Chapter 15: Catching Up

Simon and Commodore Stayren spent hours talking. At one point the Commodore had said “Can we just get to a first name basis? Call me Aillie.

“That works for me, Aillie.” said Simon. “Call me Simon.”

“Simon, I am intrigued by some aspects of Blazing Star. Although I had heard small bits and pieces of what it was supposed to be like, I find that the reality is much larger than the myth. You do realize, that Aurora holds a mythical position in our fleet to this day. She was to be the beginning of a whole new generation of Star Ships. Blazing Star is much larger than I thought and much more maneuverable. She is almost invisible normally and when cloaked, appears to be totally undetectable. You can fire weapons when cloaked and even maintain the cloak during combat. We cannot do that, the cloak consumes too much power and we have found it a waste during combat. I noticed that your power recharge rates are incredible. You must have vast power reserves. I also noticed that you didn’t even launch any fighters or bombers in that battle. I take it that you do have a few of those on board!” said Aillie.

Simon smiled as he replied “Aillie, we are equipped to launch over four hundred assorted fighters, bombers, shuttles and scouts from six launch bays. It wasn’t necessary. We have made a few technical improvements over the original Aurora, and that is contributing to those enhancements you have noticed. We are also working on more. I noticed something interesting as well. You touched upon it when you mentioned a ‘mythical position’ in your fleet. I take it that Epic retains that ‘feeling’ towards Blaze?”

“I did notice that and was a bit surprised by it. The ship AI’s have a sort of hierarchy pyramid all their own. Aurora was near the top of that pyramid. Epic would normally only ‘defer’ to a higher tiered AI.” replied Aillie.

This is going to be interesting, thought Simon. Now the AI’s have tiers.

“I had wondered why you did not employ a cloak when approaching us, nor when that other Destroyer attacked. Now I understand. Do any of our adversaries use cloaked ships?” asked Simon.

“Usually only the Scout Class ships have cloaks. Some races don’t even have the technology.” replied Aillie.

[Blaze, any update on that recovered debris?]

(Research has some preliminary information for you.)

“Aillie, just before we observed your Scout, we managed to pick up one interesting piece of debris. “ said Simon.

“That was what alerted us to your presence.” said Captain Netherla.

“Ah, yes, we thought as much. That was one of our Scouts you detected. Blazing Star was actually quite a ways away from there at the time. When you moved, you alerted us to your presence, Captain. We tracked your movements and positioned ourselves in front of you.” said Simon.

“Again, you were one step ahead of me.” said Captain Netherla smiling. “We will have to be more careful in future.”

“It did work out for the best, however. If not for those two slip-ups, we may never have had this opportunity to get to know each other. I consider it fortunate.” said Simon. “This debris we picked up, we think was a memory module. I believe our Research teams may have something on it by now. Show us what you have, Blaze.”

Blaze began with a few pictures on the nearby view screen. She then began to describe the type of the module and the state it was in. It was a very old module and had suffered considerable damage. The research team had applied power to it and had begun to charge the module when they realized that it was most likely an AI core. Everything stopped. Simon had set a few guidelines in place recently when the concept of creating AI’s was discussed. Nobody, except for Nate and himself were permitted to work on an AI. This included all memory modules or cores. At the very least, one or both of them had to be present at the time. Not even Blaze was permitted to analyze any further without Nate or Simon being directly involved. That was when Blaze was notified and she was passing along the information now.

“Captain, that is a very old memory module. I recognize the design. We haven’t used that design for almost two thousand years. It could be from one of the ships we lost during the dark years.” exclaimed Aillie. “How could it have been drifting around here? None of those ships lasted any longer than a hundred years or so. I was unaware that any of our ships had even explored this far from home.”

“It still retained some power.” said Simon. “How long could one of those survive with and without power?”

“Without power, perhaps a hundred years or so. The internal power storage units would still hold some charge for that length of time. With power, almost indefinitely.” said Aillie. “There would be serious degradation over time if power was removed.”

“Considering the state it is in, would it make sense to assume it has not been fully powered up for close to one hundred years, but must have been powered up until then?” asked Simon.

“That would be most likely, Simon.” replied Aillie.

“Were there any other ships that survived that attack over 2,400 years ago that disappeared without a trace over the next 2000 years?” Simon asked Epic.

“Yes, Captain. There were quite a few. Some have been discovered since then, but there are two still unaccounted for.” replied Epic.

“Ah”, said Aillie. “I see where you are going with this. Epic, display those two ships, and their AI core serial numbers if we still have them on file.”

“I require authorization to utilize this ships resources.” declared Epic.

“I am sorry, Epic. I forgot where we were for a moment there. Forward all relevant information to Blaze for display.” apologized Aillie.

Simon said “Display the information when you receive it, Blaze, please.”

“Displaying now!” said Blaze.

What they saw was two of the ships that were present along with Aurora over 2,400 years ago. One ship was described as a Battleship and the other was a Destroyer. The serial numbers on the AI cores were compared to the core in Research. They discovered that they somehow had stumbled upon the AI core of the Battleship ‘High Guard’.

“High Guard carried the High Commander at that time, the same High Commander that invited you to join Daandrusian High Command!” said Aillie reverently. “She survived for quite a number of missions after that attack, but disappeared during a battle with the Dark Race. That memory core may contain invaluable information if you could recover it.”

“That sounds like a new project to me.” said Simon.

“I would offer you some help on that, but we are no longer familiar with that type of core design. It is probably much closer to Blaze’s core than Epic’s even. It was the highest tiered core of its time. It was known as ‘SheGuard’.” said Aillie.

Simon suggested that they had covered a lot of ground for the day and perhaps Aillie and he needed a bit of a break, but, there was one more topic remaining on the board for discussion. How would they stay in touch with each other? Although Simon was reluctant to divulge his home world, he really had little choice. He already now knew the home world of the Daandrusian people so it would seem a bit unfriendly not to reveal his. He instructed Blaze to transmit to Epic the data she had collected on the systems to add to their star system charts and to indicate the Sol system as their home system. Aillie suggested that he would inform High Command of events regarding Blazing Star and that Simon should expect friendly visitors in the future. He did, however, mention that there were probably some very unfriendly people between here and his home world, so to be careful. Epic was instructed to send secure codes to Blaze to permit communication with Daandrusian vessels should they encounter them at any time or place.

Aillie, Captain Netherla, Epic and Drale Harton returned to Command Bay, boarded their shuttle and returned to the Epicure. They had a lot to think about and a lot of information to add to their star charts. High Command needed to know all about this situation and quickly.

Simon left instructions for his Command staff, including Blaze, to return to the Sol system. They were to shift to the same systems used to arrive here, so as to reduce the potential for encounters. Blazing Star said its goodbyes to Epicure and shifted out of the system, now on their way home.

Mike was on the Navigation Console while Blaze watched from her usual position, behind and to the right of the Captains chair. Simon and Nate went to Simon’s quarters where they spent a lot of time considering what approach to use on the newly found memory core. There was a lot to consider, especially now that they had discovered that the debris was none other than the core of “SheGuard’ herself. SheGuard was the highest tier of AI’s at that time. She probably had more information about the fleet than any other AI. She may even have the codes to unlock the Mystery Console. That was the upside. The downside, was that the damage to her memory core may make her dangerous and the highest tiered AI could likely be very dangerous. Simon knew that they would have to proceed slowly, carefully and methodically, in order to avoid causing any further damage and to ensure that nothing went wrong.

Some forty-three hours after leaving Sol on their first mission, Blazing Star and crew arrived back in the Sol System, tired but elated. Blaze was scanning the system for anything amiss before enabling communications when Simon came back into Command.

“Sol System clear, Captain. All bases currently running Black. They have obviously detected our arrival.” reported Blaze.

“Open Channels to all bases. Let them know we are home and they can stand down.” said Simon.

“Done. SBE reports a few incidents while we were away, Captain.” reported Blaze.

“Let me talk to George.” said Simon. “Let’s see what happened.”

“Simon.” said George. “Good to see you are back, I hope it was a successful mission.”

“Very.” replied Simon. “Tell you all about it when we arrive back in SBE. I understand you have had a few incidents?”

“Yes, Simon.” said George. “It seems that CSIS may not have dropped their investigation. We have now received requests to all our Corporations to expect visitors from Canada Revenue and Taxation (CRT). That in itself is strange, since we haven’t been in business long enough to warrant any kind of consideration. They do, legally, have the right to examine the businesses since we did register all of them with your personal address in Alberta, Canada. Since there were no roads out here, it seemed like a suitable approach to the registration process. Legal advice confirmed that! The funny thing is that they arrived by e-mail. Normally, requests like that come registered mail. Mind you, that might have been very difficult for them to do.”

“So, they’re pissing in the wind?” said Simon.

“That would be my take, but you expressed it better than I could have.” replied George.

“Okay, how many different names on those e-mails?” asked Simon.

“Only one, someone called Conrad Burke.” replied George.

“Nate, start a search on this Conrad Burke at CRT. See what you can find. I want his connection to CSIS and anything else you can get on him. I think it’s about time the Canadian Government became aware of us.” said Simon. “An additional thought, George. Can we relocate all those Corporations offshore? Maybe far offshore?”

“I’ll get on that Simon. Would SBM be far enough?” said George grinning.

“Great minds think alike!” said Simon. “I wonder what their reaction to that will be?”

Blazing Star took a round about approach to Earth, arriving in orbit some eighteen minutes after arriving in system.

Nate was grinning ear-to-ear. “I have some information for you, Simon.” he said kind of smugly.

“Let’s hear it, Nate.” said Simon.

“Blaze and I, have been doing some research on Conrad Burke.” said Nate. “He is Head of Corporate Investigations with CRT, a position he has held for approaching two years. He lives in Ottawa with his wife and 3 kids at a fairly well-to-do gated community. He has worked his way up the ranks swiftly, primarily because of his dogged determinism to hunt down Corporations suspected of tax evasion. We have been perusing his e-mails and phone calls lately and have uncovered a link to CSIS. He received an e-mail three days ago from a Carla Evans in CSIS with a fairly accurate corporate tree of our operation and the suggestion that he might want to take a look at it. Carla followed up with a ten minute phone call several hours later. There have been four additional calls between them since then. The interesting part is that Carla Evans is working in CSIS under an Allan Drummond. Their department is undefined. In checking on Allan Drummond, we discovered that it was he that sent the request to CFB Cold Lake for the flyover. It seems like he has several additional plans in the fire as well. I suspect that one day very soon, a squad of military types will show up at our doorstep at SBE.”

“Grant?” asked Simon.

“I’m alerting them now.” replied Grant.

“I want to know where Allan Drummond is. Tap his land phones, cell phones, computers, get into their network if you have to. He’s going to know that I am not happy about this, even if he does think he has the right.” said Simon.

“Found him, Captain.” stated Blaze a few minutes later. “He is on his cell phone. GPS tracking has him moving South along highway 35 in southern Ontario. He isn’t moving too quickly, the weather is a bit windy and snowing heavily in that area.”

“Mike, let Blaze take over the maneuvering for now. Blaze, you recall the procedure we used to rescue the Nimitz personnel?” said Simon.

“Of course, Captain.” replied Blaze.

“Track him. Find a suitable location on his route, drop down, full cloak, open bay four, drop a ramp, pick him up then head back up to space over southern Ontario and hold there. I hope his driver is alert enough to stop before hitting the end of our launch bay!” grinned Simon. “Secure Bay four for incoming vehicle.”

“Security teams dispatched to bay four, full combat mode. They will hold vehicle and passengers till my arrival.” said Grant.

“Best to disable his communications, Blaze, just before we pick him up if you can manage that at the same time.” said Simon.

“Understood, Captain.” said Blaze.

Ten minutes later, Allan Drummond was having a relaxed conversation with Carla. He was confirming his hotel room booking at the Royal York Hotel in Toronto for that evening and he also asked if the Prime Minister was going to be able to make it. Carla confirmed all that for him. His driver, ex-military security, was carefully winding south on Highway 35. Rounding a slight bend in the road, the driver saw, what looked to him a large flatbed trailer lying on it’s side at a forty-five degree angle, just like a ramp. Approximately two seconds later, he felt like he was launching over the ramp into the air, then, he saw a large room and landed with a thump on the floor of that room. He had applied the brakes just before launching, and had wet tires from the snow they had been traveling through, so skidded to a halt slightly sideways approximately in the middle of the bay. The next thing they both realized was that there were a dozen or more very serious looking military commando types pointing weapons at them from outside their doors and ordering them out of the vehicle. Allan noted that his cell phone had died. Reluctantly they exited their vehicle and stood there, staring all around them. Nothing made sense. What was going on?

Grant chose that moment to calmly walk up to Allan Drummond and said “You have been a naughty boy. Now, you are going to explain yourself to my boss.”

Grant issued a few orders and his team quick marched the two to a security holding cell. The security holding cells had only had one visitor briefly, so were absolutely spotless. This particular one had two comfortable chairs on each side of a fairly ornate oval table. Grant told them to sit down on the far side of the table. He stood at one end. between them and the door. There were several glass panels around the room, now opaque. Grant had not bothered to even search his ‘guests’, although he was well aware that Allan and the driver were both armed. He felt that they would be more likely to slip up if they thought they had an ace up their sleeves. A recent discovery in the holding cells caused Grant to grin as he waited for Simon. It seems that the ceiling above the half of the room occupied by his two guests contained some nasty surprises if the detainees misbehaved. Grant was almost hoping to test them out.

Several times, while they waited, Allan looked as if he was about to ask a question. Grant simply held up his hand, chest high, palm out, and said, “Wait.”

After a few minutes, Blaze strode into the room, followed by Simon. Simon and Blaze were in casual dress. Both men watched Blaze with more than a little curiosity. Then they turned their attention to Simon. Allan thought he recognized Simon and was considering whether or not to mention that.

Just as he was about to speak, Simon began. “Allan, I am Captain Simon Gordon, and I am a bit displeased with you. You have been wasting Canadian government and Canadian taxpayers’ money. We are here today to rectify that situation. You have taken an interest in a corporation called Star Force Galactic and in a certain piece of real estate in Alberta registered to a Simon Gordon. You have directed four F-18’s, one Hercules and one surveillance satellite to gather data on that property at taxpayer expense. You have directed Conrad Burke of the CRT, through your associate, Carla Evans, to harass that corporation and its affiliates, again at taxpayer expense. Explain to me why you have done all this, Allan.” said Simon calmly.

“I don’t have to explain anything to you. Now what do you think you are doing kidnapping me like this. In case you’re not aware, kidnapping is a serious offense in Canada.” began Allan.

Grant was grinning even more. Allan’s driver was watching Grant very closely now.

“I am not kidnapping you, you are free to leave at any time. Think of this as an unscheduled appointment along the route of your trip.” said Simon calmly. “Now, more to the point, what makes you think that you have any authority to do what you have been doing?”

“I have the authority to protect Canada and the Canadian people from all kinds of potential threats. That authority is given to me by the Canadian government.” replied Allan smugly.

“Ah, now we are getting somewhere. So how did you determine that Simon Gordon and his Alberta property might pose a threat to the Canadian people?” asked Simon, again calmly. “Let me guess. The CIA took an interest and asked you for additional information. So, thinking that they might be on to something, you decided to run your own little operation. I am sure that you are also aware that by now they have ceased to be interested in that property. So, why, then, are you continuing to waste Canadian taxpayers’ money on this foolish operation?”

“Maybe they missed something!” said Allan.

“Now that, Allan, is the most intelligent thing you have said so far.” said Simon. “However, in all your efforts to date, you have turned up exactly, nothing, to indicate that that little piece of property represents a threat to Canadian Security. Yet you persist, why?”

“People have gone missing. Something strange is going on and I am going to find out what.” replied Allan.

“Oh, how many people are you missing?” replied Simon sounding curious. “And was Simon Gordon one of those people? Maybe we can help solve your mystery.”

“Now, why would you want to do that?” asked Allan.

“We would like to clear up any concerns you have about these missing people and that piece of property in Alberta. Also, we would be saving the Canadian taxpayer millions of dollars along the way. Those surely are honorable motives!” stated Simon.