Chapter 700

The Waterfall Campsite

... Dessie straightened up and stared at Ann. “I have eaten pheasant, fish and rabbit until they’re practically coming out my ears. I’ve had MREs while backpacking and wasn’t in love with them all that much, but I think I would love some now, no matter what the meal consists of.”

“We have an assortment. I noticed a Brisket Entreé, Chicken something or other, and a Beef Stew, with whatever goes with them, and several more besides. We just grabbed some at random in case you were hungry. I’ll go back to the interceptor and get a couple. You can choose whichever you want. Better yet, why don’t you come with me? You can choose for yourself.”

Dessie finished with her spit, her attention now on her sleeping husband with Little One sitting on his chest. Arlene noticed and said, “Selina and Ann are with your husband. Please trust me on this. He’ll be fine when Little One finishes.”

“But how can that thing ... whatever it is, heal my husband?”

“It’s a she, and she’s super intelligent. She is a constructed being — well, partially. She has enhanced herself well past her first meager beginnings as well as developing her own much-increased power source — think unlimited as far as we are concerned. Her original, and as far as I know, still main purpose is healing, although she is far more than just a Healer. She kept me from dying at the risk of her own life when I was shot, and Ship healed me, but that’s a long story. When I put Little One on Phillip’s chest, she told me it would take some time to heal him, but there was no doubt in her voice about the certainty of his healing. I do suspect that it will take several hours, though.”

At the look of doubt on Dessie’s face, Arlene reached over and took her hand. “Look, you know our family, and Mom talks to you on the phone, but there are tons of things that we haven’t told you. When this is over, we will ask you to accept a mental block that will prevent you from telling anyone outside the family about our technology. After that, we will reveal all our secrets and everything about our ongoing projects. Everything.

“Just look at Little One as if she is a person, for she really is — just a constructed person in a different body. She has told me that she has feelings and dreams just as we do. She was one of a group of Healers. However, she alone achieved self-awareness, then developed her own power source as well as the ability to enhance herself. She and Ship have evolved a link, and she has become a person. A loving, very intelligent person.

“Now, back to the block. Since Selina has become part of us, we were planning to ask you and your husband to accept the block, and afterward, we would have told you everything about our family — all our secrets. I violated our rules to allow Mia and her group to view our interceptor, but there seemed to be no other way to reach them at the moment. There is much more that we will tell you after you two accept the block. Lest you worry, it is harmless unless you decide to tell someone not blocked or cleared to learn our secrets. Should that happen, you will feel increasing nausea until you stop your conversation. Otherwise, you will never know you have it. My revealing the interceptor to Mia and her group means that I will have to ask them to be blocked as well. Should they refuse, our secrets, some of which protect us from attack, might eventually be revealed to the public and hence some of our enemies.

“Anyway, in the meantime, please give me your word that you won’t reveal any of the technology you see before we can all sit down with my husband and discuss this.”

Dessie hesitated before saying, “The only people we know over here are Mia, her sister and brother-in-law and the two doctors, and if they already know about your interceptor...”

“Just please keep it that way for the present. I’m already going to be in enough trouble with my husband as it is.”

“No problem,” Dessie said with a smile.

“Okay, let’s go get you and Phillip some MREs.”

Dessie looked over at her husband. “Are you sure it’s okay to leave him like that?”

Arlene hoped her smile helped to convince Dessie. “Ann and Selina are with him, and with Little One on his chest, he is far safer than he would be without her. She is perfectly capable — and willing — to take care of herself and her patient.”

“How did it, uh she, put Phillip to sleep so quickly?”

Arlene knelt and put her hand on Little One for a few seconds. When she removed her hand, she spoke to Dessie. “Touch her.”

“How can you tell if it is a female?”

“Oh, she’s quite definitely female,” Arlene responded. “You wanted to know about her, so touch her. She converses mentally and has learned to speak mentally to humans.”

Dessie cautiously reached out, her hand hovering near Little One for a moment before she completed the movement and put her hand on the alien. “Oh, she’s warm.”

Dessie heard a sweet voice in her mind that said, {{{ I am not an it. I am a person. I would love to converse with you, but I am conducting a delicate process and need all my faculties for concentration. }}}

“Uh, thank you,” Dessie stammered before snatching her hand back with a look of wonder.

“What?” an amused Arlene asked.

“It, uh, she, told me she wasn’t an it, but a person. She said she would love to converse with me but was conducting a delicate process and needed all her faculties. That thing really is helping Phillip,” Dessie stumblingly said as she tried to convince herself that her husband would be okay.

Arlene chuckled. “She isn’t Earth technology, so if you were expecting some mechanical-sounding voice; forget it. She’s a Healer. She can, and will, heal your husband. Ship could do it more quickly, but if Little One didn’t say Phillip’s injury was beyond her abilities, then she will heal him.”

“But how can something like that...”

“That’s above my paygrade,” Arlene returned with a chuckle. “The only time she couldn’t heal someone was when I was shot. Even then, it was because of the massive bleeding that she knew she would not be able to control quickly enough, so she put me in suspended animation. Herself as well. Mom, Dad and my sisters got me to Ship, and she finished the healing process.”

“Oh, boy. Now we have some kind of ship that heals,” Dessie said while wondering if Arlene were stretching the truth a bit.

Arlene hesitated for a second, then, “Oh, well, in for a penny and so forth. Better than that,” she said with a grin, “Ship isn’t just a ship. She’s a self-aware being who built herself after an alien race constructed her brain, gave her supplies and left her to create the best battleship she could conceive of — something that would win against their enemies.”

Arlene realized that Dessie probably didn’t believe her about Ship, but maybe she would start to believe when Little One put Phillip back on his feet.

Dessie tore her attention from her husband to face Arlene, who smiled at her and said, “Let’s go get a few MREs for you and Phillip to choose from.”

“Just grab anything for me and maybe a chicken meal of some kind for Phillip. I think I’ll stay with him.”

Arlene reached to take her hand. “We’ve covered that. Ann is going to stay with him, as well as Selina, so you know he’ll be safe. Besides, you need to get your mind off your troubles for a few minutes — troubles that are essentially over, whether you believe it or not.”

Selina, hearing them, said, “Momma, Ann and I will take care of Daddy while Little One heals him. Please, just go check out the interceptor. You will be amazed.”

Despite all the things Selina had done to her parents, Dessie knew that the seven-year-old genius would never give her okay for something that would bring physical harm to either of them.

Dessie sighed. “Okay, I suppose my nerves are on edge — have been since Phillip’s accident.”

A few minutes later, they approached the interceptor, but Dessie stopped in amazement. “That must be one of the things we saw fighting when Phillip got hurt.”

When Arlene frowned, Dessie went on. “A ... machine like that one and another even larger thing was fighting when a beam from the larger craft hit the embankment we were walking on. The ground just seemed to explode. Everything crumbled and went crashing down toward the stream, taking my husband with it.”

“Oh, my gosh. Ann and I fought the Paladins in several places in this country. Most of our battles were over the cities, but I have a faint memory of chasing one with forests beneath us when it dived down to the mountains to try to get away. One of the craft you saw could very well have been this one with Ann and me controlling it,” she said while motioning to her interceptor. “We always tried to make sure where our beams were going, but the Miadax didn’t care. They were trying to destroy anything they could anyway, so a stray beam that hit people was just a plus to them. The Paladins had multiple weapon pods, and when we attacked, they always returned fire with everything they could bring to bear on us.

“We have friend or foe technology, of course, so we can’t accidentally fire on another interceptor during battle, but the AI also keeps the guns from firing toward any person who might be downrange. The only thing I can be certain of is that any beams fired by us had little to no chance of hitting anyone because of the AI’s overriding influence.”

“The beam came from the bigger craft, not one like this one, but it’s startling to see this thing just sitting out here in an overgrown field.” As they neared the interceptor, Dessie stopped to stare. “It’s even bigger than I thought. The one we saw was just sort of ... darting back and forth. It seemed to go from place to place without any lapse of time between ... It was just in one place, then suddenly it was in another.”

“All the interceptors have inertialess drives,” Arlene said, “Without those, the Paladins would probably have won. They were bigger, had more weapons and more gunners to deliver that firepower.”

“I don’t remember much of my physics, but I do know what inertia is.” After a moment of thinking, “Yes, that would explain the darting from place to place, while the other, bigger craft struggled to turn and stay away from...”

“ ... our interceptors,” Arlene finished for her.

Dessie hesitated but finally spoke. “Forgive me, but how could you be a fighter pilot at your age? What, sixteen? It’s not that I don’t believe you, but...”

“Seventeen,” Arlene said with a smile. “But never doubt that we’ve been trained — extensively. We were trained at Ship’s academy. She has a way of compressing time where you get months of Academy training in just a few hours, or maybe a day or two of actual time. Trust me on this. We have far more actual fighter training than the average U.S. fighter pilot — way more. And much of it was in simulated combat, and those simulations were far beyond any Earth-type simulation. Combat was so real that you felt your mistakes — really felt them, even after you awakened. There is nothing like pain as a motivator. When you made a mistake, you never wanted to make that same mistake again — ever.”