Chapter 7

"No! No! No!" Colin exclaimed, frustrated. "Look! You're making the same mistake the Chofri made! We're not just concerned with protecting Earth. To be successful, we have to find a way to completely defeat the Gorz. We have to make sure that they never come back! It's not enough to repel them! You've all seen the recordings from their assault on Chofri. If we do not destroy them, they will simply rebuild and come back stronger than ever! I don't claim to be a military genius but it's clear that fighting them in this system is a recipe for disaster. Now, here's my proposal. Keep in mind what I've just said, and then tell me how to make it better."

It took only fifteen minutes for Colin to sketch out the plan for the others, and another two hours to flesh it out to the point where they could begin actual planning. When the others finally left, Colin felt as if he had run a marathon. Moira waited for him after the others left. They could have communicated via their MIs, but preferred to keep personal communications, well, personal.

"So, have you got time for a quick..." she began seductively.

Colin cut her off. "Not right now, I'm afraid. I need to meet with the President, and there will probably be some follow up things to come out of that. Meanwhile, you have your own mission to complete."

"Oh, well..." Moira was clearly disappointed.

"I understand your frustration, Moira, and I can't promise that it will get better anytime soon," Colin said gently. "Maybe you should think about taking other partners..."

"I don't want other partners, damnit!"

"I know you don't," he said, "and I'm not trying to get rid of you, but it's not fair of me to expect you to wait until I have time for you, and my schedule's not going to get any better for the foreseeable future."

"Ah, hell! I knew it was a mistake to fall for the boss!" the redhead stormed off down the passage.

Colin shook his head as he headed for hangar bay. He really enjoyed the time he spent with Moira, but he could not let it get in the way of doing his job - the MIs would see to that!

President Arabella Aquino plopped tiredly into the plush seat of the limo, only to jerk bolt upright as a figure materialized before her.

"Damnit Colin!" she exclaimed, forcing herself to relax again as she recognized the face behind the armor's faceplate. "Why can't you just schedule an appointment like everyone else?"

Then as if speaking to the air, she said, "And what good does it do to have all of you MIs watching my every move if you're not going to let me know when I have visitors?"

The ID limo already knew her destination and lifted soundlessly as she turned once more to Colin. "Seriously, Mr. McClintock, does it really make sense for you to be able to override my MIs? I am, after all, the President of the Earth Union."

"It's out of my hands, Arabella," Colin shrugged as he stepped out of his armor. "The MIs have decided that, at least for the time being, I should have veto power over you, as well as over the Colonial governments, once they're established."

"It makes sense, I suppose, since you are responsible for all our survival, but do you have to use that power to sneak up on me?" she asked, taking a sip from the glass of fruit juice that appeared in the slot beside her chair, ordered from the server MI by her implanted MI as she conversed with her guest. Colin had already declined the enquiry sent through his own MI.

"No," Colin answered, grinning, "I just do that for fun."

"Aren't you a little old for such games?" The President asked from under an elegantly arched eyebrow. "They certainly don't become a man of your position!"

"Really?" Colin bantered. "As far as I know, there has never been anyone in my position before, so how would you, or I, for that matter, know what becomes a man in my position? Seriously, Arabella, I'm sorry to have frightened you. I just don't get many opportunities for laughter these days, so I couldn't pass up the chance when it presented itself."

"Well think about my health next time, will you?" She asked. "To what do I owe the dubious honor of this visit, anyway?"

"Just checking in," Colin said, settling into a seat across from her, "and I'm not worried about your health, my dear. Your implants and nanites will protect you from anything so mundane as a heart attack. How are things going with your new government?"

"You know very well how they're going, Colin McClintock," Arabella answered. "With these implants and Manufactured Intelligences everywhere, I'm sure that you know what's happening here as soon as I do."

Colin nodded and said, "The MIs do give me the facts, Arabella, but you've taken on a monumental task here, and what I want to know is how you're holding up. MIs are not very good at understanding the pressures that we mere mortals must face when we undertake something of that magnitude."

It was true. The MIs understood human physiology and psychology in much the same way that human engineers understood machinery: They knew the mechanics of it from dispassionate observation, but had no experience being human, or even biological, so they could never internalize that knowledge.

"I'm holding up as well as can be expected, I suppose," the President sighed. "When I accepted the nomination for this job, I never imagined how many self-righteous, self-serving, stiff-necked bastards I would have to deal with! Everywhere I turn, no matter what the language spoken, some variation of the same theme keeps popping up: 'What's in it for me?' Is there no one in any of these governments who is there to serve their people?"

"You have to remember, Ms. Aquino," Colin answered, "what kind of people seek positions of power. No matter what they say in public, they are, at heart, power hungry, and will do whatever they can to grab and hold their power. It's up to you to convince them that what you're asking of them will enhance their power, then, if that doesn't work, I'll step in and let them know the real situation. Don't expect altruism, Bella. These people can be swayed by only two things: More power for themselves, and someone with greater power than they command. Since your government is new, they perceive you as a threat to their own power, but don't yet know that you command greater power than they do."

"Command?" The President snorted. "I don't command anything. If I want something from you, I have to ask politely."

"They don't know that," Colin smiled, "and they don't need to. As long as you're not trying to grab too much power for yourself, your request is as good as a command."

"In that case," she asked, "how about a nice show of force for the United States? The other countries, for the most part, are inclined to go along, but the US is still trying to be king of the hill, and as long as they hold out, the others won't give much more than lip service to anything."

"Hmmm," I told her, "I've got some contacts in Congress. Let me pay them a visit first, then if that doesn't work, you'll get your show of force, okay?"

Moira was still fuming as the ship that carried her fighters and Pham's recon platoon exited hyperspace. In her fury, she skipped a step in her pre-flight checklist.

You must cease this emotional upheaval if you are to complete your mission safely, her MI implant told her, its voice smooth and controlled.

"Now how the hell am I supposed to do that?" She replied verbally, startling some of the others in the bay as they went about their business.

Are you a wild animal, with no control over your emotions? the MI asked, unperturbed. Mr. McClintock responded in the only way available to him, yet you blame him for not spending enough time with you. Did he not, and did we not, warn you that his position must take priority over his personal relationships?

Well, yes, but, she started to answer, this time without speaking, it's just that, well, he never seems to have time anymore. Hell, it's almost a century before the damned Gorz get to Earth, even if they don't make any stops along the way. Why can't he take just fifteen minutes now and then?

Among other things, her MI answered primly, Mr. McClintock was a project manager before we recruited him for his current position. He knows how little time truly remains to complete the plans he has laid out, and how much must be accomplished in that time. He is also aware of how much he needs the cooperation of the governments of Earth. His problem in this regard is much more complex than that faced on Chofri. You have no matriarch like the Chofira, and given the nature of your people, it is just as well. The nature of your governmental structures, however, means that our cause must be won in numerous places on Earth before it can be successfully advanced against the Gorz.

But I get so damned... , Moira began, but the MI did not let her finish.

That is a stimulus. Remember your sleep training. Between that stimulus and your response there is a gap into which you can insert your rational mind and choose the proper response.

Moira did remember. She didn't like it, but she knew the MI was right. She had been acting like a spoiled child when she should have been thinking about her responsibilities.

Thanks, Dolores, she thought at the MI.

Dolores? You have given me a human name?

Seems I have, Moira grinned, remembering fondly her old chum at University who had been so adept at keeping her on an even keel. I hope you don't mind. You remind me of a friend from University.

I do not mind at all, the MI replied, then continued after a pause of several seconds, In fact, I think I rather like it. Thank you.

You're welcome, Moira responded, a little surprised by the interaction. Now, where was I?

She completed her pre-flight, then stood by as Pham and half his platoon boarded the stealth shuttle. This one had weapons, but if she needed them, her mission would have failed, so Moira crossed her fingers as she checked the hatch after the MIs closed it. It was probably unnecessary. The MIs were very thorough and careful, but her life and those of the recon troopers depended upon it being done right, so she double checked the MIs.

She watched Pham do his headcount and when he gave her a thumbs up, she climbed into the pilot's seat. Pham could have taken the co-pilot's seat, since the craft's MI would serve as co-pilot on this trip, but he stayed in the passenger compartment with his men.

Phantom One to Phantom Two, we are locked and loaded with a green board. What's your status?

Phantom One this is Two, we are sealed and status is 'GO'. Awaiting your signal.

Roger Phantom Two. Mother Ghost, Phantom flight is ready for launch.

Copy, Phantom. Mother is opening launch bay doors - doors open. Phantom you're cleared for launch. Good Hunting!

Moira lifted the ID shuttle just clear of the deck and nudged the 'throttle' forward. With only inches of clearance between the shuttle's hull and the gravitational top and bottom of the launch bay, the shuttle fired out of the bay doors doing well over 600 KPH. Moira had worried about that during her first simulations, but the incredible stability of the MI assisted controls and the added safety of the craft's shield made the maneuver not only feasible, but quite safe.

Once clear of the hull, Moira maxed the speed control lever, knowing that once they got out of the miniscule gravitational field of the mother ship, they would be adrift, unpowered, until their drives could engage the mass of the Gorz fleet. That was both the beauty and the danger of using ID ships in open space, far from any planet or other massive body. If the Gorz could detect such drives, they wouldn't be expecting them so far from gravity wells and probably wouldn't be looking for them. On the downside, if Moira and her wingman were off in their navigational calculations by even a tiny fraction of a degree, they would miss the Gorz fleet and have no way to get back to the mother ship, since without gravity fields of significant size, they were essentially unpowered ballistic projectiles. That meant, at the very least, hours of drifting while Mother Ghost waited for the Gorz fleet to pass, then sent out the blip that would activate her ship's recovery beacon. One of the pilots who trained in the sims with her had had the brilliant idea of trying to 'leapfrog' two ID ships off each other's mass, having them alternate using the mass of the other ID ship to 'pull' themselves along a given course, like climbing a rope, hand over hand.

The MIs had watched in what Moira was sure was amusement as the genius painstakingly re-learned a couple of basic principles of physics: for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction, and there's no such thing as a perpetual motion machine. The best that could be achieved with two ID ships of equal mass was to draw them toward each other, then push away as they passed, with the end result being that the two ships wound up traveling away from each other at the same velocity.

Still, the MIs had gone over the calculations and double-checked each other, and within three hours the sensors began to pick up significant mass on a collision course with their own. Since the combined mass of the Gorz fleet was much greater than that of the mother ship, the two invisible shuttles were able to decelerate using minimal power from their drives. Moira was the one who had recognized the feasibility of this approach, and the recon guys had shown their gratitude. The first missions to spy on the Gorz had been accomplished by dropping the recon troops on the path of the alien fleet and leaving them to wait in empty space for the Gorz to come by so they could use the ID drives from their stealth armor to take them to the ship or ships they wanted to infiltrate.

The exfiltration remained the same as it had been from the first mission: The recon armor would use the mass of the Gorz ships to push themselves clear of the ships and decelerate. After a suitable time, which would depend upon how much delta-V they could achieve, Pham and his men would send a single, sub-nanosecond signal that the mothership would use to begin retrieval. A preprogrammed time period later, the signal would repeat, in a random pattern until the ship had located and picked up the suits and their human contents.

Approaching the Gorz fleet, Moira turned on the red light in the jump compartment. Fifteen seconds later, she got an answering green light on her control panel, signaling that the recon squad was ready to jump. The very nature of the ID drive ensured that the shuttle had reoriented itself as it came within the influence of the Gorz fleet's mass so that the shuttle's belly now pointed at the enemy fleet, Moira opened the belly doors as she used the inertial drive to decelerate. As the ship approached the threshold delta-V with the Gorz fleet, she lit the green light and the entire squad stepped into the opening of the belly door. Since they were held at the same velocity as the shuttle by its field, she had the MI re-shape the field and 'push' the squad through the opening as the shuttle continued decelerating.

Still over a thousand klicks from the nearest Gorz ship, the squads released by the two shuttles continued closing with the fleet at well over two thousand kilometers per hour, their armor, with c-thrus full on, used its ID jump drive in the last few kilometers to decelerate and steer the soldiers toward their designated targets.

Her job done, Moira gradually drew her shuttle away from the mismatched jumble of ships that made up the Gorz fleet, sending it back along the preprogrammed course stored in its MI's memory by the mother ship. It was, of necessity, a slow, boring trip. Since the Gorz' ability to detect the gravitational anomalies caused by Inertial Drives was unknown, the MIs kept their power below the threshold of detectability by their own sensors. While this minimized the chance of detection, it meant that they could not just reverse course after dropping off their passengers. The shuttles continued decelerating slowly as they passed the Gorz fleet, then used the mass of the enemy ships to 'slingshot' them back toward the Mothership.

With their returning velocity less than half their outbound velocity, Moira had little to do but mull over the past few hours.

When she had first thrown herself at Colin, it had been little more than a lark - a ploy to see if the commander of the fleet could be enticed into her bed. She had been more than a little surprised when it worked. As time went on, and she got to know him better, Moira had begun to realize that, while he liked her well enough, their personal time was, to him, primarily a convenient outlet for his own sexual tension. Still, that was the kind of uncomplicated relationship she had always wanted, but lately, Moira had found herself becoming jealous of the time Colin spent on his job.

How can that be? she asked herself. I finally find the guy who won't cling - the guy I've looked for all my life - and now I'm clinging to him? What's happening to me, Dolores?

You're asking me? her MI answered. Do you really expect me to understand the jumble of mismatched chemical signals that you Humans call emotion? As Colin has observed, I can give you a clinical analysis of what I believe is occurring within your psyche, but I cannot understand it as another Human would.

Well, maybe a clinical analysis would help, Moira answered, her exasperation coloring the thought.

Very well, Dolores replied. I believe that you have developed an emotional attachment to Colin McClintock, due in part to the same characteristics that caused us to choose him for his role. That, taken by itself, would be a positive development, but your emotional immaturity drives you to want to possess that which you believe you love, though your intellect tells you that if Colin allowed himself to be possessed, he would not be the person you love. Because you cannot see these flaws within yourself, you blame Colin for his lack of attention to you.