Chapter 2

Ray felt numb. The implications of what Joe had been telling him were staggering: on the other hand, it might all be a fabrication. Perhaps the "entertainment" might offer some kind of validation of what he had been hearing - but he hoped not.

Shortly after Joe left the room, Ray heard footsteps approaching, and was not surprised to hear the doctor's voice.

"Hello again, General," he said. "I trust that you are still comfortable?"

"I wouldn't call it that," Ray responded, "but I am probably as comfortable as I can be under the circumstances."

"Ah well," the doctor smirked, as he came into view. "We must all make sacrifices in order to achieve our goals."

"I don't have any goals that would demand that I be confined this way!"

"I didn't say that they were your goals," the doctor grinned at him. "I said our goals! Under the circumstances, even you have to make sacrifices for them!"

Ray had to laugh in spite of himself. He was pretty much convinced that these people weren't going to harm him, and they had promised to release him before his liberty was up. Things could be worse. Nevertheless, he was convinced that once he was free, sooner or later he would find them, and payback was going to be a bitch!

"Speaking of sacrifices," the doctor went on, as he propelled the confinement chair out of the office, "there has been a change in plans. The Don has decided that we will be abandoning this base permanently, following your release."

"Why would you do that?" queried Ray.

"Because we've decided that it is necessary to expose its location to you, in order to convince you of the truth of our assertions."

"Why would that be necessary?"

"Well, the Don believes that for you to be convinced, we have to show you conclusively that you aren't on Earth."

"Why wouldn't you just cut the gravity generators?" Ray asked, but then realized the fallacy of that line of reasoning.

The doctor, watching his facial expressions, nodded. "Yeah, anybody with the right equipment could fake low gravity, at least long enough to be convincing. No, the Don says you have to go outside and see for yourself."

Ray's heart almost leapt out of his chest, thinking that rescue might be only moments away ... then the doctor dashed those hopes for him, as he was wheeled into an airlock.

"We're moving you into a specially-constructed observation platform, shielded against the possibility of your nanites communicating with the Confederacy AI's. It's actually a sort of mini-spaceship, and one of our pilots will be taking you for a guided tour."

"So why would that require that you abandon the base?" Ray asked again.

The doctor, who had just finished cycling the airlock, stopped for a moment, and gave him a look that plainly said How stupid do you think we are? He heaved a huge sigh and responded.

"Look General, we aren't ignorant of the capabilities of the Confederacy AI's. We know that if you get even a glance at the star patterns here, a little session of hypnosis, assisted by some of their drugs, will allow them to recover your memory of those patterns with great accuracy. We've concluded that when they get that information, their computational power will pinpoint this base within hours after we release you.

"The base was never intended for long-term occupancy. It was handy, because of its location, and its loss will be inconvenient but not incredibly so. The Don feels it will be worth the loss to have you know that he's telling you the truth. Your conviction of his honesty in this matter, and cooperation in delivering our message to the Navy is incredibly important to him, and to the human race on Earth.

"And by the time your Navy gets here, all they will find is a pile of slag surrounded by asteroids."

Ray was stunned by their willingness to scrap what was an obviously huge investment, just to prove a point. So much so, that he completely spaced out the transition from airlock to spacecraft. By the time he recovered his composure, the doctor had secured the chair to a set of dogs, set into the floor, and seemingly especially designed to hold the chair. He faced a large transparent port, looking out onto a field of asteroids.

He felt a bump, and then suddenly he was weightless. The platform drifted first one way, then another, as small jets controlled by the pilot shifted the attitude and location of the craft. The pilot turned the craft completely around, so that Ray could see where they had just been.

At first, it looked just like any of the other asteroids in the immediate vicinity, but upon longer inspection, he could see the hatch and coupling flange that had formerly connected the craft to the base. There was no denying the reports of his own senses. He was in space, and far enough away from earth to suggest that transport would require a much more advanced technology than he'd previously been led to believe existed there.

Of course, his observations only confirmed that the Don had advanced technology, not where he got it or how advanced it was. He still thought the Don's story was farfetched, but he would bet his last credit that the mafiusu couldn't have gotten past Confederacy security to steal any technology, and he couldn't think of any other rational explanation. Eliminating the impossible demanded that he accept the Don's explanation.

Another night passed, another day in captivity began. Ray was once again being carted to the office to meet with Joe. He accepted the fact that his hosts/captors couldn't trust him — their reasoning that he would likely try to escape was perfectly valid. Hell, he wouldn't have trusted him. At this point, he just wished that they would cut the chase and send him home.

Once again, Joe was already there, waiting for him. Before Joe could speak, Ray challenged him.

"Okay. I have to believe that you have the technology you say you have, so why not just give me the message and send me on my way now?"

Joe smiled and responded, "It's not as simple as that." As Ray's face fell, he went on, "You haven't heard enough of the story to know the extent of the technology we possess, and that knowledge will be critical to the credibility of the message we are going to give you. For you to believe in the necessity of that, we will probably have to give you another demonstration ... but that will come later."

Joe turned back to his desk and picked up a sheaf of papers. Glancing briefly at them, he seemed to find what he was looking for, and resumed his tale...

La Cosa Nostra has been around for a very long time. That particular name for it is an artifact of publicity and highly visible, but less-than-effective, legal processes. Those processes were connected with efforts by the governments of the United States and of Italy to suppress the cosche. Whether or not those efforts were justified is, for the moment, beside the point.

To actually get to the point, you have to realize that, even while the prosecution/persecution was underway, and as well as well before and ever since then, members of La Cosa Nostra were embedded in the governments of both countries. Granted, our ability to maintain the embedded presence has been dramatically reduced since First Contact, but then, our need for it had already begun to fade by then.

You see, our ability to monitor and influence government activities, and thus our ability to take advantage of their inaction actually peaked during those years in which we were under observation by the Hwee! The paranoia of the US Military, during and following the war years, led them to fire upon and successfully disable a number of Hwee craft ... actually many more than they realized! Nearly all of the disabled craft, however, were capable of only atmospheric flight. The US Military managed to recover a few of those, and actually did get a small technological advantage from studying them, but not one that put them on the road to spaceflight.

The cosche, recovered the rest; and as far as we've been able to determine, my cosca in particular recovered the only hyper drive-capable vessel that was lost here. Of course, we did not know how special it was, at the time.

Something that most people never consider is that the cosche respect and desire scientific knowledge as much as any educational institution or government research program. We have a tradition of funding research and "think tanks" that goes as far back in history as we can follow; thus we already had research staff in many locations, representing a broad cross-section of scientific disciplines, even before World War II.

It was a massive and expensive effort to unravel the secrets of the Hwee spaceship, but they were unraveled! All but one ... the hyper drive itself. The recovered ship provided access to a knowledge base which was useful in gaining an understanding of their history and culture, but was short on technical knowledge. It was, after all, never intended to be more than a small cargo vessel, and a crew who was tied to either a fixed base, or a larger ship, maintained it.

It took years to map the physical layout of components and their connections, power sources, and controls. The danger of energizing the device was obvious, though, and until the Darjee made their appearance, there didn't seem to be a hurry. News of the Sa'arm, however, changed everything. Many brave young men were lost to us, as a result of our efforts, following that event.

You have seen the evidence of our ability to travel extreme distances in short periods of time. I suspect that you no longer need to be convinced that we have the Hwee hyper drive, and that we are no longer confined to Earth — despite the best efforts of the Confederacy and your Navy to keep us there.

For a price, we have also enabled others, considered undesirable by Confederacy standards, to migrate off-planet, as well. This is how we have funded many of our ongoing activities, since our successful re-creation of the hyper drive.

The look of horror on Ray's face made Joe pause to stop and grin.

"Relax," he said, "those people pose no danger to you or your Confederacy, and they might even help insure the survival of our species!"

"How can you be so sure?" Ray demanded. "The Confederacy passed over those people because they were dangerous!"

"Simple," Joe responded. "They pay a fee, and we transport them and their goods to an earthlike planet inhabited only by others like them. We promise them a location that is unlikely to get the attention of the Sa'arm, and has breathable air, drinkable water, and a temperature that they can survive with ordinary clothing.

"If they want or need anything beyond transport, they have to pack it in. They are put into hibernation before embarking, travel that way, and are revived on arrival. All their goods are dropped at their final location — always some distance from any other occupants of the planet - first, then they are revived and dropped, naked, at the same location. They never see the technology, nor do they have an opportunity to hijack it.

"We have found several such planets, but unfortunately," he grinned, "they all have a shortage of heavy elements. That, and other reasons, makes them less than desirable as targets for the Sa'arm, and there's not much chance of them developing a significant industrial base."

Joe could see that Ray was still unhappy about it, but time was running out.

"We need to finish this," he said, returning to his story.

As might be inferred from their concern about stretching out ship's stores, the Hwee did not have replication technology. Also, although far more advanced than anything available on Earth, their Artificial Intelligences had not evolved for millions of years, as had even the least of the Confederacy AI's. Nanites are not even mentioned in the records that we've been able to recover.