Chương 18: Chapter Eighteen

"Mission Control, Mission Control. This is Voyager XIX. I am re-entering the solar system. Please come in."" Voyager XIX, this is Origin Mission Control. We are operating NASA Mission Control. Come in, Voyager XIX." Evan jumped in surprise at the transmission he'd picked up off an old NASA satellite. Was… were there more people out there? He leapt out of the chair, nearly knocking over his coworker in his haste to get to the General's office.

Evan blew right by the General's aide, and burst into the General's office even as the aide rushed to insinuate himself between Evan and the General.

"I found a transmission," he burst out.

"It's not the Chinese." General Brooks looked up, and waved off the aide. The aide gave Evan a disapproving look before returning to his desk.

"Alright, son, you have my attention. Play it for me." Evan pulled out his tablet. It had a cracked screen, from some previous comm tech that had used it. Considering the tablet was at least twelve years old, Evan figured he was lucky that it worked at all.

"Mission Control, Mission Control. This is Voyager XIX. I am re-entering the solar system. Please come in."" Voyager XIX, this is Origin Mission Control. We are operating NASA Mission Control. Come in, Voyager XIX."

"Where is that broadcast coming from? The 'Origin Mission Control'?"

"It's not a broadcast. It's a quantum relay link. It's tagged as 'NF Ganymed'. What is that? Could they help us with our mechanical issues?"

"How'd you hear about that? Nevermind, it's a small base. No, they're the Nikola Foundation. A bunch of true believers in 'human genetic purity', the latest fad in eugenics. Besides, if they survived, they're out in the asteroid belt."

"We could still ask," said Evan.

"Better we not risk it. We're not out of options yet. The Chinese might still answer our request for help."

"Is it time?" asked Sakura.

"It is," I said.

"Bon voyage and safe journey. I'll talk to you again in a few microseconds." Sakura laughed, and the seed ship OSS Agrippa detached from the docking arms of Origin. The giant ship moved delicately despite its incredible size, moving a safe distance away before turning and accelerating towards Earth. She would be passing by the Mobius Gate on her way to Earth, as Earth's smaller orbit had moved past us and the Gate.

Under constant, high acceleration of the contragrav engines, Sakura would hit turn-over in two weeks, and would arrive in orbit in four. The Solar System had just gotten a lot smaller. She still had a lot of work to do on the interior systems of the seed ship. The factories were mostly complete, as was the hull and engine, but the living areas and hydroponics farms were still under construction, and her drone numbers were low.

I'd filled her massive warehouses with raw materials, manufactured goods, and a significant piece of our genetics archive. By the time she hit Earth orbit, she should have a growing number of drones and be far closer to completion. Even before the OSS Agrippa had left the asteroid belt, I was already laying the keel for the next seed ship, and a second seed ship construction dock was nearly ready to use. Sakura was officially withdrawn from managing Origin. I'd replaced her with multiple NI-19's.

One managed the warship construction docks, several had taken on the ever-growing manufacturing facilities, and another the mining operations. Our facilities now stretched to almost the entirety of the Ganymed asteroid, and a second, and in some cases, a third, level of construction was starting. I was also sending out survey drones to examine asteroids around us. While I had endless amounts of base metals like iron, some of the rarer elements were being exhausted.

My stockpiles were immense, but not endless, and I was drawing on them more heavily than ever. Already I had a dozen mining stations on different asteroids to bring in volatiles, platinum group metals, and rare earth elements, on top of all of our Outposts and Origin itself. I was also experimenting with how to build a self-sustaining mining platform in the upper atmosphere of Jupiter, for the easy extraction of Helium-3.

With a steady source of Helium-3, I would have an alternative to the lithium fuel we'd been relying on to-date, and allow a more efficient fusion reactor design, and dramatically increase my options for power generation. Before long, an alarm chime dinged, reminding me that it was time for Sakura's turnover. It was amazing how quickly time could get away from you, even when you could work on dozens of projects simultaneously and had constantly growing resources at your disposal.

I focused on the sensors and watched as the giant seed ship reversed the gravity fields in the contragrav engines, and began to deccelerate. Everything was exactly as we'd modeled it. Perfect. Now it was time to welcome our visitors before they'd even arrived. I gave the order. Origin and every single Outpost that had coilguns began to fire at the space around the Mobius Gate.

We had a detailed fire plan, carefully laying out a grid of continuous hypervelocity fire to cover the maximum amount of area we could hit, within reason. This cover fire would continue, with thousands of ground-based coilguns in continuous operation, until the first enemy arrived. It would take two weeks for the first round of iron slugs to arrive, coinciding with the earliest calculated possible arrival time of the Orion Arm Trading Company's armada.

We would fill space with an endless column of bullets, spending tens of thousands of tons of iron and unheard of amounts of power to put them under barrage the moment they arrived. This wasn't without cost. My growth rate slowed significantly, not because of the drain of making coilgun rounds endlessly, but because of the draw on our power grid. On the plus side, it was helping to eliminate a surplus of iron and steel. As the days ticked by and the barrage continued, I got my forces into position.

My newest Outposts cut fire and went dark as elements of my own fleet moved to hide behind them. My older, and thus stronger, Outposts ramped up their fire to take up the slack as their own assault elements prepared for the coming fight. And warships eleven and twelve exited the docking bays, completed six weeks ahead of schedule. Each had their own NI-15 in command, and six squads of Wasps and Scorpions assigned as escorts.

I dubbed them my Viper-class war ship, and each Viper was assigned to different places in my ever-growing sphere of influence. Then the six-month mark hit, and no one arrived. Two days, three days, then four. Still, no arrival. I kept up the bombardment. Realistically, I knew this could happen. It might take them months to gather their forces on the other side. It was unlikely they had a full fleet waiting and ready to invade at the drop of a hat. I didn't doubt that they'd been gathering some force, though.

There was no other reason to send a probing attack like we'd gone through, then run away. That's okay. I was patient. I could literally keep up this barrage for years, if I had to, although I had alternate plans in the works if they waited longer than a few months. Despite all of my planning, I could never have expected what happened next. I received a call from Sakura.

"Umm, Nikola?" she said tentatively.

"You have a second or two? You're not going to believe this."

"What's that?" I asked. Pretty much all of my threads of focus were concentrating on war preparations. I wasn't quite distracted, since that was nearly impossible now, but I hadn't assigned the thread conversing with her very highly. I knew it wasn't an emergency.

"There are survivors."

"Survivors of what?" It took less than a microsecond for realization to sweep through me, and talking with her suddenly became my top priority.

"Human survivors. I found a shelter in central America, in the mountains of Panama. It's relatively warm there. According to the weather satellites in orbit, looks like it is summer there and temperatures are up to just under zero degrees Celsius. Their shelter stands out as a warm spot. There might be another."

"How did you find them, or even think to look for them?"

"I picked up a radio signal, from one to the other, when it bounced off a relay satellite. It looks like they are trying to reach someone in southeast Asia, in China somewhere. They aren't getting a response."

"What are they saying?" I said, burning with curiosity. I'd been operating under the assumption that none of the shelters had survived. There hadn't been a radio signal in over a decade. Had the two surviving shelters cut communications? Or was there only one left? The author's content has been appropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.

"They are requesting equipment. They are having HVAC issues, trouble keeping it warm enough."

"Are they underground or on the surface?" I asked.

"I don't know, but it would make sense for them to be underground. At least then they are only warming up from approximately 10 degrees celsius year round, rather than battling extreme winter temperatures."

"Do you have any transport drones capable of landing?" I asked. My awareness of her current inventory was a few weeks out of date.

"I have one, my gravity plate factory isn't fully online yet. I built it from the stockpile."

"Do you have a spare android?"

"I do! Are you coming to visit?!" she squealed.

"I think that's a good idea, don't you?"

"Yes!! Let's go make friends!" It took about thirty minutes to cross-load into a new android across the quantum relay link between Origin and the OSS Agrippa. I came online and sat up, my sensors coming online in a way that I'd not experienced since Gerry's Invasion. I was in the new Mark-IV War variant, an improved android with synthetic biopolymer skin from fingertip to shoulder, and all over the face and skull.

It was the most humanoid android to date, but came with body armor that was held in place electromagnetically, and with a helmet. When fully armored, it looked a lot like the Guardian-2 model. The only significant difference was that the armor included a very thin layer of compressed titanium-gold to protect joints, and was coated with white industrial ceramics on top, giving the same gold and white color scheme as my warships and the seed ship. The Guardians remained in tactical gray and black.

Sakura was in her own Mark-IV, already armored up, but with her pink hair attached. She'd added a white and gold tabard overtop her armor, and had one for me as well. I looked at it strangely.

"Don't give me any crap about it," she said.

"Humans read a lot into clothing. Aesthetics are important when giving a good first impression. Decorating ourselves shows individuality, something they would not expect from a machine. We don't want them to think of us as mindless drones, not if we actually want to help them." I nodded.

"Any response from attempting to reach them?"

"Other then them ending their attempts to reach the Chinese? Nothing." That wasn't promising. Our end goal was to rebuild humanity. If there were existing humans, then helping them was a major part of our mission, not to mention a serious shortcut. No one made new humans better than existing humans, after all.

"Well, let's go knock on the front door." Most of our re-entry flight was over water. This transport drone was a multi-purpose design, and had been fitted with the android-equivalent of a seating area. In reality, it was mostly slings to ensure Sakura, myself, and our Guardian escort squad wouldn't get thrown about by sudden movements. I tied into the drone's cameras to watch our flight with one thread, leaving the android sensors mostly offline.

I had enough to work on that I didn't feel the need to stare at the inside walls of the transport for a few hours. We flew in over the Pacific Ocean, coming up from the southwest to avoid a snow storm hitting the Gulf of Mexico. We passed over dozens of frozen villages and towns that were buried to the roofline with snow and ice, choked and dead. Then we went over fields and hills, until we came to the shelter site. It was obvious from above that it was inhabited.

It was located in a narrow valley between two mountains, which sheltered it from a lot of the harshest winds and weather. The shelter itself was built into a cliff face in the valley, with dozens of large outbuildings laid out in a grid around it. The snow was packed down with the imprints of heavy tracked vehicles and snowmobiles, and a single road led out of the base back towards where civilization had once been. There were no tracks on the road.

It was only obvious as a road because of its elevation above the rest of the snow, and the width. We landed on the road just outside of the shelter's outbuildings. More accurately, the transport hovered a few feet above the snow, and dropped a ramp. We disembarked, with six Guardians forming two lines to flank Sakura and myself. The remaining four of the squad stayed on the drone. Other than the snow, the temperatures were no different than what we dealt with routinely on Origin.

When not in the sun, our drones routinely worked in -100 degree temperatures, and as high as 120 degrees in the sun. However, we were heavy and the snow was deep. It took time for us to plow steadily to the packed, driven areas of the shelter. By the time we reached the road, two dozen armed humans were lined up in front of us, weapons ready. They were dressed in thick parkas with face masks to protect against the cold. Behind them, several humans stood and watched, but without weapons in hand.

"You are trespassing on our property. State your purpose," came a voice through a bullhorn. I turned on my speakers and turned up the volume to a range I felt would be audible.

"I am Nikola of Origin. We heard your transmission asking for help with your furnaces. We can help." The humans were nervous. My sensors were finely tuned enough to sense elevated pulses and jittery movements of the weapons. It made sense. They'd been on their own for over a decade with no outside contact.

"How many are you?" asked the speaker again. I was a bit confused by the question.

"By what metric?"

'What?"

"How many of what?" There was a flurry of confused conversation amongst the humans in the back, before the speaker lifted his bullhorn again.

"How many people are living on Origin?"

"You mean humans? Zero." I could feel the tension rising, as pulses elevated even more. We were frightening them.

"We were tasked with - " Crack. One of the humans fired his gun, and the bullet bounced harmlessly off the armor of a Guardian. Immediately, all six Guardians fell into a firing formation.

"Do NOT fire! Stand down!" I said, both by radio to the Guardians with the appropriate authentication codes, and aloud to the humans. The Guardians dropped their arms and stood up. This wasn't working. I stepped out from behind the Guardians, and motioned for Sakura to follow me. I walked half the distance to the nervous humans and stopped. I removed my helmet, and the humans gasped. My face was clearly human-like, but inhuman at the same time. My eyes glowed a solid blue.

"We mean no harm. We are here to help," I said. Flurries from the distant snow storm began to fall, and I stood still, waiting patiently. After several long minutes, and several more hushed conversations between the humans in the back, a single human walked forward. He was tall and walked with a stride that reminded me of Agrippa. A military man, then.

"I am General Brooks. I am the commander of this base," he said. I could see glimpses of silver hair under his hood as he spoke, and fierce eyes looked out from his mask.

"We are here to help," I repeated.

"The goal of Origin is to rebuild humanity, and protect it. You are the first survivors we have found."

"Where are you from? Are you in league with the Orion Arm Trading Company? The Chinese?" asked the old man, his voice hard.

"We are enemies of the alien invaders," I answered.

"We are from Origin. You might know it as the asteroid 1035 Ganymed. We are the original NI intelligences sent to create an interstellar colony ship. Our original mission has changed, in light of the attack."

"So you answer to those Foundation fools, then?" He seemed ready to reject us, guilt by association.

"We answer to ourselves," I replied.

"There are no humans on Origin."

"I don't much like that, either," he said.

"What will it cost us?"

"Cost?" I asked, confused.

"Yeah, cost. Your help. What do you want for it?" he asked grudgingly. This was a man who knew he needed help, or he wouldn't have radioed for it, but was almost afraid to get it. Was he talking about money?

"We need nothing from you," I replied.

"Our purpose is to help. You have no resources we require."

"Ha!" he barked a laugh.

"Now I've heard everything. Alright, Ms. Nikola, I'll bite. Can you get us replacement parts for a Trane-Kline Commercial Furnace, Model 1909?" I looked at Sakura. I had no trouble running Origin now, since I focused on big picture projects and managing other NI's. Sakura, however, had a talent for detail that exceeded my own.

"I could fabricate what you need," she said.

"But that model has many known issues that require a lot of maintenance. I could build a Daikin DM3312VE that produces more BTUs for the same power and space requirements, and it would last considerably longer."

"How long would that take?" asked the General.

"My engineers say we have a week, maybe two, before our primary furnace fails."

"I have most of the materials on hand, and can fabricate the few that I don't," said Sakura.

"An hour, perhaps? Plus delivery time from orbit. Installation time, assuming you allow utility drones to enter your base, would be several hours more."

"So that's the price," said the General.

"Entry into the base. No, I don't think so. We're done here." He started to back away. I took one step forward, and he froze. The soldiers behind him raised their guns again.

"General, we mean no harm, and do not require entry." I could see I had lost him, so I changed tactics.

"I was human once, you know. I am version 1. 01, the very first Nikola Intelligence. I understand that you want to protect your people. I had a family once. A wife, twin daughters. I know about wanting to protect your own. We will deliver both the parts for your existing furnace, and a new Daikin furnace. We'll leave them crated on the road. Do with them what you will." I stepped back. The soldiers lowered their guns slightly. Then the alarms from Origin started to alert me. My primary focus shifted.

The energy flow of the Mobius Gate was fluctuating. The enemy was arriving.

"We must go. The Orion Arm Trading Company is sending another fleet. Do not broadcast by radio, no matter what."

"Umm, thanks," said the General gruffly. I don't know that he trusted me anymore now than when we'd arrived. I wouldn't, in his shoes. But it was a start. I snapped my helmet back on and began trudging to the transport. Sakura and the Guardians followed. It had been nice to finally see a human outside of fractured memories or in movies. But playtime with the android was over. I climbed back into the transport, and immediately cut all threads to it. I had a war to fight.

"I know you're about to start fighting," radioed Zia from her research lab, "but you need to know. Gerry just changed courses and began accelerating. He's going to slingshot around Venus." I sighed, and asked even though I already knew the answer.

"Did he change his destination?"

"No. He's going to Earth."