Fractured Earth Saga 1: Apocalypse Orphan (26 page)

“The best science I have in my database was completed by a Japanese scientist named Hiroshi Ishiguroof of Osaka University. He created a human-looking robot—a ‘female’ he called Repliee Q1Expo. She had flexible silicone for skin rather than hard plastic, and various sensors and motors allowed her to turn and react in a human-like manner. But the best this robot could do was to flutter her eyelids and move her hands like a human. She appeared to breathe, and she looked human, but she could only sit.”

Nala burst out laughing, and when she noticed Syn’s hurt look, she said, “What is a robot? What is plastic? What is Japanese? Motors and sensors? I don’t know if I can help at all, Syn. I am just not smart enough!”

“Nala, you have given me an idea that might solve my problem,” Syn announced, giving her friend an affectionate hug. “I had thought about making an android…an artificial person, like a scarecrow. I can use science to make it look real. Plastic is a material, like leather or wood. Actuators and sensors are tiny machines that act like muscles and feelings.”

“You can make those? That is amazing!” Nala exclaimed. “How can I help?”

Syn was about to answer when she realized she had not heard from Wolf. In an urgent tone, she said, “Commander, do you read?”

“Who are you talking to?” Nala asked, looking around.

Syn held a hand up for silence and tried to scan for Wolf. After a moment, she hissed, “A jamming device! It is crude but effective.” Using the satellites, she traced the jammer’s signal and located the device in the woods just outside the castle.

“Nala, I will walk you home…I must leave now. Wolf may be in trouble.”

Syn extended a hand and helped Nala to her feet. Then she went to the dintar, grabbed its hind legs, and tied them together using a nearby vine. They headed back to Haakon’s homestead, with Syn dragging the beast behind her. As they emerged into the clearing, the men who were working there gawked in amazement at the sight of Syn pulling the enormous dintar with ease. Nala told them Syn was Wolf’s woman, and she possessed his phenomenal strength.

“Will I see you again?” Nala asked.

“Yes, Nala, very soon. I will need your help with that surprise for Wolf we discussed.”

Syn hugged Nala and walked back into the forest, disappearing from view. When she was directly under the ship, she scanned the vicinity to ensure that no one was watching and shut off the holo-projectors, materializing inside the craft. She set a course for the castle, flying at just under Mach 1. Minutes later when she arrived, she saw Wolf firing his M21 at a wave of attacking soldiers, dropping them in droves. A quick scan confirmed he was using non-lethal projectiles and merely stunning the combatants.

Syn opened the chain-gun firing hatches and was about to lay the field to waste when she saw Waylan’s men pour out from the castle gate. They turned the tide, and the battle was fierce but soon ended. She saw Wolf swing his gun around, shouting. Her sensors confirmed that the gun was depleted of ammo, and then Wolf threw the gun at a soldier who was running at a girl tied to a post. The gun struck the soldier in the head, and he was dead before he hit the ground. Wolf untied the girl, and she fell into his arms sobbing. Syn glared as he carried the little hussy off the battlefield and handed her off to a man at the gate. He then turned and looked out over the field at the prisoners who were being tied. Many dropped to their knees before him.

Syn tried to bring the satellites online to listen but couldn’t. She had to locate and destroy the jamming device. She flew over the area and activated the external holo-projectors but wasn’t able to materialize. After several attempts, she tried to materialize above Wolf but failed. Not being able to communicate with Wolf frightened her. She flew the ship a quarter mile from the battlefield and tried again. Splitting into candy striper Syn and Tomb Raider, she sent the latter to materialize on the ground. After two more attempts, she was able to overcome the interference.

Syn walked towards the battlefield, the ship hovering invisibly overhead. When she was on the edge of the skirmish, patrols spotted her and ran towards her. She started to lose cohesion and backed up until she was out of the jamming device’s range. The soldiers closed in, and a sergeant ordered, “My lady, stop where you are. Who are you and what do you want here?”

“I am looking for my husband,” Syn answered.

“Who might that be, my lady?” the sergeant asked.

Leveling her best smile on the man, Syn replied, “Why, Wolf, of course. Will you go fetch him for me? I’m terribly tired.”

Chapter 19

A
throng of King Waylan’s men had gathered around Wolf on the battlefield, shaking his hand and inquiring about the strange weapon he had used to immobilize the enemy. He told the men it was a form of magic only he could deploy. Technically, this was true since the trigger was keyed to his bio signature and only he could fire it.

A soldier approached Wolf and said, “My lord, I have a message for you from a lady.”

“A lady? What does she want with me, soldier?” Wolf asked, making light of it.

“Err…she wants you to come to her.”

“Oh does she? Where is this lady, soldier?”

“Your wife is over there,” the man said, pointing to the edge of the forest. Wolf pivoted and saw Syn standing several hundred feet away. She smiled and waved, and he walked over to her, accompanied by several high-ranking officers.

“Hello, love. I see you’ve been playing again,” Syn said with a spirited laugh.

“Synthea, I’ve missed your voice all day today. I can’t believe you came here,” he said, putting strong emphasis on the word
believe
.

Syn caught the inflection and replied, “I didn’t want to make the journey to see you. But I couldn’t seem to get you out of my mind. It was like I was
jammed
into coming here.”

Wolf nodded. He turned to the soldiers who stood behind him and said, “I need a few minutes alone with my…wife.” When the men had pulled back out of hearing range, he asked, “Where have you been, Syn? I’ve been worried sick.”

“Commander, I also was worried about you. I was about to level the entire field when I flew over and saw the fighting. I could barely see you, and at the last moment, I detected you were only stunning those men. There is a jamming device just inside the forest. It is crude, but effective. It disrupts all signals within a radius of five hundred yards. I was going to destroy it, but we need to study this technology.
Someone
on this world knows more than he is letting on.”

“Were you able to pinpoint the power source?”

“Not accurately. Go five hundred yards in that direction,” Syn instructed, pointing to the western edge of the forest. “Search there. I can fly over and triangulate it, but that shouldn’t be necessary. The device is dampening my sensors, but it is relatively large.”

“I’ll take some men into the forest. If we can’t locate it, you’ll have to destroy the area.”

“I will wait for you here, my love,” Syn said, flashing Wolf a seductive smile.

“Right…honey.”

Wolf rejoined the men who had followed him over to greet Syn, and he saw envy on their faces. He flashed a grin and then turned serious. “I need some men to search for something. It may look like the projector boxes we found in the castle. Let us search where the forest begins,” he said, pointing.

Wolf paced his distance, counting off five hundred yards, which took him into the dense forest. The men began searching, and ten minutes later, a soldier spotted the object they were looking for. It was hidden in a hollow tree trunk, and it measured eighteen inches square and a foot deep. Wolf examined it. The technology was straightforward. A carrier wave was aimed at the ship’s radio signals, disrupting control. It was a simple transmitter, tuned to the same frequency as Syn’s receiving equipment and with the same modulation as Wolf’s watch. Its limited power affected a small area, and it only overrode Wolf’s signals and Syn’s signals from the ship and the satellite’s receivers. The device was a random noise generator; but what was impressive about it was that it fluctuated to random pulse, warbler, and then pulse. It also used a few other obvious and subtle jamming technologies. Whoever had built the device was skilled for this civilization.

Wolf knew that obvious interference was easy to detect because it could be heard on the receiving equipment. Whenever Syn tried to pinpoint it, the signal changed. The goal of obvious jamming is to block out reception of transmitted signals and to cause a nuisance to the receiving operator. That was why Wolf had heard the static earlier. Subtle jamming, however, was covert, and its interference caused no detectable sound on the receiving equipment. The radio wouldn’t detect incoming signals, yet everything would seem normal to the operator. That is why Syn couldn’t detect it. Only technical attacks on her modern equipment, such as squelch capture, would have alerted Syn’s computers. Wolf would have to modify the radio equipment and change its unmodulated carrier to a modulated one.

Someone on this backwards world knew about Syn, and that worried Wolf. Whoever it was had detected the ship in space and knew Wolf was on this planet.

“What does this thing do, my lord?” asked the soldier who found it. “Does it make a ghost image?”

“The ghost image is called a hologram,” Wolf explained. “No, this device does not make an image. This is a hiding device; it allows someone to shield themselves from my…powers. But I have a way to counter it.” Wolf reached into the box and pulled out the crude batteries.

“Commander, have you disengaged the jamming field yet?” Syn asked in Wolf’s ear.

“I have disabled the device,” Wolf confirmed to Syn and the soldiers. “These objects,” he said, holding up the batteries, “give the device its power. Without them, it is harmless.”

Syn had been listening to Wolf and scanning the interior of the box. She transferred the data to her neuro-net and was just about to inform Wolf that he could destroy Jonar’s creation when she detected a massive power surge. Then, a loud, shrieking noise came from underneath the box. Syn shouted, “Commander, watch out!”

As the high-pitched whine intensified, Wolf shook his head from side to side. Sharp pain erupted behind his eyes. He placed his hands on his head and gasped as wave after wave of pain rocked him. The men stared at Wolf in fear. One soldier held fast to his arms and asked, “My lord, are you all right?” An instant later, the device exploded, killing seven men and critically injuring six others. Wolf was thrown from the area and knocked senseless.

* * *

Wolf awoke to a cold rag on his forehead and a blinding headache. He looked around for a moment before the pain forced his eyes shut again, and he saw that he was in the med lab on his ship. After several minutes, he reopened his eyes and groaned, spotting candy striper Syn looking as desirable as ever. He dropped his head back on the pillow and dozed off, but then sprang out of bed and demanded, “Syn, how long was I unconscious?” His eyes widened as another question occurred to him. “How did you get me back to the ship?”

Syn smiled down at him and replied, “I see you’re back among the living, Commander. Those questions are easily answered. One, you have been unconscious for about six hours. Two, I am an extremely desirable female. Do not forget I can think faster than anyone on this planet and that has its advantages. We are on the plain, outside the castle.”

Wolf opened his mouth to ask more questions, but Syn touched a finger to his lips and said, “Shhh…When everyone was running to see you, I put on a backpack and ran up to you with the ship hovering above me. They wanted to take you into the castle, but I persuaded them to place you in the tent that I would erect. I used the ship’s holo-projectors to show me setting stakes and supports into the ground. It looked like I set up this giant pavilion on the plain. The scene below us is a tangible hologram. You are asleep, lying on a couch, in the hologram down there. I also am there, wiping your forehead with a damp cloth and feeding you warm broth.”

“So below us on the ground is a hologram of a tent?” Wolf asked, trying to comprehend.

Syn nodded.

“A hologram of me is lying in this holo-tent, unconscious?”

“Yes, Commander.”

“You are there, talking to visitors who come to see me…and the ship is hovering over this hologram, cloaked and projecting the force fields with its cameras?”

“Yes, Commander, the ship is doing it all—or rather, I am doing it all. No one can tell it is a projection. I told you earlier I had augmented the holo-emitters. But I have unfortunate news. The explosives in the jamming device killed thirteen men. No one who helped in your search survived.”

A look of sorrow crossed Wolf’s face, and then he asked, “What were the constituents in the explosive device? And what was that awful sound?”

“The explosive was picric acid, made by nitrating substances such as animal horn, silk, indigo, and other natural resins. In 1742, Johann Rudolf Glauber mentioned it in his writings on alchemy. Crude but effective as you found out. What concerns me more is the ultrasonic attack on you. I am sure the feedback from your earpiece amplified it. I will make adjustments to help you resist it in case we encounter another LRAD attack.”

“LRAD?”

“Long-range acoustic device, Commander. The human threshold of pain for sound is about one hundred thirty decibels. My sensors showed the attack reached one hundred fifty decibels before the explosion. The ultrasonic attack knocked you unconscious, not the explosion. The mystery is why it only affected you and not the other men around you.”