Rocket! An Ell Donsaii story #4) (22 page)

***

Allan said, “You have another intruder at D5R. This one came in through a wall.”

Ell leapt out of bed, pulled on jeans and ran for her car. “Tell Steve and ask him to meet me there.”

***

Sonny climbed out the hole and left the rocket under his tarp. He walked over to the tank farm.

After a few minutes he paused with his hands on his hips in frustration. All these big tanks of chemicals and no hoses! What were they doing, coming out here to get the stuff in buckets? He turned in place and finally saw a hose coiled over in a corner. He sighed and got it. Fortunately it fit the dispenser on an enormous tank of kerosene.

He dragged the other end of the hose into the building through the hole he’d cut and dropped it in the middle of the big room with all the research gear.

Sonny turned the corner back into the machine shop and was startled to find a girl standing there, obviously having just crawled in through the hole he’d made. She was a skinny kid, though kinda tall. Damn! He didn’t like hurting people but maybe he could just tie her up? She wouldn’t be able to see anything in the dark.

He wondered if she was hoping her eyes would adjust to the dark. That wasn’t going to happen because it was really dark in here. He could barely see her even with his low light goggles. He reached into his bag and pulled out the duct tape then stepped toward her. Her hand moved and he heard a “pop” sound.
Taser!
He thought as his muscles spasmed and he fell to the floor. The girl actually stepped forward and caught him on the way down, keeping him from hitting his face! For a moment he was grateful, then he remembered that
she
was the one that shot him. Before his muscles began to respond again, she’d professionally pulled his hands back and plastic tied them behind him. Then she bound his ankles.
Then
she turned on the light.
She must have been using some kind of night vision too!

She squatted down next to him and he realized she was wearing jeans and a camisole!
The girl looks like a Victoria’s Secret model!
She pulled out the dart. Then she pulled off his stocking mask and his AI headband. She looked at the back of it and popped out the PGR chip to disconnect him from his actual AI. Then she pulled off her own AI headband and plugged his chip into it instead. She grabbed him by the armpits and lifted him into a sitting position, leaning his back against one of the big machines. He was surprised at how strong she was. She gazed at him a moment, looked up at her HUD and said, “So, Sonny Alston, who sent you?”

A spike of fear shot through him,
how did she figure out who I was so fast?

Sonny had no way to know that Ell’s supercomputer AI could search enormous databases for his face almost instantaneously.

He shrugged.

She was looking up at her HUD. She said musingly, “I see you’ve been in the ‘joint’ a couple of times. Breaking and entering seems to be a specialty of yours? But you went ‘up the river’ for beating some guys in a bar.” She quirked the corners of her lips down. “Hmmm, not a very nice person are you? You went up another time for using a weapon in a robbery? Hmmm.” She turned to pick up his back pack, then glanced at him before she unzipped the front flap, “Hope you didn’t bring a weapon on this little jaunt cause my AI tells me you go up the river again if you’re found carrying a weapon… Aw, Sonny, look at this.” She pulled open the flap to show him the gun within. “It’s starting to look pretty bad for you. Breaking and entering, theft of that rocket you took outside, carrying a weapon as a felon.” She shook her head back and forth. “And this hose makes it like you were planning to commit arson. You want to tell me who sent you?”

He narrowed his eyes. “Are you the police? You haven’t read me my rights.”

“Nope.” She said cheerfully. “So I’m not bound by all those rules that restrain them.”

“You can’t make me a deal then either.”

“Sure I can…” she paused. “I…” she paused again pointing to her chest, “can just let you go without pressing charges.” She quirked an eyebrow at him.

“Why would I trust you?”

“Well, you’d just have to look into my honest eyes and see if you could. Course, the alternative is to go up the river for sure, isn’t it?”

Sonny glared at her for a minute. “General Electric.”

“What’s GE got to do with this?”

“They hired me.”

“Now, now, now, GE didn’t hire you, some
body
hired you. Maybe they work at GE, maybe they work somewhere else? Who is
that
somebody?”

Sonny felt like he had pretty good control of his muscles again. It wouldn’t do him much good while he was bound hand and foot. However, if he could take her out of the equation a moment, he knew he could get his hands around in front of himself.
In a machine shop there’s bound to be plenty of tools to cut these damned cable ties
, he fumed to himself.

He moaned a little. He just needed to get her close enough. Sonny’d been in hundreds of fights. His fists might be restrained but he knew from personal experience what a good head butt to the face could do. His own crooked nose was the result of a head butt he’d received in a fight that had practically crushed it. He’d been dazed and confused for minutes after that had happened. How could he get her close enough? He tried another piteous moan. She grinned at him. “Sonny, you can stop the moaning. I know you haven’t been hurt all that bad.” Then her eyes narrowed as they focused on his leg. She leaned toward him to him to pat at the lump in his pocket where he’d put the discs with their attached electronics. Sonny lunged up,
hard
, aiming his forehead at her nose. She had gotten close enough that he couldn’t possibly miss!

To his astonishment, though he would have sworn it to be impossible, she easily moved her face out of the way. Then she casually slapped
him
in the nose. His nose exploded with pain and tears poured out of his eyes.

How in all the Hells did she do that?!

She leaned back, “Sonny, Sonny, Sonny. That wasn’t nice. I have to tell you, the encryption on your AI wasn’t very good. My AI has finished extracting its memory, including the secret recording you made of your conversation with Mr. Dennison from ILX. I guess I’d just as well call the police.” She stood up and stepped away, just as a couple of beefy security types trotted in the door, out of breath. “Hey guys,” she said to them, “please keep an eye on Mr. Alston here for me, would you?” She left as the security guys narrowed their eyes at him and then one of them squatted down to check his restraints…

***

Ell watched with the group on the big screens in the main research room. The exterior of their modified Lear jet was visible on one. Another showed the virtual remote cockpit. The plane would be flown by AI just like almost all modern jet flights, but they still had one of their pilots standing by at a console to take over in case of bizarre problems. The set up was much like the UAV control stations Ell had been using a year ago. On one screen you could see the throttles advancing on the virtual station, on another they could see flames and steam blasting out of the engine fairings at the back of the jet itself. The rocket engines had been mounted inside the fairings after the jet engines had been removed. They could have removed the fairings and just mounted the much smaller rocket nozzles but they suspected there may be times when they wanted it to
look
like a standard jet so they left the fairings in place. Other than the bump on the middle of the back of the plane where the airlock adaptor had been mounted, it
looked
much the same as it had before being upgraded for space. The attitude thrusters were hardly noticeable. Allan said in her ear, “All thrusters except the main engines have tested to full thrust as nominal.”

“What’s wrong with the main engines?”

“The wheel brakes and chocks aren’t strong enough to hold the plane still if they were tested fully.”

“Oh, yeah.” Ell chuckled at herself.

A few minutes later they watched on the screen as the little plane shot down the runway and into the sky, quickly fading to a dot. They turned to watch the view out the front windows of the plane but it was a boring sky blue. They all went back to their own projects until someone called out that the view out the front windows of the jet was gradually fading to black.

Ell said, “Allan, how high are we?”

“Fifty three miles.”

“How is the cabin pressure doing?”

“At the equivalent of 8,000 feet, like a commercial airline, Dr. Braun had us start valving air into the cabin to hold it at that pressure.”

“Are we having any trouble maintaining pressure?”

“No. Dr. Braun has installed a large excess of 5cm ports. They have high pressure blowers on them but, without a hull breach, he is just letting standard atmospheric pressure air from the D5R facility leak in through a few of them without using the blowers. The facility is at 456 feet altitude so a much higher pressure than the 8,000 foot setting in the cabin. It would require a major cabin breach to cause decompression that the blowers couldn’t handle.”

“How did the main engines perform?”

“102% of expected thrust.”

“Please contact Braun for me.”

Ell heard Braun’s voice, “Hello?”

“Rob, congratulations! It looks like a complete success from here. Are there any problems we’re not seeing?”

“No! It’s amazing, first launch with everything going right! That’s never supposed to happen!”

“Bring it back down and we’ll get you some supplies to send up to the Station.”

“You don’t want to go on up to the station this trip?”

“I’d rather go when we can send them some supplies.”

“What’s wrong with the supplies we’ve got on board?”

“You’ve got supplies on board this trip?!”

“Sure, my daddy told me to never to plan for failure. We loaded it with fresh and canned food, bottled juices and a bunch of stuff we found on a “wish list” one of the astronauts put on the net a couple of years ago.”

“You sneaky devil! Way to go! Station here we come. How long will it take to get there?”

“I’m doing it slow to give us lots of time to determine if we have any vacuum induced failures long before we arrive and find that a failure has resulted in poor control. It won’t be for about three hours.”

“Good thinking. I’m going to contact NASA and see if we can get the replacement rocket nozzle for the CRV to send up on your next mission.”

“OK, I’ll let you guys know about 20 minutes before we arrive at the Station.”

Ell walked back to her office and sat in her chair thinking for a bit. Then she said, “Allan, let me see an organizational chart for ILX.” It popped up on her screen and she studied it. David Dennison was listed as CEO as she’d already known. “Let’s see if we can contact Norman James.” James was the Chief Technology Officer.

Allan said, “Mr. James’ AI says that he’s unavailable.”

“Leave him a message that I called and let’s see if he calls back.”

Ell had Allan try several others near the top of the organizational chart, receiving the same “unavailable response” until she got to a “John Clarkson” who was listed as a “special assistant” to Dennison. “Mr. Clarkson?”

“Yes.” The voice sounded suspicious.

“Can we have a full audio-video chat?”

“OK.”

The screen in Ell’s office blinked to life showing a taciturn man staring at her with a look of intense interest. “Do you know who I am sir?”

“You’re the gymnast from the last Olympics.”

Ell nodded. “Is that the only reason you know my name?”

“What is this, some kind of twenty questions?”

“No sir, it just seems surprising that you’d take time out of your busy day to respond to a call from a gymnast?” His eyes flashed. Ell wasn’t sure whether in anger or perhaps in trepidation?

“Yeah, I know that you work for D5R too.”

Ell frowned at him, “And why would you be interested in D5R?”

“D5R is one of our competitors, it’s my
business
to know.”

“Really? What makes you think we’re a competitor for ILX?” Ell saw the surprise in his eyes as they darted around momentarily.

He swallowed, then said, “It’s our
business
to know.”

“But there isn’t any public information about our company even suggesting that we would be competitors for ILX.”

His eyes flashed, “It’s our
business
to know.”

Ell frowned, “Have you been investigating us by illegal means?”

“I don’t have to listen to this.” The video screen snapped off.

Allan said, “He’s disconnected.”

Ell rubbed her chin, “Let’s try an audio video connection with Manfred Phelps next.”

“Ms. Donsaii? I hope you’re reconsidering our offer to purchase your technology.” said the deep voice Ell remembered. Phelps had thin dark hair and a beard. He overfilled his chair suggesting that he was as large and burly as his voice suggested.

“No sir. I’m just wondering what made you think we had any new ‘rocket technology’ such as you wanted to purchase”

“Are you trying to say that you don’t?”

“No sir. But it was supposed to be a secret. How did you find out about it?”

“Oh come on kiddo. You used it to rescue the Space Station. Surely you don’t think that’s a secret?”

“Well in fact I do. Otherwise we’d have reporters all over us here.”

He leaned into the camera. “Ms. Donsaii, you’re playing with the big boys now. I’d strongly advise you to take our offer before you get
squashed
in the gears of a machine much bigger than you’d imagine.”

“No thanks.” This time Ell cut the connection.

Allan said “You have a call from Norman James, ILX’s Chief Technology Officer.”

“Put him on, audio video if you can. Mr. James?”

“Yes, Ms. Donsaii?” A video image snapped open showing a slender small intense dark man. His eyes tracked over to a spot just below Ell. Presumably the screen below the camera she was seeing him on. “To what do I owe this honor?”