The Genie and the Engineer 3: Ravages of War (15 page)

The planet Mars

Coprates Chasma

Gathol House

Monday, 9:27 a.m. LMST

May

Day 206

C
apie, dressed
in her spacesuit but with the faceplate open, was busily fussing with the
suitcase trying to get it closed, its sides bulging from too many clothes
squashed into too little space. Frustrated, she stood back, dramatically waving
her right arm and snapping out a spell. With blinding speed, the suitcase
audibly sucked in all the protruding bulges and clamped itself shut with a loud
click.

“I should have done that to start with,” she grinned
victoriously.

Paul, standing nearby in his spacesuit too, struggled to
hide his smile. “Or let the Scotties do it for you,” he suggested for the tenth
time.

“Nonsense,” Capie declared airily. “They are busy with a lot
of other things right now. And speaking of the devil…” she nodded at the
doorway.

Daneel 1 floated into the room.

“I am
not
a devil,” his face above the black cube
objected with dignity, then turned toward Paul. “Status report, Dad. All but
two of the assembly lines are shut down now and even they will finish
operations in the next half hour or so. All data backups have been completed,
all equipment spares packed, all cargo ready for loading. You have time to
freshen up, perhaps eat some breakfast or pack a few last minute items.” He
glanced over at Capie. “Or let
us
pack a few items for you. Then we will
be ready to leave.”

Paul nodded as he faced the Scottie. “All the boxes I marked
downstairs? All other supplies ready to go as well?”

“Yes,” the Scottie attested. “Everything is outside on the
pad, fully assembled and packed.”

“All the 55 gallon drums too?” challenged Capie, gently
tugging with one hand on the diamond necklace around her neck.

“Those as well,” Daneel 1 confirmed.

Paul glanced over at his wife and then her luggage.

“If you don’t mind,” she said with an air of infinite
patience as she reached out to grab Patches from the bed, slinging the stuffed
puppy under one arm, “I can carry and stow my own luggage.”

He smiled. “Of course you can, my dear. But do you want a
little breakfast first, before we go?”

She grimaced. “I am
so
ready to go to an IHOP or even
a Waffle House. Promise me I will never have to drink re-hydrated milk again!”

Paul chuckled in total agreement with her opinion. “True,
even with a little magic to help the taste, it doesn’t have quite the right
flavor, does it?"

“That’s the understatement of this millennium,” she muttered
with conviction.

“Have you made a trip through the house?” Paul asked, to
divert the conversation. “Have we missed anything?”

“I’ve checked,” she confirmed for him, then sighed. “We’ve
been here nearly seven months. In some ways, I’m glad we are going and in
others—well, we have accomplished a lot here. I’ll miss the place and the
wonderful views out that window—when there wasn’t a dust storm blocking it.”

Paul turned back to Daneel 1. “I think we are ready to go.
Why don’t we assemble everyone on the pad, except for those involved in the
assembly of the last Scotties? That will give time to load everything on board
and for Capie and I to get comfortable. Then, when the last Scottie reports
aboard, I would like to briefly address the troops before departure.”

“Okay, Dad. I am putting out the word now,” Daneel 1
replied.

Paul waited for Capie to close the faceplate on her
spacesuit, then closed his own. With a wave of his hand, he opened a portal.
They walked through, Capie’s luggage waddling obediently along behind her, all
seven suitcases and two large trunks. His luggage, all three suitcases, was
already on the pad, courtesy of Talos 987 (Greek mythology, a giant man of
bronze) and Brandy 41 (from
Starshine
, Marvel Comics).

Outside, the latest dust storm was kicking up a fury, the
winds clocking at over 60 mph.

A few yards away, two signs on a lone metal signpost
shivered slightly in the thin wind. One of them read: “For Sale: Beach Front
Property” with an arrow pointing off to the left. The other read “CAUTION! Road
slippery when wet!”

“I am NOT going to miss this,” Capie muttered. “Dust, dust,
dust! Can we live someplace humid for a few days? Maybe a month or so? I’ve
forgotten what rain looks like.”

Their spacesuits protected them from the dust and the winds
but still, Capie had a good point. Paul was similarly tired of all the dust.

He nonchalantly waved a hand. “If you’d like, there is
probably a hurricane in the Atlantic or perhaps a typhoon in the Pacific
someplace. We can fly through that on our way to a landing.”

Capie gave him that stare she was so good at, the one that
said Don’t Mess With Me Today, I Am Not In The Mood.

“Funny man,” she grumbled in a sharp tone of voice.

Paul glanced at all the 55 gallon drums stacked to one side
of the landing field.

“That’s not going to be enough, is it?” he cheerlessly asked
Capie.

“No, it’s not,” she grudgingly admitted. “But it should be
enough to get us started. And hopefully, within a month or two of our arrival,
we will have new facilities up and running on Earth to manufacture more.”

When Capie had taken charge of the plan to bring
humanitarian relief to those in need on Earth, she had quickly decided to
continue Paul’s earlier efforts in concocting a potion for her, to cure her of
her spinal injuries. However, the one she wanted was one that could be administered
to the sick and needy and would cure almost anything. Indeed, thanks to some
wonderful research by her team of Scotties, they had managed to produce such a
miracle drug, one that restored a human body to almost pristine condition. A
sufficient portion of it would cure any type of cancer, heart disease, stroke,
diabetes, and organ failures, induce limb and organ replacements, and cure many
other major medical conditions. Capie and her team of Scotties had manufactured
thousands of gallons of the potion, which they’d named the MBE Drug, to be
administered to those most in need on Earth. But even stingy use of it would
not stretch it out very far. A lot more than what existed in the drums in front
of them would be needed. A lot more.

Daneel 1 floated up beside them. “Just checking, Dad. Will
you confirm the configuration please?”

Paul nodded. “A flying saucer, please. Along the lines of “
Earth
versus the Flying Saucers, Forbidden Planet, The Invaders, This Island Earth
,—” 

Capie raised a hand to stop him. “Not the entire list, dear.
I think Daneel 1 gets the idea.”

Groups of Scotties began to appear, their black cubes
floating in from nearby locations, others portaling in from more remote places.
As they appeared, they began to link together, reminding Paul of an assembly of
Lego building blocks but on a much larger scale.

Gradually, starting from the center and building outward, they
formed the hull of the ship, layer by layer. The supplies stacked around them
began to disappear too as other Scotties started loading the ship.

The ship hung there in front of them, a truly massive—and
also truthfully impressive—and formidable vessel.

Capie raised her eyes to the heavens and shook her head.

“I would not have thought that cubes could make all the
curves necessary in a flying saucer,” she observed. “But it doesn’t look half
bad at all.”

“You’ve never played Minecraft, have you?” Paul asked her.

“No, I haven’t. Have you?”

Paul nodded in admission. “A few times. Enough to know it’s
not my cup of tea. But there are a couple of engineers I knew at Edwards that
live by it.” He waved at the saucer. “For them, this would be child’s play.”

His wife studied the emerging size of the ship. “Just how
big a ship are they going to make?”

“With fifty thousand Scotties, you can make a pretty decent
sized flying saucer,” Paul said. “In this case, about half of them will be used
for interior compartments, bulkheads, decks and overheads. The rest are for the
hull. The ship will be 100 feet in diameter and 20 feet thick through the
center. It will have a crew deck and two cargo holds. Big cargo holds too.”

He grinned, pleased at how good the ship looked from the
ground. “‘All I ask is a tall ship…and a load of contraband to fill her with.’”

“That has to be Quark from
Deep Space Nine
who said
that,” Capie observed, cocking her head to one side and shaking it. “Okay, I’ll
bite, why are we going back on a ship? Why not portal to Earth, like we usually
do? And why pick this ship?”

“In the order you asked, we aren’t using a portal because we
have a bunch of stuff to take with us such as the drums of vaccine and other
cargo. Rather than man-handle it all, the hold of a ship just makes more sense.
And too, I would like to indulge my love of space opera, and this may be my only
opportunity to do so. True, I could have selected a different ship design.
There are so many to choose from! Such as a Colonial Battlestar, an Imperial
Star Destroyer, a Daedalus-class Battlecruiser, a FireFly transport, a Farscape
Leviathon, a White Star Cruiser, the NSEA Protector—”

Capie looked at the sky as if imploring divine help. “I get
the idea, dear. Not the whole list, please!”

He shrugged apologetically. “Anyway, a flying saucer best
fits into our planning scenarios.”

“How so?” she asked, genuinely interested in how a flying
saucer design could fulfill anybody’s plan.

He took a moment more to admire the ship assembly process
while organizing his thoughts. “When we go to Earth and start a war with
Errabêlu
,
it’s going to kick up a lot of commotion. A lot of Normals are going to witness
a lot of weird stuff. A lot of magical spells. Some people might even see this
ship flying around a bit. Now, according to the simulations the Scotties ran,
we have three basic options open to us: we could announce the truth, tell the
whole planet that we are wizards and that we have come to Earth to free the
Normals from wizardly control by
Errabêlu
—”

Capie wrinkled her nose in disapproval. “Bad idea, that.”

“Agreed,” said Paul, with a small nod of his head. “That possibility
leads to some very nasty consequences. Option two is to make up some sort of
lie. The best one we could come up with is that the Scotties are aliens from
another planet—”

“They
are
from another planet,” his wife pointed out,
with a little annoyance. “Mars, remember? The biggest dust bunny in the
galaxy?”

“Okay, so maybe that story wouldn’t technically be a lie,”
Paul said with a nonchalant shrug. “Though I think the people of Earth would
disagree. And later, when they found out the truth, and they would eventually,
then they would be furious.”

“And option three?”

He grinned. “To not say anything at all. Consider: anyone
who sees our flying saucer and reports it—”

“Won’t be believed, will they?” Capie finished with a pained
expression. “Just another UFO sighting, no different from thousands of other
sightings.”

Paul gave her a small bow. “Exactly. The same will be true
for any other strange thing that people see. Even photos or cell camera videos
won’t be widely accepted, especially with the governments controlled by
Errabêlu
officially scoffing at them. And if we don’t say anything either…?”

Capie thought of all the stories and rumors of Roswell, Area
51 and the odd goings on in the Devil’s Triangle. “Our war with
Errabêlu
will still impact people’s lives, Paul. Those that see parts of the war will be
affected by it, some of them rather profoundly.”

He nodded, stealing another glance at the ship. “It’s an
imperfect solution, I know. However, it’s the best we could come up with.”

She looked back up to the ship, now nearly finished, and
rolled her eyes. “I understand now just how crazy you are.”

“Ah, ‘understanding is a three-edged sword’ as Kosh of
Babylon
5
described it,” Paul answered flippantly. “I believe that they are ready
for us now. Shall we go aboard?” He waved a portal into existence and they
stepped through onto the bridge of the ship.

“I’ll just take my luggage and pack it in our quarters,”
Capie said, shaking her head in amusement. “I assume we have do have quarters?”

“Right this way,” volunteered a female voice from one of the
Scotties in a nearby wall. The designation on her side panel identified her as
Rosie 408 (from
The Jetsons
). A green arrow formed on the deck in front
of Capie’s feet, pointing down the corridor and away from the bridge.

Capie smiled. “Thanks, Rosie. Come along, luggage!” And she
marched off following the green arrows, the large stuffed puppy Patches still
tucked under one arm, and the luggage waddling along in her wake.

Paul turned back to Daneel 1, floating nearby. “Oh, fetch me
my new duds, please, while Capie is putting her luggage away.”

A few minutes later, when Paul had taken off his spacesuit
and changed clothes, Daneel 1 told him that the last of the Scotties had joined
themselves to the structure of the ship and that all was nearly in readiness
for launch. Capie walked in at just that moment and stood at the doorway to the
bridge, hands on hips as she took in her husband’s new clothing.

“‘What is that? Is that a uniform of some kind?’” she quoted
from the
Star Trek
episode “Tomorrow is Yesterday.”

“‘This little thing?’” Paul responded, feigning complete
innocence. “‘Something I slipped on.’”

“Boys and their toys! Okay, Captain Kirk, if you are quite
ready?” And she plopped down in the captain’s chair, crossing her arms and
daring him to force her out.

Paul grinned and sat at the helmsman station. “This is
not
a Starfleet uniform,” he replied, with a smile. “It is the new uniform for the
Space Navy.”