Chapter 6 - Tying Loose Ends

After lunch we went back home again. First, the cabal agreed that we didn't have to be dead yet. Second, they called George-the-recruiter in and I handed him my keys. He had a cell phone that worked anywhere, even down in tunnels, and he always carried at least two of those portable pads with him in his briefcase. If they needed him, he could stop anywhere, lock himself in a bathroom somewhere, and pop back to the ship for a minute. They had him go back to our condo and set a transporter ring down inside. After that, he could go on about his business.

We went back down again in our fishing clothes. They agreed that we had to take the boat out and drown, but after that they wanted Diana to help George-the-recruiter get some help, while I was to come back up to Freighter #2 and continue learning all I could before going out to Jupiter.

How could that work? She couldn't be seen after we took the boat out. Besides, our appearance was changing. We both looked younger than we did yesterday. It may not be much, but I knew me, and I spent a lot of time looking at Diana, too. We both looked younger. We should be okay for normal people, but our kids would know. And, if this continued, it would soon be obvious to everyone that something was wrong with us.

The only way Diana could stay was if she didn't go fishing with me in the first place. If she was still alive after I drowned, then she could be seen running around everywhere for a day or two, but then she would have to start acting like a normal widow. It would be better if we did everything we could for a day or two, then both of us drowned.

It was obvious to all of us that these disappearances were going to become more and more of a problem, until we came up with a viable cover story. George had that one already figured out, though. As soon as we had our Virginia office set up and working, it could be used as a "front" for a black government operation which hired specialists for unofficial foreign, um, ventures, yeah.

Anyone who dug into where people were going would find enough clues to conclude that we were fronting for the CIA -or somebody similar- who was feeding people into black ops, and then they would get stonewalled. The government would support our refusal to be investigated any further.

And, anyone would accept that they had solved the mystery when they got visited by men in black suits asking that they go investigate an unusual fish kill in Alberta instead. It's January, and the weather is delightful up there right now. Here, we'll help you get in the cab. It will take you to the airport. Fred here will go with you to make sure you don't get lost on the way. We've already bought your tickets.

A couple rounds of that, with "investigating reporters" getting stranded in unpleasant out-of-the-way places on tickets easily found to have been bought by an account paid for by the US Department of Agriculture, and the few news services not controlled by the UN would accept that the US was doing something fishy. Nothing new here.

So, once we got home I spent a couple of minutes contacting some retirees I'd like to work with again, found my latest SubVets newsletter, and then started getting the boat ready to go. After I had it hooked up to the truck and everything back on the driveway, I went back in and contacted some more people.

Meanwhile, Diana and George went to go see Ginger. I don't want to know how they convinced her to step on the transporter pad, but she was working part-time as a purchaser and would probably jump at a well-paid full-time job with the government. Ginger was going to have to be one of our "living" people who stayed here and ran our ground-side operation.

When they got back from that fishing expedition, Diana and I went to Little Creek Commissary to do our weekly grocery shopping. Yes, we got our usual stuff, but the important part of the trip was to slowly walk up and down every single aisle so that the scanner in her purse could look at everything they had on their shelves. The Giant Open Air Market at Ward's Corner would have had a better selection, but they got bought out a while back and now it was just another grocery store.

While we were driving home, Diana asked me where I wanted to eat, if it was going to be our last meal on Earth. I had to smile at that. Tripp's, off Independence in Virginia Beach. It's the best steakhouse for at least a hundred miles. Maybe we could get some use out of that scanner there, too.

Why ask? She knew the answer to that question. Because she needed to know where to send her employees, that's why. Diana called Ginger and invited her, since she was "back in town", then called George and invited him, but he was already down in the Triangle area of North Carolina. Until his investment company got organized enough to have transporter pads in every city, the only way he could get around was to drive his car.

Ginger would meet us at seven. We went back to our condo, put the groceries away, and just curled up on the back porch lounger for a few hours. Maybe a waste of our last day on Earth, but it was what Diana wanted to do and it was what we did. We did try one more time to have children, the first time we had done that out there in the daylight. I know I had a good time; I'm pretty sure Diana did too.

Dinner would have been very nice, a good quiet meal with a good friend while an alien scanner recorded every dish the restaurant served, but Diana and Ginger wanted to discuss me like a ham they were going to split. Diana claimed that since my recent operation I was too active for her and she needed help before I did something we would both regret. Before I could say anything she turned back to me and told me to butt out, I didn't have any say in it.

Then she turned back to Ginger and told her that it wasn't cheating if she set it up. Ginger replied "Oh, good. I would never support Roger cheating on you, but as long as it's not cheating I'll help you with whatever you need help with." Are they talking about what I think they're talking about? Yes, they are. We were 'moving' tomorrow and Ginger would never have another chance, so she should take advantage of me tonight.

When we left Tripp's I got in Ginger's car with her, and she wanted to hold my hand while she drove. I'm not talking about that night. Diana may be right, I had a lot more energy than one might expect, but Ginger was up to the challenge. Maybe not every night, but for one night she could stay with me. We got a lot of exercise that night, and I have some great memories. Let's just leave it at that. Ginger is almost as beautiful as Diana.

Diana came over to have breakfast with us after we had made ourselves presentable the next morning. When Ginger let her in, my wife gave her a quick hug and kiss, then she gave me a much longer and intimate one. I think it was more intimate. She asked "Did you miss me? You probably never even noticed I wasn't there. This is the first time you've thought of me all night, isn't it?"

Ginger rescued me, though. "Well, in his defense I did keep him distracted all night." Then she came over and gave me a hug, too. Maybe even better than the one Diana had just given me. Then, right in front of Diana, she stepped back, opened her bathrobe, and gave me another hug. I already knew she wasn't wearing anything under it; I'd been watching when she put it on after our shower.

What was I supposed to do now? I hugged her back, but I also said "I still think this is wrong. You are beautiful and I will always want you, but I'm married and very happy about that."

Ginger said into my shoulder "As long as you only sleep with me when Diana tells you to, you aren't doing anything wrong. And you did a lot of things very right. I haven't felt that good since Eric died."

Well, if Diana was okay with it I wasn't going to argue with both of them. And, if Diana was looking better all the time, well, Ginger had also improved overnight, with the nanites doing whatever she had asked them to do. My cock had no problem telling me it was ready to 'sleep' with Ginger whenever she wanted. It told Ginger that, too.

Ginger rubbed herself on my erection right there in front of Diana, too. "I got enough last night for now, but if Diana ever gets upset with you, you can come stay with me until she's over it."

After that she tied her robe tight again and went to fix breakfast in her kitchen. I knew that Diana had been here countless times over the years but I had always stayed away from Ginger's house. After last night, though, I very much enjoyed watching the way she moved inside her robe. When Diana caught me I defended myself. "I'd rather look at you, if you're willing to dress that way. Ginger, do you have a second robe Diana could wear for breakfast?"

They looked at each other and smiled, then Ginger told me to watch the bacon and they both went upstairs. When they came down Diana was wearing an older robe that had some worn-out places. I didn't need to peek through them, I could tell from the way she moved coming down the stairs that she wasn't wearing anything else under it.

I told Ginger she could watch her own bacon; I was watching my wife. That got me an open-robe hug from Diana, too. Hopefully, it also got me out of the doghouse for watching Ginger.

Diana and I mostly sat and enjoyed our coffee, keeping Ginger company while she fixed bacon and eggs. I did some thinking, though. I could reasonably say that I was sleeping with two beautiful women. One was my wife and the other was her best friend. Both women knew about each other, and neither seemed to mind. My wife had actively pushed me into her friend's bed, so she certainly shouldn't be complaining, and Ginger had been after me for a decade or more.

I was pretty sure that I was the only man Diana had ever slept with, at least since she met me. Anything that happened before we met didn't count. And, if Ginger ever had a boyfriend after she lost Eric she had certainly hid it from Diana. She was probably telling the truth, that I was the first man to enjoy her bed since the accident. So, neither was sleeping around. They certainly didn't fit any definition of slut that I believed in.

Still, if they wanted to act like sluts around me they shouldn't complain if I want to treat them like sluts. When Ginger brought the last plate to the table and sat down, I said "Ladies, as fetching as you both look, I'm pretty sure you would look even better without the robes. Ginger, you're done cooking, aren't you?"

Again they looked at each other and smiled, and they both dropped their robes to their waists without getting up. "I was right. Absolutely lovely." After that I proceeded to completely ignore the fact that they were having breakfast with me topless, other than enjoying the sights, never mentioning it again. I had played with Ginger's toys all night and I'd spent a good amount of yesterday playing with Diana's. They deserved some time off for good behavior.

When we were done eating, I sat back and looked at them both. "Okay, I have been given conclusive and irrefutable evidence that I should just be quiet and do what you two want me to do. What's next?"

Diana reached over and took my hand. "Dear, I want you to treat Ginger better. She needs a man, and she hasn't wanted anyone but you since she lost Eric. She's been patient, she's been honest, she hasn't tried to undercut me or go behind my back, and it's time you started taking care of her the way you should."

God help me, Ginger took my other hand. "I know you can't marry me. I won't ever replace Diana, but I can be the woman you go see when she has a headache. The only thing I'll say no to is treating me better than Diana. You should never treat me better than your wife. She is a jewel to be treasured beyond all others."

That's the way Ginger talked some times. And I agreed that Diana was a jewel to be treasured, but here she was telling me I should be treasuring another woman, too. And they were both leaning forward so that they were holding my hands against their breasts.

"Roger, I want you to consider Ginger as your second wife. I trust her, and I want you to also. She's not stealing you from me. She's helping me take care of you so that I have time for my own career."

That was a valid argument. In the modern US Defense Department, a serviceman and his spouse were considered to be partners in the serviceman's career. He went off to war, to get killed or wounded or at least gone for too long, and she had to put everything about her own life on hold to take care of the home and children without a father who was gone just as if he had abandoned her. Even when he was home, he wasn't really always there, as the service still had needs. So, being a military wife, taking care of husband, house, and children was a full-time job. It didn't leave any time left for a career of her own.

A lot of couples couldn't do it, getting divorced, which made it even harder on the kids. The military as a whole had a horrible divorce rate. And, if there were any questions about how difficult sub service was, you could just look at the statistics for accidental (stupid) deaths and divorces. The boats led all the services in both. The service had a very good safety record on the boats, but when we got off and went home we tended to drink too much, party too much, fight too much, and the submarine service led the whole military in both "recreational deaths" and divorces.

Congress had even passed laws about splitting the retirement income, in case of divorce. If the couple had been together for at least half of a career that spanned at least 20 years, she got part of the retirement income -it was a sliding scale that depended upon the actual numbers- and was eligible for VA medical care in her own right. None of us guys liked that, but we had to admit that they should get something for being a single parent all those years.

Today, we were both starting new careers, and if we were going to have any children with our new youth, it would be nice to have some help raising them. I wasn't sure that a pushy broad with a career of her own to mind was the best choice, but it wasn't my choice. It was Diana's.

I'm not coordinated enough to play with four different breasts at once, but I tried. Diana's are larger and firmer than Ginger's, but Ginger's nipples get harder. They let me play until I was sure I could tell them apart in the dark if I ever needed to, then they said we had places to be.

Ginger was going to drive to Arlington to meet with some of George's fellow corporate recruiters and decide if she wanted them working with us. If she liked any of them, when George got back to Tidewater this afternoon they were going to take them 'to the main office' to be 'interviewed'.

Diana and I had to go get the boat, go fishing, and drown. How lovely!

Drowning was no big deal, we had done most of the steps countless times before. We made our lunch, hooked up the trailer and drove out to the Lynnhaven boat ramps, launched "Miss D", and went out to one of the sandbars that didn't have anyone else nearby. That was harder than it sounds. Chesapeake Bay is huge, but it is surrounded by cities full of guys who think they can fish.

We took a couple of hours to stop and anchor, fish some, then move on before we found a good spot with no one around. We caught a couple of fish but nothing memorable. When Diana landed a huge Red Drum, though, we decided that we had to keep it. It was about 2 feet long and probably 30 or 35 pounds. Not a record, but bigger than anything we had caught in a long time.

I cut the line and held the Drum while Diana set up the transporter pad, then we opened the cooler, grabbed two beers, and left. Anyone who found the boat would find the cut line and open beer cooler with stuff missing and conclude that we had gotten too drunk for whatever we caught. Anyone who knew Roger and Diana Edelmann would know better, but it would satisfy the police. They didn't know us.

This time, when we stepped into that room on Freighter #2, we were there for good. I took Diana's Red Drum straight to the mess room to be scanned in. That one fish was going to feed a lot of people. And, with all the stuff we scanned at the Commissary, it could be fixed a lot of different ways. Diana didn't want her beer so I tracked down Frenchy.

He thought there wasn't any point in scanning the beer in but he let me do it anyway, then we drank them both before they got warm. He was right; that was the last decent beer I had for a long time.

The three of us had to go our separate ways after that. I was going out to Jupiter. Diana was going to stay in moon orbit helping Admiral Kennedy figure out who-all we needed up here, and Ginger stayed on Earth managing the effort to get us more bodies.

After I got a briefing on how to get to Jupiter, Diana and I had one more night together in our pod in Freighter #2. She was depressed and afraid and I spent most of the night just holding her and reassuring her. We'd been separated quite a few times before, but that was always for a few months, or half a year. This one looked permanent.

Always before I'd been on a United States Navy warship. Accidents happen, but the cold war had ended without any major battles in large part because the Soviet Union had never felt comfortable challenging our fleet. Their leaders understood land warfare and they had built a war machine that could grind across all of Europe if the US stayed out of it. We weren't willing to stay out of it, though, and they went broke trying to build a navy that could make us stay out.

Diana had always known that, on a USN warship, I had a better chance than anyone else of coming home from WW3, and on the submarines it was almost guaranteed. The Russian boats just weren't our equal. There may not be a home to come home to, but most of our boats would have survived even a total war with the Soviet Union. Out in the deep ocean, we were the lions and the Soviet submarines were jackals.

This time, we were like the Americans in 1775, building Bushnell's Turtle to go attack HMS Eagle. We had no navy, and we were going up against the biggest baddest force in the known universe. Until we learned enough to build a fleet that could stop the big bad aliens, we were going to have casualties. The early ships were all going to be sacrificed for knowledge and time. I'd use the Romans and their early wars with Carthage when they didn't know how to fight at sea to compare us with, but we didn't have the best army in the world to fall back on, either, this time. The other guys probably had that, too.

We had our own advantages, though. We had a billion years of competition bred into our genes, and we had a million years of a galactic civilization to give us tools. Like any contest, the winner wouldn't be the strongest or the fastest or the biggest. It would be the one that used its strengths to find and destroy the other's weaknesses. We could do this. It was as fair a fight as any.

Still.... I was an early recruit to this war. I was going to go try to hold the line while Diana helped arm Earth. Think of the patriots who held the Alamo while Texas organized and trained an army, or the 300 heroes who stood at Thermopylae while a few cities in Greece got ready to fight the whole damned Persian Empire.

What did those two groups have in common? Knowing your history isn't always a good thing. I couldn't very well reassure Diana when I didn't believe my lies myself. I finally told her that if I did something stupid she could get it revised in the papers to be heroic, have a ship named after me, and send Junior out to avenge me after he graduated.

That made her feel better. "You don't ever do something stupid. Our friends will know we didn't drown, fishing drunk. You'll be the one who learns the secret and comes back to tell us how to win, oh crafty Odysseus." We slept, after that.

I woke to find Diana trying to use me for her filthy needs again. When she realized I was awake she told me that she wanted more children. Well, I knew what that was all about, but my instincts agreed with her. I should have more children before I died. If we slowed them down, and Junior's generation stopped them, then our youngest would see his own children live free. I made it as good for her as I could.

When we were done we took a shower together, had breakfast, had one last kiss, and she went to work getting me reinforcements. I took my dufflebag and stepped on a transporter pad to our Moonbase, wondering if I should take a helmet with me. Should I be wearing it?

The reason we had a base on the Moon was distance. The transporters the aliens had given us had a limit on how far they would work. It didn't seem to matter what the mass was like all the science fiction stories thought, it was a simply a hard limit on how far they would go. That limit just happened to be high enough that a ship behind the Moon could use transporters to reach Earth.

If you wanted to go farther than that, though, you had to use some kind of ship. The aliens had not yet turned any of their starships over to us, but they had given us a couple of shuttles to get around the system in. Since then, we had built several more. Or, rather, had the shipboard AIs build some more for us.

As a traveling replicator salesman, I knew all about that. Each ship had several small replicators in common places like the mess decks and the living quarters. However, they could only build things that were small enough to fit inside their active volume, which was about the same as a microwave oven. Every ship also had a much larger replicator back in the engineering spaces.

That replicator didn't have solid sides around it. Instead, it had force fields that isolated the work area. You could use it to build something medium-sized, like another mess decks replicator, or you could use it to build something much larger, like a replacement main engine module.

If what you needed was too large for the force-field work area, it would start at one end and slowly build the whole thing, pushing the completed part out as it got in the way. It would look something like one of our solid 3D printers, down on Earth, but instead of a special printing material what these things built would be made of whatever it was supposed to be made of. Steel, carbon fiber, whatever.

If they wanted a new shuttle, all they had to do was tell the ship's AI to build it and make sure that the integrated shipboard repair system got all the raw materials it needed. Both the central control ball where the aliens stayed and the engineroom itself held large "Digesters" which acted like large-scale scanners and also took things apart for their raw materials. All that the aliens had to do if they wanted more materials was send out a couple of automated miners -also carried onboard as standard repair equipment- to go down to the Moon and bring back whatever they found that contained the Iron or Vanadium or whatever it was they needed.

If I keep using the phrases "automated" and "self-controlled" it's because everything was. The ship's crew apparently did not need any specialized knowledge about their ship to take care of it. Their civilization had moved past needing repairmen. The AIs had been handling all the ugly details for a long, long time. If those guys ever lost their AIs they would probably all just sit down and die.

Also, when the aliens had first arrived, one of the first things they had done -even before contacting us- was to have an automated construction crew start working on a base on the Moon. They had already turned that over to the UN; they certainly didn't need it and had only started building it to save us some time. The UN didn't need it either, but no one likes to give up something they think is valuable. With our counterrevolutionary cabal, we'd have to get our own "military" base soon, but for now this place was a UN operation.

The UN was doing several things from this base including some probably important exploration and surveying, but the only one that mattered to us was that they were using it as a shuttleport. They had set up regular service to the industrial effort out at Jupiter, and a shuttle left every morning.

They had a landing pad on the surface, while the base itself was buried somewhere in the rock. People got into the shuttle by transporter pad again, so no one ever had to walk through vacuum or an airlock to get on the shuttle. It was all very civilized and safe. If the shuttle needed servicing it happened automatically without bothering anyone. I was probably the only one on the base who even considered the possibility.

I spent a few minutes talking with the others in the waiting room. My three fellow passengers were also naval officers like me. With my normal paranoia now cranked up by confirmation that there actually were people out to get me, I paid a lot more attention than usual to mannerisms and such. I got the idea that the Dutch Commander had been selected for his political reliability, rather than his combat or leadership skills, but the Canadian Lieutenant-Commander and the German Fregattenkapitan both appeared to be normal run-of-the-mill competent officers.

I did note that all three were currently on active duty with their services, not retired like me. If they had been assigned up here at the request of the UN, I might have to revise my estimate of their trustworthiness. Something to ask the AIs about when I had some privacy.

I also got the strong impression from the base staff that it didn't matter if the four of us were lost in an unfortunate shuttle accident. We were only soldiers and far from being important people. And if we caused any trouble about it, well, there were many more where we came from. I gritted my teeth and tried to not notice. As far as I was concerned, these people were no less the enemy than the Sa'arm were.

It looked like we had a couple of hours to wait. I looked around, but there were no 20-year-old magazines in this waiting room, either. I pulled out my iPad to play with it. I hadn't looked at it since we had first come up here, but it was on the charger when I took it from the office, and I'd only used it a couple of times on the boat. It should still work.

The navigation app, one of the few I'd paid to have added, had crashed, saying that it could not locate enough GPS satellites to determine my location. Okay, that's reasonable, we aren't even on Earth. The iPad's refusal to do anything else until I found it some GPS satellites was not reasonable.

"AI? This device..." waving my iPad "...does not appear to work off Earth. Are there Confederacy replacements available?"

<Please restart your device. We have adjusted its programming to not require location signals.>

"Thank you."

After I shut it down and brought it back up again it was a lot happier. The navigation app still didn't work, and neither did the weather app, but the iPad was willing to keep going without them. Apparently they had WiFi here on the Moon. I could look at the latest from CNN on the earthquake in Peru (the actual quake was just offshore in the subduction zone, but all the damage was onshore, of course) and I could get to the Weather Channel if I wanted. The Norfolk Times had nothing yet on my death by drunken fishing.

I thought about email. 'AdmiralKennedy@ConfederacyNavy.mil' probably wouldn't work. "AI, can I use this to communicate with the people on Freighter #2?"

<Who do you wish to communicate with?>

"Admiral Kennedy. I have some questions about my assignment."

<We will have him send you an email.>

"Thank you." That was that, I marked all previous email as read, deleted all the spam, and played solitaire until I got the Ding! of an incoming email. I went back to that and I had one from 'AdmiralRKennedy@F2.Confederacy', which I was pretty sure wasn't a valid email address. The subject was "Open when alone".

I looked up, as much to see where the others were as to talk to the AI. "AI, can I get a charger for this thing? The batteries don't last very long."

<We have developed a plug that acts as a charger to extend the battery life of your Apple device. It is in the replicator to your left.>

Yes, the transporter station waiting room had a replicator. It also had a bathroom, good. I went over and got my charger, a little dongle-looking thing that plugged in to my iPad's charger port. It immediately said "charging".

I moved my duffel over to a chair against a wall and got comfortable, my back against the wall and no one else near, and opened the Admiral's email.

"Roger, the AIs assure me that they and the Darjee are all on our side. I don't know how we could tell if they weren't, but if they are we should be safe. These emails will go over their own communications system and no human can access them. The AIs monitor everything. They tell me that, if anyone else is looking over your shoulder, this email will not open. Also, your tablet will not work if anyone other than you is holding it. If you can see this, no one else is trying to read it with you."

"Anyway, it looks like you have a couple of hours to kill before your shuttle. Sorry about that, we're still getting organized. Again, this week is the first we have HAD a regularly scheduled shuttle, and the schedule may need adjusting. Close and delete this email, and do something else. In a couple of minutes there will be an announcement for you and your team to return to this ship. We'll run those three through the test and see what we get. See you soon!"

Okay, sure. I went back to losing at solitaire. Soon there was an announcement <Captain Edelmann and team please report to Freighter #2 for a briefing.>. If I didn't already know that this place was run by AIs also, I would have thought it was a badly-recorded standard message.

I looked up. "I'm Captain Edelmann. Can you clarify 'team'?"

<Captain Edelmann, you and the three men waiting with you for the next shuttle are requested for a briefing.>

"How long is this going to take, and will this interfere with our shuttle?"

<We expect this to take less than an hour, and the shuttle will not be ready for departure for at least two hours. Also, the four of you are the only passengers expected on this run. If necessary, the shuttle will wait for you.>

"AI, will you inform anyone who cares that we are not here waiting for our shuttle?"

<We will so inform all who inquire.>

I looked around at the others. "Any of you know what this is about?" I got two shakes and a "No, sir" so I shrugged and said "Okay, let's go find out."

We went over to the alcove with the transporter pads in it, and one lit green. <The transporter with the green light is set to deliver you to Freighter #2.>

I said "Thank you" to the voice in the ceiling and stepped on it.

Both Frenchy and Doc were there to meet us. Frenchy pulled me out of the way again because I hadn't learned yet to get out of the way on my own, and after that the other three came in behind me. I helped Frenchy pull the first two out of the way. Once we were all present, Frenchy said "Captain, these three officers here were processed before we found the problem with the implants. We want to get them into the med-tubes before they get on the shuttle. You're okay, we did you yesterday, but these other three officers need to be checked."

The German officer asked "What is the problem with the implants?"

Doc took that one. "The AIs don't know everything they think they know, but at least they admit their mistakes. We humans are not as stable as they expected, and in some cases the implant has made that a bit worse. They want to fix that before one of us proves them even more wrong than they think they are. Since you three are going out to the ships, we thought we'd go ahead and check you now."

"But what are you doing?"

"We are going to turn your implants off, to start with. The nanites will make some changes, and then we will turn them back on when you are ready to test them. It will take a day or so. Until then, it won't work."

I poked my head in the discussion. "So, I don't need any more work?"

Doc shook his head. "No, you should be okay."

"Alright, I'll go talk to the Admiral if he has time. Gentlemen, I'll come check on you in about half an hour." I don't know if they are really "my" people or not, but I'm senior so I'm in charge. And I'm responsible.

Doc led the three guys back towards his domain, and Frenchy walked over to the Admiral's office with me. "Okay, what's this really about?"

"It's a good chance to test three more people for our secret plan to take over the universe."

"How is that going?"

"We took the US and NATO people on this ship as a baseline, so everyone here passed it. We have added the test to the processing that the other ships are doing with their new recruits. The last I heard, 7 out of 8 people tested got below our proposed cutoff for trustworthiness. We may have to adjust our expectations some. I guess someone will have to do something to provide oversight on the test, so we know we can trust it."

"How much does Doc Sorensen know?"

"He got one of our highest scores for integrity. We told him that we're trying to run a scam to get out from under the UN so we can do our jobs." Which was, actually, no less than the blunt truth, wasn't it? "He's in with us all the way. He understands OpSec and didn't ask too many questions."

Operational Security covers a multitude of sins, but the core principle is not spreading sensitive info any further than necessary. Just having a "Secret" clearance is not sufficient to be allowed to see all "Secret" info. You have to have the clearance, yes, but you also have to have a "need-to-know" about a particular item, or operation, or system, or you don't get told. Military personnel all understand and accept that. And they understand the corollary, that some desk-jockey will worry too much about his secrets and not let the people doing the work know enough to get the job done.

We were at the Admiral's office before we were done talking. The door was open so we walked in. "Good morning, boss!"

"Roger! Did the email help at all?"

"It certainly did, Admiral. It gave me the warning I needed to look like I knew what I was doing. Thank you! How is the rebellion coming? Are we strong enough to take on the Emperor yet?"

"Son, I don't think we will ever want to do that. We need to be happy with just getting as many people off Earth as we can. The good people, at least."

"Well, then, how is THAT coming?"

"We're making progress. Your Ginger approved two of the recruiters she met and they came up and got processed earlier. They belong to us now. They are working on our recruiting list while Ginger looks at renting some office space and George looks at employment agencies. If all goes well, most of the testing will move down there soon and we'll start moving people a lot faster."

I had nothing else to do, so I found Diana and distracted her for a few minutes. Just seeing her helps me be calm. Touching her is even better. And if she wants to touch me, too, I'm in a pretty good mood. All we did was hug, but I felt a lot better about leaving her to go fight aliens.

Doc called me in time to be there when 'my team' got out of the tubes, and it was clear when they saw me that they felt better about me being there. We may not have the same relationship as Diana and I do, but everyone appreciates being told the truth. I said I'd be there, and I was there. Stuff like that cements trust. We covered what had to be discussed, then I pointed out that we'd have time in the shuttle to discuss whatever was on their minds. We needed to get on our way.

While we were walking back to the transporter room I had a thought. "AI? Can you give my iPad an address list for people I can email here?"

<That has been done. Also, your implant has been modified to support the agreed functions. You can turn it on whenever you want. The implant will give you secure communications with us, and we can connect two or more of you for private conversations.>

"Who else has their new version activated?"

<Admiral Kennedy, Major French, and Captain George Smith are using theirs. We have agreed that Diana Edelmann and Colonel Sorenson should not yet, as a control in case there are other issues.>

It didn't take me long to realize that the operators, the people who actually did things, had gone ahead and done it. The analyzers, the people who thought about things, were waiting or had been told to wait. Which am I? I held my arms out and stopped in the passageway. My team had been listening to this conversation and knew what was going on. "Okay, go ahead and activate mine. How do I turn it on and off?"

<You must choose a code that you are not likely to accidentally say, and let us know. We will set the implant to accept your code. When you use the code, the implant will remain dormant until it hears you say the activation code again.>

("AI, can you hear me?")

(<Yes, we hear you. Your implant appears to be functioning correctly. If it appears to act erratically we will ask you before turning it off>)

("Okay, that seems fair. I can live with this.")

I turned to the guys. "It seems to be okay for now. Thanks for waiting." Hmmm. If I have a private channel..... ("AI, how did these three do with your test?")

(<All three of the men with you passed the new reliability test. We would welcome their efforts to help us.>)

With all that, our wait in the moonbase's transporter room wasn't long at all. Soon enough, we were called to one of the pads.

The shuttle appeared to be a very wide-body commuter plane set up for first class passengers, at least from the inside. The transporter pad was between the stewardess section and the first seats. It wasn't immediately clear where cargo would go. It looked like we had 32 seats to choose from; eight rows of four very comfortable-looking seats each with a wide walkway down the middle. The next man through pushed me out of the way so that the others could follow. "Excuse me, sir. We need to stand clear of the pad." I needed to get better about that.

When all four of us were there, I walked around the pad to the front. There was someone there checking things out. Hopefully, the pilot. "Does it matter where we sit?"

"Not at all, sir. We don't have to worry about weight and balance in these. Sit wherever you like. I'm not going to insist on seatbelts, but at least make sure your suit is complete. We'll be leaving momentarily, since we are already behind schedule and you four are our only passengers. I'll make an announcement."

I turned back to the seating area, and pointed at the innermost two seats on the first two rows. "Let's take these four for now so we can talk. Afterwards, we can spread out if we want. Do any of you know how long this trip takes?"

<Shuttle time will vary with the orbital positions of Earth and Jupiter. This trip will take just over 22 hours. This time will increase as Earth goes around the Sun until it reaches a maximum of twenty five hours in approximately four months, then will decrease for slightly over six months to a minimum of 21 hours.>

"Twenty-two hours? Do we get inflight meals?"

<This shuttle is equipped with both a replicator and a bathroom but available mass is limited so it would be prudent to limit your requests to drinks and food.>

Yeah, I knew that from my earlier sleep-training. The replicator and bathroom pretty much had to go together. The bathroom used replicator supplies and provided raw materials back to it. Not something that we humans really wanted to think about too much, but in a closed system everything had to be recycled. A small system like this shuttle had would not have very much room for raw materials storage, probably not much more than one of those residence pods.

The majority of that storage would be water and other low-atomic number materials used for food. There would also be a good supply of materials that would be needed for hull and machinery repairs, but that was also limited. I could get a pair of 14" pipe wrenches if I wanted, as long as I wasn't picky about materials. If I needed them made of Rubidium it probably wasn't going to happen.

I told the AI that I'd like a large McDonald's coffee with one cream and then waited while the others ordered.