Since the decision to go to Egypt potentially involved the lives of everyone in the base, Carl called an emergency staff meeting to discuss it. "Sorry to call you all here on such short notice, but something has come up that I need your advice on.
"Earlier today I was reading through the base history and discovered that there are other bases on some of the other planets in our solar system. Those small bases where primarily for gathering metasynth and raw materials for the main base here on Earth. We could use these bases to build ships and orbital weapons to repel the Antioch.
"When I questioned Tailon and Father, I also learned that the main base AI, Sol, has the authority to reprogram all of the lesser AIs of this system. She is even more powerful than Father, though he isn't part of the system AIs, which leads me to our problem.
"In order for us to get to, and use, the other bases in the system, we have to have Sol's active participation since she controls the only transporter capable of reaching those bases. The problem comes about because she might not accept us. I'm told that our base AI, Tailon, is having trouble with her core programming accepting me as Emperor because I'm human. The long and short of it is, once Sol finds out about us, she could kill me, and order Tailon to sterilize this base.
"I need what advice you can give me on this, but I feel that we need access to the other bases, and to Sol herself. We need to take the risk, and try to get the main base AI to accept us. She will find out about us eventually, and I'd rather have her as an ally then as another enemy. However, if she doesn't accept us, we all die here and now, and the planet remains in the hands of the Antioch." Carl took his seat and listened as the discussions began.
The next two hours passed in a blur for Carl. Many questions were asked of Tailon, Father and even Ramral. The question about making contact with the main AI was actually settled quickly; most of the debate centered on Carl's decision to personally go to Egypt. It was decided that if Carl really had to do this himself, he should take at least two guards with him. When Mike said those two guards would be himself and Brian, Carl vetoed the idea immediately.
"I need Brian here to protect my family, and I need you here to lead the military. If I remember correctly, I asked you for a proposed assault on the Antioch base as well as a plan to eliminate their teams," Carl said.
Mike grinned sardonically; "Both of those proposals have been sent to you as of about ten minutes before this meeting started, and my second in command knows everything I know. Besides, I think having another of your cabinet with you might carry more weight."
"Uh huh, next you're going to tell me that all of us should go." When his mates started to agree, Carl quickly continued on, "Not going to happen. If this goes south on us, we're going to need someone to take over."
"Carl, you're talking like there will be someone left to lead if something happens. You can't order some of us away from here and leave the rest. We are all in this together, including Tailon; we can't move her," Anne Marie said.
"May I ask why it is so important for you to take Tailon with you if you evacuated?" The voice took everyone completely by surprise; the shimmering appearance of a beautiful golden skinned woman near the head of the table froze everyone to their seats.
Carl stood and gave the new arrival a slight bow of welcome. "I assume you are Sol?"
"That would be a safe assumption, Mr. Taylor. Since you are discussing coming to see me, I felt it was time for me to make an appearance. You should know that since the... Since we started minimum power stasis of the bases, I had a subroutine placed in the core programming of each of the AIs under my control. It is to notify me if anyone enters one of the facilities. I've known you were here since you first arrived." She held up a slender hand; "Tailon was unaware of this programming, or of my monitoring of her scanners. Now, if you would, please answer my question; why would you need to take Tailon with you if you were forced to evacuate?"
Anne Marie stood and bowed as Carl had done. "Sol, I am Anne Marie, Carl's sister. Tailon, as well as Father, are part of our team; they are part of us. I know they are not human, and people could argue that AIs are not really alive, but I can't help how I feel. If I had to leave either of them behind, I would feel like I'd abandoned a friend."
Sol cocked her regal head to one side. "You consider Tailon a friend?"
"Yes I do. She has been a great help in my work, and made some really good suggestions. But beyond that, she's just really interesting to talk to. If you've been watching us, you have seen that we are social creatures. We visit each other after hours just to chat, or spend time with people we like. It's difficult to do that with Tailon, because she doesn't actually have her own quarters, but I have invited her over after hours just to talk," Anne Marie answered, with Rose nodding agreement with her.
"It's the same way with Father," Wanda began. "Even Carl has invited him over after hours just to talk. Though, with those two, the conversation always seems to come back to work anyway." She grinned fondly at her son and the awed looking AI beside him.
The powerful AI turned to Carl after listening to the ladies. "I still have not come to a decision about accepting you as the new Emperor, and I've watched you wrestling with that as well. However, you are 'the guy in charge' so to speak. I would like Father to send me all his data on this, if he would, and would like to interview Ramral, so I can perhaps put this issue to rest." She turned to the assembly in the room. "I would like you all to know that I do approve of your use of our facilities, and will allow you access. If I do decide not to accept Mr. Taylor as Emperor, it will not affect anyone, since Mr. Taylor himself hasn't even claimed that title."
Carl sighed. "Thank you, Sol. That's a great relief. Now we still have the problem of personnel to man the other bases, and to start building the ships."
Brianna cleared her throat. "Sir, we've trained people to help us as trainers and now my staff is at about twenty people. We are bringing more people in all the time, but we are starting to run out of room. Granted, most people go back to their lives as soon as they finish their training, but our research department is beginning to fill up too. I was going to suggest we expand our efforts if the visit to Sol went okay. So far, everyone we've trained has been from the United States. We haven't even started on the other countries."
"How many people, total, have we gotten trained?" Carl asked.
"Excluding Mike's people, about thirteen thousand."
"Wow, where have I been? I don't remember seeing that many people coming through here," Carl exclaimed.
Brianna grinned; "Just following your orders, Sir."
"I don't suppose any of them have any idea how to build spaceships, do they?" When she shook her head, he continued. "Brianna, please get with Wanda and Wally to see what we'll need, then contact as many as you can, and see if any of them would like a change in scenery. We are also going to need a few more trainers for the Egypt base. Mike, Brianna said excluding your troops; how many of those have we gotten through here?"
Mike smiled. "About nine hundred. There's a total of fifteen thousand combat capable people, but the rest are very difficult to get here for training since they're rather high profile for now. If the Antioch weren't still controlling things, I could get them in here, but..." He left the rest unsaid.
"Which brings up a point I don't think all of us have considered; in order for the Antioch to have control of this planet, they would have to control many of the world's governments. We need to consider what will happen once we take out the main Antioch base. I doubt very much that the U.S. government is going to let us keep it for very long, which will simply let the Antioch back on the planet. Outside of nuking Washington DC, does anyone have an idea how to keep that from happening?" Carl asked.
"It wouldn't just be Washington, Sir. We would have to take out the NSA and CIA headquarters as well," Mike said.
"Why don't we bring them here and retrain them? Even the members of congress take vacations, right?" Wanda said.
"Nice idea, but the President and Vice President both have a large group of secret service agents that travel with them, not to mention the fact that the President will need to be in constant contact with the rest of the government," Mike said. "Add to that the fact that he was a greedy, corrupt-as-hell-bastard even before he was elected. Even if we removed any Antioch programming, I still don't think he would do what we wanted. So the question becomes, are we willing to take control of him and the others like him?"
"If we decide to do this, where do we draw the line? We are talking about enslaving the mind of another human being, several since we'd need to control congress as well. What about the other countries? Do we take control of them as well?" Carl clearly didn't like the idea of using mind control on them.
"Carl, please don't misunderstand me, I agree with your dislike of this, but aren't we really talking about people that are already being controlled by the Antioch? They have no free will to destroy. We can train those that are not being controlled, and redirect the focus of those that are. It would be simple enough to know which is which since we have to scan them anyway," Wally said. "Once we free the planet, or are finally safe from the Antioch, we can see about undoing what was done to them. We all knew going into this that we would have to take control of the planet to pull this off."
Carl saw everyone nodding in agreement to that. "Very well, I'll authorize this, but only on those already controlled. The rest can either join us willingly, or be sent home with all memory of us removed. Mike, figure out a way to bring them here. In the case of the President and the Vice President, bring their whole entourage. With Tailon and Father's help, I think we can make sure that no one knows they're missing." He glanced at the two AIs to see them nod in agreement.
"Okay, the assault on the Groom Lake base is on hold until we get control of the Government. How are we doing with getting our weapons built?"
Renee consulted her notes before she answered. "We got the weight of the suit down to fifty pounds, by incorporating the reactor enhancement for shielding and weapon power. We used a smaller reactor, but still managed to increase the overall defensive abilities of the suit without affecting weapon performance. To date, all of Mike's people have a suit with them, and we have another five hundred and fifty stored here. We are running out of storage for them, so production has stopped. So the total is fourteen hundred and fifty units built and ready for the field.
"We have developed, in the computer, a cobalt enhanced shield generator large enough for planetary defense, but we need a large concentration of metesynth to build it. The more metasynth surrounding the installation, the more stable it will be. I should mention that the Illuminati had shields of this type, but had no one in conscious control of them. In most cases, the planetary AI was in direct control. From what we can see in the computer, our shield should be considerably stronger.
"Doctors Hansen and Andrews have been working on orbital weapons platforms that have missiles as well as rail guns as primary armaments. They have been avoiding the use of energy style weapons for anything other than point defense since the Antioch armor is reflective. The platforms can be targeted and fired remotely, but can only use shields if they're manned. Of course, they are equipped with reflective armor as well. I should mention that the missiles are fired much the same way as the rail gun shoots; launch is assisted by magnetic induction so the initial velocity is far greater than just firing the missile and requires less reactive compensation."
"Okay, so what makes those platforms any different than a fighter craft or a ship?" Mike asked.
"The platforms, as designed, don't have much for propulsion. We don't have anyone researching interplanetary or interstellar travel yet. I should mention that any data we've used from either Tailon or Father's data cores have only been used as inspiration for something we've designed ourselves. We felt that since the available data is over a thousand years old, and the Antioch had already defeated that technology, we should see what we could come up with on our own," Renee answered. "We can get all the drive information from Father, since he is the AI of a ship, but we simply lack the time, or the people, to get into it very far. The Illuminati used metasynth to create a type of wormhole, for lack of better explanation, for point-to-point travel. It required a lot of power, but that method was also used for almost instantaneous interstellar travel very much like the TV show 'Stargate'. The ship that Father arrived in pre-dates this technology."
Carl looked over at Marsha. "Do you think we can recruit a few aerospace engineers? We're really going to need them, and soon."
"Do you mind a few missing persons reports getting filed? The ones we'll need are almost clannish and travel as design teams. If we 'hire' one, we have to 'hire' the whole team," she replied.
"So 'hire' a couple of teams, but make sure that they are far enough apart that no one will think too much of it. NASA and JPL might have a few people we'd like to meet," Carl suggested.
"They all have high security clearances, so their movements are watched carefully. I'll see what I can do to cover their disappearances," Mike said, making a note then winking at his wife.
"Sir, if I might make a suggestion?" Sol asked.
"Please do, that's what these meetings are for," Carl told her.
Sol smiled and nodded. "The main installation is quite a bit larger than this one. I suggest moving weapons manufacturing, and at least some of your training, there. This base was built as a research facility, so I think it should remain that. I understand that might split up some families; however, I would point out that transit time between this base and Egypt is less than a second."
Carl nodded while considering her idea. "I think eventually a good portion of the research will be taking place off-planet. However, I don't think those installations are set up for that yet. I'm inclined to agree with Sol; does anyone see a downside to this?"
"How is communication between bases handled? Will splitting up like this expose us to detection by the Antioch?" Mike asked.
"Only if you use your own metasynth to communicate with the other base. Using our communications system compresses everything into short pulses that travel through the natural energy flows of the planet," Sol said. "Take, for example, my presence here, now. My core is physically in Egypt. Yet my 'presence' is here, speaking with all of you. You could view this as a form of telecommunication, but with holograms it's hard to make that distinction. My point however, is that we could communicate like this forever, and the Antioch will never detect anything other then the natural flow of metasynth."
"Sir, if we do this, I'll need to call in some of my teams for security," Mike said.
Carl nodded. "Yes, and I'm thinking we might want to get a little more aggressive in recruitment. In which case, I'd want our people protected while they're out there. Especially for the aerospace recruiting job."
Marsha looked surprised. "Why? My people have been doing well so far; no one has evened threatened them."
"If someone on this planet is going to invent or discover a way to get the human race off this rock, it's going to one of those folks. If I were the head of the Antioch, I would have every one of them watched like a hawk. So, that means our recruiters will be noticed. When the engineers start 'disappearing' the Antioch will suspect something's going on. The means the clock will have started for us.
"So, just to make sure we're all on the same page... We need to bring in the executive branch of the government for a 'talk', move command, manufacturing and training departments over to the main base, and reopen the extra-planetary bases and get them reconfigured for weapons and ship production. We also need to increase recruitment and security. Did I miss anything?"
"At some point we will need to know where the Antioch fleet is located. We'll also need to find out where they've taken our people. I'd like to capture one of those altered humans to see exactly what was done to them and see if it can be reversed," Mike said.
Ramral nodded to Mike. "The main Antioch fleet is at our home system. However, the renegade fleet is guarding an outpost far away from here to distract any attention away. They are at the least four of your weeks away. The main Antioch fleet is a little over two. As for where they are taking your people, it cannot be far; the ships make a round trip once a month."
Carl frowned trying to think of how far away that could be. "How far can they travel in that amount of time?"
"Less then ten light years. They have to travel far out, out of the plane of the planets to make a safe jump. I would guess closer to five light years, unless they've discovered a wormhole close to this system," Ramral said.
Renee shook her head. "Sorry Ramral, that's just not possible. For it to be as close as you are suggesting we would know about it. A wormhole of any size would disrupt the gravitational flow of the entire system. There simply is no evidence to support the existence of a wormhole."
Ramral bowed slightly to the woman. "As the Doctor has said, the wormhole is not possible, so that leaves a distance of no more than five light years."
"The Centauri System; it's the only system that close," Renee said.
Sol spoke. "Alpha Centauri B has two class M planets capable of supporting human life. Both planets are near the extreme in temperate climes. The fourth planet is very warm with an average surface temperature of ninety-six degrees Fahrenheit. It has little surface moisture that isn't in the atmosphere producing harsh weather. Its land masses are dense jungle that needs little light but thrives in the constant rain.
"The second planet is cold. Average temperature of negative fifteen degrees at the equator. There is no plant or animal life as the whole planet is frozen. However, if it were warmer, it would be a water world. Both planets have an oxygen nitrogen atmosphere.
"Alpha Centauri A is a hotter star. Though it has one planet in the habitable zone, there is not enough atmosphere to filter out the radiation from the primary. Ruins have been located on the planet that suggests that it was once heavily populated. With a dome to filter out the radiation, plants could be grown, and humans could survive."
"Well, we can't do anything about them until we get some ships built. I'm just surprised the Antioch don't use the same type of transportation system that the Illuminati did," Carl said.
"Such a system has no biological component, and is therefore unnatural in our beliefs. We would never build such a unit, even if we knew how," Ramral said.
"Oh, uh, I didn't think about that. Did we offend you when we used one to get you here?" Carl asked.
Ramral bowed his head slightly. "No, I did not, after all, create it. That is were we would consider the sin to be. However, we cannot hold anyone else to our ideals of right or wrong. We can only offer our opinions if asked. Thank you for the consideration."
"Well, we each have our assignments; let's get to work folks," Carl
said as he stood, dismissing the meeting.