different. We’ve got a tight schedule, and we had to dump it all on you and get you into the program as fast as possible. Today we go to Nebula Ops. That’s where you’ll spend most of your time until we’re ready to go to Mars. We have some laboratories and small manufacturing facilities there. It’s nothing on the scale of Nebula Two, but it’s what you and the others will need for the work that remains before we deploy.”
Harry had finished preparing the toast and was pouring a cup of coffee when it sank in. “Are you using the word we in a general sense, or are you implying that I’ll be going to Mars with you? That’s what it sounded like.”
“You’re now part of my Advanced Force Operations team. We’re the ones who will do the work on Mars. So, yeah, you’ll be going there with the rest of us once we have everything squared away down here. We still have work to do to get everything ready for the operation.”
“Wait a second,” Harry replied, almost spilling his coffee. “What the hell would I do with you on Mars? I told you I’m not a soldier. I’m just a lab rat, a researcher. I can’t help you fight with alien soldiers and robots that are coming here.”
“OK, look. We don’t intend to fight them on Mars or anywhere else until the final battle to wipe out what’s left of their fleet after the plague kills most of them. Your role will be to help us make the connections to all the robots. We need to have direct brain to robot control so that we can apply Yuri’s and Ludmila’s technology and keep everything hidden from the enemy. We need to be on Mars to work with the machines there since any greater distance would introduce too much time delay. It all has to be very nearly real time for it to work. So you’ll help us finish the work that your predecessor was doing, and then you’ll be with us on Mars to do the job there. That’s why you’re here Harry. You have a big role to play in all of this.”
Harry stood silently for a few seconds and then asked, “So what about Titan? Will I go there too?”
“No, as I explained we abandoned any thought of using Titan for any manned operation and disabled all the aliens systems there. We don’t need it, and there are environmental issues with trying to establish a covert presence there. Mars is all we need, and we’ve already prepared a well-hidden outpost underground and pretty close to the area where the alien facilities are. We destroyed most of the alien structures and robots on Titan in a way that made it look like a small asteroid strike, very convincing if I may say so. If the aliens do detect the wreckage, they won’t suspect anything. The only thing that we left there that could be useful is a small array of very covert sensors that we installed. If an alien ship finds and inspects the destroyed site, our sensors will alert us that they’ve arrived in the solar system. Other than that, Titan isn’t a player in our plan. Let’s save the details for later. Finish your coffee and toast, and we’ll head out to Ops. You can have a better breakfast when we get there. We’ve got a lot to do today.”
The trip from Nebula Prime to Nebula Ops was uneventful and more or less the same as the first trip to Prime. The two undersea facilities were separated by thousands of kilometers, so the trip was made in a spacecraft, the same one that they flew in on the previous day. Milo was the pilot again, and he said almost nothing, keeping in character.
When they arrived, Harry could see immediately that Ops was much larger than Prime. The arrival chamber was huge, still hexagonal but about fifty percent wider and quite a bit higher. The doors on two of the walls were also much bigger. They looked to be thirty to forty meters wide and about ten to fifteen meters high, taking up almost all the area of those two walls. The entry doors in the receiving chamber, the one where the ship waited until water was removed, were also the same enormous
Harry had finished preparing the toast and was pouring a cup of coffee when it sank in. “Are you using the word we in a general sense, or are you implying that I’ll be going to Mars with you? That’s what it sounded like.”
“You’re now part of my Advanced Force Operations team. We’re the ones who will do the work on Mars. So, yeah, you’ll be going there with the rest of us once we have everything squared away down here. We still have work to do to get everything ready for the operation.”
“Wait a second,” Harry replied, almost spilling his coffee. “What the hell would I do with you on Mars? I told you I’m not a soldier. I’m just a lab rat, a researcher. I can’t help you fight with alien soldiers and robots that are coming here.”
“OK, look. We don’t intend to fight them on Mars or anywhere else until the final battle to wipe out what’s left of their fleet after the plague kills most of them. Your role will be to help us make the connections to all the robots. We need to have direct brain to robot control so that we can apply Yuri’s and Ludmila’s technology and keep everything hidden from the enemy. We need to be on Mars to work with the machines there since any greater distance would introduce too much time delay. It all has to be very nearly real time for it to work. So you’ll help us finish the work that your predecessor was doing, and then you’ll be with us on Mars to do the job there. That’s why you’re here Harry. You have a big role to play in all of this.”
Harry stood silently for a few seconds and then asked, “So what about Titan? Will I go there too?”
“No, as I explained we abandoned any thought of using Titan for any manned operation and disabled all the aliens systems there. We don’t need it, and there are environmental issues with trying to establish a covert presence there. Mars is all we need, and we’ve already prepared a well-hidden outpost underground and pretty close to the area where the alien facilities are. We destroyed most of the alien structures and robots on Titan in a way that made it look like a small asteroid strike, very convincing if I may say so. If the aliens do detect the wreckage, they won’t suspect anything. The only thing that we left there that could be useful is a small array of very covert sensors that we installed. If an alien ship finds and inspects the destroyed site, our sensors will alert us that they’ve arrived in the solar system. Other than that, Titan isn’t a player in our plan. Let’s save the details for later. Finish your coffee and toast, and we’ll head out to Ops. You can have a better breakfast when we get there. We’ve got a lot to do today.”
The trip from Nebula Prime to Nebula Ops was uneventful and more or less the same as the first trip to Prime. The two undersea facilities were separated by thousands of kilometers, so the trip was made in a spacecraft, the same one that they flew in on the previous day. Milo was the pilot again, and he said almost nothing, keeping in character.
When they arrived, Harry could see immediately that Ops was much larger than Prime. The arrival chamber was huge, still hexagonal but about fifty percent wider and quite a bit higher. The doors on two of the walls were also much bigger. They looked to be thirty to forty meters wide and about ten to fifteen meters high, taking up almost all the area of those two walls. The entry doors in the receiving chamber, the one where the ship waited until water was removed, were also the same enormous
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