Chapter Seven: Conversations
"I'm gonna make him an offer he can't refuse." – Don Vito Corleone (Marlon Brando), The Godfather"
xxxXXxxx
Three Months Later
James Cooper, formerly of Bourne, Lincolnshire, England tapped at the controls of the worker bee. The craft was small, one-manned, and designed to handle construction and repair in space. It was lightly armored, and pressurized so he didn't need a spacesuit. He wore one anyway, as he not only felt it was safer, but it allowed him to become acclimated to it. His life support was feeding from the workerbee, and he had been told it wouldn't run out on him, but he couldn't stop himself from checking anyway.
According to the readouts, he had eight more hours of air, and enough battery power for a whole month of continuous operation.
The voice of his superior officer, Chief Engineer Blaylock, sounded in his helmet, "You all right out there, Lieutenant? You just checked life support for the third time in the last hour. Are you worried? Do you need to RTB?"
"Ah... no, Commander, I'm still on mission. Just..." James paused. "It's... well... I'm in orbit, working on the construction of an orbital megastructure. Just a bit daunting, I suppose."
A chuckle came over his radio. "I get it. Do me a favor. Take a deep breath, then look up for me."
James did precisely that. Far above his head, Africa, in all of its glorious greens and browns, presented itself. The Atlantic Ocean, pure navy blue, had minimal cloud cover, and the atmosphere made the rest of the earth a sky blue jewel. It hung above his head like a cosmic painting.
"Oh, that's beautiful." was all he could say.
"Oh yes," Commander Blaylock agreed. "Whenever it all seems to big for you, just remind yourself why we do this."
"Aye, Commander." Though for James Cooper, the earth wasn't why he did this. Oh he felt his duty to the human race as a whole, and the planet, but he had a single reason for joining the crew of the Far Traveler.
If he was honest with himself, he had to admit that his recruitment had an odd feel to it. He had been assured, multiple times that not only were he had been assured that he and his wife, Hannah, were perfectly safe, and that the care Hannah was receiving would rid her of her cancer and save her life. Its just that they were perfectly safe, and Hannah was receiving cancer treatment aboard a spaceship from the future currently in orbit around the Earth.
A Doctor Gibbs informed him that his wife, who had been placed in an induced coma for treatment, would be injected with... James thought the doctor had called them nano-something or other. The doctor had also attached some gizmo to Hannah's chest to start her muscles and organs rebuilding themselves from all the tissue damage the cancer has done. Doctor Gibbs has said it would take a few weeks of treatment for total recovery, but the cancer would be gone from his wife's body 48 hours. It was enough to put tears in his eyes.
In response, a man named Brandenberger... Lieutenant Commander Jonathan Brandenburger, asked James f he wanted a job.
Working on their spaceship.
When James had told them he's do whatever they wanted him to do in exchange for saving Hannah, the officer had gotten stern. Almost angry in fact."
"Mister Cooper," Brandenberger had said, "for your wife's medical care, you don't owe us a damned thing. Its on the house. You don't owe us for the food you'll eat while here, or for the room you'll stay in. None of it. If you need clean clothes, toiletries... whatever you need, we're providing it all to you for free. If you find you need something out of the ordinary, just ask Dawn and she'll tell you how to get it." The man had chuckled. "Of course that's within reason. We're not going to give you a nuclear weapon, or a kilo of heroin, or a machine gun."
"But..." James began, but Brandenberger kept going.
"Now, we do want to offer you a job, working up here with us on the ship, but before you say anything..." James stopped. He was about to say "Yes, I'll take the job and I don't care if its shovelling horseshit with a broken shovel if it means Hannah's cured" but the officer's upraised hand stopped him.
As he watched, John tapped his wrist and a blue screen popped into the air above it. John poked at the screen, then said, "We need to create a legal record of this. lease confirm that you are James August Cooper, born September 4, 1971 in Lincoln, Lincolnshire, England, National Insurance Number QQ-135426B?"
"Um... yes, that's me."
"Good," John continued. "I want to reiterate for the record that the medical care your wife Hannah needs is not and will never be contingent upon you accepting our job offer. As I said, we are providing that care with no obligation to either you or her. Whether or not you accept our job offer, we're going to give your wife the care she needs, no strings attached. If you tell me to shove my job offer up my ass, then we'll put you up for as long as your wife's care takes, and we send you home at the end with a good luck and a handshake. Maybe even a gift basket. Do you understand what I am saying, James?"
James nodded.
"Sorry, James, but I need you to say it. Say, "I understand, Lieutenant Brandenberger. Hannah's care is guaranteed whether or not I take the job." Its so we have a legal record showing we're not coercing you."
"I understand, Lieutenant Brandenberger. Hannah's care is guaranteed whether or not I take the job." James nodded again.
"Cool." John tapped on his wrist again and the blue window closed. "Now that that Is out of the way, , would you like to discuss the job offer now, or tomorrow morning, after you had a full night's sleep?"
The next day, Lieutenant Commander Brandenberger had James take some kind of test, the purpose of which (he was told) was to determine in which areas he had potential.
And then he was offered a job as a Construction Engineer on a starship. His "training" involved a forty minute nap while everything he needed to know to be a starship engineer was fed into his brain directly. He received a couple implants – one in his wrist and one behind his ear, and some immunizations.
A little more than two weeks later, here he was, flying a construction shuttle in orbit around the earth, beginning the construction of a gigantic space station that would circle the earth.
Back in the present, James watched as the cables his workerbee was manipulating were fused at the molecular level into one piece. "Traveler, this is Cooper. Carbon nanotubes are locked."
"Roger Lieutenant. Tighten them up."
"Aye aye." James punched a control, and the cables began to reel in until all slack was gone. Now that the wire framing was in place, the next step was to start building the station proper. He glanced at the huge autofac that straddled the nanotubes. They'd start any minute.
xxxXXxxx
Daniel Jackson looked out of the floor to ceiling window at the earth. He would never get tired of the view, he decided. He found watching the cloud-covered world spin past much more captivating then the bulky white objects that shared an orbit with the Far Traveler. He's been watching as a small, one—man spaceship maneuvered carefully around a point in space, but it hadn't been close enough to reveal any details.
Behind Jackson, a tone sounded, tearing his attention away from the view, He turned to watch as one of the ship's crew... Lieutenant Brandenberger, if he recalled correctly... stepped out of the elevator. The officer was staring at a data pad and didn't initially register Jackson's presence. It took the man a couple of steps to look up, react to Daniel, then smile.
"Doctor Jackson, how are you?" A quick glance at the conference room door, then back. "I thought you were part of the delegation?"
"Technically," Jackson said. "I needed to step out and take a breath. You know how it is." Daniel glanced back out the window. "You've repositioned your ship, I noticed. And you're geostationary now. Though I don't admit where we are in relationship to the surface..."
It was a leading question, and Brandenberger, recognizing it as such, stepped up the same window Jackson had been staring out of. The officer pointed at the ocean directly below their position. "We're hanging in space over The Republic of Null Island, " Brandenberger stifled a laugh, causing Daniel to give him a sharp look.
"What am I missing?" He asked.
"Null Island isn't real. Its just convenience. Total fiction. Its the location where 0 degrees latitude meets 0 degrees longitude."
Daniel Jackson's face softened into his "thinking face", and he said, "Zero degrees latitude... that's the equator. This is where the equator meets the Prime Meridian?"
"Correct, Doctor Jackson. This is going to be where the first ring station will be located."
"First? How many are you building?"
"Well..." Jonathan paused. "In the end, there will be just one orbital station. But its going to be made up of two long stationary belt stations that circle the planet. The north/south ring is positioned precisely over the Prime Meridian, while the east/west ring follows the equator. At the four points where the two belts meet, there will be four ring stations, each a kilometer in diameter. When its finished, it will look like this." Jonathan tapped on his wrist for a moment a blue holoscreen opened up on the window. The screen showed the planet earth. In orbit above the equator, and above what Daniel had to assume was the Prime Meridian, was a pair of rings stretching around the earth's circumference. Just as Jonathan said, at the four points the two larger rings met, smaller circular stations could be seen. "Makes it easier to extend an force field over the entire planet, and gives us control points for spacecraft approaching the Earth."
Daniel's head tilted slightly. He whistled. "That's going to be huge."
Jonathan grinned. "Oh yes. Each ring band is going to be around 44,000 kilometers long. They''' be around a hundred meters wide, and around forty meters thick for most of its length. The ring stations will each have a circumference of around 6 kilometers, 300 meters wide, but 100 meters thick. When completed, if we can recruit enough people, there will be maybe five million permanent residents... but it'll be decades before we reach that point."
Daniel nodded. "I guess that..." He glanced at his watch. "Oh damn, I should have been back already."
"I'll follow you in."
xxxXXxxx
Faith Lehane smiled to herself as she maneuvered the cargo shuttle up and around the Far Traveler, some thirty kilometers distant. The asteroid she was dragging moved with her, held in place by tractor beams. She had no idea how the tractor beams worked. She just knew they did, and she trusted them to act as they were supposed to act according to her training.
Her training had been trippy... she'd laid down on a couch and they put this metal thing that looked like a halo on her head, gave her a totally painless injection of some drug they said would facilitate her absorption of the information, and she'd gone to sleep. She's woken up an hour later feeling refreshed, smarter, and enthusiastic to get working to improve life on earth for everyone.
She was kind of surprised how much she cared so much about the whole wide world, now. Back in Boston, she'd been only concerned with herself. And Diana... but Diana was gone, unfortunately. Willow, Cassiopeia... Lieutenant Commander Rosenberg. The woman bounced between both first names sometimes, a fact that Faith shrugged without really thinking about it. Commander Rosenberg has explained the crew's mission after the training was and suddenly Faith was all about saving the world to a degree she never had been as a Slayer.
Faith stared through the shuttle's big font window, watching her destination getting closer and closer. The window wasn't glass; rather, it was one huge piece of diamond, which Faith just though was wild. And the view was amazing. She'd never been a poetic or romantic type, but if she was honest with herself she had to admit that the nerd that was deeply hidden under the tough-girl exterior had always loved anything to do with space. She just never thought she'd go there.
Her destination was a big white block of machinery that was crawling along a cable that was nearly three feet thick, but even that thick it was too small to see at this distance. The asteroid she was transporting would fit into the feeder end of the autofactory, which would break the rock down into its component elements using nanites. Those materials would then go into the construction of the ring station. It was all very cool.
"Falcon flight to Autofac Control," she said after another moment of watching the Earth.
"Autofac control. Go falcon flight."
The voice didn't sound like anyone Faith had met yet. But then, there were about a hundred people in the crew now. "Control, Falcon flight. I am beginning my approach with the payload. I will be All Stop and station-keeping in fifteen seconds. Advise on this is a direct feed or if we're chunking it up?"
"Falcon flight, control. Roger. We need you to park it next to the input hopper, we're cutting this into four or five pieces before feeing it into the autofac. Beginning countdown. Ready for proximity maneuvers."
Faith knew that eventually she would have some problems fitting in with the entire military thing, but the benefits outweighed the disadvantages. And the job was so damned cool!
"Roger, control. Beginning approach," she said, a huge grin plastered on her face.
xxxXXxxx
Daniel and Jonathan walked into the conference room in time to hear Senator Kinsey shout, "You do not have authorization for that! Who do you think you are?"
Daniel hurriedly, but quietly, returned to his seat. None of the rest of the planetside delegation noticed, but the three members of the Far Traveler's diplomatic team nodded to him in greetings. Jonathan took up a position behind and to the left of the Ensign... Daniel stopped when he realized he couldn't remember the young lady's name. Subastis, Subiassus... something like that. He could remember that her first name was Cordelia. Lieutenant Commander Brandenberger handed her his pad, pointed to something on it, then quickly left the room.
"We are an independent nation, Senator. You and the other nations of the world saw to that when you collectively refused to form a united command. Captain Samson told your Vice-President that he wasn't going to allow this ship or any of our resources become a club you can use to bludgeon the world into submission." A tall, rather stately looking woman was speaking. She's been introduced to Daniel as Commander Elizabeth Weir. The third member was Lieutenant Commander Giles, whom Daniel had met the first time he'd been aboard the ship. "We do not need your authorization any more than you need China's authorization for your space program."
"And that's another thing," Robert Kinsey stood up, looming forward balanced on his fists, the knuckled of which were pressing into the conference table. "You can't just declare yourself independent. That's treason."
"Against whom?" Weir asked.
"What? To the United States, of course." Kinsey almost spat as he answered.
Giles broke in, his voice calm and steady, "It would be interesting to see how you would justify such a charge, Senator, seeing as how neither the Far Traveler nor any of its crew are now subject to US authority."
"There are American citizens on this ship! They..." Kinsey began.
He didn't get far before Weir interrupted, "And under ICS law, their citizenship in the Interstellar Confederation of Sentients takes precedence, sir. In the same way that being a Floridian is trumped by your US citizenship." She gave Kinsey a direct stare.
Kinsey didn't so much blink at her response. He just moves on to his next talking point. "You cannot recruit new crew members without the permission of the Unites States government."
Giles spoke up at this. "And here I was under the impression that the First Amendment to the US Constitution guaranteed that individuals had the right to take whatever job they wanted, as long as the job wasn't inherently criminal in nature."
The Senator fumed. "Bob," the woman sitting next to the Kinsey put a restraining hand on Kinsey's arm. "Take a breath, you'll rupture something." Senator Olympia Snowe waited until the overwrought Kinsey had sat back down before turning to address Weir.
"Commander, you must understand how this looks," Snowe began. "You're recruiting US citizens to leave the country and work on an alien spaceship and you didn't bother to see if that would bother anyone in the US government."
"Once again, Senator, you're under the mistaken perception that we are answerable to you." Weir took a deep breath, closing her eyes for a moment. "We gave every government on earth notice that we would be recruiting a new crew. Most of the people we've recruited aren't even American."
"The majority of our new recruits are, in fact, from Sub-Saharan Africa. Namibia alone has given us nearly eighty new crew-members." Rupert Giles interjected.
"Yes," Kinsey said, seemingly calmer. "We've heard rumblings of your involvement with that area. What exactly are you doing down there. You've practically taken over that country."
"Not at all, Senator. The sitting government there is still in charge" Weir said, "We're merely investing in Namibia's infrastructure. We've improved roads, and are building desalinization plants to supply fresh water. Our future plans involve hospitals and schools that will provide basic education, pollution clean-up, and other improvements."
Giles took up the narrative. "And, of course, we are revitalizing the soil, which will aid in their agricultural production. In addition to all other benefits, like a lowering of infant mortality, we'll be addressing the country's unemployment problem by doing all this, as we will train and employ locals to work at the new facilities."
"Why Namibia," asked Daniel, his first question during the enter conference. He was here as a representative of the Stargate program, and thus wasn't technically supposed to talk at all, but it seemed an obvious question.
Rupert Giles nodded. "Excellent question, Doctor Jackson." Giles coughed into a fist, clearing his through before continuing. "We announced that in order to uplift planet earth to a point where it could defend itself against alien invaders, we'd be raising the general standard of living for the entire planet as a sort of side effect. Namibia ranks as one of the ten poorest countries on the planet, with no resources to speak of. We are using Namibia as a test bed for our plans."
"When we approached the various leaders of those nations," he continued, "it was President Nujoma who accepted our offer without any sort of demand. The leaders of the other nations all set conditions. General Kabila of the Democratic Republic of Congo, for example, told us he'd agree to let us use his nation as a test base on the condition we supply him with nuclear missiles."
Kinsey spluttered at this. Aurora Snowe, on the other hand, merely asked, "And what did you tell him?"
With a small chuckle, Weir replied, "We told him no, of course."
Senator Snowe nodded, "Well, that's good." She took a deep breath. "Is there anything else you're pursuing we should be aware of? Any other plans that might step on somone's toes?"
Weir gave her a sharp look. "Of course we have plans, Senator. Our task will take generations to accomplish and will require the rebuilding of Earth's infrastructure. But we are not going to bother coming to the US government, hat in hand, asking for permission, every time we begin a new initiative."
"No, of course not." Snowe conceded.
After a tense moment, Weir continued. "I will tell you one thing, Senator. For our next big operation, we are sending the Unfurled Banner to several nearby stars to see what's there."
"And the Unfurled Banner is..."
"Its one of the Far Traveler's escort vessels. If you think of the Far Traveler as an aircraft carrier, the Unfurled Banner would be a destroyer. It is part of the Traveler's standard complement." Weir turned to Kinsey. "I believe you saw it sitting in the landing bay during your first visit, Senator Kinsey."
Giles took over the narrative. "Once we can fully crew it, we'll be sending the Unfurled Banner on a survey mission to Proxima Centauri, Procyon, 40 Eridani, Epsilon Eridani, Barnard's Star... the usual locations, if you're a fan of science fiction."
"We're planning to invite some representatives of Terran governments to ride along as observers." Weir interjected. She took a deep breath before continuing. "We're also going to be dropping a ColonyFac on the Moon and Mars, but that won't be for a couple of years, that will eventually lead to permanent habitation of both bodies."
"But you can't..." Kinsey started, only to be silenced by Snowe's hand on his arm.
"My colleague was no doubt about to point out that such colonied are prohibited by he Internatiaonal Moon Treaty, but you aren't signatories to the Moon Treaty." Snowe said, a blank look on her face.
"Correct," Giles said.
"So the Moon and Mars will be under your authority," Snowe said.
"They will be sovereign entities, ruling themselves, but withing the overall authority of the Interstellar Confederacy of Sentients, yes." Giles replied. "Which, admittedly, is currently just the crew of this starship. We hope to formally found the ICS in the years to come. Earth, of course, will be invited to be a founding member."
"You're going to end up in control of the entire solar system." Kinsey finally said.
"Senator," Weir said, staring right into the man's eyes. "This is not meant as a threat. Truly. But realistically, we already are in control of the entire solar system. Which is why we hope the nations of the earth will work with us to help make a better world."
In reply, Kinsey just stared at the woman, his mouth agape.
xxxXXxxx
Xander stood on the barren plain, looking up at the Earth as it hung like a jewel in the sky. He had to force himself to look back down at everything that was going on around him. The Moon was, as astronaut Buzz Aldrin had said, a "magnificent desolation.
"The worker drones are almost finished," Buffy said over coms. Her voice carried not only the faint distortion from being broadcast, but the slight accent her physical transformation had given her. The shield dome will be in place in perhaps two minutes.
All around Xander, the worker robots were putting shield dome generators in place around the perimeter of the Apollo 11 landing site. Once in place the force field would protect the site from any outside force, be it a meteor strike or nuclear missile strike. He glanced at the statue. Two men in bulky, primitive space suits, planting a flag. The plinth of the statue now sported the relocated plaque with Richard Nixon's famous quote on it, buffed and shines so it would be easily readable to any tourist visiting the site in the future.
Around the moon, similar shield domes and statues were being planted at the landing sites of Apollo 12, through 17, as well as the boulder upon which Charlie Duke left a photo of his wife and children, the spot where Gene Cernan wrote his daughter Theresa's initials in the moon dust, and the landing spots of Surveyor 3, Luna 3, the Vikram probe, and all other unmanned probes sent to Earth's closes neighbor. Xander thought of them as parks, of course. The various rovers and landers on mars would get similar treatment, of course.
It made him proud to be human. And it was the least they could do to remember the people who made it possible.
XxxxxxX
Author's Note: Buffy the Vampire Slayer is the property of Warner Brothers in conjunction with Mutant Enemy Productions. Stargate SG-1 is the property of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer in conjunction with Double-Secret Productions, the Gekko Film Group, Sony Pictures Television, and the Showtime Network.
While presented as being created by a poorly disguised fictional version of J. Michael Straczynski, the universe of Far Traveler, the characters, alien species, ships, worlds and creatures found in that universe are wholly the creation of the author as part of his Hundred Worlds series of science fiction novels; no insult is intended to Mr. Straczynski (whom the author has met and holds the greatest of respect) nor his seminal work, Babylon 5 (which remains one of the author's favorite works of television ever).
Author's Note the Second: This chapter is a bit shorter than the others. There is a major plot point coming up, and I felt it would be better for it to be in its own chapter rather than tacked on to this one.