TEMPUS TWO CHAPTER ELEVEN
I think we are at the dawn of a new era in commercial space exploration.
Elon Musk
“Cristian, we will have to discuss that ship you blew up on the moon,” said Lorelei.
“Not much to discuss. It was the bad guys, I blew them up. We already knew they would come. I am sure they were watching the Reticulan homeworld and the Gray homeworld. I am also sure they will not be happy about us joining together. The scorcher will give them pause for a while.”
“Every second we are out here, lives will be in danger. I am sending Mary with her grandparents to the cave with a mechanical. We should send any other non-essentials as well to be safe.”
“It might be a smart thing to do, Lorelei. I have no problem sending Mary away. Tiffany can choose for herself. What we should be concentrating on is outfitting those ships as fast as we can.”
I have an idea that may make things faster. We have over 700 crew and a hundred mind-reading Gray in stock, all with some space experience. I think we use them and the mechanicals and the ship’s AI to vet and clear the massive numbers of people we need to outfit those ships, and then we start transporting them to the ships, so they can be trained and help with the refit.”
“Gracie to the ready room,” said Captain Wolf.
“Cristian, that plan just might work. If we can figure out how to get that many people to us.” Gracie said.
“We can go to them. We can fly the ship to a few different countries. If they want in, they will make it to one of the recruitment drives.”
“What countries do we go to, Cristian?”
“Let’s discuss it with Our Press Girl.”
“Gracie, we are about to do a massive recruitment drive.”
“We need a press release and recruitment times and dates we are going to recruit over 20000 people in a few days and start getting them to Thu-ban to help with the refit.”
“Got it boss, you want hard-hitting Starship Troopers style ads. What cities? And how far apart, starting when?”
“We start as soon as the ads go out.”
“Cities to be discussed. Maybe Toronto, Vancouver, New York, L.A. Denver, Paris, Moscow, New Delhi, Beijing, São Paulo, Lima, Antarctica, Sydney, Tokyo, Johannesburg, Morocco.”
“Why Antarctica?”
“High percentage of scientists.”
“Tell them to send digital CVs or Resumes with pictures.”
“We can have them do an aptitude test that may help show their strengths. Watcher can set that up. I was thinking we should record their reaction to the tests. This will be a massive undertaking.”
“We want to be done as soon as we can.”
“The entire crew will be involved in sorting out the chaff from the wheat.”
“We need military leaders to become Captains, We need soldiers for ground troops, we need fighter pilots, engineers, cooks, farmers, Astronomers, Information technology, Welder’s mechanics. Their primary skill set isn’t important, though. We can train them. Use our crew to film sequences, footage from flybys hangar bay shots, exterior ship shots, whatever you think will look good”
“Can do Boss, I will have it done by tomorrow for preview.”
“Lorelei, we should name the ships, so we can use them in the ads.”
“You need 29 names, any Ideas, Cristian ?”
“Yes, we name them for famous Sci-fi Writers, TV and movie guys Lorelei.”
“What like the Spielberg, Clarke, Wedon, Roddenberry, Asimov, Clarke, Sagan, O’Bannon, Silverberg, Bradbury, Hebert, Heinlein. Adams, Verne, Wells, Vonnegut, Lucas, Emmerich, Richter, Crichton, Cameron, Zemeckis, Verhoeven, Lynch, Wachowski. Stanton, Carpenter thats all I can do off the top of my head.”
“Marry me.”
“Been there done that, got the baby and another on the way.”
“Say what now” Cristian kissed the woman he loved and whispered. “After this one only ten more to go.”
“I am game.”
“Watcher, you didn’t say anything?”
“I thought you would like to hear it from your wife.”
“Actually yes I did, thanks.”
“The doc just let me know today, Cristian.”
The world leaders were warned about the recruit drive. After the moon incident, no one had a problem. The ads were done and approved and sent out to all the world.
A website and domain were set up with instructions. The ads were repeated on the web. The site generated hundreds of thousands of email. Their responses were catalogued by the ship’s AI. Steve and Andy were complaining that the processors were working too hard and too hot. It was discussed with the Gray on board, who upgraded the capability of the core. The core was tripled in processor power and new improved cooling units were added. The question did come up as to why this wasn’t done in the first place. The Gray had not guessed that Cristian would need that much processing power.
Cristian added a quote he read once, as he often did:
I don’t know where are going with technology, but sure as hell when we get there we will not have enough ram.
Of course in this case it meant nothing since the ram was actually part of the storage array. Ram didn’t really exist any more. Except in the old technology left in the cave. Technology that was less than ten months old.
Among the millions of applicants for the various jobs online. More than another half-million showed up in person at the various cities.
A second tour of the cities were necessary to do the in-person vetting. When they were done they had all the people they needed and even managed to pilfer 30 experienced Military Captains, Some Airforce but a good amount were Navy. They managed to find 2500 pilots to fly the fighters, most with combat experience.
This all helped because the Captains were now responsible for choosing their crew from the applicants that managed to get through the watchful eye of the Mechanicals and ship’s AI.
The Gray technicians needed to get back to their planet to help with the refit. The 29 new captains were assigned to their ships. They were allowed to pick a ship’s name from a hat. They were on the first freighter to Thu-ban. So they could see their ships and decide how to deal with the logistics. They met the Reticulan Officers and were assigned the jobs they would be taking.
Séadhna and the Magellan would start hauling people equipment, food and resources needed for the refit. The school was established near the shipyards with its own AI. The AI that would train the crew for the ships.
An airbase was built near the school to train the pilots for the Gryphon.
When the ships were finished and equipped, the crews were ready.
The ships were loaded, and the next voyage was to Earth for stocking of guns ammo, food and supplies.
The Alliance now had a fleet of Thirty ships to combat an enemy of untold numbers, with one ship for resupply and transport.
Soon the Alliance would start fanning out to find the enemy or where the enemy had been. The ships were loaded with comm drones that would be launched at the first sign of trouble. A search grid was established. Sector by sector, the known Galaxy was mapped out.
Immense amounts of data were sent to either Thu-Ban or Earth about the star systems and everything that was found.
If the yet-unnamed enemy was found, the order was to bug out and come back with reinforcements. The ships were taking thirty-day trips before returning to resupply and report.
Many new worlds were mapped, and the inhabited worlds were recorded and a rough evaluation of their place on a scale. A scale that showed how far they had advanced in comparison to Earth, before space flight capabilities.
It was decided not to interfere with species who had not made it to space. There was no prime directive like in the Roddenberry stories. If a species was under attack, they would help. If they were not ready for space, and they were safe, they were left alone.
Hundreds of inhabited worlds were found. None so far were found destroyed. Thousands of stellar events were recorded, and the info sent back and collected.
Just that information alone made all the trips worth the effort. More was learned about the Galaxy on those trips than man had been able to learn looking at images from telescopes for hundreds of years.