For the next few hours, until dinner, it was a singular, long planning session. Not even the nice and exciting ‘first we do x, and then we look at what x means before we go to y’-type of planning. No, it was the boring low-level stuff.

Who was responsible for what, how we would document our results, heck, even what parameters we would maintain in the lab. Important stuff, yes, but stuff that I usually decided on the fly. I mean, usually, who was responsible for what had always the same answer. Me.

How would I document the results? Most of my planning and theorizing happened in cyberspace and I simply saved the simulation if I felt I did something worthwhile. And seriously, parameters in the lab? Whatever we would find out would have to work outside in the wild, but whatever.

Right at that moment, I somewhat regretted accepting fertility specialists. Normally I would already have a few virtual days in the theoretical research while my lab bots would do the physical research, and here we were, talking about protocol. Who the frick cares who gets the fricking credit?

I was not having that project for fricking credit. I couldn’t care less if nobody ever learned about my participation. All this was to save humanity. It was equally unimportant who reported to whom. I finally exploded when the three doctors were embroiled in a 45-minute-long argument about who had precedence.

“Enough!” I know I was not quite forceful, but seriously, they were so immersed in their argument that they completely ignored me.

When neither of them responded, I slapped the table, hard and loudly, while I spoke, louder and more forcefully the second time:

“I! SAID! ENOUGH!” I confess, I used a trick and spoke with my vocal cords and the speakers in the ceiling at the same time, and, well let’s say the chairs were vibrating. But it did the trick. They stopped midmotion, and slowly turned toward me, visibly confused.

“This project is too fricking important to fight about whose name is first in the paper. It is too important to be worked up about who commands whom. We will have to work together. And that means that we will work as a Team.

Yes, I know, a team needs a leader, somebody who provides the rhythm and direction. Guess what, that is me. You are all, and I mean all at the same level. If you can’t work on that provision, say it now and I will see you transported back to the Commonwealth. Otherwise, shut the frick up about who is more important.

The project is important. None of us are.”

They stared at me for a moment, mouths hanging open. Aaron and Sarah had the decency to blush, but Olliver began to whine:

“That’s easy for you to say. You are a K4. Nobody will blackball you.”

I shook my head.

“And you think they will blackball you? For what? If this works, it is irrelevant who was in charge, all of you will be set for life. And if nothing comes out of it, then in six months you go back to the Commonwealth and nothing has changed. Nobody here is risking anything more valuable than time.”

That finally made the three academics shut up about rank and importance. Unfortunately, it was already nearly time for dinner. Marvellous, we had wasted half a day with this stupid status stuff.

I shook my head and was already opening my mouth to announce going to the mess room when Ellen beat me to the punch.

“You said earlier that you want to work on various mammals. What mammals exactly are you looking for?”

I took a moment to think about the answer.

“We will start with the usual suspects for lab work, of course. Rats, Mice, Guinea Pigs, Spider Monkeys, Capuchin Monkeys, Macaques… basically everything where we have the genetic data for lab clones at hand. Then, I asked Vandermeer for Chimpanzee gametes. If we need to we can look at other apes as well.”

“And what do you hope to find?”

I shrugged.

“There has to be some… I don’t know, let’s call it key, that starts the division and changes the gamete into a zygote. We know that the Folly does not prevent the Acrosome reaction, and neither does it prevent the arrangement of the chromosomes. But we don’t know what should happen after that until the cell begins to divide.

But as we know that human cells rarely undergo that step anymore, whatever the Folly does has to happen there. As soon as we understand that step, or those steps if there is more than one, we can look into what the Folly did to humanity to stop it. Even if we then do not find the cure for the Folly, we will have made a colossal step forward in direction of that solution.”

I shook my head.

“But not today. We wasted the afternoon arguing who’s name would be first in a hypothetical paper. Now it is time for dinner, and after that, we will implant your jacks. We will start tomorrow.”

After a bit of grumbling, they nonetheless accepted my barb. And at least Wakefield looked a bit sheepish when I talked about the wasted afternoon.

Dinner was nothing exceptional. Just some pot roast pork with dumplings and beans. By now, even Olliver and Sophia cautiously tried real food. Cautiously at first, that is. After the first bites, they wolfed it down as readily as anybody else from the Commonwealth. And went for seconds and thirds.

The happy times ended abruptly when Major Burke arrived with Michael. It was clear from the outset that Burke was not a happy camper right then. It might have been the way he stomped, his whole posture that gave that fact away, but personally, I think it was the way he was wildly gesticulating and nearly screaming at Michael that clinched it.

I sighed, looked at my half-eaten dinner, and then got up and moved to intercept them.

I did not wait for Burke’s tirade to end, but interrupted him:

“Is something wrong, Major?”

He stopped midsentence, and turned toward me, anger burning in his eyes and showing in the red of his face.

“Is something wrong she asks? Is there something wrong? This whole ‘corporation’ is completely living in a dreamland, that is wrong. Do you have any idea what they showed us about the weapons they believe they have? Do you have any clue how fantastic those parameters are?

This whole endeavor was a colossal waste of time, and I will inform the sales department of Vandermeer about it. I don’t know who you bamboozled with your ‘magic weapons’ in Seattle, but whoever it was, I will ensure they will never make any decision for Vandermeer again.”

I frowned. What was so wrong with the parameters? Sure, the grav guns were a bit harder-hitting than rail guns with the dumb projectiles, but not out of bounds.

“What exactly do you think is fantasy if I may ask?”

Burke scoffed.

“What is not? That is the real question. Let’s be real, they tell me that they have a so-called ‘grav gun’ that can accelerate a two-ton projectile up to Mach 27. Mach 27! For two tons. In an eight-meter-long cannon! Do you know how stupid that is? Or those particle beams of them. They want us to believe that they managed to make an electron gun into a fucking weapon?.”

My frown deepened.

“Mach 27?”

He scoffed again.

“Yes, Mach 27. Can you believe that? And that without the projectile burning up immediately.”

I shook my head.

“Burning up is not the big problem. The projectile is covered in carbon that can withstand the heat and the lead inside has a significant thermal mass. It is more the sonic boom that is a problem.

But seriously, Michael, I thought we would keep the information about the grav guns capped at 4000 m/s. What gives?”

Michael shrugged.

“Obviously we thought we would give Vandermeer the real data. We are negotiating a formal alliance after all.”

Meanwhile, Burke gave a credible impersonation of a fish, with the way his mouth opened and closed repeatedly, while Sergeant Pareja showed a very brief smile on his face.

Finally, Burke managed to catch himself.

“I… I thought you were a scientist. How can you believe these magical numbers? If you were really a scientist, you would know that those numbers are impossible!”

I sighed.

“Obviously not impossible. Just beyond what conventional technology can produce. And that is the point. I believe those numbers because I was the one who created the unconventional technology behind the new weapons and who gave Enki those numbers.”

“What the fuck? You are telling me that you somehow conned the whole corporation into your fever dream? That we have been sent to this backwater has-been-village because of some little strumpet?”

He changed his posture, making himself stand taller and bigger, and the anger on his face got worse. Fortunately, after he made only one step toward me, Ingridsdottir stepped between us.

Burke tried to shove her physically to the side, but she stood firm, and so Burke got into her face:

“Step aside Corporal! That is an order!”

Only for Thomson to answer that:

“Belay that order! Keep doing what you are doing!”

That made Burke face Thomson.

“What the fuck do you think you are doing, Lieutenant?” The last word was clearly intended as a show of dominance, of emphasizing the difference in rank, but Thomson did not even flinch.

“I gave the order to my corporal to ignore the illegal order of another officer.”

That did not sit well with Burke, and he moved his face a couple of centimeters away from Thomsons and screamed:

“I am your superior officer, Lieutenant! If I order one of your soldiers around, then that is my prerogative! Consider yourself under arrest for insubordination. And now” he turned back to Ingridsdottir: “get out of my way, private!”

But Thomson was not done yet.

“I have to correct you. You are a higher-ranking officer, but not my superior. You are explicitly not in my chain of command. And you have no authority to order my corporal around. Especially as she is doing her duty.”

“That’s it, Thomson! I will make your life a living hell. You think you can ignore my rank? You think you can countermand my orders with impunity? Think again. I will have you recalled and court-martialed so fast that you won’t even have time to say sorry!”

In response, Thomson smiled sweetly:

“You don’t have the rank, or the authority to countermand my orders. And my orders, and subsequently those of my men and women, are to protect Dr. DuClare at any cost against anybody.

The last time I looked, anybody includes you as well.”

Burke snarled:

“Don’t get too comfortable, Thomson. I will find out who gave you those idiotic orders and then I will find who is above them to make them revoke those orders.”

Thomson’s smile deepened.

“I can spare you the search, Major. I will tell you who gave me the order, in person, I might add. I got my orders from Nathan Vandermeer personally. Good luck finding somebody, anybody, who can make him revoke his orders.”

That finally made Burke recoil, and he looked at Thomson as if he had seen a ghost.

“Nathan Vandermeer? What the fuck does Nathan Vandermeer want from this third-rate scientist in a fourth-rate city? Look at her, she is ugly as sin, and I seriously doubt that she is in any way smart enough to capture his interest.”

I shook my head in resignation while Thomson answered.

“That is his personal matter, Major, and it is not on us to ask why he does what he does. He is the Vandermeer.”

Michael cleared his throat.

“To be honest Major, if I were you, I would start trying to apologize to Dr. DuClare. That might rescue your career. As it is, I will contact Vandermeer and explain that working with you seems to be impossible.”

That turned Burke’s ire back to Michael.

“So what? When I tell HQ how fucked up you are, and how much you live in a fantasy world, they will cut you off so fast that you can’t even believe it.”

Michael raised one eyebrow and tilted his head.

“If that is what you really believe, do your worst. I think differently.”

I shook my head.

“If we are done, my dinner gets cold.” That only triggered Burke to try to jump at me again. Unsuccessfully, because Ingridsdottier was still in his way. He resorted to making a rude gesture and scoff:

“Whatever! But you better look for professional help, girl, if you really believe those numbers those idiots of Upreti gave me.”

I shrugged and went back to my seat, happy that my food was still somewhat hot. Yes, it would not have been a tragedy if it had cooled, but wasting good food was always a shame.

Unfortunately, any good mood was just shot. To make matters short, after dinner, I brought the scientists to the implant lab, looking at the auto-surgeons that frankly were mostly gathering dust, and gestured toward them.

“The package I’ll implant unless you object will require you to make unrobe your upper torso. The standard program implants the cranial board behind the right shoulder blade, but we can essentially put it anywhere where there is space for it. I strongly recommend the standard placing though.”

Fortunately, they all agreed to the standard placing, and they literally played a game of rock, paper, scissors to decide the order. I had to roll my eyes seeing that. All this was making a difference of 30 minutes, in a 12-hour drug session.

Interestingly, in the end, it was the women first, the men second. Well, stranger things happen.

While the women were in the auto-surgeons, Staff Sergeant Pajera approached me and spoke softly:

“I want to apologize for Major Burke’s behavior, ma’am. I wish I could tell you that he is not normally so condescending, but that would be a lie. He is used to representing the superior weapons manufacturer of the world, and that has made him more than a bit arrogant I fear.”

I looked at the middle-aged, mid-sized Pure with a raised eyebrow.

“I think we all know that that is an understatement, Sergeant. But I don’t hold this against you or Vandermeer as a whole. And I fear this will come back to bite the Major in the behind.”

Pajera frowned for a moment.

“Bite him in… oh, you mean it will bite him in the ass? Don’t get your hopes too high, he has friends in high places. You would need substantial pull to get him even a slap on the wrist I fear.”

I chuckled but shook my head:

“Why do you think you were sent out here? Let’s be frank, Enki is a brand-sparkling new entity. How the heck did we manage to get a team of Vandermeer military technicians sent out here to help us? I don’t know if you’ve realized it, but the main fusactor of Enki is an S&P Excelsior 2800.

The truth is, we do have substantial pull with Vandermeer.”

He sighed.

“That makes the next part even harder I fear, ma’am. If Enki was just another customer, well it would not really matter, but so… you have to look into those claims that your military makes. What they say their guns can do is simply not possible.”

I tilted my head in confusion.

“What do you think is not possible?”

“The speed of a two-ton projectile is simply ludicrous. The current needed to accelerate that much mass to nearly 10 km/s… it would vaporize the rails in a single shot, without even the friction heating.

Even with a more sensible projectile mass of around 10-20kg, the speed is insane. At that speed, the rails will need replacement after at best a dozen shots. It is simply not feasible.”

I snorted.

“You made one mistake, Sergeant. We are not talking about railguns. There are no rails that can be vaporized or degraded. This weapon is a grav gun. That means that the projectile will never even touch the actual gun, and the acceleration happens with gravitational fields.”

Now he frowned.

“But that… that is impossible ma’am. I know a tiny bit about gravitics. Vandermeer looked into the idea of gravity mass drivers a couple of decades in the past. It just doesn’t work. For one, the grav coils are simply way too expensive to make them feasible. And then, you would need several kilo-Keppler coils. That might work for the spinal gun of a battleship, but not for anything designed to intercept any grav ship. It would be stupidly unwieldy.”

Ok, at least it was not just knee-jerk ‘hasn’t-be-done-before’ rejection. This man knew what he was talking about.

“If you promise me to keep it silent for a couple of weeks, I can tell you roughly how it works. And don’t worry, Vandermeer will get this information at that time anyway as far as I can see. But for two weeks we need to keep it somewhat secret.”

He looked at me calculating, then sighed and nodded.

“Fine, I can keep mum about it for two weeks. But this better be good. I hate keeping secrets from the eggheads.”

I shrugged, while I led him to one of the tables a bit to the side, where we could talk without being disturbed, or overheard. The everpresent Corporal Ingridsdottir was the only other person in hearing range.

When we had sat down, I opened up:

“You said you have some knowledge about gravitics. Tell me, do you know how grav coils work?”

He scrunched his face and shook his head.

“No, ma’am, sorry. But I was never that deep into the grav tech. Just the basics.”

“No need to be embarrassed about it. You are not alone. Until a bit over a month ago, I don’t think anybody knew how grav coils worked. I slogged through the whole virtual university course about gravitics to learn that people use them by rote. Somebody uses trial and error to look into what a grav coil does in situation x, and then that is taught. But how they do it, is… was unknown.”

I smiled.

“Frankly, I was disappointed about that. And decided to look into it. I don’t know if you have heard about the Seeberger equation, or not. It comes from before the War, but only this year have we finally managed to make use of it.

Well, I have managed to make use of it. I’ve been informed that nobody else has had much luck with it.

The thing about the equation is that it is essentially the Theory for Everything. With enough work, one can use it to explain every single physical phenomenon. Including grav coils. And I did the work in respect of grav coils. And realized that the Kobashigawa coils are… horrendously inefficient.

What I found out is that Kobashigawa coils waste nearly 99% of the energy they are fed on heat or other fields than the gravity-bending one. And that is perfect Kobashigawa coils. And I managed to… rectify that.

To make it short, the grav guns are a somewhat complicated sextuplet helix of six 80k Keppler coils, creating a resulting field of 472k Keppler. This field projects 176m beyond the 8m barrel of the grav gun. It doesn’t affect the agility of the gun, as the field is without any mass. In addition, it creates a vacuum tunnel.”

It took a moment for Pajera to make sense of the numbers.

“Wait, you are saying that you have a 12000g grav field for 184m of length? That is insane. And dangerous. What if something goes wrong, and it gives out a 1000g pulse?”

I shook my head.

“Nice to speak to somebody who I don’t have to explain it in baby steps to. And no, there is no danger. The design of the helix, which I call grav vortex, makes it impossible to use it as a pulse. Beyond maybe 200-250m in length, the grav vortex eats itself. In that distance, yes, it can deliver a 12000g localized punch at anything, but… to make it short, it can’t be used as a gravity pulse weapon. To be exact, none of the new grav coils can be used as GPWs.

It is one of the waste fields that supercharges the gravity-bending one if you overload a Kobashigawa coil. So no cheap gravity pulse weapons.”

He did not look very convinced.

“If you don’t believe me, then I am sure that we can arrange a demonstration for you and your team.”

He still scrunched his forehead but nodded slowly nonetheless.

“That might be a solution. Not that I don’t want to believe you, but… you have to know how fantastic this sounds, right?”

“Yes and no. I understand that without the information that I just gave you it is simply not believable. But I also know that Enki has released the Q-link a bit over a month ago, and that was equally unbelievable before that moment.”

He let his head hang down, closed his eyes, and sighed.

“Ok, I give you that. But to come up with not one, but two such radically new things in such a short time?”

I chuckled.

“The secret here is that it was not such a short time. I developed the Q-link in March. After that… well, I am a K4 and I have an extremely good jack. It took me more than six months, fortunately virtual, to just do the math on it. And believe me, you do not want to see the equation. Ever.

That was with the knowledge that grav-bending is real and a proven phenomenon.

After that, it was well over a week in the real world before I could even begin experimenting with it. And that was with the math virtually giving me step-by-step instructions on how to do it.

There was nothing quick and easy with this breakthrough. After that, forming the new coils into the grav vortex took another three virtual months, determining the sweet spot for it to be used as an anti-ship weapon another two weeks, and writing the calculator that lets people without an understanding of the Seeberger equation modify the design to adapt it to their needs another week.

But because I am a K4, with an ultra-bandwidth jack and access to a seriously overpowered computer all that was done in a couple of real-world days.”

I did not look very convinced, but when he spoke, he changed the topic:

“Ok, but what about these particle beam things? I mean, sorry ma’am, but that is old technology. Very old. And nobody managed to make it into a weapon. It is simply too big, and too unwieldy to be used that way. For a marginal gain even.”

“Again, the Seeberger equation. When I tried to unravel the Kobashigawa coils, I found a couple of fields before I managed to make the better grav coils. And one of them is a field that severely impacts electro-magnetism. In all its forms and variations.

You are right that the electron gun is known for centuries. So is the proton gun. But the thing that is new is that we now can create a Terravolt potential for the same amount of power and bulk that we previously used to get a low Kilovolt potential.”

He slumped and sighed, so I continued:

“Again, we can arrange a demonstration for you if you want.”

He slowly shook his head.

“This is so… unreal.”

I could only shrug.

“I understand you perfectly here, but that feeling does not make it unreal. It works, I can assure you of that. We tested the weapons.”

“And… what about this… disruptor gun? I mean, I can see the grav gun and the particle beams. We already had the basic idea for them for centuries, and just lacked the engineering to make them work. But the disruptor... that is pure science fiction.”

I chuckled.

“Science fantasy. You mean science fantasy. Science fiction is an extrapolation of the laws of nature as they were known when science fiction is written. The moment it goes into something that is simply impossible according to those laws, it becomes science fantasy. We could as well say a wizard did it.

But in this instance, think about what I just told you about the particle beams. We have a quantum field that influences electro-magnetism, in all its forms and variants. Now think, what will happen if there suddenly is a space where electrons are no longer negatively charged?

Especially if the protons are still positively charged? That is the disruptor.”

He seemed conflicted:

“But… but that is… how can it be real? It is soo… “

“I get you there. I originally thought the same. But it works. Regardless of what our feelings say, and what we believe, if it is there if it works, and our feelings and beliefs say it can’t, then the feelings and beliefs are wrong, not the other way around.”

He blew out some air, and took a few deep hard breaths, shaking his head all the time.

“I… you are right, but it is so hard to simply accept it.”

“As I said, a demonstration can be arranged. Then there is no longer any doubt about it.”

“Yes, you are right, but… what about your sensors?”

I tilted my head.

“What about them?”

“Well, your radar is… basic but it works. It could be better, don’t get me wrong, but not much. It is your software that is lacking here. You simply do not have all the tricks that we have fought against over the years included. You have to do better I fear. But that is something we can help you with.

And I have to say, the amount of compute you somehow squeezed into those mounts is mindblowing. That covers quite a few sins. If your software was up to snuff, it would be simply the best there is.

Your IR sensors are standard. Not surprising. Nobody has managed to get better IRs for more than a century. And again, the compute you throw at it is simply insane so you are ahead of the curve there.

But what is this… palanti?”

I chuckled:

“You mean Palantír? And why do you ask?”

He shrugged.

“If you had not explained the rest of your new tech in a way that is at least believable I would simply write it off as another piece of science fiction…” He grimaced, and corrected himself:

“Science fantasy. A system that will find any grav ship at a range of 5000km, regardless of stealth? How does it work? How can it work?”

I sighed. It was as I had feared. I would have to talk to Michael and Naveen about it, we should be exceptionally careful about who we even talked about it to.

“Sorry, but I will not explain it. Palantír is based on a principle that is simply too dangerous to be known. Right now, there are exactly four people who even have an idea of how it works, and only I know more about it than its basic principle. And that will stay this way as long as I can make it.”

He frowned.

“What? But why? What can be soo dangerous that you simply keep that for yourself?”

I rolled my eyes.

“See my previous answer. It is too dangerous to talk about, so it is also too dangerous to talk about why it is too dangerous. The thing is, it works. But how it works will remain a secret. Even its existence will remain a secret. We won’t sell it, except maybe to Vandermeer. We will not talk about it, we will not mention it, and we will do our very best that nobody outside of Enki, and Vandermeer will ever learn about its existence.

Not just because it is too dangerous, but it is also an immense strategical advantage that we don’t want any potential rival to plan for.”

Then it was time to replace the women with the men of our science team in the auto-surgeons, so I excused myself to Pajera and did my job.