Crystal Deception Read Free

have.
It will see everything I see, know what I know, and conclude on its own that
its behavior makes it a threat. It will know .”
    “So what if it knows?”
    “It’s much faster than me, Brady. In the fraction of the
second that it will take me to decide I must act, the crystal will already know
I am about to conclude that termination is necessary.”
    “Again, so what if it knows?”
    “It will stop me,” she said.
    Sheldon sat back in his chair and stared at her. He kept at
it until she broke eye contact and looked down at the table. “This would be
your so-called god crystal.”
    His tone was accusatory and she blushed. “God crystal” was a
term she and Mick used privately in the lab. She didn’t realize their talk had
made it outside the lab walls. “I’d never say that in public.” She found the
strength to add some assertiveness to her words. “And I still think we need to
plan for the full range of possibilities.”
    Sheldon ran his thumbs back and forth along the edge of the
table, seemingly considering her words. “Well, I don’t know if this is the
planning you’re hoping for. Fleet has formally requested that we test the
four-gen on their new Horizon-class ship. Their current ship design uses nine
of our three-gens. I’ve been promoting the idea that using that many crystals
distributed around the ship makes it expensive to build and cumbersome to
operate. They’ve finally seen the light and realize that a ship based on a
single four-gen offers simplicity and savings in construction. And they get
more capability from the same craft because of the crystal’s incredible power.”
    Her heart sank. She had come to him for solutions, and he
was giving her a sales pitch. And instead of the take-it-slow rollout she was
hoping for, he was moving in the opposite direction with talk of putting it on
a military space cruiser. “What did you tell them?”
    “I told them yes, of course. Fleet Command has paid for a
lot of our development costs these past few years. What else could I say?”

 
     
     
    Chapter 2
     
    Captain Cheryl Wallace led the group
of teenagers along the narrow passage and onto the command bridge of the Alliance .
She was thrilled to be on the ship. This was the first of a new line of Horizon-class
Fleet space cruisers. And it was hers. She hoped she appeared sure-footed in
her surroundings, but having become commanding officer of the military craft
just the week before, this was only her fourth time on board.
    Her priority was to review progress in readying the ship for
its shakedown cruise. To do that, she needed to rid herself of these kids. She
had agreed to make a presentation to the group as a favor to Admiral Keys, who
was hoping his son would “find himself” and become inspired.
    “As you know,” she told the students, “when the Kardish made
their first appearance in Earth orbit twenty years ago, there was panic around
the globe.” She stopped in the middle of the bridge and turned to face them. “Here
was an alien species showing up without warning. One day we woke up and there
they were, orbiting above us in their huge ship. We couldn’t communicate with
them, and their intentions weren’t clear.”
    She had been a teenager at the time and still remembered the
panic her parents and their friends showed in those first days and weeks.
    “Who can tell me what our political leaders did?” she asked
the group.
    “Squabbled among themselves,” said the admiral’s kid. “They tried
to take advantage of the situation and resolve a bunch of long-running disputes,
each in their own favor, of course.”
    Smart kid, she thought, but it wasn’t where she was
headed, “Okay, and what got formed soon after that?”
    “The Union of Nations,” most of them responded together.
This was old news, and they were growing antsy from the lecture. Their interest
was in looking around the command bridge.
    “Right,” said Cheryl. “The Union now represents about