Michael Brachman's Blog: Tales of the Vuduri, page 37

Hi-tech Low Tech

Now that Rome, Rei, MINIMCOM and Ursay had made their way to the end of the Meson tunnel, they found a giant door that they presumed held the virus weapon but no method of access. As we saw from the historical chapter on Jack Henry, he had his men break off the wheel lock so that nobody could ever get in. Here we see an example of simplicity winning the day:

     Rei reassembled the flashlight and turned the beam which was getting dimmer, on the center of the door. A bent cylinder, machined, stuck out from the front.
     “There is a pressure lock here,” Rei said. “Jack Henry’s men must have smashed it and removed the wheel so nobody could get in.” He ran his hands along the door, up and down, checking to see if there was another way to open it.
     “We best not blast it,” Rei said. He turned to the livetar. “How about whipping up another batch of VIRUS units? We can have them dissolve the door.”
     “I have a better idea,” the livetar said. With a whoosh and a pop, he disappeared. Instantly, they were plunged into the semi-darkness, illuminated only by the dim beam of Rei’s flashlight.
     “Where’d he go?” Rei asked. “What did he mean by that?”
     A grinding noise came from the door. Rei looked down and aimed the faint light toward the center cylinder. He could see the stub of the screw turning. They stepped back. The vacuum seal was broken accompanied by a hissing sound. Air rushed into the previously evacuated chamber as it equilibrated to atmospheric pressure. With a groaning noise, the huge metal door swung open. MINIMCOM’s livetar was on the other side, his shoulder lights illuminating the room.
     “Was that not easier?” the livetar asked.
     Rei laughed. “Yep.”
     The three humans entered the room which was maybe ten by ten with a high semi-circular ceiling. Standing in the middle of the room was a seven-foot tall concrete mini-bunker with a door and a window. Rei rushed up to the window and peered in. He shined his weak flashlight to illuminate the interior.
     “It’s there!” he shouted, “Look!” Ursay and Rome raced over and peered in as well. Sitting on the floor, surrounded by concrete stanchions, laid a dull metal vessel identical to the one that Ursay was carrying. Its utter simplicity belied its utterly lethal nature.
     Rei turned to Rome. “What do you think we should do with it?”

So MINIMCOM came up with a simple solution to get into the room. Now what do they do? As Ursay later noted, one wrong move and it is curtains for mankind. They need something equally as clever.

Atomic Batteries to power

Everybody remembers the Adam West version of Batman where he had a really cool (for the 60s) Batmobile. As Batman and Robin were getting ready to leave the Batcave, they'd go through the checklist. Robin would call out "Atomic batteries to power. Turbines to speed," and Batman would say "Roger. Ready to move out" and off they'd go. They seemed oblivious to the fact that they were tooling around the city at high speed sitting on an atomic bomb.

Well, in the novel The Ark Lords, I really did need atomic batteries to power the subbasement of the Tevatron, the flashlights and the walkie-talkies that were sitting there for 800 years. Here is Rei stumbling across them:

     “Wow,” Rei said. “He died here and yet he is still helping us, eight centuries later.” Rei straightened up and pointed to the sealed end of the corridor. “That’s what he was defending. That’s where the virus is stored. He knew the Ark Lords couldn’t just blow him up. With his back against that door, he had all the advantage. Come on.”
     Rome stood up and the group gathered around the huge bulkhead blocking off the end of the hallway. A shiny object, lying on the floor, caught Rei’s attention. He bent over and picked it up. It was a flashlight. There was zero chance it would still be working after eight centuries but Rei tried the switch anyway. A yellowish glow emitted from the front.
     “What the hell?” Rei said. He twisted the barrel and opened the sealed cap. A battery slid out into his hand. The light from MINIMCOM’s shoulders was enough to allow Rei to read the label.
     “Thorium?” he said. “Atomic batteries? These guys thought of everything.”
     Rei reassembled the flashlight and turned the beam which was getting dimmer, on the center of the door. A bent cylinder, machined, stuck out from the front.

So they really did have atomic batteries. Pretty neat, huh?

Genetic Time Travel

After Rome got her gun, she and Rei continued down the Meson tunnel deep within the Tevatron, following the signs of battle. At last they came to the concrete barriers that Jack Henry had set up to prevent the Erklirte from getting a straight shot. They noted the bullet holes in the concrete baffles.

Here is what they found:

     “We’re getting close,” Rei said. “It looks like this is where they had their big battle.”
     MINIMCOM strode around the blocks and called out to them. They hurried through the maze to see where the livetar was pointing. There were two large stains on the ground, covered in dust. Rome cocked her head and stared at the closer one. She sank to her knees and gently wiped the dust away. There, in the center of the black stain, was a circle scratched out with the initials JH in the middle. A single stroke cut all the way through it.
     Rome touched it in a loving way then put her fingers to her lips. She looked up at Rei. “This is where Hanry Ta Jihn died,” she said. “I can feel it in my heart. This was the beginning of the end of the Erklirte.”
     “The black stain is dried blood,” MINIMCOM said, taking a sample with his fingertips.

We have always suspected that Rome had extraordinary psychic powers but it was this incident confirms it. Just by touching the 600-year-old blood stain, her mind traveled back into the past and contacted her ancestor. In fact, all of the historical records that were portrayed in The Ark Lords were courtesy of Rome's genetic time travel. She speculated that perhaps time was like a river and that under some circumstances, your mind can travel up or down the river when freed of the body. Kind of like Quantum Leap but without occupying a body in the past. I guess she knew what she was talking about.

Tales of the Vuduri: Year Four

Well, I thought I was getting good at this. Turns out, compiling Year Four of the Tales of the Vuduri series took a lot longer than I would have guessed. Plus I thought I had a really good methodology to blaze through the months. But here it is, the day after Valentine's Day and TOTV:Y4 is just now going on sale. Like the previous three years, you've missed any of these posts over the past year, it would be an easy way to catch up. I have published it on Amazon. You can find it if you click here. This is what the splash page looks like:


Here are the buy links for the e-book:
Amazon ($1.99):
Barnes and Noble ($0.99)
iTunes Store (free!)
Kobo (free!)
Smashwords (free!)

The paperback will be available on CreateSpace in about a week and on Amazon and B&N about a week after that.

As with the previous books, I'd prefer to "sell" the e-book for free but Amazon and B&N just don't allow it so I charge the minimum permitted. If you think about it, selling a book for free is kind of an oxymoron. I give these books away in the hopes that readers will be sufficiently intrigued to investigate Rome's Revolution or The Milk Run and actually buy a copy.

As far as the paperback, I haven't given Bruce the back page blurb and "Critical praise for The Vuduri Companion" yet. He needs that to finish the back cover so I can order a proof copy. Once that is approved, it will go on sale, probably within the next two weeks. I have to sell that thing for $17.99 because it just too thick to charge any less. In any event, you should be able get a copy somehow and help yourself to a year's worth of fascinating stuff.

Rome gets a gun

Yesterday, Rome and Rei stumbled across the centuries old armory that Jack Henry and his band of rebels raided to arm themselves against the Ark Lords. However, the resistance fighters didn't exactly clean the place out. They only took what they could carry and use. There were a few items left, one of which Rome took an interest:

     “Yeah,” Rei answered, looking around. “This was an armory.” As he slowly surveyed each wall, the far wall on the right had a pegboard with a placard stating its purpose. Rei walked over to it. “Here!” he said, “that’s where they got the M4s.” Lying on the bench was a carbine. Rei picked it up just to make sure it was real. “The Darwin people must have kept these sealed perfectly to have lasted the six centuries before Hanry Ta Jihn found them,” he announced.
     While Rei was studying the rifle, Rome wandered over to the left and picked up a 9mm handgun that was lying on the bench. The ammo clip was still in it. “Is this a chemical weapon too?” she asked, peering into the barrel.
     “Yikes,” Rei said. He set the carbine down and hurried over to where Rome was standing. He gently pulled the gun away from her. “Yes,” he answered. “It’s a handgun. You have to be careful though. The gunpowder might be unstable after all this time.”
     MINIMCOM reached over and took the gun from Rei. He placed it in the folds of his cape. “I will clean it and restore it for you, Rome,” he said. “Then it will be safe to handle.”
     Rome furrowed her brow and shrugged. She looked around the rest of the room. “Well at least the mystery of the Vorasdock is now solved,” she said. “Hanry Ta Jihn got here first, armed himself with weapons that the Erklirte would never have expected or prepared for. They could not have known what they were in for.”
     “Yes,” Rei said studying the rest of the room. “They had flashlights, radios, rations, the works. But don’t forget, the Ark Lords had powerful weapons of their own. I say we keep on going.”
     No one disagreed. The three humans and the one livetar left the chamber and continued down the corridor. Ahead of them was a short maze of huge, pentagonal concrete blocks, seven feet high. Each block was shaped like a baseball home plate. Many of the blocks had scorch marks. There were numerous bullet holes all around.

Unlike Rome, I knew where the story was headed. I needed for her to have an old-fashioned handgun right at the climax. This is where she picked it up. However, MINIMCOM hid it within his cloak and Rome forgot about it until she really needed it. All part of the fun.

Where did they get them?

Yesterday, we saw that Rome and Rei used the weaponized VIRUS units to dig a sloping tunnel down to the basement of the Tevatron. At first, they didn't know which way to go but Rome's infrared vision allowed her to detect the fact that the tunnel labeled Meson exhibited signs of battle. Rei correctly assumed that Jack Henry would have set up for the final battle exactly where the Ark Lords wanted to go. As our heroes headed down the hallway, they saw something very peculiar. I'll let them tell you:

     “Look,” he said. “Rome, you’re right.” Rei pointed up at one of the wire carriers. There were slashes through it that looked like they were burned. “Laser pulse rifle burns.”
     “Why would they fire their rifles up there?” Ursay asked.
     Rei looked at the opposite wall then back at the burns. “Men with lances, knives, crossbows, anything could have hidden among all this clutter. By now, the Ark Lords knew they were here. Let’s keep going.”
     They continued along, taking note of the increasing signs of battle. More holes, more burn marks. “Bullet holes,” Rei said. “So now the battle really took hold. The only thing I still don’t understand is where they got the guns.”
     “Perhaps here,” MINIMCOM said. Rei glanced up and saw MINIMCOM standing at the top of a short stand of steps. The steps were pressed up against a large, white propane tank mounted on stilts. MINIMCOM reached forward and turned the sealing ring inserted in the center of the door that was bolted onto the tank. Rei started to warn MINIMCOM but before he could get the words out, MINIMCOM already had the door open. The livetar swung the door all the way to the side and stepped inside the cylindrical room. Rei, Rome and Ursay walked up the steps and joined MINIMCOM in the chamber. The inside of the tank had a false floor and surprisingly, a very dim light emitted from panels in the ceiling. MINIMCOM twisted his cape behind him then borrowed OMCOM’s trick and his shoulders lit up, illuminating the chamber completely.
     “Oh!” Rome exclaimed. “This looks like the back room in Edgar’s storage bin.”
     “Yeah,” Rei answered, looking around. “This was an armory.”

Well at least the mystery of the Vorasdock was now solved. Jack Henry and the rebels used the Ark Lords' own weapons against them. Tomorrow, Rome picks up a souvenir that plays a critical role in the denouement.

The Deadly Termites

I had introduced the concept of weaponized VIRUS units near the end of Rome's Revolution as a tool Rome and Rei could use to destroy MASAL and detonate Kilauea. But they were too good of an idea to just drop so that is why I brought them along on this trip in The Ark Lords. They are actually very well-behaved and only do what Rome or Rei commands them to do. They needed to dig down under the surface with surgical precision, not an explosive force such as MINIMCOM's roadgrader cannon.

     It was as strange conversation. The tiny VIRUS queens crawling from Rei’s finger over and around the ersatz vessel. “Remember,” Rei instructed them. “I only want you to excavate a way for us to get underground. There was a large building here. Once you enter the underground complex, I want everybody to shut down. If, by some chance, you see something that looks like this metal object along the way, don’t touch it. Alert us at once. Understand?”
     The VIRUS queens confirmed their orders so Rei, Rome and Ursay exited MINIMCOM and circled around the invisible starship, stopping at the base of the hill. They didn’t bother with their invisibility cloaks. Rei reached into his pocket and pulled out a brown leather-like pouch. He shielded his eyes with his free palm and stepped to his left under he was satisfied that he was directly in line with the marker mounted on the top of the hill. He undid the drawstring and dumped the pouch of super VIRUS units on the ground. Immediately, the dirt started churning. In another life, what he saw would have filled him with dread. In this life, Rei knew the super VIRUS units were obedient and would be careful. They dug a wide, gentle ramp down 40 feet under the ground until they punctured the main complex area.
     “What do you see?” Rei asked the ultimate queen.
     “We have reached a large corridor,” she replied. “There are many rooms. Do you want us to continue?”
     “No,” Rei answered mentally. “That’s great. Thank you. Go ahead and shut down.”
     “Acknowledged,” replied the queen and then the signal went dead.
     Rei and Rome followed the ramp down with Ursay just behind them carrying the replica of the vessel under his arm. The ground was littered with the tiny corpses of the now-inactive VIRUS units. It was best not to think about it.

Occam's Razor says dig here

As an author, you have to make informed decisions on when to draw the plot out or when to take shortcuts to get to the next piece of the action. Surely, I could have placed the Darwin Virus Strain 5 canister anywhere in the world but then why would Rome, Rei and Ursay be wasting their time in Batavia, Illinois during this section of The Ark Lords? I decided to just make Rei have a flash of brilliance so that we could get on with the story and not just present you with a travelogue:

     Rei walked over and picked the canister up. It was surprisingly light. Well, maybe not surprising since it was really almost just an aluminum balloon. He held it up to the light, looking at the top and bottom.
     “How are we going to find that?” Rome asked. “It’s so small and the Tevatron is so large!”
     Ursay motioned for Rei to hand it over to him which Rei did.
     Rei turned to face the front of the ship. “You have to remember Project Darwin’s goals,” he said. “They had to make it secure but not so hard to find if the people looking for it really needed it. So I’m guessing they put it somewhere under the main hall or maybe in a collection tube.”
     He stopped for a moment and looked up at the ceiling. “It was called Wilson Hall, I think,” he said. “It was built out of concrete. Too much to haul away. So when your people bulldozed it, that’s what made the hill we just walked up. And since they put up Hanry Ta Jihn’s gravestone at the top, I’m guessing he died down below. So Occam’s Razor says we start here, under this giant mound of dirt.”
     “What is Occam’s Razor?” Rome asked.
     Rei shrugged. “It means the simplest solution is probably the right solution. Why introduce complexity when you don’t need to?”
     “Well, in that case, this is as good a place as any,” Rome said. “But you still didn’t tell me how we’re going to dig down to find it.”
     A broad smile crossed Rei’s face. “We aren’t going to dig for it,” he said. “But I know some ladies who will be able to get us into the building.”

Whatever could he mean? I'll tell you. The weaponized VIRUS units. They will dig and dig until they are told to stop. They would be a lot more gentle that just blasting the rubble with MINIMCOM's roadgrader cannons.

The Stanley Cup

One of my goals in The Ark Lords was to create a replica of the Darwin Virus Strain 5 canister so that Captain Keller could shoot it and scream to Rome that she killed them all. But I had to come up with an ostensible reason why there was a replica in the first place. So I hatched a plan making the replica a training device for both the humans and the weaponized VIRUS units. It would be filled with air so that when it was punctured, you'd hear the air escaping. I wanted it to look a little like the modern day Stanley Cup. Here is how it came about:

     Rei stared out the cockpit window at the hill in front of him.
     “We have to find a way in,” he said. “I gotta figure out where they would put it.”
     “You have mentioned it before,” Ursay said, “but I do not even know what we are looking for, other than some sort of storage vessel.”
     “You’re right,” Rome said. “MINIMCOM, from the information on slab 20, could you build us a replica so we know what to look for?”
     “Of course,” MINIMCOM replied. “I will use my transporter as a molecular sequencer. Give me a moment.”
     A whistling noise and breeze issued from the cargo compartment. The three humans walked back there just in time to see a whirlwind swirling around a shiny cylinder that was assembling itself right on the floor of the cargo bay. The cylinder resembled a Dewar flask normally used to hold liquid nitrogen but with an oversized cap. After a few minutes, the tiny tornado surrounding the vessel stopped.
     “This is a life-sized replica,” MINIMCOM announced from a grille within the cargo compartment. “However, there are a few small differences. I built it out of aluminum since that was the most readily available metal in the soil,” he said. “The real thing is built out of titanium. Also, this replica is very thin so I highly pressurized it with air to give it the necessary rigidity. The real thing would have thicker walls. And finally, this one is completely sealed. The real canister has a removable lid although I do not imagine that is anything you are going to fool around with.”

I was looking at this image from a web site called Verge Campus and it shows you which version of the Stanley Cup I had in mind. I actually didn't realize there were so many versions but I guess when you think about it, when it first started, they weren't thinking 150 years into the future when the first cup was handed it out in 1863.

The End of Jack Henry

Death scenes are always dramatic but you can't overuse them. We knew from the historical records that Jack Henry died during the Battle of Chicago. Yesterday, we saw him sacrifice himself to take out the final soldier. He was mortally wounded but the rebels had saved the day. Here is the sad scene of Jack passing on to the next world:

     “Jack!” Red shouted. He ran over to his beloved leader and stooped down. He lifted up Jack’s head and rested it on his thigh.
     “Did we get ‘em?” Jack whispered.
     “Yeah, Jack,” Red replied. “They’re all dead.”
     Jack grunted. “You have to…” His voice was so quiet, Red couldn’t hear him. He bent over so his ear was next to Jack’s mouth.
     “What is it, Jack?” Jack Henry spoke but his breath barely stirred the air. Red had to strain to hear his words.
     “Use their cannon and level this place. Then go back home and get the rest of them. No matter how many men it takes. Bury them and their vehicles and their spaceship and their weapons. Bury every place they’ve ever been on the Earth. They may have other disease weapons stashed somewhere else.”
     Jack coughed and blood spurted out of his mouth but he went on. “Someday, there may be others, more spacemen. Make it so they can’t find a trace, not a hint, that their race was ever here. Swear to me.”
     “I vow it, Jack,” Red said. A tear formed in the corner of his eye. “Even if it takes us a thousand years, we’ll erase everything. It’ll be like they never existed.”
     A wan smile formed on Jack Henry’s face. Some men would have died conflicted, knowing the war was not over, but not Jack Henry. He knew he had done all that one man could do. This was the turning point. The Resistance had achieved the edge they needed. Now it would be up to others more capable than him. After all, he was just a young man and he missed his parents. His whole frame sagged as his spirit left his body to rise up and join his mother and father in peace.

Of course, if you've read The Milk Run, you know this is not truly the end of Jack Henry, only his body. Aason Bierak meets him up in Heaven and Jack is very helpful in facilitating Aason's rescue of Lupe. We also have the story of Lacy Henry, the wife that Jack left behind. You can read her story in The Vuduri Companion. It's too bad that he had to die but that's what martyrs do.