While Jacob was working on recovering the parts of Franky’s mind not destroyed by Redline Dynamics, another drone was making its way to Daniel Roberts’s home. He could have spoken to the General on the phone, but he wanted to make his offer in person.
After spending so long on Earth, Jacob found it trivial to bypass any electronic surveillance, even the top-of-the-line military-grade stuff that was keeping an eye on the general. Jacob had no intention of learning how to do that when he first showed up, but boredom had forced him to do something, and the internet held little interest to him after the first week. The thought of wasting his time scrolling through the next meme just felt pointless, so he decided to put his prodigious processing power toward something more interesting.
At first, he just learned how to code, and that led to how to hack, but both of those efforts were so easy with his processing power that it took barely any effort. Eventually, he turned toward finding unknown backdoors and vulnerabilities in supposedly secure systems. Nothing was truly secure, but he quickly found more security holes than he realized.
Technically, his first attempt to speak with the president could be considered hacking, but that was just a brute force attack, which they easily detected and quickly cut off. Now, he could slip into and out of any connected system on Earth undetected. The ease with which he went from the former to the latter really highlighted how much power was at his fingertips, and how far behind the curve Earth was, and he was using millennia-old tech by Astryx standards.
Earth was going to have to get its shit together if it wanted to be taken seriously in the broader universe. They probably thought Jacob’s contributions would help with that, but they were going to be sorely mistaken.
While he had agreed to share certain technologies with Earth, he didn’t actually know any of the science behind how the technologies functioned. He didn’t feel the least bit guilty about hiding that fact when negotiating with the world leaders. They had been so blinded by their lust for power that nobody thought to ask him. That was their fault. They would be pissed when they found out, but Jacob had already gotten most of what he came for, so he didn’t really care if they got mad now.
The agents keeping an eye on Roberts were a bit harder to avoid, but not unassailable. During his hacking research, he learned that people were always the weak link in a system. It wasn’t all that surprising. This was a bit of a different situation than tricking some poor sap into giving you their password so you could hack their account, but there were parallels. People had to take breaks, eat, sleep, use the restroom, etc. The trick was taking advantage of those situations. Jacob was able to track them through their own electronic monitoring, making finding those gaps trivial. And when that didn’t work, he created openings.
Jacob watched from a neighbor’s doorbell camera as the pizza delivery driver pulled up outside the dark house. The pimply-faced youth got out of the car, grabbed the pizza bag from his back seat, then eyed the dark house for a long moment before verifying the address. With a shrug, the kid walked up to the side door, where the order had said to go, and knocked.
The agent monitoring the general’s house down the street with a scope jerked in surprise. Then he got up and headed down the stairs to see who was knocking.
Jacob was already strolling up to the former general’s house before the agent had even left the blacked-out bedroom.
He climbed the stairs and rang the man’s doorbell.
A few moments later, he heard footsteps, then a pause as the man behind the door looked through the peephole to see his bare robotic frame standing there. Reluctantly, Roberts unlocked and opened the door, scanning the neighborhood.
“Nobody saw me,” Jacob replied.
The man grunted noncommittally. “Why are you here?”
Jacob would have smiled if the drone had the capacity. “How would you like to be part of something bigger, General? To make an actual difference instead of just being a pawn to politics?”
The man stood there for a moment, mulling over Jacob’s words. Then he slowly stepped aside. “I’m listening.”
Once they were seated in the man’s living room, Jacob explained his proposition further.
“Why do you need people so bad for this station?” the general asked skeptically.
“For two reasons,” Jacob replied. “The first is, humanity needs experience with aliens, as well as representation. I could wait until Earth manages to build the FTL systems and a ship, but we both know that will take ages.”
“Aren’t you already fulfilling that role?”
“Yes and no,” Jacob admitted. “While it pains me to admit this, my digital colleagues and I aren’t human anymore. Without that biological connection, I’m afraid our perspective will be skewed.”
“And the second reason?” Roberts asked.
“Because I have other things to do. I would rather delegate the task to someone else, and the other abductees seem less than willing to take on that role.”
“You mean you don’t want to put up with the bullshit and paperwork?” Roberts guessed.
“True enough,” Jacob chuckled. “But that doesn’t mean that I won’t do it if I have to. It just means I would rather have someone more experienced handling it.”
Roberts chewed on those words for a bit, his face and body not revealing his thoughts on the matter. After a minute of silence, the man finally spoke, but it wasn’t to agree with Jacob’s request. “What happened with the people who ordered the strike on Brooklyn? The attack was hidden from news outlets, but I know you know what happened.”
“Well, I killed most of the mercenaries. A few escaped, but I assume you don’t really care about them.” Roberts nodded, so Jacob continued. “The executives were arrested, but quickly released, and never charged.”
Robert’s face grew dark. “Fucking figures,” the man spat. “People like that never see any consequences to their actions.”
“Oh, I wouldn’t say that,” Jacob chuckled. “The US government might not have wanted to prosecute them thanks to their connections, but I have no such compunctions. I made sure they faced consequences. Let’s say their money isn’t as secure as they thought.”
You could be reading stolen content. Head to Royal Road for the genuine story.
“That’ll hardly stop them,” Roberts said in disgust.
“True,” Jacob admitted, “but their power will quickly wane now that their scientists are under the direct supervision of the US government, and the alien tech will be shared globally. That being said, I can and would go further for people who work with me.”
“So what you’re insinuating is that if I join you, you will make sure they can’t pull a similar stunt in the future?”
Jacob laughed. “If you join me, General, I will make sure every single executive from Redline Dynamics becomes a pariah in the business world and that not even a fast-food joint will be willing to hire them to flip burgers.”
“You have yourself a deal,” the man said, holding out his hand.
Jacob shook the offered hand. “I’ll give you a few days to pack, then I’ll be back to pick you up.”
“No need,” the man said, getting up from his chair and pulling a rucksack from behind it. “I’m always ready.”
“You don’t want to take anything else?” Jacob asked. “What about your house?”
“No. The furniture isn’t mine, not that I would take it even if I could. As for the house, it’s a rental.”
“Fair enough,” Jacob said as he called in the ship. He had to block the panicked calls from the agent down the street, but that was easy.
The president would find out soon enough, but the final negotiations were taking place, and there was no way the president would pull out of those for a single disgraced former general.
The pair stepped out of the house to see street lights illuminating the hull of the ship. Roberts actually paused and whistled in appreciation.
“I never was much of a fan of ships,” the man admitted. “The thought of being stuck in a confined space that could sink at any moment was not very comforting.”
“Well, no worries about sinking with this thing,” Jacob quipped.
“Only dying of asphyxiation,” Roberts said under his breath as he stepped aboard the ramp without hesitation.
He did pause to take in the van, the combat drone, and Jacob’s other drone working off to the side, but he didn’t comment on any of it as Jacob led him to one of the cabins.
Speaking of, Jacob drove the empty van off the back of the ship and left it sitting in the middle of the road as the ship rose back into the air and transitioned away.
***
“I’m fine with that,” Jacob said, shaking the hands of eleven individuals across the world simultaneously.
Jacob had managed to get the last drone back in time to meet with the president. The man’s face was a smiling mask, but Jacob could sense he was annoyed by his actions. It was slightly amusing to see just how far the president was willing to go to swallow his pride and get this deal completed. That dynamic would only last so long as the power was in Jacob’s favor, but that was fine.
“Excellent,” President McConnel said. “So, it’s agreed? You will provide the nations of Earth with everything you know about the faster-than-light drive, metallurgical tech, reactor technology, power core technology, sensors, gravitic plating, and shields. I really wish you would reconsider your stance on offering weapons tech as well, but I understand,” he added, quickly putting his hands up in a placating gesture.
Jacob wasn’t dumb enough to think that Earth wouldn’t figure out how to make their own weapons eventually, but they would have to do that without any help from him. He looked over the document and quickly confirmed the agreement before anyone could ask him if he actually knew anything.
As the ink dried, the president beamed in delight. “Let me introduce you to the scientists and engineers that you’ll be working with directly.”
Jacob was already familiar with most of them. One was the humorless woman who had questioned him while he was imprisoned. Two others were formerly Redline scientists, and they cast their gazes to the floor when he glanced their way. Considering their freedom was contingent on their cooperation, he wasn’t too surprised by their reactions. The last was a man he didn’t recognize.
“You’ve already met Mrs. Brown,” the president said, gesturing toward the stern woman he had dubbed science lady.
“How nice to see you again, Alana,” Jacob replied cheekily, after having dug up the woman’s employment records.
Her heartbeat spiked for a moment, but her face showed zero emotion after calling her by her first name.
“I can’t say the same,” she replied flatly.
The president pinched the bridge of his nose and sighed. “Mrs. Brown, we discussed this. You said you would be civil.”
The woman crossed her arms. “Just because we discussed it doesn’t mean I agreed.”
“Let’s move along,” the president said, quickly bouncing back.
Jacob wanted to laugh at that byplay. He knew Alana held a lot of sway because of how talented and smart she was, but man, he had no idea it went all the way to the president.
Next up was an enthusiastic middle-aged man with a bit of a beer gut.
“This is Nathaniel Stern,” the president introduced them. “He is one of NASA’s top engineers.”
Nathaniel chuckled as he stuck out his hand for Jacob to shake. “I wouldn’t say that, Mr. President. An engineer is only as good as the team behind them.”
Alana scoffed loudly at that, but the bombastic man ignored her.
Jacob shook the offered hand. “I think you and Barry would get along well,” Jacob said. “He seems to love robotics.”
“Is he like you?” Nathaniel asked in interest.
“Yup.”
“Well, I would love to pick his brain if he’s up for it.”
“I’ll ask him,” Jacob replied.
He didn’t want to make any promises for Barry.
“Next up, we have Sergei Volk. He was one of Redline’s chief scientists. He’ll be working alongside Mrs. Brown, with a focus on the data cubes, since he is already somewhat familiar with them.”
Sergei rubbed the back of his head in embarrassment. “Sorry about what we did,” he said quietly. “We didn’t know the data on the cubes was part of someone’s mind.”
Jacob was more surprised by the man’s perfect, unaccented English than he was about the apology. Given the name, he had assumed the man would have a Russian accent or something.
“And last but not least, this is Sergei’s wife, Elena Volk. She was in charge of Redline’s Top Secret research and development program.”
The woman held out her hand. “Don’t let that fool you, Jacob. I was more than just a paper pusher.”
Jacob looked at the offered hand, but didn’t shake it.
She awkwardly retracted it. “For what it’s worth, we weren’t aware of what Redline did to acquire the objects. We were only tasked with studying them.”
“Wasn’t there a third member of your team?” Jacob asked.
The couple looked disgusted by the mention of the third man, but it was Elena who commented on his absence.
“Thadius turned out to be a Russian spy. I suspect we won’t be seeing him ever again.”
The woman wasn’t lying, but Jacob turned to the president for confirmation. The man nodded.
“When we brought them in for questioning, a thorough deep dive into their finances was carried out. Thadius’s showed quite a few inconsistencies that were further traced to offshore shell accounts. Normally, that isn’t enough to convict someone of spying, but we already knew the Russian government set up those accounts. We just couldn’t access the bank records to see who that money was going to. If it wasn’t for the spy’s own bank records, we wouldn’t have been able to connect the two.”
Jacob nodded at that. Russia was an ongoing issue. Their exclusion from the talks had caused them to make all sorts of threats. It also inflamed the Chinese, but not enough to get the Chinese to withdraw. If anything, the Chinese scientists and engineers he was speaking with seemed more enthusiastic about working with him than the American ones.
Russia wasn’t the only country making threats. Pretty much every nation he had excluded was threatening to do something if not included, which was exactly why they had been excluded from the beginning. The fact that four of those countries had nuclear weapons wasn’t lost on him.
President McConnell had assured him that it was just posturing, but Jacob wasn’t so certain. He had access to the internal communications of those belligerent nations, so he knew some of the hardliners in those governments were pushing for nuclear strikes. So far, cooler heads had prevailed, but how long would that last once those nations saw the others pulling ahead technologically?
While Jacob would admit some guilt for Franky’s actions, it wasn’t his responsibility to solve all of Earth’s problems. Hopefully, the technology he was providing them would give them some more options rather than mutually assured destruction.