"You know how this shit goes, Marty. Every single movement that ever comes from grassroots is instantly infiltrated by a dozen different Federal agencies. If we recruit people, they're going to be half Feds."
"It's a problem that me and my friends have thought a lot about. Theoden would have a lot to say about this particular subject."
I nodded. That did seem right up Theo's alley.
"Anyway, we'll figure it out. First things first. How long till we get to Mercury?" I asked.
I could've found out for myself, but it was a nice way to change the subject.
"Roughly eight hours. We could've made it there quicker, but it's on the other side of the sun from us right now."
"Great, we've got some time. Let's listen to some tunes," I said.
My phone had gone from an essential tool for everyday life to useless relic and was now back to being an essential tool since it had our only remaining gate in it. It did have one function that I hadn't yet re-created with Union technology.
Music.
"What have you got there? Your phone? The cabin's evacuated and it's not like this baby has any speakers. Now that I say it, that seems like a bit of an oversight. Want me to repressurize so you can play on your phone's speaker?" Marty asked.
"No, that would be horrible. Here, check this out," I said.
I walked over and stuck the phone to Marty's control console. I had spent a little bit of my downtime modifying the phone even further, giving it a more sophisticated conduit for the Interface to control it. I had also loaded it up with every bit of music I could find. With Brick's help that turned out to be just about everything. Storage capacity was no longer an issue when you had Union tech.
I pulled up the music player app and pressed play on my carefully curated playlist.
An Interface popup appeared.
╠═╦╬╧╪
Music player wants to share audio output with you. Accept, Yes/No?
╠═╦╬╧╪
I hit accept and the opening riff of Steppenwolf's “Born to be Wild” seemed to fill the Redemption's small cabin. The bass was rich, and the sound full and beautiful.
The Interface had me experiencing the music as if I were surrounded by topnotch speakers, perfectly tuned for the acoustic space we were in. In actual fact, there were no sound waves at all. It was all strictly in my mind. Even the illusion of the bass slightly vibrating my sternum. It was a smaller-scale version of the sound and image projectors we'd used to fake the saucer landings.
I could control the volume, and even when it was loud, I could still hear and understand Marty speaking. It was the best possible use of Union technology, and for some reason I'd had to invent it since it wasn't in the Common Knowledge Set. I guess when you're worried about surviving a Galactic apocalypse, you didn't tend to think too much about the proper way to enjoy your tunes.
"Holy crap, Jake. That's cool. I've even got my own volume control. Very cool. But seriously man, are you my dad? This music is ancient."
Marty looked down at the phone, scrolling through the playlist.
"What's the deal? Every one of these is at least thirty years old. Even your rap is from the early 90s."
I shrugged, not feeling the urge to defend my musical tastes. My father had always been playing music when I was young, and although I had picked up some of my own tastes over the years, lots of his had rubbed off on me. He would listen to music from the 60s, 70s, and 80s. I would listen to those, as well as the techno, trance, and trip-hop that I'd grown up with. It made my playlists a little eclectic, but I wasn't going to worry about it.
"Oh pipe down. You can put some of your own tracks in the playlist if you want. We've got time, don't we?" I asked.
Marty nodded, and picked up the phone to start adding his own tracks to the list.
Ten minutes later he was finally done, and he turned back to me. He grinned widely as the track switched and a wall of distorted guitar sound smacked me in the face, followed by what I could swear was Cookie Monster singing a heavy metal song.
Chapter Thirty-Four: Arrived at Mercury
SIX HOURS LATER MARTY startled out of his Interface trance. He'd been deep into the design interface, and swiped windows out of the way frantically.
I muted the music that had been playing. The track was a Marty addition, heavy metal from Finland. It was loud, angry, and wonderful.
"What's going on?" I asked.
"We're still fairly far out, but I'm detecting a target lock."
"Can they actually hit us at this range?"
"No, not beam weapons. Missiles, sure. Think about it. When you've got propulsion as good as the Union you can make some nasty missiles."
Kiril had mentioned something about anti-ship missiles and how we had no chance of evading them. I was sure he was right. There was no way we could tank them either. We didn't have any point defense and our shield was—to be blunt—crap.
The Interface popped up a message.
╠═╦╬╧╪
Incoming message from: Union Connahr base FW-2199880.
Accept? Yes/No
╠═╦╬╧╪
I hit the accept button, and an audio recording played.
"Attention unidentified ship. This is Connahr base FW-2199880. You are entering restricted space. To authorize your approach, return proper identification codes after receiving our handshake on the data channel we have opened. A closer approach without authorization will be met with lethal force."
Mercury was still a tiny grey dot ahead, barely visible. The fact that they were warning us off at this distance was a bit concerning.
"And there's the data channel. They've sent a big lump of binary. Not sure what they want us to do with it."
"This is a standard authentication method," Brick supplied. "You are expected
