The Inner Ring (gxg)

Chapter 2

The electric car moved smoothly through the city towards the office while Vanessa sipped her coffee. Self-driving cars had become much more common over the last 20 years, and she couldn't imagine having to drive herself. She relaxed in the seat while loading up her company e-mail and scanning through the hundreds of messages that she was copied on, she really needed to be better about filtering those. She was almost to the office when a particular e-mail that was sent just a few hours ago caught her attention.

The Uranus Ring images team? She had forgotten that project was still around, it had been something her father had started just before he retired a few years ago, but nothing had come from it, if she recalled. In fact, none of the Uranus teams had provided anything of value, and they had already written the initial investment from so many years ago off. But it sounded as if this Pepper person had found something. Enough of a something to take it directly to her at least. She quickly typed out a reply.

Pepper.Simmons@PASSpace.com

RE: Ring Images

Pepper,

My office is room 5001, the only office on the top floor. My assistant will be directed to let you in as soon as you arrive. I hope what you have found will be worth the effort!

Vanessa Joseph

CEO PASSpace

She was just finishing up her coffee as her private car glided to a halt in her underground parking garage, next to her personal elevator. She immediately exited and placed her hand on the plate next to the elevator that allowed only her and her father to use it. The elevator immediately chimed open, as it hadn't been used since she took it down from her office the night before, and she stepped into it, thumbing the 50 on the elevator control panel. She felt only the slightest of motion when the elevator started to rise, and again as it slowed at the top floor less than a minute later. Stepping out into her waiting room, she noticed two things. One, she had beaten her assistant, Harry, into the office again. And two, the sleeping young woman with the dirty blond hair sprawled over two of the chairs outside her office and using a backpack as a pillow.

Walking gingerly over to the woman, she couldn't help but notice the dark circles under her eyes from the lack of sleep. The good news was that the ID on her belt lanyard had the name Pepper Simmons on it. Evidently, she had found the very person she had wanted to talk to. Leaning down she gently shook Pepper's shoulder. "Miss Simmons, good morning."

The blonde's eyes fluttered, looking up at her with confusion. "I'm sorry, hello," she mumbled groggily, looking up a stunning young woman with auburn hair and hazel eyes. Please be the CEO's assistant!

"Hello there," Vanessa smiled down at her. "I assume you got my e mail?"

"E-mail?" Pepper wondered, her mind foggy still.

"Yes, I had asked you to come to my office."

"Oh! Are you Vanessa Joseph? I'm so sorry!" Pepper blurted, embarrassed at the CEO finding her asleep. "I just wandered the building looking for your office after I sent the e mail and found it. I should have known, top floor and all."

"I am, yes. And I'm glad you found it, you saved me the trouble of tracking you down."

"Oh, you got my e-mail!" Pepper finally put everything together. Having no coffee wasn't helping.

"I assume you have something to tell me?" Vanessa chuckled. Normally her mornings were a lot more boring, this was an interesting change.

"No, I have something to show you!" Pepper stood up quickly, pulling out the flash drive from her pocket. "Do you have a monitor I can borrow?"

"Of course, come into my office," Vanessa stepped to the door and keyed it open with her handprint. "Set up over by that monitor," She pointed to a huge monitor set up near a small conference table.

Pepper walked quickly to the table, setting her backpack down and pulling out her laptop. All the corporate monitors were available to stream on, so it took only moments to pair with the large monitor on the wall. Sliding the drive into the laptop she started opening files. "I'm the only one working the Uranus Ring images, and the newest images came in early this morning. The images were of the inner most ring, and I've been zooming in, trying to find anything unusual to report. We've never been told what exactly we were looking for, but when I zoomed in, I found this," Pepper brought up the first image of the intact spaceship.

Vanessa looked at the image, stunned. "Is that real? You didn't enhance the image at all?" she finally asked.

"Other than zooming in, there is no enhancement at all. I could have sharpened it, but I didn't want anything but the raw image," Pepper explained.

"How big is that?" Vanessa wondered.

"Well, I can't give an exact measurement, but I did some modelling, and it appears to be about the length of twelve football fields. Quite a bit smaller than the other one."

"Wait, the other one?" Vanessa asked, dumbfounded.

"Shit! Sorry! I'm really not awake," Pepper quickly pulled up the other image. "This seems to be a piece of a much larger craft. The piece by itself is already larger than the intact one, so the original ship must have been immense."

"Good god," Vanessa murmured. "Can you give me a moment?"

"Of course," Pepper wasn't going to ever say no to the CEO over something like that!

Vanessa pulled out her phone and dialed her father. As usual, his aide, Jason, answered the phone. "Miss Vanessa, how are you this morning?" He asked in a kind voice.

"I'm fucking amazing Jason. Where is he?"

"He is in the shower at the moment."

"Get him to the office as fast as you can, I have something monumental that he has to see," she ordered.

"The office? He hasn't been there in several years," Jason complained.

"Jason, have I ever asked him to come in, for anything? Trust me when I tell you that he needs to come in right away, there has never been anything bigger than this," Vanessa's voice rose with her impatience. She valued Jason screening her father's calls for him, otherwise he'd be needlessly bothered about trivial details, but in this case, she just needed him to do what she told him.

"I'll talk to him, but I'm not sure he will want to."

"Fuck it Jason, just tell him that his Uranus project is going to more than pay for itself, and he'll walk here if he has to," Vanessa hung up, aggravated.

"Will he come?" Pepper asked.

"Damn right he will," Vanessa stated. "So, what next?"

"I don't know, what do you want me to do?"

"Can you move your work up to this monitor? I want to work with you, this is now my number one priority," Vanessa asked. 

"I can do that, I'll need to move the bigger computer up here, and we'll need dimmer lights," Pepper thought out loud. "But I thought you had a whole company to run?"

"Oh, hold on," she strode to the door out to her lobby, finding her assistant just coming in. "Harry, cancel all of my meetings for the entire week, and get the heads of every division of the phone as soon as you can. And get a pot of coffee up here!"

"Yes ma'am!" Harry called out, not surprised by an early morning command.

"I do. But I can delegate. What you just handed us is the future of not only the company, but the world. I cannot even begin to imagine what we'll find in those ships," her heart was racing with the excitement of this discovery, and she felt like jumping around like a little kid.

"Find in them?" Pepper asked, once more lost in the conversation.

"Damn right, we're going to go take a look! We just need the right team to go with us," Vanessa announced.

Pepper just stared at her, not sure if she should be thrilled or terrified.