Slaver Wars 1: Moon Wreck

by Raymond L. Weil

  Jason understood her sorrow. She was the last survivor of the Human Federation of Worlds. It was times like this that Ariel seemed almost human.

  “She has to comply,” Lisa broke in, seeing that the colonel was getting angry. “She is only obeying her orders, just as you are.”

  Colonel Greene took a deep, calming breath and then nodded his head. “Very well, I guess I can understand. Ariel, since they are not replying, can you stop broadcasting?”

  “Yes, Colonel Greene,” Ariel replied. “In the absence of direct orders from the nearest base, my program is authorized to recognize another human as my commander. It is something I should have already done.”

  “Then do so,” ordered Colonel Greene expecting Ariel to name him since he was the highest ranking military officer present.

  Ariel closed her eyes briefly and then opened them. “It is done. Commander Jason Strong is now my new commander.”

  “What!” Colonel Greene spoke in a stunned voice, his eyes widening in confusion. This was not what he had wanted or expected to hear. “Why Commander Strong?”

  “I trust Commander Strong. He meets all the criteria to be my new commander, even though the Avenger will never leave this moon. Commander Strong may state who his second in command will be.”

  Jason looked around the room. He didn’t know what to say.

  “You need to be careful, Jason,” Lisa whispered quietly leaning over toward him. “I don’t know what Ariel would do if you declined. Tell her you accept and then name Colonel Greene as your executive officer. That should get us by for now until I can speak in more detail with Ariel later.”

  “I accept,” spoke Jason, standing up and facing Ariel. “Colonel Greene will be promoted to the position of executive officer. During my absence, you will obey all of his orders.”

  Colonel Greene rose and, looking over at Lisa, turned to face Ariel. He had overheard what Lisa had told Jason. “I accept the position of executive officer of the Avenger.” He didn’t see what other choice he had.

  “Commander Strong’s recommendation has been noted and recorded,” Ariel replied.

  “Now, since that’s settled, let’s finish our briefing,” said Jason, sitting back down and looking over at Colonel Green. He still felt strange about taking over as commander of a crashed warship. “What do we do if we get inside the base?”

  “We want to see if any of their warships are still intact,” Greene responded in a serious tone. “We have one in particular we want you to look for. It’s the light cruiser Vindication.”

  “Why the Vindication?” Greg asked. “What’s so special about it?”

  He still couldn’t believe that Ariel had promoted Jason over Colonel Greene. This day was full of surprises. The AI had them over a barrel. He knew they couldn’t object. They needed the AI and the technical information she had in her memory banks.

  “It’s actually quite simple,” responded Colonel Greene, cocking his eyebrow. “The Vindication has an AI named Clarissa on board. We want you to activate her and then, if it’s feasible, bring the Vindication back to the Moon.”

  “What!” Greg stammered, his eyes growing wide in disbelief. “You want us to fly a 2,000 foot warship back to the Moon?”

  “There will only be eight of us,” Jason reminded the colonel. “I don’t believe eight people are enough to do that. Just manning the Command Center would take a larger group, not to mention Engineering and the other essential sections of the ship.”

  “It should be possible if Clarissa is still sentient,” Ariel replied with hope in her voice as she took over the conversation. “I will give you the command codes, which will clear you with her security systems. Clarissa, once she is brought back to full operational status, will be able to ascertain if the Vindication is capable of making the flight back to the Moon. With the absence of her crew, Clarissa is capable of flying the ship and operating all of the Vindication’s systems on her own. You will just be passengers enjoying the ride.”

  Jason shook his head in disbelief. He couldn’t believe what they were asking him and Greg to do. He leaned back and closed his eyes. This mission had just gotten a lot more complicated. He wondered what was next.

  -

  Jason was walking down a corridor searching for Greg. Lisa had told him that Greg had gone off to inspect the ship’s railguns. This didn’t surprise Jason at all. He knew how curious Greg was about the Avenger’s armaments. Ariel had finally agreed to give them access to the weapon systems several weeks previously. Several experts had already flown up from Earth to begin examining the advanced weapons the ship was equipped with.

  After talking to several technicians who were working in this section of the ship, they indicated which direction Greg had gone. After a few more minutes of searching, Jason found an open hatch that led to one of the railgun turrets. Stepping inside, he found himself in a small room. Greg was hovering over what looked like a large, double-barreled cannon that occupied much of the space.

  “So that’s a railgun,” commented Jason, walking over to stand next to Greg and eyeing the railgun.

  “Jason,” Greg responded with a big grin. “Look what I found!”

  Jason could tell that Greg was genuinely excited at getting to examine this advanced weapon of the Federation. “We have those down on Earth,” Jason said. He had been fortunate to see several railgun demonstrations a few years earlier.

  “Not like these,” replied Greg, running his hand along one of the large barrels of the railgun. “I measured this thing and it’s capable of hurling 60 mm projectiles. From what Ariel told me, these were used to destroy inbound missiles and enemy fighters. The ship was originally equipped with 48 of these twin railgun turrets.”

  “That’s not a very big round,” Jason responded as he looked closer at the railgun. He had expected something much larger and more destructive. He noticed the railgun was on a platform that could be extended until the turret projected from the hull of the ship.

  “Big enough,” responded Greg, stepping back and looking down the length of one of the barrels. He had measured it earlier, and it was slightly over ten feet long. “Ariel said these were called defensive turrets and could fire five rounds every second. Since they’re double cannons, that’s ten rounds a second or 600 rounds per minute. At the speed the rounds were fired, that’s a lot of punishing power. Enough to destroy an inbound missile or a fighter.”

  Jason nodded; he could well understand how useful these defensive turrets could be in a battle. They could protect the ship from incoming missiles and attacking fighters while the big guns concentrated on their main targets.

  “Have you looked at any of the big turrets?” Jason asked, curiously. He knew the Avenger had a number of much larger railguns.

  Greg grinned like a kid who had just gotten his first puppy. “Just down the corridor and up one flight of stairs is a larger one. It’s a secondary offensive railgun. It’s four times the size of this one. If you want to see something truly amazing, there is an access hatch open to one of the upper hull primary railgun batteries. That thing can fire a shell nearly a meter in diameter. Whoever designed these ships obviously knew what they were doing.”

  “Perhaps,” Jason replied with a worried frown crossing his face. “But they lost to the Hocklyns. Evidently the weapons of the Federation weren’t powerful enough to save them from defeat.”

  Greg was silent for a moment as he mulled that over, then he responded. “We have 268 years before they reach us. Maybe by then our weapons will be better.”

  “I guess all that depends on what we find on Ceres. If there are intact ships inside the asteroid, it could save us years of research. Even with Ariel’s help, it’s going to be a bitch to build a ship like the Avenger.”

  Greg nodded. He looked back at the twin railgun. It was a masterful piece of equipment and engineering. Perhaps sometime in the future, his son would fly in a ship such as this. Greg let out a deep breath. It was just dawning on him how important this miss
ion was.

  “Don’t forget, we have flight training in the morning,” Jason reminded Greg. He was looking forward to learning how to fly one of the shuttles. “We have a lot to learn before we’re ready to go to Ceres.”

  -

  Jason and Greg were in a small room just across from the flight bay. Lieutenant Addison, the young pilot that had sat in the pilot’s seat when the shuttle had brought Jason and Greg to the Moon, was explaining to them how the simulator worked.

  “There were half a dozen simulators in this room to begin with,” he explained, pointing at a number of partially disassembled machines. “Ariel had the technicians cannibalize parts from the others to get this one functioning.”

  “How does it work?” asked Jason, looking with interest at the simulator. There were two seats in front of him with what looked like a flight helmet with a full visor on the front hanging above them. This wasn’t like any simulator he had ever used before.

  “It’s virtual reality,” explained Addison, grinning. “Put the helmet on, and a virtual world is created which mimics the inside of the cockpit for the shuttle. We don’t really understand how it works, but everything seems extremely real.”

  Jason looked over at Greg and then, shrugging his shoulders, sat down in the indicated chair for the pilot. Greg sat down in the other.

  “You’re sure this thing is safe?” asked Greg, glancing uneasily at the lieutenant.

  Lieutenant Addison laughed and nodded his head. “I’ve used it dozens of times over the past four weeks. It’s perfectly safe.”

  Greg tried to relax. He wondered how this would work.

  Lieutenant Addison stepped over and lowered the helmets, making sure they were in place. He then stepped up to the control console in front of them. Then, looking back at the two, he said. “Okay, get ready to be amazed.” The lieutenant flipped several switches and pushed a large green button.

  For a moment, Jason thought nothing had changed. Then, looking around, he realized that his surroundings were different, and he was no longer in the simulator room. He was sitting in the cockpit of a shuttle. Looking over to his side, he saw Greg sitting in the copilot’s seat looking equally surprised.

  “This is interesting,” spoke Greg, looking around in amazement. “How the hell can they do this? Everything looks so real.”

  “If you two are ready, we will begin the instrument familiarization part of this simulation,” Lieutenant Addison spoke. His voice seemed to come from a speaker that was on the console in front of them.

  Looking over at Greg, Jason nodded. “Let’s do it.”

  -

  Jason was sitting in what at one time had been the officer’s mess. Lisa Gordon and Adam Timmons were sitting across from him. They were eating a simple meal of sandwiches, chips, and sodas. A few others were at other tables eating and discussing their current projects.

  “What do you two think about this mission?” asked Jason, eyeing the two.

  This was the first time he had been able to get together with Lisa and Adam to discuss the trip to Ceres. He highly valued their opinions. From his time with them on the Avenger before he and Greg returned to Earth, he had gotten to know both of them quite well. They were both highly intelligent and capable of thinking outside the box. He was glad they were both going on this mission; their expertise could be quite valuable.

  Lisa took a sip of her drink and then with her right hand moved a strand of blonde hair from in front of her eyes. She had let her hair grow out some since the Avenger had initiated its artificial gravity field. “I’ve spoken to Ariel about what she thinks we may find. The fleet had two large colony ships with them that were capable of building almost anything they wanted.”

  “Colony ships?” Jason asked, his eyes focusing on Lisa. “Any idea how big they were?”

  “Ariel says the colony ships were nearly 2,000 meters,” Lisa replied, her blue eyes studying Jason waiting for his response.

  “Two thousand meters,” Jason repeated slowly, his eyes growing wide. “That’s three times larger than the Avenger!”

  Jason leaned back in his chair and thought about what Lisa had just said. He could scarcely imagine a ship that large. The technology to build such a ship was so far in advance of anything Earth was capable of. It made Earth’s space program look like a joke.

  “Yes, it is,” Lisa responded. Then she smiled. “The colony ships were capable of setting up a complete colony. They had numerous manufacturing systems on board which could build almost anything the colonists wanted.”

  “What kind of base does Ariel think they were going to build in the asteroid?” Jason asked.

  The more information he could find out about the goals of the Federation survivors, the better the mission would go. He was still trying to come to grips with the technology available to the Federation. He still found it nearly incomprehensible that the Federation had lost to the Hocklyns. It made him realize even more just how dangerous the Hocklyns were.

  Lisa looked over at Adam. They had discussed this already. “It would have been massive, Commander. The base they had planned originally would have been capable of housing over 100,000 people, plus all of their ships.”

  “That’s big,” responded Jason, trying to imagine a facility that large inside the asteroid.

  “Perhaps larger,” continued Lisa, smiling mysteriously. “The base was to be a military one and would contain all the facilities necessary to repair damaged warships as well as build new ones.”

  “Build new ones!” repeated Jason, drawing in a sharp breath. “How’s that possible?” A facility like that would be a Godsend for Earth if it were still intact.

  “You have to remember,” Adam said, leaning back and laying his sandwich down on his plate. “Their science in most areas was far ahead of ours. What we would consider impossible, they would consider to be routine. Many of their construction operations were totally automated.”

  Jason looked at the two, thinking about what they had just said. He also remembered what his sister had said before he left about not taking any unnecessary risks. Going into a large unknown military base might be extremely dangerous. There was a good chance a base such as this, if it had actually been built, might have some type of automated defenses.

  “Lisa, I need you to talk to Ariel about what type of automated defenses this base might possess, and what we can do to turn them off if we need to.”

  “Automated defenses,” Lisa said with shock on her face.

  “Damn!” Adam spoke, his eyes growing wide. “We never thought about that, but it makes sense.”

  “I will talk to Ariel,” Lisa replied, her face turning slightly pale. She had never thought about automated defenses. None of them had.

  -

  One week later, Jason and Greg were going through their final flight simulation. They were in the process of landing the shuttle on the Avenger. Only in the simulation, the Avenger was in space, and they were coming in at a high speed. Jason carefully adjusted the controls and watched as the Avenger’s flight bay doors slid open. Adjusting several flight controls and decreasing their speed, he brought the shuttle into the bay and landed.

  “We made it,” Greg spoke with a relieved smile. The first few times they had tried this simulation they had crashed into the ship. According to Lieutenant Addison, they had only died twelve times in the last ten days.

  “Not bad,” Lieutenant Addison said with a smile as he shut everything down. “I think I’ve died over 50 times in all the scenarios I’ve run.”

  “We leave tomorrow,” said Jason standing up, feeling pleased with the landing. In many ways, the flight simulator had reminded him of the days he had been a military test pilot. He looked over at the young lieutenant. “Are you ready?”

  Lieutenant Addison smiled and nodded his head. He would be operating the shuttle’s scanners and sensors on their trip to Ceres. “I’m ready and excited. Just imagine what we might find.”

  “Don’t get your hopes up too high, L
ieutenant,” cautioned Jason, understanding the young man’s enthusiasm for this mission. “We don’t yet know if there is anything on or in Ceres.”

  “Perhaps not,” Addison replied, his eyes focusing on Jason. “But we won’t know until we go there.”

  Greg just shook his head. He wondered if he had been that enthusiastic when he was the same age as Addison. “I’m going to go call Elizabeth,” he said, nodding at Jason. “You should probably give Katherine and Trevor a call also. We don’t know when we will be able to talk to them again.”

  “You’re right,” replied Jason, thinking about his overly protective sister. At least Katherine was still talking to him. She had been highly upset when he had told her that he was leaving again.

  They left the flight simulator room knowing the next day would be big. The mission to Ceres was due to launch in the morning. Ceres was currently 262 million miles from Earth. The flight would take a little over 72 hours for the shuttle. Ariel had told them that they could do a micro-jump once they cleared the Earth and Moon’s gravity well, but she didn’t recommend it due to the age of the shuttle. The small craft’s FTL drive was one of the few things she couldn’t explain to the technicians how to properly repair or check. They would have to depend on the shuttle’s sublight drive. Ariel had assured them the drive would function properly. Jason and Greg both hoped the AI was right.

  Chapter Eight

  Jason and Greg were strapped into their acceleration couches on the shuttle, watching the control consoles in front of them. Lieutenant Addison was sitting behind them, in front of the console that controlled the shuttle’s scanners and sensors. The rest of their mission crew were in the passenger compartment waiting anxiously for the launch. Ariel would control the launch and would be flying the shuttle by remote control. It was hoped that she would be able to do this all the way to Ceres.