by Doug Farren
“No explanation is required,” Captain Minotu explained. “You are in Earth space and therefore subject to random inspections as we deem necessary. I have been instructed to inspect your ship. Now please lower your shield.”
“And if I refuse?”
This was an unexpected response to which Minotu had not been instructed on how to respond. Thinking quickly, he replied, “Failure to comply will result in immediate revocation of your orbital permit. You will be required to depart Earth orbit without delay.”
“I have two shuttles on the surface being loaded with cargo. I will not leave until these shuttles have been recovered.”
“I’m afraid I can’t allow that until your vessel has been inspected,” Captain Minotu calmly replied. “You have two minutes to lower your shield. Azuma Zosen out.” The captain punched a button on his console that terminated the link. He then put in a call to Tycho base for further instructions.
Two minutes went by and the freighter’s shield remained firmly in place. The two fighters which had been keeping a distance of 100 kilometers from the freighter began moving closer. Captain Minotu hailed the Tholtaran freighter and as soon as the connection had been made said, “Your ship has been identified as the source of an unauthorized attempt to penetrate the security of the Tycho base military facility. This is a violation of port authority regulations. You have thirty seconds to either drop your shield and submit your ship for inspection or leave Earth space. Failure to comply will result in the use of force. Your time begins now.”
The Tholtaran captain responded by terminating the communications link. A few seconds later, the freighter broke orbit. The gunboat and the two fighters escorted the ship until it engaged its stardrive. In Australia, the crews of the freighter’s two shuttles were detained for questioning. Following the articles of the treaty with the Consortium, the shuttles were impounded but no Human entered the ships.
The Tholtaran government immediately filed a complaint with the World Council. The World Council filed a counter-claim against the Tholtarans for violating port authority rules. It took three days before the Tholtaran crew was released and the shuttles were allowed to depart. They docked with another Tholtaran freighter after that ship had reluctantly agreed to undergo an intense security scan.
A few weeks after the freighter incident, Commander Kilpatrick received another bit of disturbing news. This time it came from Lieutenant Commander Umbatu Wanabee, Tycho base’s chief tactical officer during one of the weekly command meetings.
When it was his turn to present his brief, Commander Wanabee said, “Our deployment of the long range sensor net is nearly complete. We now have over twenty-three thousand sensor stations deployed covering all space out to a distance of half a light year from Earth. This network has enabled us to track all inbound and outbound traffic. After consolidating all recent ship transits with the port registry, an interesting pattern has been detected.”
Wanabee entered a command into the computer terminal built into the table. The lights dimmed and a large screen in the front of the room came to life. A dozen or so white lines appeared radiating out from a central point. “This is a view of sector seven looking out from Earth. The white lines represent the tracks of all Tholtaran ships traveling to or from Earth over the past four weeks.”
After a moment, Commander Kilpatrick said, “I don’t see anything threatening or alarming about these trajectories. What is your point commander?”
“Perhaps if I present the entire picture in a different view it will become clearer.” Mr. Wanabee entered another command. The screen cleared and then began showing each track as it was made with an arrow indicating if it was an incoming or outgoing trajectory. As each track was placed on the growing display, the entire viewpoint slowly rotated so the viewer could picture it in three dimensions. It didn’t take long before a pattern emerged.
“I’ll be damned,” Commander Kilpatrick murmured. “The bastards are using freighters to search the space surrounding Earth. Do you suppose they know of the existence of Olympus?”
Lieutenant Commander Wanabee returned the room’s lights to normal then replied, “I can only guess that the Tholtarans are suspicious. My personal belief is that they suspect we have established a large shipyard within our solar system and they are now searching for it. For clarity, I did not include the position of the other planets in our system in the previous presentation but every planet, major moon, and many of the smaller moons and asteroids in our system have been closely approached by at least one Tholtaran freighter during the past month.”
“If I were the Tholtarans, I would be suspicious too.” This came from Lieutenant Chang, the base’s chief medical officer. Despite his name, his family had lived in America for several generations.
“Why do you say that?” Kilpatrick asked.
“Human nature,” replied Chang. “We’ve always been a war-conscious culture. Given the opportunity and the resources, every human culture has created a means to prevent aggression by building defenses. We not only build defenses, but we also have historically created the means to retaliate as well. The Tholtaran’s are not ignorant of Human history and they are probably wondering why we haven’t jumped at the chance to build a fleet of interstellar warships. It’s inconsistent with our past behavior.”
“Regardless of what the Tholtarans think,” Wanabee interjected, “we have a problem on our hands. If we allow this probing to continue, the Tholtarans are eventually going to discover the Olympus shipyards before we are ready to disclose its existence.”
“I agree with Mr. Wanabee,” Kilpatrick said, effectively halting any further discussion. “Recommendations?”
“We could require all incoming traffic to follow a prescribed travel path through our space,” one of the junior officers suggested.
“That would work, but it would announce to the Consortium that we have an operational deep-space tracking network,” replied Wanabee. “I’ve been under the impression that the network was to remain secret for as long as possible.”
Commander Kilpatrick came to a decision. “I will forward our concerns and recommendations to Earthside; this is beyond our level of decision making. The brass back on Earth will have to decide how to proceed. Next, on the agenda is…”
A transcript of the meeting, as always, was beamed to Earth within minutes of the meeting’s conclusion. The commander bumped the priority up several levels so as to bring the meeting to the attention of the proper officials. The next day, the existence of the deep space tracking network was revealed and the Earth government announced that, effective immediately, for safety reasons, all traffic into or out of the solar system would be required to follow one of several pre-approved routes.
Two days after the announcement, an unknown ship entered the detection network on an unauthorized trajectory. Two gunboats were dispatched to intercept. The ship detected the gunboats, turned around and accelerated out of detection range before it could be positively identified. Several days later, a second ship was also detected and retreated as soon as the gunboats were dispatched to intercept.
The border remained quiet for over a week. Then, six intrusion attempts within a 24 hour period occurred, all in different areas of space. Suspecting something was up, Commander Kilpatrick ordered a pair of gunboats to search the area of the latest intrusion. After two days of searching nothing unusual was found. On the way back to Tycho base, however, one of the gunboats made a disturbing discovery.
“Got it sir!” announced the tactical operator. The captain made his way to the tactical console for a closer look.
“What do you make of it, Chuck?” he asked. Unlike larger ships, the captains of most gunboats followed a more relaxed military protocol. The eight-man crews of these small ships were often very close to each other and they did not require the rigors of military protocol for them to operate as an efficient team.
“Metallic—definitely artificial, especially considering that it’s traveling at 0.19c. It does
not appear to be using any form of propulsion at the moment. EM radiation is near zero except for the one brief FTL communication pulse we picked up. Distance is currently 12,492 kilometers and it’s vectoring away from us at an angle of thirteen degrees to our current heading. In my opinion sir, it’s a probe.”
“I think we got lucky,” the captain remarked. “That FTL pulse was pretty tight. We must have been nearly directly in its line of travel otherwise we would never have picked it up. Any idea which race might be responsible for this probe?”
“I can’t get a good reading on its composition from this distance. The signal we intercepted might give the intelligence community a clue as to who sent it. I’m not familiar enough with the encoding to say who it might belong to.”
The captain turned to his left and addressed the helmsman. “Jerry, fire up the drive and slowly bring us closer to the probe. Chuck, keep a sensor lock on that thing and learn everything you can about it. Be careful though, I’m betting it won’t like us getting too close.”
A moment later the gunboat surged ahead as the ship's drive fields went to work. The gunboat matched the course of the probe and slowly closed in. When the ship had closed to a distance of 8,441 kilometers the probe suddenly vanished from the gunboat’s screen. The tactical officer scanned his board for a moment and said, “The probe has self destructed. My readings point to some sort of non-nuclear high explosive.”
“Get us as close to the point of the explosion as possible and scan for residue,” the captain ordered. Twenty minutes later the report of the encounter was transmitted to Tycho base, read by Commander Kilpatrick, and then forwarded to Earth for analysis.
Two days later, Kilpatrick called a staff meeting. After everyone was seated and the room was sealed he said, “Two days ago, gunboat eleven encountered an alien probe cruising through our system. This probe was discovered following a series of incursions into our detection network by several unidentified ships. Under normal circumstances this probe would have gone undiscovered. Were it not for the coincidence of G-11 being in the direct path of a coded FTL transmission beamed from the probe, we might never have learned of its existence.
“The gunboat approached the probe in an attempt to ascertain its origin. It detected their presence and self-destructed. The intercepted transmission and the scans recorded by the gunboat have been analyzed by the experts back on Earth. This morning I received the results of that analysis. There is a greater than eighty percent probability that the probe was of Tholtaran origin.”
“Tholtaran! I’m not surprised,” exclaimed Lieutenant Commander Wanabee.
“Why not?” Lieutenant Chang asked. “Why couldn’t it be the Shandarians or the Rouldians? It wouldn’t take much effort to design a probe that would lead one to believe it was built by a different race. In fact, I’m surprised nobody has considered this possibility. Perhaps one of the other races is trying to put the Tholtarans and us at odds with each other.”
“Why would they do that?” Wanabee countered. “The Tholtarans are our nearest neighbors. They are also a culture that has embraced a militaristic lifestyle for more than four centuries. They know our history and I’m sure they are concerned. The Tholtarans are keeping an eye on us—they’re suspicious.”
“The point,” Kilpatrick interrupted, “is that we have been ordered to keep a close eye on all Tholtaran ships entering and leaving our space. To keep the Tholtarans from feeling as if they are being discriminated against we will be performing a security scan of every ship entering our space.”
“That’s going to create a lot of tension between us and the Consortium,” Chang said. “I disagree with this policy. We have got to learn to adopt a more trusting relationship with the Consortium. This new policy is going to make us appear as if we are hiding something, or are afraid. We can’t close our borders. We can’t act like the communist countries of the twentieth century.”
“Personally, I agree with you Commander Chang,” Kilpatrick echoed. “But our leaders have adopted this policy and I have been ordered to carry it out.”
“But look at what we are doing! We’re building a fleet of warships, we’re arming ourselves as if we expect to be attacked at any moment, and now we’ve become paranoid and distrustful. Will we ever learn from our past mistakes?”
“That will be enough Commander Chang!” Kilpatrick replied in a firm tone. “We are not doing anything that the other members of the Consortium have not already done. They have fleets of warships at their disposal. We are simply trying to protect ourselves.”
“That’s what starts wars,” Chang fired back raising his voice.
“Enough!” Chang’s mouth opened and shut a few times but in the end he decided against any further argument and looked down at his reflection in the tabletop. The room was silent. “Are there any more comments?” Kilpatrick said in a voice barely loud enough to be heard.
“What about the possibility of more of these probes cruising around undetected?” Wanabee asked.
“Central command is looking into the possibility of enhancing our deep space detection grid to give us a better chance of detecting the probes. They are positive there are more of them out there. The network around Olympus is already being upgraded with the addition of more sensor stations. Until our network can be upgraded we will have to be on the lookout for odd signals and sensor readings.”
“Are we going to lodge a protest against the Tholtarans?” Wanabee asked.
“We have no conclusive proof that the Tholtarans are responsible for the probes. Therefore, no official protest will be made against the Tholtaran government. The government will, however, make it known to the members of the Consortium that a probe was discovered and an investigation into its origin is being conducted.”
The meeting broke up a few minutes later. While everyone was standing up to leave, Commander Kilpatrick looked at Commander Chang and said, “Please remain seated Mr. Chang.”
After the room had cleared, Chang said, “I wish to offer my apologies for my inappropriate comments during the meeting sir. It will not happen again.”
“Apology accepted Mr. Chang. In the future, I would ask you to please refrain from voicing your personal opinions concerning governmental policy. This is the military and we are charged with carrying out that policy regardless of our personal feelings.” Kilpatrick stood up and Chang quickly followed his lead.
Chang turned to leave but stopped when Kilpatrick said, “Off the record, I wanted to let you know that I am in agreement with you concerning this policy we have adopted. I don’t know much about military history, but I do feel that the path we have chosen is wrong. On one hand, I can see the logic of wanting to defend ourselves. But, on the other hand I can see this leading to disaster.”
“One can always hope that those in positions of power will be wise enough to look back at our past in order to avoid those same mistakes in our future. Good day Commander.”
Kilpatrick watched as the door slowly swung closed behind the departing Chang. He stood in the now silent conference room for several long minutes simply thinking and wondering. Deep inside himself he felt a dark knot of fear beginning to form. With a shake of his head and a forcefulness of mind, he put the feeling aside, walked out of the conference room, and continued to perform his military duties as the commander of the most powerful military base ever built by mankind.
24
The Fleet Takes Shape
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===== May 11, 2061 (Terran calendar) =====
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It had taken years of back-breaking effort and sacrifice. Today all the sweat, the long hours, the secrecy, and the lives that were lost were temporarily forgotten as the fast cruiser ES Enterprise rose majestically, silently out of the shipyard where it had been assembled. The ES stood for Earth Ship and she was the first Human warship capable of actually challenging a Consortium warship of similar class. It was the most techn
ologically advanced ship ever built by Humans, carrying the very best shield, weapons, sensors, power reactors, and propulsion systems known to Human science. The cruiser was also armed with two large sledgehammers.
The Olympus shipyard had been constructed entirely in secret. It had been painstaking, incredibly difficult, and unbelievably expensive. Seventeen people had given their lives during the early days of its construction. The main shipyard covered almost a third of the surface of one of the rogue planet’s six small moons. The other moons had been converted into giant mining and refining centers capable of producing hundreds of tons of processed metal a day.
Even with state-of-the-art automation (much of it based upon non-Human technology), Olympus supported a population of over twenty thousand workers. A vast underground complex of hydroponics’ gardens, animal pens, and fish farms kept the workers fed. What Olympus could not produce on its own was supplied by a small fleet of cargo haulers that briefly stopped at the secret facility on their way to more public destinations.
The area surrounding the pitch-black planet had been seeded with thousands of small but very sensitive sensors capable of detecting any approaching vessel. Several hundred Defender class fighters patrolled the surrounding space. These were quickly being replaced by the larger, more powerful Hammerhead fighters as they rolled off the assembly line. Massive, powerful defense installations dotted the surface of each moon and surrounded each of the construction pits.
Twenty-nine more Enterprise class ships in various stages of construction lay in the mammoth yards. Eleven larger Thor class battleships were also under construction. Work was progressing on all these ships as fast as was humanly possible. More construction docks were being built to handle larger, more powerful ships. As soon as the ES Enterprise had cleared the shipyard, workers and robots moved in and started laying the keel for the next ship. At the current pace of construction, Olympus could launch an Enterprise class cruiser every two weeks and a Thor class battleship every five weeks.
