Countdown Amageddon (The Spiral Slayers Book 2)

by Rusty Williamson

  “Good morning, Bugs. Have my four assistants reported in?”

  The back of the Listening Chamber opened and cold air poured in.

  “They went up about an hour ago.”

  The capsule exited and dropped to the floor 200 feet below and landed softly. The large doors that led into the lander slid apart and the capsule entered.

  “Excellent. Then we’re all ready to go?”

  “We depart in twenty-one minutes.”

  ---

  Bernard Shipyards…

  Harrington rounded the corner and entered the control room. Evelyn was already there meeting with two dozen senior controllers. Harrington noted that Evelyn had positioned herself strategically above everyone else in the room. She had accomplished this feat by squatting on top of the 90-degree corner of two cubical walls. She looked like a bird sitting on a nest but ready to spring down upon the unsuspecting people just below her. Harrington almost laughed aloud.

  Evelyn was saying, “All senior staff at each of the three shipyards will rotate and serve three months working aboard the other two. At the end of the six months, we’ll want full reports on differences in procedures and their impact on efficiency, quality control and morale.”

  The meeting wrapped up and Evelyn jumped down. Harrington walked up to her, “Where did you learn that trick?”

  “Ha. My dad used to do it when he was running Hideaway.”

  “It’s my understanding that we’re phasing out construction on the latest ship and weapon designs. What are the three shipyards going to do during the research and development phase which could last for well over a hundred years?”

  Evelyn laughed, “We’re halting construction on warships and weapons, but we’ll still have plenty to do, Lorry. Almost 50 percent of Anderson and Hideaway will be converted to R&D and testing. As for ship building, carrier, supply and mining ships alone will have both Bernard and Anderson booked for at least the next half century. Add another half century for transportation, science and cargo.”

  “Three of Hideaway’s five space docks will be converted to build the ultra-large transportation and cargo ships. These types of ships will not be impacted too much from advanced R&D. In fact, the existing war ships as well as the orbital forts and other weapon platforms may not change much. Oh, their drives, defenses and weapons will and these may require changes to the platform so we will hold off on almost all war ship construction. We’ll also wait on weapons and technology upgrades to the Leviathans. However, we have decades of upgrades that, for one reason or another, are safe to make.”

  “Like what?”

  “Like their power train and engines—it would be too much work to perform that kind of upgrade on those old ships. Their entire frame would need to be rebuilt to handle the extra stress and you might as well build a new ship if you face that kind of rebuild.”

  Evelyn changed the subject, “So, only a few weeks before you get to see Patrick again?”

  Harrington smiled brightly, “Yes, and I can’t wait. And, how long before you see Brandon?”

  “I guess about a month. I dread seeing what kind of mess Brandon’s made.”

  “You are kidding, right?”

  “Yes…and no. He hates paperwork.”

  “Don’t we all.”

  “How are you doing as a married woman?”

  Harrington laughed, “We haven’t had a chance to find out yet.”

  “Well that one-year vacation should do it. Where are you going?”

  Again Harrington laughed. “We haven’t had a chance to discuss it.” She frowned, “I don’t envy Grace. She and Nero will be able to see and talk to Adamarus daily but…gone for up to sixteen years—that’s a long time.”

  Evelyn was staring into the distance. Her face had gone blank.

  “You need to get over him.”

  Evelyn blinked, returning to the present. Her face burned as she looked at her friend. She said nothing.

  ---

  Back on Amular, in a small run-down town named The Last Stop on the border of the Barrette Wilderness Preserve, Tim Waters, mayor, sheriff and grocery store manager paused, leaning into the wind to watch a six-foot tumbleweed bounce across the dirt road. It bounced up on the hood of a car, then leaped up to the roof of the grocery store where it became lodged between the first two letters of the sign reading ‘Last Stop All-In-One Store’.

  Tim shook his head—it would have to be pried out. Not that Tim would do it. He’d add it to his list of things to do, prioritize it, sort the list, then when it came to the top, assign the task to someone else. That doing all this would take longer than simply climbing up there and pulling it out never entered into Tim’s decisions about how things should be done so, it was strange that, overall, Tim was very good at his job.

  He was about to continue on his way when a sound made its way through the gusts of wind and caused him to pause again. He turned and looked down the dirt road, the town’s only road, to where it vanished in the distance.

  Couldn’t be, he thought, someone coming in from the badlands? No one’s supposed to be in there. He saw nothing so he turned and looked the other way—far more likely for someone to be coming in—maybe the sound was playing tricks on him. However, he could see nothing so reluctantly turned toward the sound again and this time he could just barely make out something.

  It turned out to be an old all-terrain vehicle that had seen better days. It pulled right up to Tim and came to a halt. A well-built man got out. “Sir,” the man said, “I heard there was a service enlistment office here.”

  Tim was taken aback. Besides being the mayor, sheriff and store manager, Tim was also the service enlistment officer for Last Stop. It was a requirement that enlistment offices be assigned per region population and this had led to Tim having this title and duty. In his twelve years on the job, he had had only one enlistment. Well, he could fake it. “Hello. And, you’ve come to the right person.” Tim held out his hand, “The name’s Tim Waters.”

  “General Rodger Allen Whitehall, retired,” the man said. “I figured it was time I re-enlisted—help with defensive buildup.”

  “Mind telling me where you came from?”

  “I’ve spent the last 43 years in a cabin I have on the other side of Split Mountain.”

  “That’s quite a drive.”

  “Well, Last Stop was the closest enlistment office.”

  “Guess that’s true. Well, if you’ll step this way.” Tim led Whitehall into the store. On the way in, he noticed his visitor look up at the sign with the six-foot tumbleweed stuck between the first two letters.

  Tim’s office was in the back room, which was surprisingly large and well equipped. Tim sat down behind his desk, which contained a standard monitor and control panel. Whitehall sat in one of the two chairs in front of the desk.

  “Get many enlistments way out here?”

  “A few,” Tim lied as he stumbled through unfamiliar menus. Finally, he found the proper screen. “Okay…your name again?”

  “Rodger Allen Whitehall.”

  Tim entered the name then collected other personal information. The local system sent the information to the Archive. Once there, government programs went to work on the data. One of the first checks was comparing the name to a list of names, which were, for one reason or another, of special interest. It got a hit and followed the link associated with the name for instructions. These were followed and within 15 minutes, an urgent message was sent to the Secretary of Defense, Sally Barrington. She, in turn, contacted the General Chief of Staff, Apox Yuran, who took over from there.

  In Last Stop, a message appeared on Tim’s screen saying, ‘Re-Enlistment Approved. General Whitehall, please wait where you are. A helicopter has been dispatched to get you.’ Tim stared in disbelief at the message.

  When he told Whitehall, Whitehall tossed the keys to his ATV to Tim, “I won’t need this anymore—it’s yours.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “Absolutely, I won’t be
back.”

  Chapter Five – Project Snowflake

  “The grav-bomb minutely warps space-time for a fraction of a second in all four dimensions; stretching it out and then releasing it, allowing it to snap back (picture a rubber band). Matter is destroyed as space-time is stretched, which releases vast amounts of energy. Then, when space-time snaps back, that energy is amplified exponentially. The biggest problem with grav-bombs is reducing their yield.”

  The Loud Named Bugs

  The Hideaway Shipyards, First Council of War

  Source: The Archive

  T-Minus 186 Years

  The Ice Cloud, Ten years into Project Snowflake

  Iceis was the brightest star in the heavens but that was pretty much all that could be said. At a distance of one light year, the orange dwarf was just another star…although it was its very own beautiful orange, which was rare throughout the heavens.

  However, Iceis was not the main attraction in this very strange region of space. Here, the heavens were filled with endless numbers of small, faint white dots that at first looked like stars. You could see them with the naked eye, but the longer you looked, the more you saw, and you could never come close to picking them all out. The ship’s computer enhanced them on the viewer for the ship’s crew.

  Some of the misshaped pieces of ice wobbled about oddly due to their center of mass and rotation. Just as strange, the faint white points of light were all moving in the same direction against the stationary background of the far brighter real stars. And, stranger still, the odd star-like dots could only be seen looking away from the bright star that was Iceis—look toward Iceis and they vanished.

  This was the Ice Cloud.

  The Ice Cloud formed about four billion years ago during the formation of the Iceis star system and was composed of two trillion icy bodies that ranged from the size of a walnut to that of a small moon. The cloud extended from about one light year away from Iceis to its furthest reaches of about 1.5 light years. It rose above and below the plane of the elliptic .5 light years, though it was denser near the elliptic. However, even in its densest regions, space was still surprisingly empty.

  Adamarus sipped his coffee as he looked out the main viewer of the Dry Runner—the small human science ship that had been attached to the Loud Umbrella ship for the ride out here and for other long hops needed for the mission. The ship’s name was a bit of a joke Adamarus really didn’t get…but he guessed if you’re with an ‘Umbrella’ ship, you could look forward to a ‘dry run’.

  The Loud Umbrella ship was five miles off the Dry Runner’s port—its seven-mile height still impressive.

  The mission, dubbed Snowflake, was a two-pronged mission. For the first part, one Umbrella ship plus Adamarus’ craft went out to the Blackship's projected point of impact with the Ice Cloud.

  In the second mission, a second Umbrella ship hauling an unmanned robotic ship had gone in the opposite direction. It halted outside the Ice Cloud on the opposite side of Iceis and released the robotic ship plus thousands of special unmanned sensors equipped with Tach-coms for instantaneous reporting. Then the Loud ship headed back in-system. There were only four Umbrella ships able to ferry payloads and people around quickly in-system and with one gone, the second ship was needed back in-system.

  The unmanned robotic craft continued into the Ice Cloud, keeping the orange dwarf star Iceis between it and the current position of the distant Blackship. It released grav-bombs of different yields at pre-determined locations for the testing. By keeping Iceis between the detonations and the Blackship, the tachyon release of the grav-bombs should be mostly blocked by Iceis, keeping the testing—or at least the complete nature of the testing—a secret.

  On the side where the Blackship would pass in roughly 114 years, the grav-bombs would be placed based on this testing. However, no grav-bombs would be detonated on that side until the Blackship arrived.

  “One minute to detonation,” came over the intercom.

  Adamarus put his coffee cup in the arm holder and leaned forward, needlessly rechecking all of the readouts and screens again.

  On other side of the star system, roughly two light years away, the first high-yield grav-bomb would be set off. It was lowest of three high-yield models, which were 3,000, 3,500 and 4,000 gigatons. This first test would actually be done well inside the boundary of the Ice Cloud and was more for testing yield estimates. Bombs of this size could not be set off in-system without causing unacceptable damage.

  Adamarus knew that the explosion should fill only a quarter of the far right screen…the rest of the screens showed closer views and were most likely going to just turn white as the photon burst overwhelmed the optical inputs. He wouldn’t really understand much of the non-visual data in its raw form so he ignored all but the right-hand screen.

  “Ten-second countdown to detonation imminent…” came from the speaker.

  Back on Amular, as well as all of Amular’s settlements throughout the Iceis Star System, the threat posed by millions of comets that would be pulled in-system by the Blackship’s passage seemed more urgent than the threat of the Blackship itself. The comets would not arrive until years after the Blackship's departure, yet this was something tangible that they could do something about. The Spiral Slayer Blackship might well make worrying about the comets moot except that the comets were also going to pose a threat to the arks of both species, provided they could slip away.

  “…and…ten…nine…”

  Adamarus took a slow deep breath as he watched the sensor feed from the other side of the star system.

  “…two…one…zero.”

  On the screen a white ball appeared, it grew slowly to about a quarter of the screen then faded.

  “Test one…all results are within expected parameters.”

  Adamarus stared at the screen and blinked. He was somehow underwhelmed.

  ---

  Armed Forces Headquarters, Axis, Capital of the Iceis Star System…

  General Whitehall’s security level—Red Raven—had been restored and two days ago he had been briefed on the situation regarding the aliens that had destroyed the Loud’s star system. As he’d suspected, the government already knew that the alien ship was on its way here. He had planned to bring down the president’s administration with this news whether or not it was true. However, now that he knew it was true and knew the other details—like the ship was powered by a black hole, the size of that black hole and the speed at which it was approaching—the shock of all this had placed his plan on the sidelines. He’d never let anyone know it, but he was scared shitless by all he had learned.

  He’d also learned about the three arks that would attempt to save their civilization should things turn out for the worst, and for two days, he’d done nothing but scheme on some way to be aboard those arks. But no, the position he’d carefully and painfully placed himself in all but guaranteed that he would not be on those escape ships but rather on the front lines. He had messed up big time. And, he hated it. How could he have been so stupid? He had finally come to hate those arks—hate that 300,000 would escape to safety while he would not.

  He now sat in General Apox Yuran’s office. The four-star general was saying, “I want you to head up a new division we’re creating, the 1st Mobil Heavy Artillery.”

  “Mobil Heavy Artillery,” Whitehall repeated.

  “Yes. We need units of heavy artillery that can be deployed quickly. Large guns with wings, General, to pound the enemy from a distance then quickly relocate and pound them again. These new weapons are just coming off the drawing boards and the first prototypes are going into production.”

  Whitehall didn’t know what to say, but a couple of things Yuran had said did seem to agree with him…from a distance and quickly relocate. He heard himself say, “Yes, sir.”

  ---

  The Dry Runner, The Ice Cloud…

  The ship’s food dispenser was not bad, Adamarus thought, as he swallowed a bite of meat loaf and wiped his mouth. “So
how did it go?” he asked.

  “Smoothly,” Grace answered. “The son of Admiral Maximus—are you kidding?”

  They both laughed. Grace was on a flat screen across from Adamarus. It was strange having dinner with his wife this way, but it had worked out well and now they had most meals together.

  “And when does he leave?”

  “He has four weeks before boot camp starts.”

  Nero was 18 years old now and, following his father’s example, he had enlisted in Amular’s Space Navy. The navy would take over his education now. After boot camp, he’d go into the Officers Candidate School, then flight school. It killed Adamarus to be away at this time, but he and Nero had spent a lot of virtual time together which he had to admit was better than nothing.

  “Does he still seem as excited?” Adamarus asked, taking another bite.

  Grace smiled, “Jumping out of his skin.”

  Adamarus laughed, “Where’s he at?”

  “The gym—tonight’s his last game.”

  “Damn.” Adamarus had made about half of Nero’s ballgames watching through special glasses Grace wore, but his schedule was so tight now he was barely making meals with Grace.

  “He understands, honey.”

  Adamarus sighed, “I know he does.”

  ---

  It was their yearly meeting and President Wicker looked around the conference table at his inner-circle—either in seats or on teleconferencing screens.

  Admiral Adamarus Maximus and Bugs were together on screens next to each other, joining the meeting from their respective ships currently just inside the Ice Cloud a little over a light year away.

  Rear Admiral Leewood was on a screen to the left, joining from a remote base in the Eastern Desert.

  Leewood’s wife Dr. Harrington (she’d kept her last name) was currently above the North Pole at the Anderson Shipyards wrapping up an assignment.

  Dr. Evelyn and Brandon Eden were sharing a screen—both were currently out at the Hideaway Shipyards.

  General Burnwall and Captain Radin also shared a screen, joining in from The Leviathan Battleship The Dominator conducting battleship and fighter training exercises near the Hideaway Shipyards.