CHAPTER FIVE
Sixteen days go by fast. Now, we are just a half hour short of emergence from Alcubierre space-time. We will arrive at the outer edge of the magnetosphere of Kepler 22. A star which the Kepler survey of early this century documented as containing a single planet twice the size of Earth in its habitable zone of liquid water. Would there be more planets? Asteroids? For sure there would be comets. Every system visited by humanity had an outer ring of Kuiper zone comets, with a larger ring of Oort Cloud comets extending further out. A star’s gravitational reach always extends past the edge of its magnetosphere. That was Cosmology 101, as Cassandra might say.
“PO Stewart! How’s the antimatter flow look?”
I looked at the surrounding nine flow tubes. Their rainbow shimmers reminded me of a spring rainbow just after a rainstorm swept over Castle Rock. In short, the shimmers were perfect. “A-Okay, Chief. Ready to feed to our thrusters.” With a mental curse I lifted the goggles that regs required me to wear and put them on. “Verified by goggle check. Sir!”
“Good.” At one end of the room the Chief sat before his thruster and Alcubierre control panels. Like all of us, including Gambuchino and her Spacers, he wore a vacsuit with helmet thrown back. He tapped a control patch on his right armrest. “Captain Skorzeny, Chief O’Connor reporting from Engineering. Thrusters are a go! Antimatter injection tubes are a go for afterburner push! Sir.”
I looked right at the nearby bulkhead vidscreen. It was live, in color and gave a top-down view of the Bridge. As before the captain sat in his seat at the top of the command pedestal, with XO Kumisov, Major Owanju and Dr. Bjorg seated below him. In front, arranged in a half circle, were the six function stations of the Bridge. Those stations were Communications, Astrogation, Power, Life Support, Tactical and Weapons. Seats for visitors ran along the back half of the circular room that lay at the front of the Star Glory. While it lacked quartz portals for directly viewing external space, its front vidscreen was large, measuring five meters long by three high. The screen edge stopped just below the overhead’s gray metal. Beyond that overhead lay the inner hull metal, a water barrier to impede external radiation, and a thick armored outer hull. That outer hull was festooned with front and rear sensor arrays, the ship’s electro-optical telescope for true space views, neutrino com transmission nodes and, to either side of the rounded bow of the ship, lay the laser stations. A proton laser sat on port side while a CO2 laser station adorned starboard. At the ship’s stern were similar laser stations, with four missile silos and the funnels of the ship’s three fusion pulse thrusters filling the space between the laser stations. On the spine and belly of the outer hull were located sideways-shooting railguns. The Smart Rocks that shot out of the railguns were part of the ship’s final close-in defense against small meteors and Hunter-Killer warheads. During lessons at Great Lakes, and fleet maneuvers above Moon Base, I had thought the Star Glory, the HMS Dauntless and the Pyotry Velikiy were unbeatable warships. Now, I knew better. Now I knew why people crossed their fingers before they set off on a dangerous trip. Or just before they went into battle.
“Acknowledged, chief,” Skorzeny said, both vacsuited arms lifted to hover just above the control patches on his seat’s armrests. “Astrogation, what’s the count?”
“Twenty-three minutes until emergence,” Ibarra said softly, her Spanish-accented English reminding me the woman hailed from northern New Mexico. Her dark brown face looked young, though I’d heard from Cassie that she was in her mid-thirties and had a hubby and young kids back home in Chimayó. It had been founded in the 17th century by Spanish settlers, Oksana had added during our discussion.
“Life Support? How are we doing on the oxy-carbon dioxide balance?”
“Captain, the balance is Earth-normal,” replied Becky Woodman, an Aussie who hailed from Alice Springs, according to Cassie. “The Forest Room and all of Farm Deck are doing great in producing fresh oxy . . . as are the hydroponic tubes,” she added belatedly.
I didn’t blame her for neglecting the hydroponics, which lay on Recycling Deck. Nothing good came out of recycling, including the algae steaks that the Mess Hall cooks mixed with soy protein to give the vegetarians on the ship an alternative to real meat. As someone who had seen real hot dogs being made in Denver from meat scraps, I understood her attitude. It was similar to mine toward hot dogs. A real T-bone, New York Strip or Ribeye steak were the real deal. As I had told Bill many many times.
“Power?” the captain said. “How are the reactors? And the energy flow to the containment fields on the Antimatter Deck?”
“Captain, all three fusion reactors are producing power at rated levels,” responded Diego Suárez y Alonso, whose home was the seaside town of Fortaleza, Cassie had mentioned. “Neutron embrittlement of reactor vessel walls is miniscule. The armor metal is holding up fine. Power output can be increased with increased DT pellet feed. Sir!”
“Good to hear that,” said Captain Skorzeny, his tone thoughtful.
Was the man planning to run the reactors beyond their rated levels? That was dangerous, or so I had learned at Great Lakes. But so was running the thrusters at more than their rated levels of ten percent of the speed of light. The captain continued his function station inquiries, listening to what Wetstone at Communications, Yamamoto at Weapons and Chang at Tactical had to say for their stations. It was normal command behavior just prior to emergence from Alcubierre space-time. Every starship captain wanted to know his ship could operate at its full rated capabilities. Including the ability to fight off pirates, asteroid rebels and now, aliens of the Empire. Would we find friendly aliens at Kepler 22? Would there be Empire starships hiding behind their sensor cloaking field? Would we be fired upon the moment we emerged? Course, when we emerged, we would be heading in toward the local star at eleven psol. That was our exit speed as we escaped from the Empire in Kepler 37. So it would be our emergence speed here.
“Ninety seconds,” called Ibarra.
What? Had I nodded off? Where had more than twenty minutes disappeared to? Shaking my head I told myself to stop mental wool gathering and meandering among memories. I was part of a team. The same team that included the Bridge function stations and the top brass up there. My friends would be at their stations right now. Cassandra would be seated somewhere on Science Deck, watching her own image of the Bridge. Not far away was Oksana, in the Intelligence portion of the deck. Below them were Warren and Bill in Weapons and Armories Deck. Hundreds of other crew filled the other decks, all waiting and wondering about what we would find at Kepler 22.
“Heidi, if you see an immediate threat before I do, take action to protect the ship,” the captain said firmly.
“Understood. I am prepared to protect this vessel,” said the AI, her tone becoming half-masculine.
The captain’s order to the AI was something I had never before heard, or heard reported from other ships. But as I considered it, the order made sense. The AI’s senses were lightspeed-functioning. They included direct inputs from our sensor arrays and the true space electro-optical scope. If any being on the Star Glory would be the first to know of a threat, it would be the AI.
“Heidi, advise me on the status of our sensor arrays. Is everything operational?” the captain said, clearly needing to pass time.
“Ship external sensors are fully functional,” the AI said in a sing-song voice. “Sensors for x-rays, ultraviolet, infrared, far infrared, stellar wind, yellow light, ranging radar down to millimeter wavelength, beta and gamma rays, plasma sources, neutrinos, gamma rays and microwaves are all activated,” Heidi said. “In the realm of imagery, the ship’s electro-optical telescope has its aperture open. With it we can perform speckle interferometry and high-resolution near infrared spectroscopy, in addition to true space imaging of planets and moons. Other systems include radar pulse compression ranging, PAVE-PAWS phased array radar, and ultrawideband imaging radar.”
“Good. Maintain your active observation in all spectrums!”
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��Emerging,” called Ibarra.
The bulkhead vidscreen now changed. The Bridge image moved left while the right side became filled with an image of black space. White star dots filled that image. At its center was a tiny yellow orb that glowed brightly. I looked over to the other vidscreen by the Chief. Its imagery had changed from the gray of Alcubierre space-time. Now it held a system graphic image, with the yellow star located at the far left side of a top down view of the local system of star, planets, comets and anything else we might detect from our sensors and the electro-optical scope.
“Tactical!” the captain called sharply.
“No moving neutrino sources, sir,” answered Chang, sounding anxious. “No stationary neutrino sources near us either. Sir, it looks as if this part of space is empty of starships.”
“Understood.” The captain looked to the left side of the arc of function stations. “Astrogation! Reorient this ship at a right angle to our current course. We have to avoid passing into the magnetosphere! Set us to cruise parallel to the sphere’s boundary.”
“Activating port nose thrusters,” Ibarra said. “Sir, even if we thrust along this new vector track, our current track will still be headed inward until we counter our current momentum.”
“Understood.” The captain tapped his right armrest. “Engineering! Full power on the thrusters. Add antimatter flow to them. I want us up to eleven psol within a minute or less!”
“Activating all three thrusters,” the Chief said. “PO Stewart, turn on—”
I pulled my hands back from my AM control panel. “Chief, antimatter is now flowing below our deck and into the afterburner nozzles. Antimatter is now combining with the three fusion pulse plasma flares. Sir!”
“Captain, this ship is now moving sideways at eleven psol,” the Chief said, ignoring my anticipation of his order.
In the nearby vidscreen the captain nodded. “Tactical, talk to me about this system. What’s here?”
Hilary leaned forward to stare at her control panel and at a holo now glowing to the right of the panel. She brushed her black bangs away from her eyes.
“Sir, Kepler 22 is confirmed to be a yellow, G5V main sequence star. Electro-optical scope true space view shows five planets! Positions are going up on the system graphic on our front vidscreen.” The slim Chinese-American woman sat back a bit. I looked away from her image and over to the vidscreen next to the Chief. Its system graphic now grew a yellow star orb, with silvery dots for five planets.
“Details, Tactical,” Skorzeny said quickly.
“Sir, planet one is a Venus-size world orbiting at half an AU out from this star. Planet two is the known super-Earth located at 0.849 AU, in the middle of the system’s habitable zone. Planet three is an Earth-size world lying at 1.1 AU. It also lies in the habitable zone. Planet four is Mars-size. It’s at three AU out, which is beyond the habitable zone. Planet five is a Saturn-sized gas giant! It’s located at seven AU. There’s an asteroid belt at ten AU. Uh, the local Kuiper Belt of comets begins at 38 AU and extends out to 43 AU. The magnetosphere edge is at 45 AU. We are at 46 AU, in the lower range of this system’s Oort cloud of dispersed comets. Sir!”
The system graphic vidscreen grew dotted lines to show the circular orbits of all the planets and the outer belts, plus the edge of the magnetosphere. Our ship’s green dot showed just beyond the sphere’s boundary line. Our dot moved inward very slowly. To my surprise seven purple dots showed up one-third of the way around the edge of the magnetosphere. An eighth purple dot showed just above the gas giant. Ships!
“Captain!” called Chang. “There are eight stationary neutrino sources now going up! Seven are at the magnetosphere edge about a hundred degrees beyond us, while the eighth is orbiting next to the gas giant. They are shown as purple dots, sir.”
“Tactical!” yelled Kumisov. “Give me a readout on those emissions. Are they Empire ships? Or asteroid rebels or Earth generation ships?”
“Negative XO!” called Chang. “The flavors of the neutrino emissions do not match any Earth fusion reactor or fusion pulse thruster. Nor do they match the emissions from the Empire ships that hit us in 37. Sir!”
“Heidi,” called the captain. “Do the neutrino emissions match anything ever recorded from Sol system?”
“They do not,” responded the ship’s AI, sounding like Aunt Agatha on a cold winter day.
I recalled Agatha telling her grown sons to come inside, but only after knocking off the snow on their boots. The woman was older than my Mom by twenty years, and her sons had children of their own. But in keeping with the tradition of her tight-knit family, all three sons had returned to her small farm to put out bales of hay in the nearby corral for munching on by Aunt Agatha’s four heifers and one steer. It was a memory I cherished.
“Doctor Bjorg,” the captain said abruptly. “I see no one to talk to or trade with at this location. Nor do I see any sign of the Empire in this system. I propose we do a mini-jump to the spot where those seven ships are clustered near the edge of the magnetosphere. Those ships seem to be holding formation there, neither moving inward nor outward. What is your opinion?”
The Science Deck chief cleared his throat. “Captain, recommend we travel to where those seven ships are located. By now they know we have arrived here, assuming they have the same neutrino FTL sensors that we have. Let’s go there and see if their translator software is as good as the Empire’s.”
I looked to the Chief. Who was already looking my way. “PO Stewart, kill the antimatter flow.”
I tapped my control panel. The shimmer of the nine feed tubes remained the same, but the flow rate sensor froze at its record of 2.1 liters expended so far. “Chief, antimatter flow stopped.”
“Engineering, shut off the thrusters and the antimatter feed,” called the captain. “Once that is done, give me a verbal countdown to re-entry into Alcubierre space-time. Astrogation, provide Heidi with the coordinates to those seven ships. Heidi, feed those coordinates into the Alcubierre space-time modulus formation program!”
“Sending coordinates,” called Ibarra.
“Coordinates entered into the formation program,” the AI said softly, sounding far more relaxed than when we had arrived.
To my left the Chief put out his hand to just above his Alcubierre control panel.
“Captain, going Alcubierre mini-jump on the count of five. Four, three, two, one—”
The bulkhead vidscreen showed the gray of Alcubierre space-time alongside the image of the Bridge.
“Exiting Alcubierre space-time,” said Heidi.
The black space and white dots of normal space-time filled the side of the vidscreen that had held grayness.
In my mind I finished my count. The mini-jump had lasted just 41 seconds and some nanoseconds. Which seemed right considering we were traveling maybe 50 AU to get a third of the way around this system, measured at its plane of planetary ecliptic. I did not compute that distance number. It just seemed right, based on my mental intuition for where we had to go, based on the system graphic image and its depiction of this system. It was the kind of thing that my Great Lakes profs had marveled at. Before telling me to use my tablet to work the numbers and verify what I told them.
“Tactical, report!”
“Sir, seven very large starships are clustered about 900 kilometers from us.” Chang tapped her control panel. “I’m putting up the electro-optical scope image of them on the front vidscreen. Sir!”
The bulkhead vidscreen’s true space image was replaced by a different true space image. In this image there were seven red starships that resembled long pencils with rounded ends. No fins showed. Exhaust funnels were apparent at one end of each ship. But the scale at the right of the image was what shocked me. Each of those pencil ships was ten kilometers long! And two klicks wide! Each was larger than any ship ever produced by humanity.
“Damn,” muttered the captain. “Those are biggies. Doctor Bjorg, is your First Contact program cleansed of the EarthRise starfield?”
“It is, Captain Skorzeny. The package is ready to transmit,” the Swede said in a low rumble.
“Send it to Heidi.”
The Swede tapped a control patch on his left armrest. “Sending.”
“Heidi, transmit the program by both neutrino comlink and AM radio. Route any incoming response to Mr. Wetstone.”
“Transmitting,” the AI said in a low soprano.
Seconds passed. Then a minute. Then two minutes. I glanced around. Dolores and her three Spacers were all watching a bulkhead vidscreen near their station. The Chief was watching his vidscreen, which now had the same multiple images as the Bridge’s front vidscreen. Those were the system graphic, the true space image of the seven ships and the overhead Bridge view. Which were also the images now showing on my vidscreen.
“Incoming neutrino comlink signal!” called Wetstone eagerly. “Sir, it is audiovisual and matches the frequency of our outgoing neutrino signal. Putting it up.”
My bulkhead vidscreen now grew a fourth image next to the ship imagery.
Five beings who resembled orangutans stared at us. They had reddish-brown hair all over, leather straps that crossed their shoulders and which supported brown bags that held silvery metal objects, and a forward-leaning stance that seemed natural to all of them. The room in which they stood was half-filled with brown-barked trees whose thick limbs supported fat green leaves. Yellow balls that might be fruit dangled from some limbs. Beyond the trees that filled the room’s middle were metal walls adorned with vidscreens and green vines, cupped seats before each screen, and six other orang-type beings who either moved from one station to another, or sat on a large branch, holding something that resembled an old-style iPad in their laps. No one was wearing clothes other than the leather straps and carrybags.
Star Glory (Empire Series Book 1) Page 7
