Project Sail

by Anthony DeCosmo

  “I chose to join so I could leave the orphanage; no one forced me.”

  “You were fed coactione-oxetine in grade school so you would feel a desire to fight for your country, to do what they asked.”

  Kelly stood quiet, staring at the radio, her thoughts traveling backwards in time to the orphanage, the academy, her first trip into space. Those had been her decisions…right?

  “Your parents are still alive, and I can tell you how to find them. Maybe they did not want you then, but I imagine they would love to meet the young woman you have grown to be. They are your only family. Stay away from the artifact and I will send you the entire file on how the military used you, as if you were just another drone.”

  She went silent, her eyes staring at the tarp-covered floor.

  Hawthorne transmitted, “Kelly, are you there?”

  “Is it true, Commander? What he said?”

  “I never heard of a program like that but it would not surprise me.”

  Lazarus radioed, “Do nothing, Lieutenant, and I will tell you the truth. Think of it; you can meet your real father. You can have a family.”

  King wrapped an arm around Kelly and she accepted it for a long second, and then stepped away and asked, “You have my medical records, I did the pre-flight screenings, am I on Push now?”

  “You were taking it yourself back on Titan.”

  “Yes, but I have not taken any since we left there. Dr. King, has UVI or the military fed me Push since Project Sail began?”

  “As far as I can tell, no.”

  “Okay then, I will worry about this later. For now, my Commander asked me to do something, and I am going to do it.”

  49. Entanglements

  “Nine minutes until the cylinder activates again,” Coffman said.

  Hawthorne asked everyone, “Is that enough time to load the nukes?”

  When no one else answered, Phipps said, “Yes, there are automatic loaders but I cannot do it alone.”

  Hawthorne looked to Kost who still sat at the XO station and asked, “What am I forgetting?”

  She replied, “I am not in communication with them; I just read the note they left behind.”

  “Hey, you did your part,” Wren told her. “We will take it from here. Come on Phipps, I’ll help out.”

  He turned to leave but she grabbed his hand.

  “I was conscious the whole time. I could not respond, but I could still hear, Leo. I could still hear,” and she smiled which caused him to do the same before Phipps pulled him off the bridge.

  Meanwhile Fisk retreated to a dark corner, trembling and sweating, but silent.

  Coffman walked for the exit telling Hawthorne, “I will see to engineering; you will want power, I assume.”

  Hawthorne watched him go and then called to his navigator, “Hey Marvin, is that course plotted?”

  “Yes, sir, I just wish Stein was here to fly it.”

  “He would love this shit but you will do fine.”

  Warner chimed in, “This is crazy and it won’t work,” but she did not sound upset about the idea. Except for Fisk, a collective euphoria had settled over the group now that their fates felt settled. “You are sure he won’t take out the missiles until they are at fifty kilometers?”

  Hawthorne answered, “That’s standard distance for optimal deflection.”

  She said, “At fifty kilometers, a forty-kiloton warhead won’t even give the battleship sunburn.”

  “Then we better hope the warheads get closer.”

  Kelly Thomas broadcast from the surface, “Commander, are you there? I am ready to begin.”

  His heart sank as he thought about what must be going through her head.

  “Yes Kelly, I’m here and I am sorry about this.”

  “It isn’t your fault. But Commander—Jonathan—I just want to tell you, like, I don’t know if that Lazarus was full of shit, but whatever the case, what I want to say is, well, I love you, you know? Whoever my father really was, well, I hope he was like you.”

  He answered the way any father would answer his angel in a moment like this; he lied.

  “We will get out of this just fine. I know it.”

  “I have to go now; I think time is running short. Good luck.”

  “You, too.”

  After the transmission from the surface ended, Ellen Kost said, “Commander, you should take your seat.”

  “It’s okay; you need it more than me.”

  Leanne Warner corrected, “She means that one,” and the Air Boss pointed to the Captain’s chair at the center of the bridge.

  He froze, his eyes falling on the station that had sat vacant since he deposed Charles.

  Jonathan Hawthorne had reluctantly inherited the Captain’s chair once before, only to be dragged into battle by his crew. This time he took that seat and led a new crew into a fight of his choosing.

  ---

  Lieutenant Kelly Thomas grabbed two satchels from the corner of the cavern, the last items salvaged from the Army-in-a-Box.

  “I know you want to do this for the Commander,” Ira King spoke as the two women stood in the sealed cave, “but it does not appear you have any weapons left.”

  She answered, “I have one, but it is a suicide mission.”

  Horrified, Dr. King insisted, “I will not allow you to sacrifice yourself.”

  Kelly carried the satchels over to the robotic drone she had long ago nicknamed “Larry,” who was the last of three friends.

  “I did not mean suicide for me…”

  …Wren reported by intercom from two decks below, “Locked and loaded, bitches; two ass-kickers in the pipe.”

  Hawthorne turned his attention forward and asked, “Marvin, you still ready to go?”

  “Yes, Commander, we are only waiting for power.”

  Behind him, Warner reported, “Missile tubes read green, just give the word…”

  …Kelly Thomas knelt alongside her canine-shaped companion and calmly strapped the satchels and their explosive charges to his haunches where they fit perfectly.

  As she prepared Larry for battle, she wondered if Lazarus spoke the truth. Had she been born into bondage? Was she a soldier by choice or merely another drone?

  Kelly wanted to believe that her decisions in life had been her own, but soldiering never felt like a natural fit. Other than working with robots, she was not a particularly competent warrior, but she never shied away from fighting. Was that determination and courage real, or the result of drugs?

  Her thoughts turned again to the vertical farms on Earth where she might have tended crops with her three robotic companions. However, that dream would not come true, so she shoved it aside and focused, driven this time by the one desire that was truly hers: the desire to make Jonathan Hawthorne proud.

  Using her military-grade thinker chip, she merged her thoughts with Larry’s as she had hundreds of times over the years, but knowing this time would be the last.

  First, she sent clear instructions so he could act independently should she become incapacitated. Next, she told him good-bye.

  The drone did not respond.

  Before she stepped away, Kelly wrapped her arms around the machine’s spine and pressed her cheek to its cold metallic skeleton that warmed only when touched by a tear…

  …The intercom activated and another message came to Hawthorne, this time from Coffman.

  “The furnace is working. We should have enough power for this trip in one minute.”

  “Great, how long until—”

  “Two minutes.”

  “We are cutting it close, professor.”

  Lazarus’ stolen battleship was a speck in the distance when viewed through the bridge window. Soon it would be much closer…

  …Larry dashed from the research cave, running at top speed across the field that was littered with the remains of battle. His featureless round head bobbed as he ran, and while he was the only thing moving through the shallow valley, he was not alone.

  Kell
y Thomas ran with him, her eyes seeing through his lenses, her face feeling the wind and touching the ground through his sensors. Her heart beating, his servos spinning; her respiration increasing, his generators reaching peak output.

  As he approached the danger zone, launch tubes opened along his spine and gun barrels protruded from his shoulders…

  …Hawthorne’s pep talk to the crew was only a few minutes old, but it seemed like a dream in which he had played the part of the brave commander. Now the moment had come to carry out his plan and he nearly faltered. For all his brave words, staring death in the face still made him blink.

  Nonetheless, he forced the order from his lips: “Fire one.”

  Warner complied with the press of a virtual button and the starboard side tube ejected a sleek white missile speeding away from SE 185 at Mach 23.

  “Missile away, two-hundred eighty five kilometers and closing, impact in forty-two seconds.”

  To Jonathan Hawthorne, that sounded like a long time. To a creature of Lazarus’ composition who measured the universe in atoms, forty-two seconds must seem like an eternity.

  As he eyed the battleship, he could almost hear his computerized friend laughing…

  …Both Terrible Ivans sensed the intruder’s approach and turned to face the tiny robotic dog.

  The fired cannons, spewing dozens of explosive rounds, but their tracking scanners struggled with Larry’s built-in countermeasures. A trail of explosions chased the drone but could not catch him.

  Larry responded with two missiles fired in quick succession as he swerved and dodged but still closed on the transmission dish, now only fifty meters away.

  One warhead for each giant. Not enough to topple the Titans, but their cannons fell silent and streams of gray smoke rose from holes where bolts of blue lightning danced like the heart of a thunderstorm.

  A walking defense turret maneuvered to intercept Larry’s path and nearly sliced him with a cutting laser. The dog-like machine sprang into the air and decapitated the turret with one vengeful talon. It exploded and a shower of shrapnel rained across the field with bits falling on both the dormant Probe 581 and the vacant Alliance shuttle.

  The transmission dish was only a few steps away…

  …Coffman called from engineering, “Almost ready, Commander.”

  “Okay, Marvin, stand by. Leanne, give me the missile track.”

  “First bird is downrange one hundred and fifty klicks, time to target twenty-one seconds, time to fifty-kilometer mark fourteen seconds.”

  The bridge door opened and Wren hurried in, nearly out of breath.

  “Didn’t want to miss the fireworks. Phipps headed to engineering.”

  Hawthorne’s eyes darted from screen to screen, one filled by the Sergey Gorshkov another following the nuke as it flew toward the target in the shadow of G-Moon.

  Despite the advanced guidance systems, fancy engines, and technology at his disposal, Hawthorne knew his plan relied on his sense of timing…

  …As it had done a million times before, the alien artifact activated, its signal radiating out and filling the chamber where it fell on the deaf ears of dead astronauts.

  Unlike any of those previous emissions, a high-tech intruder grabbed this signal, taking hold of the transmission the way a man might grab a rope and pull.

  That signal left the cylinder, traveling the conduit built by Lazarus’ laborers until it reached the parabolic antenna constructed outside. From there it went skyward, reaching through G-Moon’s atmosphere, into space, and boarding the Russian ghost ship…

  ... Leanne Warner eyed one of the three screens hanging in the air around her station and reported, “Commander, that virus we isolated in the lighting systems is trying to get out.”

  “Guess he noticed the missile,” Hawthorne answered sarcastically. “Probably wants to sabotage our environmental systems.”

  Coffman reported from the lower decks, “The engines are charged.”

  At the same time, Leanne told him, “Missile at fifty-kilometer threshold.”

  A solitary laser shot from the Sergey Gorshkov and targeted the nuclear weapon with seemingly no more concern than a man shooing a fly…

  …Larry leapt into the air above the antenna like a great bird of prey taking flight. The charges on his haunches detonated, disintegrating the drone, the dish and the robots protecting it. The blast changed into a cloud of debris shrouding the field, the dormant spaceships, and the cave entrance in a gray and black fog…

  …Kelly Thomas screamed as her link with Larry terminated in screeching feedback, and then she collapsed to the cavern floor, her eyes closed and her lungs no longer seeking breath…

  …”Tommy, hit it!”

  In the blink of an eye, SE 185 traveled two hundred and ninety kilometers, passing the first missile and sending a wall-like shockwave of high-energy particles and gamma rays barreling into the battleship’s bow, throwing the defensive laser off-line and twisting the dreadnaught until its broadside lay bare.

  “Fire two!”

  The second missile launched from the port side and covered the distance in less than two seconds, detonating at point-blank range and ripping a hole in the behemoth’s hull followed by a nasty EMP…

  …King dropped to her knees next to Kelly Thomas’ motionless body.

  “Lord, help this soul; she is just a little girl who deserves a life of her own.”

  With no time to search for her medical kit, King turned to techniques that relied on her skill and knowledge, not technology. She pressed her lips to the Lieutenant’s and gave her breath, and then drove her hands into the young woman’s chest as she attempted cardiopulmonary resuscitation.

  “Please, Lord, guide my hands…”

  …The first missile passed its mother ship and hit the target, exploding in nuclear fire against the strongest hull mankind had yet put into space, the impact only a dozen meters away from the hole made by the second missile.

  Plating peeled away from the Sergey Gorshkov and the mighty ship wobbled like an ocean liner listing at sea.

  But the target remained, gutted in the mid-section with its inner decks exposed to the vacuum of space and careening laterally as navigation and propulsion systems lost their grip. But still operational and dangerous.

  Coffman burst on to the bridge and looked over Kost’s shoulder at the XO’s station.

  “The artifact transmitted, Jonathan. Lazarus hijacked the signal.”

  Fisk stepped from his corner and cautiously asked, “Did we do it?”

  Hawthorne sighed before answering, “We did the best we could…”

  …Dr. King funneled her faith and belief into a prayer for the young girl’s life, but education and training guided her hands.

  Just as she feared the worst, Kelly Thomas coughed and her eyes opened.

  King nearly collapsed, her body and soul exhausted.

  “Did I pass out? Am I okay?”

  Ira considered what might be happening in orbit at that moment.

  “We do not know yet…”

  …Hawthorne stood from the Captain’s chair and watched the damaged battleship, expecting it to swing around and blast them into oblivion.

  “Bring the diametric drive online,” he ordered. “We can only run now.”

  Coffman said, “I am picking up a gravitational anomaly forming onboard the Russian ship.”

  Hawthorne saw that Coffman had called up several screens at the XO station that were tied to ship’s survey equipment, except instead of studying G-Moon they were pointed at the Sergey Gorshkov.

  Wren pointed at a display and asked, “Professor, what is this?”

  As Coffman eyed the scanner, his face contorted, as if he discovered a puzzle within a puzzle.

  “That’s synchrotron radiation.”

  “Like what you measured coming out of the cylinder,” Kost said.

  “Jonathan…” Coffman started but did not finish as the sight ahead stole everyone’s attention.

  The
Sergey Gorshkov slowly collapsed in on itself, bow and aft bending until nearly touching. Hawthorne thought about Martin Chambers, crushed by a runaway gravitational field.

  Perhaps Fisk saw the similarity as well as he asked in a panicked voice that rose to a scream, “What is that? What is it?”

  “I don’t know,” Hawthorne said.

  Kost suggested, “It’s them.”

  Coffman countered, “Or a gravitational anomaly. It can happen.”

  Tommy Starr interrupted their shock with a dose of reality: “Commander, we are only ten klicks from that.”

  “Shit! Tommy, thrusters, full reverse. Get us clear!”

  SE 185 retreated, moving a hundred kilometers away in seconds, but by then the battleship had lost its form, becoming a shrinking metal ball.

  “Commander,” Ellen called as the console grabbed her attention. “We are picking up a transmission from the battleship.”

  Hawthorne walked over to his old station and tapped a control switch, feeding the call over the bridge’s speakers.

  The cry that played on the bridge sounded similar to the voices Hawthorne had heard screaming for release from Lazarus’ control, but this time the voice belonged to Gerald Faust.

  The transmission cut and a minute later all traces of the Sergey Gorshkov disappeared from the universe, leaving only questions behind.

  “What the hell was that?” Wren gasped.

  Fisk said. “You saw, it was a gravitational anomaly.”

  Hawthorne urgently opened a comm line to the surface.

  “SE 185 to surface team, Kelly are you there?”

  Dr. King answered and his heart jumped, assuming the worst.

  “She’s here, Commander, safe and sound, although we had a bit of a scare. Shock and that damn implant of hers are to blame. If you ask me, she should have the thing removed.”

  Kelly spoke for herself, “We knocked out the transmission dish. Did it work?”

  He told her, “Yes, Kelly, it worked.”

  “Larry was a hero,” she said.

  “No Kelly,” he corrected, “you were. Now sit tight, I’m coming down for you.”

  Leanne Warner stood and said, “Oh no, I will get them. I am the only person on this damn ship that has not been on the surface yet. If I don’t get out of here soon, I’m going to strangle someone,” and she made her artificial hand spin in circles to emphasize her point.