“I’ll bet most of those containers are empty,” Allen said, “in order to have made the trip from Earth in eight days.” Nods of agreement.
“Got the science suite on it now,” Mark said. “Scan the entire thing, just like you did when you intercepted Eternity, with this fine gentleman aboard.” He indicated Kato. A glowing x-ray like image of the other ship rendered slowly in 3D, in the center of the bridge above the location display. Nobody dared even breathe. “One… two… three…” Mark counted off the occupants as they were shown in the ship’s quarters. “Six… seven… eight.”
“Those freighters only have a max of eight crew,” Wilson said.
“How’d you know she’s not one of the occupants?” Elias said.
“They’re all hanging out in the main, open area. None of them looks to be confined.”
Oh God, Kato thought. All this and she’s not even there. Looks of concern and disappointment all around. Silence. “Wait! There!” Mark said, pointing excitedly at the now-complete display of the other ship’s inner structure. “There’s someone in that cargo container!”
“My God! You’re right!” Elias said. “Holy sh… crap! They stuck her in one of those!”
“She’s very much alive,” Mark said, “though inactive. She probably hasn’t a clue where she is.” Kato stared, blinking, at the image.
“Allen, get us alongside Huo. Meanwhile, I’ll keep trying to hail them.”
Soon, Huo X-37-B was a mere one hundred meters away. The Sun shone brilliantly on her white fore section, which was shaped like a larger version of the crew compartment and cockpit from one of the old space shuttles. The excess width of that part cast a long shadow down the side of the ship, leaving the forward of the visible cargo containers, including the one that held Zara, in shadow.
“Huo X-37-B, we know you have Zara Sasake-Robbins confined in a cargo container,” Elias said. “Dock with us now, and hand her over.” Still no response. Elias clenched his teeth. “Grrrr!”
Wilson narrowed his eyes, and looked at Elias. “You know, I don’t think they could get her to us even if they wanted to. Those containers will be sealed, and it doesn’t look like there’s a way to get in there from the crew compartment. There’s no access to her, until the container is unloaded and opened!”
“Christ, you’re right!” Elias said, wide-eyed. “In fact, the crew might not even know she’s there. It could be they just loaded what they thought was an empty container. Think, guys. What can we do?”
Kato began to turn a sickly shade of green, and turned to his right. “It’s over, Martin.” Kato shook his head. “It’s over.”
“Kato, stop panicking,” Martin said sternly. “You’ve pulled off the impossible several times now. We can do this. Hang in there.” Kato sighed.
“We could mate with the container like we did with Eternity, cut a hole in the side, and extract her that way,” Mark said.
Suddenly, a jarring male voice filled the cabin. His accent was a mixture of Korean and Chinese. It was a thin, high, rattling voice. “I can, and am, coming to get you. Back off now, or you will face unimaginable torture. You will wish you had never existed.” Then, there was utter silence on the bridge. Jaws fell open and eyes widened in fear. The hair stood up on the back of the necks of everyone present. After a long moment, Elias looked at Kato. “Was that…”
Kato nodded. “It was Seung Yi. I’d know his voice anywhere. He’s definitely alive.”
Precious seconds ticked by. “I’m muting the comms. From Ceres, anyway,” Elias said. “We have a job to do.” He looked directly at Allen. “We’ll give it the ‘kiss.’ Pull up next to the container. Then, stretch the smart skin out to form a seal, cut a hole in the vessel, and go get her. Wilson, go down to the docking controls and get ready.”
“Aye,” Allen said. He began to maneuver IIX closer to the other ship, very carefully. Wilson unbuckled, and clambered towards the back of the bridge as though he was climbing down a ladder. He used the handholds in the floor, as the ship was still under power at half a gravity.
“By the way, everybody,” Allen said, “we’re only eighty-one hundred K from Ceres now. We have twenty minutes to get this done.” Everybody turned around, Ceres was behind them now, and looked out a viewport at the rear of the bridge. The body was much larger now; about the size of a tennis ball held at arm’s length. Craters and other surface details could be seen.
IIX was ten meters from Huo X-37-B, and closing slowly. She filled up everyone’s field of view. Suddenly, the other ship began to roll about her axis.
“CRAP!” three crewmembers said at once.
“She’s trying to stop us mating,” Elias said. “No way we can get this done now.”
Kato closed his eyes, and held tensely onto his seat. “Ideas, people,” Elias said. Others looked off into the distance, their brilliant minds working quickly.
“Lasers!” Mark said at last. “We have powerful scientific lasers, normally used for vaporizing rock!”
“Put a hole in it?” Wilson asked, incredulously, over the intercom from his post further back in the ship.
“No. Cut the container free. It’s anchored at both ends. Once free, it’ll float away from the ship, and then we can do what we want with it.”
“Right. It’s all we’ve got,” Elias said. “Do it.”
Chapter 35
Seung Yi watched, rapt, from his palatial suite atop the main pyramid. A very high magnification telescope image displayed both ships. He squinted against the great light from both craft’s engines. Their bodies were only just visible, as the optics compensated for the glare. IIX had maneuvered almost right up to Huo X-37-B. Then, the freighter began to roll. Obviously, she was trying to defend herself against the imposter. Seung Yi managed the merest crack of a smile, and sighed with relief. IIX appeared to back off slightly, but stayed in formation with Huo X-37-B. Both of them were descending quickly towards his world’s surface, decelerating as they did so. The cargo that he, and the entire dynasty, had worked so hard for, would be there in less than twenty minutes. The telescope image gradually grew clearer, as the distance decreased. Seung Yi never took his eyes off it. Then, something completely unexpected happened: a cargo container broke free from the freighter. It tumbled off into space, like a shot put finally released from its spin. Seung Yi began to shake his head slowly. “No!” he snarled. Then he began to mutter under his breath, his face like thunder, his tone not a plea, but one of absolute fury. “No, no, no. Oh no. Not this time. I’ve come too far for you to get away.”
Seung Yi’s mind flashed back centuries. Absolute humiliation at losing his prized, and extremely expensive, spaceship. He became a laughingstock. Being stripped naked in front of the world would have been better. Then, he had gradually descended into madness. His days were a blur. Agony beyond knowing. The inner walls of an asylum. Many drugs that messed up his vision. Then eventual release… into a world that now saw him as weak and disturbed.
“Chase it down!” Elias ordered. Allen turned the ship on a dime, causing her occupants to hold onto their seats, and pursued the long, white container. The freighter appeared to rush off upwards. She was still decelerating with respect to Ceres. The container was not, and hence, neither was IIX. Both were falling very quickly towards the surface of the dwarf planet.
“The laws of physics are on my side,” Seung Yi said to himself with great satisfaction as he watched. “They can’t stop in time. Every last one of them will die.”
IIX was now alongside the container. “How in the heck are we going to stop it tumbling?” Wilson asked, panic evident in his voice.
“I’m gonna use the exhaust from the close maneuvering thrusters,” Allen said. “If we hit it just right, near the top, we can hopefully exert enough force stop it. I’m thankful it’s just an axial spin, not a precession.” Zara’s flying prison was now dead ahead of them. Everyone watched, rapt, as barely-visible bursts of gas were emitted towards the long object. It gradually came to a
halt.
“Kiss of life!” Elias ordered. “The surface is coming up very rapidly indeed!”
Allen deftly turned IIX ninety degrees to the right, repositioning the ship side on to the container, two meters away. Wilson, situated in the side corridor behind the bridge that led to the hatch, immediately commanded the ship’s skin to stretch out and pucker against the side of the container. “Seal is good! Pressurized!” Wilson said. Kato, Mark and Karla floated behind him in the now weightless environment of the side corridor, looking directly at a circle of the cargo container’s white skin. “Cutting…” A circle of the white metal fell away from them, glowing at the edges. There, in the dimly lit void beyond, was Zara. Wilson dodged to one side, while Kato propelled himself straight through the opening at speed.
“DAD!” the wide-eyed girl screamed. “What… how…”
“No time!” Kato yelled. “I’ll explain later. Just get in there!” Father and daughter pushed themselves off the far wall of the container. Being very practiced in moving in zero gravity, they shot through the one-and-a-half meter opening as one, back into IIX. Karla caught Zara, and Mark caught Kato.
“Sealing!” Wilson yelled. The tube of the ship’s skin crimped itself off. The end, resembling an octopus’s sucker, detached from the now-empty box.
“Allen, can you get us around Ceres, since we can’t stop in? I’ll be a close call,” Elias said.
“Doing it!” The main engines lit up. There was no time to wait for everybody to strap in. The occupants of the side tunnel were thrown uncomfortably against the wall due to the sudden acceleration.
“The surface is still coming up pretty darn quickly! Compute a solution and warp us the hell out of here!” Elias yelled.
“Already on it! Computing fifty percent done. I just set a random point far away as our destination. Stand by to warp in forty-five seconds.”
Chapter 36
Seung Yi was aghast, as IIX streaked laterally across the surface of Entara, her engines shining like the Sun. His pupils contracted like those of a snake. “Oh no. Not this time. I vowed to make her pay, and pay she will. There… is… one… option… left…” He paused for a few seconds, weighing something very heavy in his heart. “Put me through to the Advanced Antimatter Facility,” he said at last. “Show me the containment field control panel.” The two-by-thee meter panel took his up entire display, save for an inset box showing the action outside in space. The array of containment bottles on the display were all showing one hundred percent.
ENTARA ONLY EXISTS BECAUSE OF ME. IT IS MINE TO DO WITH AS I PLEASE.
“Display field control system.” The prompt for the three alphanumeric passwords appeared. Seung Yi recalled the sequences easily. All three were entered, as he touched virtual buttons on the midair screen. Another panel was then displayed. One red button, in the bottom left corner, read: DISABLE ANTIMATTER CONTAINMENT SYSTEM. One last look at the rapidly disappearing IIX. “You crossed the wrong person. You will pay with your lives.” Seung Yi reached out. His finger hovered over the button for a few seconds. Then, he pressed it. How long would it take? Would he feel anything? What about… Ceres was consumed by the savage, boiling heart of a new star. Seconds later, any object within millions of kilometers was vaporized by heat and light beyond comprehension. The wave of pure energy expanded in all directions, as though looking for its next targets. Jupiter’s atmosphere was buffeted, as it was the closest planet.
Twenty-one minutes and several hundred million kilometers later, weakened considerably by its expansion, the burst reached Earth. It was first detected by automated observatories on the far side of the Moon. Within nanoseconds, a warning message was generated, and sent Earthward. It read:
UNEXPECTED CELESTIAL EVENT. ORIGIN: EXTRASOLAR. WAVELENGTHS: ALL. TEMPERATURE: 95 MILLION DEGREES. EXPECTED DAMAGE: CATA…
The message never made it.
Philadelphia stood tall, as a showcase of America’s rebuilt cities. Unearthly needles pointed at the sky. Robots labored tirelessly on reconstructing its outer areas. However, one thing had never changed in that city: a love of baseball. A little way outside of downtown, the wrecked MLB stadium had been one of the first structures to be renewed. It was now named Richard Lee Park, after one of the lesser known signers of the Declaration of Independence. The Phillies were playing the LA Dodgers. The game was in its eighth inning, and the stadium was packed to capacity. The sultry summer evening had given way to darkness. Row after row of mothers, fathers, children, grandparents, and people of all colors and creeds cheered their beloved teams on. The smell of hot dogs and popcorn wafted through the air. Children, bored with the game, played with electronic devices. The younger ones laid their heads on their parents’ laps, beginning to drift off to sleep. The jumbotron, a midair display the size of a football field, showed the player at bat, crouching, swinging the slugger in a circular motion, preparing for a fast ball.
Within a second, the sky was twice as bright as midday. The light was accompanied by intense heat. The crowd looked up and screamed as one, shielding their eyes. All sixty thousand rushed for the exits at the same time. Men, women and children were trampled in the stampede. Some fell into the rows below, crashing into others and causing a domino effect. The players ran for the dugouts as fast as they could. The commentator stopped mid-sentence. The air reverberated with terror.
Several million people were watching the game at home on their displays. Suddenly, the screens went blank, replaced by glowing words saying SIGNAL LOST. Then the power went out completely, leaving their homes in darkness. NORAD went dark. DEFCON 5 was ordered within seconds. Satellites ceased broadcasting. Those using neural implants were suddenly jerked back into reality, as their communications were scrambled. They rushed outside. The sight that greeted them convinced them that the end was nigh. They rushed back indoors and began to pray.
The power grid for the entire western world ceased to function. The land heated up, and rising air caused gale-force winds to batter everything. Signs, fences, wires, and some trees were leveled. Windows were blown in. Coastal areas were hit with hurricane force winds, due to the sudden heat differential between land and sea. America, and every country on that side of the planet, was bathed in the intense, unearthly light.
Spacecraft on final approach to the Earth Transport interchange lost all ability to communicate or maneuver. Helpless, they crashed into the terminals, with a groan of metal and exploding glass. Decompression in the terminals was almost instant. People and objects were ejected into space. They soon disappeared, flailing and gasping, into the distance. Pressure doors inside the ETI slammed shut immediately to contain the damage. The force of the outrushing air from the punctured sections nudged the offending ships back. They tumbled slowly away from the station.
Twenty seconds after the sky had apparently exploded, the intense light slowly began to dim. One minute later, it was once again a black, starry summer night in America. The heat had not been intense enough to cause any injuries worse than a bad sunburn. The high winds stopped as quickly as they had started. It was as if nothing had happened—except that every single light was off. Great cities stood in eerie darkness. Displays came back on in homes that had backup power supplies. All their programming had been replaced with one screen. The top was a blue band, bearing the seal of the US Government. Below that was a white band, with the letters U.S.E.C.N. on it. This stood for US emergency communications network. At the bottom was another blue band, with white writing on it: AN UNEXPECTED EVENT HAS OCCURRED. STAY INDOORS AND AWAIT FURTHER INSTRUCTIONS.
Chapter 37
Kato and Zara hugged each other as tightly as they could, while being pushed against the flat white wall of IIX’s side tunnel. No words were exchanged. “Stand by to warp in forty-five seconds,” was heard over the intercom.
“May as well stay here, instead of trying to climb back to our seats,” Wilson said. “The acceleration will be over soon.”
“Agreed,” Karla said. She touched Zara’
s hand, which was presently behind Kato’s back. “You’re freezing, honey! As soon as we can, I want to get you to the med bay and check you over.”
“I’m fine,” Zara snapped.
“But… what were the conditions like in there?”
“I don’t want to talk about it right now.”
A few seconds later, the travelers were weightless again. The view outside went black. “Back in warp,” Mark said. “Now we can float up to the bridge.” Elias and everybody else watched expectantly as the crew floated back into the large circular space, one by one. Zara’s dirty face appeared, framed by greasy hair. There was much clapping and cheering. Elias floated over and hugged Zara. Wilson returned to his station, opened the display, and ran his eyes over the data. “Power output is good. Ablation normal. Data throughput good. WHOA!”
Elias’ head snapped around. “What?”
“The gravitometers are going crazy! This is… this is… nuts!” Wilson shook his head slowly.
“What are you seeing?”
“The gravity well around Ceres…”—he looked up at Elias—“doesn’t exist anymore!”
“How can that be?”
“I haven’t the first clue! The equipment must be off or something.”
Elias blew air out through puckered lips. “How far are we from there?”
“Five-and-a-half million kilometers. I picked a spot in the middle of nowhere, around three hundred and fifty million K away, as our destination. Then we can assess our options.”
Kato's War: Book Two of the Kato's War series Page 17
