Every Last Mother's Child
Page 3
Chapter 2: Surveyor Flight 008
Surveyor flights were the kingdom’s long-range patrol recon spacecraft. When they went on their patrols the crews kissed and hugged their family good bye knowing that they would be back in two or three months. The crew of ten was prepared to stay in space for upwards of six months. The oversized landing craft were quick and fully stealthy. The crews were well trained and their equipment was the envy of the Imperial Armed Forces. On more than one occasion a Surveyor crew had surprised the commanding officer of an imperial war ship by just showing up under his guns with no warning. Their job was to check out a situation and report back. It had been the surveyor flights that had first checked out the area that the comet had hit months before. It had been their data that provided the Kingdom’s authorities the information they needed to formulate plans. They had also checked out the after impact trajectory before and after the collisions ensuring that the rocks would not damage anything important to the kingdom. The Surveyor flights were armed very lightly, barely enough to defend themselves if attacked. Their defense was speed and stealth.
Surveyor flight “Double Oh Eight” was just finishing up a patrol of the far reaches of the Trena system. None of the other surveyor flights had seen the explosion and collision of the asteroid and the comet. For whatever reason the defense establishment, had missed the collision up until a few hours before. Even as the Surveyor flights were being dispatched General Qoum was ordering a full investigation as to why they had missed this event.
“I am so sick and tired of canned fruit!” one of the sensor operators complained as he pushed a small snack can of fruit away from him. The fresh fruit had been gone for at least two weeks after the start of the mission. Surveyor flights by their nature were never re-supplied underway; rarely read that almost never did they dock with a space station or other vessel to get fresh food. Everyone was sick by this time of the canned food. “When I get back to the world I am going to that farmers market on South State Street and buy one of everything!”
“Yeah,” The second watch pilot absently agreed turning the page on a novel he had read at least twice in the last year. “When I get in I am going to Mega Books and buy the whole frigging store!” He took the book and launched it at a trash receptacle across the crew’s galley and recreation area. The first officer was about to say something to both of them when the lights dimmed and the alert lights strobe red.
“Attention on deck!” the loud speakers blared, “Action Stations. We have a Mountain Event.”
That ended all conversation, gripping or otherwise. A Mountain Event was a national defense alert that meant the kingdom was in severe danger. The crew reported to their stations just as the command pilot lit off the star drives and put the landing craft on a speed run to the area of interest. It took them less than an hour to get on scene. All the way in the Surveyor double oh eight was on the job. By the time they had arrived on the scene they had confirmed that the targets were non-military. They had determined that the targets were sky junk of some sort, and that they were on an orbital trajectory that would impact Trena in less than a year. They had not found any sign of Surveyor 011.
Surveyor Double Oh Eight would stay on the scene for three weeks. None of the crew complained about the extra time on station. They were joined by a second and third surveyors. The three spacecraft gathered over 100 million gigabytes of data and transmitted it by secure means back to The Mountain. When they left three weeks after first arriving on station they knew without a doubt their world was going to be killed and what was going to kill it. By the time the three space ships landed back at Fletcher Militia base, the crews were heartsick. They were even more heart sick when Military Police officers escorted them to The Mountain under protective custody. Of the many injustices that were about to befall the citizens of Trena; this was by far the first, and most painless.