AMERICA ONE - NextGen II (Book 6)

by T I WADE

  The club didn’t end there, but the work did begin in earnest.

  The girls kept their word, and within the three months’ dry time, the office was separated from the ship and left floating next to the mother ship. A double, radiation-safe wall was built onto the rear wall of the office with a docking port to reconnect the “office” once it had its thruster fitted directly onto the part of the rear wall of the cylinder right above where the office was positioned. The same radiation-safe double wall was added to the new outer wall of the Richmond apartment, and Kathy and Ryan, minus an office, moved back in once the work was finished.

  Now the outside work began on the new spacecraft nicknamed “The Office.” This time it was thruster work, and the unit was floated back to the rear of the ship, where the mechanics could spacewalk to it from their station just in front of the ship’s massive rear thrusters.

  A decision was made to attach only one of the old Astermine thrusters to the supply pod itself, not to the added room which was connected below the twenty foot pod like an upside-down submarine. If this was done, the office could be reattached to Ryan’s apartment, and it could still be used as his office.

  Power and distance weren’t factors in the design, but one 250-pound outside hydrogen fuel tank was added into the supply pod and connected to the aft wall, as well as to its four side thrusters.

  “Why do we need more than 100 gallons of hydrogen fuel?” Ryan asked, five months into the project. This time the meeting was on the bridge, the cafeteria was still out of bounds for male get-togethers apart from meetings with the whole crew, and the Richmonds were back in their apartment. The club now met secretly in Ryan’s old office. It wasn’t much fun with spacewalking to get to and from the craft, and it was tiny, but at least the project kept the crew happy.

  “Fuel supplies for an emergency,” suggested Igor.

  “There is never too much fuel,” added Jonesy.

  “I just think 250 gallons of liquid hydrogen is a bit much for a weak single thruster which will never be used,” concluded Ryan. “The supply pods are meant to be transported by our small craft, not by themselves. Liquid hydrogen is a very slow-to-make fuel. We don’t have an excess to just add 250 gallons to every emergency pod. One hundred gallons is enough for the test pod. If you want to fill it with something, tie in an exercise bike, more supplies, water or something. What is the current inventory aboard each supply cylinder anyway?”

  “Continuously growing,” stated Boris. “We added our latest grey and black water filtering systems into them a year ago. That decreased the water supplies needed per pod by 50 percent. Down from 5,000 gallons to 2,500. We have increased the selection of dry food, included dried fruits, and currently the pods have enough supplies for 30 people for 360 days. There is simple accommodation for ten people inside the pod. The other 20 crewmembers would be living in the cargo bays of the shuttles or Astermine craft. Squashed in like sardines, we can take up to 250 crewmembers in the six escape systems, including those living in all the small craft.”

  “Where are we going with these pods in 360 days, Alpha Centauri?” Jonesy added.

  “No, Mr. Jones,” smiled Igor. “Home from the furthest part of our solar system if need be, and before you say something, yes, we are already halfway through our journey and closer to Earth than we have supplies, but there is no need to decrease the limit of supplies just yet, and we will need to rotate the older dried food through the ship’s food system every few years.”

  “I had an idea about the Russians cruising around the solar system in one escape pod to save our vodka supplies,” Jonesy continued. “Can I make a motion to include our wives to go with the Russians? We’ve been dry for 60 days longer than they promised.”

  “Good news on the vodka topic,” smiled Ryan to his bored Chief Astronaut. He had enjoyed a dry ship; the crew had returned to normal behavior, and it was time to allow a tot or two again every now and then. Ryan had been working on his wife for a while now. “Mars is still 18 months away. We may splice the mainbrace once a week from this month-end. The female crew commander has agreed to three tots per person per Saturday night, including three glasses of beer or wine. Gentlemen, we will celebrate our first party in 15 days’ time.”

  As promised, the first party was a rounding success. Everybody including Jonesy behaved and Saturday night became party night once again.

  A year later the new craft was complete. The only difference Ryan could tell from the inside of his smaller apartment was that he had a complete Soyuz docking port in the wall where the door to his office door used to be. Since the old television sitcom was being aired in the cafeteria, a few nights a week during this time, Ryan’s new addition to his apartment, his new mini-office/‌command center, and the supply cylinder/‌pod, the whole unit was officially named “The Office.”

  This was the same docking port Captain Pete and Dr. Nancy now headed to years later. Nancy had never seen the alteration to the Richmond living quarters, but did reboot all her information to the servers inside “The Office.”

  Since it could be colder in there than inside the ship, Pete gathered their blankets and cover off the bed. Dr. Nancy couldn’t resist taking all her paper files, and she stuffed them into her briefcase. She had been about to take a shower and asked Pete if he could wait. He explained that speed was the essence; more alien spacecraft could take off at any time and he needed to be outside the shield to see where they were coming from more clearly. He explained that she could use the old-style non-gravity-use bath bag aboard the supply pod if she wanted. Nancy had put up with the vile way of washing living on the bridge, so she put her nose in the air and decided on which fresh clothes to take.

  Rebooting all her latest information to the servers and grabbing the chocolate cake, she ran after her husband.

  “It’s a docking port!” Nancy stated to Pete, once they arrived in the Richmond apartment.

  “What did you expect? Limo service and a doorman? We are entering a complete escape pod. Darling, it is only for a couple of hours until I can see their home base, compute the coordinates, and relay them to Ryan. We’ll be back before you know it.”

  It was much colder inside as Pete headed into the old office. He could also feel the pull underneath their feet decreasing. The rotational pull of the ship on the upper level was disappearing, as he had halted the rotation for flight purposes. Captain Pete wasn’t as good an astronaut as Jonesy and VIN were. He and his wife had flown the mining craft and spacewalked for experience, but it wasn’t something he or she liked very much.

  Nancy followed him in as he heard Jonesy’s voice over the radio blaring through the whole vessel, “Thrusters active and warming, laser active.”

  When he had left the bridge, Captain Pete had relayed to Ryan, now in the control center on the planet, that the incoming ships were 18 minutes out, speed 180 knots, altitude 1,000 feet, and they were beginning to spread out. “Three have broken off and seem heading north” were his last words before someone interrupted him on launch. He decided to tell base control his new intentions from aboard the escape pod. Time was running out.

  Pete had worked on the new “mini command center” from Day One. He had helped place the three main computer control screens in a triangle in the middle of the room. They, at 42 inches each, filled the center of the office. Each screen was on a command console and each had a different purpose. One was for the control of the escape pod. One controlled the entire bridge of the mother ship and the third was the exact laser firing command console as was on the bridge. He had stated that the controls were overkill, but Ryan had appeased the build crew and allowed them to fill the room with everything they wanted.

  He smiled as he saw the drink holders. Each console had two drinks holders—Jonesy’s idea—one for beer and one for vodka. He sat down at the first desk, switched to the camera under the bridge following the alien ships, and spoke to the planet below him.

  “Two minutes to arrival. They are descending into the
crater and will be approaching you from their usual position. Three of the alien ships seem to be circling about ten miles north of the crater.”

  There wasn’t much more he could do. The command center at The Retreat would have the alien craft visual in seconds and were already tracking the incoming craft on radar. It was time to find the alien base of operations, so he climbed across to the pod’s control seat.

  Within a minute, the docking hatch was secure, and he had the single thruster warming up above him. He was still watching the camera locked onto the ships and saw that some of the craft was going in to land. He felt relieved. He hoped they were on a peaceful mission, but something was gnawing at his gut.

  He noticed out of the corner of his eye that Nancy had become completely weightless, so he tightened his seatbelt. She looked very beautiful as her long blonde hair streamed out in all directions as it usually did.

  Every now and again communications from below shouted themselves across the speakers, interrupting his train of thought. He increased thrust and detached the hatch connection. With his wife’s hair now standing straight up, he knew that the mother ship’s roll had completely stopped, and the tiny craft gently propelled itself away from Ryan’s apartment.

  Captain Pete heard VIN get permission to remove his helmet as he saw the ship disappear behind him through the large windows which covered half of the walls of “The Office” on each side of him. He neared the shield wall and gently headed through it, his rear thruster at 10 percent.

  Slowly the large supply pod, looking like an airship right above his head, slipped through the shield wall into the blackness of space and he turned all the pod’s cameras. Again, for the lack of something to do years earlier, the crew had added three of the most powerful cameras to the bottom of “The Office” in case Ryan ever wanted to use it as a command center. These three cameras were as powerful as the ones underneath the floor of the bridge, and he was surprised how clear they were now that they were out of the blue shield.

  The ship drifted away as he saw that the rear of the escape pod several feet behind his small room had exited the shield. He added thrust to 30 percent and slowly they drew away from the mother ship. He didn’t want to go far even though they were in complete safety.

  Captain Pete wasn’t a competent pilot like the astronauts. His biggest worry was reattaching the pod to the mother ship. This needed expert flight control, and in his training, he had practiced with Jonesy in SB-III about a dozen times.

  “VIN, command your men to shoot down that alien craft before it destroys all our farms!” shouted a wild Ryan through the radio. Captain Pete knew that he was picking up the intercom from Ryan’s helmet. It wasn’t as strong as the radio, and at 200 miles, he was at the limit of the intercom’s range.

  Captain Pete forgot to cancel the thrust of the rear thruster as he floated up and pulled himself over to the mother ship’s laser control station to look through the infra-red and heat cameras already locked onto the base’s coordinates. This saved both their lives.

  At 68 knots the pod floated away from America One as he heard VIN’s reply.

  “All robots, the visitors are destroying our shields. Shoot before they deploy their shields.”

  He could now see all the movement below very clearly and locked the mother ship’s laser remotely onto the attacking spacecraft. Igor’s voice was next, giving him the order he was waiting for.

  “Get back to the safety of the base! Your suits could have holes in them. Captain Pete, you have permission to fire.”

  He checked the three cameras on his screen from underneath the bridge and set up the laser. Each of the three cameras showed him different information from the battle below.

  “Three aliens, two miles south and incoming rapidly to the base,” he stated over the radio, completely concentrating on the battle on the screens in front of him. He watched as the first of the three craft exploded and moved his laser to the next craft. He was again beaten to firing. Somebody was faster on the draw than him below; he knew it would be Maggie. He reacted quicker and the mother ship’s laser took out the third craft. He wasn’t going to be beaten just yet, and he smiled to himself.

  “Five more alien craft coming from their base area, heading through 20,000 feet, 10,000 knots, moving fast and heading straight for us in America One. ETA five minutes ten seconds, over,” Captain Pete stated to the crew, and he checked the pod’s computer readouts for the alien base coordinates. He smiled as new coordinates flashed upon the screen.

  Yes! He had their base! Somebody had just taken off from an area of the planet.

  “Commencing fire at the incoming ships,” he stated to the radio feed while saving the coordinates. As he checked the new area again for any movement, he saw that one of the shuttles was in the general area from where the new aliens had come from. It was not in the correct position, and Captain Pete was about to give the astronaut the corrected coordinates when Jonesy blew up the first craft of the new flight. Not about to be outdone, Captain Pete aimed at the third craft and took it out as the rest of the alien ships broke away and headed out in all directions. Then he heard Jonesy over the radio.

  “Captain Pete, close down your shield; that is what they are after.”

  Nine minutes had elapsed since they left the shield, and he looked through the window at the mother ship as Nancy floated down through the hatch to join him from the pod above.

  “We are so far away from the mother ship,” she stated, looking out of the window. “Are we heading out for a romantic encounter in space?” she added, not knowing about the battle going on below.

  “America One is only about 10 to 12 miles away. Sorry, I forgot to close down the rear thruster. We are totally safe, darling, and nothing is going to happen to us.”

  Captain Pete was so wrong. As they both looked back at the mother ship floating in its rosy blue glow, it lit up and exploded into a bright vivid white and blue atomic explosion, and Captain Pete instinctively pushed the small rear thruster to maximum power.

  Chapter 2

  Oh, Crap!

  “Oh, crap!” were the only words out of Captain Pete’s mouth as the fireball that was once his beloved command vessel mushroomed out in all directions. Nancy was silent, her mouth gaping open as the light from the explosion hit them.

  Captain Pete held on for dear life, but the blast wasn’t nearly as bad as it looked.

  The pod hardly vibrated, except a silver piece of something twice their size whizzed by a hundred yards or so under Captain Pete’s feet, all the outside cameras went dead, and the internal lights went out.

  It must have been a miracle, for none of the parts of the exploding ship hit them. What had saved them from death was that the pod was over 12 miles away from the initial blast, and the explosion had been so intense that much of America One had disintegrated within the explosion of the 400-ton ship and the untold energy from the exploding shield around it.

  Captain Pete was in total shock. The radio was dead, so were the cameras, and suddenly he could see an eerie pink glow around the craft. What he didn’t know was that the burst of energy around them was frying anything that was attached to the outside of the pod.

  Then space went black around him, and all that was left were the console dials looking up at him. Seconds later dull yellow emergency lighting began to glow dimly and light up the small room under backup battery power.

  “Where is the ship?” asked Nancy, still looking out of the window. She still hadn’t moved since the explosion seconds earlier.

  “I don’t know,” replied Captain Pete. It was eerie, quiet and silent inside the small ship. Odd pieces of silver metal began to float past the windows, mostly slivers of light reflecting from the dull light inside the craft.

  “Pete, where is the ship? Where is Mr. Rose and the crew? They must be safe somewhere. Pete!”

  “Nancy, sit down. I’ll try and contact somebody. Maybe the crew on Mars can see the ship,” he replied. Both astronauts were in total sh
ock, their minds refusing to acknowledge what they had just witnessed.

  “America One to Mars Control. America One to Mars Control. Are you reading me, over?” There was no response from the radio apart from horrible-sounding static. America One to anybody. Can you hear me? Over.”

  Captain Pete sent out a Mayday request, the only thing his fried brain thought to do. The static never changed, and it was if the whole universe had suddenly unplugged itself from around them.

  “Nancy, I need to inspect the supply pod for damage. We could be losing atmosphere.” He unstrapped himself and floated upwards through the hatch into the twenty-foot-long, eight-foot-wide cylinder.

  The inside of the pod was neat, with had pallets of stores and large gas cylinders neatly lined up along the floor. He saw three spacesuits on the far wall. Upside down on the ceiling were living quarters and the exercise bike that Ryan had jokingly suggested be placed into each pod instead of the 250 reserve gallons of liquid hydrogen Captain Pete really would like to have right now. His body went ice cold when he remembered he only had 250 gallons of fuel aboard. As a captain, his mind automatically began working out the distance to the only place of safety other than The Martian Club Retreat, planet Earth.

  “Pete! Pete! I’m sure Ryan will send up Jonesy to find us!” shouted Nancy from down below.

  Then he saw a large bright glow lighten up the inside of the supply pod from the hatch connecting him to “The Office.”

  “What was that, Nancy?” he asked, his stomach in his mouth.

  “A bright explosion, a massive explosion down on the planet’s surface,” she replied. He hurriedly pulled himself through the hatch to the room below and looked in the direction she was pointing. They were about to head over the horizon, the pod still orbiting the red planet as the mother ship had done. The computers weren’t providing any information, but he was sure that the light had come from the direction of the alien base, not their base. He got back on the radio and tried in vain to contact anybody. For now they were very alone.