Sigma
GL 876
Monday, June 20, 2078, 0420 UTC
David was up early, as he often was, whether he was on a ship or back home. He cleaned up and dressed for what he expected to be a long day. His night had been busy, full of dreams of Lisa and Carol and God knows what else. He'd slept, but he wondered to himself just how much rest he'd really had. He was back on the Bridge before 0500.
The object had neither moved nor had the intensity changed. Len Davis came on the Bridge about 6, as the 12-hour surveillance period Rodriguez had given them was running out. Sanders arrived shortly after the Captain.
"So, Mister Powell, what do you think?"
"Still at the edge of resolution, sir. I really don't know. It could be a natural, tidally locked asteroid that just happens to look a lot like an enemy ship."
"Or it could be an enemy ship that looks kinda like a tidally locked asteroid."
"Or it could be someone else's ship. The orbit is in-plane, which would seem to imply that it's natural. But again. It's too far to tell."
"Lieutenant Sanders, is there anything else around that arouses your curiosity?" the Captain asked.
Sanders shook his head.
"No, Captain, everything else we've looked at is clearly natural. We have not seen any other objects with spectra quite like this one."
"How many asteroids or dwarf planets have we cataloged?"
"Uh," Sanders flipped through data on his tablet. "About fifty. All pretty nominal stuff."
"Nothing similar to this object?" Davis asked, surprised.
"There are other irons around, sir, but nothing that fits what we know of the enemy ship composition as nearly as this one."
Davis turned to David. "Mister Powell?"
"Nothing to add to what Lieutenant Sanders said, sir. It's an outlier for sure."
Davis paused a moment, thinking, then turned to the Nav console.
"Nav, get me a course to put us one million klicks behind that object in the same orbit."
He turned back to Powell and Sanders.
"If we can't discriminate what it is from that distance, you're both fired."
It took a couple hours, but they settled into an orbit about three times the distance from the Earth to the Moon behind the suspect object. The exact range was hard to know since they were keeping the radar offline. Whatever the exact distance was, they were close. Powell and Sanders stood side by side behind the Surveillance station as the long-range telescope focused in on the object. It came up clear now, craters and an irregularly shaded surface.
"I don't buy it," said Sanders, quietly.
"Me neither," Powell replied. "Why?"
"If the numbers are right, it's something like five hundred meters in diameter. Asteroids that small aren't such nice neat spheres. It should be lumpy or potato-shaped or something."
"Are we getting any better spectra data now that we're close?"
Sanders looked over at the console. "Yeah, it's better, I guess. Still closely matches enemy ship material, but it's not as exact as other reports have been. Maybe they're trying to hide the construction with other stuff?"
The Captain left the command chair and joined them. Jake Fleming and Lisa Briggs were also on the Bridge.
"OK, so what do you think?"
"We think it's a fake," Sanders responded. "The shape is wrong for the size - it's not normal for a body this small to be so perfectly spherical."
Fleming and Briggs looked at the Captain. He didn't look back, but his expression became hard, determined. Davis had made up his mind. He walked over to the Nav workstation.
"Get us to ten thousand klicks. Take an hour and make sure we're in a slightly different relative position."
He walked back to the Surveillance position.
"We'll kill it. Once we get to ten thousand, assuming it's still quiet, we'll fire. I'll send the SLIP as soon as we shoot."
"What weapons do you want, Captain?" Fleming asked.
"It's a new type...let's hit it with two Lances, center mass, five seconds apart. Load one rotary with Spartans, then the other with two Bludgeons and the rest Lances."
Fleming nodded his acknowledgment and went back to the Weapons position to set up the attack. Briggs gave Powell a long look before heading back to the magazine to brief the techs. David could see she wanted to say something, but she held back. He decided to try to catch her later and see what was on her mind. He knew she felt unnerved by this, as he did, but it wasn't something they could talk about with the Captain present. It would have to wait.
David leaned in close to Sanders.
"John...let's take that hour to recheck everything else in view."
Sanders looked surprised. "Losing your edge, David? First name?"
Powell frowned. "Just this once. Somehow, I feel like a mouse faced with a big perfect pile of cheese. I don't see the trap bar, but that doesn't mean it isn't there."
Sanders nodded and leaned over to his techs, asking them to go back and re-examine the largest objects they had seen. Powell turned and walked to the command position.
"May I have a word, sir?" he asked quietly.
"Yes of course."
Len Davis came down the two steps, and they walked to the far-right corner of the Bridge.
"You may have thought of this already sir, but I must express my concern that this may be a trap."
"I had thought of that, Mister Powell. But, go on."
"Have you considered, sir, the intelligence value of leaving it in place? Might we be better served by not killing it but watching it?"
"I have, but this early, David, with our limited knowledge of the enemy, I can't. It could be watching us just like we're watching it. Five or six of his best friends could show up any time now, and all we could do then is run. And run, David, is not something we're ever going to do, OK? We will strike anytime we have the chance, is that clear?"
"Yes, sir, I understand."
"I appreciate your input, Mister Powell, and your view has merit, but this one we're going to crush as soon as we can."
"Sir, in that case, I would recommend that you launch the Lances in delay mode, even a minute, and make a maneuver that takes us pretty far away from the launch point."
Davis looked at Powell for a moment before responding.
"I am beginning to see what Hansen was talking about." Seeing the shock on David's face, he continued, "She did extraordinarily well under hard circumstances on Inor, David, and she gave you and your study group at the U much of the credit."
"I, uh, I was not aware of that. But let me just say that Lieutenant Hansen gave as much or more to that group than I did."
"No doubt." Davis paused a second before returning to the subject. "I agree with your assessment of this object. It's a little too convenient. I had planned a maneuver, but I had not thought about a launch delay. We'll do that. Good work, David."
They left the corner, the Captain returning to his position and David sliding in next to John Sanders behind the Surveillance position.
Davis called Fleming and the Chief Navigator Kameron McDaniel over and told Fleming to insert a 15-minute delay into the Lance attack. He then instructed McDaniel to use that time to move the ship out of the plane of the system and into a better position to observe the results of the attack. The runtime of the Lances would be about 10 minutes, which gave McDaniel more like 25 minutes to be in a position a few light-seconds from the target.
The time went by slowly as they maneuvered closer to the faux asteroid. Powell finally left the Bridge and went back to the Intel section to work with Jackson and Gray as they analyzed the data from the visual and spectral analysis. It sure looked like a fake to David, too round and too close to the enemy ship construction to be an accident.
If it did turn out to be an asteroid, there would be a painful and lengthy well-deserved ass chewing from Davis.
The screens in the Intel section were showing the same view in visual, IR, and UV. The radar was offli
ne, as Davis wanted to be as invisible as possible. If this was a ship and not a natural body, they had not done a very good job of hiding it. The shape and the construction were just too obvious. The more David thought about it, and the more he and Abe and Sally reviewed the data, the more convinced he was that it was a fake. Sanders evidently thought so, and as the Surveillance officer, it was as much his call as it was David's. Or, more accurately, the missing Lieutenant Boyd's call. But, he was either in the Weapons office or back in the magazine, or wherever.
The hour passed, the object was even larger on the screen, and they could see more detail. As the techs zoomed and scanned and re-zoomed and looked again, there were still no obvious tells, other than its incongruous size and shape, that it was not natural.
At 0930 UTC Sigma dropped two Lances off her port rotary. She then moved out of the plane of the system, moving to a point where the target was 30 degrees below and ahead of her. The impact point would be visible from this angle, and they would have a good perspective to see what came off of the object when the weapon hit.
At 0950 David made one last check that they had the right views selected. He finally sat down next to Sally and Abe, waiting for the attack to happen. He had the Bridge audio on in the Intel section so he could hear what was happening up there.
It was quiet on the Bridge. There was a time running on the central data monitor showing the estimated time to impact. The first Lance hit exactly in the middle of the object, as expected, leaving a hole perhaps ten meters across and sending a small amount of debris outward. The second passed through the hole and exploded inside. Then, they saw even more debris and gas exiting the hole. There now could be no doubt that they had hit an enemy facility of some kind.
"Comms! Send the contact message!"
PRIORITY 207806201000UTC
TO: CINCFLEET
FROM: SIGMA
SILVER DOT
HAVE DETECTED AND ATTACKED FAKE ASTEROID ENEMY FACILITY AT GL 876
MORE TO FOLLOW
END
"OK sir, it's off. Twenty-three hours thirty-eight minutes to Earth."
"Very well." Davis turned to Sanders. "What is it venting, John?"
Sanders turned back to the Captain, smiling.
"Oxygen, sir, and water."
The phone at the Surveillance position rang, Sanders picked it. It was Powell.
"So, are we seeing the same stuff that Dunkirk reported? O2 and water?"
"Yeah, looks like it's bleeding to death. I don't see any Hydrogen yet, though."
Davis turned back to the Weapons position to his left.
"Fleming, what's my status?"
"Full rotaries both sides, sir. We replaced the two Lances already."
"Very good, thanks."
"David was watching the IR screens in Intel, still talking to Sanders on the Bridge,
"Anything on the IR?"
"Nope."
As they watched, whatever mechanism stabilized the fake asteroid began losing control, and the thrust of the gasses bleeding out into space began to have an effect.
"Captain! It's starting to roll." Slowly the ball began to roll, within a few minutes the opposite side had come around, and they could see that it was much the same as the side they had been looking at.
"Powell - look at the IR," Sanders said.
There was now an obvious hot spot on the 'back' side.
"Anything else, like maybe nitrogen, coming out?"
The surveillance techs reviewed the spectra of the gasses and decided there was no nitrogen.
"Ok so, if it's a fuel cell coming apart would we not see hydrogen as well?" Sanders asked.
Powell agreed. "Maybe the H2 tank is still mostly intact - or that where all the heat on the other side is coming from."
They watched the visual and IR displays for a couple minutes.
"What's the spin rate?"
"About one and three quarters a minute."
Powell let out a low whistle.
"Holy crap - what is that in Gs?"
Sanders pulled out his NetComp.
"Huh - about point nine. Less than I would have expected."
"But it is speeding up - as long as the gas lasts it's going to accelerate."
"I wonder if it's unmanned. With the damage we did, I'd expect something more interesting to be coming out."
"Yeah me, too."
They continued to watch as the gas venting waned. It was now spinning about twice a minute. It had shed a few small pieces of debris but really less than they had expected.
"Ya know," Powell began, "If it's mostly tank space, there might not be a lot of debris. We bust open their tanks, but the crew and all the equipment might still be intact inside. Hell, they could still be alive for all we know. Even with the spin, it's only a little more than a G."
David rubbed his chin, looking off into the distance, something he did as he thought through a difficult problem.
"The Dunkirk object deorbited itself into the star. This thing hasn't done that." Sanders pointed out.
"Yet." was David's quick response.
Sanders nodded his agreement. David gave Sanders his best conspiratorial wink.
"Think we could get on it?"
"You're out of your goddamn mind, Powell."
"Amen to that." Lisa Briggs piped in, having snuck up on the conversation.
"Ok well, maybe so. But it would be awfully interesting."
"Sure would." the Captain commented. "Got any idea how to do it?"
Powell thought for a few seconds and then shook his head.
"No sir, I don't. Pity, though."
"Well," the Captain said sadly, "maybe we can get a second mission out here with the right equipment and do that."
"That will take time, sir, and I'd bet it won't be here when we, or whoever, gets back," Sanders said.
The Captain crossed his arms and looked at his young officers. He was impressed, perhaps more so than he had expected. They were smart, inquisitive, with good sense. Powell was right that it would be interesting to get aboard that sphere, but he was quick to realize they couldn't do that and dismissed the idea himself without feeling like he had made a mistake. Not everyone could do that, Davis knew.
"So, what are your recommendations?" he asked them.
Sanders and Powell looked at each other. David spoke.
"From an Intel point of view, sir, I would like to observe it for a while - maybe a couple days..."
Sanders interrupted him.
"But the longer we sit here, the more we look like the mouse staring at the cheese, David."
David acknowledged Sanders' concerns.
"No doubt, but if we pull back a little and stay low-EMR, even if he calls in his friends, we could bug out."
Davis looked hard at Powell.
"If his friends come, Mister Powell, we'll kill them, too,"
Sanders and Powell exchanged looks. Sanders spoke.
"Sir, if I may, we have a wealth of intelligence already. I don't think we should risk that in a fight, especially if we're outnumbered."
"Noted, Lieutenant. I understand your caution. But as I said to Mister Powell earlier, I will strike the enemy whenever and wherever I can. Is that fully understood?"
They all said they understood. David looked at Lisa Briggs, her face impassive but David could tell she was afraid. No surprise, he thought, I am too.
Davis scribbled out an update to CINC.
PRIORITY 207806201100UTC
TO: CINCFLEET
FROM: SIGMA
SILVER DOT
ENEMY SPHERE ATTACKED WITH TWO LANCES AND APPEARS DISABLED.
VENTING AS REPORTED BY DUNKIRK OBSERVED.
WILL REMAIN AND OBSERVE APPROX 48 HOURS THEN PROCEED
END
ISC Fleet HQ - Office of Commander in Chief
Ft. Eustis, VA
Thursday, June 23, 2078, 0945 EDT
Senior Lieutenant Noah Peters worked quietly at his desk in CINC's outer office. It was a remar
kably clean desk for someone working as a gatekeeper for the top admiral in the middle of a war. Peters kept his desk as he kept himself - well groomed, well-conditioned, neat, and prepared. Noah was of average height, a bit thin, with a light skin tone for an African-American. Peters graduated from the Fleet University two years ahead of Carol and her group, and FleetPers selected him as CINCs aide for his exceptional organization and communications skills. If CINC needed to have something said just right, Noah knew how to give him the words. He could be prickly when necessary but otherwise maintained a friendly, professional demeanor. He had no close friends in the office, which he considered necessary because of his sensitive position, but in reality, he liked the emotional distance. No office dramas for him, no distractions, no favorites.
Months ago, CINC had asked him to look into the SFU history of a specific former student, now serving as a warrant officer in the fleet. His first call went unanswered, as did his first written request. They similarly ignored his second call. There was a war on, after all, and Peters had a good number of small and large issues he was chasing down for CINC, whom he admired greatly. A good man in a very difficult position, he thought, too bad the wife was such a pain in the ass. So much so that the boss was now residing on the top floor of the BOQ. So, the Powell matter, as Peters had come to call it, moved at a slow pace. He finally sent a second request, upped the verbiage to make sure that the SFU administrators got his point, and copied CINC. The response was just three pages: a letter from the provost stating that Powell had been denied readmission based on existing regulations, and two pages of transcript. That day he had walked into the CINC's office and asked him to call SFU.
"They're slow-walking us, sir. I don't like it." The response in a few days was a large file, with reports, performance assessments, transcripts, and supporting details. Finally, he had the whole picture. It took him the better part of a week, working as he had time with his other priorities, to get through it, cull what was important, and create a summary worthy of CINC's review. This morning, he was finally ready. He picked up the phone.
"Sir, if you have time, I am ready to present the report on the Powell matter."
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