by J W Murison
‘We know the Albany have ships that can reach the Earth in just a few short weeks. Their next fastest ships would take about seven to eight weeks, and after that months of travel. Only the first two options are open to our enemy. In about seven weeks time our bid to become a member of the galactic community will be passed by the great council. However, it will not be ratified until Earth changes its laws to reflect that of the galactic federation; our representatives have to read and sign all the paper work. We will have to appeal one or two of the laws, or so I am led to believe. So our enemy probably have a window of two to three months to hit us with everything they have. If they hit our planet after the treaty has been ratified by the council then it will have severe consequences for the three parties involved. From what little intelligence we have been able to gather, each asteroid has the potential to cause an extinction level event on Earth. That’s just one. We think they may well be throwing hundreds of them at us.’
She paused for effect and to let the news sink in. ‘Just one reaching Earth will kill everything and everyone we know and love. If two reach Earth then the planet will most likely shattered into pieces. Do you all understand the gravity of the situation?’
There was a few mumbled agreements. She held a hand to her ear. ‘I’m sorry, I didn’t hear you.’
‘Yes Ma’am.’ They roared back.
‘Good.’ She looked round the room then glanced at Logan and Lloyd. ‘I will leave you to it, gentlemen.’
CHAPTER 42
Steven had never quite seen anything like it. The asteroid field was huge. Everyone sat at their posts. Tension was high; it was so quiet Steven could feel his heart beat. The ships were completely invisible, even to each other. Every member of the crew looked straight out through the hull at the mass of asteroids.
‘Hailey avoid that patch of dust. We could be seen moving through it.’
Despite the fact that he had kept his voice low she was still startled and almost jumped a foot in the air.
‘Yes Captain.’
No one laughed. The ship lifted up and over a large dust cloud, then settled back on the same bearing. It was a slick manoeuvre considering she couldn’t see the console at her finger tips.
‘Well done Hailey, very neatly done.’
Her answer was a half-smile.
It was like floating through the asteroid field in a bubble of air, Mya thought. She sat leaning against Cookie. It felt good to be back on board again. Here life was more simple, but she had felt the tension within the crew rise to a strange height over the past few days. It had reminded her of the time the Japanese used to visit her village; it was the same sort of tension and it had unsettled her a bit. Cookie’s arm around her waist was a great comfort.
She felt she was getting a crick in her neck and sat up. Rotating her head she began to work the crick loose. As she worked her head backwards she caught a glimpse of something.
‘There Cookie!’
‘Uh! Where?’
‘Up there.’ Mya pointed. ‘No, it’s gone.’
‘What did you see?’
‘I don’t know, it looked square.’
Cookie concentrated. ‘Captain, Mya saw something above us, something square.’
The ship came to a stop and began to move backwards. Now they were both looking. Mya saw it first again. ‘There.’
Cookie saw it. ‘Right above our heads Captain.’
‘I can see it. Well done Mya.’
The ship rotated until they were looking at it head on. Mya had a big grin on her face and nudged Cookie. He burst out laughing and gave her a hug.
As they drew closer, more of the object became apparent. Steven was keeping his fingers crossed. It had taken him a while to work out the best possible places to pick asteroids from., calculating their distance from the barrier and the distance from that point to Earth. Still, the area he identified had been huge and days of searching had been futile. Komoru was miles away searching in a grid pattern along the edge of the field just like Steven was.
The large, square metallic object became clearer as they approached. It was one of the blades that Mya had seen. The object moved slowly out of the asteroid field. Steven thought it looked like a giant forklift. The asteroid came next on the blades, and then the body of the ship. It negotiated its way round the last few asteroids and began to accelerate.
‘Babes, are you familiar with that type of ship?’
‘I believe I have schematics.’
‘Do you have its top speed?’
‘Sub light. Heavy shields my heart. They do not extend over the asteroid. The asteroid is fixed by the use of heavy cables and, during deceleration, the tines of those forks you see bend upwards to help hold it in place. It will take most of the day to accelerate slowly to maximum speed and a day and a half to decelerate. From here it will take almost two weeks to reach the barrier at top speed.’
‘I imagine its destination will fall somewhere short of that. Plot its course and jump us ahead half a day at a time please.’
‘That is dangerous my heart. Half a day is too much. I suggest an hour only.’
‘That will take us forever!’
‘You have us running silent, no scanners. On a parallel course we will hit something.’
Steven sighed. ‘OK Babes. Pilot, Hailey, I am giving control over to the ship. Listen in everyone. Control is now forwarded to the ship. We will be making jumps of an hour distance. Many rapid ones. It will be disorientating. I suggest you lie down wherever you are and close your eyes.’
He kicked his seat back and closed his eyes. Beside him Buzz followed suit. ‘That’s a hellava chunk of rock they are planning to throw at Earth.’
‘It frightens the hell out of me.’ Steven agreed.
It would take the asteroid-towing ship a week to reach the base that was preparing to attack Earth, which was situated midway between the asteroid field and the great barrier.
‘It is a modified mining platform.’ Babes informed the crew. Steven could only shake his head in wonder. None of them had ever seen such a thing. It was almost a hundred square miles large. An asteroid was being placed onto the platform, while another was just being taken away. Ships both small and large moved around the area.
An Albany battle cruiser lifted off from the platform, the giant rock only taking up about half of it. Another battle cruiser of an unusual design took its place.
‘How much do you want to bet there is a bar on that station?’ Buzz ventured.
Steven nodded. ‘Makes sense they would have somewhere for rest and recuperation.’
A line of destroyers swept in and around the battleship and they accelerated away. Steven had seen enough for now. ‘Let’s get to the rendezvous position; we are way off course here. If we miss Komoru it will take us a whole day to catch up with her.’
They moved slowly and carefully away.
‘Sid, what was the comms traffic like?’ Steven asked Sid Tulane once they were safely out of the area.
‘Quiet as a church mouse Captain. They are obviously using direct line of sight communications. There was only the occasional ping from a craft that is out of sight.’
‘Do you think you could plot those pings?’
‘If you give me Hailey, I’m sure I could.’
‘We rendezvous with Komoru in four hours. Have the data ready by then. Hailey, go with Sid please.’
‘Yes Captain.’
Sid and Hailey walked into the stellar cartography room almost side by side.
Hailey took a deep breath. ‘What do you need?’
‘I need the area between the base and the barrier. Babes, can you give me the times we received the pings, the direction of them and intervals between them, and then plot them please?’
‘Sid, why do you call them pings?’
He shrugged, ‘Don’t know what else to call them, Hailey, and they sound a little like the old asdic sonar pings. You must have seen a movie or two when you were a kid. You know that navy, subma
rines, ping?’
She laughed. ‘Yeah, my father was a navy man. He used to watch all those old black and white movies.’
‘He must be very proud of you.’
‘So proud its almost embarrassing at times. What about yours?’
‘He died in Afghanistan when I was a kid.’
‘Oh... I’m sorry to hear that.’
Sid looked away. ‘It was a long time ago Hailey. I still miss him. I wish he could see all this. He was the reason I joined up.’
‘Did you join up so you could get revenge?’
Sid burst out laughing. ‘Oh hell no. It was to walk a mile in his boots. You know, see the things he did, experience the same things.’
‘To try and feel closer to him.’ Hailey mused.
‘Yeah I suppose so.’
‘Was he special forces too?’
‘Nah. I joined when a friend of mine did, we thought it was a great idea. He dropped out after a few weeks but by then I was hooked. I think I’ve only seen him once since. Last I heard from him, he had left the army and now works in a garage. Whole passel of kids. I’m kinda glad I stuck it out. I mean this is some adventure isn’t it.’
Hailey smiled brightly. ‘It certainly is.’
By the time Steven caught up with them, they had a number of lines plotted.
‘How’s it going Sid?’
‘We have plotted everything we have sir.’
Steven studied the chart. ‘Explain all this please.’
Sid pointed to the first group. ‘A ship sends out a signal to another ship. If they don’t know where it is they send out a ping. That ping will hold certain information, such as the unique identifier of the ship they are trying to contact, as well as their own identification, speed and direction. Only the ship that its intended for will be able to decipher the ping. It will send a ping back at the location the ship should be at. It sometimes takes two or three pings for both ships to be able to lock onto each other. Once they do then communication is line of sight only and no one else can listen in to their transmissions. It only takes a few seconds but ships can travel quite a distance in that few seconds. That gives us a chance to plot the direction that the ships are traveling in.’ Sid waved a hand and half the lines disappeared. All that was left was a number of parallel lines. ‘As you can see here, on this plot we get a bearing between the two ships. These two were running parallel to each other.’ He flicked his hand and the next plot came up. The lines spread out like a fan but crossed at a point near the second ship. ‘On this plot the ship nearest us is traveling towards the barrier while the far away ship is traveling along the barrier from left to right. What these plots don’t give us is the distance away they are. It isn’t until the ships patrolling along the great barrier contact other ships from other directions that you get a crossover. As you can see from this third plot, the first ship contacted another ship off to its right.’
‘I see it.’ Steven nodded. ‘The first ship is patrolling left to right and there is a point where it contacted the third ship. It must have been at the far left of its patrol route. I presume where the lines from the other two ships cross is the distance they are away.’
‘Exactly sir.’
‘It is still only three points of reference.’
‘No sir.’ Sid turned the display and Steven could see that the ships were all at different latitudes to each other. Sid also filled in every other contact.
Steven could see all the other lines converging. ‘That is damn good work. Sid, Hailey, well done. Would I be wrong in saying that there are three different areas of activity?’
‘No you wouldn’t sir. May I ask what we are going to do now?’
‘Of course you can. We are going to reconnoitre these areas, find out what the hell is going on and then report back to the fleet. From there we will take orders.’
CHAPTER 43
The base was a hive of activity. Ico sat high above, recording it all. The colossal asteroids were towed to the old mining base and two large parallel holes were drilled into their mass. From there they were towed to a staging area. At the staging area they were collected by military vessels and towed to their launch points.
At the first launch site, Steven and the crew watched as a large platform moved silently down the line of asteroids. He got up and made his way to his private room. Charlie was on the floor with his eyes closed and Steven lay down beside him.
‘Have they fired any yet Charlie?’
Charlie opened his eyes. ‘No, the Chief Engineer down there is stressed out to hell. They were supposed to launch a massive attack about a year from now. Their whole timetable revolved round it. That platform we are looking at is only three quarters built. They rushed the last part of its construction and now they are having problems. He has already had a couple of blow outs with two lives lost. They are just practicing loading the fuel and engines.’
‘A dry run?’
‘Aye. The engines are going to start arriving in about a week. They have thirty-seven now, with a promise of another three to be completed soon. He thinks they want to wait until they have all forty engines ready to go before they fire them. They only have twenty asteroids here now, they moved the excess to the other sites. That means that two sites now have the correct number of asteroids; the third site requires another twelve.’
‘How are the engines are going to arrive?’
‘By some kind of transport freighter that can carry four of them at time. This is the only platform that is designed to load the fuel and the engines.’
‘So if we destroy this platform then they are stuffed?’
Charlie shook his head. ‘Not necessarily. He has been contemplating using normal tugs to do the job. His commander wants to split the engines between two sites. It would take much longer, but it obviously can be done. The engineer would rather fire all twenty and move on to the next launch site while waiting for the engines to return. The fuel is arriving tonight. It is inert so we can’t blow that up.’
‘Yeah I know that Charlie.’ Stevie was silent for a while. ‘What’s he thinking now?’
‘He is wondering if he is going to miss the mating season; he thinks he is and is furious.’
‘Yuk.’
‘Don’t ask then.’
Steven laughed. ‘Do you understand how this platform works?’
‘Pretty much. That flat area over there is where they are going to put the fuel cells. They will be loaded like depth charges used to be. Colossal drums. They will roll forward and a ram will push them into the hole two at a time. Then the engine will be pushed in with that funny shaped ram down there. Once the engine is in they will activate it. The engine will anchor itself inside the hole. A big spike will come out of the nose of the engine and pierce both fuel cells.
‘Once both engines are in they can upload a launch sequence. If everything works, then the engines will engage and propel the asteroid towards Earth. The engines won’t create some kind of field. The word doesn’t translate in my head, I can’t pronounce it anyway. It will take a few days to gather speed. Once it reaches faster than light speed the engines will cut off. They will un-anchor themselves and those big fuel spikes will extend to their full lengths and push the engines out of their hole. Once they are clear of the asteroid, they will brake to slower than light speed and turn. They will then have enough internal fuel to return to their next launch point. Only this time they can accelerate quickly. Return time will be a fraction of the outward journey. I don’t really understand all the ins and out Stevie. Hopefully you can fill in the blanks yourself.’
Steven was nodding more to himself than Charlie. ‘I get it Charlie, don’t worry.’
‘Wish I bloody did! Wish I knew more. A couple of shitty O grades and a lifetime of army service doesn’t exactly qualify you for this kind of work.’
Stevie looked at his friend in a thoughtful manner. ‘You are more intelligent than you think, Charlie. In fact, you are well above the norm or Babes wouldn’t have give
n you an implant.’
‘But I have looked at some of the stuff you do. I wouldn’t even know where to start with it. I found it hard to grasp algebra at school, failed maths miserably, scraped by in English. I was OK at woodwork and history, but that was about it.’
‘So what are you good at Charlie?’
‘I would have said I was a bloody good soldier. Not the best, but a good all-rounder.’
Steven frowned. ‘What do you mean by “would have said”?’
‘I’m not me any more. I’m more cyborg than Human. What took a lot of effort before now takes no effort at all – from a physical point of view that is. I run about that assault course all day making young men look stupid and inept. It makes them push themselves to the point of collapse.’
‘Does it make them better soldiers?’
‘It makes them fitter, that’s all.’
‘Aye, but that’s important for a soldier isn’t it?’
‘It is if you are in the infantry. Not all soldiers fight. We had some Modloch in a few weeks ago and ran them ragged.’ Charlie laughed. ‘It was good fun. When this all went down we were about to be bollocked by one of their officials on what a Modloch soldier should and shouldn’t be asked to do on a physical level.’
‘Sounds like you and Kelly were having fun. You don’t like doing this, do you?’
‘Makes me feel like a spook, and you know how I feel about them.’
