by Terry Mixon
“I’ll send someone,” she said. “This war with your father is only starting. I want you back here as soon as possible.”
She hung up without another word. Nathan climbed back into the escape pod. There had to be something to eat in here somewhere.
* * * * *
Clayton listened to his son explain the events from orbit with a mixed sense of anger and relief. It could’ve been so much worse.
“I obviously failed in providing enough security,” he said at last. “I needed a heavily armed cadre of troops there to protect the station.”
His son shrugged. “It was hard to imagine this happening. What about the people who were supposed to be on that lifter?”
“Dead. We found them in an old warehouse. It had a tunnel right under the security cordon. I have Cradock searching every building for more. We also found one of my executives with his throat cut. Probably the leak.”
“That sucks,” Harry said. “The engineer said the ship is fit to boost. We still have the reserve pilot. The captain and primary pilot died on the bridge.”
Clayton shook his head. “That won’t do. I’ll find someone else who can learn to pilot the ship. Call your people. We have two lifters held in reserve. That’s two dozen more security people. Have them pack whatever weapons you think you’ll need. Hell, pack things you don’t think you’ll need. You should be prepared if anything like this happens again.”
Jess leaned over Harry’s shoulder. “We should’ve put weapons on the hull. It’ll take us a few days to replace the panels in the observation room, but we can do that while in flight. I’d really like to break orbit as soon as possible.”
Clayton couldn’t agree more. “I have the lifters under heavy guard. No one will be using them without authorization. The only other ways into orbit are the spaceports in China and India. I’ll warn both of them.”
He checked his screen. “Let me make a few calls. We’ll launch as soon as we can. Get things ready on your end.” He terminated the connection.
That had been entirely too close for his comfort. He needed to get the ship on its way before something else went wrong. He picked up his phone and called his assistant.
* * * * *
Ten nerve-wracking hours later, the last two lifters docked with the station. Harry had spoken with his people on the ships, so he was certain there wouldn’t be any trouble. He still had all four trained fighters on hand to welcome them. Armed to the teeth.
He relaxed when his people came out the hatches. The addition of two dozen of his men and women took the edge off his anxiety. They’d keep one of these lifters to replace the damaged one. They’d already jettisoned it. The pilots that had just brought them up would go back down in the remaining one.
Harry knew one of the new pilot trainees. Lieutenant Colonel “Black Jack” McCarthy. The tall man floated out of the lifter with a huge grin. “Momma always wanted her boy to be an astronaut.”
He pulled the pilot over to a crate and shook his hand. “We’re glad to have you with us, Colonel. The crew will get your stuff into your new quarters while we break orbit. I don’t want to give my mother or brother another chance to screw us up.”
By the time they made it to the bridge, the departing lifter was undocking. The one that had been holding position was ready to reattach to the ship.
He introduced McCarthy to Waller. The two pilots immediately started talking shop.
While that was going on, Harry commandeered a station and called his father. It was night, but he knew he was waiting for them to get on their way.
Harry was surprised when he only got audio. “Is your screen broken?” he asked.
“I’m on my jet, but not in my office. Mexico might get a little warm for me once everyone discovers I’ve been building a spaceship. I have a little island nation that’s considering electing me president for life. In exchange for a very substantial payment and jobs at the new spaceport I plan on building there, of course. It’s recognized as a nation by the UN, so that might give me some cover.”
“Are you expecting a lot of trouble?”
His father laughed. “Oh, hell yes. The UN will hold endless hearings. Every gasbag on the planet will call for my head on a platter and demand that I bring the ship back at once. The US government is going to have a conniption. Things will be very exciting. I’m sure that they’ll attempt to nationalize all my holdings. That won’t stop me, but the fight will be long and glorious.”
“Good luck, then. Captain Waller tells me that we’re about ready to break orbit.”
“She’s only the command pilot, and while competent at that task, has no leadership experience. I think you would be best suited to that role.”
Harry stared at the display in confusion. “Me? I don’t know the first thing about running this ship.”
“And you don’t need to. You know how to lead. The subject matter experts can handle the details for you. Learn as you go, just like Colonel McCarthy. Right now, everyone needs a confident, steady hand at the helm. That’s you.
“Miss Cook will be your second. She knows every aspect of Liberty Station. She can teach you about it while you show her how to be a leader.”
He looked over at Jess. She was staring at some readouts on one of the other consoles. “I think she’s already learning that. Fine. We’ll break orbit in fifteen minutes or so.”
“Allow me to wish you the very best of luck. Humanity is counting on you. I’ll keep you up to speed on events here as they unfold.”
Harry ended the call and walked over to Jess.
She looked up. “We’re ready. Both lifters are docked and the engines are uncovered and ready to fire.”
“My father thinks I should assume command of the ship. What do you think?”
Jess beamed. “That’s the best news I’ve heard all day.”
“Then let me bring you down. He said you should be my second in command.”
“Me? Is he smoking crack?”
Harry laughed. “Doubtful. He just thinks that you’d make a good counterbalance. You know the ship better than anyone else and I’ve seen how decisive you can be.”
“That wasn’t me being decisive. That was me being impulsive. I’m not leadership material.”
“And I’m not trained to run a spaceship. We’ll both have to learn as we go. Are you ready?”
Jess took a deep breath. “Ready, Captain.”
Harry returned to his console. “How can I speak to everyone on the ship?” he asked Waller.
She reached past him and tapped the controls. “Hit the green button to activate the speakers. Hit it again to close them.”
He smiled at her. “Thanks. As I just told Miss Cook, my father has appointed me as the Captain of Liberty Station. I’m sorry if that steps on your toes.”
The woman held her hands up. “I’m a pilot, third in line for flying the ship. I have enough on my plate becoming the command pilot. You can gladly have the sleepless nights, Captain.”
“Tell me that in a month.”
He touched the button. A chime sounded from the speakers overhead. “Attention, everyone. This is Harry Rogers. You don’t know me, but after the terrible events that took Captain Lee from us, I’m assuming command. Miss Jessica Cook will be my second.”
Harry paused a moment to allow that to sink in. “We’re going out to explore the solar system. There are many things that you don’t know yet, but I’ll be talking with all the section leaders as soon as possible. You deserve to know what we’re looking for and what we hope to find.
“For the moment, just accept that this is the most exciting and important voyage of exploration humanity has ever undertaken, bar none. If we find what we hope, you’ll be helping to free mankind to explore the universe.
“Think about that as we get under way. We’re breaking orbit in ten minutes. Do whatever you need to do to get ready. Inform your supervisors if there’s a problem. Rogers out.”
He touched the button again to shut off
the speakers. “Ten minutes, pilot.”
She looked at her console. “Orbital mechanics being what they are, I can work with that. We’ll start out slow and build thrust as we come into the best course. Just as a heads up, if you’d waited twenty minutes to say that, we’d have been on the wrong side of the planet and would’ve needed to wait.”
Harry felt a little chagrined. “I’ve obviously watched too much television. Let me rephrase. When would be the optimal time to break orbit?”
She turned in her seat. “Just over fifteen minutes, Captain.”
“Go with that.”
“Aye, sir. Rotating the ship to bring the engines into the correct position for burn.”
* * * * *
Jess watched the countdown clock until it hit zero. She’d been in communication with Ray Proudfoot for the last five minutes and everything was ready. Right on the mark, the engines began firing.
The fuel pellets dropped one at a time into the fusion chamber and intense magnetic fields crushed them until they ignited. The thrust from each burst wasn’t massive, but one after the other they got the ship moving. The ship slowly began rising into a higher orbit. The consoles and seats rotated until they found a balance between the thrust and the centrifugal force.
They’d continue to burn for several passes around the Earth before they escaped its gravity. The fusion burn would be visible below. She wondered how long it would be before anyone noticed they were leaving.
* * * * *
The ringing phone woke Kathleen Bennett from a sound sleep. No one called her at night unless something was terribly wrong.
“Bennett,” she said groggily.
“I’m sorry for waking you so late, ma’am,” her assistant said. “Something serious has come up regarding the space station. It’s leaving.”
“What? Is it falling out of orbit?”
“No, ma’am. It has some kind of thruster that we couldn’t see. It’s firing now. The astronomer you paid to keep an eye on it feels certain that it’s leaving Earth orbit. It’s not a space station. It’s a spaceship.”
She sat bolt upright. “Is my son back?”
“Yes, ma’am. He arrived an hour ago and went to bed.”
“Wake him. I want a full team in my office in twenty minutes.”
Kathleen hung up and began dressing hurriedly. She didn’t know how they’d missed this, but she knew what it meant. Her ex-husband was going to wherever that crashed ship had come from. She was certain of it.
She wouldn’t let him steal a march on her. Somehow, she needed to get in front of this.
* * * * *
Josh Queen, the secretary of state for the United States of America, woke at the first ring of his phone.
“Yes?”
“I’m sorry to disturb you, sir. Something has happened.” The man outlined the events in orbit.
Queen sat up and slowly nodded. “The president will need to know about this first thing. Contact the owners of this station and demand to know what they think they’re doing. I want details on my desk in an hour.
“And Paul, don’t let them push you around. This is a direct threat to the United States of America. I don’t care who they think they are, no one secretly builds something like this in orbit around our planet. They might have nuclear weapons. They’ll answer to us directly or suffer the consequences.”
He rose, looked at the clock, and started getting dressed. Today would be long and difficult. At best, someone had built an unauthorized spaceship, duping the American government. At worst, they were threatening the stability of the greatest nation on earth.
He couldn’t allow that to stand.
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Check out Terry’s other works through the links below. Continue on to read the first chapter of Empire of Bones, Book One in his exciting Empire of Bones Saga.
Works by Terry Mixon
The Empire of Bones Saga
Empire of Bones
Veil of Shadows
Command Decisions
Ghosts of Empire (forthcoming)
Humanity Unlimited
Liberty Station
Anthologies Terry Has Work In
Dirty Magick: Los Angeles
Dirty Magick: New Orleans
Empire of Bones
Commander Jared Mertz, captain of the Fleet destroyer Athena, looked up from his console when his tactical officer spoke. “Contacts bearing two-five-zero by three-three-zero. Gravitic scanners show at least three ships under power and on a slow course toward Orbital One.”
He leaned forward in his seat and gave Lieutenant Zia Anderson his full attention. “Put them on the main screen. Have they seen us?”
The forward display switched from a tedious view of the asteroid they were in a close orbit of to a graphical representation of the immediate area of space. A small blue circle represented his ship. The enemy task force, marked with a red diamond, appeared on a projected course that took them ahead of and below Athena’s position. Their current range was just over a million kilometers.
Their slow speed prevented their grav drive signatures from showing up on the gravitic scanners beyond this short range. By his estimation, they’d need to increase speed by twenty or thirty percent before Orbital One might detect them from deeper in the system.
If Athena had been actively scanning with the normal space scanners, the enemy would’ve detected them much further out and gone dark before the destroyer noticed them. Relying on only the passive and gravitic scanners had been the only way to spot them first.
“Have they seen us?” Jared asked.
The tall redheaded officer shook her head. “I don’t think so, Captain. The asteroid we’re grappled to seems to have fooled them.”
“Keep all active scanners offline, but arm the missile tubes and bring all combat systems to standby. Sound general quarters and send a tight beam warning to Orbital One.”
“Aye, sir.”
Lieutenant Pasco Ramirez, Athena’s helmsman, examined his console readouts. “Their drives are at minimum, sir. They probably exited the flip point about three hours ago. At their current speed, they’ll cross our orbit in about half an hour.”
They officially called the incongruity in the space-time fabric that allowed for interstellar travel an Osborne-Levinson Bridge, but no one outside a university used that name. Jared figured it hadn’t taken more than fifteen minutes before someone called it a flip point, because that’s exactly what happened when the special drives pulled on the weakened area of empty space. The ship ceased to exist in one planetary system and appeared in a different one light-years away.
It had made the existence of the Old Empire possible. And the rebellion that destroyed it.
“Be ready to bring our drives online at a moment’s notice.” Jared returned his attention to his tactical officer. “I want to fire two salvos of missiles after they pass us, just before they’re out of effective range.”
“Sir, we don’t have any speed built up,” she warned. “They’ll have us as soon as they pivot.”
The red team ships would need to turn before they could return fire because the massive drives a starship required left no room for missile tubes aft.
“I know. With their momentum and course, we might be able to get out of easy firing range before then. If we want to make these war games more than a toss-up, we need to bloody their noses. Keep working on possible scenarios while I chat with the XO.”
He opened a channel to operations. Athena’s executive officer appeared on Jared’s console a few moments later. His second in command already knew what Zia had reported, but Jared summarized the situation and his plan to make the red team pay for their inattention.
Lieutenant Commander Charlie Graves grinned. “It’s about time they showed up. I was beginning to think they’d gotten lost.”
“I’m sure Admiral Yeats would have something incisive to say about that in the after action report.”
“Wouldn’t he?” The lanky officer glanced away from the screen. “Okay, we’re starting to get some better data now. It looks like six hostiles, tentatively identified as three destroyers, two light cruisers, and a heavy. We’re not supposed to know who’s participating in the exercise, but Ensign Enova says she’s sure the heavy cruiser is Spear. She served her midshipman’s cruise on her.”
Jared allowed the corner of his mouth to twitch upward. “We’ll overlook that little violation of the simulation guidelines just this once. Who’s in command of Spear?”
“Wallace Breckenridge. The ensign says he’s a real “by the book kind” of guy. Apparently, he’s not the kind that appreciates anyone thinking outside the box.”
“Then we’ll be giving him quite the unpleasant wakeup call. Let me know if you see anything else as they close range. Bridge out.”
The six red diamonds slowly inched toward Athena on the screen. The red team would intersect their course about four hundred thousand kilometers away, just inside Athena’s most effective targeting range—half a million kilometers.
Time crept by as Jared waited for the enemy to notice their presence or perhaps send a destroyer to check the asteroid out, but they didn’t. He let the distance between them open again once they’d passed until the enemy was almost out of optimal missile range.
“Separate from the asteroid, Pasco. Zia, as soon as you have a passive lock, fire. Don’t go active until they respond. We might get the second salvo off before they can react.”
The screen lit up with four amber sparks representing Athena’s missiles as they exited the tubes. They screamed toward the enemy task force, their grav drives at maximum.
“Missiles away,” Zia said. “Telemetry indicates target acquisition. Thirty seconds until interception. Tubes reloading.”
