Encounters (The Spiral Slayers Book 1)

by Rusty Williamson

  He leaned forward and looked to his right where his first officer, Commander Radin Talvin, sat. At 51, Radin was a jolly, heavyset man, with a deep suntan and a shiny bald head with a strip of brown hair framing his ears. Utterly dependable on duty, but off...the women, drinking and brawling were almost legendary. They had worked together for over a decade now and knew each other well. No words had to be spoken. Radin just nodded back once then fingered his headset; his deep voice boomed out over the bridge’s intercom, “Attention all personnel: Ten second countdown is eminent.” Radin paused a beat then, “And… detonation in… ten, nine, eight…”

  Almost filling half the main viewer, an asteroid rotated slowly. Strategically scattered across its surface, small flashing lights marked the locations of the Shaped Charge Array Units or SCAUs and indicated that they were armed.

  “…seven, six, five...”

  Behind the asteroid lay the bluish purple and orange surface of Amular a mere 400 miles beyond. Amular's orange dwarf sun lay behind the ship optimally lighting the scene.

  “…four, three, two…”

  Everyone on the bridge stopped what they were doing and looked at the main viewer.

  “…one, zero.”

  Though they could not see it, on the asteroid, each of the eight SCAUs now extended its 20-foot pole to its full height. On top of the poles were large saucers—these were the glober charges. From the saucer's underside, four guidance rockets fired and the saucer detached and flew straight up.

  From the main viewer of the Bet’ti’s bridge, it looked like nothing was happening while the glober charges rose to their precise computer generated positions. Then, the SCAUs’ buried liquidation charges fired and the bridge’s main screen went white. Within the white, for just a second, the red liquefied rock could be seen blasting outward. Then the glober saucer charges fired and expanding balls of white could be made out forcing the liquid rock inward. The white faded and everyone on the bridge held their breaths.

  On the main viewer, instead of the asteroid, there was now a turbulent churning ‘glob’ of glowing red liquid. Everyone was mesmerized by it. It seemed like it would break apart any second but… it held… one second, two… cheering broke out on the bridge.

  With a big grin on his face, Adamarus keyed his throat mic, “Now, now…” his voice was filled with amusement, “quiet on the bridge.” The cheering subsided with a few nervous laughs. “Zoom out to fifty and justify left,” Adamarus ordered.

  “Zooming out to fifty, left justification,” an officer repeated and the churning red glob shrunk to half its size moving to the left side of the viewer. On the right side, the Smelting Station came into view, heading toward the glob.

  The Smelting Station was almost as large as the Anderson Shipyards; almost three miles in length. Its scoop measured one point three miles. Behind the scoop was the casting section where the molding and surface preparation took place. This area was marked by the large heat dispensing rings. The final section was the linking distribution area where the tugs picked up the shaped and prepared ore for atmospheric entry. The control center was a large circular structure at the end of a huge crane, which was anchored to the linking distribution section. The crane was long enough to suspend the control center in front of the scoop. On the bottom of the linking distribution section was a large circular structure which housed the officers and crew.

  The glob started entering the scoop. The biggest danger now was that parts of the molten metal would escape. This could be very hard to recapture before it hit something or worse, made an uncontrolled fall to the planet.

  All seemed to go well until suddenly an alarm went off. At the same time, the bridge crew could see that a large piece of molten ore had separated from the main body and was spinning off to one side of the scoop. It was solidifying quickly.

  The Smelting Station maintained a fixed home station for dispensing the long sections of prepared ore to the tugs. When it moved forward to collect the molten glob, it then circled back to its home station while the captured ore was processed. The huge facility was hard to maneuver and veering away from its planned route was not something anyone would want to do.

  The plan for this scenario was to have Explorer mining crafts capture lost ore and move them to a safe holding orbit, but this was a lot easier said than done. Lost pieces were almost always spinning, making it hard to lock onto, and they could also break apart, multiplying the problem.

  This piece was large and spinning around rapidly. As they watched, it elongated until it looked like a misshapen barbell. It was going to be a bitch to capture.

  “Scramble four Explorers,” Adamarus ordered.

  At that moment, the Smelting Station hailed the Bet’ti. It was the station’s captain, Emit Walling, “Captain Maximus, I think we can clean up after ourselves this time.”

  Maximus agreed but said he’d have four recovery craft standing by just in case.

  The Smelting Station stayed on course until it had taken in the main body of the glob. It only took 40 seconds but seemed to take forever. As soon as this was done, the Smelting Station rotated until the funnel faced the now hardened piece, then moved forward and collected it. The misshapen barbell connected with the station’s red hot grid, and after a few seconds, the piece re-melted and entered.

  Now came the tricky part, getting back on a course that would bring the station back to its home position. However, as the bridge of the Bet’ti watched, the station made a series of graceful turns and arrived right on schedule back at its home position between the lines of waiting front and rear tugs that stretched into the distance.

  Adamarus keyed his throat mic, “Adamarus to Captain Walling.”

  “Walling here,” came the reply.

  “My compliments, that was nice flying.”

  “I’ll pass that on to our computer,” Walling said with a laugh.

  The station’s heat dispenser rings were glowing red now. Eight minutes later, the first Load, a three-quarter-mile long string of 20 hardened rectangular segments, slid into one of three “racks” at the end of the station. Front and rear connecters had been added to each end, a small segment to which the tugs connected. Green lights began to strobe around the left and right connectors.

  The first pair of tugs moved in. The front tug was half the size of the rear tug; its wings were folded down. The rear tug had huge wings that were folded down and rotated back. Both connected perfectly with each end.

  The tracks which held the Load to the rear of the station opened and pushed off the Load with its tugs, then both tugs extended their wings. The rear tug fired her engines and the newly assembled tugs and ore pulled away and angled downward.

  Ten minutes later the assembly entered the planet’s atmosphere, the front tug taking most of the air friction. As the assembly descended, it began to level out and the rear tug fired its eight large forward-pointing engines, slowing the assembly down.

  Finally, it crossed from the Western Ocean to the white sands of the Eastern Desert. Descending through 3,000 feet, it was close to the ground now. The forward tug fired its rear engines and separated, pulling forward and up. Several minutes later the rear tug also separated.

  The Load was on its own, still hurtling forward faster than it was falling, with its nose slightly raised. Precisely as planned, it hit the first huge sand dune and the sand exploded upward. There were 50 sand dunes of decreasing size spread across two miles and the Load plowed through them all in five seconds. From afar, the first 25 sand dunes seemed to explode upward almost at the same time, but then the second half showed a noticeable slowing as the speed bled off. Giant lifts immediately rose reforming the sand dunes. After hitting the last dune, the “Load” landed almost perfectly on a flat plain of sand and sped across it. Three huge parachutes emerged from the rear connecter and opened, slowing the Load further, and then it plowed into the final three sand dunes and came to rest.

  Four large vehicles raced to the Load’s side and began pushing i
t off to the side. Three minutes later, it slid onto a concrete surface then right onto a string of flatbeds. Machinery on the flatbeds finely aligned the Load, then clamps rotated up from the far side of the cars, securing it. Then, the train pulled away.

  Four hundred miles above the surface, on the bridge of the Bet’ti, someone hollered out, “All right!” and clapping and whooping broke out.

  Adamarus leaned back in his chair and smiled, “Yes, indeed.” He now needed to take a shuttle over to the Smelting Station and inspect the process there while Radin kept the process going here.

  He rose from his seat, straightened his shirt, then keyed his mic, “People,” the clamor quieted down, “that was absolutely perfect. I thank each and every one of you for a job well done. Commander Radin will be taking over now and we’ll baby in the next dozen or so before turning the operation over to the Smelting Station.” Radin was already standing at parade rest with a smile on his face. “Commander Radin, you have the con.”

  Radin replied, “Aye Captain,” and he moved to take Adamarus’ seat.

  As Adamarus turned and walked from the bridge, the next asteroid moved into position and the next countdown began.

  ---

  The day had gone exceptionally well. They had turned the harvesting operation over to the Smelting Station, and now it was late evening and everyone was tired. This was the last item on Adamarus’ schedule.

  On the display screen, Corporal Greg Donaldson rubbed the bridge of his nose. The motion conveyed all the weariness he felt.

  A gruff disembodied voice said, “Corporal, you said that what you saw was…” the sound of papers being flipped, “yes… the word you used was ‘impossible’. Can you explain why?” The doctor conducting the debriefing could not be seen and Adamarus did not recognize the voice.

  Greg’s hand moved from his nose to the hair above his temple, “Well…” his eyes looked up and to the right thinking back, “distant stars, the ones so distant that they look almost like a cloud or haze, these were blocked by the blackness…”

  The unseen doctor could be heard flipping back through his notes as he interrupted, “Now that’s… you said, ‘a blackness that looked like a hole… blacker than the surrounding space’?”

  “Yes,” Greg answered in a tired voice.

  “Okay so the darkness blocked out the distant stars… go on.”

  “Yes, that’s right, but… the brighter stars… the closer ones, weren’t blocked out… like whatever was blocking the light was between the closer stars and the distant stars. But of course that’s insane. You looked at it and thought…impossible.”

  “Pause,” Adamarus said as he leaned forward and placed his hands on the conference table. Corporal Greg Donaldson’s face froze on the large screen and the lights were turned back up. Caught in the process of moving, Donaldson’s face looked unnatural. Adamarus stared at it for a few moments thinking.

  Commander Radin, Lt. Commander McKay, head of security and Lt. Thomas Harman, head of the Shaped Charge Array Deployment division were also seated around the conference table.

  Adamarus shook his head, “And this happened this morning?”

  The head of the Psychiatric Department, Dr. Tanner, was at the other end of the conference table near the view screen. He casually leaned against the table over the room’s access and control station. He was an older man with thin gray hair. “Yes, and the pilot, Lt. Hector Servius, witnessed it as well.” He leaned forward and keyed instructions into the console and the frozen face was replaced with a representation of the asteroid train around the planet. “Throughout the day there were seven other sightings in this area.” Dots appeared off to one side and a blinking box surrounded them. The area was between the planet Amular and its smaller moon. It was labeled Section 2C12.

  “And the cameras and sensors?” Adamarus asked.

  “Same as always, they show nothing.”

  “How many teams did we have in that area?”

  “Fourteen.”

  Adamarus turned from the display to the older man, “Over fifty percent of the teams saw this thing?”

  “Today’s sightings were high. Over the last three weeks, about ten percent is pretty much the daily average. Up to that point it had been quite rare.”

  Adamarus caught Radin’s eye and gave a single nod. Radin had been right to call this to Adamarus’ attention… again. Radin had briefed him on this a month ago. Adamarus sighed. He had hoped that it would just go away but it hadn’t. “So anyone going out there would have about a ten percent chance of seeing this… whatever this is.” It was a statement, not a question. He looked over at Lt. Harman and smiled, “I think it’s time you and I inspected a section of the asteroid train…” he looked up at the display, “…section 2C12.”

  Chapter Two - Encounter

  “Over three hundred ‘sightings’ have been reported over the last five months within the Project Harvest theater of operations. Something like this has happened to one extent or another on almost every orbital or deep space project throughout history. There never seems to be an explanation. This time I’m going to get to the bottom of this if it kills me.”

  Captain Adamarus Maximus

  Captain’s Log

  Source: The Archive

  Adamarus wore a silver vacuum suit, his helmet hanging on the bulkhead behind him. It had been years since he’d been in a vac-suit piloting a small craft over a rotating asteroid. A smile formed. Too long, he thought.

  The cockpit was solid, padded, insulated and comfortable. It made the lethal vacuum only inches away seem remote. The vibrations from the engines coincided with their muffled roar. This constant background symphony mixed seamlessly with the other sounds of the cockpit; the air flowing through vents, the dozens of soft blips of audio indicators and the low chatter of the radio broadcasting on the all-purpose reporting channel. Various displays showed computer generated images of the asteroid's interior makeup, the craft’s course across the asteroid, the status of the SCAUs already planted, and the placement of the one SCAU left to go.

  Adamarus brought the craft down until it was only a couple of hundred feet above the gray pitted surface.

  He leaned forward and looked upward through the view port. Rotating in and out of view, he could see other asteroids with other Explorer Class ships working them, the flashing buoys, and even the huge carrier ship that had brought them out here.

  He glanced to the right where a display showed the vac-suited form of Lt. Harman outside the craft making his way towards the last SCAU.

  Both he and Harman had insisted that in order to keep appearances the same, they would take part of a normal ‘planter’ shift. Harman would normally be back on board the carrier tasked with the mundane chore of monitoring all of the planter teams. He seemed like he was having the time of his life actually being out here and Adamarus had to admit he was having a great time flying the small Explorer craft.

  As the one mile by one-half mile rock passed beneath, the next drop site came into view on the display.

  They were almost three hours into the shift and about to wrap up their first asteroid.

  So far, they had seen nothing unusual.

  “Coming up on the drop” Adamarus said into the microphone.

  A burst of muffled static erupted from the speakers. Through it Harman replied “Got it.” Adamarus checked the radio settings—sunspots were playing hell with communications today.

  A few minutes later Harman and the SCAU dropped away from the ship.

  Adamarus again studied the stars spinning overhead for anything strange—absolutely nothing.

  Ahead was a ridge hiding the horizon. “Lieutenant,” he said, “I’m going ahead for a look–there’s a canyon beyond that ridge.”

  On the descending SCAU Harman replied, “Don’t be too long.”

  The SCAU landed. Twenty feet below Harman the explosive bolts fired, locking the unit down. As the shock absorption pole collapsed, Harman dropped rapidly into the center of
it all with an explosive burst of laughter. “You know, I forgot how much fun this was!”

  Adamarus shot back, “I’d give it a week for the thrill to wear off.”

  “Probably less than that, like right after having to use the suit’s waste disposal systems the first time.” Both laughed. “Well, keep an eye out for the boogeyman,” Harman said.

  “Roger. Be right back.” Adamarus pulled back on the yoke causing the craft to fly faster over the asteroid’s surface.

  Computers controlled the complexities of maintaining the ship’s relative position to the asteroid’s surface. The asteroid itself was moving around the planet at high speed as well as rotating rapidly on its axis. Visually, this was transparent if you focused on the asteroid below, but the forces pushing and pulling were still there and often conflicted with what you saw. Sometimes speeding up was really slowing down and it could, at times, be confusing to the senses.

  Adamarus did his best to ignore this and divided his attention between the terrain and the stars spinning overhead.

  The ridge was coming up quickly. There was a gorge cutting into it—he headed for that.

  ---

  Harman walked carefully out along one of the SCAU’s metal legs then paused and watched the spinning universe for anything strange. Nothing. Ridiculous he thought once again…but then, he corrected himself; too many of his people were seeing this stuff.

  After checking all four legs, he returned to the center and started the drilling sequence.

  He scanned the heavens again—nothing.

  Since Adamarus would not be back for a while, he had some time to kill. He decided to check the legs a second time and headed out.

  Through his magnetic boots, he could feel the vibration coming from the center of the SCAU where the drill bored into the solid rock.

  Reaching the end, he again inspected the steel spikes then turned and started back towards the center. He had to admit it was good being out here again—this was the reason he’d joined the astronaut program ten years ago—but promotions eventually put you behind a desk.