Planet Killers
By Sean Brandywine
Smashwords Edition
Copyright 2009 Sean Brandywine
Strict Publishing International
Smashwords Edition, License Notes
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Chapter I
Swift Killer
The killer approached silently and swiftly. The helpless prey never knew of the danger until the strike, and then it was too late.
The killer was an intelligence-made machine, a construction of metals, plastics and other materials not normally found in nature. It had a rest mass of 878,938 kilograms (968 tons) and was moving at nearly the speed of light. Even so, it took over nine months to pass through the Oort Comet Cloud surrounding the Solar System, and another three and a half hours to pass through the Kuiper Belt before entering the realm of planets. In neither of them did it strike any objects for, although the Oort Comet Cloud contains around two trillion icy bodies of frozen methane and carbon monoxide, the average distance between them was tens of millions of kilometers. Likewise for the Kuiper Belt where these objects tend to be larger but are still widely spaced apart.
This object, made by creatures that did not resemble men at all, sped past the orbit of Neptune, inward bound. In just short of three hours it had crossed to the orbit of Saturn. Another thirty-six minutes later it had reached the orbit of the planet Mars. From there to the earth took only three minutes.
Faster than any eye could follow, this killer machine missed the Earth by just over eighty thousand kilometers. But it did not miss totally. A half second after its near-miss of the Earth, the object impacted with the edge of Earth’s moon.
The explosion was the largest ever seen by man, dwarfing man’s puny atomic and hydrogen bombs. It shattered the moon, leaving one major ragged chunk and thousands of smaller pieces flying off in all directions. The off-center hit caused what was left of the moon to spin wildly, throwing out fragments and dust as it did.
It was the largest disaster to ever hit mankind. And it was not natural.
* * *
Chapter II
Counting up Losses
News bulletin, Station KKNV, 23 July 2213 A.D.:
“Officials all over the world today are releasing casualty figures from the Moon Strike, as it has come to be called. Casualties attributed directly to the falling pieces of the Moon have already topped 800 million worldwide, and more continue to strike the Earth. Secondary casualties from tsunamis, flooding and fires exceed 100 million and are expected to grow. Authorities place the death toll from the major meteorite that struck near the center of Beijing at 200 million, but communications within China are unreliable. Some say that figure is too low.
“Other cities have suffered near misses. Casualties are high New York and Chicago, also from nearly direct hits.
“Disruption of the social infrastructure in many countries is expected to affect almost everyone on the planet. Distribution of food supplies, power and other necessities has been disrupted in many areas, and it may be weeks or months before they are restored. The World Health Organization has warned of massive spread of diseases to due food shortages and disruption of fresh water and sanitation facilities.
“Scientists are still uncertain what it was that struck the Moon. No sign of any approaching object was found by Space Track. “We can only assume that it was a high speed asteroid,” said a spokesman for the Astronomical Union. He could not account for the fact that Space Track, a system that has proven itself many times in detecting near-Earth asteroids, failed in this case.
Van Johnson, an economic advisor, turned off the TV. For long moments no one in the room spoke. Finally, the military Chief of Staff, General Groves, rose to address the President’s Advisors. “Estimates,” he began in a weary voice, “are that the death toll is likely to far exceed one billion.” The stunned silence continued. He paused to look around the room, seeing many shocked and disbelieving expressions. “Of course all national and local organizations will be put into full time rescue and rehabilitation efforts. But that is not the only purpose of this meeting. The first order of business is to try to determine the cause of this disaster. I have invited several leading scientist to assist us.
“Dr. Carlton from Space Track will speak first.”
The elderly astronomer, who looked more like a tall, slender mortician than a leading scientist, stood. “You all have the same question that I have: how did Space Track miss this? Space Track has seventy-six telescopes around the world and on the Moon. We have a very good track record of finding, identifying and countering any near-Earth asteroid or comet that comes our way. You all remember how we identified the asteroid NGAC-18999C in time for Space Command to divert it away from Earth with nuclear bombs.
“All I can tell you is that we detected nothing in the days before this event. Whatever struck the Moon must have come in at an unbelievably high speed. Otherwise we would have seen it. If not with the optical scopes, then with the radar installations.”
“Doctor,” asked a voice from one side of the crowded table, “could the object have been black, non-reflective? And somehow shielded from radar. We have aircraft that can do that.”
“There is nothing known in space that can be both. Even assuming that an object was covered with dark, non-reflective dust, such as carbon, it will still show up on the radar systems. I know of no natural objects that will not reflect radar and still be solid enough to do this damage.”
“General Craig Smith of Space Command,” said General Groves as Dr. Carlton sat down.
The General looked like one. Short cut hair, hard features and a well-tailored uniform that spoke of a man still in shape despite sixty or more years under his belt.
“I can tell you categorically that there was no device stored on any moonbase that could have caused this explosion. There are a few nukes stored for Space Track use, but even if all those were to go off simultaneously, the explosion would have been nowhere near as large as was seen. Nor,” he continued, “was there any kind of experimentation being conducted on the Moon that could conceivably account for an explosion of this size.
“Further, all Space Command ships are accounted for. We lost two of our starships that were in orbit around the moon and a number of smaller craft. But whatever hit the moon was not one of our craft.”
He sat back down.
General Groves rose again. He was closing his cell phone as he rose to address the body again. Looking around the table, he begged them, “Does anyone have any other ideas?”
No one replied. “Very well. I shall inform the President that we are unable to explain this event. This advisory board will now turn to matters of national recovery. I will turn you over to Dr. Lewis. Dr. Carlton and General Smith, please come with me.”
The two named people joined him as he left the room. “What is it?” asked Dr. Carlton. “Not here,” was the curt answer. The three of them left the underground bunker conference room and got into a golf cart. Many facilities in this bunker complex were linked via tunnels with electric carts to transport personnel about. Once they were traveling and could not be overheard, General Groves told them that he just had a call from the President. They were wanted in his presence immediately. They drove in silence for over a mile before pulling up to a passageway labeled Room 17. He turned down that tunnel and traveled another half mile. There was a massive, closed door at the end, guarded by four Marines in combat uniforms and armed. All three of them had to look into a retinal scanner to be cleared through that door.
Inside was a medium sized conference room with several large monitors along one wall. Two of them were currently showing the Norad Command Center and the Military Unified Command Center in Maryland. Both places looked very busy but the sound was muted within the room.
A figure arose from a chair to greet them. He was tall, just a little over six feet, and slender. The youthful face did not seem to be old enough for the important position he held.
“Mr. President,” said General Groves, “May I present Dr. Carlton of Space Track and General Smith, whom I believe you already know.”
“Yes, we know each other from way back. Had some debates in the Senate about military spending.”
“Yes, Sir,”
“Gentlemen, please be seated. This meeting will be informal but recorded. Coffee? Tea? No? Then let’s get right to the bottom line.
“I was informed by my counter-part in Russia that one of their optical tracking systems did observe something approaching the Moon in the brief time before the explosion.” All heads came up. “It was not a normal object in any respect. Here it is.” He pressed a button on the console before him. MUCC display disappeared to be replaced by a photo showing one edge of the Moon in clear detail. To the right and just below the Moon was a short streak of blurred light.
“What is that?” asked General Groves.
“I would say,” replied Dr. Carlton, “that this is an image of what struck the Moon.”
“But what is it?”
“Mr. President, did they say how long the exposure of this photo was?” asked Dr. Carlton.
“One hundredth of a second.”
“I see. Then, gentlemen, I believe we have been attacked.”
His pronouncement left the others in stunned silence, even the President.
“Please explain,” the Chief Executive managed finally.
“It is simply, really. That object is traveling very fast. So fast, indeed, that it must have been at nearly the speed of light. What you actually see here, gentlemen, is not the object but the interaction of the object with particles within the Earth-Moon space. Dust and such. This object is moving so fast that when it strikes a dust particle, the particle is vaporized, giving off a tiny burst of light and energy.”
“What can travel that fast?” asked the President.
“Nothing man-made. And nothing in nature. At least nothing that large. Cosmic rays and some other particles can approach that speed, especially from super-nova explosions. But nothing this large.”
“Then what is it?”
“It is a machine. A starship, in fact. And, unless I miss my guess, it was aimed at the Earth.”
Had these men been more emotional people, they would have cried out in shock. But these were men used to holding onto their emotions.
“Please explain your logic, Doctor,” asked the President.
“Gladly. I’ll try to keep it simple. As you know, we have interstellar flight capabilities. It is expensive and difficult but we can currently travel to the handful of nearest stars. We do this by using a tremendous surge of energy to create a small wormhole. The wormhole then pulls the ship into it and spits it out at the other end. The tricky part is making the calculation so that you get out where you want to be.”
“Yes, Doctor.”
“Well, that is not the only way to travel between the stars. As you know the distances we are talking about are huge, so huge that a beam of light traveling at three hundred kilometers a second takes years to make that journey. Until the invention of the WHD, or Worm Hole Drive, interstellar travel was impractical. It would take massive amounts of reaction mass to accelerate a ship to even half the speed of light, not to mention a massive power source to accelerate that ejected reaction mass. Then massive amounts more to decelerate it on the second half of the trip. Just a quick jaunt down to Alpha Centuri would take twenty or thirty years, if you were willing to put out the power to do it.
“The WHD makes all that unnecessary. It still takes a lot of energy to open a Worm Hole but once you do, the trip is almost instantaneous.
“There is, however, one reason why you might want to do it the slow, expensive way. As a weapon.”
General Smith leaned a little closer at the mention of a weapon.
“If you accelerate a large mass to nearly the speed of light, you have a very, very powerful device. When it strikes a target, such as a planet – or the Moon - it will convert nearly all that mass to pure energy. Force, if you remember your basic physics, is equal to mass times velocity. The faster an object moves, the more energy it has to impart to a target.”
The doctor was in full lecture mode now, something he always was good at.
“That’s why a small lead bullet striking with high velocity will do much more damage than a much larger object moving slowly. Now you may say that is okay but wouldn’t you have to have a very massive object to do the amount of damage we saw on our Moon? Let me calculate for you. Let’s say you have an object weighting one ton: two thousand pounds. That’s four thousand and four hundred kilograms. And let’s say that we have accelerated it to nearly the speed of light. When it hits, you have a force of 4400 kilograms times 300,000 kilometers per second.” He pulled a calculator out of his pocket. “That would be the equivalent of 96.8 billion tons of TNT.” A couple more pokes on the calculator and he added, “That would make the explosion equal to almost five millions times larger than the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima.”
He paused dramatically for a second, a trick he learned while teaching undergrads. “But,” he said, “that is not the bottom line. This one-ton vehicle that you have accelerated to nearly the speed of light does not weigh one ton any more. You are forgetting Special Relativity. Remember from your classes, at relativistic speeds, matter changes with respect to the observer at rest. Time becomes shorter, lengths become shorter, and mass increases. Think about that mass increasing. This is the equation.” He stood and went to a white board and wrote on it, and then stood back and pointed at the formulas.
“V is the velocity of the object, and c is, of course, the speed of light. M-zero is the rest mass. What this tells us is that as you increase the velocity, v, to close to the speed of light, c, then this fraction here, v over c, become nearly equal to one. And if that is equal to one, then the quantity under the square root sign become nearly one minus one, or zero. The square root of zero is zero. So you get the dominator of this overall fraction approaching zero. As you approach the speed of light, you are dividing the rest mass by a very small number. That makes the apparent mass, M, very large. In fact, if you could actually reach the speed of light, its mass would become infinite.
“Mr. President, you had college math, no?”
“I understand the math, Dr. Carlton. What you are saying is that at speeds very close to the speed of light, the mass increases to a very large number.”
“Couldn’t have put it better myself. And then it follows that multiplying the speed times the mass gives much a much higher number for the force of the explosion. Much more.”
The military mind is always quick to latch onto new weapons. “Then what you have,” General Smith said, “is a very effective bomb. Makes nukes look like firecrackers.”
“You got it, General. Now back to our Moon Strike. Either some race was trying to visit us and their ship never decelerated from near light speed, or you have a weapon deliberately fired at the earth. I believe, gentleman, that this object, this relativistic bomb, was aimed at the earth. Luckily it missed.”
“Luckily!” cried General Smith. “Blowing up our moon and killing millions. Millions!”
Dr. Carlton looked at the general over the rim of his glasses. “It could have been worse,” he said simply and softly.
For a minute no one spoke as they imagined what would have happened had this object struck the Earth.
“Probably no less than the elimination of the entire human species,” Dr. Carlton filled in for them. “Save for a few of us who were off the Earth at the time.”
“Why do you think it missed, Doctor?” asked the President.
“Probably difficulty in aiming. You see, we can assume that this bomb started out as a starship. It left some planetary system, accelerating as rapidly as it could, probably ejecting massive amounts of reaction mass. For a long time, it accelerated, maybe a year or two. Then, when it was traveling at almost the speed of light, it traversed the space between their star system and ours. As it neared our system, it was traveling at full speed, nearly c. At that speed you can’t change course. You’re covering 300,000 kilometers every second. That’s 186,000 miles. Every second. Something going that fast cannot have its course changed easily. This means that they have to be very careful in their aim when the ship is traveling slowly enough to still change its course. They could only make course changes while very far away from our solar system. I think they simply missed.”
“My God!” said the President softly. He covered his face with his hands. Dr. Carlton watched with interest. He was good an explaining things but in this case he was glad that he did not have to make the decisions.
“Mr. President. We have to retaliate,” said General Smith.
“How? Build a relativistic bomb ourselves? Hell, we don’t even know who launched this thing!”
“I believe we may be able to backtrack it,” said Dr. Carlton. “We have this photo,” he said with a wave towards the display still on the screen. “And, now that we know what to look for, there may be other tracks we can find. I’d say there is a good chance we can find out where it came from.”
“Then I suggest we contact the other nations and prepare a fleet to go there,” said General Smith. “And kick their butts!”
The President only shook his head sadly. “We have met three races in space. All three have been friendly. There are some who maintain that any race intelligent enough to discover interstellar drive is intelligent enough to understand the illogic of war. Who could have done this? Who wants the human race wiped out?”
No one had an answer for him.
For a long time these four men looked at each other, unable or unwilling to voice their thoughts right then.
Finally the President took in a deep breath. He muttered, “How am I going to tell the public?” Then, louder, “How do we keep people from panicking? How can we tell them than some race out there has the ability to totally destroy the Earth in a second? And they just tried!”
“And,” added Dr. Carlton, “that another such bomb may be on its way as we speak.”
The President turned pale. It took several long seconds before he could speak again. “General, you’re going to get your wish. I want you to head up a commission that will include all nations. Explain the problem and ask them to help formulate a response. An armed response.”
“Yes, Sir!”
“Dr. Carlton, I want you to find out where these bastards live. We’re going to go visit them.”
Chapter III
Departure
As always, the Earth was a lovely, a blue-white crescent filling window of the Pacer as it approached ISS3, International Space Station Three. From the inboard side of the shuttle, the view was mostly of Earth, but a milky band of light could be seen at the far edge. A streak of light occasionally darted across the Earth, above the clouds, in the upper atmosphere. They were meteors entering the atmosphere and burning up.
“Luckily, those meteors are not traveling at the speed meteors normally do,” said the attractive woman sitting next to Jones. “They’re fragments of the Moon. Most of them are coming in at relatively slow speeds, not the 2 to 6 miles per second normal meteors do. That’s one of the reasons damage wasn’t as bad as it could have been.”
Jones turned to the woman. “Over a billion people killed and you say it wasn’t bad?”
“I said, Captain, that it wasn’t as bad as it could have been. Normal meteors coming in at high speeds have a lot more energy. And more energy means more impact when they hit.”
“You an astronomer?” he asked.
“Yes. My name is Sharon Bonner. That’s Doctor Sharon Bonner, to be formal. I’m with the UN Task Force. I’ll be going on the Thrasher. Just as you will, Captain Jones.”
“That’s an assumption,” he told her, a little put off by the know-it-all attitude of this woman. “I might be support team, not necessarily part of the flight team.”
“You are the first choice Weapons Officer for the Thrasher. Unless you prove unsuitable somehow, the job is yours. You are twenty-eight years old, a graduate of UCI with degrees in engineering and physics. You are not married, both parents live in San Diego, and you like to drive fast sports cars. You have been with Space Command for three years, were just made a captain – congratulations, by the way – and are a specialist in nuclear weapons.”
Jones could only stare at this nice looking young woman in disbelief. He truly wished he could rattle off facts about her, but truth was, he knew nothing about her beyond the fact that she had nice legs and a pretty smile. That pretty smile was shining upon him just then.
From her point of view, this Captain Jones was typical of the Space Command officers; confident to the point of arrogance, trim and fit, and convinced he was God’s gift to womankind. In this case, he was not far from wrong. He was good looking, in a boyish sort of way. The crew-cut hair was dark brown, his eyes blue, and the chin had a delightful dimple!
“You say you’re on the Thrasher, too?” he asked.
“Yes. Astronomy and navigation. By the way, I looked up the bios on everyone in the crew, not just you.”
It was hard to stay displeased with her when she smiled so nicely. He reached over to offer his hand. She took it and returned the shake with a firm grip. She had what he had always thought of as dirty-blonde hair, not quite golden blonde but also not really light brown. Her eyes were a soft shade of blue. And, he could not but help notice that she filled out her summer dress quite nicely.
“Calculations have shown that the Earth will have a set of rings for at least ten thousand years. Just like Saturn does. All fragments of our old Moon.” She was in lecture mode again, but he did not mind. “It is a good thing that the main fragment of the moon stayed pretty much in the original orbit. Had it come down, it would have taken out a whole continent. Maybe a lot more.”
“Have you astronomers figured out where it came from yet?” he asked the question that was in the minds of most those days.
She frowned. “You’ll hear about that after departure.”
“Classified?”
“Highly.”
They were just two of the fifteen people being shuttled up to ISS3 on that trip. As with most things those days, it had been a rush to get him on board. There had been only a couple minutes to buckle in before the lift-off. Sharon had dashed onboard right after him, barely before the closing of the hatch.
There was a second question on most people’s minds in the months after the Moon Strike. He asked it. “Do you think there will be another? Another relativistic bomb coming this way?”
“I don’t know. No one does. It would come in so fast that we can’t see it. Telescopes all over are looking.” She shrugged. “But what good would it do if we could see it coming? It would give us very little advanced warning; literally seconds. And there is absolutely nothing we could do about it. Am I wrong?” she asked him. “Could you Space Command guys intercept it? Nuke it? And would that do any good? I mean, look at the speed it would be coming at! In one second it would cover almost two hundred thousand miles.”
“One hundred and eighty-six thousand miles,” he said.
“Quite. So you see, there is nothing we could do about it. Maybe if we could move the Earth so that any RB’s sent would miss. But that’s not very practical, is it?”
“So you’re saying that we have to stop it at the source – before it is launched?”
“That is the idea behind the Thasher and the rest of the fleet. Go get them before they do it again.”
“Yeah. Go get them.”
“Captain, can I ask a question?”
“Please call me ‘Rocky’. That’s what my friends do.”
“But your name is Rufford Jones.”
“I hate Rufford. Let’s just forget it.”
“Okay. Rocky it is.”
“What did you want to ask?”
“How many nukes are we going to be carrying?”
He grinned. “To quote an old line, ‘I could tell you, but then I would have to kill you’.”
“Classified?”
“Highly.”
“I was just wondering how much firepower we will be packing. We’re only four ships going up against a whole world. We had better be carrying a big stick.”
“We’ll have a big stick. Many of them,” he said in a quiet tone.
“Oh.” There was a bump followed by everyone being jerked forward. “We docked,” she said. “Look, I have to report to the UN Task Force Leader. But I’ll see you during orientation meeting. Or maybe at the dinner tonight?”
“I would like that,” he said, and meant it. Dr. Bonner was an attractive woman and not far different in age from him. He had figured on this being a purely military mission, but maybe with her on board…?
They left the shuttle Pacer in single file, hanging on to the lead line as they floated in zero G. A couple of the passengers looked a little green around the gills, but that was normal for first-timers into space. A short tube connected their hatch to the station, and then it was down passageways and around corners and over pipes and boxes and numerous other unidentifiable parts of the space station. Finally, a guide showed Rocky to a tiny cabin and told him that was to be his for three days, then he would be transferred to the Thrasher.
Fortunately Rocky had done a lot of flying and even been into space once, so weightlessness was no problem for him. He was glad of that. Trouble adapting to the conditions of space flight could easily keep him off the Thrasher, and that was something he could not tolerate. He HAD to be on that flight!
The orientation meeting had to be conducted in three sessions because the largest single space on the station could hold a maximum of forty people. Rocky was disappointed to see that Sharon was not in his group. Well, maybe at the dinner that night…
The orientation told him little that he did not already know. There were four starships in the fleet; the Thrasher, the Revenge, the Minsk, and the Satori. Each was a WHD starship. The crew complements ranged from twenty-two for the Satori to forty-one for the Thrasher. Each would carry both defensive and offensive armament, including nukes.
“We have identified the star system from which the RB was launched. You will be informed further after the mission starts,” said Colonel Ramis, the commander of the Minsk, whose English was accented but rather good. “I can tell you that this will be the farthest humans have ever traveled. For the next three days you will all undergo additional testing to assure your qualification for space travel and for the job. The final crew members will be transferred to their ships after that. I remind you that all information about this mission is classified at the highest level. If any of you communicate to family back on Earth, do not forget that. Dismissed.”
The formal welcoming dinner was also served in sections for lack of space to hold everyone. Again, Rocky was unlucky enough again to miss the astronomer he wanted to talk to. The dinner was nothing special, just a little better than average station food, accompanied by a few welcoming speeches. Rocky met a few more of the Thasher’s potential crew, but found most of them to be wary of personal contact. A good part of that was because more than half of those currently on the mission would be left behind. They were backup only, should one of the mission finalists fail in some way.
The one common feeling was, however, that all wanted to go. Some, like Rocky, very badly. The damage done to the Earth affected every one in some way. Many had lost relatives. Some had lost their homes. But mostly, all were angry. Some unknown race had tried to destroy us. No warning, no reason, just the most powerful weapon imaginable thrown at them. And it only missed by the tiniest of margins.
Human nature demanded revenge. Anger, even rage, predominated. But underneath was a strong current of fear. Was another RB coming? Was it already entering the solar system? Could we all die in the next second and not even know it was coming?
It had taken almost a full year to rebuild the world enough to support the massive effort to outfit these four starships. Except for Space Track nukes, humans had no weapons in space, but new and powerful ones were designed and built with all possible speed. Laser cannon were designed to protect the ships. Missiles with nuclear warheads were stored and ready. The crew even drew and were taught how to use side arms. To use an old expression, this expedition was going out loaded for bear.
Rocky was busy during the next few days. There were tests, dozens of them; physical and mental and emotional. He was poked and prodded and probed. About the time he was ready to scream, they finally stopped testing him.
“You’ve passed,” Colonel Samuel Horton, commander of the Thrasher, told him personally. “You’re my Weapons Officer.”
They were in the tiny office the Colonel was using. The Colonel was a veteran with thirty years service behind him. His cold, hard eyes and emotionless expression might have been on a recruitment poster for combat troops. But he was also highly intelligent and understood technical matters far better than most military commanders.
He pulled a security box from a satchel by his tiny desk. He keyed in the code and the lid snapped open. Inside was a single sheet of paper.
“Here are the launch codes for the Thrasher’s nukes. Memorize them now.”
Memorizing the list of eighteen pairs of six digit launch codes and two digit missile codes was no problem. It was one of the talents he had mastered in his career as a weapons specialist. After a couple minutes he handed the sheet back to the Colonel.
“Number nine?” he was asked.
Rocky repeated the proper code for missile number nine. There followed a dozen other tests in rapid succession. He snapped out each code just as rapidly.
The Colonel smiled. “You and I are the only officers who have those codes.” He folded the sheet and put it back into the security box. Rocky noted that the Colonel had questioned him without looking at the sheet. A second code combination was keyed onto the security box pad and there was a small sound, like a hiccup from the box. The contents, they both knew, were now nothing more than a pile of fine ashes.
“You report onboard at 0900 hours. We launch at 2100 hours. Before that I want you to run a total systems check on every missile and launcher. Report directly to me when you have finished. I want assurance that every missile is functioning properly.”
“Yes, Sir.”
Rocky felt like smiling, but he kept a poker face. This was exactly what he wanted. With every fiber of his being.
“Dismissed.”
Rocky released his hold on the foot bar and floated upward. Rotating in midair, he prepared to launch himself towards the corridor when the Colonel stopped him.
“Captain…”
“Yes, Sir?”
“We will avenge Santa Clara.”
“Yes, Sir!”
Their eyes locked for a second in understanding.
Rocky returned to the tiny cabin to pack the few personal items he had. In that minuscule bit of privacy he allowed the smile to cross his face. It was not, however, a happy smile. It was the hard smile of a determined man.
An hour later he was floating in a queue near one of the airlocks, along with four others. Sharon was not there, but he figured sooner or later he would find her onboard the Thrasher. It was not that big a ship.
The man in front of him turned to grin at him. “Well, see you made it,” he said cheerfully. “We’re going to go kick some alien ass, right?”
“We have a job to do,” Rocky said with no trace of joy in his voice.
“Wow, listen to the Space Command boy! ‘We have a job to do!’ Wow!”
“Listen, Mister… Carter,” Rocky said, looking at the nametag. “We have the most important job any group of people have ever had. Doing it and doing it well is the bottom line.”
Carter dropped the smile. “You lost someone, didn’t you?” he asked with surprising perception.
“Yes.” Then Rocky deliberately softened his tone. “Yeah, I’m ready to kick some alien ass!”
Carter nodded gravely.
The little exchanged told a lot about the two men. Some wanted to be on this mission out of a sense of duty to the human race. Others did it because they were personally hurt by loss. The latter group tended to be more serious.
Since the Thrasher was in Earth orbit, the shuttle trip was only twenty minutes. Coming up on the starship, everyone who could was looking out the viewports eagerly. The starship was basically a huge ball. Aerodynamic shape was not needed by a ship that never would enter an atmosphere. And being a compact, spherical shape made it easier to fit into small wormhole. And the smaller the wormhole needed, the less power it took to create it.
Numerous antennae and radar dishes dotted the dull silver surface of the sphere, as did sixteen dark circles. Most of the crew knew that those marked the location of missile launch tubes. The command bridge was the largest widow in the surface. That window was lit and some tiny shapes could be seen moving inside as the shuttle came closer. There were also numerous blisters all around the waist, and clusters of them at the poles. Those were laser cannon, which would hopefully defend the ship should that be needed.
Rocky knew that it was unlikely they would ever be fired. To be effective with a laser you had to be within miles of the target, a hundred at maximum. The lasers were close in weapons. And most of the tacticians felt that such close in fighting was unlikely. Standing back and tossing missiles was far more likely in a space war.
The Thrasher was a converted exploration starship. Scientific instruments and collection areas where removed to make room for missile tubes and lasers. But it also meant that the crew quarters were larger and better appointed than military ships. The cabin Rocky was shown was twice as large as anything he had ever seen on a military craft. It had a large viewing screen, computer terminal, and a bunk both larger and more comfortable than he expected.
He quickly stowed his gear and then made his way to the Weapons Command Console. The layout of most starships was very much the same, so it was not too hard to find the Command Bridge. His console was to the right of the Commander’s chair, next to the Communications Officer. Rocky settled into the chair, adjusted it to his liking, and then began familiarizing himself with the displays and controls at his command.
It was almost identical to the simulators, so it was not long before he began running the systems checks. Massive computer power checked every circuit, every component, every sensor at lightning speed. Then it crunched the data, mulled it over, and spat out status reports. Circuits were tested, power supplies and backups tested, and everything else short of actually launching the missiles.
Near the end of his testing, Rocky noted, in the corner of his eye, Sharon enter the bridge and took a seat at the Navigation Console. He looked up, nodded to her, and then went back to his work.
When finished, he took the final printouts and went to stand by the Commander’s chair.
Colonel Horton accepted his verbal status report, and then looked over the printouts himself. “This relay measures two percent low on the timing test. Replace it. Have them rush it over.”
Rocky, who was going to recommend exactly that one same corrective action, went to the comm station to order the part. Then he went to the airlock to wait for the relay. By the time he replaced it and ran the tests again, it was growing close to the launch window.
His pre-launch tasks finished, Rocky had a few moments to take a breath and observe. There was activity all over the bridge, a dozen people hurrying about on different tasks, but all projecting a sense of urgency. Through the windows he could see a thin slice of the Earth, the band of light showing where the rings were forming, and a distant bright spot that was the ISS3. It all looked peaceful, floating around their home world, but in the back of his mind, as with most of humanity, was the thought that all this might end in a flash. He wondered if he would see the streak of light as a RB plunged into the Earth. The amount of energy released would shatter the planet. Sharon could tell him what would be left, probably a spreading disk of debris still circling the sun, but no longer a planet. The sun would have a second asteroid belt.
He felt a sense of motion and knew that the ship’s reaction engines had been turned on. The ship would be thousands of miles away from Earth before they would create the wormhole. It was a safety precaution. He could feel the slightest of vibrations in his console.
A chime sounded and a display appeared on his console. “Ten minutes to launch. Secure all stations,” it read. He again checked the status of all missiles and launchers. Green across the board. Then he double-checked the status of all lasers. Also green indicators across the board. His responsibilities were as complete as he could make them.
He glanced over to Sharon. She was busy typing. He could see numerous numerical displays on her screens. With a prayer that she knew what she was doing, he turned back to his console. There were stories about starships that had not calculated correctly and materialized far from where they should have. Wormholes were funny things. A slight miscalculation when you create it and it will be more than a little distance you miss your destination: you might miss it by light years.
A double chime sounded and “Five minutes to launch” appeared.
He made sure that the harness was firm about his body. He had never “jumped” as they called it; never been through a wormhole. Some said that it felt as if you were being turned inside out then back again. Others said they saw only blackness and felt nothing. But whatever sensation it produced, the very idea of plunging into a phenomenon of nature akin to a black hole, was scary. In a second, this huge starship, and you with it, would cheat the laws of physics and suddenly be light years away.
This jump would be only the first. They still had not been told their destination, but it was far enough away that multiple jumps would be necessary. Rocky suspected that they would not jump right up next to the world that had launched the RB. They would come close and observe before deciding what to do.
Three chimes.
Rocky tensed. He wondered if he would see anything out the windows when they jumped. But the blast shields were coming down over the windows. The powerful reaction engines had already moved them almost out to the distance of the old lunar orbit.