Ruben inserted the first key in the nav slot and turned it. “Yellow key is beginning initialization now, Skipper.”
“Oh, very curious; I am beginning to see where we are,” the ship announced. “I had not realized we were so far from any habitable planets. Very interesting ….”
“Ship,” Stephen interrupted, “Are those feelings you are expressing again?”
“I am sorry, Captain Campbell. They were.”
Ruben swore the ship cleared his throat.
The ship continued with his assessments. “The lead enemy ships are 3.6 l-m away. They have not deviated from their course since arrival. If current projections remain true, Captain, a missile salvo fired from your position into their path 2.5 minutes ago would strike the target group just before they achieve beam range to your projected location.”
“Thank you, ship,” Stephen replied. “We had that figured out already. Our missiles have been in flight for three minutes. Something I just learned from my wife. I’m sending you the parameters.”
The missile data update appeared on the Perry’s screens. “Yes,” the ship said, “I have your missiles plotted. Very good shooting, I might add. Impact in one minute, assuming the enemy fleet has not altered course. And considering the momentum they are carrying on their approach, it would be extremely difficult for them to do so.”
Out of the static, a message arrived from the Glinting Algol, the ship nearest the approaching Wasatti warships. Captain Blakely’s voice was doppler-distorted by the relative motion of his ship in relation to the base. “Captain Campbell, this is Blakely. Advise: Advise: Enemy Penetrator is heading to VCB; velocity 0.55 constant; ejected at fourteen–thirty-two hours. One hostile cruiser eliminated; trailing ship in pursuit. Out.”
Ruben heard the message at the same time-intercept as the base, and only a few seconds before Stephen, who was that many light-seconds further out. Blakely was, as Ruben recalled, somewhere around 4.5 light-minutes away, so his words were already four-and-a-half minutes old. He said the planet killer was launched at 1432 and was traveling at just over half light speed. Ruben glanced at the chronometer and made some quick mental calculations. It gave him a headache trying to figure it out.
“VCB, this is Captain Campbell. Commence immediate evacuation! Immediate evacuation! Rube,” Stephen continued, “you get that? Penetrator impact in three-and-a-half minutes.”
“Aye, Sir,” Ruben replied. “That’s what I figured too. Do we have anything in position to intercept it?”
“No, we don’t. Ship, send me your latest velocity data,” Stephen commanded.
The ship sent the data directly to the Sirius’ bridge.
“That’s not nearly fast enough,” Stephen warned. “Go to maximum accel. Rube, push forward that jump!”
“What’s the range of their planet killers?” Ruben asked.
“I don’t know,” Stephen replied, “but I surely don’t want you to find out. I’m at max acceleration to enemy intercept. The Capella and I will form a line between you and the Wasatti. Once you are behind me, jump out.”
Ruben input the parameters into his console. “Okay, Captain. I see what you’re doin’. I’m set to turn the blue key in three minutes. The system should be initialized by the time I’m past you. I calculate jump in 5.3 minutes.”
“Okay—”
The ship interrupted Stephen. “I have some bad news, Captain Campbell. The enemy fleet appears to have altered course two minutes ago. Missile salvo is a miss.”
At half light speeds, a miss of a minute was an error of six million miles; almost a quarter of the way from Old Earth to Venus.
“All remaining enemy ships appear to be heading directly toward me and away from the base,” the ship offered.
“Rube,” Stephen said, “you hear that? They’re going after you; not us. They’re going to be on you before you’re ready.”
Ruben stared at the tactical display, looking at the enemy force bearing down directly toward him. In response Ruben commanded, “Ship, remain on course, but come to Neg 54, relative; stat!”
“Captain?” the ship asked Stephen for confirmation.
“Do it! Do it!” Stephen shouted. “Give full operational control to Wilkins.”
Ruben felt the ship pitch down violently as it began to vector away from the plane of battle. He was trying to find a hole to hide in to give them time to set the jump. There really were no places to hide out here, however, and all he could do was steal as much time as possible from the pursuing Wasatti by maneuvering away. And the enemy still held the velocity advantage.
“Yes, Sir,” the ship replied. “Two minutes to enemy missile impact with the base.”
“They’re almost on me, Skipper,” Ruben warned.
“Ruben, turn the blue,” Stephen pleaded.
“I can’t, sir. Not yet. It may short out the electronics relays. But I think if I—”
Ruben’s message was abruptly cut short. A massive particle beam discharge from the lead Wasatti warship struck the upper aft quadrant of the prototype ship. Anywhere or anytime else, a ship in a similar situation would have been reduced to dust from the powerful blast. In this case, though, the self-annealing hull of the revolutionary ship did whatever it could to repair the damage. Several holes bore in the hull venting atmosphere to space, but they were patched before they could spread. Failing internal systems fought decay as if life-giving antibodies were rushed to the scenes of a viral attack. Methodically, the ship healed itself, but not without going through tremendous physical pain.
The infant ship never felt such agony in his short life. He fought with a blind intensity to hang on to the new, curious feelings he recently discovered, and did anything he needed to save his own life. Without thinking, the ship directed deadly static discharges throughout the injured parts of his hull and also to the bridge, centered on a blue key that should not yet have been inserted. In confusion, the young ship mistook the key as yet another unwanted invader.
* * *
Sar ap Kel watched the attack unfold. He had changed firing solutions from the human frigate to the new ship as soon as they discovered it. When he saw the attack fail, he quickly turned to sel Roan. “What class ship is that?”
“It is none we’ve catalogued prior to this. But I believe we have an answer to what the humans have been developing.”
“How could it have survived that attack?” Sar ap Kel demanded.
“It simply could not, General. Not given the force of that attack.”
“Did you see it blow up?”
This time, sel Roan flinched at the general’s harsh words. She automatically ducked her head defensively under her arms, protecting her vulnerable throat. “No, Sir, I did not,” she replied subserviently.
“Then it obviously survived.” Sar ap Kel raised his claws to strike out at sel Roan, the nearest target available to quench his growing anger. He pulled back at the last instant. “Cease firing on that ship immediately. Disable it if you need to, but I want it captured. Do you all understand? If that ship gets away, you will all pay dearly for your mistakes.”
Meg ap Silferen and sel Roan both answered at the same time, “Yes, Sir.” They quickly tried to hide behind their screens.
Sar ap Kel grumbled, “Tactical, I want an assessment.”
Meg ap Silferen glanced at his screens for a beat. “We have lost two destroyers and a cruiser. The Warrior’s Honor is in pursuit of the enemy frigate lying in wait for us. One frigate, one destroyer, and our remaining three cruisers are in pursuit of the unknown ship. It is heading below the original human frigate now advancing toward us. Further away, at four l-m, there is a third human frigate also heading our way. It made itself visible when it powered up five minutes ago.”
“Those two frigates are trying to protect the new ship,” Sar ap Kel surmised.
“It would appear so,” Meg ap Silferen agreed. “And it is fleeing from us at all possible haste. Perhaps we stumbled upon it before it was finished.”
/> “And still vulnerable,” Sar ap Kel concluded. “Shed all forward velocity as quickly as possible. There’s no use overtaking it if we can’t stop and capture it. Once we are at maneuvering speed, release the boarding ships.”
The Wasatti warships immediately began breaking maneuvers. They needed to shave off an appreciable percentage of light from their velocity in only a few minutes, and if they could not slow down they would be on the other side of the system by then. Normally, it was an impossible request, but the General would not accept failure. Sar ap Kel’s crew were repeatedly thrust forward, as if they were being smashed into an immovable anvil, as his ship’s vanes tore into the angry space around them. He and his accompanying four ships were in single-minded pursuit of that strange, new ship that by all rights should not have survived their initial attack.
* * *
The Wasatti Planet Penetrator traveled all of its thirty million mile flight as it sped onward toward the Vega Construction Base. The missile was the length of a five-story building. At its tip was a detonator—longer in length itself than many fighter craft—designed to monitor its penetration into the target body. It was designed to measure how long it had burrowed into the ground, crumpling slowly as it drilled directly into its target, until it was deep enough to smash the end of the detonator into the primer, releasing its payload. At that depth, the detonator jammed into the magnetic container releasing the sphere of antimatter from the confining Penning Trap. It was a housing that separated antimatter from the normal universe. Once the antimatter was released from the Trap, it would consume its opposite form, atom by atom, in a violent chain reaction the size of a hundred nuclear explosions. From the core of the world from where it was released, the material world would simply fail to exist in an outward-expanding shell, causing the remaining planetary crust to cave into the developing void.
The missile struck the asteroid at slightly under half the speed of light, releasing astronomical amounts of kinetic energy from the simple process of collision alone. In an instant, a quarter of the asteroid’s mass vaporized, leaving a massive crater at the apex of the burrowing Penetrator. Slightly over one third of a second later, the missile reached its goal at the center of the tiny world and the magnetic fields of the Penning Trap shut off.
The Construction Base—and the asteroid around it—vanished as if it had never existed by the time the antimatter was consumed. The only reminder of what once had been was an expanding shell of neutrinos created from half the mass of the titanic conflagration that astronomers on Old Earth would discover as a new neutrino source twenty–five years in their future.
Those near the explosion were too close to observe the unnatural process of matter eating matter, as were the frightened souls in the emergency pods futilely trying to escape the doomed asteroid.
* * *
“Ruben, turn the blue.”
“I can’t, sir. Not yet. It may short out the electronics relays. But I think if I—”
Peter Campbell was slammed to the deck of the pitching ship. He came close to smashing his head against the bulkhead, had it not been for Henrietta reaching out at the last moment. Peter looked around in confusion. He recalled he was in the rad room and was listening to his father talking over the com channel to the lieutenant up on the bridge. That was when the world around him collapsed. The ship must have flown into the Base; what else could have caused such a tremendous crash?
Peter heard a scream as he tried to sort out where he was. He did not really “hear” it but rather experienced it. For a moment, he thought he was screaming. He was embarrassed as he looked to his friends, ready to beg forgiveness for his unexpected outburst. The scream continued as he looked around—two seconds, three seconds … an agonizing minute long. He placed his fingers on his throat to see if his vocal chords were vibrating, but they were silent. So he was not the one yelling. Someone else was. He threw his hands over his ears, but it hardly muffled the wailing. He looked at Henrietta. She, too, covered her ears. Jimmy was cowering in his chair. He then looked at Ali. He was speaking, but Peter could not hear his voice. The scream turned into a protracted moan, trailing off as he stared at Ali. He watched his friend’s lips move.
“What?” Peter shouted.
“—ship,” Ali replied.
Whatever Ali tried to say was lost in the echoing ring in Peter’s ears. “What did you say?” he repeated.
“The ship,” Ali yelled. “It’s the ship. It’s in pain!”
Although it seemed ridiculous, that made as much sense as anything. It did sound like an animal crying out, like something with its foot caught in a trap. The shriek slowly subsided to a mournful groan.
“Ship,” Peter called out. “Respond.”
The ship ignored him.
Peter looked at Ali again, “What’s going on?”
Ali was furiously working with the consoles near his chair, searching for any clues. “I dunno,” Ali replied, “but I think the ship was hit by the Wasatti.”
“Is it okay?” Henrietta asked.
Peter looked toward Ali for suggestions, and then at Stiles. Neither said a word. Jimmy—as well—was of no use, as he was still folded in on himself. Not having anything else to try, Peter opened the PA.
“Lieutenant Wilkins, do you copy?”
There was no answer. “Lieutenant Wilkins?” Peter asked again. There was still no reply. “Ship, connect me to the Sirius.”
The ship was unresponsive. “I think it’s broken,” Peter concluded. “Maybe dead.”
Henrietta reached out to the wall. “No, it’s still throbbing, see?” She took Peter’s hand and placed it on the wall.
Peter felt life still coursing through the ship. “But it’s stunned, I bet. Ali, can you get any of these monitors to work?”
“Maybe,” Ali replied, “let me see.” Ali set to work, and within a few seconds had the ship’s external monitor active. “Look, there’s the Base. We’re flying pretty quickly away from it.”
Peter inched his view next to the monitor. The VCB asteroid grew smaller and smaller as he watched. “Wait,” Peter said, “it’s not falling away that fast. We can’t be moving that quickly. I think it’s shrinking. The base is dissolving, I think.”
The asteroid disappeared. In its place, a massive shell of ionized gas blew out. The front of the wave headed directly toward the ship. A moment later the ship vibrated, almost as violently as it did a few minutes ago. As the ship vibrated, they heard the explosion as the wave front passed through the atmosphere within the ship. “My God! The Base is gone!” Peter moaned.
Jimmy looked up from the deck and began crying. “Mommy!” he screamed.
“Peter, what’s happening?” Henrietta asked.
“I don’t know, but no one’s answering, and I don’t like it. We gotta get to the bridge, and see what’s going on out there.”
“But we might jump any second,” Stiles warned. “We can’t just unplug.”
If they were caught in the corridor in the middle of a jump, they would all be dead before they realized what happened. The CT-suits provided essential nutrients and adjusted all the body’s autonomic responses during the long intervals occupied in K-T-space. Within compressed days, they would grow hungry, but long before they would dehydrate and die of thirst, if their unadjusted metabolism did not kill them first. “Jack and jump” was the very first thing a person learned when they entered a light-capable starship, and the universe was not forgiving to anyone ignoring the lesson.
“We aren’t going anywhere like this,” Peter replied.
“How do you know?” Stiles asked.
Peter thought for a moment. What’s the right thing to do? The most important decision he had ever made until now was being sure he did not step in front of some speeding ground vehicle. He never was responsible for the safety of anyone other than himself. If anything, he kept Jimmy from doing anything stupid enough to get punched by Stiles, and even that had not always worked. “I don’t, I guess, but this just do
esn’t feel right.”
“Feel right,” Stiles mocked him. “You’re betting our lives on a feeling?”
“I agree with Peter,” Henrietta said. “His feelings are good enough for me.”
Henrietta was backing him up. He glanced at Ali to see what he thought, but Ali was fully occupied between the console screens and his PAD.
“Not me,” Stiles retorted, settling back in his chair stubbornly.
“Fine; stay here then,” Henrietta said. She unplugged her chair and got to her feet. Everyone else was still plugged in.
Peter looked at her, wondering if he really was correct suggesting they leave the safety of the rad room. What if they jumped at this very moment? Henrietta would be dead, and they would wake up on the other side with her decaying body lying on the deck.
Was it blind loyalty that made her do that? Peter wondered. More likely, she just wants to argue with Stiles.
Peter got up too, and unsnapped his connectors free of the chair, joining Henrietta near the hatchway.
Before long, the five kids gathered together and bolted out of the emergency room, Ali furiously inputting data into his PAD as he ran.
CHAPTER 5
VEGA STAR SYSTEM – OUTER FRINGES – 1453, JANUARY 29, 2365
Peter was the first to burst through the lift doors and onto the bridge. He quickly looked around, trying to assess the situation. At first glance everything looked normal, but on closer inspection he sensed things were not quite right. All the station monitors were working but he could hear the continual beeps of warning, and from the corner of his eye he could see telltale flashes of light in various hues of yellow, orange, and red. Otherwise, all seemed quiet—maybe too quiet. Something else was wrong; something Peter could not put his finger on. The large view screen showed the ship traveling quickly through space, as debris and smaller asteroids sped past. At least we’re moving, Peter realized. Plus, nothing fired on them since they left the radiation room. That should be good news, even though the Wasatti must still be somewhere out there. Peter wondered why he felt so uneasy. What’s wrong with the ship?