The higher we go the faster I can accelerate until I’m hitting five miles per second and we’re out of the atmosphere entirely. Life support chugs away at eighty percent power in a losing battle to keep me warm as the cold of space wraps around us.
Orbit.
When Sydney brought me up here I didn’t have time to look around, nor when I went sub-orbital to get to DC. Now, I have some extra time. I just wish the right side of my vision wasn’t blurry.
“Okay, enough sightseeing, where’s the station?”
Displaying course now.
A yellow line appears on my HUD. It’s weird, I usually have landmarks to navigate as a frame of reference. Up here it is just the black on one side and blue on the other. The only way I know I’m going in the right direction is the three-dimensional path Epic displays on the HUD. If I stay in the center I am in the pipe and going the right way.
The thrusters hum as they push me through the frictionless environment. Electromagnetic propulsion was made for outer space. I have to dump gigawatts of extra power from the ZPFM to make it work right in atmo, but up here? I could probably hit a few thousand miles per second without much effort. Of course, the second a solar flare hits or a particle of dust the size of my fingernail crossed my path, I’d be roasted and gutted.
Epic highlights the thousands of objects in orbit to avoid, thankfully NASA tracks all these things making it easy for us. Tapping into their system helps us double check our own onboard sensors and not have to rely on just one mechanism.
“I don’t see it yet… you sure this is the right way?”
We are approaching the station from its orbital shadow. Presumably, it will have fewer sensors pointed at where it has been instead of where it is going. However, we are still a hundred miles out, you cannot see it with the naked eye yet.
The seconds tick by as I watch the range shrink. I flip around giving us a retro burst with the boot thrusters slowing us down to just a mile per second.
“Epic, stealth mode, one last burn and let’s just pretend we’re orbital junk.”
Calculating, projecting burn, commence in three, two…
I fire off the Emdrive in the direction he indicates for three seconds. The HUD switches to blue and I go limp, letting our momentum carry us. He locks the armor up with my visor is pointed at the station. Even if they turned radar full power at us, the kinetic field would send it bouncing off in other directions. We have the cross signature of a sparrow in this mode.
“Uh, Epic, we have a problem.”
I see it.
I’ve wanted to say this my whole life, but I never thought I would say it with terror gripping my heart. I swallow a couple of times just to clear the cotton from my mouth.
“That’s no space station…”
ISS was a joint venture between several space agencies. Funded mostly by the US, built by space capable supers and shuttle launches. It’s a habitat capable of supporting two or three astronauts at most… this ain’t that. It might have started life off with as a small habitat, but this is a full-on orbital base capable of housing hundreds.
In the center is an octahedron, like an eight-sided die. Three rings wrap around it crossing each other at different angles almost like a double helix. I can make out light glinting off windows, small vehicles traversing it and two huge landing bays. How the hell did he build this with no one finding out? The whole thing is easily six hundred feet across and at least twelve hundred tall. I can’t be sure; it’s hard to tell distance in space.
There are elements in the hull I cannot quantify.
“What does that mean?”
Based on light analysis and passive sensors… I have no idea what that thing is made of.
That isn’t possible. Like the man said, ‘there’s nothing new under the sun’. If it exists on Earth then Epic can-
“Epic… holy crap… are you saying what I think you’re saying?”
I cannot tell you for certain. Perhaps one of the many scientists he has kidnapped over the years is a metallurgist who created something new. After all, a weightless environment is ideal for forging alloys.
“You say that but I hear the doubt. It’s alien isn’t it?” The pause before he answers is far too long for comfort.
That would be the most probable likelihood based on all available data.
This is a lot to take in. Aliens. On Earth. It would explain the Zero Point and plasma weapons. Reversed engineered alien tech?
“Epic? What if they had another reason for kidnapping all those top scientists?”
Other than using them for the obvious reasons?
I do the math. Fifteen years ago is when the world’s smartest people started disappearing. Almost five years ago all the powerful telepaths vanished. They checked into the school but they never checked out.
“For the last two decades, the worlds technological advances have, essentially, been put on hold, right?”
Begin deceleration bursts, and yes.
I spread my hands out and Epic does microbursts to slow our speed gently as to not catch anyone’s attention. Two thousand feet per second… one thousand… five hundred.
The station comes up fast. I know it’s an optical illusion but I still close my eyes and tense up.
Impact. I thud against the metal. Epic instantly switches the kinetic field generators to ‘stick’ me against the hull. I roll over and put my back to the wall. My breath catches in my throat. My God, the world is beautiful from up here.
It takes a second before I regain my train of thought.
“Everyone who could blow the whistle on him has vanished and everyone who could have created an advance to fight him has been usurped. Epic, he’s holding our tech level down artificially. Think of all the advances we would’ve had if he hadn’t!”
It is logical to assume the rate of advancement in technology would increase at a statistically average level. I am checking the math now. Adding variables. Creating outcomes. Engaging warp drive.
I smile a big toothy grin. Epic always knows how to put me at ease. While he’s running permutations I take a moment to switch the HUD to our passive ECM and see what I can pick up. There is a ton of signal noise. I pick up the camera stream from what everyone thinks is the ISS, not to mention the astronauts as they go through their daily routines. Now I know it’s all fabricated.
The station is connected with several satellites and three space telescopes I didn’t even know we had.
Compiling the last hundred years of advancements since Tesla turned on Wardenclyffe I have determined that our rate of advancement dropped by almost eight percent over the last fifteen years. It has declined steadily. We did not just hold still. We lost ground.
“Son of a—” I clamp my mouth shut. If I had to guess, he had some kind of program to identify the smartest people capable of making truly great advances. Then he just snatched them up.
“Are we sure it’s just fifteen people?”
No. That is all I could find. We could put in a number of variables and estimate up to at least a hundred people. Even if it were just fifteen, that would be enough.
“True. The big leaps are always a single person with a vision, aren’t they?”
Edison, Tesla, Wright brothers, Von Braun, Hughes… imagine if they had been removed from the timeline.
“No electricity, at least not then. No planes, no nuclear power, no Rocketeer. Would we have even beaten Hitler?”
It is likely if even one of those men disappeared from the timeline the world would be a very different place. For good or ill is impossible to know. Too many variables.
I’ve read too many books and played too many games with this kind of premise to doubt it. Maybe we continued at the same rate of advance, but it is unlikely. Before Tesla turned on Wardenclyffe and changed the world forever, few people had heard of him. I can only imagine the world we would live in if he’d been taken well before that time.
“This ends, Epic. Record everything. If you think we’re about to die, or if
I become mind-controlled, you dump all of this to the world. No matter what happens he can’t be allowed to tamper with Earth’s future anymore.”
Affirmative.
I take one last look at the Pacific Ocean as it passes underneath me. No matter what, I have this moment. I’m in space in a suit I built. No one can ever take that away from me.
“Okay,” I take a deep breath, “Let’s go kick his ass.”
61
With three giant bays on different sides of the station and numerous hatches, airlocks, and observation posts, I thought it would be easy to sneak in.
Nope.
The bays are protected by some kind of pressure shield that keeps the atmo in and space out. Even touching them could trigger an alarm. The only other option is an airlock door or maintenance hatch but the stupid station doesn’t have a wireless network we can tap to hack them open. Other than the fake one and that doesn’t do us any good.
“We could cut our way in?”
Any hull breach would instantly alert them to our presence.
“They’re going to know we’re here eventually. I could fire off a couple of Particle Beam from a central location, blow open a couple of holes, pick one at random and go through.”
We cannot see the interior. There could be people in the locations you shoot.
I hadn’t thought about that. However, I don’t think I can get through this without people dying. I won’t kill callously, but this has got to stop.
“I think it’s worth the chance. Let’s do it.”
Pushing off the station, I kick in the thrusters. We glide out a few hundred feet. I check the power levels. The ZPFM is undamaged and I have all the power I need for this.
Epic puts the crosshairs on the HUD and I wave them over the station looking for likely spots. There’s a hatch, what looks like two observation ports, and a sensor array of some kind.
“Full power, three-second burst. Crap… are we going to be okay heat wise? With no atmo to bleed off the heat…”
Running the numbers. If you fire no more than twenty seconds total we should be okay.
“Alright, let’s do this.”
I start with the sensor array, wiping out their ability to see might keep them occupied as well as blind.
I place the target over the dishes and antennas sprouting from the hull and bend my wrist down. The particle beam reaches out and touches the array. I let it flash twice before stopping. I can’t hear it, but the exhaust of gas and particles are impressive. The dish disintegrates as an entire section fifty feet square explodes outward into space.
“Nice!”
Well done.
The next spot is an observation port, or at least I think it is. I hope no one is in there. The beam lashes out. I draw an ‘X’ on the window. As the second beam touches the previous burn the entire port explodes outward. Gas, debris, and glass disappear into the black in a heartbeat.
Two thousand degrees on the particle beam emitters.
Crud, okay enough for one more shot. That’s okay. I find the hatch, identify the likely weak points… and fire. The beam slices through like butter. Before I’m done the hatch follows the other two sections into space.
“Okay, time to go.”
A fault light pops up on the HUD flashing red before burning a solid crimson.
I am sorry. I thought the emitter could handle the sustained heat.
“Me too. Maybe it suffered damage fighting Behemoth we didn’t detect?”
I fly up to the hatch, it’s the smallest opening of the three, therefore I’m hoping they’ll consider it the least likely entrance. The airlock looks like a maintenance hatch of some kind for drones or small cargo, not people. The ideal entry point as they won’t think a person will come through.
There is an internal fail secure airlock door.
I land in the remains of the ‘lock and let my boots clamp to the metal deck using my kinetic emitters to approximate gravity.
“That’s why I like to keep this handy,” I reach behind me and pull the sword from my back, “For close encounters.”
You are having fun with this are you not?
“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” I say with a grin as I slash the square blade down on the control panel. It explodes in a shower of sparks. Next, I start hacking at the door’s centerline, I just need to open it enough to crawl through. The blade penetrates the steel and the entire door explodes outward, slamming me and flattening the suit against the far wall as air rushes out.
There is another door closing.
“I see it.” Ten feet past the one I just destroyed, a massive bulkhead door slides down. I leap forward, kicking in the jets and scream through the hatch just before it clamps shut behind me.
There is atmo in here. It is human, normal mix of oxygen, nitrogen, and carbon dioxide.
“Internal network?”
They do have a wireless network inside. The outer shell must be incredibly well shielded. Attempting access…
I glance around; this is a hallway of some kind. Gunmetal gray walls with LED lights every few feet to chase the shadows away. Control panels, caution signs, decompression warnings, this all looks pretty standard. I get my feet under me and pick a direction. The corridors are too small to fly down so I walk with my sword out in front of me.
Their network is incredibly sophisticated. As I attempt to crack it, algorithms shift to compensate. I cannot be certain, but I think they have an AI defending it.
“Take no chances, I don’t want someone overriding you and taking over the suit. I don’t care how much we think it isn’t possible.”
Understood.
If I were to design a station, I would put the command center in the exact center. It would be the most shielded from radiation and the most likely to survive any accidents. The way the station is set up I’m on one half, I’ll call it the bottom half. I need to go in and up.
The hallway doesn’t go far before I run into a closed door marked ‘Cargo One’. I put my palm on the panel next to it. Epic overrides it locally in a few seconds and the door hums as it lifts into the ceiling. A large open area stretches out but I don’t see any exits to the outside. It has to be the internal bay, like a warehouse distributing the cargo.
There are several fuel lines running through here. Severing them would lead to the station's demise.
“I need him alive, Epic. It’s the only way to have my parents back. I’d love to just blow the place up and move on but we can’t do that. We need him and a shuttle of some kind or escape pod to return to Earth.”
Understood.
I sense more than see movement and turn just as a massive crate crashes down. The metal box slams me hard to the floor. If not for the sword’s kinetic emitters I wouldn’t have been able to hold onto it. I shove the box off with a growl as a giant, mechanical foot flattens me to the deck. The foot belongs to a huge mech. It has legs like a chicken and a cockpit with tinted glass. Where there should be wings, two armatures extend with grappling claws for cargo.
Amelia, it is exerting tremendous weight, the kinetic emitters are close to maximum.
I fire off the IP cannons in my left hand, hoping to overload the electronics. The blue bolts travel up and down the leg but dissipate before causing any real harm. Alarms flash to life on the HUD letting me know tolerances are approaching maximum.
“Full power to the Emdrive!”
There’s a great screeching of metal on metal as thrusters kick in. The mech wobbles as I shoot out from underneath it, leaving a furrow in the metal floor before crashing headlong into a stack of crates.
“IP cannons, narrow beam,” I regain my footing, holding my free hand out to fire. The narrow beam intensifies the point of impact. Generally, it makes a target hard to hit, but this thing is fifteen feet tall if it’s an inch. The sandpaper staccato rips through the air as I set it to continuous beam. Thankfully, the IP cannons generate next to no heat. They just aren’t that effective against shielded things.<
br />
Massive clawed arms swipe at me. The sword sparks as I swing it through the joint, severing the limb and sending the chicken-mech scrambling to regain footing.
“All my advanced tech and I’m sword fighting.”
There is some irony in this.
“Shut it.”
I charge forward, kick in the jets and leap up. The mech swipes at me but I dodge and bring the sword down just behind the cockpit where I think the batteries are. The thing slumps over with a whir of discharging energy and drained solenoids.
There is a panel to your right. Make contact.
The suit clatters against the floor as I run over and slide to a halt, slamming my hand against the control panel.
This is a direct conduit. Shutting down all escape means. No lifepods, no shuttles. There are approximately three hundred individuals on this station, Amelia. We’re going to have to do something about them.
“I’ll let the government worry about that, our problem is Ericsson.”
Each crew member has a RFID tag that shows their clearance and position. I have located Ericsson. Take the third door on the north wall.
62
I don’t know why I thought his door would be more ornate. Instead, it’s just another plain, bulkhead door with the plethora of warnings about death and mangled limbs.
“Can you access it?”
As long as their defending AI cannot override direct access, yes I can. It may become aware of the flaw in security shortly.
“Never plug in an unknown computer on your network, right? Okay, do it.”
With my palm flat against the interface, Epic overrides the door. It slides up with the same dull hum as the other doors. Inside is a spacious room with a giant picture-window facing the Earth. Reflected sunlight streams in, illuminating the area. Sword out and IP cannons fully charged, I walk in. The other side of the room is living quarters with a bed, desk, and what I presume is the bathroom. This would all be perfectly normal if it weren’t for the three men, all in their twenties, sitting blank-eyed and still on the far side. Life signs pop up on the HUD and they all appear normal, except for the lack of brain activity.
Full Metal Superhero Box Set [Books 1-6] Page 33