Thomas Aquinas, Explorer of the galaxy (Thomas Aquinas series)

by Rico, J. Luis

  Year 2566, Xenious Oort Cloud

  The alien’s Ram jet ship is exactly of the design imagined by physicist Robert W. Bussard in 1960 in North America.

  An invisible cone of electromagnetic energy forms a trap for stray hydrogen atoms. The magnetic trap/field extends to seven thousand kilometers around the ship. The boost to speeds capable of using the ram jet drive is made by highly efficient ion engine thrust over a course of six terrestrial years. The alien crew maintains their engines and their generators. The large and efficient nuclear-fired engines create tremendous energies to fire the energy demands of the cone of electromagnetic force projected in front of the ship. For every extra kilometer per second speed the ship adds, the more hydrogen the drive scoops from the void of space between the stars. More hydrogen means more power, which means more speed, which means more hydrogen. It is a feedback loop of power. Once a Bussard ramjet gets to a high enough speed to power its hydrogen engine, it is more difficult to moderate speed than it is to speed up.

  The aliens are purposeful. One might say they are simple-minded. Any perceived threat to the colony must be eliminated. An excellent strategy evolutionarily speaking which has brought them to this point in time. They are a proud and capable, albeit simple purpose race which has managed to occupy every system within eight light years of their home.

  For the last forty years, they have engineered and built a strategy to destroy the aliens who invaded their system.

  Through the use of space telescopes, both radio and optical, they have identified two systems occupied by the alien invaders. In those systems, the aliens have occupied several planets and hundreds or thousands of asteroids. The aliens plan is ruthless and simple.

  Invade the alien systems and kill every living being with hard radiation and nanotechnology. The flame of hard radiation exhaust from their ramjets is an incredibly effective weapon. If they can pass within a few thousand kilometers of an inhabited body, the hard radiation will destroy anything biological instantaneously.

  The Nano bots they will seed the system with are particularly vicious as well. The incredibly small devices number in the quintillions and are capable of self-assembly, replication, and mining. They will attach themselves to anything and disassemble it and use the components to assemble more Nano bots. They are impressively effective at this. Trillions of Nano bots will swarm these two systems, drawn by gravity and traveling at relativistic speeds. They will survive their impact and begin to mine and assemble. One Nano bot on a kilometer sized asteroid will completely consume the asteroid within a week. The Nano bot will turn the asteroid into a huge ball of gray goo, of nothing but self-replicating Nano bots. These Nano bots are so dangerous, they are cryogenically stored at a fraction above absolute zero temperature to prevent them from destroying the fleet of ramjets that carry them.

  The fleet of Ramjets numbers 233. 233 Alien crews work on their machinery and their control equipment. These aliens are long-lived. Each is over five hundred earth years old. The fourteen-year Ramjet journey will be long, but they will suffer through it without hibernation or crew sleep. The fusion of Hydrogen increases which increases the speed of the ramjets, which yields more hydrogen from the void. The feedback loop builds great speed.

  Catholic Ship Julius, Gerrald F Quarantine Zone

  “We have broad spectrum alert skipper! I show dozens of Ramjets under steady G accelerating towards open space from the nearest system. These ships have been under power for six years now, sir. The speed of light consideration taken into account.” The Ensign on watch glares at his display. It now shows more than a few dozen ramjets.

  The watch senior officer picks up his mic to alert the Captain who bounds into the control room within seconds. “Thank you, Ensign, open an AI source to analyze the data and give me a location they are headed.”

  “I’ll be damn, they are running the blockade.” The Captain whistles under his breath as he looks at the Ensign’s scope. “I count a few dozen, Ensign. That correct?”

  The Ensign squirms a little bit under the attention. “Sir, yes sir, I count over one hundred twenty with more popping into sensor range every few seconds.” Forty years of quarantine and these bastards choose his watch to bounce out and run the embargo.

  The Captain sits down in his control room chair. “AI, give me what you have.”

  The AI responds on the control room speakers. “Sir, at this moment there are more than 200 Alien Ramjets making .2C all out of the system in the general direction of or Colony world Xenious two light years distance from us currently. We are seeing six-year-old data. Extrapolating the aliens are now at .7 C or a bit more and within… say… thirty years of reaching Xenious.”

  “Any clue what the aliens would be doing?” the Captain asks sternly.

  “One has to assume this is an act of aggression sir. The ramjets themselves are an effective weapon. The exhaust end of the jet is thousands of kilometers of hard radiation plasma. They could sterilize a planet with one of those ships. They would also be quite capable kinetic kill vehicles. Each of those ramjets will mass over hundreds of billions of kilograms. Each one is a potential planet killer.”

  The Captain uses the entangled communicator to inform the chain of command. No decisions need to be made today, but these Aliens will need to be dealt with in the next few years before they get too close to all the humans on the Xenious system. Xenious is a Shia Muslim system, but they are human and the Catholic Space corps will protect them.

  Mars, Papal Apartments

  Pope Nicholas receives the Military leaders along with his most trusted Cardinals and advisors. One by one they approach and kneel and kiss his ring and ask for his blessing. Nicholas generously applies his hand to the head of each in turn and blesses them as is their wish and his boon. After the last of his aides have gone through the motions, the Pope stands from his chair and directs the group into his office. “We have a modern display in here Officers and Cardinals. Please follow me.”

  Inside the large private office, the Pontiff removes his robes and his hat and other Papal vestments. An aide hangs them carefully in the foyer. Underneath all that the Pope is wearing rather ordinary slacks and a collared shirt with plain, white, loafer shoes. He carries a cane to help him manage a bad hip when he walks.

  The Pope points at the display wall. “Please begin.” Pope

  The senior Cardinal speaks. “Your holiness. Late last week our quarantine fleet detected the aliens of Gerrald F making a break out of the quarantine zone. 233 Bussard ramjets are outbound toward the two nearest manned systems.” The display wall comes to life to show the data from the Cardinals phone. 233 dots of light are represented split into two groups at around the one-eighth point between the Alien system and the colony systems. “The aliens have timed their arrival into the two systems to coincide it appears. Our military strategists think the Aliens don’t know we are watching them. We have not been aggressive in any way to these Aliens. Your Grace, this is an aggressive move. Their Ramjet drives are both hard radiation torches reaching thousands of kilometers, but they are also extremely effective high-velocity kinetic kill vehicles. The aliens can slam into a planet at a high percentage of the speed of light and create a civilization-ending event. The hard radiation from their drives is enough to sterilize a planet as well.”

  The Pope stirs from his seat. “Timeline?”

  The Cardinal looks glum “We estimate thirty-two point five years till they enter the two systems and make impact with any planetary bodies.”.

  The Pontiff stares at the man firmly. “What is your advice Cardinal?”

  “Everyone in the chain of command as well as myself urge the immediate extermination of the alien species. We destroy the ramjets in space by placing matter in front of them. We destroy their systems by dropping solar mass black holes through them at significant C velocity.”

  The Pontiff walks around the room three times looking down at his feet praying under his breath. He works his prayer beads in the hand not
holding his cane.

  “Please make all preparations to destroy the Aliens as you have described, Cardinal. Let me know when the preparations are complete.” The Pontiff returns to the foyer to again dress in his royal vestments and robe and cap. The group returns to the formal receiving hall, and the Pope returns to his throne. One by one the Cardinals and military men return to kiss his ring and ask for his blessing. Again, the Pontiff places his hand on every head and blesses them quickly. The group hurries out of the hallway onto their tasks. The Pope leans his head forward in prayer. He prays quietly for several minutes but receives no guidance from the Lord.

  Black Holes

  Man-made black holes, like naturally occurring black holes, fall into four types or classes based upon their mass.

  Super Massive black holes are the ring leaders and far and away the largest and most influential. They range in mass from 10,000 to 100,000 times the mass of the Sol system sun. Super massive black holes range from 200 million kilometers up to 4 billion kilometers in size.

  Intermediate class black holes mass as large as a thousand Sol system suns. They range in size up to ten million kilometers.

  Stellar class black holes are the same mass as the Sol system sun plus or minus ten times mass. Stellar class black holes are 10-40 kilometers in size.

  Micro black holes mass around the same as the earth’s moon. These black holes have an apparent size of hundredths of a millimeter. Almost all man-made black holes are micro black holes.

  Lagrangian point L4, Xenious system

  The Shia Muslims when alerted to the threat of the Alien attack responded quickly and with purpose. The entire system is converted to a war time footing. The strict Shia code of honor, love of family, and obedience to both Allah and the Iman’s will. The Grand Imam of the system quickly orders the changes of the economy needed to rapidly create these new weapons of war.

  Space-based habitats and labs are created to manufacture both extremely large kinetic kill weapons and solar class massive black holes. Most black holes used in industry and engineering the FTL drive systems are not solar class massive. They typically are barely black holes. They mass around the same mass as the earth’s moon and are much less than a millimeter across. The solar class massive black holes needed for destroying a solar system will be kilometers in size. The same principles apply to the creation of each, but the creation of a solar class massive black hole for industry or engineering is not needed and is, in fact, extremely dangerous.

  Solar class massive black holes distort gravity wells of everything within a light year. A much larger super massive class black hole lies at the center of the Milky Way galaxy. It has formed the disk and the spiral arms of our galaxy with its gravity well. It is a special class of super massive black hole.

  Nano bots consume large metal nickel asteroids and turn them into perfectly formed ten-meter diameter, kilometer long, kinetic kill vehicles. They will be unguided obviously. They will be launched with perfect mathematical precision into the launch bubble at 100,000 meters per second or more initial velocity on an exact arc of travel that takes into account the time in side space, the spin of the system they are launched from, the spin of the target system and the rate of expansion of the space between the source and destination systems. Side space travel math is very precise and very predictable.

  Since solar class massive black holes cannot be created near the Xenious system, they will be created in the alien system by remote controlled craft sent into the system using the same precision as the kinetic kill vehicles. The remotely operated and largely automated vehicles will pop into the normal universe a few million kilometers from the systems suns or large Gas Giants and then form the solar class massive black holes that will consume huge parts of the systems and radiate the entire system with hard radiation, sterilizing it completely of life.

  The black holes will pass through the systems Sun or Gas Giants and exit, still at a high fraction of C distorting the gravity well and forcing the planets and other orbiting bodies to lose their billions of year old orbits. Planets will spill into empty space is a slow speed dance of destruction. The tidal forces of the second and new massive solar gravity field in the solar systems gravity will distort planets crust and cause tidal pull and rejection of the oceans and the magma under their surfaces.

  The results for the planets will be quite extreme and quite deadly to anything on their surface. Super volcanoes will rage. Super earthquakes will tear the fabric of the crust of the planets apart. Atmosphere will spill into space from new drag created by the solar storms and ejections of the Sun due to the black holes impact. Hard radiation will overpower any radiation belts shielding the surface and the planet will be subject to millions of units of hard radiation.

  The highly efficient Catholic sailors and the Shia Muslim colonists made excellent progress. The kill vehicles, the dozen transfer stations needed to rapidly join thousands of kinetic kill vehicles into side space and the remotely controlled black hole generation equipment is readied within eighteen months. Thousands upon thousands of kilometers long kinetic kill vehicles are readied and placed into holding orbits. The humans are ready for war.

  Chapter Twelve

  Apocalypse

  The Year 2566

  In the ten years since the Aliens have begun their slower than light speed attack, the Catholic and Shia forces have waited, prepared and monitored their advance. Their ramjets have achieved greater than .6C velocity and show no sign of slowing. By now they would have begun to decelerate if they were intending to colonize or were of friendly intent. These Aliens are planning to run their enormous ramjets through the systems at high speed, undoubtedly ramming into planets, large moons and planetoids.

  Humanity is at war with space faring, intelligent aliens.

  Pope Nicholas orders the strikes. From the balcony of his Apartments on Mars, he blesses the men and women of the Catholic Space Corps. All of humanity listens to the broadcast over entangled communicators as the Pope urges God to bless the men and women who will do battle on behalf of us all.

  “I lift the flag of praise high and declare you are my King. I walk boldly forward into Kingdom lands and trust in you as my fortress. I stand strong rooted in the goodness of your love and draw near to you. I ride triumphantly upon your grace and thank you that the battle has already been won. You are my King, my Fortress, my Strength and my Redeemer. Lord, I lift your name high above all others and worship you!”

  The Pope raises his hand in the air. His fist, white and bloodless from the firm grip he makes on the rosary and the cross he holds.

  “To War!” The crowd below him chants. “To War!” “To War!”

  Humanities first space battle is joined.

  Lagrange Point L4, Gas Giant Decker, Xenious System

  There are ten side space entry ripple entry points in operation. Five here in the Xenious system and five in the Boxxer system. The large metal asteroids operate in pairs. Carefully orchestrating their black holes and exotic matter dance that maintains the thirty-meter spheres of space ripple that will be used for the attack.

  The thousands of kinetic kill vehicles await outside the Lagrange points of each system. Their sleek black hulls glistening with a thin layer of ablative material. A Nano bot created fluid similar to an oil. The thin coat of oil will cook off before the heat of re-entry damages the kinetic kill vehicles exterior. As the vehicles enter the atmosphere of the planets and moons they are targeted at, the best shot at a planet wide kill is to penetrate deeply into the mantle of the planet and unleash the radioactive materials and magma deep under the surface. The kill vehicles are super massive. Ten meters spheres or larger, and all are at least a kilometer in length.

  An extremely efficient nuclear ion thruster provides the propulsion for each. They will enter the transfer point at 100,000 meters per second or more velocity with a thirty-rpm clockwise spin. Their hour’s long journey to the Alien systems will culminate with their antennae forcing re-entry into normal un
iverse within thirty minutes of impact with their target. No existing technology in the known galaxy can stop the onrush of these super massive kill vehicles at their high speed. The Aliens may see them and have a chance to react, but they will never stop the death hurling at them.

  466 of the kill vehicles are being used on the ramjets. The ramjets are enormous vehicles with the mass of a kilometer large asteroid. These kill vehicles are much smaller in mass. Anything larger than a kilogram-sized rock would spell doom for the ramjets as they clip along at half the speed of light. The enormous magnetic fields they use to scoop hydrogen from the void are not capable of protecting them from any mass that exceeds some very hard mathematical limits. Speeding along at half the speed of light with only a magnetic field designed to scoop hydrogen out of the near nothingness of space, they are tremendously vulnerable to destruction.

  The ramjet kinetic kill vehicles are one-meter spheres, one hundred meters in length. They are being launched from entry points in the front of the line of advance of the ramjets. This creates a favorable angle of incidence of less than one or two degrees. The kill vehicles will be fired with enough precision to physically strike the mass of the ramjets less than the fourteen-hundred-meter surface. The combination of the 100,000 meters per second speed of the kill vehicles and the half C speed of the ramjets will turn almost all of the mass of the ramjet into plasma instantaneously.