“Could be the same one,” Jones said, “but it’s turning and pointing toward us, not forward toward their third ship. You think they could be trying to replicate the visit to Phoenix?”
“Well, we’re not letting the sons of bitches on our ship,” Captain Massey snarled—to Carol’s immense relief.
Carol noticed the relative distance counter to the alien ship was still increasing. Pointing it out, she said, “Didn’t we turn over and start back toward them five or ten minutes ago?”
She felt embarrassed when the first officer leaned toward her and quietly pointed out that they’d been moving away from the aliens when they’d made their turnover. At present they were still decelerating—relatively—to what would be a momentary parallel trajectory at 1,000 kilometers. After that their deceleration thrust would become an acceleration back toward the aliens. I should’ve realized that myself! she thought angrily at herself, not liking the sensation that she needed to be spoon-fed.
A few minutes later the first officer caught Massey and Lee’s attention, saying, “This shuttle, or whatever it is, is accelerating faster than the shuttle that visited Phoenix. The shuttle that moved between their two ships accelerated this fast, but only briefly… Um, I’m feeling pretty sure it’s an attack of some kind.”
Carol saw Massey and Lee studying the screen. After a moment, Lee musingly said, “It seems unlikely they’re trying to ram us, since they’ve seen that we’re able to tolerate such impacts a lot better than they can. How do you think they might attack us?”
Jones shrugged, “Who knows? I suppose it could be carrying some kind of missile or big gun or something.”
Lee looked at him a moment, then spoke slowly. “I suppose it could, but again it seems unlikely. They know we can survive kinetic impacts they can’t. If it’s a missile, they should’ve shot it from back near their ship rather than trying to get close. If it’s a gun, they’ve got to know a projectile’s unlikely to hurt us. I suppose they could be trying a beam weapon because they don’t know our hull will shrug those off too.”
Massey said with a tone of certainty, “It’ll be a nuclear weapon. They’ve seen one of their bombs take Phoenix out of action.”
“But…” Lee began, then paused, then continued, “ah, I see. They don’t know we can staze ourselves to get our crew past a nuclear attack too.”
Icicles forming on her spine, Carol couldn’t stop herself from asking, “Are you sure…? Um, that we can survive a nuclear attack, I mean. Phoenix didn’t.”
Lee studied Carol a moment, then spoke reassuringly. “I think we can feel certain Phoenix didn’t staze its interior. They didn’t know there was an atomic weapon attached to their hull, so they had no reason to do so. The fact that Phoenix’s hull’s intact tells us that Stade can tolerate an atomic blast. We’ll just staze ourselves before this shuttle or missile, or whatever it is, can reach us.” Seeing the fear in Carol’s eyes, she elaborated reassuringly, “Just in case, we’ll staze well before it gets here, okay Carol?”
Appreciating Lee’s consideration of her concerns more than she could say, Carol said, “Thank you,” in a small voice. “Maybe we should stay stazed a lot longer than we think necessary? In case they put a delay on their detonation.”
Lee gave a thoughtful nod and turned her gaze on Massey and Jones. “If they delay past the moment of impact with Maui, that collision would initiate or destroy any nuclear weapon. We’ll know in a few minutes whether they turn over and begin slowing. That would suggest they intend to deliver without an impact that would destroy their bomb. But even if they don’t turn over, whenever we staze ourselves, we should stay stazed with a margin that considers the possibility that they might start decelerating at that moment.”
Jones glanced at Carol, “Plus a little, in case they can decelerate harder than we think they can, eh?”
Lee grinned, “Plus a little more than that to be sure. I’d rather come out of stasis to find we missed them and have to make another pass, than find out the bomb’s just arrived and will be going off in milliseconds.”
The alien shuttle didn’t turn over, suggesting it was an attempt to ram or that they were carrying the suspected atomic weapon. The minutes until they stazed for impact passed agonizingly slowly, but eventually, Massey said, “Stazing in thirty seconds. Make sure you’re strapped in.”
Already fully buckled down, Carol wondered why they needed to strap in if they were going to be stazed during any impact or detonation that might occur.
Then she found herself slammed hard down into the seat.
Crushingly hard!
So hard she had trouble breathing. She realized they’d gone through stasis, but couldn’t understand the weight she suddenly had. What’s happening?! she wondered in a panic. It was as if they were accelerating, but accelerating faster than Maui’s engines should be able to achieve. And—she felt suddenly queasy—spinning like on a carnival ride.
As her stomach rebelled and her vision went gray, she heard Captain Massey grunting orders at the navigation AI.
~~~
Carol woke, groggily blinking. Her nausea had diminished and her weight was back down to normal levels for Maui’s standard acceleration. Lee was bent over her, squeezing her hand, patting her cheek, and saying, “Carol? Wake up, girl.”
“I’m awake,” she said, mouth dry. “What happened?”
“You passed out.”
Carol snorted, “I can tell that! But why did I weigh so much? I felt like I was on a carnival ride… about to puke.”
“Ah,” Lee said, understanding. “Though we were in stasis, we’re pretty sure there was an A-bomb on that shuttle. We think the shuttle hit to one side of the big dish and that’s where it went off.”
Carol frowned, “But we were in stasis. We shouldn’t have even noticed.”
Lee nodded, “Yeah, but it put an end for end spin on Maui. Since the bridge is behind Maui’s center of gravity, the spin acted like a centrifuge. Of course, once we were out of stasis, we were again subject to centrifugal acceleration. We think it was about nine g’s because almost everyone passed out at least briefly. Fortunately, Captain Massey’s had some experience flying performance aircraft so she knew how to grunt in order to keep pushing blood to her brain. She did it long enough to tell the nav AI to stop the spin, but even she passed out once that was underway…” She hesitated, eyes sad, then said, “You need to know that it looks like Felix had leaned out of his chair when the stasis came on. He was… he was killed when those g’s hit him.”
“What?! How?!” Carol asked, her anxiety spiking. She and Felix had been friends.
Lee shrugged, “I don’t know. I’m assuming it broke his neck, but we don’t have anyone who can tell us for sure.”
“So, what are we doing now?” Carol asked with trepidation. Her palms were sweating and her visions blurred with unshed tears for Felix, but she didn’t want to let everyone else down.
Lee tilted her head as if assessing Carol’s state of mind but replied calmly. “Well, it not only put a spin on us, it blew us back, giving us a significant velocity heading away from our target, the alien ship. So, we’re having to decelerate again. It’ll be another thirty minutes or so before we start on our way back after them again.”
Trying not to let her fear show before the woman who was becoming her hero, Carol said, “Won’t they just hit us with another A-bomb?”
Lee shrugged and said, “I suppose they might. Let us know if you get any ideas for avoiding them if they do. If they do bomb us this time too, we’ll just have to go after them again.” She put a hand on Carol’s shoulder and said, “I hope they don’t have too many shuttles. We don’t want them to have enough time to design that bioweapon, right?”
“I thought we barely had enough fuel to get back home without all this chasing around?”
Lee nodded. “We barely have enough to accelerate and decelerate the entire way home. However, we have plenty if we accelerate partway, then coast until we’re nearl
y there and it’s time to decelerate. We wouldn’t develop as much speed, so it’d take us a long time to get there, but we wouldn’t notice the extra time in stasis.”
Carol wiped at her eyes, “Our families…”
Lee squeezed her shoulder, “Our families need us to do this. To save them and everyone else when no one else can. I have young kids and I don’t want them to die of an alien bioweapon…” She paused, then smiled at Carol, “Besides, if we stop these bastards, I think Earth should send us a tanker full of fuel, shouldn’t they?”
Carol sniffled and forced a weak grin, “They’d better.”
Lee looked her in the eye. “You okay now?”
Carol nodded and Lee moved on to check someone else, leaving Carol with her broken heart and a resurgence of nausea.
***
Diddiq, now aboard the lead ship, Busux, looked up when one of the nav people began cursing. “What is it?” he asked.
“Sorry, Expedition Leader. Um, the solian ship…” he paused and looked at his screens for confirmation of something he just couldn’t believe. “Um, it’s recovered from its spin and is firing its main rocket. It looks like it’s going to make another try at Kranex but I’ll have to get one of the computers to confirm the trajectory.”
What in the name of the first haliq is it going to take to stop them?! Diddiq wondered with a sinking feeling, his third heart speeding up again. He turned his eyes to Cassiq, Busux’s captain, “Do you have any suggestions for how to deal with these solians?”
Cassiq turned his eyes on Diddiq and shrugged his antennae helplessly. “Send more suicide missions in shuttles armed with atomic weapons.” With more certainty in his demeanor, he said, “I can’t believe they survived one atomic explosion, but, even if it didn’t destroy them, it definitely put them out of commission for a while. I suspect they must be working with a skeleton crew of survivors. One more blow and they should be done for.”
And, if that works, what do we do when we encounter more of these damned invulnerable ships when we get closer to the planet? Diddiq wanted to ask. Is our only hope to pray that this is the only indestructible craft they have? He sped his breathing for a moment, then looked at the comms officer, “Tell Kranex to send another armed shuttle at the solians.”
***
Carol was feeling better, the last of her nausea just resolved, when Lee came back from checking on the others. She announced, “Everyone else is okay except for some strained muscles.” She turned to Carol, “Can you help me with a project?”
“Um, sure. What’re we doing?
“Well,” Lee gave her a wry smile. “I’ve had a crazy idea about how we might build some shotgun type devices to deal with that next A-bomb you’re worried the aliens might throw at us.” She waved for Carol to get up, then sent her to open up the Stade fabrication room and power up the equipment. That way the Stazers would finish their self-check sequences while Lee and a couple more crewmen collected materials.
Carol had everything turned on and had created a couple of temporary Stades to make sure it all worked by the time Lee and the guys arrived with bundles of the steel rods intended for Ceres’ 3D printers. To Carol’s distress, they also had some plastic explosive called Semtex. Lee reassured her it wouldn’t explode without a blasting cap and detonator, but Carol couldn’t help eyeing it askance.
Soon, Lee had them forming a Stade cylinder around a bundle of nineteen rods. Once the cylinder was stazed, they pulled the rods out, installed the wiring and a couple of vacuum-rated blasting caps, then stuffed the bottom of the cylinder with vacuum-tolerant Semtex packs. That done, they stuffed the rods back in, packed the spaces between them with wires, and attached the first ends of some Schmidt-Stade welding wires to the outside of the cylinders.
After looking it over, Lee said, “Carol, you think you and Rick could build more of these while John and I suit up and try installing this on the hull?”
No! Carol thought nervously. But she nodded because she didn’t want to let Lee down.
As Lee and John went out the door Lee said, “Build as many as you can between now and when we get back.”
Carol and Rick had finished seven more by the time Lee and John got back. Lee apologized, “We had some trouble aligning it perfectly with the hull, but now that we’ve done one, the rest of them should be easy.”
A while later Carol climbed into her suit and waited a moment for it to do its self-checks. After making sure she had control of the mechanical fingers at the ends of its arms, she headed out to help install the last of the shotgun devices. It was weird stepping out through the airlock at the base of the big dish. The ship’s thrust gave her weight against the inner surface of the dish, but moving around on the frictionless Stade was essentially impossible without employing their suits’ thrusters or pulling on the safety cables Lee had strung the first time she and John went out. Lee and John had plenty of experience with that kind of work and did almost everything. All Carol managed to do was to pull the last shotgun cylinder over to them.
Lee had positioned them against Maui’s cylinder with their bases against the dish. Once they’d perfectly aligned the first one parallel to the body of Maui, they simply set each of the others against both the previous one and Maui’s body, then Stade-welded them in place.
With a start, Carol tilted her head back—which tilted the suit’s cameras upward—so she could look up to make sure the shotguns weren’t pointing up the same side of Maui that the radar was deployed on. To her relief, the area above their little cannons was clear. For a moment she thought about how some items in the cloud of rods and wires fired out of the cylinders would likely spread enough to strike the fuselage—fortunately Maui’s Stade hull wouldn’t even suffer a scratch.
This reminded her that an A-bomb had gone off against the surface of the dish she was standing on. She looked carefully around at the dish without seeing even a hint of damage—something she’d consciously known would be true, but, instinctively, was damned hard to accept.
~~~
When Carol and Lee got back to the bridge, Ray Jones looked up and said, “The aliens have launched two of their shuttles this time. They’re moving our way, but slowly. One’s hanging back behind the other.”
Lee narrowed her eyes thoughtfully and asked, “Any idea what their plan is?”
Massey said, “I’d been thinking they were going to try to double their impact by hitting us with both at the same time, but with one hanging back all I can think is that they’re holding one in reserve in case the first one misses.”
Carol opened her mouth but then shut it again for fear of saying something stupid. Lee saw her abortive attempt to speak. As if she thought Carol was an important part of the crew, she asked, “What’s your idea, Carol?”
“Um,” Carol said uncertainly, “that they might hit us with one, then hit us with the second one just about the time we destaze.”
“They’d have to know what stasis is and how it works to plan such a maneuver,” Ray said a little dismissively.
“Even if they did,” Massey said, “it wouldn’t work. The first bomb would blow us so far away that the second shuttle couldn’t catch us in time to hit us before we were out of stasis and ready for them.”
Lee eyed Massey, “There’s no chance that with two bombs they could blow us far enough away that we couldn’t get back to them?”
The captain shook her head. “It’d just take longer.”
Lee looked thoughtful, then said, “I’m thinking you’re right that they’ve deployed a spare in case the first one misses. I plan to fire eight of the fifteen cannons at the first shuttle. That’ll leave us seven to shoot at the second one. If that lets us get past both shuttles, they won’t be able to launch another in time and we should hit their ship. If we don’t get past them,” she gave a wintry smile, “we’ll try, try again.” She looked around at the others, “Anyone have a better idea?”
No one did. But Carol thought Lee’s requests for input not only develope
d better strategies but built a stronger team. If I live long enough to become a leader myself someday, Carol thought, I hope I can remember how she did this.
Captain Massey toggled a switch to speak to the entire crew, “Okay, five minutes to impact. Four minutes and fifty-five seconds until we fire the cannons and go into stasis. I’d suggest you hit the heads if you need to, but don’t put anything in your stomach you don’t want to taste again on its way up.” She turned to Lee and Jones, “I’ve set the system to leave our areas in stasis until the nav unit has stabilized the ship enough that any centrifugal forces are less than two g’s.”
“Great idea,” Lee said. Then quietly, “Sorry about Felix.”
“Yeah,” Massey said in a raspy voice. “It’ll hit me hard in a while… if we survive this.”
“The entire human race is depending on us,” Lee said softly.
For some reason, this gentle assessment gave Carol goosebumps that she hadn’t gotten from previous statements to that effect.
Chapter Ten
As the first of Kranex’s shuttles accelerated toward the solian ship, Diddiq kept having to slow his third heart.
His concern was not whether the strategy would work to blow the solians back again. After all, they knew nuclear weapons could impart vast velocity changes on the oddly lightweight solian vessels. He’d come to terms with the fact that the hulls of the solian ships could survive an atomic weapon—after all, he’d seen it happen twice now. What he couldn’t understand was how the biological crew of this second solian ship had survived its bombing. He kept trying to picture how any living being could have lived through the impact of an atomic explosion that must have imparted thousands of g’s of acceleration to the ship. Accelerations that should’ve liquefied cells as their bodies slammed up against walls.
Because the first solian ship they’d bombed seemed completely incapacitated, he hoped, perhaps only one or two survivors had made it in the second ship. And that then they’d brought the ship around and lined it up to try again with great difficulty. Maybe they survived through immersion in an incompressible liquid. He knew such a strategy could mitigate sudden accelerations though he found it hard to believe anything could work against the accelerations imparted by a nuclear explosion.
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