The Turret: Starclan Foundation

by James McAlliater

  Two thousand, four hundred Asteroid Defense Stations were commissioned in the three decades after the Bird invasions. Originally armed with railguns, missile batteries and laser emplacements, the ADSs were continuously upgraded throughout the years. Huge numbers of missiles were maintained, but upgraded with newer, faster, more maneuverable missiles. Lasers were upgraded with better ranges, faster recharge times, and more power. Railguns fired larger, denser projectiles at higher velocities. And sensors were improved to the point that anything coming within a half light-year of the station was identified.

  The stations were comprised of groups of asteroids clustered in gravity wells about the system’s perimeter. The habitation module was in a large asteroid near the center of the cluster, with various sensors and weapons systems spread out among the smaller rocks. ADS 1437 was more like a series of powerful forts, each with supporting fire from its neighbors, rather than one turret.

  The most recent upgrades had included experimental gravity beams, still not perfected. Studying gravitics gave Jock ideas for other weapons, such as gravity well ‘moats’ and projectile gravity imploders. These later devices would act as explosive projectiles, except that instead of releasing energy through explosions, they turned their energy into a concentrated gravity field, which would act as a mini-black hole.

  Jock monitored the startup and initiation of the systems, but everything was automatic, so there was little for Jock to do. As he came closer to ADS 1437, his probe slowed, and the sensor collectors deployed. Jock soon had a vid feed of the surrounding space, including the many rocks, pebbles, boulders, and planetoids he was gliding through.

  Jock looked at a large planetoid dead ahead, seeing the docking bay doors open, transforming the rocky surface into a gaping landing field. His probe seemed to float into the opening, settling down without any effort on his part. Gee, I’m sure glad I spent all those hours in the simms learning how to fly this crate!

  The probe settled onto the landing bay floor, as the darkness signaled the closing of the exterior bay doors. Jock was anxious at the prospects of meeting his station partner. He felt remiss that he had not studied her files on the trip out; it was his only official assignment.

  Quickly Jock brought up the files, scanning the background, the last two evaluations, and the most recent perf-proj, or performance projection. This computer-generated report was an electronic guess of the sailor’s performance over the coming two years. Jock read it, and started to worry.

  His partner’s IQ was nearly off the charts, ten points higher than Jock’s. But her perf-proj was a disaster, just awaiting fulfillment; total mental breakdown within six months. Great.

  The probes hatch opened, jarring Jock back into the present. Her name, he hadn’t memorized her name! He glanced at the image on the darkening screen, the name under it, and felt a chill go up his spine: Shannon. Shannon Malone. Malone… Jock’s shoulders shook as his eyes rapidly scanned the bio file. Sibling, twin sister, Sharon Malone!

  She never told me about a twin sister!

  The image of his three friends waving flashed to the front of his mind. That image zoomed in on Sharon, closer, closer, the bus…

  “Aaaagh!”

  Jock tried to sit up as he screamed, slamming his head into hard, cold, unyielding metal. The jolt snapped his head back down and his mind spun back to the present.

  The dark prison he had so recently escaped threatened to lock him away again.

  Calm down. Remember the good times, like Bucktooth taught you. Deep breaths.

  It took a moment for Jock to feel presentable. Still, one thing worried him.

  Twins. She’ll probably look exactly like Sharon, so man-up and deal with it!

  Jock hit the release switch to open the probe. Bright light hit him, forcing his trembling hand up to his forehead.

  He felt a lump growing there.

  Oh, just great!

  ***

  Asteroid Defense Station 1437

  Landing Bay Alpha

  Standard Earth Date January 9 3445

  “Welcome aboard, Lieutenant.” The cold computer voice spat at Jock.

  I would have expected the Ensign Malone to show up and say, ‘hi’, at least! Jock thought. He looked around the small landing bay; barely big enough for him to stand next to the transport stealth probe he’d ridden out from the Moon.

  “Hey, El-Tee Jay-Gee! Nice ta-meet-cha!” a familiar yet strange voice greeted Jock.

  “Hello?” Jock looked around, trying to find her.

  “Over here, lover boy!”

  Oh, God, no! Please let me handle this…. Jock spun around and saw her. Sharon, but not Sharon.

  “Ensign Malone?” He weakly inquired.

  “Yeah. So, is this the stud my lil sis has gone so gaga over?”

  “Shannon, when was the last news from home delivered here?” Jock walked towards the voice.

  “Well, if you’re as smart as sis says, you’d know. Six months ago.” An unkempt blonde stepped out of the shadows, and stood with arms crossed, staring defiantly at Jock.

  Oh, God! I can’t relive that! Jock stopped, and stood in silence for a long time.

  “Well, what happened? You marry her, she get run over by a bus, what?”

  “Ensign, follow me.” Jock swallowed hard, his suddenly dry throat leaving his voice barely a whisper. It’s just no fair! I shouldn’t have to do this! I shouldn’t have to relive that again.

  She shouldn’t have to find out like this. No one should. Damn total stealth isolation!

  A few more deep breaths and the stretching of his muscles calmed Jock a little.

  This is a function of the assignment I had asked for. Suck it up.

  The two walked in silence towards where Jock remembered his quarters were supposed to be.

  Think of her as a subordinate!

  Finally arriving at the door to his quarters, Jock went inside and sat at the desk there. “Ensign, sit down.”

  “Yes, Sir!” she said with mock seriousness.

  Jock stood up as Shannon sat down. Even thought the room was small, Jock paced head down. Every few steps he shook his head.

  There’s no easy way to do this. No magic words. No special phrases. Damn it! I shouldn’t have asked to come here!

  “Hey, LTJG, what’s going on? You clench that jaw any tighter you’re gonna need dentures.”

  Jock stopped walking and looked through Shannon.

  “Shannon, Sharon is dead.”

  The gorgeous blonde looked at Jock, her expressionless face cutting his soul into little pieces.

  “That…that’s not funny.”

  “Sharon and I were engaged. I asked her the night after graduation. When I boarded the tram to the spaceport, Sharon and my two best friends were hit by a bus. The driver had a heart attack, and the bus ran them over as I watched them waving…” Jock swallowed hard again, swallowed those tears he couldn’t let escape just yet, “waving goodbye. To me.” Stay upright. God, I just want to lie down and cry!

  Shannon stared at Jock for a long time. She wavered side to side for a moment. “You were engaged to her?” her voice came quietly to his ears.

  Jock told her the story of that last night. Everything. Even the parts he would never tell another. He had to tell it all, to get through telling it at all.

  “You were engaged to my twin sister, and then you watched her die. Now you have to tell me about it. How are you so…damned composed? Because I’m about to lose everything right now.” Shannon did not wipe the tears flowing down her cheeks.

  “Shannon, I…It’s not easy. I loved her with all my soul.”

  “If you told her the things you said you did, I believe you. I… I.” Shannon took three big, deep breaths. “Oh, Shar is gone! Oh, God!” The ensign fell to the floor, unconscious.

  She looks just like…STOP THAT! SHE IS NOT SHARON! “Ensign, Ensign Malone, are you alright?” Jock knelt next to her, holding her head. God, she looks just like Sharon! How am I…why this test
?

  “Wha-what’s going on? Sharon? Sharon’s dead?” Shannon sat up, and squinted at Jock. “She loved you more than anything. She must have been very happy when you asked her. Tell me that part again. I know it must hurt, but…please tell me again.” Shannon stared up at Jock through her tears.

  Jock nearly melted, looking Sharon’s twin with that much emotion flooding her eyes. So, Jock told her, through the tears and sobs. It helped that she wore her hair tied up in a way Sharon never did. He hoped she smelled different too. Jock focused on that while he told her his feelings, his regrets for not owning up to his feelings earlier, and his guilt for her death. Jock held nothing back. At the end, Jock placed a hand on her shoulder while he told her his heart, his tears hitting her face while he spoke.

  “She told me about you in the last letter I got from her, about a year ago. It wasn’t long, but twins can say a lot with a few words. You’ve had some time to deal with this. Give me my time for that.” Shannon stood up, composing herself as best she could. She looked right through Jock standing next to her. Suddenly she leaned over and lightly kissed Jock’s cheek. Before he could react, she was gone.

  She does smell like Sharon. Am I screwed, or what! I’ll either come out of this the strongest person ever, or I’ll go nuts.

  Jock sat on his bunk for several minutes, just letting the last few minutes fade on their own. When the numbness wore off, he moved to his duffle and began unpacking. Yeah, this would be challenging. In many, many ways.

  ***

  Asteroid Defense Station 1437

  Landing Bay Alpha

  Standard Earth Date January 12 3444

  Shannon Malone drummed her fingers on the monitoring panel. “Where the hell is he?” she glanced at her watch again. “He’s half an hour late, and I’m hungry and tired.”

  Shannon reached out and tapped several inputs until she brought up the video of Jock’s quarters. I shouldn’t be doing this, he could have my ass….ha-ha! Poor choice of words. He’s sleeping! The SOB is sleeping!

  Shannon set the system on auto-track as she stood up. Her feet hit the floor with just a bit more force than the ADS gravity generators would have accounted for as she marched to Jock’s quarters.

  She hit the codes on Jock’s door and froze as she focused on the back of her hand; her watch. She grabbed her datatab from her belt and checked the time…DAMN! How could I have misread the time like that? It’s 05:30, not 08:30!

  “NO! NO! NO!”

  The scream shocked and frightened Shannon. She gingerly stepped into the dark room, and stuck her head into the Lieutenant’s bedroom.

  “SHARON! STOP! STOP THE TRAIN! I’VE GOT TO GET TO HER!” Jock thrashed in his bed, the light from the corridor shining off of his sweat-drenched hair and face. His blankets were flung across the room, and he clutched his pillow tightly in the grip of his nightmare.

  Shannon watched Jock as he quieted down. She turned and walked back to the passageway, not bothering to wipe the tears streaming down her cheeks. She held her sobs until she heard his alarm go off. She closed the door to Jock’s quarters and ran sobbing to her own.

  ***

  Asteroid Defense Station 1437

  Commander’s Quarters

  Standard Earth Date January 19 3445

  Jock stared at the large video screen, watching his father implode in slow motion once again. Something’s not right. What IS IT!

  Shifts on the ADS were ten hours on, fourteen hours off. The automated systems ran the ADS for the six hours that both of the crew were off. The shifts were supposed to overlap for two hours for the crew to work together. But some how Shannon was always somewhere else for those two hours, fixing a system or running a diagnostic. The first day he got here, he’d shown up ten minutes before his watch began, only to find Shannon had just left. Each day after that he had come in ten minutes earlier than the day before, with the same result. He hadn’t seen her since that meeting in the landing bay. Today, he would show up exactly on time, just to see what happened.

  Jock had spent every waking off-duty minute studying the vid, pouring over each frame, following the movements of each person over and over again, and burying his mind in it, using it to shut out everything else.

  He couldn’t figure out what it was, but there was something wrong in the vid.

  “Ding-ding-ding” his datatab alarm told him his watch began in five minutes. Jock stopped the vid, and began getting ready.

  A final adjustment to his uniform, and Jock turned and walked to the door. He reached for the handle and pulled it open. As he began to walk through, he pulled back with a start.

  Shannon!

  “It’s the lab assistant next to your father. Run it again.” She said, brushing past Jock to the small meeting area of the commander’s quarters. “Here, look.” She was adjusting the controls before Jock could think of a thing to say.

  “Uh, Shannon! Um, my, a, my watch is starting, I should be in CIC…”

  “You know that the station computer will contact us if anything shows up. There! See it?” Shannon pointed her finger at the right hand pocket of the assistant’s lab coat.

  Jock stared up at the scene he’d looked at a thousand times. Now, as Shannon played the three tenths of a second forward and back in a continuous loop, Jock saw it; the pocket moved! Someone had altered the recordings!

  “What…” Jock looked at Shannon, who was already watching him.

  “I watched the vids of Sharon’s…that bus was heading straight for them before the driver had the heart attack. They were part of a hit, Jock, a hit meant for you.” Her eyes were aflame with her anger. “We need to find out who did this. Now, tell me everything your father ever told you about his work.”

  “Well, he was working on using gravity control to stretch and compress space. As a means of driving a ship at FTL speeds, and on using gravitic thrust, where the gravity force is applied like tires to a road, driving a ship without fuel, and a power plant design that used gravity to hold a proton and an electron in close proximity without allowing the electron to orbit the proton, which could end up producing a lot of energy.”

  “All that, before lunch, hey?”

  “Excuse me?”

  “Look, do you have any notes of his, or anything like that?”

  “Yeah, I brought them all. I was hoping it would lead me to the reason for the implosion. Something there just isn’t right, like you said.”

  “Right. Now, I’m starved. C’mon, follow me to the mess.” Shannon grabbed his hand and pulled him out of his quarters.

  Jock followed Shannon, though he wasn’t exactly sure why. His sense of duty, his training screamed that he should be in the Combat Information Center, or CIC, scanning the computer’s reports. Yet, somehow, this impetuous reflection of Sharon was leading him around as if he were a puppy.

  “Jock, you’re too close to the problem. Give me what you have, and I’ll look at it overnight.” Shannon said as she punched in the menu choices. “I’ve got yours, too. Save us a table.”

  Jock looked around the small room, then walked over to the only table in the mess and sat down. He waited patiently until Shannon brought the two steaks, baked potatoes, and corn on the cob over.

  “Here, Jocko. Now, about your father’s research.” Shannon said as she stood next to Jock.

  “Look, Shannon, my father’s research, it’s pretty intense…”

  “Can it. My IQ is forty points higher than Sharon’s. “ A hint of anger touched her voice. “And I know hers was ten points higher than yours. How you ever outscored her on all those tests…”

  “I worked harder. Well, I worked better. Okay, I’m not sure how that happened.”

  “You really are just as dense as she told me, aren’t you? You beat her because, for the first time in her life, she was distracted. Distracted by you!” Shannon nearly yelled her response as she grabbed Jock’s shoulders.

  Jock stood up, glaring at her. Shannon saw the pain burning in his eyes, and immedi
ately regretted the tone she had used.

  “I’m sorry, Jock. That was selfish of me. We both loved Sharon. I just wish…”

  “What? You wish what?” Jock put his hands on Shannon’s shoulders and stared intensely into her eyes.

  “I wish I had been distracted by someone like you instead of… Jock, haven’t you wondered why I’m here, and Sharon went to the Academy?”

  Shannon looked straight back into Jock’s eyes. He thought for a moment, he saw Sharon’s eyes looking back.

  “Why” was all his suddenly quiet voice could reply.

  “I was in love. She was a girl from high school. She enlisted, and I followed. Then she got pregnant, got herself discharged. And here I am, on a career path to nowhere, jealous of my dead twin sister, talking to her… fiancé. Thinking what I could have been. I…”

  “Shannon, please, you just beat me up, don’t beat-up yourself now!”

  Shannon sobbed as she buried her head in his shoulder. Jock put his arms around her, trying to tell himself he was comforting a friend. Much to his own disappointment, a large part of him tried to pretend that he was holding Sharon again.

  They stood there awkwardly for several minutes as Shannon’s emotions finally found relief. She composed herself, and stepped back from Jock.

  “Thank you. I needed a bit of ‘family’ support. Now, back to work.”

  ***

  Asteroid Defense Station 1437

  Research Simulations Center

  Standard Earth Date December 29 3445

  “No, that won’t work; the magnetic flux field has to be synchronized to focus the gravity wave. See, like this.” Jock was deep into the physics, confident in his education and understanding playing off of the raw intuitive brainpower of Shannon’s intellect.

  “That won’t let you go where you need to. See, in order to compress the spatial fabric, you need to apply the gravity wave over a larger, unfocused area, and then bring it into focus as you shrink the wave’s footprint. In order to do that, you need to be unfocused initially.”