‘Sure, I understand. How’s Amy doing?’ asked Darla.
‘She’s devastated. She lost her whole flight group,’ said Straus.
‘I’ll have a talk with her later.’
‘I think she’d like that.’
They finished their breakfast and Straus headed for the bridge. Turning to Lt. Bell he said, ‘Initiate a conference call with Bernal in Flight Ops, and Commander Harrison.’
‘Yes. Commander,’ said Bell turning to the Quantum Transceiver console. A few moments later, she said, ‘Ready, Sir.’
‘Morning Gentlemen,’ said Straus to Bernie and Tómas.
‘How’s it going out there Straus?’ asked Tómas.
‘Up until last night it was going really well. Making steady progress on diverting the asteroid. Last night Phoenix Flight Two was jumped by a Drone attack group. Not only did they have a Beetle, they had something new. Looked like a giant starfish,’ said Straus as he pressed a button to replace the image they were seeing of him with one of the Starfish captured from Bug’s wing camera.
‘The Beetle’s plasma caught two of our ships and then that thing raced in and ripped them to pieces with those arcing energy beams, like a giant bug zapper. We’re going to have to up our game somehow to counter that kind of destructive fire power,’ said Straus.
Bernal whistled softly and shook his head.
‘Bernie we’re going to need another flight out here to replace Phoenix Flight Two. What’s available?’
‘Well the Crusaders and Wizards are running standard patrols. You can have one of them, or you can have Black Hats Flight One.’
Tómas tensed at the thought of his wife, Vicks, being sent out into harms way, but didn’t say anything.
‘Relax Tómas, I think the Crusaders can handle it,’ said Straus.
Tómas nodded, but still didn’t say anything.
‘I’ll have them on their way in the next half hour,’ said Bernie.
‘We lost the Amazon. Are there any transports available?’
‘Only the Thames and Mississippi but they’re both making runs planet-side, and neither has a graviton unit,’ said Bernie. ‘There is another one in production, but it won’t be ready for a week.’
‘I can have it done faster, if you give the word,’ added Tómas.
‘I’ll get back to you on that. We’ll need to reevaluate the situation once we recover the black box. Anything happening back there that I should know about?’
‘Black Hat Flight Three ran into a recon patrol in Sector 53. There was a Beetle but they atomized it before it could get a shot off. No sign of any flying starfish though.’
‘Good. Let them know it's out there. Its faster than the standard ships but not quite as fast as the Ninja’s Supercharger.’
After signing off Straus headed for the locker room and changed into his armored flight suit. He found Abernathy and a few of his men, fitting Darla and Dr. Hamilton for the Excursion suit.
The suit was based on the Russian’s Orlan spacesuit and consisted of a rigid trunk and flexible arms and legs. It was just a matter of attaching the right size limbs to match the individual. Once it was assembled the person would enter through a hatch in the back.
‘This is heavy,’ said Hamilton.
‘Yeah, it's meant for zero-G work. On the asteroid, you’ll still have to use gravity boots to hold you down, as you’ll only weigh about ten pounds on the surface.’ said Straus.
‘Why can’t I have a suit like yours?’ asked Darla.
‘You can. It’ll just have to wait until we get back to Corvus.’
When they were sealed into their suits, Abernathy’s team helped them over to a waiting cart which transported them to the Colorado. Capt. McCandless was standing by at the docking port, after having refueled the ship.
Once everyone was aboard, McCandless maneuvered the transport away from the Adamant and set down near the crater caused by the impact of the Amazon.
They powered down the transport’s gravity plating, then easily made their way out of the loading hatch and onto the surface. Abernathy and his team headed for the crater and started cutting away debris with plasma torches. Darla and Dr. Hamilton went about collecting samples and taking readings of the asteroid.
Straus was standing with Abernathy watching the crew cut apart the debris and said, ‘Keep an eye out for any human remains, sergeant. Uh... no bad pun intended.’
Abernathy chuckled and said, ‘Aye Sir. Over the last couple of weeks, I got to know Browning pretty well and I think he would have thought that was funny as hell.’
Straus nodded in agreement and chuckled to himself. He was going to miss that plucky comic relief personality.
It took thirty minutes to dig down to the black box. It was in fairly decent shape, which meant that they shouldn’t have much trouble finding answers. Between the impact and the explosion, they weren’t able to find any sign of Browning himself.
The two doctors managed to collect several cubic feet of representative material which they packed into the same special magnetic collection bottles that were used to collect anti-DEP.
After returning to the Adamant, and dropping everyone off, the Colorado returned to the far side to continue pulling the asteroid. The two visiting doctors got to work on the specimens, and Darla began to examine the black box.
‘This shouldn’t take long,’ she said as she plugged in various cables into the recovered unit.
Straus watched as she turned to the computer and began accessing the data recorded on the device. She configured the monitor to display the cockpit data and play the audio, then said, ‘Ok, this is the last few minutes that were recorded.’
‘You hear that Altman? We nearly got our butts kicked.’
‘Yeah I heard. I knew Moe. He was a good guy.’
‘Geez, I wish I was out there blasting those things, instead of being stuck on this... tug boat,’ complained Browning.
‘Hey we all do our part. Did you know that Capt. Burke started out on transport duty? There’s still hope for you. You may have your own carrier one of these days.’
‘Yeah... right. Doesn’t help me now. Oh well. The show’s over. They’ll be on their way back soon. Better straighten up in here. Oh, crap...’
‘That’s the end of the audio. You can see here on the cockpit telemetry that the graviton beam’s polarity was reversed. What with the forward thrust of the ship, he didn’t have enough time to react. The ship accelerated into the asteroid and impacted a few seconds later,’ explained Darla.
‘But how did the graviton polarity change? Did he hit a switch, or was it some sort of malfunction?’ asked Straus.
‘Its not a simple toggle switch, but one of those “pull out, then rotate, and push back in” switches. However, if something was spilled on that panel it may have shorted, or... it could have been a malfunction. The data just shows the polarity changing, not how it changed. Sorry.’
‘Ok... thanks sweetheart. Now if you can take a look at the other black box, I’d like to see if it can shed any light on the weapon that was used to destroy Flight Two.’
‘Its too badly damaged. Its going to take major surgery and I don’t have the equipment here. It will have to wait until we get back.’
‘Alright... the next thing we need to determine is what effect the impact had on the asteroid, and what we need to do to complete the mission.’
Darla turned back to the computer and examined the trajectory data for the asteroid, then said, ‘The impact and subsequent explosion went a long way toward changing the asteroid’s trajectory. If the Colorado maintains it's schedule we can still complete the mission in seven days.’
‘What if we reposition the Adamant and use the fighter recovery field as a weak tow beam?’ asked Straus.
Darla smiled and nodded, then added in the data and watched the computer calculate the new estimate, then said, ‘That will cut it down to five and a half days.’
‘We’ll do that then. I’ll head to the br
idge and get started.'
‘In the meantime, I’d like to examine the Beetle and Starfish fragment you brought onboard.’
‘Sure, have at it. Just be careful... and I mean, really careful,’ said Straus deliberately making direct eye contact.
Memories of the anti-DEP incident flashed in her mind and she swallowed hard, then said, ‘I will be.’
Chapter 7
TAKE TWO
A week had gone by and Corvus was in the news again for being the first ones to successfully divert an asteroid from impacting the Earth. The science community was abuzz over having actual pieces of the asteroid to analyze. Samples were parsed out to universities and labs all over the world that were clamoring for the opportunity to be involved.
On their first morning back on the station, the Straussers were meeting with the Harrisons for breakfast in the officers mess. Straus sat down with his tray and started adding the fixings to his coffee. After a taste test, he spoke up.
‘It’s been a long couple of weeks. I’m glad to be back.’
‘So am I,’ said Darla.
‘As far as I’m concerned, you two have a honeymoon to finish. Things are under control here. Why not take a week off and recharge?’ said Tómas.
Straus and Darla looked to each other and discussed it briefly, then he said, ‘That sounds pretty good, actually. We both have a few things we want to get off our plates first though.’
‘I should also let you know that you and I have been promoted to commodore. I felt it was more befitting the positions we both hold,’ said Tómas.
‘Commodore Strausser... I like that,’ said Darla.
‘That does have a nice ring to it. Thank you Commodore Harrison. I imagine that comes with a raise?’
You’re welcome... and of course,’ said Harrison.
‘Anything else going on that I should know about?’
‘Well, you’ll be happy to know that the dome park is nearly enclosed now. And... the environmental systems are up in the Diplomatic wing, they’re working on the interior spaces now. Oh, and Sections 30 to 35 have been modified and towed into position on the opposite side of Earth complete with a skeleton crew. The construction bots will begin expansion.
‘Excellent. Does that mean we have a little slack in our production facilities?’ asked Straus.
‘A bit. What do you need? More fighters? More transports?’
‘Well first, I’d like to make some modifications to the Adamant. I’d like a couple of graviton units put in so we can push and pull things around like the transports do. I’d also like a couple of DEP collection units so it can gather it's own DEP.’
‘That should be pretty straightforward,’ said Tómas.
‘Second, I was thinking that we could use a second carrier altogether. We have all the specifications for the Adamant. Just crank out another one with all the current mods that we’ve added.’
Harrison whistled softly and said, ‘That’s more than a little project, but we can start on it for sure. What about that Corvan hulk we towed in. Can we make use of that?’
Darla shook her head and said, ‘The engines were destroyed and the power systems overloaded. However we could recycle the materials. We’ve already stripped out everything useful.’
‘Good. I’ll have it dismantled and we’ll use the material for the new carrier. That will be faster than refining new ore. Any news on those Beetle projectiles?’ asked Tómas.
‘Yes, I’ve completed my analysis. Its a very clever device. It disperses an anti-plasma charged with anti-electrons. They effectively sap the energy out of our systems, until the anti-electrons are depleted. I believe we can modify it to use against the drones. I’ve passed it off to Weapons Research.’
‘Have you found a way to counter the effect?’ asked Straus.
‘Haven’t had a chance to get to it, however theoretically if a positive plasma were dispersed into a negative one, they would cancel out. We’ll be looking into it.’
‘Just to give you a heads-up. We now have two decks devoted to the temporary embassy space. Currently we have five countries represented and today the Italian contingent arrives,’ said Tómas.
‘Maybe we’ll be returning to our honeymoon sooner than I thought,’ said Mick.
‘Thanks loads,’ said Harrison.
After breakfast, Darla headed to the lab to get started on the damaged black box from Phoenix Flight Two, and Straus headed for his office.
Straus’s first order of business was to change the Operations procedures, specifying that pushing with an anti-graviton beam was to be avoided. His next order of business was to contact Colonel Snowden at the Pentagon. Once his staff sergeant had arranged the video call he transferred it in to Straus.
‘Snowden here, Commodore Strausser. Congratulations on the promotion by the way. What can I do for you, Sir?’
‘Colonel, I regret to inform you that your son-in-law was killed in the performance of his duties.’
The colonel’s smile was replaced by a pained expression, and he said, ‘I see. How did it happen?’
‘Well, we’re not exactly sure. He was piloting a transport that was pushing 2015EJ3 off it's trajectory. My report states that there was a malfunction which caused the ship to fly straight into the surface. He was killed instantly.’
‘That was very tactfully put Commodore. I appreciate it, but just between you and me... did he screw up?’
Straus’s hunch was that he may have had, but since the conclusive evidence was destroyed in the crash, he decided to keep his opinion to himself and said, ‘No Colonel, I don’t believe he did. He was a character, but he performed his duties well.’
Snowden nodded and said, ‘He will be missed.’
‘If it's any consolation Colonel, his actions helped save the Earth from destruction and we’re recommending him for the Corvus Medal of Honor. As the asteroid starts melting on it's approach to the Sun, it will be reclassified as a comet... Comet Browning.’
‘A fitting tribute. Thank you, Commodore.’
Straus spent the next two hours addressing some of the non-routine issues that Yuri and Page had left for him. After taking care of the most pressing paperwork, he spent the next thirty minutes making arrangements for the rest of their honeymoon.
His mind had turned toward his time off and he decided to stop by the lab to pick up Darla. As he stepped out into the corridor, he had to stop short to keep from running straight into the Italian delegation. He barely recognized the General wearing civilian clothes. Walking with him were, what he guessed must have been his wife, twin sons in their late teens or early twenties, and his daughter which he recognized. Tagging along were two staff members and two of the station’s security people.
‘Oh, excuse me Mr. Ambassador. Welcome aboard.’
‘Commodore Strausser,’ said Basitco with a tone that hinted at contempt. ‘Allow me to present my wife, Angelica, and my sons Angelo and Dante. You already know my daughter.’
‘Ma’am, a pleasure’ he said shaking the wife’s hand. ‘Nice to see you again Colonel,’ he said nodding to Francesca.
‘Its very nice to meet you Commodore. We are so proud of you all and the work that you’re doing here. Its an honor to be a part of such an important endeavor, even in a small way,’ she said.
‘Well thank you Ma’am. Its nice to have you all aboard.’
‘And congratulations on your recent marriage... and to such a lovely young lady,’ said Angelica with a genuine smile.
‘Thank you. Yes, she’s both lovely and capable.’
‘My husband was just showing us around, but perhaps if you’re not too busy, you would be so kind.’
Mick glanced to the ambassador who now had an expression that said, ‘Ha, got you now. Let’s see you get out of this one.’
Straus huffed to himself, but smiled and said, ‘I’d be happy to Mrs. Ambassador.’
She took his arm and said, ‘Oh please... call me Angelica.’
Straus suddenly grew
uncomfortable and began to understand why Francesca might be the way she was.
After spending an hour showing them the highlights of the station he led them into Darla’s lab. There were several technicians working on a variety of projects at various lab benches.
‘And this is the Tech Research lab where alien technology is investigated... and this is the head of Tech Research and my wife, Dr. Darla Strausser. Sweetheart, you remember Ambassador Bastico. This is his wife Angelica, sons Angelo and Dante, and daughter Colonel Francesca Bastico.’
Corvus Prime: Escalation Page 9