“If we go tinkering with the bomb, we risk sending a signal up to their command ship behind us. If they get that signal, they’ll detonate the bomb with us still inside the ship. Then, I’m afraid, our plan falls apart, we die in a sensational explosion that will also take out half of their own fleet.”
I started to laugh.
“You reckon they’d do that? Detonate the bomb with us onboard like this? Kill half the ships behind us? I don’t know about you, but that doesn’t scream too smart to me,” I said.
“Well, I’m afraid that’s where you’re wrong. It’s perfectly smart. They have three more of these things on board three ships behind us,” he said.
“All built by you?” I asked.
“Yeah, but in their minds they can lose this one easily enough. They blow it up, blow us up, and they lose a few thousand ships. Not a big deal. They’d have to divert the other ships at the back to avoid any debris from the carnage caused by the bomb from taking out the remaining ships.”
“Sounds like there’s a but here,” Dale said, in one of his brighter moments.
“BUT” Philip said, emphasizing every letter. “That’s where they’re wrong. While it is true they have three other bombs on three other ships, the radius of the blast would take out three-quarters of their ships. Half of the quarter that remain would catapult into the exploding ships and the other half would divert just in time. So that would only leave them with one and a half thousand miles of war ships left, which is about a million, give or take. So we’re down from nearly fourteen million ships in their fleet heading toward Earth, to one million. Not bad.”
I nodded.
“Not bad at all. But what about the remaining bomb? Could they still detonate it once they reach Earth?” I asked.
Philip shrugged his shoulders.
“Doesn’t really matter to be honest. It’s a dud,” he said.
“A dud?” I asked.
“Yeah. I built a prototype. It’s for show. The only bomb they actually tested, was this one. The other three were assumed to be the same. They provided me with enough material to build four of these things.”
I cocked my head.
“But what did you do with the leftover material?” I asked.
Philip smiled again.
“Built a fifth bomb. A bomb they don’t know about,” he said.
I locked eyes on him, and then on the engine in front of us. The organic material that coated the outside of the engine looked gooey and gelatinous. I squirmed at the thought of even touching it.
“Where’s the fifth bomb?” Dale asked from behind me.
“Let’s just say I left the Ursines a goodbye present,” he said.
“Man, the humans are going to be pissed if you nuke that planet,” I said, remembering the conspiracy that surrounded this whole ordeal. “If they truly want to colonize the Ursine planet, and you blow it up, then this would be all for nothing. At least that’s what the humans will see it like.”
Philip nodded.
“Well, the thing’s on a timer. If the humans can get there in a year, find it and disarm it, then they can have the planet all to themselves. If they don’t, then I guess the first settlers there will have a lot more to deal with then a few pissed off Ursines!”
We all burst out laughing. It was the perfect one-man-up-ship. I took my hat off to Philip. He certainly knew how to get it done. The fifth bomb was genius. It was like a little message to the humans back on Earth. They put us through this, we put them through that. It didn’t really matter anyway. They’d find the thing. I’d end up telling them out of sheer guilt. But it was funny nonetheless. And if Philip did survive this, I guess he’d pay for the joke in some way. But then again, the humans owed us big time. They’d destroyed our lives, banished us from Earth, sold us into slavery, armed a planet of hostile aliens just so they could colonize their home world.
Humans have done a lot of messed up things in their sordid history, but this topped it. So blowing the hell out of their ultimate prize seemed like a fair deal to me. I guess I wasn’t thinking about the Ursines at that point. All the lives that would be lost as a result of the bomb going off. But it was fair game. Everything was fair game. They try to blow our planet up, we blow theirs up. It is, after all, the way of the humans.
An eye for an eye. Always has been, always will be.
“So where’s this bomb? It doesn’t look like it’s in here?” Dale asked, which was good, seeing that I thought I was going insane trying to spot the damn thing.
“It’s in the tube,” Philip said.
I laughed.
“The tube?”
Teresa scowled.
“What the heck is the tube?” she asked.
“It’s the poop shoot. Where we jettison our garbage into the great vacuum of space. No use carrying it around,” I said.
“Exactly,” Philip added.
Dale grunted.
“I don’t understand, how the hell did you convince the Ursines that putting the bomb in the tube was a good idea?” Dale asked.
“Well, I told them that the tube was where we put our torpedo bombs. They didn’t ask for any proof of my statement, so I just went with it,” Philip said, smiling like a kid at Christmas. I must admit, I was smiling as well. It was smart. Real smart.
“How did you know where to put the bomb? You weren’t part of our ship, so there was no way of you knowing if or how you’d transport the bomb to Earth?” I asked.
Philip stopped smiling and a look of sorrow fell across his face. He bowed his head and stared at the floor.
“I’d been taken prisoner with my crewmates. We were part of the Haden ship. There were eight of us in the beginning, but after the tests they put us through at the start, I was the only survivor. The rest of them died. So I used my design of the Haden to house the bomb. I knew that most ships from Earth were designed with the same principles in mind. And every ship had one or two tubes. So convincing the Ursines that we used the tubes to store bombs wouldn’t be so difficult, and in the event that a human ship was used to transport the bomb, at least we’d have the upper hand.”
I nodded my head, reassuring Philip with a brief smile.
“You did good. You should be proud of yourself. Now we have a chance to put things right. And it’s all thanks to you,” I said.
Dale grunted again.
“Thanks to you and the stupid Ursines for believing that the shitter extractor was where we housed weapons of war!” Dale said, bursting out into a belly laugh.
“Yeah, I guess so,” Philip said, brimming with joy. I could tell that he was chuffed with himself. And that all the pain and suffering we’d all been through was coming to an end.
“Sorry to be a party pooper, but that doesn’t explain what we’re doing in the engine room. All we need to do to eject the bomb into the oncoming ships is release the hatch back on the bridge.”
Philip nodded.
“Ah, but with great power, comes great speed!” he said, breaking into another grin.
***
“I’ve modded the engine. It’s ready for hyper drive speeds,” Philip said as he joined me and Dale on the bridge. Teresa was also there. She’d been given the job of monitoring the radio waves outside of the ship. Basically seeing if the Ursines behind the ship were attempting to hail us. And if they were, then we would know that they suspected something, which in turn, would mean we’d have to get a move on.
“Correct me if I’m wrong, but aren’t we going fast enough?” I asked.
Philip nodded his head.
“Twice the speed of light is pretty fast, but once we jettison the bomb from the tubes and it reaches the fleet behind us, the explosion will end up propelling us at unthinkable speeds. To put it bluntly, there wouldn’t be a legible number on the speedometer at the speeds we’ll be going at.”
I nodded my head, understanding.
“Don’t get me wrong, I trust you and all, but going twice the speed of light already has me worried. Grante
d, nothing has come of it, but to be going at such a speed, such an unimaginable speed, scares me. I just don’t see it as being safe,” I said, momentarily glancing at Teresa on the coms unit. She smiled at me. I smiled back. Looked like everything was A-Okay on the transmissions department.
But that didn’t stop me worrying about that either. My biggest fear was that the Ursines would discover our plan and shoot us down. The bomb would explode and there would be no Alpha Ship One anymore. And no more Alpha Ship One probably meant no more humanity. I figured that we were going to be an integral part when it came to defending Earth from the oncoming attack. If we did manage to release the bomb into the oncoming Ursine ships behind us, then it would take care of the majority of the Earth-bound ships. In turn, keeping the people on Earth safe. But that of course was not all that could happen. There were a lot of unanswered questions when it came to Earth’s position in the galaxy and if they were truly egging these creatures on into an intergalactic blood bath. All would be revealed once we reached Earth, but that was easier said than done.
“I understand your anxiety when it comes to dropping the bomb on these things. Hypothetically we should come out of it unscathed. The blast radius will propel us into hyper drive, on top of the three hundred thousand miles a second we’re going right now. So those two speeds coming together will force our ship into a combined speed of nearly three quarters of a million miles per second. It’s a speed that no human ship has ever reached. But it’s not impossible. Down in the Elis Quadrant, a race of Albinoites managed to get their ship to travel at a million miles a second. It made them a superpower in their sector of the universe. Earth tried on different occasions to mimic the technology when they heard about the feat that the Albinoites managed, but unfortunately, the alien race wasn’t willing to give us the blueprints to their design, so what followed was a lot of trial and error when it came to designing an engine that could reach those speeds.
“Earth tried, but try as they might, they never managed to get the design right. Their attempt resulted in about three hundred failed launches. Ninety percent of them ended in complete destruction of the ships being used. The other 10 percent ended up in mid flight explosions.”
I sighed.
“Sounds dangerous then,” I said, twiddling my thumbs as I tried to mask my horror at the idea of suffering the same explosive outcome.
“Well, it is. But we have something that the people on Earth don’t have working in our favor.”
I shrugged my shoulders.
“What’s that then?”
Philip looked at me and then raised his right hand in the air, gesturing at the MEGATON bomb in the tube.
“This baby here is fitted with more explosive power than any self-respecting rocket scientist would dare handle. The people on Earth want to reach those sort of speeds, the same speeds that the Albinoites did, but they aren’t willing to use their noggins. Reaching those speeds isn’t a case of tweaking certain engine systems. It’s a case of slapping thousands of tons of nuclear material into an engine, and igniting the son-of-a-bitch. That’s how you go fast,” he said.
“Well, I’m glad you’re feeling confident in the matter. As for me, I’ll try and not shit myself once we are a go,” I said, immediately realizing how silly I sounded. I was the damn captain, and there I was crapping my pants like a cabin boy!
Unfortunately, I didn’t have to wait too long for the inevitable to happen. All systems were a go. The tube was loaded with the bomb. The hatch was on a ten-minute timer. When that timer reached zero, the bomb would jettison into outer space, float about for two and a half minutes until the first couple of Ursine ships behind us collided into the thing, triggering the bomb to explode on impact. We’d be about twenty-seven thousand miles in front. The blast would reach us six minutes later. By then, we’d be riding the first wave. And when the second wave would reach us, the ships speed would have tripled, in effect, outrunning the third wave, which usually carried with it death. So as long as the first two waves hit us at the right moment, we’ll avoid any severe damage to the ship.
The good news was, if it worked, we’d kill two birds with one stone. We’d annihilate the majority of ships escorting us to Earth, and we’d cut the five months and twenty-four days left on our journey into seven. But the bad news was, if it didn’t work, we wouldn’t know until it was too late. And by then, we’d be engulfed in a million degrees centigrade of molten, radioactive fire, tearing the ship into shreds of microscopic dust.
So it was bombs away, I guess…
Chapter Twenty-Six
“Jettisoning nuke in five, four, three, two, one…package dropped off, I repeat, package dropped off,” Dale said, his voice sounding noisy in my ear piece.
“ETA on package being received?” I asked, looking down at the small LED screen to the left of my flight controls. I watched as a small red blip flashed on the screen. That blip represented the nuke. It had been fitted with a tracker, much like all bombs these days. That way, if it went missing, you could easily track it down. But ours hadn’t gone missing. Ours was making its way nicely toward the Ursines behind us.
“Package will be received in one minute, twenty-two seconds,” Dale said.
The blip on the screen continued to move as we moved. The radar scrolled on the LED display, showing a purple mass on the far right of the screen. The purple mass was the collective heat signatures coming off the Ursine ships behind us. They were congregated in a tight arrow formation. Perfect trajectory really. Once the bomb hit them, the tip of the arrow formation would ripple the debris from the explosion outwards, making the fatter end of the arrow implode as well, repeating the effect until most of that formation had been destroyed.
“One minute. ETA, one minute until delivery,” Dale said, working his controls, analyzing the data coming in from the ship’s sensors.
“Horizon looks clear. No mass or matter for the duration of this trip,” Teresa said, pushing a few buttons and switches as she spoke. She was talking about our route. We were flying a bearing in this part of space known for having little to no space junk, stars or asteroids. Which was perfect really. It was no good travelling at such speeds, only to fly into something and destroying the ship.
“ETA, thirty seconds,” Dale said, his voice sounding ragged.
I braced myself as I rested my hands on the controls. The ship was flying on autopilot, and wouldn’t need to be flown manually if everything went to plan. But I couldn’t help it. I just had to feel in control. This whole experience had shown me what it was like not to be in control, and frankly I was fed up with it. I wanted…I needed to feel like we were progressing. Like we were pulling the strings here. So I was ready. Ready to take back command of my ship.
“Ten seconds till package is delivered,” I heard Dale say.
I darted my eyes back to the LED screen next to my controls. The blip was seconds away from making contact with the arrow formation of the Ursines fleet. I watched as the blip blinked in and out of shot.
“Five…four…three…two…one…”
The blip disappeared off the screen. My heart froze in my chest. I grabbed hold of the controls. They shook slightly. The ship started to rattle a bit. Not a lot at first, but just a bit. I was worried. The arrow formation was untouched. It remained as precise and sharp as it was before.
“I can’t see any damage; the formation is still there!” I said.
“Don’t worry, it hit. Trust me, that bomb hit,” Philip said.
Suddenly, the arrow formation on the radar screen started to disappear, one pixel at a time, as if the screen was malfunctioning. Pixel by pixel, the arrow soon resembled a line. Then the line changed into three shorter lines. Then squares. Then dots. We all began to cheer. The MEGATON bomb had destroyed nearly every ship! Only a few straggling dots remained on the LED screen.
Then nothing. They were gone. All gone within the blink of an eye.
“Holy shit! We did it. There’s no more of them!” I said, not quite bel
ieving our luck! The bomb had taken out all of the ships. Not one of them remained. The screen was now blank. The radar pinged, but all it was picking up was the bomb’s waves. I broke into a smile. The smile then turned into a grin. I’d never been so happy in my life. My hands gripped tightly onto the controls. But then my grip relaxed. I rested my hands on my lap and turned in my swivel chair to face my crew, who looked as if they were about to burst into tears.
“We did it!” I repeated, standing up and punching the air. “We actually did it!”
The slight rattling that had started when the bomb hit turned into a rumbling. A noticeable rumbling. The cheering stopped and I turned my attention to the radar. The screen was showing eight waves. Eight massive waves heading toward us.
“Shit, we’ve got incoming waves. Eight big ones!” I said, sitting back down on my chair and putting my hands back on the controls.
“I thought you said there would only be four waves?” Teresa said.
Philip looked around helplessly. He put his head in his hands and scrunched his eyes.
“Shit, shit!” I heard him say.
“I thought you said there would only be four!” Teresa said again, repeating herself in her panic.
“I didn’t know the bomb would explode like that!” he said. “I only thought it would take out three quarters of the ships, not all of them!”
My legs were shaking uncontrollably. The pit of my stomach churned as my guts pancaked up and down inside me. I felt sick. I thought I was going to throw up.
“I didn’t account for the fuel,” he said, standing up suddenly. “I didn’t account for the damn fuel!”
I shook my head. We were all going to die. He’d miscalculated the explosive power of the bomb hitting the fleet! We were going to die. There was no question about it in my mind. We’d messed up big time.
“The fuel onboard the other ships?” Teresa asked.
Stasis (Alpha Ship One Book 1) Page 19