A Sword Into Darkness

by Mays, Thomas A.

  “Now, for many of you, this is your first time in microgravity, so this sensation of weightlessness might be new to you. I caution you: don’t try to tough it out! If you feel the need, use the osmotic meds you’re carrying. It happens to a lot of us and it’s no reflection upon you if you need them. You can’t do your job if you’re getting sick everywhere. All right, all stations report in and commence space-worthiness checks per your checklists.”

  Nathan released his harness and gave himself a short push, floating off the couch and into thin air. Despite the changes that had occurred, the setbacks they had all endured, and despite Gordon not being there, they had made it.

  He looked around at the semicircle of acceleration couches and maneuvering coffins mounted to the deck, one for each bridge watchstander. The couches were each coupled with a set of flat touch screens and a communications panel, from which most operations of the ship could be controlled. Larger displays covered the padded, cable-strewn bulkheads, lighting up the bright white and navy blue bridge with information, while speakers and ducting crowded the overhead, setting up a background buzz of voices and noise that defined a ship underway.

  Nathan grinned wide and foolishly as he tried to take it all in at once, unable and unwilling to put up a stoic front. He was here, in space, weightless, aboard his own ship. It almost made up for not being in command any longer. His was a jumble of emotions: excitement, anger, joy, nervousness, and even a touch of guilt.

  The new commanding officer looked at him, bemused. “And how do you find it, Mr. Kelley?”

  He turned to Henson. “Captain, Superfluous Civilian Consultant reporting in with nothing to do, sir!”

  Colonel Henson frowned for a moment, considering, then pushed off of his own couch, directly at Nathan. He touched, grabbed hold of Nathan, and carried them over to a corner of the bridge, stopping them both much more adroitly than Nathan would have ever managed alone. Nathan briefly envied his experience, but Henson cut off his thoughts with a sharp whisper.

  “Mr. Kelley, I need to know now if the two of you are going to continue to be willfully difficult for the rest of these space trials. If you are, I may be forced to have you confined to quarters until we can use the SSTOS to take you back down. Is that what you want?”

  Nathan stared at the officer’s eyes, trying to gauge whether he was serious or not. What he saw failed to comfort him. “No, it’s not what I want.”

  “Good. I don’t want that either, but I will do whatever is necessary to make these trials a success. Our launch is going to cause enough problems down on Earth, that I don’t need another set up here. Understand?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Henson smiled tightly, forcing himself to be somewhat more pleasant. “I really thought we had gotten past our … circumstances, Nathan. You and Kris have been nothing but helpful this past week, giving us a crash course on the Sword of Liberty.”

  Nathan nodded. “We both want you guys to be successful. It’s in everyone’s best interests. I guess it’s just a little different being up here and knowing we’re not going all the way. But, that’s not your fault and we shouldn’t be taking it out on you.”

  He blew out a long, slow breath. “All right, we’ll be good. I’ll have a word with Kris and we’ll stop pushing your buttons.”

  “Thank you. Because while your instruction on the ground was excellent, I’ll admit that most of us are still too new to not be nervous pushing this bird’s buttons. We’re glad to have you along.”

  The military skeleton crew and their two civilian consultants went to work, verifying the Sword of Liberty was safe and ready to continue with her trials. Coverall adorned crew flitted about the ship through bright white passageways festooned with handholds, cables, ducts and padding. The decks of the ship were all aligned perpendicular to the centerline running from bow to stern, set up for either weightless operations or for the pseudogravity that existed when the ship was under a standard one g of thrust, turning “forward” to “up” and aft to “down”.

  Kris darted around the corridors and access trunks like a fairy on too much caffeine, excitedly checking every internal seam and pressure boundary, each accessible valve and indicator, ensuring her ship was safe and ready for the stars. A trail of Navy and Air Force engineers, both astronauts and non, struggled to keep up, taking notes on everything she touched. After verifying no air was leaking out and that everything had survived the launch intact, they proceeded to reconfigure the ship for actual operation.

  The aeroshells were jettisoned, revealing nests of antennas, cameras, and sensors which would connect the destroyer with the universe around her. Larger shells came free from the amidships third of the 800 foot long spacecraft, exposing her immense, fragile, chevron radiators and their support struts, lying between the mission hull and the reactor/drive section.

  The Sword of Liberty shortly matched orbits with the International Space Station, coming to rest 100 meters from the nearly forty year old, cobbled-together monstrosity. They were a study in contrasts.

  Where the ISS was a spindly, boxy structure of scaffolding and connectors, mismatched tubes and capsules, discarded experiments and obsolete solar panels, the destroyer was defined by its solidity and functional lethality. Her forward third was a stealthy collection of oblique angles, clean lines, and sharp boundaries: a plated, irregular, hexagonal wedge bristling with antennas and laser emplacements. Lines of missile hatches covered the wide faces of the long wedge, while a pair of active phased array radar domes stood out from the two narrow faces.

  On one narrow side, designated the “dorsal” side even though such things were completely arbitrary in absence of a consistent gravity, an armored, retractable panel covered the ship’s Single Stage To Orbit Shuttle, or SSTOS. Essentially a miniature version of the ship itself, it could carry the entire crew complement to and from the surface without worrying about stages, boosters, or refueling. Opposite it on the ventral side, a similar set of roll away panels covered a pair of pods for use in space, as either lifeboats, repair vessels, or inter-orbit transports.

  Amidships was dominated by the radiating panels, large, reddish, reflective squares arranged in a series of chevrons along the long axis of the ship, each set of panels perpendicular to the next set. These panels all glowed dully, giving away to space whatever waste heat the pebble bed reactor, environmental systems, and weapons produced.

  Since there was potentially a lot of heat to dump, heat that could and would give away the vessel’s presence, the panels had been vastly overbuilt. A pair of the sets was sufficient to handle most normal heat loads while the others could be shut down. Was the crew to only use the ones facing away from the threat axis, they would be able to approach much closer before their residual infrared signature gave them away. In cold, empty space, thermal stealth was nearly impossible to achieve, but this design would make the best of a bad situation, reducing their detection range from interplanetary scales to merely planetary ones.

  The aft section consisted of the pebble bed reactor and the photonic reaction drive—a gigantic reflective “nozzle” capable of emitting and focusing the thrust of their enhanced photon drive, as well as a number of smaller nozzles for station-keeping and maneuvering. Though more refined and many times the size of the experimental setup Kristene had developed at the University of Texas at Arlington, it was nonetheless almost identical in operation. Of course, this one, they all hoped, would not explode like her original had.

  Aiding in the maneuvering of the destroyer, the main drive was duplicated in miniature upon four triangular pylons on the forward hull, aft of the banks of missile cells. These pylons each supported a trio of photonic emitter nozzles facing in opposing directions, a reaction control thruster system with each emitter more powerful than a shuttle’s main engine. Used in concert with the main drive emitter and the similarly-sized aft nozzles, these photonic thrusters could maneuver the ship at high g-levels more nimbly than an air-bound fighter jet. They could, in fact, man
euver the destroyer at rates far in excess of what its soft tissue crew could physically withstand.

  The crew of the ISS took all this in over the next couple of hours, gawking unceasingly through the habitat windows while the destroyer crew completed their readiness checks. The Sword of Liberty had made this stop-off in case the destroyer should prove unsafe to continue on with its tests. In that case, the ISS would have acted as a last ditch refuge of sorts. However, with his new ship performing flawlessly, Colonel Henson had another duty to perform.

  With the bridge cameras rolling and transmitting, Henson and the others floated back to their seats around the ship, strapping in for maneuvers. The colonel sat up and addressed the camera directly, “Crew of the ISS, peoples of Earth, this is the United States Ship Sword of Liberty, designated DA-1, the first step in our journey to the stars, ready to face whatever may come with honor and courage, in defense and support of our planet, but against no man or terrestrial power.

  “This ship represents a promise to all nations that we will go forward together, in unity and fellowship, to a new age, a golden age where we are no longer fighting over the limited bounty of Earth, but are instead working in harmony to discover the universe for the benefit of all mankind. We stand atop the achievements of those who have come before us: the trailblazers, the pioneers, the voyagers, those who have given their lives for the advancement of all. And in the spirit of their past accomplishments, we go … forward.”

  At his last word, the destroyer’s main drive fired and the ship accelerated effortlessly away from the ISS at a single gravity of continuous thrust. The new guard had saluted the old. The torch had been passed.

  Commander Torrance, the XO, jumped up again and fell solidly back down to the deck. He smiled at Henson and Nathan. “This beats the shit out of that freefall stuff, sir. You astro-nuts might like it, but I’ll take the pull of terra firma any day, thank you very much.”

  The destroyer had been underway for hours now, toward its planned tactical operating area, and the trials had gone flawlessly. They had gone so well, in fact, that they were all waiting for some setback, for Murphy to make his presence known. But the other shoe had thus far refused to drop. Both in orbit and underway, they had tested every system, cycled each valve and every switch, with nothing but a few minor faults that had no real effect.

  Henson shrugged at his XO’s teasing, but said nothing. Nathan smiled and clapped the XO on the shoulder, saying, “I’m with you, but don’t forget, there’s no terra firma here to pull you down. We have pseudo-gravity only while the drive is firing at a continuous one g. It cuts out or we maneuver, and you may find yourself in an uncomfortable position.”

  Henson clicked off his display and stood, stretching loudly. He enjoyed the comfort of gravity himself, not that he would ever admit it to his non-astronaut Exec. “That’s right, Dan. Stow for space, just like you stowed for battle. Move around and secure things as if gravity could turn upside down or at right angles without notice. It’s a pain in the ass … but you lonely squids should be used to pains back there.”

  “Ha-ha. Homophobia, the last bastion of insults for the intellectually disarmed. Don’t make me pull out my bag of Air Farce-isms, sir. Between me and my former Navy compatriot here, we could reduce your mother-service to shreds within seconds.”

  Henson held up his hands. “Ach! Truce, truce. Besides, we’re part of a whole new service now—the Aerospace Force. The terrestrial forces will have to come up with all new insults for us, and I expect you to have my back, XO.”

  Torrance looked as if he was considering it. “Call it the Aerospace Navy and you’ve got yourself a deal.”

  Nathan figured that was a good trade-off, but he said nothing. There was so much different about their new ship, it would take a lot of getting used to. Neither the astronauts nor the regular officers had any particular advantage, either. And of all things, simply getting around took perhaps the most getting used to.

  With the thrust on standard, forward and aft were tricky concepts. On a wet-Navy ship, those terms meant “toward the bow” and “toward the stern” respectively, but here the planet-side definitions were at odds with common sense. Instead, toward the bow was “up” and the stern was “down”, essentially turning the angular wedge of the destroyer into a tall, regal tower, thrusting upwards through the heavens.

  For ease of reference in varying thrust conditions, forward and aft kept their naval designations, even though they also meant up and down with the main drive running. Continuing with that convention then, the other ship coordinates worked themselves out: ventral was to the narrow side with the work pods, which had faced down when the ship was constructed laying over on Earth. Dorsal lay opposite this, along the narrow side with the STOSS hangar, which had faced up during construction. Port was to the left when facing ventral or forward, and starboard was to the right. These designations were firm as well, no matter if they were in microgravity or accelerating along some non-standard vector. Re-orienting their coordinate system to apparent gravity would not only have been maddening, it would have made meaningful communication impossible.

  Nathan sat and checked their progress on his screens. Earth had been left behind, becoming just a small circle no larger than a dime held at arm’s length. But they were not alone in all that vast emptiness. Grown into visible range before them was another body—a small, seemingly insignificant mountain of iron compounds and silicates, which had the unfortunate distinction of being their target.

  To prevent a sudden, limited pass-by past their rocky objective, the Sword of Liberty had flipped around to thrust into the opposite direction once they were halfway to the Near Earth Asteroid, 2006 UA22. And aside from a slight wobble in their apparent gravity at turnaround, thrust and acceleration as well as the direction of up and down remained constant. They quickly matched orbits with the target, the pair of them pretty much alone in space.

  Nathan split his attention between the bright marble of Earth and the gray-brown pitted ovoid of the asteroid. He shook his head to no one in particular, and wondered which of the two bodies were going to be hit harder by what they were about to do.

  Kristene popped through the doorway, excitement and anticipation evident on her face. “Are we there yet? I’m anxious to blow something up.”

  The CO and XO both laughed and Nathan grinned and stood. She sidled up to him and he kissed her, with only a twinge of self-consciousness at the critical looks Henson and Torrance gave him. Nathan responded, “Patience, patience. We’re farther out than anyone has ever been, in just a couple of hours no less, and it’s still not fast enough for you.”

  Torrance checked his display and nodded. “The young’uns these days. As a matter of fact, we are approaching range of the target, and have reached the planned crossing velocity. Recommend cutting thrust and proceeding with the tactical trial.”

  “Very well. Cut thrust and line us up on the asteroid. All personnel to Battle Stations Alpha,” Henson commanded.

  Nathan sat and made the necessary selections. From speakers all around the ship, a cool feminine voice announced, “General Quarters, General Quarters. Now set General Quarters, Alpha Stations. The ship may engage in high g maneuvers without warning. All personnel will move in an orderly fashion to their General Quarters stations. All personnel will secure for maneuvers and minimize all internal transit unless specifically authorized by the Commanding Officer.”

  Suddenly, all trace of weight vanished as the drive cut off and they were again in microgravity. Most of the skeleton crew of fifteen officers aboard were in position, but more than a couple overcompensated for the return to freefall and launched themselves into the overhead with painful results. Those few winced and proceeded to their designated acceleration couches, to monitor and control the weapons tests from there.

  Alpha Stations allowed them to work from their usual consoles and seats without suiting up, while Bravo Stations forced them to work from within protective vacuum suits, just in case th
e ship took damage and lost air integrity. The final condition, Charlie Stations, required them to don vacuum gear as well as relocate to the “pods” or “coffins”, special one-person chambers capable of being pressurized with a force-dampening gel which would enable them to withstand higher g-loads than they normally could endure.

  Nathan glanced over to Kris, where she had strapped into a spare couch between the XO and the Weapons Officer. He locked gazes with her and gave her a significant look. “We all ready, Kris?”

  She smiled. “Born ready, Mr. Kelley, sir! Let’s launch us some nukes and shoot us some guns.”

  Henson glanced from one of them to the other. “Ms. Muñoz, if you would, please monitor the Weapons Officer and assist LCDR Gutierrez with the launch. This will be the first time any of us have fired these missiles and we would prefer not to have a set of six fusion warheads go astray. XO, please monitor Mr. Kelley in the use of the railgun and the laser emplacements. Computer, main screen, enhanced targeting view, go.”

  The large flat screen that took up half of the ventral portion of the bridge switched from an overview of environmental, ship, crew, and sensor data to a false-color display showing the highlighted asteroid on a field of black. Vectors and outlines shifted continuously over the rock’s surface as radar and lidar picked out surface features and the computers made automated threat evaluations.

  This particular nameless asteroid had been chosen for one reason only, and a cynical, informed observer could not help but notice that the planetoid’s shape and size bore a striking similarity to that of the Deltan control ship. Nathan had suggested the target and Henson and Torrance had been happy to agree with it. None of them would admit to having pre-conceived notions of the aliens’ intentions, but neither would they object to being prudent.

  LCDR Rudy Gutierrez made some selections on his screen to which Kris nodded. Elsewhere on the ship, in CIC just dorsal of them and in the missile deck monitoring station several levels above, his selections were taken as commands to the officers working there, who carried them out and acknowledged them almost automatically. Gutierrez turned to the CO. “Captain, all weapons stations report ready. Track 0017 targeted at range 674.3 km, bearing 340 by 075 relative off the port dorsal bow, bearing and closure rates negligible. Asteroid target and ownship at zero thrust. One missile, portside dorsal cell 12, selected for launch. Weapon, drive, and tube capacitors are charged, and ripple warhead pattern selected. Ready for nuclear weapons release on your authority, sir.”