Unfathomed (The Locus Series Book 1)

by Ralph Kern

  “In a changing uncertain world,” a serious sounding voice growled. “Ballistic missile defense is key to America’s sec—”

  “Sorry, I forgot about the blurb,” Donovan said, killing the sound but leaving the video running. “Right then. In a nutshell, how the Aegis BMD system works is as follows.”

  The video showed a massively-out-of-scale ship, of the same class as the Ignatius, sailing on a computer-generated sea. Around the visible curve of the world, a graphic of a missile erupted into view, leaving a dashed trail behind it as it arced over the horizon.

  “Normally we would have support from various other battlefield sources, satellites, seismographs and what-not, telling us a missile had been launched and was incoming, but we can detect ourselves too. Here we have detected the launch and the Aegis system decides whether we have a chance of a successful intercept.”

  The ship radiated a series of concentric circles, and when one touched the missile, the circle bounced back.

  “Right, this shows we’ve detected the missile and the system says, “Yes, we can intercept.” The VLS will then prep a RIM 161 and begin tracking the target to the optimal time for a launch. When that has been achieved...”

  From the graphic of the ship, a small missile launched, arcing toward the much-larger incoming ballistic weapon.

  “All throughout, the missile will keep talking to the ship, receiving course corrections as it burns through its stages.” On the graphic, spent stages of the missile fell away as the remainder continued on and up. “Finally, the LEAP will be deployed and impact the incoming ICBM, satellite, or whatever.”

  The image showed the final stage of the missile fall away, leaving a tiny cylinder, the LEAP. It slammed into the missile, and they both disappeared in a bright flash, leaving nothing but a dissipating cloud of pixels. Donovan stopped the video.

  “That’s pretty impressive.” Kendricks looked at the computer schematic of the LEAP with a newfound respect. “How high can one of those hit something?”

  “Max ceiling is 1500 kilometers,” Donovan said proudly. “Although we would need extra battle-space support to hit something that high.”

  “You’re shitting me?” Kendricks noted the small frown twitch across Donovan’s face. Clearly he didn’t like bad language. “Sorry, 1500 kilometers. That’s real Star Wars stuff.”

  “Yes, it is,” Donovan said. “Quite literally. It’s actually one of the few developments from Reagan’s original strategic defensive initiative that is currently in operational use. The SDI program was referred to as ‘Star Wars’ in the media, although that was never its official name, of course.”

  “So how do we turn this thing into a satellite?”

  “Well, it’ll never be a satellite,” Donovan said. “The missile doesn’t have the capability to put the LEAP into orbit. It goes straight up pretty much then, if it hasn’t hit something, will fall back down and either burn up on reentry through the atmosphere, or simply splash down somewhere.”

  “Okay then, let me rephrase. How can we turn it into a mapping device?”

  “Our problems are threefold,” Donovan said. “First we need to replace the IR sensor head with a decent camera. Two, we need to reprogram the projectile to be able to do what we want it to do, which is basically, when it deploys, turn to face the Earth. Finally, we have to transmit the images through the bus and back to us.”

  “All that seems easy enough.”

  “It’s not quite that easy. For starters, the camera has to be able to operate in space. Then there are literally thousands of lines of coding that dictate the LEAP’s flight profile. Lastly, the datalink has a very low bandwidth—it’ll take seconds to transmit each individual picture. It’s essentially just designed to send coordinates in the form of raw numbers. Images are something else and consist of far bigger data packets.”

  “Right... and are any of them insurmountable problems?” Kendricks asked.

  Grinning, Donovan said. “Well, that’s what we are going to hash out. The camera replacement especially isn’t something we could even attempt with the equipment we have on the Ignatius, but with your far more extensive facilities... we might just make this work.”

  Chapter 27 – Day 10

  “Welcome to Nest Island, ladies and gentlemen,” the middle-aged farmer drawled slowly, tipping his sunhat at them as he spoke. “It is a pleasure for you to be here with us, providing some more willing hands.”

  Grayson, along with the six other men and women who had agreed to help with the farming duties, looked around dubiously. The field in front of them promised nothing but backache-inducing toil in the burning hot midday sun. The field was hardly extensive, but the earth looked hard and infested with all kinds of weeds.

  “May I be suggestin’ a hat for tomorrow for those who don’t have one today? For now though, I’ll just be a inductin’ y’all,” the man said, his name already forgotten to Grayson in the glum realization that this was actually going to be hard work. “What we have on this here island, is a cross-section of all the fruits and vegetables that we managed to get seed stock from, between all our boats. I’m... ah, hoping your big-ass cruise ship can provide some different sustenance to grow, as I for one am getting sick and tired of the boring shit we’ve managed to cultivate so far.”

  The fields, as the one they were in was one of several, stretched for most of the relatively flat land on the island, around two and a half square miles in total. The central island peak dominated the skyline and some curious looking trees were dotted around the edges of the field.

  The man stood next to Grayson had an even glummer look on his face than the others.

  “Hey, it’s not that bad,” Grayson whispered at him.

  “Oh yes it is,” the man murmured. “Back home, I’m a farmer. There’s nowhere near enough arable land here to support everyone from the Atlantica.”

  “Well, hopefully we’re not going to be here that long. We just have to fend hunger off a little.”

  “Yeah, right,” the man said distractedly. “You know, a person needs roughly an acre of farmland per year to live off.”

  “Okay... but the fishing is going to help, surely?”

  “It better, or we’re just going to be trying to fill up a bucket with no bottom.” The man squinted at the edge of the field. “And just what the hell is it with those trees? I’ve never seen anything like them.”

  Grayson glanced at them. Sure enough, they were of a type that was common on the scattered islands of the region, but would have been new to the man. They were similar to palm trees, except the leaves were thicker, much thicker, like slabs of green flesh rather than the thin leaves of back home. And every leaf was orientated so the flat edge was facing the sun. Glancing at the other trees, Grayson saw the same thing. He knew that the flat edge would track the direction of the sun throughout the day like actuated solar cells. It was a curiosity of the region. Grayson certainly couldn’t recall ever having seen a tree like it before he arrived here.

  “I don’t know, they just look like palm trees to me,” Grayson lied.

  “Yeah. Okay,” the man scowled distractedly.

  Chapter 28 – Day 11

  “And this is what you’ve come up with to slap on the top of one of my missiles?” Slater squinted at the piece of paper. It certainly wasn’t an exact blueprint, but it did show the general concept of what Donovan and Kendricks had managed to put together. “It frankly looks like shit.”

  “Ma’am!” Donovan admonished through gritted teeth.

  Reynolds gave a snort of suppressed laughter from where he stood, leaning against the bulkhead of the captain’s small grey cabin, which doubled as her office.

  Kendricks grimaced as he looked around. There wasn’t anything approaching the privacy of the Atlantica. If Slater wanted to talk to people alone, it was in her neatly ordered personal space next to her single bunk. Running alongside the bunk was a recessed shelf. It was full of thick folders, books and texts, everything from the rath
er imaginatively titled “Captain’s Manual” to “Sun Tzu’s – The Art of War”. Nestled at one end, closest to Slater’s pillow, was a small picture frame. The enclosed photograph showed a handsome middle-aged man with his arms around a beaming Heather Slater, who in turn had her arms around a young girl. To Kendricks, the normality of the captain in that picture was in total contrast to the hard woman before him.

  “Apologies, Perry,” Slater said absently as she picked up the A3 sheet and turned it around in her hands. “Okay, walk me through it.”

  Plucking the paper out of Slater’s hands, Donovan flattened it on the desk. On it was a drawing of the LEAP’s sensor module, a small cylinder that would fit inside the slightly larger cylinder that was the projectile itself.

  “We’re going to take out the IR sensor completely and replace it with this camera,” Donovan held up the expensive-looking, but still very normal digital camera in his hand. “Of course, we’ll be taking it out of the casing, basically leaving just the working parts. They should be small enough to fit inside the LEAP. The hard bit is that we need to harden the camera to both the stresses of launch, and the varied thermal conditions it will be subjected to...”

  “Which is where Atlantica’s 3D printers and workshops come in,” Kendricks smoothly took over. “We’ll produce a module that the camera will fit into, which we can then plug and play into the slot where the IR sensor had been.”

  “Okay,” Slater said dubiously. “You are aware this damn... this thing is going into space?”

  Ignoring his captain’s curse, Donovan said, “Yes, the module we come up with will be airtight and well insulated. The functionality shouldn’t be affected by the vacuum, at least for the time period it’ll have to be operational. To cope with the quintessential stresses of launch, we’ve come up with this novel solution...”

  On cue, Kendricks pulled a can of tire-inflator foam out of his pocket. They’d found it in the puncture repair kit for the forklift trucks down in Atlantica’s holds “We will fill the module spaces with this stuff. That will be enough to protect the camera itself, and will also help with insulating the electronics.”

  “And how are you going to interface that camera to the LEAP itself so we can actually get some pictures back?” Slater asked, impressed at their ingenuity despite herself.

  “By trusty USB, of course,” Donovan smiled. “The control board on the LEAP is pretty much off the shelf. Thanks to it being designed by the lowest bidder, the cabling has standard connectors - it’s just they’re a vacuum hardened version. We can just plug it in. We’ll then work with...”

  “Tricia Farelly,” Kendricks helped him out.

  “Tricia, Atlantica’s head of IT, to reprogram the LEAP to be able to process the pictures and it will send them back along the datalink. She’ll also help out with reprogramming the LEAP’s flight profile. Basically, when it deploys, it’ll turn the camera lens to face straight back down toward Earth and start sending us pictures.”

  “Gentlemen,” Slater exchanged a quick glance at Reynolds who was smiling in the corner. “I have to tell you, I’m still nervous about letting you mess with one of my RIM 161s. When we get home, you can be sure as hell the Pentagon will be asking some rather pointed questions as to why I fired one off.”

  “Heather,” Reynolds said. “You’ve waited here at this island for two years and not been rescued. If one of my commanding officers had shown this kind of initiative in such a circumstance, I’d be more inclined to give them a medal than a reprimand.”

  “I think you may be underestimating the bean-counting nature of the Pentagon,” Slater smiled despite herself. “But okay. Get the ball rolling. Test the replacement module. I don’t know how—set it on fire, put it in a freezer, and then throw it at a wall. If it survives all that, then I might be willing to say yes.”

  “Yes, ma’am.” Donovan’s expression was one of pride for his expected new baby. “Oh, about that testing?”

  “What?” Slater asked slowly.

  “I’m going to need another missile for that. Just something small,” Donovan beamed brightly.

  “Perry, if I say yes, will you let me swear every now and again without looking at me disapprovingly?”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “Then just do it.”

  ***

  The Liliana was motionless on the open sea, fifty miles north of Nest Island, having circumscribed a long arc around it.

  “Are you sure you want to go yourself, Urbano?” the Liliana’s first mate, Davey Grainger, asked.

  “Yup,” Bautista said as he placed jerry cans of fuel into the gently rocking inflatable boat, enough to get him to Nest Island and back again. Finally, he grabbed the rucksack that he was going to deliver to Grayson and gently stowed it under the plastic seat.

  “Let’s hope all those days on a floating palace haven’t made him go soft.” Grainger said with a grin.

  “I somehow doubt it,” Bautista said as he climbed into the boat and pushed himself away from the side of the hull. “If I’m not back in three days, head home and tell Vaughan not to come.”

  “No problems.”

  Bautista gave a nod and started the engine. He swept the boat around in a long arc and raced away from the Liliana.

  Chapter 29 – Day 12

  Letting the rake drop to the floor, Grayson placed his hands in the small of his back and felt his shoulders pop.

  “I’m going to take my thirty minutes,” he called over to the foreman, who merely grunted in response as he broke a patch of sun-hardened ground with a pick. The weathered old man seemed to have resigned himself to the fact that the soft folk from Atlantica had to be eased into hard labor gently.

  Grabbing his rucksack from the edge of the field, he slung it over his shoulder and began walking toward the shade of a copse of the weird-looking palm trees, well away from the field.

  Entering the shadows, Grayson glanced around, checking to see if anyone was within earshot. No one was.

  Reaching into his rucksack, he pulled out his CB radio and turned the dial on the top, switching it on, and was greeted by a crackle of static.

  “Rain,” Grayson wasn’t expecting a response. The watch boats were well away from Nest Island to prevent detection by the Ignatius, which made it even more surprising when he heard the countersign.

  “Desert,” Bautista’s familiar accented voice responded.

  Hunkering down behind a tree, Grayson hissed into the radio, “Urbano, what the fuck am I still doing here? Get me extracted.”

  “Karl, we will get you away as soon as we can, but for now I have a job for you. I need you to meet me at the northern tip of the island, where there’s a small peninsula. 11 pm tonight. Out.”

  “Fuck!” Grayson scowled at the radio, before switching it off and slipping in back into his rucksack.

  He glanced back at the work party. Giving a shrug, he stretched out his feet, leaning against the trunk of the tree.

  If I’m not getting out of here, I may as well take my full thirty minutes.

  ***

  The industrial-scale 3D printers were set in a room deep in the hull of Atlantica. They ranged in size from a microwave to a chest freezer, and were there to produce everything from replacement engine components to the sometimes-bizarre item requests the stewards received from passengers. It was one of the many innovations Crystal Ocean Lines had equipped Atlantica with in order to make the ship that much more efficient.

  The problem was, what they wanted wasn’t in the ship’s design catalogue, which was why Tricia Farelly had spent the afternoon on the computer-aided design—CAD—console, following Donovan’s specifications—effectively designing the camera module from scratch. But finally, she was ready.

  “Right, we’re building this thing from ceramic. It’s not going to be exactly space-age stuff, but it will do the job,” Farelly said, then finished quietly, “I hope.”

  “Okay, shall we... get started then?” Donovan croaked. The air in the room wa
s incredibly dry. They had placed several dehumidifier units in it, sucking every piece of moisture out of the air they could. It had occurred to Donovan that they would need to prevent condensation from forming on the lens cover when it was in the cold of space, and that meant working in as arid an environment as possible.

  Standing up from her stool, Farelly left the room and came back a minute later with a small grey plastic-covered block. Tearing off the wrapping, Farelly placed it in the 3D printer that was about the size of the microwave, closed the door, walked over to the CAD console, and pressed a button.

  The 3D printer began whining, cutting, and hissing. Donovan looked dubiously at the vibrating machine. After a few minutes it pinged, signaling it had finished working the raw material.

  “That’s it? Donovan asked with incredulity.

  “That’s it.” Farelly said as she opened the door with her gloved hands and pulled out the tiny cylinder within. It was thirty centimeters long and ten wide. “Right, let’s start fitting the camera components and we can begin testing.”

  Looking between the printer, the component in Farelly’s hands, and a smirking Kendricks, Donovan finally gave a shrug. “Okay then... I guess.”

  ***

  The farming team was staying in a small hut on the beach. If it wasn’t for all the rigors of a hard day’s work, it would have been idyllic. Instead most of the workers were now snoozing, having just had a large supper, a perk of the job.

  Once again taking his leave, Grayson began walking. The sun had set on the horizon, and without the benefit of lighting, there was only the full moon to light the island.

  Crossing the fields, he skirted around the base of the foliage-covered peak. After an hour of walking, he reached the northern coast, the complete opposite of where Atlantica and Ignatius were mated together.

  Grayson saw the spit of land where he was meeting Bautista. He started walking down it and as the ground became rougher, began clambering over the rocks and shale. Grayson reached the end. Looking over the edge, he saw a small rubber motorboat bobbing in the water.