The Resolute

by G. Weldon Tucker

  It was not to be…

  CHAPTER 11

  “ATTENTION! INTRUDER ALERT! ALL HANDS!! BATTLE STATIONS!” Spook called loudly, for three times. That part of his programming took his volume up several notches. Unemotional, but programmed to make it count.

  Alarms were blaring from every klaxon in the ship, all eleven plus miles of it, and the squirrel cage applied brakes, immediately, on automatic.

  Angela, stumbling from the sudden shift of gravity and the mismatch of her running feet against the rapidly slowing tread mill, managed to hold herself on the pole support and wait the half minute to stop. She launched through midair, from on high toward the door, then quickly pushed and pulled herself outside. The klaxon alarms were screaming!

  This not a drill. No one can call a drill but me, damn it!

  Into her magnetic shoes, then, refusing the delay necessary to dress in her duty uniform in the locker room, she raced to the elevator. Now, anxious, she was chomping at the bit as it seemed to take forever to get to the bridge. It was, however, almost as fast as a tram, but she was in a real hurry. Even inside the elevator, she was almost forced to cover her ears.

  “Captain on the bridge!” came from an alert Ensign, as she barged in, receiving salutes and panicked looks.

  She called out, “As you were!”

  Then came the double takes. No one of them had ever seen her outside of a uniform. Not in anything so… femininely revealing.

  Seeing the stunned expressions, she growled, “As you were, damn it! Tend to your duties. Report, Commander!” she called as she hurried to her Captain’s chair and battle screen.

  The alarms were stopping, first the collision warning alarm, the damage report alarm, and finally the air system alarm. None of them had a valid input, so what the hell was the matter?

  Commander Willits, looking frightened, reported, “It was a huge green flash, ma’am, a few thousand miles out front of us. Ma’am, the asteroid…” he choked.

  “Speak up! What about it, Commander Willits? Keep it together, damn it!”

  As he pointed to the viewer and her eyes followed, she was stunned. There was no asteroid at all, the big thing had… vanished!

  “Oh, my God!” she managed, gripping her duty desk to keep from swaying. “Did we stray off course?”

  “No, ma’am!”

  “Technical!” she called, unnecessarily loud, but then, she could barely hear herself over her heartbeat in her ears.

  “Yes, Captain!”

  “What was it!” she demanded, trying her best to calm down.

  “Looked like a laser beam, only much, much broader. We think it encompassed that whole rock, and suddenly, the thing disappeared. It did not explode… we think. It vanished.”

  “Not damned likely! It was not a ghost image! Spatial report, now!”

  Radar went direct, saving the white faced Dale from fumbling it. “No one in ten thousand, Captain. We have the range increasing, but things get fuzzy out to twenty. Still, nothing. Anywhere!”

  “Ping that rock, Commander. Hard band radar. Things do not vanish. They might play chameleon, but they do not vanish!”

  “Yes, Captain. Radar, one sweep, hard band radar, now!” Any enlisted or above who sat in the radar control chair was simply called Radar for simplicity. Myriad talented minds passed through the chair and there was no time to try to remember names.

  “Commencing, Commander,” the sandy haired waif in the radar operator’s remote chair, who looked thirteen, but was closer to thirty, spoke up. “Done… no returns outside of rock and ice, Commander. None, at least none in our plane. Should I check spherical?” Though the radar room was three or more floors down, later improvements and efficiency had moved control up to where it was most useful. And direct.

  Angela overrode Willits’ decision making process. “Do it, Cory!”

  “Commencing, Captain… nothing that does not belong. Rock and ice, and a lot of it. No return for twenty-eight thousand miles. The asteroid has indeed vanished, Captain!”

  “Stealth up, now. Shields up, now!” She was taking no chances. As if her puny stealth and shields could stop a death ray of such magnitude! The shields were the latest defense system, untried and unproven so far… Theory does not provide safety any more than does hope. But they had to try.

  The Commander dutifully repeated the orders, that was his job.

  “Spook put stealth up first sign, Captain. Shields up, now, ma’am.” Of course, all these commands were read by Spook and handled before the Commander could even acknowledge them.

  Angela spoke up, assuming all command, “System check, now!”

  The system took keyboard commands, but often this was slower than audible. But she could not wait for translation software and someone’s missed key. “Yes, Commander,” Spook replied, calmly.

  As he had since his installation, he called all leaders on the bridge ‘Commander.’ All audibles were assigned Commander status, and voice recognition allowed only Commanders and Captain level to operate the system.

  Forty-one seconds later, the system spoke with its slightly male, synthesized voice from speakers embedded in the steel walls, “Systems check one hundred percent, Commander.” He… or it, was not able to read the insignias.

  “Okay, people, look sharp. Laser type beams capable of disintegrating a huge rock like that do not occur naturally. We have company, even if we cannot see them. Look alive, watch every monitor and check the system!”

  Plenty of, “Yes, Captain!” and “Yes, ma’am!” came back but she was in a different zone. A battle zone. The zone that made her an ace in a thousand simulations.

  “Weapons up but on full standby. I do not want to represent a threat. They might have taken that asteroid out for us, which means, maybe, friendly. What are your thoughts, Commander?”

  “Weapons up but standby,” he repeated, not rising to the bait. The weapons could go from full standby to hot in a microsecond. Standard standby states might take ten seconds. Far too long in an all out laser oriented battle.

  All weapons were electronic, meaning laser beam, photons, which were ultra-hot laser packets, and scrambler.

  This was more than sobering. It was damned frightening to everyone on the bridge. Top to bottom.

  Despite their best defenses, stealth and shields, against something that could destroy a mountain from whatever distance away, they were probably still sitting ducks… moving at just short of fifty thousand miles per hour…

  CHAPTER 12

  Angela stood the bridge through the change of Commanders, but frankly, no threat materialized. No ships or other indicators of another being appeared.

  The video for the viewer was analyzed, determining that the green flash had originated from their port side, nearly ten million miles closer to the black hole! A hell of a long way from them, and way too close to the black hole for safe sailing!

  This was intense math, conducted on the computer, measuring the vertical height of the bolt at the leading edge of the viewer, and the change of vertical height at the closing edge.

  The tiny amount could be extrapolated like a long, very long triangle, to a point approximately a yard across, back at the origin.

  Of course, they had no idea how big the diameter of the laser, but anything over a million miles away… wow!

  “How much farther until we turn out of this orbit, Commander?” Angela asked.

  “Twenty-one hours, ma’am!”

  “Okay, change of plans. We are going to veer out of orbit to starboard and make our correction a few million miles farther out. Starting now, Commander. Please plot the coordinates and the speed.”

  “Yes, Captain,” Commander Rogers replied. He sat down at a system keyboard and began operating it furiously, while two junior officers watched his every move.

  “How the hell does something operate ten million or more miles closer to the black hole?” Angela growled aloud. Whatever or whoever, the entity was in the strong grip of the descending whirlpool, a
nd probably did not have enough acceleration to break free.

  Yet, they had the power to remove a monster asteroid from that distance, making Resolute’s escape that much easier. How the hell did they even see Resolute and its offending rock? It made little sense.

  “We have it, Captain. We can accelerate up six thousand and the orbit will lift us outside the asteroid ring in three hours. Then we can simply add more and more starboard push until we clear the pull….umm… Captain!” Commander Rogers was pleased with himself, just as if he had made the calculations all by himself.

  “Is there anything in that path to disrupt our transit, Commander?”

  “Not that we can see at our current sophistication, Captain.”

  “Start the process, Commander. I am going to dinner and bed. Summon me if anything odd happens. That was more than odd, don’t you think?”

  “Yes, ma’am. Absolutely!”

  -----

  Angela left the bridge, returning salutes as needed and walked calmly down the steel staircase to her deck. She maintained that same calm all the way until she was inside her quarters. She suddenly realized she was still completely out of uniform. Well, that was probably a treat for the men in the command. She did not worry about someone keeping an eye on her, like she had before with the previous Captain. All of the motion detectors inside this cabin were off, removed as soon as she took over.

  She had put them in herself, so she had no problem taking them out. She was neither elderly nor feeble, and needed no watching. Now, however, she let out a long breath, trying to will her heart beat to lower. Something… alien… had possibly saved them all. But who… or what?

  Wow, first contact… it is… unbelievable!

  She calmed enough, eventually, to order a complete uniform, crisp and pressed, along with her boots, shined and proper, to be at her door in two hours. Now, it was time to slip under the straps and the magnetic lined covers, and was promptly asleep.

  -----

  “Captain to the bridge, NOW!” called the system, the emphasis on NOW at full volume, literally jerking her up from sound sleep! That was only supposed to happen in battle situations, but it certainly worked. Glancing at the lit LED clock as she unfastened the clasps to free herself, she saw that she had been down seven hours. Fine.

  As ordered, her duty uniform was ready and waiting outside her door. Pulling everything inside her room, she was into her duty uniform, kicking her feet into the shoes and running up the stairwell in under two minutes. Running will get you awake, or, failing that, your neck broken on the stairwell. She slammed into a bridge once more descended into bedlam.

  Voices were calling back and forth, orders issued among the noise, and everyone in there looked panicked.

  “Captain on deck!” cried the Lieutenant who spotted her, but before it could even register, she shut it down.

  “As you were. Report, Commander!” she called, hustling to her battle screen and desk.

  “Ma’am… uhh… Captain… we have three… or four unidentified objects, huge objects paralleling our course, twenty-six thousand miles behind us, one more, we think, below and slightly starboard. If our system is accurate, the ones we can see are nearly thirty miles long, and five or more miles thick. Image is nonexistent, Captain. Radar produces three large tube shapes. The fourth does not register… uhhh, Sir!”

  “Aliens?” and with that question, her own nervous system tried to go ballistic. Of course they were aliens! They had suspected it, why be panicked? She fought and gained control. Friends or foe? “Did you try hailing them, Commander?”

  “Yes, Captain. All frequencies, audio and video, from sub audible to microwave. No return, ma’am. They are simply… shadowing us!”

  “Remain calm. If they wanted to kill us, they would have done it. If they can remove an asteroid a hundred miles wide with a single shot, they do not need to test us. Calm down and maintain your posts!”

  More, “Yes, Captain!” and “Yes, Sir!” returns. But she tuned them out.

  “Are we at stealth?”

  “No, ma’am. We cannot maintain stealth for six hours. It has been seven, ma’am.”

  Damn, her first mistake. She knew that! She played her way out of it. “Good, then they obviously know we are here. Alien communication array extended?”

  “Yes, Captain, on first knowledge. Simple light display, zero through fifteen, binary, repeated now, let’s see, two hundred times, the array is now in gold, ma’am.”

  Some scientists had wondered if aliens would be able to see certain colors. So, they ran the gamut of the rainbow, flashing the lights in sequence. If there was a mathematical mind behind the alien’s presence, it should pick it up.

  But, more important, any species technologically advanced enough to use computers, would be fully aware of the binary numbering system.

  Zero to five looks like the following: 000, 001, 010, 011, 100, 101. Fifteen, eventually, is simply 1111. All computers use on off switches to read the numbers, and those numbers can get really, really unmanageable as the they get into the high levels. In these later centuries, full code might be well over 512 ones and zeroes. They were only using three. Of course, the speed of the computer system was in direct correlation with how fast those numbers could change, and how quickly the system could read and respond to them.

  The array was a mile long, the large LED based lights in groups of ten, each about four inches in a sphere, each group one hundred fifty-eight feet farther out. This allowed for up to 32 bits, each bit all ones, essentially equaling 65,536, one of the key numbers for all systems. So, starting with zero, no lights, for five seconds, it began to cycle with one set, then two, then three as needed to increase the count. It was hoped any technical species would understand it. Done several times, but still, no response.

  “Hail through all frequencies, Commander. Put up a picture of Earth, peaceful, please, in all respects. Number four in the series, I believe.”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  Nothing happened for a full minute. “Keep weapons on standby.” She had noticed the display, they did not stand down until the Captain told them to, and with aliens out and about, that was not going to happen.

  “Light, Captain! The rear viewer!”

  But it was chaotic light at best. In fact, it became quite apparent that their three shadowers were in a firefight with a fourth, unseen vessel! Huge bolts of laser light, some bright blue, some green, flashed back and forth, only showing because, already, there was a huge debris field.

  In space, without an atmosphere to break up and bounce light, there was no huge flash from this distance. In fact, for the tenth of a second for each bolt, they could well be watching a static picture.

  “To see them at this distance, Commander, means we are seriously outclassed. Get the Resolute up and away, all stealth, no more communication!”

  “Yes, Captain. Lights are being reeled in as we start. All stealth, but only sixty percent. System is not yet charged. Working on it. Thrusters on full, bearing twenty-two degrees off our original line, ma’am. Speed forty-eight point five thousand and climbing at two thousand miles per hour, ma’am!” Stealth had come even farther since their AL point. More electronics, more camouflage edges and such, but radar should not find them. Visually, well, it was still a tossup.

  “Lift us twenty thousand miles overhead, Commander, but do it gently. Let’s not display all our thrusters at once.”

  “Yes, Captain. Pilot, half thrusters.”

  He got his confirmation, then said, “We are moving upwards, relative, at one thousand miles per hour, increasing by one thousand miles per second for two minutes, Sir!”

  The Resolute slipped away, and the light show behind them faded out. There was no returned hail, no call for help out here in this Navy oriented playground. Somehow, in almost a mystery to them all, the rules had changed dramatically in a single twenty four hour period…

  CHAPTER 13

  For two weeks, nothing at all caused a problem. From
unbelievable heights of fear and excitement, the emotions slid down, down, until back at normal they were calm, thoughtful people.

  They had, of course, dropped stealth long before their six hour limit. They had not been charged enough to maintain. But, by then, they had increased speed to better than thirty-five thousand miles per second. If there was activity behind them, it was soon lost in the huge vacuum of space.

  People settled into their respective jobs and the military arm kept their weapons and observation systems polished. No telling what would happen, now that they had made first contact.

  Angela shivered every time she thought about it. First contact! Humans to… what, exactly? Something very, very powerful!

  Resolute was well beyond anything Earth had been able to sense, so far away, in fact, though black holes were all over the galaxy, and surely, though unproven, the universe, too, this one had gone unnoticed. Finally, they had found their way back, roughly in line with the bearing they had used for a tie back to Earth and continued on. The black hole slowly receded in the distance. It would do no good to send reports, now.

  Suspected for more than a few centuries, black holes were supposed to be so strong in gravity that they could even bend light. If true, subsequent reports homeward were probably futile.

  Angela studied the last message received by the Resolute, nearly one hundred years past. It was framed, hung on the wall, well, actually, glued and secured. It came from the moon station, rather than any place on Earth.

  It stated that the ozone layer was diminished to the point that the few remaining people moved underground, or, giving up, waited out their impending doom in their homes. And most of those were on the street. The Cyborgs lived very nicely in confiscated houses. One of the aspects of developing intelligence and emotions was greed.

  It further indicated that something drastic was planned, but it did not indicate what it was. It made no difference to Angela. She could not turn back.