by James Wilson
After Earth went into a deep freeze in the 2700s, weapon advancement came to a complete halt. Bigger weapons of mass destruction had little use when there was not enough food on the planet. All that began to change after First Contact and the formation of Earth Guard, a group of regions dedicated to protecting the Earth from outside threats. The scientists and engineers working on the weapons program first started to reacquaint themselves with the twentieth century’s nuclear technology. There were countless examples of fairly well-preserved bombs of many varieties to serve as a starting point. There was also enough documentation of the old systems to allow researchers to advance quickly. The old technologies of satellites, lasers, missiles, rockets, and both chemical and ion space propulsion engines were also brought into the modern era and expanded upon.
In the early 4220’s, after the IPDC had taken over Earth Guard, one of the research teams began the development of a new brand of stealthy satellites with great maneuverability and a variety of highly destructive payloads. These new satellites worked in a network, relaying commands to make it difficult for any alien observer to find their origin, and both Earth-based and satellite-based communications were developed to make it nearly impossible to be detected by any potential enemy.
Over the course of about 400 years, many colonies were established. Military bases on the Moon and Mars were established first. Colonies and bases in the asteroid belt required much more effort. Progress was slow when things went well and devastating when things went wrong. By the forty-seventh century, a few good facilities had been built. The largest was a weapons lab built inside a hollowed-out asteroid called Ambrosia. Later, a second large lab, Cleitus, was built, using several asteroids that were fused together with rock and ice.
It was in the asteroid belt where work on the most destructive weapons was carried out. It was discovered that neutrons could be fused together to make a material nearly as dense as a neutron star. This new material was called neutronium. Neutronium converted its mass to energy more efficiently than plutonium. Because of its high density, this work was best done in space, as it could not easily be contained in Earth’s gravity. It would fall through the container, bore through the floor, and head for Earth’s core. The micro-gravity of space proved to be a good environment for heavy weapons development. It was later found that working in the center of an asteroid was even better. Neutronium could be slowly produced and accumulated in micro-gravity into weapons grade with a destructive power never before seen. The problem was so much energy was required to make the smallest amount that it was not feasible to build anything in the depths of the asteroid belt, due to the lack of any large energy source.
In the last decade of the forty-seventh century, the IPDC started the Mercury program to produce neutronium on a much larger scale. A condensing station was built and put into orbit around Mercury. Even the highly concentrated solar radiation available near Mercury was only powerful enough to allow for slow production of weapons-grade material. As small amounts of material were produced around Mercury, it was slowly accelerated and sent on its way to the asteroid belt. Every stage of development was challenging and took many years to work out optimal production methods; even then it would still take no less than twenty years to make a single bomb. It was late in the forty-eighth century before we had enough material for the first test bomb.
After the discovery of the vessel, production of another condensing station and another hollowed-out asteroid weapons lab were both started. The intention was to first double production of neutronium and, with improved production and transportation methods, quadruple production of neutron bombs.
While the new neutron facilities were being built, research was started on an even higher density material with the potential of a thousand--times greater-yielding bomb. These were called black hole bombs. With the slow pace of development, nothing was expected before the 4850s, at best.
CHAPTER 33
ANXIETY
The discovery of an alien vessel heading toward Earth instilled a certain amount of fear in the population. Thus far, the vessel had continued its silent approach without any changes. It was estimated that at its current pace, it would arrive a few months into the year 4821. As it got closer, fear levels only continued to rise. Everyone’s lives were impacted in some way by the approaching vessel. The people responded by building more and bigger fortifications deeper underground and sending more colonies out into space.
A couple times a year, the IPDC would announce the formation of the next colony group. Each one had an overall destination and mission. The IPDC would take applications from those who were interested in being part of the crew. Those who could make the greatest contributions in manpower, resources, or funding were the first ones selected to go. Colonies were sent to a variety of places. Lunar and Martian colonies were required to be underground and to maintain a low-visibility profile. There were several sent out to the asteroid belt, as there was already a lot of development in that region. There were only a few that were transported into deeper space as the long-term survival prospects were not nearly as great.
Unlike the attempt to colonize space, Earth underground fortifications were easy and were occurring at several levels—individual, local, and on a regional scale as well. That, combined with the rapidly growing population, generated a demand for tunneling and digging equipment not seen on the planet for thousands of years. While the approaching vessel caused a lot of fear, it was beneficial for almost all sectors of the economy.
The IPDC’s response to the discovery of the vessel so far had been to make the population invisible, develop as much strike capability as possible, and learn as much as possible about the vessel. Six months before the expected arrival of the vessel, representatives of all the regions and military leaders met to decide what, if anything, should be done next.
Three basic options were debated for the next course of action. The first was to continue along the current path of defense. The second option was to try to make contact with the vessel. The third option was to attack the vessel. While attacking the vessel had some very strong and vocal supporters, a consensus was soon reached that this was not going to happen, at least not yet. There were too many unknowns, and even if an attack was successful, there was still the second ship, ten years behind, to consider. An attack on the first vessel could signal an alert to the second vessel and any other possible vessels to follow. Making contact was ruled out next. Giving up our position and alerting the aliens to our presence didn’t seem to be worth the risk. It was still possible that they did not know of our existence. The only other reasonable option was to continue doing what we had been doing.
CHAPTER 34
WAKING UP ON THE VESSEL
At about the same time that the IPDC was adding the second vessel to their observation routine, the first half of the twenty-seventh expedition from a tenth-generation Harvester was ending the deceleration phase of its 2,992-year journey. The vessel left in the year 1830 from a star the aliens call Drakariea, about 2,000 light years away. For the first 100 years, the ship was in a state of high acceleration and its entire crew of 510 had to remain in cryostasis. All ship operations were maintained by the ship’s autonomous systems during both the acceleration and deceleration phases.
Once they reached a cruising velocity of a little over seventy-five percent the speed of light, sometime in the 1930s, the first crew of ten would wake up and begin their duties of maintaining the ship. They would always maintain a crew of ten individuals during the 2,787-year cruising phase of their journey. Five couples would be awakened from stasis and would run the ship for ten years. After their ten years were up, they would return to stasis, and another crew would wake up and take their place. Over their ten years of ship duty, each couple would have the option of producing a few offspring if they liked. They would also have various ship or personnel duties which they were well trained to perform. They also had the option to take more classes if they wanted to continue their education or
learn a new trade. Their offspring would remain awake until they reached the age of about twenty years and were only allowed to go into stasis after completing all of their education. They would not be awakened until it was time for them to perform whatever job they had trained for or they were needed for some other reason.
After traveling for 2,887 years and producing 2,807 newly-educated and highly-trained crew members, the final crew of ten would put themselves into stasis for the deceleration phase, which would take just under a hundred years and put them just inside our solar system. Their sister ship, with a slightly smaller crew, followed about ten years behind.
Finally, in 4817, with only five years left of its journey and after being silent for a century, the last crew, also known as the home crew, would be awakened. This crew included the captain of the ship. Each of the five couples were awakened over the course of about ten days, giving them a few days to recover from stasis and a little time to run through a short checklist of the systems that they were responsible for. They would also gather data for their reports due at their first meeting with the captain.
CHAPTER 35
MEETING OF THE CHIEFS
The ship’s crew module had five levels arranged around a cylindrical access hall. Each level had 1,000 cryostasis chambers, each of which could hold a member of the crew. Each couple was assigned to two adjoining bunks, and the entire crew of 500 was spread out across the 5,000 chambers. Admiral Nikodima and his wife, a pediatric physician, occupied chambers A001 and A002. The couple next in line had A020 and A021. In this way, ten couples were spread out over 100 chambers and comprised a group that would share a ten-year shift of being awake to run the ship in its nearly 3,000-year cruising phase. While in transit, the crew used their chamber numbers as their ship I.D.
Captain Agafya and his mate Oxana, a teacher, were in A100 and A101. They were the last of the five couples to be awakened, about ten days after the deceleration phase had ended. The first day was usually spent hardly moving and it would take about three or four days in all to recover. Once they started feeling close to normal, the captain gathered the crew together for a meeting of the chiefs to get a full status report.
The bridge encompassed the first full level of the ship. The conference room was in the center of the second level along with all the offices and labs just below the bridge. Captain Agafya was eager to know how they had come through the deceleration phase and if they were on schedule with their rendezvous with Sol. Despite the data being available on the network, Agafya liked to hear the verbal reports from each of the chiefs, so he didn’t bother to look online to find out the status.
Starting with Lieutenant Vensecosk and proceeding in order as they sat around the table, each gave a status report. The life science chief reported, “All thirty-three hundred and seven crew members survived the journey. The crew module did, however, sustain some minor damage, causing a few system failures, probably a result of impacts to the ship over the hundred-year deceleration period. I have requested two construction workers to begin repairs. They were just coming out of stasis before this meeting.”
Chief of Construction and Second Lieutenant reported next. “About half of the construction machines have been tested so far, and everything is fully functioning. I’ll need another three-to-five days of testing to assess the rest of the machinery and systems. As soon as that is complete, I will begin what fabrication I can using the smaller replicators.”
Replication Specialist, Lieutenant Fruzan, reported that the first replicator tested so far had completed its checkout. The second had major problems and would take several days to repair. The replicators would not be fully tested until the ship reached its final position at the North Pole of the Sun.
CHAPTER 36
CONSTRUCTION BEGINS
After arriving in position above Sol, the crew aboard the vessel took a little time off before starting their mission. A few more key members of the crew were brought out of stasis; they were needed to build the first two new structures. They were mostly engineers, assemblers, and machine operators. Living space on the ship was limited. There was room for the standard transport crew of ten and extra room for only about ten more couples, utilizing the conference rooms and library as temporary crew quarters. With such a limited work force available at the start, construction would proceed at a slow pace.
Before any serious construction could begin, several things had to happen first. The top priority was to get the large replicators up and running, a task that would take more than six months to complete. The replicators would be removed from the rear section of the ship and installed on the outside of the ship, where they would take in direct solar radiation. The large space that would be cleared out with their removal would be used for the fabrication of large structural parts that had to be built and processed. Eventually, this section would be detached from the rest of the ship to allow for the construction of extremely large pieces, some in excess of ten miles long.
Once the large replicators were able to produce the materials needed, several large structures would begin to take shape. The first and highest priority building was the Habitat, which was needed before significant numbers of workers could be woken. It would be several years before any new rooms would be available; thus, much of the crew would remain asleep for a while longer. The North solar collector would start only after the skeleton of the Habitat was complete; it would proceed at an ever-slower pace. The Habitat would begin housing crew members sometime around 4827 and be complete around 4840. The collector would be complete about fifty years later.
CHAPTER 37
CURIOSITY
As the final details of the first section of the Habitat were being completed, groups of three or four couples were awakened every few days. This process continued until 300 crew members were awakened to fill the newly available housing. The pace of construction was about to accelerate.
One of the newly-awakened crewmembers was Tevek, a forty-two-year-old solar engineer. He had received his education back at the Tenth Generation Star, where he also served twenty years before he and his spouse enlisted to go with the twenty-seventh expedition to a new star. The main reason Tevek wanted to go to on the expedition to a new star system was so he could explore possible new planets. All the planets at the Tenth Generation Star from which he came had been thoroughly explored for several centuries.
Before leaving for Sol, Tevek had made arrangements with his friend Admiral Nikodima that would ensure his own replicator and lab space at the new station. He would also be allowed to launch probes and possibly even go on planetary exploration missions.
Tevek’s years of experience and exemplary service record allowed him to opt out of serving ten years while on the journey to Sol; thus, he and his spouse had stayed in stasis for the entire trip. His son, Keiske and Keiske’s wife, Sorba, would be going to Sol also, but they would have to serve their ten-year shift while traveling. As soon as Tevek could walk after waking from nearly 3,000 years in stasis, one of the first things he did was to check the crew roster to see if he was a grandfather. He was very happy to learn that he had two grandchildren on board the ship.
After a few days off to relax, Tevek was ready to get to work. He wanted to study the star for which they were about to build a new Harvester. A wealth of data was available, the ship had methodically collected photos of the star through the entire journey in just about every wavelength from gamma rays to radio waves. He also discovered six planets in orbit of Sol.
After a few months of studying all that was available for the planets, he decided to build and launch five rockets, each carrying a satellite that would orbit the planets. He would not send a satellite to P1 (Mercury) as it was very close, and a lot could be learned simply by making observations directly from their location near the Sun. From those observations, it was obvious that there was not a lot to see on Mercury.
He would not have to design any equipment; instead he would rely on already existing tried and true designs
from the past. He would, however, have to assemble and program everything. While his assembly skills were second to none, he would require a lot of help on the flight plans and programming. He encouraged his son to acquire these skills during the flight to Sol, which Keiske was happy to do as he wanted to take part in planetary exploration when they arrived. Tevek’s assembly process started in 4830 and would take several years to get all five rockets and satellites built and launched.
The first satellite would go to Mars, as he had highest expectations of finding something noteworthy there. Shortly after sending the first satellite to Mars, the next two would follow, first to Earth and then to Venus. Mercury was simply too close to the Sun for anything interesting. From his early observations, Venus appeared to be too hot, and Earth looked to be too cold, but they each still warranted a closer look.
CHAPTER 38
RETOOL
Before the flyby of 4821, the vessel was no longer in range of our outer solar system observation stations. The IPDC still had three reconnaissance satellites on reserve. It was decided that one additional satellite would be sent to orbit Mercury to watch the vessel and that the other two new satellites would remain on hold, pending what moves, or lack thereof, the vessel made. The new Mercury platform would not be operational till sometime in early 4823. We would be relying on what was already in place at Mercury and the two small observers we had tailing the vessel at a presumed safe distance of about a million miles.
Shortly after the vessel parked at the Sun in 4822, the remaining two observational satellites were sent to orbit the Sun, where they would watch the vessel. The smaller of the two satellites was to orbit just inside Mercury’s orbit and the other would be just outside Mercury’s orbit. They would also be positioned on opposite sides of the Sun to provide two completely different views of the vessel. Each would monitor any signals or movements made by the vessel. Data collected would be sent first to a relay satellite near Venus, then to Mars before being sent back to the IPDC on Earth, a precaution to minimize signals being traced back to Earth.