Chief Burns looked over to his right, trying to see if there was another section he could send an officer so he could get a better location. He was blind as far as using the standard camera systems were. The Central Net was down; he had no access to any surveillance equipment that would be normally available to him.
Suddenly an explosion on the wall of the building near them sent forth debris into the police defensive line, causing many of them to duck out of the way to avoid getting hit. Gunfire erupted through the smoke from the inside of the building. All of the police officers opened fire, shooting blindly through the smoke. They aimed for the flashes that appeared every now and then.
Thirty seconds into the fight the first person stepped through the smoke. It was something that stunned Chief Burns and caused him to stopped firing. It was also the last thing the Chief saw before the figure used his firearm to rip him to shreds. The figure wore the traditional white Powered Exoskeleton Armor of the Commonwealth Marines with a standard issue gauss rifle. The last thought Chief Burns had as he fell backwards from the force of the rounds punching through him was how betrayed they were, and how his brothers were going to soon join him.
***
Not many other officers took notice of Chief Burns falling, ripped apart at the waist as the gunfire tore him in two. They instead were more concentrated on the Marines pouring forth from the wreckage of the exploded wall across the street. The Marines walked forth in their armor as the kinetic rounds from the police officer’s pistols and rifles failed to penetrate the exoskeleton’s armor.
Some of the Police were firing thermite rounds from their pistols. The rounds went through a highly exothermic oxidation reduction reaction that caused the iron oxide and aluminum base of the round to reach temperatures of nearly three thousand degrees Kelvin. The reaction continued as the molten bullets impacted on the white armor, melting it through and releasing part of its kinetic energy and heat inside of the armor. A few rounds were enough to knock the people inside the suits out of commission.
Yet after eight minutes of fighting there was nothing left of the police at their defensive line. The firefight caused the surrounding blocks to become highly damaged by the assault that took place. The temporary headquarters of the police force of Jupiter Ring Three was destroyed. Even with the Central Net down, the cameras viewing the event as it took place were still independently recording and storing it. When their link to the Central Net was reestablished the cameras would place their recorded images among the cloud based storage systems. There it would be subject to review from the various RIs and possibly flagged for human based reviewing. It would only be then that someone finally saw the Massacre of the Jupiter Ring Three Police Force.
Chapter 13
The Stalks allowed humanity relatively easy access to space. However, shipping high density items like steel was still economically unfeasible. Instead, entrepreneurs looked towards the Asteroid Belt for the metal supplies the industrialists desperately wanted and needed to expand their assets in the area around Earth’s gravity well. The development of colonies inside the hollowed out asteroids gave the miners a place to live and grow. However, most asteroids were kilometers apart. Ion thrusters placed onto the hollowed asteroids maneuvered them together. Eventually, after a few centuries, over five dozen large asteroids have been stitched together with transport tubes and the Stationary Strut System (SSS). The SSS was a rigid structure that held the asteroids close to each other. Mobile mining platforms traveled to mapped asteroids that were iron based chondrites. The pure metal was smelted down into ingots and shipped to the Earth system through manned freighters in the past while now drone freighters are used. Although the colonies developed their own hydroponics farming facilities, they were at first dependent on Earth for food, electronic, medical, and water shipments and the Moon for fuel shipments. Now the colonies get their water shipped from Mars, their fuel from Jupiter, and most medical supplies and high tech electronic equipment shipped from Earth. The colonies manufacture enough food to feed their current population plus overproduce enough to feed another five percent increase annually. The colonies produce basic electronics but the newest technology is stilled developed primarily on Earth. The Asteroid Belt now houses approximately eleven million in population and became the third body based in space to be represented in the Commonwealth Senate, where the Moon was the first, the Earth Ring became the second, and the colonies on Mars became the fourth. The Asteroid Belt differs from the rest of represented colonies in space as their Senator is democratically elected for a term of six years with a maximum of three terms.
-The History of the Earth Commonwealth
“Captain, how much longer until we are finished loading?” Admiral Jevins asked. He had just finished running some simulations using the crystalline computers and noticed that the timer in his Exovision, showing supposedly when the loading would be finished, was fluctuating severely. Obviously, something was either wrong with the loading or the computer was in error.
“I will find out Admiral,” Captain Eru said.
“Please do, please do,” Admiral Jevins said. He was getting old, but he always kept up to date with the current technology. Always believing that willingness to accept change and be at the forefront of it was key to survival Admiral Jevins had previously read up on most of the technology present on the ships. He remembered reading that the new crystalline based computers built into the structure of the destroyers were still faulty in some aspects. Their atomic structure themselves allowed them to have the same computing power as a quantum computer but not with the same storage abilities. They were also much, much cheaper to produce.
“Admiral, loading will be finished in another hour,” Captain Eru said after a minute.
“I am not pleased with extra hour. What is the issue?”
“It was the loading of the torpedoes. The other destroyer is having the same issue with the preloading sequence.”
“Admiral,” the female communications officer spoke up. “Incoming transmission from Admiral Umut.”
“Put the Admiral through to my Exovision,” Admiral Jevins said. Inside of his Exovision Admiral Umut’s avatar appeared. All incoming calls from outside the destroyer to any service members inside the destroyer were routed through the communications officer here on the bridge. That also included his calls, personal or otherwise. This prevented the service member from losing their vision to a large number of window calls opening up inside of their Exovision. Bringing up the call to his Exovision also allowed Jevins to take the call privately.
“Admiral Jevins,” Admiral Umut said as soon as he saw Admiral Jevins’ avatar in his own Exovision. Admiral Umut was on Earth’s Ring, so the lag time inside of their call was minimal.
“Admiral Umut, to what do I owe the pleasure?”
“Spare me. I got an update from Jupiter.”
“Oh?”
“About forty minutes ago we received an update that Jupiter’s Central Net went down.”
“How did you receive an update with their Central Net down?”
“Please, Admiral,” Admiral Umut said. “Let me keep at least some secrets.”
“Any other word?”
“There have been a series of explosions coming from inside of the Rings, mostly localized in the main inner residential wing.”
“It has begun again?”
“That is the summary we have reached here.”
“Thank you Admiral,” Admiral Jevins said. “I fear I must be on my way.”
“Good luck Admiral,” Admiral Umut said as he disappeared from Admiral Jevins’ Exovision.
Admiral Jevins looked over to his left where the Captain was busily typing into his console. “Captain Eru.”
The Captain stopped what he was typing and looked over towards Admiral Jevins. “Yes Admiral?”
“Change of plans. We depart immediately. End all loading sequences and get everyone strapped in and ready to go.”
“Yes Admiral,” the Captain sai
d as he typed in a series of commands and as he shouted orders to his bridge officers.
“Time until undocking?”
“Ten minutes, sir.”
“Make it five, Captain.”
“Yes, sir.”
Admiral Jevins brought up a two dimensional map of the Earth system. He looked at the navigational portion of the map, linked in with the docking quantum computers of the Ring, and watched the patterns of the ships entering and exiting the space near the Ring. It had a beauty to it. He zoomed in onto the restricted space section of the Ring where the destroyers were located. They wouldn’t be the biggest ships in the system, but they certainly would be the strongest by far. The Ring itself would only have its THEL system to protect itself from similar ships of this class. But the destroyers were still the only ones of its kind. Nobody else had anything close to a design such as this. There was just no reason for it to be developed in the past. Fortified pirate bases decimating fighters and the shipping lanes had changed that.
“Admiral, we are go for launch.”
“Good, good. Captain, initiate the undocking sequence.”
Outside, the two destroyers was still surrounded by its manufacturing shell. Slowly, the shell peeled apart to show the destroyer to the world. Docking clamps released off of the destroyer as umbilical tubes were withdrawn. Small ion thrusters on the front of the ship engaged and pushed the ship away from the dock. The cylinder shaped ship continued to move away from the dock and then started to push its nose up relative to its passengers inside.
The main ion engines engaged slightly, powered by the fusion generators inside the aft section of the ship. The destroyer and its sister ship moved away from the Ring and towards a more open area of space. “Ok Captain, let’s make history,” Admiral Jevins said. “Engage the wormhole drive. Let’s see Jupiter.”
“Yes sir,” Captain Eru said as the main ion engines shut off while the front ion thrusters engaged to slow the ship to a stop. “Officer Drio, engage the antimatter generator.”
“Yes sir. Antimatter generator on line and producing.”
“Shunt all available power to the capacitors.”
“Yes sir, weapons systems down.”
“Time until capacitors fully charged?”
“Two minutes sir. Capacitors were partially charged already as per orders at dock.”
“How long until the capacitors can be recharged for another jump after this one?”
“Approximately fifteen to sixteen minutes, sir.”
“Begin the partial charging with energy that is left over from the other systems. Disengage the antimatter generator when charging is complete. Issue the fusion generator to trickle charge the capacitors until wormhole transition is complete.”
“Weapons systems will still be down thirty percent total energy capacity during the trickle charge, sir.”
“We will have to make do. Conserve antimatter fuel supplies. We will be getting none from the Jupiter system.”
“Yes sir.”
“Captain,” Admiral Jevins said. “Coordinate the jump with the other destroyer so the timings are synchronized. Power up weapons systems as soon as possible when wormhole transition is completed. Do a partial charge on the capacitors only until after the systems are up. Employ the back-up fusion generators to make up for the loss.”
“Yes sir. Officer Huy, relay the Admiral’s orders to Captain Koil.”
“Yes sir.”
“Officer Drio, how much longer?”
“Forty seconds until antimatter generator is brought offline.”
“Officer Brut, set a timer for wormhole generation for one minute.”
“Yes sir.”
The countdown appeared on the forward viewing screen. The actual bridge itself was inside the middle of the ship. The front and side parts of the ship held the weapon systems. The middle of the ship held the bridge, crystalline computers, life support, and other critical system hardware. The aft part of the ship held the power generators and the wormhole generator.
Admiral Jevins watched as the countdown approached to the ten second mark, the officer in charge of the wormhole drive shouting out at every ten second mark. Officer Brut began counting down from ten seconds. Admiral Jevins brought up the minimap of the Earth System again and accessed the sensors outside of the ship. He brought up a dual screen. One screen showed the visual picture outside. The other screen showed the spacetime fabric and its various properties.
As the countdown reached zero, Captain Eru said, “Officer Brut, engage the wormhole drive.”
“Engaging wormhole drive,” Officer Brut said.
Admiral Jevins watched as one of his screens as the spacetime fabric warped and seemed to curl in towards a single point in front of the destroyer, the effects of the gravity generator as it cycled up and turned on. Deep down, beneath the sight of humans, wormholes popped in and out of existence in the quantum foam around the curved ball of space. Ghost particles followed the wormholes, obscuring the instruments by blocking their measurements of the area. Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle took hold even on the wormholes. No one truly knew where the wormhole was until it was measured, as per the law discovered by a physicist named Heisenberg long ago. As a wormhole formed and was spotted and measured, struts of negative mass cosmic strings were shifted into its mouth. The machine confirmed that the Planck scale sized wormhole was stabilized.
The hard part was done, but the wormhole was still many times smaller than it needed to be. The gravity generator turned off gradually, flattening out the spacetime fabric and reducing the stress on the wormhole. Energy was poured into the cosmic strings, feeding them and growing them bigger. The latticework of the negative mass objects prevented the wormhole from collapsing in as it expanded outwards. Soon the wormhole was larger than the destroyer. The wormhole took on the appearance of looking like a fish bowl in the visual spectrum as light was bent from the gravitational disturbance caused by the wormhole itself. The cosmic string struts inside of the wormhole tweaked and lengthened, fine tuning the location of the other mouth of the wormhole. However, something unexpected formed in the center of the wormhole in his visual spectrum screen that left Admiral Jevins confused.
“Officer Brut, what is that black hole in the center of the wormhole?” Admiral Jevins asked.
Officer Brut looked up from his screen that showed a multi-scale view of the topographic properties of spacetime surrounding the wormhole. “Sir, that is just an effect of gravitational lensing. The gravitational effect of the wormhole is bending the light as it is going through it. It is not a black hole; it is still normal spacetime that just has been curved very much. The hole should disappear soon after the wormhole is fully stabilized for transversal.”
“Why is it taking so long?” Admiral Jevins asked, noting that the clock said this experience has been taking place for over a minute so far. “I was told this would form almost instantly from our point of view.”
“Sir, our computer and generators are still calibrating. After this time they will have all the information they need to make the next time seem instantaneous.”
“Thank you Officer Brut.”
On Jevins’ visual spectrum screen, the wormhole’s black center disappeared and the fish bowl look of the wormhole started to flatten out. The edges still maintained a curvy look to it as light still bent around it, but the majority of the center appeared flat. The visual view through the wormhole showed the image of Jupiter in all of its glory. The wormhole end was being fine-tuned and was moving closer to Jupiter. Stopping right in front of one of the colony Rings there, the wormhole mouth on that side began orbiting the Sun at the same speed as Jupiter.
“Wormhole stabilized. Ready for transversal Captain,” Officer Brut said.
Captain Eru looked over to his right at Admiral Jevins, who gave him a nod. “Officer Huy, does Captain Koil report readiness on his end?”
“Contacting,” Officer Huy said. A few seconds later he added, “Yes sir, Captain Koil i
s ready for transversal.”
“Officer Brut, how long until we are in Jupiter?” Captain Eru asked.
“Approximately one minute of transversal to the other side,” Officer Brut said.
“Engage main thrusters. Maximum burn. I want to be moving fast enough that we won’t fall into Jupiter’s gravity well.”
“Yes sir. Engaging main thrusters.”
The gravity generator of the ship engaged to reduce the inertial effects of the acceleration caused by the main ion thrusters that jutted out the back side of the destroyer. Outside the crew’s and ship’s frame of reference, the ship accelerated at twelve times of normal Earth gravity. Earth’s escape velocity was massively smaller than Jupiter’s escape velocity. The ship had to build up that difference in speed or else they would fall into the seemingly endless clouds that roiled in Jupiter’s atmosphere. In a full solid minute, both ships emerged out of their respective wormholes and ended up orbiting Jupiter right near Jupiter Ring Three. Jupiter Ring Three was the newest source of disturbance that Admiral Umut had contacted Admiral Jevins about. It was also the same disturbance that caused Admiral Jevins to engage his transversal plan before their weapons payload was fully loaded in.
“Admiral, welcome to Jupiter,” Captain Eru said.
“Welcome, welcome,” Admiral Jevins said. But he knew that the transversal was the easiest part of this mission. The metal walls of the Ring prevented them from seeing the turmoil that was raging inside. The hardest part was about to come. If they failed, they would lose something that could take centuries to heal. Admiral Jevins’ hand was now played; his surprise would keep the Rebels guessing how he showed up and keep them trapped. It was now time to see what the Rebels had to bring to play against him. The party was about to start.
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