Echo of Tomorrow: Book One (Drake chronicles)

by Rob Buckman

  Scott let Dr. Chase try to handle that, but it was hard for the biological parents to handle the rejection. A sullen, angry teenager wasn’t fun to be around and akin to juggling a live hand grenade with the pin pulled. You never knew when it might explode in your hand, which it frequently did, dissolving into a screaming, furniture breaking, plate throwing temper tantrum. In the end, one parent had had enough and promptly grabbed the child and gave her a sound, old fashion over the knee bare bottom spanking. After having to stand in the corner for an hour after that, the incensed child became tearfully apologetic. The word spread, and it wasn’t long before some other parents took the same steps. Scott smiled slightly hearing that, not that he approved of corporal punishment per say, but in this case the solution works, so he let the matter rest. He did make one rule, that this time there would be no orphans. From now on, all the children would be everyone’s responsibility and charged with taking care of them, not matter who their parents were, now and in the future when more, naturally born children arrived.

  After that, he took a step back, concentrated on coordinating and looking to see where they should be going, instead of the details of getting there. The first priority was personal weapons, and between the armorer and his team, with modern manufacturing equipment available, they managed to turn out a respectable rifle in less than a month. What they turned out was a deadly needle rifle that could spit out a hundred 1-mm rounds a second. Scott went down to the makeshift range to try out the first production model. In design and configuration, the rifle looked and felt similar to any rifle he’d even handled. He stripped and reassembled it several times to get the feel of the weapon, finding it simple to maintain, which was a very good thing on the battlefield. He practiced loading and unloading the magazine, cocking the weapon and bringing it to his shoulder, finding it pulled in snugly immediately with a good sight picture.

  "One mag contains twenty five thousand rounds of spin stabilized tungsten carbide needles, sir.” The Armorer informed him. "Inside the main housing are two rotating blocks that feed the needles into the firing chamber."

  "Why two.” Scott asked.

  "Well, sir, we tried one at first, but the gyroscopic spin made the weapon harder to turn fast in one direction."

  "Smart. Any heat build up?"

  "No, sir, none. The needle doesn’t touch the sides of the barrel, the magnetic field keeps it centered." Scott nodded.

  Using a flat section of the anti-gravity material, they'd rolled it into a cylinder and laser welded the edge together. By wrapping this with a super-conducting magnetic coil, it induced a momentary electrical current around the barrel; any material in the center of the gravity flux was driven down the tube. The exit speed dependent upon the amount of power induced in the coil from a power cell in the butt. This rifle was set so the needle exited the barrel at 4500 feet per second, giving it a range of a thousand yards.

  “What the penetration like?”

  “Excellent, sir. The needles are armor penetrators, and will punch through three quarter inch armor plate.”

  “Good. I’m not sure what sort of body armor these alien’s have, and I just hope it's not some sort of energy shield, or we are screwed.”

  “From the video we saw, it looks like ordinary body armor to me, sir.”

  “I hope you’re right.”

  There was no recoil, and except for a loud hiss, like the sound of tearing cloth, no sound. The three-position selector gave him the ability to use three round burst, full auto, and safe. On top of the receiver, the design team had added an electronic telescopic sight that worked at all light levels, including complete darkness. A crystal inside the sight would transmit the picture to a heads-up display in the battle helmet they were working on. Overall, it was a neat, clean weapon first generation weapon with no frills, considering the time they'd had to design and get it into production. The estimate for equipping the whole unit with the rifles, and a smaller side arm unit was six weeks. That was good news for Scott, as he knew most of his people felt somewhat naked without some sort of deadly weapon in their hands. Standing on the top of the firing point, he spent an hour firing the weapon in different stances and distances, from one hundred to six hundred yards, finding it light and easy to handle in any position. His hit ratio wasn't as good as he'd liked, and promised himself he'd come down here at least once a week to practice. One of his first priorities was to work with the design team of the space navy, and here the astronauts proved invaluable. His next stop of the Aeronautics hanger and a chat with Captain Price.

  "With the available level of technology we can build the ship any size we want,” Price informed him, “the question is, what size is that?” He asked.

  "Haven’t we got this backward?"

  "How’s that, General?"

  "First, I think we should decide what this ship is supposed to do."

  "All right, what is it supposed to do?"

  "That's the sixty four thousand dollar question, isn’t it.” He pursed his lips for a moment, wishing he had a few Admirals lying around to ask that question. “Without knowing what the aliens have in the way of warships, their weapons, armor, tactics and aggressiveness, it’s anyone guess what we’ll need.”

  “I see your point, Skipper. All we can do is fall back on what we know has worked before and start from there.”

  “Good point, but I don’t want to build a bloody great big battleship and find out the enemy is into fighter air… space craft and bombers.”

  “Yes, sir. We all know how that turned out.” He chuckled.

  “First, we want the ship to be strong enough to take on the alien starship, both long range and head on. But, at the moment, we have no way of knowing how they will fight, or with what. The armor on our ship had better be able to stand up to anything he throws at it."

  “Agreed, they do have armor plate, thank god, not that they use it for that.” Price added.

  "We have another pressing problem."

  "What's that? He asked.

  “First, we have to come up with something we can build quickly and put into action, say something like a destroyer. The only way we can find out what these people have, is to put a ship in harm’s way with the best weapons available, and see what happens.”

  “What if they have something we can’t handle, General.” One of the team asked, looking at Scott for an answer.

  “Then we get good men and women killed for no damn good except to tell us we’re screwed before we can even get started, don’t we.” It was cold logic, and Scott could see it didn’t sit well.

  “Not exactly a hopeful prospect, General.”

  “No, it isn’t. That’s why what you and your team are doing is so important.” Jack Price stood a little straighter and squared his shoulders. “Yours is a twofold project, one, get us something we can put up against them, and hopefully do some damage, and secondly, a plan to build a better starship to kick the crap out of them once we see what they have.”

  “We’ll do our best, General. These people do have intersystem space craft, freighter as large shuttle craft. They do a lot of asteroid mining and most of their manufacturing is done in space. That gives us a wide range of hull designs to work with. For the first ships we can use what available and reconfigure it to our needs. We won’t let you down.”

  “Didn’t think for a second you would, Jack.”

  "You said starship, General, that's implying these aliens come from a distant star. If they run, how do we follow?"

  "Good question, but it still doesn’t change a thing. We will still have to take them down here, either head on or at long range in this system or theirs."

  "So we leave the question of drive until later then?"

  "Right. Think of the old George Lucas Star War movies; remember the model ships he used. We could build something like that for real, if the defense and offensive weaponry can be worked out."

  "You're right, General. Our second objective is to build a battleship, able to take on the wo
rse that they can throw at her, so that means shielding of some sort, then guns, however we define them."

  "Now you've got it. I saw some kind of shield used at the building we woke up in. That might provide a base to start from. I’ll have to have a word with that mad Doctor about that. In the meantime, try anything, and everything you can think of or imagine, and see where it leads. In the mean time I’ll work on the shields, guns, and drive for you." He did, talking to the team working on the anti-gravity generators.

  It didn’t take them long to grasp the concept of antigravity and how the generators worked, taking short trips into space to view the different application now in use. Visiting the various orbital factories and manufacturing plants to ascertain their capabilities. Already they had seen five different ways to use the antigravity generators and its effect that none of the engineers of this time had thought of, even coming up with a shield that now protected the base. The people in this time did use something similar to protect people from dangerous equipment, or keep some areas off-limits, and for radiation and micro meteor shielding, but from what they’d seen on the video, these didn’t stop the aliens worth a damn. The shuttles punched through them as if they didn’t even exist. His techs found the problem lay in the amount of force applied to the screen, enough force and the generator burned out. They then found ways around that in short order. The problem was the size of the heat sink, give the generator a bigger sink, the more power you could put into the shield. Now, any ship trying to land found itself pushed side, and no matter how hard they tried, it was impossible for a ship to penetrate the shield. Super high-speed projectiles were a different matter. With the right angle, mass, and acceleration they could punch thought the shield, so they went back to the drawing boards and started again. It did however give Scott a lever with the President, and slowed the constant stream of question about getting results. Scott passed on the plans and specification for the new shield generator at their next Holo-conference. To say the President looked pleased would be an understatement, and Scott concluded he was under a lot of pressure from the council.

  "I will pass this on to our engineers. If it works as you say it will, then we may have a device that will stop them landing and taking our people. If that is the case, then, our, and your problem is solved." He looked pleased, smiling from ear to ear.

  "No, it's not, it’s only a start."

  "But you said this will stop them?" The President’s smile slipped a little.

  "That's right it will, for a while."

  "I don't follow you!"

  "Mr. President. These aliens, for whatever reason, are exploiting what they view as a resource. Don't you think they might have anticipated we would devise a way to stop them, and come prepared with bigger and better weapons?"

  "I don't know, you are the expert in these matters." The President’s smiled slipped away with his elation, receiving in return a sinking sensation in the pit of his stomach that he didn’t like.

  "I can tell you from experience, we have seen nothing of the potential force they could bring against this planet.” That made Westwood sit up and take notice, and obviously, something he hadn’t thought of. “All we have seen so far is them landing and carting off your people, by as yet some unknown weapon."

  "Why do you think they used a weapon, I have seen nothing to indicate anything."

  "Mr. President,” Mike stopped and rubbed his forehead, something he’d been doing a lot of lately. “I can't believe that all those people stood around and let these assholes walk away with their children without doing something to protect or defend them!”

  “But...” The President stammered.

  “It’s instinctive human nature to protect your children! Yet, they didn’t! All of them stood there and watched, doing nothing to prevent it, why?"

  "I’ve explained that, we are not a violent people, what could we do?" He answered, looking confused. Clearly, he wasn't getting it.

  "Mr. President?” Scott said in a tired voice.

  "What was your first reaction, and what did you do when you heard that your children had been taken?" The expression on the old man's face changed to one of sadness, and fear.

  "Nothing, I did nothing.” He whispered, his eyes drooping.

  "But what was your reaction when you heard?"

  "Anger, frustration, and the feeling that I was powerless to stop it."

  "Where were you when you heard the news." He hesitated for a moment, and had the situation been different, Scott swore that the old man would have cried.

  "I didn't hear it, I saw it. They came into my house and took the children. They stripped them naked in front of me and I did nothing to stop them." A single bright tear ran down his face.

  "Why not?” Scott asked, pushing as hard as he could, feeling for the man, and hating himself for doing it.

  "I couldn't!” Westwood yelled at last. "I just stood there, frozen, unable to move or do anything, and that... That monster laughed at me, he laughed!" He sobbed. Scott looked down at the floor and nodded, knowing exactly what the old man was feeling.

  “Clearly, they have some device, or way of pacifying everyone to prevent them from interfering with their collection troops. It’s the only reasonable explanation as to why you all stood around and did nothing to prevent the abduction.” From the expression on the President’s face, his explanation didn’t help mitigate the man’s feeling of shame of standing by and doing nothing.

  "Your history doesn’t record it, but a group of religious fanatics detonated a large explosive device near the place where my family and I lived.” Something like a sharp pointed object seemed to stab him in the heart.

  “At the time, my wife was at work, and my two sons at school, and the evening before I'd spoken to them on the...” He took a moment to compose himself before continuing, “when the weapon exploded, all three were killed, along with three million other people who lived in the area. When I heard the news I felt as helpless as you did that day, and do now."

  "Good god! What... What did you do?"

  "I avenged their death Mr. President, and the others who died that day and made the people who did it pay a high price."

  "What was the price?"

  "Their lives," he whispered, "and that's what you must do." He was glad that the President hadn’t asked him how many lives it had cost.

  "Can you do it?"

  "With your support."

  "What do you need that you don't already have?" The President asked. It wasn't a reproach, but a sincere question.

  “Mr. President, you have to understand a few things before you can really ask that question.”

  “How so?”

  “You have to think about how these alien’s view us, and what they will do if we interrupt their, what shall I call it? Their supply line.”

  “And your conclusion?”

  “If we can slow or stop these abductions, they will send a stronger collection unit. Bigger and better armed warships, more men, warriors and the like.”

  “So we need to build a lot of, um... War spaceships?”

  “True, as it stands. If we can defeat them, the next time they will do one of two things.” Scott took a deep breath, as he knew what he was about to say would make the President think twice about his commitment to this project.

  “And they are?”

  “They might send in a really massive fleet, the big guns you might say, and pacify us by brute force...” Scott paused and looked down at the floor a moment.

  “And the other option, General Drake.” By the tone of his voice, Scott felt the President all ready knew, or suspected the answer.

  “If we are too much of an annoyance, or a threat to them, they might just come in-system and obliterate every living thing on this planet.”

  “Allah have mercy! But why?” The color drained from President Westwood’s face.

  “Because, Mr. President, we would be a threat to them, and they know that in time we’d be strong enough to upset their nice lit
tle apple cart.” The President sat there looking at Scott, not blinking at the thoughts and scenarios cascaded through his mind. Permutation and possibilities. His eyes drifted away to a vista of a blackened Earth, devoid of life, or humanity.

  “Then we have only one choice, don’t we General Drake.” Scott held his breath. “We will have to defeat them by whatever means available.”

  “Yes, Mr. President.” Scott let his breath out in relief. “The World Council has not realized yet, but before this is over a major part of this planets resources will be dedicated to this project. At some point soon they are going to realize that, especially when we go into phase two."