by Don Koch
"Anyone else have any thing else to add to this suggestion" asked Hank. Josh rose and said, "I concur, Fador and Ter-Amin have posed an excellent argument for this course of action. It just makes good sense." He sat down.
Hank said, "I agree, let's do it. Now we have to get the personnel to operate our weapon systems should we need them."
"At some point, we will need to go public. We will need to recruit. Initially, I do not want a preponderance of greenhorns here just for the sake of filling slots but I am not going to rule out their inclusion. There are also many good people in third world countries that just do not have the education to be effective but we have the ability to provide them the necessary education and skills in a fairly short time. It is going to occur to the politicians down there that we are only selecting the cream of the crop. That is not going to sit well. Also we may be barred from the recruiting we need to do. However or whatever they feel, we are still going to recruit. I expect that I will be visiting heads of state and getting in the door may be a challenge. I think in some cases we may go for something spectacular. At the moment I am leaning toward a worldwide broadcast to let the people of Earth know what is coming, that we have the means to stop it but it will require their help. Otherwise we pack up our bags and move to the next system willing to help. I do not expect we would do that even if there is resistance but they do not know that. In any event, I am reluctant to play that card so it will stay on the back burner."
"We will need a good screening process. Sam and I will be working with Barana to assure we have something that is useful and effective. We do not want radicals or extremists on Station unless they are in stasis and are being shipped somewhere. Fador has agreed to furnish me with the list of candidates that have already been vetted so we can start with those as a core group to the extent they are willing to sign on. We are going to go for people that have been through a rigorous training regimen. That will provide some preference to those with Marine Corps, Navy Seal, or Special forces type training. We will initially recruit persons from the elite services regardless of nationality. We will have to be pretty careful to avoid unwittingly weakening a country to the point of leaving them vulnerable to their neighbors."
"I have given this quite a bit of thought and it occurs to me that many that fit this description are no longer in active service. Some have retired. Some have done an enlistment or time in service and moved on. Some may have been disabled and discarded. Some are war vets who were not able to regain full use of their physical abilities. As you know, the medical capabilities of this and other stations is so far beyond what Earth's best is capable of providing as to appear to be magical. We can identify such persons and offer them opportunities that they would have thought closed to them. If they meet our screening standards the offers will be hard to refuse. Do not mis-understand, I will not be in the business of breaking up families. If the offer is not attractive to the whole family, it will be taken off the table. The offer includes living on the station for the duration as a family unit. The offer goes to male and female. A great deal of the screening for this will be in Barana's able hands, figuratively speaking. Think on this because I do not wish to overly disrupt the world."
"I do want to have one Type 1 station and four type 2 stations ready for duty in one year with 10% of their warships manned and ready for use. I want to have another two Type 1 stations and eight Type 2 stations ready for duty in two years also with 10% of their warships manned and ready for use. We will build from there. I want to be fully ready to send out half of the fleet to confront the main force in 10 years."
"George, I have not left you out of the picture," he continued. "I need some guidance on who to approach and how. In some cases I will need someone to open the door for Sam and I. If you wish to move on station, I will assist you to assure that your employees are not left out in the cold. There should be more than enough jobs to assure they all are taken care of. I know that is your interest. If you wish to stay where you are in the short or long term, you will have security better than that of the president and no one will know it unless they try to penetrate it. We can talk about how you might like to proceed over dinner later this week."
"I think that is about as far as we need to go today. I would like you all to think over the issues we discussed today and start working on the plans each item requires. You are my principle advisors so if you think there is something I should know, tell me. You are all familiar with team environments so lets use those principles."
"Josh, Rose, Bill, Joann, George and Miriam, would you join Sam and I for a few minutes, we want to show you something." He then thought to Barana,
The group of them arrived at the place Barana had suggested about 50' from the table with a USMC issue 1911 Colt 45 caliber handgun on the table and 7 stopwatches next to the hand gun. "I said up in the meeting that I wanted to show you something. Actually what I had in mind was more of a demonstration. There is a table exactly 1/2 mile down this road. On that table is a hand calculator whose purpose I will explain during the course of the demonstration. First I want you to each pickup and test a stopwatch. I will give a signal for you to start them and I will give you a signal to stop them. If you wish, you can use the stopwatch function on your smart phone, that is OK. Ready, Set, Go." After a pause he said, "Stop, 15.5 seconds." They all checked their stopwatches and were amazed to see that it matched his announced time lapse precisely.
"What will happen next is not intended to show off and there is a point that I will explain at the end of the demonstration. When Josh gives me a start, you will each start your stopwatches, I will run to the other table and retrieve the calculator and return to this table with it. When you hear the calculator placed on the table, stop your watches and I will announce an elapsed time. Please stay back about 10' from the table. Barana will not be providing any assistance during the demonstration. Ready when you are Josh."
"OK," said Josh, "Ready , Set, GO."
Hank took off in a blur. They realized he was moving so fast that it was difficult to follow with their eyes and understood why he wanted them to use the sound of the calculator hitting the table as their trigger to stop the watches. In a short time the calculator clicked on the table and Hank said, "25.75 seconds." The watches generally matched that time and those that did not were due to a reaction failure. They could just not believe that anyone could move that fast. "OK, who is good with the calculator? How fast was my average time over that 1 mile course?"
Bill took the calculator and did the calculation, "Good Lord, 140 miles per hour. That is not possible."
Hank went on, "the next part was difficult for me to accept but seeing is believing. Bill would you please check the weapon, the loads, announce the number of rounds loaded, then prime the weapon and insert it in the firing stand. It is a 1911 Colt 45, standard Marine Corps issue." "Roger that," said Bill, "It has 8 rounds, one in the chamber and seven in the clip. The weapon is hot, I repeat HOT." "Thanks Bill," said Hank as he walked to the target and stood in front of it, "Now please do not panic at what you see next, I have no death wish. Please, everyone in back of the firing line. Target stand, eight rounds only, commence firing." he said. Sam watched in horror and Hank thought to her,
As the rounds stopped 12 inches in front of him, he quickly plucked them out of the air before they could start to fall. He then
walked over to the table and placed all eight bullets on it. Sam, walked over to him and punched him on the arm. "Ow, what was that for."
Sam responded, "You do that again and I'll shoot you myself. You scared me half to death." The others all laughed.
"OK, I probably should have explained that part or done a better job of forewarning you, but I wanted to test the shield so I would be comfortable with it. I was comfortable with the fact it would work. Barana told me it would. This whole demonstration is to show you some of what the command level enhancements can do. I want you all to have them emplaced starting sometime in the next two weeks, but the sooner the better. We will each be spending quite a bit of time, some more than others on planet. Once we go public and become associated with the stations in the public eye, there are radical groups out there who would like nothing better than to get a shot at one of us. Not everyone will get all of the enhancements but all of you here now will. Getting acclimated to the changes is not so difficult. It took me six weeks to adjust to all of it. The enhancements include strength, speed, agility, a clock in your head without even thinking about it and a very effective shield. There is lots more, probably the most exciting is life span and health. You will never again have to worry about being sick and you will likely live to see the next millennium. Each enhancement will be thoroughly explained. Trust me, Barana can do thorough."
"The treatment actually includes lessons on how to use and apply the various enhance features. Initially everything except the shield will be damped down until you have mastered them. I really want you all fully functional and protected ASAP. Does anyone have a problem with any of this, please let me know now or privately but soon. These enhancements are not something we advertise or flaunt, but when they are needed, they are there. You will find that you have vision acuity up to about 25x. If you are a birdwatcher, you won't need field glasses to do that anymore. Meanwhile, Sam and I have some honeymoon time of to catch up with. Just let Barana know where you want to go next. As part of the command team, you have use of her instant transport system at all times. We can start the enhancement process immediately for those of you who are ready to give it a go." With that Hank and Sam disappeared. Everyone else told Barana that they were ready to start immediately including the Reevers.
George and Miriam were already discussing what they needed to do to move to the station. Their quarters were more attractive and spacious than those at home and the view of the mountains was awesome. They felt that the move could be smoothly done in about three months including helping his employees to transition to whatever they wanted. He expected that many would want to come to the station.
Chapter 6: Antoran Starship/Stations Part 1
General
There are three types of Antoran Starship/Stations, Types 1A, 1B and 2. Technically, these vessels are starships, however they are so large and their functions so all encompassing that the term Starship/Stations seems to be a better descriptive fit. They are referred to as Stations for brevity.
The motivation for the construction of the Type 1A and 1B classes of vessel was the impending Glarin invasion of Antor discovered in the year 1498 AD (Earth calendar) about 15 years before the arrival of the invasion fleet. The Antoran people determined that their best course of action for survival was to evacuate the planet.
The challenge before them was how to evacuate 1.5 billion persons to a location sufficiently distant to allow for their survival and to do so in the time frame with which they had to work. They also had to transfer as much of their technology base as was possible. This led to the conceptualization, construction and use of the Type 1 stations. They succeeded in moving their entire civilization to Antor II in the Tau Ceti System, a distance of 3,162 light years from Antor. Tau Ceti is about 11.9 light years from Earth. In the process they removed everything of potential use to the invaders, particularly their technology and stores of the super metal Herculenium (closest English translation).
Two operational Stations were built and outfitted. The first of these was 260 miles in length and was the prototype Station One. The second was shorter at 200 miles in length. The decks that in the future would be the warship flight decks and the military training decks were utilized to house food supplies sufficient to feed their population for two years. A sufficient number of dwelling units in the inner habitation zones were converted to stasis storage units similar to those now found on all stations to transport 90% of the population in stasis. This helped to reduce the food and oxygen requirements for those managing the evacuation. A third hull was built, also at the shorter 200-mile length but the farm and habitat sectors were not installed. Instead, those spaces were fitted with numerous temporary decks to warehouse as much equipment and material as was possible to load into the vessel. A large commercial freighter was connected to the inner hull in the core. This was then linked to the power systems of the vessel and used to maneuver and operate the vessel. The journey was expected to take six months, so this temporary arrangement was workable. The last of the 1.5 billion Antoran population was removed about two months before the arrival of the Glarin.
Currently, 20 Type 1 Stations (one Type 1A and 19 Type 1B) are fully operational and provisioned but not fully occupied. The construction of these stations was completed in 1548 at Tau Ceti and efforts were then shifted to construction of the Type 2 stations. It was argued that the smaller stations were needed for several reasons. The first was that the area of space that could be covered by more of the smaller stations would increase dramatically. The second was that too many people would be exposed to harm if the continued to build only the larger Type 1B stations. Eighty of the Type 2 Stations were built and placed in operation. Aside from their size, the stations are not going to win awards for appearance since they look like an overgrown cylinder with a hollow center core running its length.
All stations utilize the same diameter, 60 miles. This allows for some uniformity in the structure of some sectors of the stations. The military sectors and the storage sectors are the same for all stations. Habitats in the outer zone are identical for all stations. The inner zone Habitats are the identical on the Type 1A and Type 1B stations while the Type 2 station does not have an inner zone Habitat.
The sheer size of the stations is the feature that tends to stagger even the most imaginative of those viewing it. The 60 miles diameter of each station and length varying from 90 to 260 miles certainly contribute to this impression. The core area or center, is eight miles across. Physical access to the interior of the station is through airlocks dotted along the surface of the core area starting ten miles from either end of the station. The Station's offensive capabilities were not operational when the inevitable attack came but the Antorans were able to leave without incident. Upon arrival at Tau Ceti, the Antorans exercised an ambitious construction program to build what they believed would be a fleet sufficient to counter the Glarin invasion. They then proceeded to seek persons with appropriate skills to assist in manning defenses.
The station's most unusual feature however was not just its size. The entire outer shell of the station and its internal supports were one continuous construct of Herculenium the strongest alloy known then and now with no bolts, fasteners, welds or other connectors apparent. The construction of station components was accomplished through use of a fusing process. Programmed fabricators were also used extensively, particularly in the construction of habitat components such as the dwelling units. These processes left no trace of joining down to the molecular level. The alloy has a very low expansion/contraction coefficient and was ideal for this application. It also did not exhibit metal fatigue common to other construction metals. The exterior part of the hull that was integral to the station was two feet thick. The Antorans were able to reduce the construction facility to components that fit in the core of the prototype and its sister ship when they left Antor. The prototype initially carried 25 additional hull layers that were each two feet thick and could be used for t
he construction of additional stations. This was also done to avoid leaving this valuable material behind for the Glarin to utilize.
The outer hull of the station is "down." Each deck has its own gravity generator that can be varied depending upon the function and use of the particular deck. This is achieved by artificial gravity at each deck. The flight decks use varying levels of gravity from 0.25G to 1.0 G. The storage areas use lesser gravity. Training areas can be brought all the way down to 0 G if needed. The station is intended to be a livable habitat. It has amenities not generally considered for space stations.
The total dwelling units on a station vary by the number of outer zone and inner zone habitat there are on the station. The dwelling units are designed for occupancy of 4 persons. Average occupancy of a unit in use is 3 to 4 persons but is quite comfortable with up to 6 persons in a unit.
General
Type 1A
Type 1B
Type 2
Length in Miles
260
200
90
Diameter in Miles
60
60
60
AI Computer Cells
24
12
8
Power Tubes
400
340
140
Number of Habitats
6
4
1
Farm Acreage
940 million
806 million
283 million
Dwelling Units
109,610,629
73,073,753
23,078,703
Capacity @ 3 per unit
328,831,888
219,221,259