Through those blurry eyes, she detected creatures slowly approaching her. Who were these weird looking creatures? Where was she? She had not seen such creatures in her home world. Was she on a different planet? Her eyes could detect that she was being prodded by stick, and being manhandled by those weird creatures, but she could not feel it. Her sensory systems had more or less shut down along with her nervous system. Her body tilted in an awkward position, and then she could see herself moving, being dragged on the ground. Then she saw herself being further manhandled by those strange creatures and lifted into a very primitive vehicle. Once on the vehicle, the creatures covered her with some kind of tarp, and the entire world went black for Fast Current.
Chapter 4
Anyone Home?
2197
Mining Asteroid Asimov, Asteroid Belt
The atmosphere inside the room resembled that of a funeral. In many ways one could liken this to a funeral. It was a requiem for the poor souls of the mining station, for Ragnar and his team and for the thousands of their fellow USC brethren in the first and second fleet who had perished. The unspoken question in the minds of every person in the room was this: was this to be a requiem for all human kind on Earth. That possibility was so terrifying that no one dared to even think about it, although at another level every one of them knew it to be eminently possible. Were there any humans left on Earth? Even the question sent shivers down everyone’s spine.
Capt. Gorr entered the room along with Lt. Terzi. The rest of the crew stood in attention at the arrival of the two senior-most members of the crew of USC Patagonia. Hannibal Gorr motioned everyone assembled to settle down. The rec room had been cleared and there were enough seats for all the people assembled, but some chose to stand, leaning against the walls. Standing in 40% gravity of the rec room wasn’t that tedious in any case, and most were too disturbed to sit. The room had about thirty people assembled. All the officers on board the Patagonia, as well as many of the senior non-commissioned officers were present. Basically, the entire leadership team of the vessel was there to attend the staff meeting called by the captain.
It was the day after the Marines team had boarded the doomed mining colony, and uncovered the haunting scene of the floating and partially decayed corpses of the miners. It was also the day after Lt. Ragnar’s log had been found. The technicians had been able to retrieve the entire logs of the mining colony as well as the data that had been dumped by USC Majorca, which had been mentioned in Ragnar’s logs. The crew of USC Patagonia now understood in fair amount of detail, the catastrophe that had befallen Earth and humanity. Although there still were more questions than answers, but at least there were some answers.
“Officers, the agenda of this meeting is twofold. First is to hear from our technical experts on whatever they have learnt so far, and the second is to brainstorm a safe way to get near Earth to learn its fate. First, I will start with the easiest item on our list, which should have the least amount of uncertainty – the cause of death of the people on Asimov mines. Dr. Goetz, you’ve had the opportunity to examine those bodies, so please give us your report.” Hannibal invited the ships physician Dr. Goetz to come forward and speak.
“No surprises on the cause of death. As we had suspected initially, the miners and the USC personnel on Asimov asphyxiated and died of carbon monoxide poisoning. The people on that asteroid managed to survive for just under one and a half years before their air filtration system gave up. This mining outpost was not geared to function for that long without resupply. If it is any comfort, most of the miners did not suffer in their deaths. They would have passed out before they died. That is the gist of it, I will be filing a detailed report shortly.” Dr. Goetz finished and yielded the floor.
“Lt. Terzi, I believe you have been poring over the downloaded logs of USC Majorca all night along with the technical staff. Why don’t you give us an update of what you have learnt so far about how the military situation unfolded on that fateful day over five years ago?” Capt. Gorr invited his XO Lt. Göker Terzi to speak.
“What we have found from the logs of USC Majorca broadly validates the narrative in Lt. Ragnar’s logs. We gleaned some additional details – like the distance at which our fleet seemingly spontaneous combusted, was exactly four thousand six hundred and twenty kilometers. Whatever superweapon that super ship uses, it seems that is the effective range of the weapon. We are still going through the logs and we will keep updating the details. The only new aspect we have figured out, is that this super ship had to have either another type of super weapon that can operate at great distances, or launched small daughter ships which in themselves have fantastic acceleration.
“The reason we suspect this, is because we analyzed the line of approach of the super ship and the timing of our space based installations in the outer reaches of our solar system going dark. We found a pattern. According to the logs of Majorca, the super ship was observed to be moving in a straight line, initially in the direction of the Sun, and then it made a minor course correction to turn towards Earth. However, as the super ship progressed inwards towards the Solar System, all our installations in space on the periphery in the vicinity of the line of approach of the super ship kept on going dark. It started with the lighthouse, which had detected the super ship, and continued with our observation satellites on Uranus, whose orbit happened to place it close to the line of approach of the super ship.
“The beacons on the Asteroid Belt were next, followed by our installations on the moons of Jupiter, and then Saturn. I know that doesn’t sound like it is in the correct order, but if you were to take into account the position of each of those planets at the time of the approach of super ship, and calculate their distance from its line of approach, you would find that it is consistent with the distance. It was as if super-fast missiles or ships were launched from the super ship aimed at each of those installation. The order of the destruction of those installations is directly proportional to the distance those planets were from the line of approach at that time. If you notice, the logs of Majorca don’t mention anything about the satellites orbiting Neptune or Pluto going dark, because at that point they were on the opposite side of the Solar system, and thus much further away from the line of approach of the super ship.
“These missiles or daughter ships had to be very fast. Saturn was over thirty million kilometers from the line of approach of the super ship at that time, and yet the missiles or daughter ships reached them in just a few hours. Those missiles had to be accelerating at close to 5Gs to be able to reach there so fast. If those are missiles, then they have a fantastically long range and a type of engine whose technology is as unknown to us. Broadly that is the only new aspect of the attack we could discern from the logs of Majorca so far. We will be presenting a much more detailed report in a few days’ time, and will keep everyone updated if we find anything new.” Lt. Terzi turned towards his captain to let him know that he finished his report.
“So, was there any alarm raised by the observation satellites and the manned stations destroyed by your assumed missiles that they were under attack?” Capt. Gorr asked.
“None that we could find in the logs. One moment Cent Com was receiving the IFF signals from those installations, and the next moment those automatic electronic pings were gone. Those installations stopped responding to electronic and manual hails from Cent Com. They simply seemed to have winked out of existence. That fact makes us suspect strongly that whatever destroyed those installations orbiting Jupiter, Saturn and Uranus were not missiles. At least not missiles that killed by impact or by exploding near their target. If those installations had been killed by missiles of that sort, then the automated sensors on those installations would have detected the missiles in the last moments before it died however fast those missiles may have been, and sent that warning to Cent Com. No such last dying warning was received by Cent Com.
“That is one of the reasons we suspect that the cause of the demise of those installations may have
been small daughter ships launched from the super ship. Such small daughter ships, moving silently on reaction less drives that we suspect them to have, would be undetectable at the range of four thousand six hundred kilometers by the automated omni directional radar scan that our space installations have. Those installations could have detected such a ship only by specifically looking in the particular direction from which those daughter ships were coming, which in the vastness of space was unlikely. Once the daughter ships reached the critical distance of four thousand six hundred kilometers, they would have unleashed the super weapon that killed our fleet, and those installations orbiting the gas giants would have simply winked out of existence.” Lt. summarized the conjectures of the Engineers and other technical staff who had been working overnight with him.
“So that brings me to the question of this super weapon. I can’t even begin to wrap my head around a weapon, which could simply vaporize tens of thousands of tons metal warship in seconds. Before this being an engineering question, it is a science question. What kind of science allows one to do that? Dr. Chitnis, do you have any answers on that front for us?” Capt. Gorr looked at the science officer of Patagonia.
Dr. Sabina Chitnis felt the gaze of thirty pairs of eyes, which made her more nervous about what she was going to say. She knew that the super weapon was the most critical question on the mind of the captain and every crew member. The super weapon was probably the most important question in the minds of every surviving human everywhere. What was this weapon, and was there any defense against it? Was there any way to defeat a ship with such a super weapon, and in short was there any hope for humanity?
Dr. Chitnis wasn’t a typical USC personnel. In fact, she was not some military personnel at all. Most USC long range missions by the end of the twenty second century would sail with a junior science officer, but the navy found it hard to attract senior science talent to undertake the long and arduous journey entailed in deep space missions that sometimes lasted a decade or even more. Junior science officers usually left the services after their first assignment or opted for R&D positions on Earth or near-Earth research facilities.
As the navy expanded ever outwards into deep space, each new long-range mission encountered some or the other natural phenomenon never encountered before. Such observations were always documented and sent back to Earth, but analysis and advice from Earth would take years to reach back to the ship that encountered those hitherto unknown phenomena. It was very important for the Captains of the ships to receive immediate scientific advice in such situations, if not for anything else but to know whether the encountered phenomenon was dangerous to the ship.
To be able to attract quality talent for such a situation, USC kept the position of Senior Science officer open to academia. USC had a board of reputed academics, who peer reviewed the academic work of every applicant to select some of the brightest to sail into deep space. A lot of emphasis was given to cross functional knowledge of the applicants. There was no way of predicting whether the unique phenomenon encountered in space would biological, chemical or a matter of physics. Applicants for the job came from all streams of academia. They usually had one thing in common. Whatever research they were doing could be best done in deep space or in an alien planet or moon.
Usually most applicants had another thing in common. They were either loners whose ties to Earth was less important than their dedication to work, or they had developed some personal situation that made them want to get away from Earth for a long time. Dr. Chitnis was in the latter category. She had taken the breakup of her marriage particularly hard, to such an extent that she found it hard to stay in the same city. All the familiar landmarks reminded her about the happier and painful times of her marriage. So, she moved from her native city of Bombay, where she had been born and grown up to Bangalore.
Dr. Sabina Chitnis was an astrophysicist, and she had been working in Bombay at TIFR, the most reputable and oldest physics institute in India. She couldn’t get the same level of professional satisfaction in Bangalore. After a year, when she found that changing city hadn’t significantly reduced the level of hurt and pain, she decided to change her planet! Dr. Chitnis specialized in studying Cosmic Rays, Gamma Rays and other high energy particles streaming through deep space. The origins of those particles tell us about some of the most violent and fundamental processes of the universe – from a supernova to the beating heart of a supermassive black hole at the center of each galaxy. The study of those rays also gives us a clue about the fundamental particles of nature as well about the nature of the fabric of space, time and reality itself.
The solar system is unfortunately one of the worst places to be studying Cosmic rays, as the solar wind streaming out of the sun interferes and pushes out those Cosmic rays. Somewhere in the Kuiper belt way beyond the orbit of Pluto, is a point which scientists call the Heliopause. Beyond this point, the influence of the sun and its solar winds no longer interferes with the interstellar wind. It is beyond that point that one gets to study Cosmic rays the best. Alpha Shaitan happens to be just beyond that point, and hence ideal to collect data on Cosmic rays. It was a no-brainer for Sabina. She took her life’s work to space on board USC Patagonia, which was to make a trip to Alpha Shaitan. It was providential for the Patagonia that their senior science officer was a physicist specializing in Cosmic rays and other high energy particles, because it was the exact discipline to explain the science of the super weapon.
Sabina looked at the crowd and raised her hands defensively as she spoke. “Everything I am going to say is speculation. I don’t have any hard data other than the observed symptoms i.e. the nature of destruction of the ships of fleet. I am a lot more certain about what this super weapon is not, compared to what it is or can be. Please keep that in mind. Please feel free to challenge any assumption or conclusion that I make, because someone else may be onto something closer to the truth than I am.” She turned back and looked at her captain defensively. Hannibal knew the background to Sabina. He also had come to respect her as a brilliant mind. He nodded to her encouragingly.
“OK. So, let us first get the obvious stuffs out of the way. What this super weapon is definitely not is a missile of any sort that we know, as was mentioned by Göker just now.” Sabina had the habit of addressing everyone by their first name and never by their ranks or their last names – a habit due to her background as an academic. “We can also rule out lasers or any other high energy focused electromagnetic beam. By this I mean Masers, which are nothing but coherently focused microwave beams, X-Ray lasers and even Gamma ray bursts. I am ruling them out, not because we humans don’t have the technology to produce such an intense beam, which we don’t have in case you are wondering. For the moment, I am going with the assumption that the alien ship possesses as advanced a technology as required to produce anything as long as it doesn’t violate the laws of physics as we know it.
“The reason I am ruling out any kind of focused high energy electromagnetic beams is because of the nature of damage to the ships. Everybody out here has heard those last shouts of despair from the bridge of the Majorca ‘Oh God, we are burning from the insides!’ I validated that observation of the dying crew by going through the last readings of the internal maintenance computer logs. As you all know that our ships have thousands of sensors installed in every conceivable part of the ship starting from the outside skin of the hull, down to deep within the reactor rooms and every compartment of the ship. It monitors many parameters like temperature, humidity, structural stress etc., of the ship on a continuous basis. Those sensors log the data into the maintenance computer, monitored by the Engineering.
“The internal sensor logs of the maintenance computer confirm the fact that the Majorca burnt as much from the insides as from the outside. In fact, at first glance it seemed to me that the entire ship had caught fire almost simultaneously. It was only with some careful regression analysis on the data that I could discern a pattern. Unfortunately, the Majorca died too quickly
for there to be enough data to compute with high level of statistical confidence, but from what I can make out, it would seem that a hole opened up in the hull of the Majorca. The hole could have been just a few centimeters wide or could be tens of meters in diameter. I am afraid I cannot give a more accurate number. What I can say with confidence is that only a single section of the ship initially opened to space.
“Then the insides of the ship caught fire, but it wasn’t just any simple kind of fire. It was plasma fire! The kind of fire you see in nuclear blasts. But there were no nuclear blasts. In fact, there were no blasts as far as I could make out inside the Majorca at all. Within a second of the hull being breached, the temperature in the section that opened to space had risen to over a thousand degrees Celsius, at which point the sensors in that sections failed. The last sensors to fail from overheating at the rear section of the ship was just over nine seconds after the initial hull breach. By this time most of the ship was engulfed in raging plasma fire with temperature that had to exceed three thousand degrees Celsius. Nothing, not even hardened ceramic can withstand that kind of temperature. Most of the crew would have died within the first few seconds itself.
Game Reserve: Earth (Shaitan Wars Book 5) Page 8