Ephialtes (Ephialtes Trilogy Book 1)

by Parker, Gavin E

  One of Kostovich’s first priorities was to scale the system down. Helios had been commissioned to design a system of missile batteries capable of defending coastlines or other long borders. They had done this by coming up with large batteries capable of defending a forty kilometre radius, meaning that, with redundancy, batteries could be placed along borders at distances of up to eighty kilometres apart.

  Each battery consisted of six smaller sub-batteries, each with one hundred and twenty missiles available to it, and its own independent tracking system, capable of being supplemented with additional information from the other batteries and sub-batteries.

  Given the relatively small size of the Martian colony, centred as it was on Marineris, Kostovich thought that four of the sub-batteries, stationed north, south, east and west of the city, would provide more than adequate cover for the populated areas, particularly since any threat would more than likely come from above. The cut-down size would also allow for the rapid production that was necessary.

  That was part one of his planned system. Part two, which he was only making tentative steps on, was to mount two of the sub-batteries on an orbiting platform. This would truly give protection against external attack. The missiles’ range through the vacuum of space would be greatly extended with the platform sited, as it were, at the far boundary post of Martian civilization.

  The orbiting platform was at the back of his mind right now. It was desirable but not a necessity. The priority was to firm up the plans for the four planetside platforms and get them into production as fast as possible.

  He had that thought in mind as he entered the board room. Venkdt was already there at the top of the table. Seated around it were the next tier of management below him. There was some low-level chit-chat as Kostovich found a seat, nodding to his unfamiliar colleagues as he sat down.

  “I think that’s everyone now,” said Venkdt.

  Venkdt generally didn’t like to use the board room. He preferred to chat with people one on one, or at least in small groups. He thought that large formal meetings stopped people from expressing their true opinions and allowed the cocky and overbearing to ride roughshod over the more contemplative and withdrawn. For this occasion, though, he had made an exception. This was going to be a meeting of extraordinary import, and only the boardroom would do.

  The conversation dropped off and Venkdt had the room’s attention. He felt he was presiding over something that would live forever in the history books of the future, but he wanted to keep it simple and human. He coughed before beginning.

  “First, I want to thank you all for coming at such short notice. I know you’re busy so I appreciate it.” He nodded his thanks about the room.

  “What this is about may come as something of a shock to some of you. I’d appreciate it if you could keep what we talk about here today private, for the next few days at least. We’ve taken the liberty of blocking comdev transmission to and from this room, just for the duration of the meeting and purely as a precaution.”

  ‘Blocking most comdev transmissions,’ thought Kostovich, with schoolboy relish.

  Venkdt continued, his audience concentrating now on his every word.

  “Some of you may be aware of my long-standing interest in jurisprudence as it relates to us here on Mars. I have long thought that as this small colony grows larger this matter will assume ever-greater importance. I’ve decided recently to pursue an idea I’ve been kicking around for a good number of years now. I intend to make an official announcement in the next few days but, due to some information I’ve recently come by, and which we’ll get to later, I will let you in on it now.”

  He coughed, perhaps to underline the moment.

  “I will be proposing a plebiscite, a poll of the people of Mars, asking whether they feel the time has come for Mars to be self-determining. A simple poll, that is all I propose. The issue at hand will be presented in the plainest of terms; should Mars become an autonomous state, or not?

  “Should the people vote ‘yes’ I have a draught constitution and a proposed system for an elected government. There are details of the proposed constitution in the handout, and we will widely publicize them in the run up to the plebiscite. The constitution would allow that the first issues any Martian government dealt with would be pertaining to electoral wards, courts, and the constitution itself.”

  Venkdt paused.

  “I would hope to achieve a ‘yes’ vote, and that any transition from the status quo to independence would run smoothly with very little effect on day-to-day affairs, much like a demerger.”

  He shuffled some papers.

  “As mentioned, I will be announcing all this in a few days’ time. I’ve asked you here today because of a slight wrinkle that’s come up even before I’ve had the chance to announce. Daniel Kostovich,” he indicated Kostovich at the end of the table, “has intercepted some USAN communications showing that they know about my proposals and,” he paused, “are sending two very large warships our way to encourage me to reconsider.

  “Now, I plan for this thing to be smooth, very bloodless and as civilized as possible. I expected it to ruffle some feathers and I realise that in a strict sense some of it will not be ‘legal’. But I intend to play fair. Sending the heavies over before the other guy has even started talking? To me that is not fair. So in order to level the playing field back in our favour I’ve asked Dr Kostovich to build a missile defence system. This is a purely defensive system, you understand, and its purpose is to show the USAN that we will not be bullied, and that we are serious. I’d like you to all cooperate with Dr Kostovich in every way you possibly can to ensure that we have protection in place should we need it. I want that to be the top priority for everyone, superseding everything else. We will need production capability,” he glanced at one of the managers present, “that’s you, Bob, personnel, that’s you Sally, and logistics and finance and everything else to get this working.”

  A hand rose near the head of the table. “What is it?” said Venkdt.

  A man answered, his voice thin. “Isn’t this . . . treason?” he said.

  Venkdt pulled a weighing-things-up face. “Well, treason is all a question of dates, isn’t it? I prefer to think of it as emancipation.”

  “I don’t think that, in all good conscience -”

  “Listen,” said Venkdt, “if you don’t want to be a part of this we can transfer you to another department, another role, and you can wait the whole thing out. And of course, you can vote ‘no’ when the time comes. But if the people vote ‘yes’, as I believe they will, by acting with us you will be serving their will. This is a tremendously exciting time to be a Martian. We will be forging a new nation. So no, it’s not treason, far from it. In fact, the way I see it, it’s a patriotic duty.”

  A flurry of questions followed. Most were positive and technical, with a few cool cynics in the mix.

  “Who’s paying for all this?” one sceptic asked.

  Venkdt replied, “I, as you know, am not short for cash. And as Executive Officer of Venkdt here on Mars I have control of the local company funds. Since I believe that independence will be overwhelmingly beneficial to the company I think it’s justifiable to invest now in securing that independence.”

  He similarly batted away other mild objections and in doing so seemed to bring people further and further on board. He had obviously thought the whole thing through with meticulous attention to detail. His plan - the elections and constitution - were prêt-à-porter and the funding, timings and a thousand other details appeared to have been considered and evaluated and accounted for. As Venkdt had it, it was more-or-less a demerger. Ownership would change, the company crest would change but the people on the factory floor would hardly notice the difference.

  Mars, colony of Earth, would simply become Mars, independent state.

  The meeting wound down and the managers filed away in little groups, talking excitedly amongst themselves, invigorated by the intriguing developments and change in
routine.

  Kostovich hung back, pretending to work on his comdev while he waited for the last straggler, who had button-holed Venkdt, to leave. Eventually the woman finished up and said a cheery goodbye to Venkdt as she left. Kostovich strode up to take her place.

  “You won’t be cancelling the missile system, then?”

  Venkdt laughed. “No, I thought about it and it has to be done. As an independent nation we’ll need defences anyway. We can’t let them intimidate us.”

  Kostovich nodded.

  “There’s a provision for an army, a small one of course, in the draft constitution. I was going to have Maya split off half of Venkdt Security and donate it, as it were, to the new nation as the basis for an army. I guess they’ll need weapons, so what the hell.”

  “You made the right choice,” said Kostovich. “Igitur qui desiderat pacem, praeparet bellum.”

  Venkdt smiled. “That’s Latin, isn’t it, you clever bastard?”

  Kostovich smiled too. “Yes, Mr Venkdt, it is.”

  “What is it?”

  “It’s from a treatise by Publius Flavius Vegetius Renatus on Roman military principles, written sometime around the fourth or fifth century.”

  Venkdt nodded along, impressed. “And what does it mean?”

  Kostovich smiled again.

  “If you want peace, prepare for war.”

  C H A P T E R 1 1

  Ship Building

  Lund and her fellow passengers had to wait for half an hour after they had heard and felt the low clunk of their shuttle docking with Ephialtes before they were finally allowed to board. Releasing their harnesses and floating freely most experienced a giddy, childlike joy at the rare sensation of weightlessness.

  “Well this is certainly easier than it was getting in,” a colleague said to Lund, and she smiled politely in return. They pulled themselves along, making their way down - maybe it was up - to the airlock connecting them to Ephialtes.

  Pulling herself through the lock Lund looked up and saw the face of Commodore Deborah G Lucero. Lucero held out a hand, grabbing Lund’s and shaking it firmly. “Welcome aboard Ephialtes,” she said. Lucero was a handsome woman. She was tough-looking, with a sparkle in her eye, and she looked like she could achieve anything she set her mind to. She let go of Lund’s hand and was immediately shaking the hand of the next person. “Welcome aboard Ephialtes,” she said again. A second officer behind Lucero guided Lund into to a position further into the room.

  “Please just wait here,” the woman said and went back to collect her next body. Lund waited until the room was filled and the hatch had been closed. Lucero floated herself into a position at the head of the room. “Welcome aboard everyone,” she said. “Before we do anything we’ll be bringing up the AG. This might feel a little weird, so we’ll do it slow and you might need to manoeuvre a bit so you don’t end up piled on somebody else, or even worse with somebody piled on top of you.” Lucero nodded to one of her staff, who tapped at a comdev mounted on her arm. “Here we go,” said Lucero.

  Lund felt an odd sensation as she was gently pulled in one direction to bare a wall of the room. As instructed, she negotiated with her fellow passengers to find space for herself as the pulling sensation grew stronger and heavier. She lay with her back against the wall and felt a force pushing down on her. As she lay there soaking up the sensation she heard Lucero’s voice once again. “And that’s that,” Lucero said, “you’re back to 1G where you were a few short hours ago. You can stand up now.”

  Lund sat up. She had the feeling you might get coming out of a swimming pool after a long swim, or fully clothed. The pull of gravity, real or artificial, felt burdensome after just a few hours without it. Lund noticed clumps of people discussing it with each other. There were many smiles and animated expressions. It had the feel of a particularly exciting school trip.

  “We’ll see you to your quarters presently,” Lucero said, “but before then just a few basic things you should know. Firstly, this is my ship. I am Commodore Deborah G Lucero and I am in absolute command here. This is a military vessel. We understand there will be a lot of work going on, and we will work closely with you and support you on that, but please understand that we retain ultimate control. I could bore you with safety regulations but none of you look stupid to me. I guess you’re all here because you know what you’re doing, so I’ll summarise the safety regulations like this; don’t do nothing stupid, okay?”

  The room tittered, warming to the commodore. “I’ll let you settle in and we’ll meet up at the refectory in, say, an hour for some chow, and then I’ll give you the tour of the ship.” Lucero nodded to her subordinate. “Carry on,” she said, and left the room.

  The subordinate had shown them to their living quarters and Askel had unpacked her few things. Her room was small and functional with a bunk, terminal and a small seating area. She had lived on Otus before and had found the accommodation perfectly adequate. She wasn’t planning on spending much time in her room anyway - she had far more important things to be doing. When she was in there she would either be sleeping or working at the terminal.

  The chow was good - standard fare, no better or worse than what Askel was used to at the Helios refectories back on Earth. She had made small talk with the others at her table and had managed to put a few names to faces. Soon, Commodore Lucero appeared again, her back ramrod straight as she stood to one side of the refectory, feet apart and hands behind her. “Listen up, people,” she said. “I am about to take you on a tour of this great vessel. I know some of you had a hand in designing and building this great ship, we all thank you for that, but that doesn’t count for much anymore. You are civilians on a military vessel, so I’ll thank you all to stay away from any restricted areas and to refrain from interfering with the crew and their operation of the ship. If you need any special access, if you need to interfere with standard daily operations, come to me and, of course, I will accommodate any reasonable requests. Now, if you’ll follow me, the tour will begin.”

  The engineers, designers, software specialists and logistics experts from Helios stood and followed the commodore out of the room.

  Ephialtes was enormous. It was shaped like a shallow shoebox. Four hundred and fifty-eight metres long, two hundred and fourteen metres wide and sixty-eight metres deep. Its purpose was to deliver the twenty-four dropships it carried in its lower deck to the surface of the planet below as quickly and accurately as possible, then offer support from above for the duration of the mission.

  The lower deck held twenty-four chambers, known as bays, twelve on each side, which housed the dropships. There was room in the bays to maintain and loadout the dropships. Each dropship similarly had its own bays, six on each side. The dropships’ bays each contained a drone mech except the twelfth bay, which contained a command drone. The commander operated the dropship either from within his command drone or from the cockpit. The dropships could be set to provide automatic flight plans and aerial support. The commander could simply dip in and add suggestions or requests to the AIs as and when necessary.

  The mechs stood four metres tall and had a broadly humanoid shape; legs, torso, arms and head, though the head was fairly squat and close to the torso.

  They were well defended and armed, with a selection of threat detection systems and countermeasures as well as pulse weapons and missiles. The mechs could act autonomously or, like the dropships themselves, with partial or total control from their commander.

  The bays were serviced from a large open hangar deck running most of the length of the ship, stopping where it met the main engine housing two thirds of the way toward the rear. Here, the mechanics and mechanic droids could work on maintenance, weapons loadouts, fuelling and the like. It was a good space, available for multiple uses. The commanders were able to use it for some old-school fitness training and it had hosted the occasional football game.

  Sitting above the lower, deep ‘ship’ deck were the upper decks. These were the main living and operation
al spaces on the ship. At the front was the bridge, which operated as the command and control centre for the whole operation, dealing with day-to-day management of the spacecraft and mission control should the dropships be deployed.

  Further back from the bridge were various rooms and sections devoted to the military nature of the enterprise; intelligence, administration, coms and others.

  Next came the living quarters, divided into sections each with a number of individual dorms arranged off it. It was next to the day area, which consisted of a series of interconnected open areas with various distractions; IVR booths, a bar, video screens and social areas.

  Finally came the refectory, with the galley between it and the engines beyond.

  The tour had started at the refectory and moved up along the top decks to the bridge. The bridge had impressed with its large forward facing widows and air of super-slick efficiency and order. The lower decks did not have the same gosh-darn awesome factor as the ones above but to Lund they were the most interesting. They were the guts of the ship, what it was all about. It was also where most of her alterations would need to take place. Internal access to the engine mountings could be gained at the far end of the hangar deck, and the deck itself would be used as a workshop for many of the physical alterations that would need to be made.

  The dropship commanders on board would soon be sent home. The ship would not be operational for the duration of the refit and they would not be needed for the Mars mission. For that, a select group of combat veterans was being picked and trained back in the USAN. Some would be returned that very day on the ship that had bought the Helios staff to Ephialtes.