by WADE, T I
“Sounds like an excellent plan,” replied Doug. “If you can minimize cube attacks from space, that could lower our shipping losses and give us a chance to begin using our larger shipping fleet again. Size of ship doesn’t matter to the submarines, and we can then direct our defenses to destroying the underwater attackers. As far as missiles are concerned, our friend has given us their latest Dome system. Their new system has also been designed to be aboard ships and can protect the vessel from any atmospheric missile attacks. Unfortunately, they are not cheap, but we have procured ten of these systems. Then, with their systems and with ten good-sized vessels of ours, we believe that we can open up a safe sea lane where even more ships can cruise within a mile of these Dome systems and be protected. I’m sure that if your plan works, you will see a more prosperous southern hemisphere on Earth when your crew return. And by the way, we have your island choices down to ten. We will pick you out the best we can.”
Once the three shuttles were supplied with enough provisions for a month, and the new crew container fitted into SB-I, the three shuttles, helped by a dozen spacewalkers, were each fitted with a defunct freighter attached to the underneath of the craft.
For Saturn, Penelope and Pluto Jane, their time had arrived to show the bridge what they had learned. Jonesy and Maggie had made sure that they had rearranged the crew compartment into a place of comfort and relaxation. All seats but the rear row of four had been removed. Vertical beds—horizontal beds with tie-downs—could be used, as the electromagnet built into the floor of the craft gave everything metallic a pull equal to about 18 percent of Earth. Unfortunately, the shuttles didn’t spin like the mother ship, so the added 18 to 30 percent at the outer level was sorely missed, but 18 percent was better than nothing. Wearing metal shoes, they could walk normally, but liquids and food would float, so bath bags and even the vertical beds were sometimes a better option. Everything else, like the computer, seats, cargo and any other items to make the journey better, was either encased in a metal frame or tied down to the floor of the shuttle.
By the time SB-I left her docking port, her interior was emptier than the other two, but they also had a screen to watch movies, a computer and mike to patch into the communications and even a refrigerator full of goodies. To the Pitt family, it was like a floating heaven with five times the space in the cockpit.
“SB-III, cargo attached and leaving the shield,” said Saturn, once she maneuvered her shuttle through the shield of the non-rotating mother ship.
“SB-II. We are five minutes from departure, over,” replied Pluto Jane Saunders.
“SB-I. We are still connected to our liquid oxygen refueling system. Girls, our new rear compartment is so big and perfect. Fifteen minutes to release from docking port, over.”
“SB-III, roger that. I will float away from the port side of the mother ship and hold position two miles out, over.”
It took 40 minutes before all three shuttles formed up and were in formation. Ryan could see them off his port side as the ship began its “gravity” rotation behind the bridge. They all looked pregnant with the freighters tied onto their bellies, but aerodynamics didn’t matter in space.
“Roger, igniting thrusters, peeling away to port and setting course for Earth,” said Saturn Jones. Ryan watched as the three shuttles fired their rear thrusters and began turning away from him. It usually took several minutes before they disappeared, and slowly the three shuttles in formation turned in a 180-degree turn, completing a third of it before disappearing from sight. He followed their precise turn on the radar screen, and 20 minutes later they were increasing thrust and heading in the opposite direction.
“Time to first orbit: seven days eleven hours and 20 minutes at 49,500 knots cruise velocity. Cruise velocity will be attained in 27 hours from now. Thrust: 75 percent for 169 minutes. Your course is perfect. Bon voyage, ladies,” said Igor from the bridge.
“Enjoy yourselves, girls, and mind those horrible cubes,” added Lunar Richmond, plotting their course with Igor. Ryan had little to do. Captain Pete and Mars Noble were backing up Igor on another computer, checking all the readouts from all three craft.
Jonesy was asleep in the rear compartment, and so was Allen Saunders in SB-II. Maggie and Jamie were in the copilot seats doing nothing but monitoring, and the Pitts watched a movie in their new section. Penelope had done this so many times before that she didn’t even want them in the cockpit. To all three girls this was a simple flight, something they had gone over a thousand times in the simulators.
Within an hour of flight and already 35,000 miles behind the mother ship, all three craft had empty cockpits, and the crews were enjoying dinner in their compartments.
“Remember the days of vodka rationing heading home from DX2014?” said Jonesy to Maggie. They were sipping from food packets, not allowing the contents to get loose in the cabin. Jonesy was tied down on the couch while Maggie and Saturn were strapped in comfortable chairs with their metallic shoes off. They didn’t need footrests, as the lack of gravity gave them automatic ones.
“You were a real pain in the butt on that first flight home,” replied Maggie.
“Well, what do you expect, me having to sit around in a darn horrible pink rear compartment whenever I was allowed in, wife?” countered her husband. “The color would have made any intelligent man delusional. Plus, I had to beg for your secret stash of jerky like a dog for Beggin’ Strips, and you sometimes felt sorry for me and handed me my—yes my—supplies of vodka. Which were meant to be a gift from Ryan to VIN and me, not for you to dole out like we were at a food bank.” Maggie smiled at the remembrance.
“What are Beggin’ Strips?” asked Saturn. “Didn’t you have real jerky in those days?”
“Something we used to give our pets on Earth,” replied Maggie. “If I remember, they were bacon-flavored.”
“And your mother can be the meanest person aboard this ship,” countered Jonesy, opening the refrigerator for a fresh packet of beer.
“I believe I am the meanest aboard SB-III,” said Saturn. “I’ve got both of your genes. Actually, I could be the meanest SOB aboard America One, maybe even the world, with my genes.”
“Saturn, your mother is present!” remonstrated Jonesy, smiling at his daughter. “But she acted like you expected, returning from DX2014.” That got him a hard space punch to the shoulder, which would have propelled both of them in opposite directions across the compartment if they weren’t tied down.
“I’ve got first go after breakfast on the bike,” said Maggie, changing the subject and looking up at the roof of the oval cylinder where the bike was ready, upside down and fixed to the roof.
Dinner at the Jones household was never boring. To the Jones family, this was a normal family dinner except for the complete lack of gravity. Anybody on Earth would have found it quite amusing to be with them, sucking hot food out of reusable packets while your hair stood vertical.
Beer and alcohol also came from silver packets, and metal tags on the bottom of each packet for all their provisions keeping cold in the space refrigerator stayed in neat rows. One section had breakfast packets, the next lunch and dinner together. In the refrigerator door were the packets that Jonesy and Maggie enjoyed during and after dinner only. Today, they could partake, as neither of them were flight commander, and Saturn was too young to drink anyway.
Also, it was her twelfth birthday in a few days’ time, and there were a few surprises hidden around the craft. Saturn’s birthday was also due for its own fireworks display, just a day early.
A week later they passed through 5,000 mile altitude, still in the Middle Earth Orbit or MEO zone, and under Saturn’s orders began fanning out in a line around the planet. Even at faster speeds than usual, it took SB-III six hours to complete their first orbit as they descended to 3,000 miles. From this altitude, they could still see the entire side of the planet from the shuttles.
Low Earth Orbit ended at 1,240 miles above Earth, and Ryan knew that the cubes could reach
the MEO zone, as that was where the strongest attacks on America One’s shield, at about 10,000 miles, had begun on the last visit.
This time the crew on the bridge, now out of range for communications with Earth and the three shuttles, knew that few of the cubes would have made it that high yet and would take at least 12 to 24 hours to climb the extra altitude into the mid-level to attack the shuttles.
The crew aboard America One had done a lot of homework on the most modern U.S. and Chinese cubes since their arrival over three months earlier. They had received much information from old friends by radio from both countries. As usual, it was NASA’s latest designs that were copied by the Chinese.
All these cubes used a minute amount, a few grams, of Plutonium-238 in tiny reactors to power their directional controls, stabilizers, and computers in space. They had several hours of liquid hydrogen fuel for their tiny side thrusters, and most of their initial speed came from the reusable first stage, solid fuel launchers and then second stage hydrogen thrusters propelling them into space. The cubes left Earth aboard a first stage launcher as powerful as a large missile. The first stage ended at around 40 miles and fell back to Earth. Then the cube was propelled into LEO at far faster speeds than the shuttles by its second stage, which separated and self-destructed at 100 miles.
By this time the average cube was travelling at 28,000 miles an hour or more. A third stage which could be turned on or off by its directional systems, its size about a meter cubed, ignited when prey was found. The job of the third stage was to allow the cube to close and engage its target, or any other target which came closer. The third cube allowed the payload of explosives to change orbital height, up or down, like a missile, or change direction to keep a lock on its target.
This third-stage fuel cell, Ryan and Igor were told, was enough for about an hour of thrust. This thrust in the vacuum of space, for 60 minutes, could propel the cube up to 50,000 miles an hour, although still in rising orbits around Earth. Once this last stage was done, only minor changes could be made from then on by the tiny side thrusters. It was the third stage that either propelled the cube, its nose cone pointed like a missile so there was little atmospheric interference on reentry, down onto a ground target, or thrust it up into even higher altitudes.
Gaining altitude took time, and once in orbit, only smaller or larger, higher orbits could be negotiated by the cubes. Even though the first attacks in their last visit were as high as 23,000 miles, it had taken the cubes weeks or months of ever-increasing orbits to achieve that height. So would be the case at 3,000 miles.
Ryan and the crew gambled that very few of the cubes had actually ignited their third stages to increase altitude. The cubes were happy taking out the enemy at far lower altitudes, the unused fuel used as added explosive. The bridge believed that the three shuttles had at least 24 to 48 hours descending under 5,000 miles before the first attacks. The cubes should detect the shuttle’s incoming presence at about geostationary altitude, ignite and begin the long task of climbing up to attack the shuttles.
Saturn and her pilots had ten hours remaining when they reached their 3,000-mile target altitude and still needed to slow to release the freighters at the correct orbital speed of just below 26,500 miles an hour. Even at this higher altitude and high orbital speed, they were no match for the much-faster cubes traveling at up to 70 times the speed of sound.
“Two minutes to release, shuttle shields away,” said Saturn as they orbited the Earth with one-third of the planet between each shuttle. Even though they were over 30,000 miles apart, their communications were perfect.
“Roger, shields deactivated,” replied the other two. In each craft, the men had spacewalked out of the hatch, readying the freighters for release. Inside the shuttle shields they had actually entered the empty freighters and checked the black boxes as well as the computer aboard for self-destruction. Each freighter was about the size of a semi-trailer, and each astronaut could see that the last decade of space travel had started the inside’s erosion. Here and there were areas of white dust. The space torches and the blue light coming in from the opened hatches made the insides bright.
Vitaliy had inspected each one, placing the instruments inside them before they had left the mother ship, and he and his crew reckoned that they had at least another four to five decades of service before their structures weakened. He had joked that the freighters would outlive both Jonesy and Ryan.
Jonesy checked his. Inside, it was like an empty cylinder thirty feet long. The black box was inside the inner wall on a welded frame around it. On one side of it was a small lead reactor designed for this specific job. Inside was a tenth of a pound of Plutonium-238, borrowed from America One’s main reactor. This was turned into energy to power the shield. Since this setup had already been used, it was a no-brainer for Ryan to use it again.
With a half-life still of over 70 years remaining, the shield would be powered for a long time to come. On the other side of the black box was the computer and screen inside a protective atmospheric sleeve. Outside sensors had been placed. The computer was the direct connection to the shuttles and could activate the shield as well as the ten pounds of explosives underneath the black box.
In Allen’s and Michael’s craft were the exact same systems, and they were all gone over, and then the spacewalkers undid the metal connections holding the cylinders to the floor of the shuttles.
Slowly the empty freighters, all three of which still had “Earth-Exit” written on their outside walls, floated away from the belly of the shuttles. They were still tied by a ten foot metal arm a quarter-inch thick to the shuttle, which could be separated by an explosion when ready.
“One minute to release,” said Saturn, once Jonesy and the other two were back inside.
“I have the first approaching cube on radar,” said Maggie sitting in the copilot’s seat. “It is at 1,500 mile altitude, passing through 47,000 knots and coming up 13,000 miles behind SB-III.”
“I have it visual,” said Jamie Saunders 32,000 miles behind. “I have three more on radar, far below us at 1,900 miles altitude and 49,000 knots.”
“I hope ours is not American,” replied Maggie to Saturn only over their intercom. “I’m sure the U.S. President wouldn’t fire on his own daughter.”
“I suppose he could be a bad man, but even my father wouldn’t fire at me,” replied Saturn, smiling at her mother.
“I count nearly two dozen cubes ahead of us and behind you, SB-II,” added Penny Pitt, who had just completed helping her husband off with his spacesuit. “I can’t see the cubes you guys mentioned, but they are like a whole quiver of arrows 20,000 miles between you and me, Jamie. All at 1,800 miles altitude, and I assume, following the ones you can see. We have yet to see any behind us. Oh! There is a launch detection on computer. Central Mongolia; are we allowed to blast their sites?”
“Go for it,” remarked Jonesy. “As commander of laser operations, and on behalf of my daughter, I give you open season on all launch sites,” he joked.
“Michael, I have the site locked. Hurry up and get the laser in operation,” the entire crew heard Penny Pitt order her husband. They did not hear his response.
“5… 4… 3… 2… 1… freighter detached,” said Saturn, and with a small explosion their freighter released from the shuttle. “Increase thrust by 1 percent,” she ordered the shuttles, and like a choreographed ballet, the shuttles, foot by foot, slowly slipped away faster than the unmanned spacecraft now on their own orbits around planet Earth.
“Sixty seconds to freighter shield extension,” noted Saturn. A minute later, the shields were activated. The shuttles only several hundred yards ahead of the freighters turned to face backward, using their side thrusters.
As if on cue, the blue shields grew around the cylinders, controlled from the shuttles. They were extended to about 20 feet around the cylinder. At 75 percent of maximum power from the tiny reactors, there was enough to protect the cylinders from the cubes, but not a nuclear blast from
a full blown missile.
“SB-I’s dummy target ready for operation,” said Penelope Pitt first.
“SB-II’s ready and operational,” added Pluto Jane Saunders.
“SB-III’s dummy target operational,” added Saturn. “Face shuttles forward, and increase thrust by 3 percent.” Slowly the blue shields got smaller and smaller.
“Launch from Hong Kong area of China,” said Jamie Saunders.
“Burn them,” replied Jonesy.
“We are three miles from our drops. Increase thrust by ten percent, increase speed to 25,000 knots and let’s climb to 4,000 miles, over,” ordered Saturn, and the craft blew up the launch sites as they passed the coordinates from one craft to the other.
The shuttles gained altitude, and on the next orbit were 300 miles above the blue shields as they began to take one or two hits only seen on their radars.
“We have heavy launches from Mongolia and southern China,” said Penelope Pitt as her father, now in the copilot’s seat, blasted away at the coordinates given to him from the onboard target computer.
“Don’t those guys ever learn? Zero launches from the U.S. Two from North Korea. Those sites are history, and I’m not getting much of the action yet,” said Jonesy, sitting next to his daughter.
“You are over the wrong part of the globe,” laughed Allen Saunders. “I have a dozen more sites to blast over China, and I’ll see if I can leave you a few.”
“I think they are wanting our blood bad,” added Michael Pitt. “There was another strike on the shield below us. The cubes we are following are all climbing up to take the bait. I see several dozen. The ones we saw on the last round, now at 2,600 miles altitude, will be attacking on their next orbit.”
“Happy Birthday, Saturn!” shouted Jonesy two hours later as he interfaced the target cameras onto Saturn’s screen, which was locked onto the shield below them. They were on the dark side of the planet, the sun’s rays not touching them, and the cubes, as Michael Pitt had mentioned, a few dozen of them, exhausted themselves against the shield 600 miles below them.