Even if Matt’s worst fears weren’t confirmed in the next few minutes, he realized they would all probably be dead of gamma radiation poisoning in a few hours if they didn’t get medical attention immediately.
Finally, he was able to get an intermittent signal from one of the Far Approach satellites in Restricted Zone A, three times farther from the planet than the ship had just flashed in. The telemetry fed through to the Near Approach plot. Matt dropped his hands from the keyboard and began muttering a prayer.
The supervisor gripped the back of Matt’s chair and leaned in close as if to somehow make the image on the screen change. “It’s heading right at us,” he whispered.
Matt shook his head as he stared at the sight on the screen. The ship was a massive deep space freighter, and it was heading directly for the city at a tremendous speed. It should have arrived safely on the edge of the solar system, many Astronomical Units (AU) from the planet where the massive radiation and particle burst that always accompanied a ship flashing in from FTL speeds would be directed into deep space and out of harm’s way. Then it would spend days decelerating to a safe approach speed before it even reached Restricted Space around the planet. There were so many redundancies around this process that Matt couldn’t fathom how things had gone this wrong.
In the end, it didn’t matter to Matt. It didn’t matter to the entire planet. The ship was hurtling at them all and was only a few hundred thousand kilometers away. Matt had done the math in his head and knew there was nothing he, or anyone, could do.
They were doomed in less than 30 seconds.
Matt got up and walked to the window, leaving the supervisor behind him, who had begun to sob. He looked out at the city he had been born in and all of its garish, colorful buildings spread before him, with the aurora swirling around like an angry rainbow colored hurricane overhead. He saw smoke and fires everywhere; doubtless tens of thousands of automobiles and aircraft had crashed as a result of the radiation burst from the flash-in. Not that it mattered now.
He, too, began crying as he thought of his daughter; scared, injured, and hundreds of kilometers away. Matt knew it wouldn’t be far enough. Nowhere would be.
Large explosions began sporadically jolting the city, the outskirts, and even the mountains in the distance, as the wave of incredibly fast cosmic particles released along with the Gamma Rays during the flash-in reached the surface. The explosions steadily increased in frequency, building up in tempo like the start of a rain storm slapping on a rooftop.
Matt stared unflinching as large parts of entire buildings were vaporized. It wouldn’t matter soon anyway. He looked up at the churning sky and wondered if he’d be able to see the ship at all.
In the end, it all happened too fast for Matt, or anyone else, to see. When the ship hit the upper atmosphere it was travelling so fast that it literally tore apart the very molecules in its path. In the fraction of a second it took to impact the ground, the ship disintegrated under the force of the fusion reaction it was blazing through the air.
The surface impact created a thermonuclear explosion that engulfed kilometers and sent ejecta into the sky that would rain fireballs down for days. The blast from the shockwave stretched over nearly the entire continent and flattened every single human structure on the planet.
The last thing any human on the planet of New Shanghai witnessed was a blinding white light, and then nothing.
***
Arcadia, Beta Canum System
United Sol Confederation Capital
The panic spread like wildfire. The news nets picked up the story within minutes of the incident in local time, breaking into broadcast programming and sending out emergency VIA alerts with flustered anchors and slightly more composed news AIs struggling to convey the facts as they spilled out across the Confederation.
“We are looking now at extremely disturbing footage of what can only be described as a catastrophe of epic proportions. It appears that some kind of massive explosion has devastated the Confederation colony on New Shanghai…”
“We’re receiving word that perhaps an uncharted asteroid or other celestial object has impacted into the surface of New Shanghai, near the colony’s main city of Lujiazui. The impact event has caused a tremendous explosion, and the loss of life is estimated to be in the millions...”
“Ok, ok, we are now hearing from…wait a minute…we have unconfirmed reports that it was a ship that crashed or exploded on the surface of New Shanghai. This is unconfirmed, and I’m not sure a ship crashing during landing would be able to do this type of damage...”
“You are looking at a massive fireball, and we are estimating…we are estimating that fireball to be nearly a hundred kilometers in diameter. It had to be some kind of planet killer asteroid that impacted the planet, although it is unknown how such a large asteroid could have been missed by the planetary defense network…”
“The feed you are seeing is from a passenger ship that was approaching New Shanghai when the incident occurred. The Captain of that vessel is claiming that it was a ship which crashed into the surface at interstellar speed…”
“This is extremely disturbing news we have just been told. It seems…and again this has not been confirmed by officials, but according to a witness, that somehow the supposedly infallible GTS planetary approach network failed…or perhaps was sabotaged…we can’t verify sabotage or even the failure but obviously something terribly wrong has occurred and a ship has apparently crashed into the surface of New Shanghai at near-relativistic speeds.”
“The implications of this are far reaching and enormous for literally every human in settled space. If the GTS system can fail then potentially every star system is at risk of the same disaster that we are seeing here. Billions of lives could now be at risk.”
“If this was intentional, if this was an attack, it could be a terrorist attack of a staggering magnitude, and more could be on the way.”
The nature of real-time intergalactic news assured that within minutes of the initial broadcasts almost all of the nearly hundred billion humans spread out across the Local Bubble had heard. Almost every single planet, whether they were members of the Confederation hegemony or independent, depended on the Galaxy Travel Systems Planetary Approach Network to assure that incidents such as the one being witnessed could never occur. So when it was clear that somehow it had failed, that meant that every inhabited planet was suddenly at risk.
As he reclined in a plush seat slowly swirling and sniffing whiskey in a tumbler, Zachary Allard imagined that his retirement account would probably take a significant hit. GTS stock was a leading performer in the market and a near automatic inclusion in any retirement portfolio, and it was about to crater.
As he scanned through the various newsfeeds and listened to the talking heads come up with theory after theory on what had gone wrong, he watched the identical live video footage they all displayed and knew the only explanation was an intentional attack. With the ability to bypass the PAN system, the stakes of the deadly game he had played for years had been raised to entirely new heights.
He took a long, slow sip of the whiskey, a rare and expensive vintage that demanded respect. As it was his first sip of a fresh bottle, he had poured it neat to experience it as the distillery had intended. The liquid swept over his tongue and down his throat, instantly fooling the nerves there into believing that they were under assault with burning heat. He tasted complex arrangements of salt and smoke but felt that the alcohol content was just a tad too high to really experience the complete offering. As he added a few drops of water from an ornate glass diluting dropper, he muted the newsfeeds and began reviewing what he knew.
The GTS PAN system was a necessity of modern star travel, and every human colony in the Confederation and the vast majority of non-affiliated worlds had the system installed.
When mankind finally conquered the engineering challenges of faster-than-light travel, it was due to the invention of the Alcubierre Drive. It was named after Mi
guel Alcubierre, an ancient 20th century mathematician on Earth, whose theory had been centuries ahead of its time. The A-Drive, as it was commonly called, allowed for unprecedented exploration and expansion and within a few decades of its inception dozens of human colonies had been created.
However, the A-Drive had a considerable and extremely dangerous side effect. As the ship decelerated from superluminal speeds, the “warp” bubble which allowed for FTL travel collapsed and released a massive wave of particles that it had collected during the trip in an event that was simply referred to as the A-Flash.
This would in essence create a deadly explosive cone of gamma rays and other high energy particles that would do serious damage to anything in front of the ship when it exited FTL speed. This was why another name for the drive systems was the Flash Drive, and why shifting from FTL to subluminal speeds was referred to as “flashing in”.
Initially, ships would simply ensure that they flashed in facing away from planets and known obstacles. The effect of the A-Flash could be destructive at tremendous ranges, however, and a system was needed to remove the possibility of accidents, at first.
Shortly later that watchdogs began warning against intentional usage of the A-Flash as a weapon. And it wasn’t a much bigger leap of the same logic to postulate that someone could just skip using the A-Flash and simply use the ship itself as a weapon. How do you defend yourself from a ship traveling faster-than-light that suddenly flashes in a few megameters away? A solution to all of these problems was soon the focus of every starflight agency in human space.
Enter Galaxy Transit Systems, and their PAN. Allard didn’t know the technical specifics and didn’t feel like calling them up on his VIA, but he knew that the system handled each aspect of the flash drive problem in an efficient and safe manner.
Ships were directed to specific space lanes far from any planetary bodies, mitigating A-Flash effects. A large array of deep space monitoring stations were deployed to monitor for incoming traffic in each system. If a ship breached the restricted space surrounding a planetary system, they had several options.
They all contained sophisticated AIs that could attempt to use the tamperproof safety override that every licensed flash-drive ever created had installed to shut down the engines. They could attempt to hack and take over command and control if that failed. And as a last resort, they each were armed with their own ship killer weapons and would attempt to destroy any ship that didn’t respond to the first two options long before they became a threat.
Allard knew that there was a lot more to it than that, but the system had been in place for over a century without ever having an issue, let alone a catastrophe like what had happened on New Shanghai. Not one of the commentators on the news had been able to come up with a viable answer on how the system had been beaten. And Allard couldn’t either. That wasn’t his job.
His job was to see to it that the ones responsible were eliminated.
“Admiral Upton Nilal, voice-only, max encryption.” thought Allard to his VIA. “Initiate.”
The call connected to the Admiral almost immediately, but Nilal’s VIA politely informed Allard to stand by. Without a doubt he was quite busy at the moment mobilizing a response. It still took less than 20 seconds for the Admiral’s voice to come booming out of the speaker.
“Zachary, tell me you know something about all of this.”
Allard swirled the tumbler again, watching the viscous brown contents lap up at the sides of the glass. “I’m afraid not Upton. That’s not while I’m bothering you. I’m sending an asset to work with your investigative team on the Scorpio. He’ll have full access.”
There was a short pause before the Admiral responded. “I guess I shouldn’t be surprised that you already know the ship being dispatched to run point on this, even though it hasn’t officially been assigned yet. We can certainly provide access. But what chain of command are you suggesting?”
Allard didn’t hesitate. “My asset reports directly to me and is not under military C-O-C. His role will be to observe, support, and provide guidance where he can.”
A longer pause on the Admiral’s end followed. “Understood. The Scorpio will receive orders to depart shortly. When can we expect your asset to arrive?”
“He’ll meet the task force there, likely a few days after they arrive in-system,” Allard replied, having already done the calculations. “Good day, Admiral,” he said as his VIA ended the connection.
He inhaled deeply, holding his breath before slowly letting it out through pursed lips. He had a number of qualified assets for this mission, but the end result of this investigation could very well lead to a full blown war, the scale of which hadn’t been seen in centuries. He had to have his absolute best working on this.
Unfortunately his best asset was already deployed on an ultra-covert mission, far beyond the borders of Confederation space, and he wasn’t due to check-in for several more days. That assumed that the complicated and dangerous mission was completed on the timetable prescribed. Allard smiled, threw his head back and swallowed the entire drink in one quick movement.
Complicated and dangerous were what his asset did best.
ONE
Approaching Nouveau Toronto, Ontario System
Independent Colony
One week earlier
The view was spectacular. From this vantage, the speckled blue, green, and white orb of the planet Nouveau Toronto filled almost the entirety of the vista. Vast oceans and great continents seemed to be scrolling across the surface of an imaginary display screen, while wisps of mottled white and grey clouds ponderously marched in the opposite direction as if in defiance of the land and sea below. Three of the world’s four moons were on display in various phases similar to the planet beneath them, and if you watched closely you could see them slowly traversing their own orbits in what romantics would no doubt refer to as a choreographed dance. One could almost lose themselves in awe of the splendor.
Dargo Pearce had no time for such idle musings. He stood on the precipice of the airlock, quite literally on the edge of outer space, and prepared to leap forth. The jump distance was only five meters, but he mentally played out the movements in his head several times.
He lacked any sort of maneuvering capacity in his stiff survival suit, and although he was tethered to the ship on whose airlock he teetered he didn’t want to end up flailing around in zero g, bouncing off the ship’s hull and the payload she was tugging with her.
In addition to wasting valuable time and possibly injuring himself, it would look pretty foolish to the crew of the recon boat in charge of his insertion if he “got strung out”, humorous spacer lingo for being dragged on a tether behind a starship at tens of thousands of kilometers per hour.
The former SpecOps officer in him just wouldn’t allow that.
Pearce had performed many extra-vehicular activities during his time in the armed forces, including several ship boarding activities similar to what he was about to attempt. Where this EVA differed was that in this case the target wasn’t another ship where he could rely on magnetics in his suit to secure him down upon contact.
Instead he’d be landing on the uneven rocky surface of a small asteroid, which would serve as his ride for the rest of this trip. He shook his head ever so slightly as his fingers tightened again on the edge of the airlock and tensed his legs as he thought about his mission.
Pearce had “retired” from active duty in the Confederation military five years ago with considerable controversy. The controversy was not due to any scandalous behavior or political shenanigans, but rather because most of his friends and colleagues had thought it a scandal in and of itself that someone with as much talent and opportunity as Dargo Pearce would retire in the prime of his career.
He had served as the commander of the elite 102nd Special Services Group (SSG) for over two years with distinction, been promoted to full-bird Colonel and was widely considered to be on the fast track to his first star. Therefore the deci
sion to retire seemingly out of nowhere just before getting promoted to Brigadier General took a lot of people by surprise.
In reality, Pearce hadn’t retired at all, but rather been tapped for an off-the-books task force by people who realized that Dargo Pearce’s exceptional talents shouldn’t go wasted behind a desk, no matter how effective of a leader and strategist he was. At 36 years old, he was simply too valuable an asset for that track. Pearce was an exceptional soldier as well as a brilliant thinker, a combination the made him one of the deadliest men in the known galaxy. Sidelining him was out of the question.
Privately, even though Pearce knew that he was doing plenty of good where he was, he agreed and jumped at the opportunity when it was offered to him. He had spent the last few years as a member of the small team known as Omega to the few that were aware of its existence, engaged in some of the most challenging missions of his life. That was saying a lot considering his nearly two decades of prior service.
This mission might take the cake for the craziest, though.
At its core the mission was a simple assassination, officially an Eliminate Target Of Interest op (ETOI to the mission planners). The target, some SepF terrorist commander, was lightly defended and in a known location.
The difficulty lay in getting to that location covertly. Nouveau Toronto was a small colony of only a few hundred thousand adventurous souls, far outside of Confederation controlled space. While this was not technically enemy territory, it was certainly hostile. This would normally not be a problem for Pearce, as he was a master of disguise and fluent to a native degree in all of the major languages his possible enemies could speak.
Nouveau Toronto was also extremely isolationist, however. Unlike other independent worlds, they refused to trade with the Confederation at all. They held no diplomatic relations, and even interstellar relations with other independent systems were strictly limited. That made insertion a rather difficult proposition, and so Pearce had war-gamed various scenarios with the intel and planning group known simply as Control until the current plan had come to fruition.
Impact Event (Dargo Pearce Chronicles #1) Page 2