by Bob Blanton
Table of Contents
Chapter 1 Should We Worry?
Chapter 2 Back to Normal
Chapter 3 Station Tour
Chapter 4 Humble Pie
Chapter 5 The Chinese Ambassador
Chapter 6 Christmas in Space, Not!
Chapter 7 Moving ADI
Chapter 8 Board Meeting – Jan 6th
Chapter 9 Good from Pain
Chapter 10 Space Manufacturing
Chapter 11 Damn Pirates
Chapter 12 Visitors
Chapter 13< Board Meeting – Feb 3rd
Chapter 14 More Pirates
Chapter 15 Whose Asteroid?
Chapter 16 Asteroid Mission II
Chapter 17 Waiting and Waiting
Chapter 18 What Is That?
Chapter 19 We Need a Plan
Chapter 20 The UN Speech
Chapter 21 The Buildup
Chapter 22 The Big Lie
Chapter 23 The Sendoff
Chapter 24 Is He Insane?
Chapter 25 Final Preparations
Chapter 26 Standoff
Chapter 27 First Engagement
Chapter 28 The Battle Begins
Chapter 29 Secret Weapon
Chapter 30 Coup de Grâce
Chapter 31 Oops!
Afterword
Acknowledgments
Delphi Publishing
Copyright © 2019 Robert D. Blanton
Cover by Momir Borocki
[email protected]
All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the publisher except for the use of brief quotations in a book review. Printed in the United States of America First Printing, 2019.
This is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to actual persons living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.
https://www.facebook.com/StarshipSakira/
Chapter 1
Should We Worry?
“What’s the update on the asteroid?” Marc McCormack asked at the premeeting with his inner circle.
His brother Blake, his partner in MacKenzie Discoveries, who had been with him when he found the dormant alien starship off the coast of Hawaii; his daughter Catie, who came to visit and discovered their discovery; Samantha Newman, the company lawyer and Delphi’s Minister of Foreign Affairs; and Liz Farmer, a former Marine helicopter pilot and one of their security specialists, as well as Catie’s close friend, rounded out those present.
“NASA says it will intersect the Earth’s orbit in 3.5 years,” Catie said.
“That seems like plenty of time to deal with it,” Marc said.
“We are seeing some panic; the doomsayers are out in force,” Samantha said. “Do you think we should tell the governments that we can take care of it?”
“I don’t want to expose the fact that we found the Sakira,” Marc said. “We’re still maintaining the fiction that we’ve developed all this technology on our own. It’s a stretch, but the truth is too far a jump for the establishment.”
“We can monitor the situation for now,” Blake said. “If it gets out of hand, we can decide if we should step in.”
“ADI says there is only a five percent chance that it hits Earth,” Catie said, “and only an eight percent chance that it disturbs Earth’s orbit.” ADI, Advanced Digital Intelligence, served as Sakira’s shipboard computer.
“Good, then we can wait,” Marc said.
“Masina, would you show the others in,” Marc asked his admin over the comm.
Masina showed the other members of the board into the boardroom. Then she collected the dishes from the breakfast eaten by the inner circle, their excuse for meeting early, so it wouldn’t be too obvious they weren’t sharing everything with the rest of the board.
“Good morning, everyone,” Marc said as they entered the boardroom. It had been four days since the Russians had tried to take over Delphi City. “Kal, can you tell us what we’ve learned so far?”
“As I explained last week, the Russians were fishing off the edge of the city, bringing up yellowfin tuna. Their Russian friends on the fishing boat had caught the tuna earlier. They had gutted them and then inserted the weapons and grenades and sewed them back up. A diver then swam the twelve miles to the city underwater, pulling the fish behind him. He attached them to the hooks and let the Russians sitting on the edge pull them in,” reported Kal Kealoha, head of security for Delphi Nation.
“Why didn’t we pick that up?” Marc asked.
“It just looked like a school of fish to the sonar, so the system didn’t flag it. We have modified the software so that whenever a school of fish enters the area, it alerts security. We’ve also raised the sensitivity for metal detection. I’d like to get some underwater drones that we can send out to verify the school is truly fish,” Kal said.
“Okay, talk with Catie, I’m sure she’ll love the challenge,” Marc said, giving his daughter a smile.
“Why didn’t they bring the arms in earlier?” Admiral Michaels asked. The admiral had immigrated to Delphi after he ran afoul of the U.S. President and whoever was pushing the president to eliminate Delphi as a source of technology that would shift the balance of power away from energy companies.
“We probably would have detected the TNT and the gunpowder on our sensors,” Kal replied. “We monitor all the recirculated air in the buildings, and they must have assumed we would detect any attempt to hide them outside.”
“So, what else are you changing?” Blake asked.
“First, we’re putting active scanners on the edge of the city. They’ll check anything that comes over the side. Second, we’re running various scenarios on how to defeat our measures. I’m building a Zulu team to play the bad guys. It will be a permanent team. Their full-time job will be to defeat our security systems,” Kal said.
“Require them to attempt one infiltration per month,” Blake said. “Embarrass them when they fail. That’ll motivate them to work harder.”
“That’s the plan,” Kal said. “I’d like to add a couple of engineers to the team. They would only have to work with the team part-time.”
“That’s smart,” Blake said. “Fred, do we have any engineers in the squadron?”
“Sure, I’ll check around and get back to Kal,” Fred said. Fred was one of their pilots, and coordinated most of the production activity for MacKenzie Discoveries.
“Thanks,” Kal said.
“Admiral, I assume the fusion announcement had something to do with this,” Marc said. Seven weeks before the Russian op occurred, Marc had announced that his company had created a sustainable fusion reaction. Of course, already having one from the alien spaceship he’d discovered eighteen months ago had helped them perfect it long before Earth’s scientists could.
“I’m sure it affected the timing,” Admiral Michaels said. “But their agents in Delphi City were in place over a week before the announcement. And that means the planning was done months ago. But I’m sure it is the same root cause, the threat to the value of their petroleum reserves. The batteries and fuel cells are already impacting the price of oil; announcing a working fusion reactor would have raised the urgency of their plan.”
“What’s the story on the diver?” Marc asked.
“Still not talking; we’ve put him in the jail we threw together on the airport. He and the Russians from the ship are enjoying each other’s company,” Kal said.
“What about the surviving commandos?” Blake asked.
“Dr. Metra informed me that she’s bringing the woman out of the medical coma today,” Kal said. “She had some pretty serious injuries. The guy had too much brain damage and didn’t make it.”
“Yeah, being next t
o a grenade when it goes off will do that to you,” Blake said.
“Anything else?” Marc asked.
◆ ◆ ◆
“How is our prisoner?” Marc asked.
“Cer McCormack, she is stable,” Dr. Metra said. Marc was taken aback by her use of his last name, instead of the more familiar Cer Marc that everyone used. Clearly, she was distraught that he had not allowed her to replace the prisoner’s lost leg. Marc was not very sympathetic since the prisoner had lost the leg when the Russian infiltration team she was part of had thrown a grenade at the security detail and a group of teenagers. The fact that the one throwing the grenade had been shot, letting the second grenade fall at her feet was all that had saved the teenagers from being killed.
“Can we talk to her?” Kal asked.
“Of course,” Dr. Metra said.
“She’s really pissed,” Kal said as Dr. Metra left without another word.
“She’ll get over it,” Marc said. “I’m not ready to waste printer time on some Russian mercenary.”
They entered the patient’s room as the door unlocked automatically, recognizing Kal’s comm signal. The patient, a woman, was sitting up in the bed with her eyes closed. Her face was haggard, her skin still showed the burns that Dr. Metra was treating. The doctor was regrowing the skin from the bottom layer upward using nanites to replace the tissue. It took longer than grafting new skin on, but the result was better; the patient wouldn’t have any scarring, and there would be no risk of rejection.
“The doctor says you’re recovering well,” Marc said.
“Blin, why don’t you just shoot me,” the woman said.
“We don’t shoot prisoners,” Marc said, “even after they commit acts of terror.”
“Ach, that was that idiot, Svetlana,” the woman said. “Her and her grenades, how stupid. It only causes more problems. What happened to the teenagers?”
“They are okay,” Kal said. “One of my people caught the grenade in his helmet and fell on it.”
“I’m sorry,” she said.
“What’s your name?” Kal asked.
“Marta.”
“So, Marta, who sent you, the FSB, the SVR?”
“I don’t know, I just follow orders,” Marta said.
“What service do you work for?” Kal asked.
“I am what you call mercenary,” Marta said. “I was in army for ten years, but pay is not so good. So I join mercenary team.”
“The same mercenaries that were in Crimea?” Marc asked.
“I was in Crimea,” Marta said. “Pay was good. Easy work.”
“The same job as here?”
“Yes, same job, but not so easy,” Marta said. “And now, no pay and no leg. Please just shoot me. I have nothing to go back to.”
“You have family, don’t you?” Kal asked.
“What family? I grow up in orphanage, join army, join mercenaries, nobody cares what happens to Marta,” she said. “What happen to fishing boat? You sink it?”
“No, we disabled their engines and power. It took them two days to surrender,” Kal said.
“Demitri must be furious,” Marta said. “He is not used to failure. If you send me to him, he will kill me. Then you no have blood on your hands.”
“He would kill you? Even when you’re in a wheelchair?” Marc asked.
“Sure, he is prisoner because my team fail. He not like being prisoner. What will you do with his men?” Marta asked.
“We don’t know what to do with them,” Kal said. “What will happen if we send them back to Russia?”
“Who knows? They might put them on trial for crimes, hang them,” Marta said. “Or maybe make them heroes for trying to save Russians from mob.”
◆ ◆ ◆
“What should we do with her?” Marc asked Kal after they left the prisoner’s room.
“I don’t know,” Kal said. “I’m sure she’s telling the truth about Demitri killing her. We could keep her here; I don’t think she has any special allegiance to Russia.”
“Tell Dr. Metra to go ahead and fix her up; we can discuss that later,” Marc said.
◆ ◆ ◆
“See, I said we should just take that city,” the president said. “It would have been a disaster if the Russians had succeeded.”
“Mr. President, if you were to order the taking of Delphi City without provocation, you would lose the election, and Congress would likely impeach you,” Walter Meadows, his chief of staff, said.
“They wouldn’t dare,” the president yelled.
“Your popularity is hovering at twenty percent, and even among your base, you’re only polling at fifty percent,” Meadows said. “We have yet to recover from the Admiral Morris debacle.”
“Sir, right now, Delphi Nation has broad support in the UN. We cannot afford to antagonize our allies,” Secretary of State Janet Palmero said. “We need to bring Delphi to our side, or we’ll be allowing the Chinese to pull them into their sphere.”
“That’s right,” Bill Lassiter, the Director of the CIA, said. “Besides, even if we seized Delphi City, we don’t have the resources to take their space station.”
“Without the city and that airport, we could starve them out,” the president said.
“I think another nation would give them landing rights,” Director Lassiter said, careful not to directly disagree with the president. “Then we would really be at a disadvantage. Right now, we are still the most powerful country in the world and have the largest economy. We can weather the shock from their introduction of nuclear fusion power.”
“Right now, we’re the most powerful country in the world, because we are the only large economy that is energy independent. We can apply our resources to better uses than importing energy,” the president said.
“We’re only ninety percent independent,” Secretary of Defense Barrows said. “If we could build a few of those fusion reactors, we could become a net exporter.”
“If we could!” the president said. “That idiot McCormack is bent on undermining our power!”
“I think he is focused on distributing economic wealth,” Director Lassiter said.
“The concentration of wealth is what makes us powerful,” the president snapped. “Do you really think Americans want to live like Mexicans? No, they like living in the wealthiest nation in the world.”
“I agree,” Meadows said. “That means we have to find a way to benefit from the technology Delphi is introducing. We need to find a way to get them to partner with us before someone else does.”
“Then you had better figure it out,” the president threatened. “Or we’ll have no choice but to seize control.”
“Yes, sir!”
Chapter 2
Back to Normal
“Hey Squirt,” Blake said as he entered Marc’s condo on Delphi City. “What are you doing?” He walked to the sideboard and poured himself a couple of fingers of Marc’s scotch. He waved to Marc and Samantha, who were preparing dinner in the kitchen.
“Working on the cargo distribution for the Oryxes for the week,” Catie said. She was lying on the floor, using it as a surface for the image that her HUD was displaying for her. “And you need to quit calling me squirt.”
Blake slid down onto the floor and leaned against the sofa. He mussed Catie’s hair a bit as he settled in. “That sounds boring. Come on, you’re really avoiding helping with dinner.”
“That too,” Catie admitted, “but I’m really trying to figure this out. We keep sending Oryxes up that are almost empty because we need them to take down the polyglass we’re manufacturing up there.”
“Typical problem,” Blake said. “Since we have the material we need for the polyglass up there, our shipments are unbalanced.”
“Yes, but it’s weight, not volume, that’s the problem. Our loads going up are mostly manufactured goods. We don’t need that much yet, and it’s bulky, so it doesn’t overload the Oryx. The polyglass is dense, so we hit the weight limit long before we fill an Ory
x up. We could balance the loads a lot better if we could carry more weight on the way down.”
“You can overload the Oryx a bit on the way down by managing the fuel load. A full load of fuel is as much as the cargo capacity, and you don’t need that much on the way down,” Blake suggested.
“I already did that,” Catie said. “We still have to send them down only thirty percent full. And the problem is going to get worse when we start manufacturing the solar panels.”
“You just have to find more stuff to bring up,” Blake said.
“Then we’re going to run out of Oryxes,” Catie said. “We could build more, but it doesn’t sound like a good solution.”
“That does seem to be a waste of resources,” Blake said.
“Could we make the runway longer?”
“It would help a little,” Blake said. “You could land at a higher speed, so you’d have more loft for the weight, but nobody can execute a perfect glide every time. Sooner or later your landing gear has to take the impact, and then all that extra weight will collapse it.”
“Could we beef up the landing gear?”
“It would help some, but then you’d just move the problem to the fuselage. It has to support the landing gear, so then you beef it up. Eventually, you’ve added so much weight that you’re defeating yourself,” Blake explained. “The problem is, when you land you have to absorb the impact where the landing gear attaches. You use support struts to help distribute the load, but there is a limit.”
“It would be nice if we could distribute the landing impact over the entire bottom of the Oryx,” Catie said. “Then we would be able to carry a lot more weight.”
“It’s considered really bad form to land without extending your landing gear first,” Blake said. “They generally call that a crash landing, even you would never land like that.”
Catie chewed on her lip for a bit, “But I have,” she said, her eyes danced with excitement.
“You have what?”
“Landed without extending the landing gear.”
“When . . . oh,” Blake said, his eyes going wide in recognition.
“Yeah, when I landed the Lynx on the water,” Catie said. “Couldn’t we do the same with the Oryx?”