by Bob Blanton
“Why?” Samantha asked.
“We’ll eventually need them, and if we’re going all the way out to the belt, we might as well get them now,” Catie said.
“I think she just wants to do another asteroid mission,” Blake said. “She’s turned into a glory hound.”
“That too,” Catie admitted. “But, I really do think we should bring more resources closer to Earth.”
“Oh, I agree with you,” Blake said. “I was just trying to yank your chain.”
“Who goes?” Marc asked.
“Same team as last time,” Blake said. “Catie, Liz, and Natalia. No reason to train another team.”
Catie looked at Samantha, who shook her head no.
“What’s the hurry?” Admiral Michaels asked. “It’s a couple of years away.”
“No it isn’t,” Catie said.
“How so?” Admiral Michaels asked. “NASA says it’s at fifty-five AUs and doing about ten AUs per year.”
“But when it gets inside of fifty AUs, it will be able to use gravity drives if it has them. So, it’ll be able to accelerate,” Catie said. “I don’t know why it’s not traveling faster than it is, but it will enter our gravity well in six months, and then it will be able to do a few tenths of a G acceleration.”
“But if it has gravity drives, why isn’t it going faster?” Blake asked. “It should have built up more speed when it left their system.”
“Maybe they had to leave Paraxea quietly and were outside its gravity well before they could build up a lot of speed,” Samantha said.
“Maybe, we won’t know until we look,” Marc said. “So, who else, Catie?”
“We could take Morgan to help,” Catie said. “If we’re going for two asteroids, we can get one ready while we’re waiting for our spy asteroid to come back.”
“Take enough that you can bring two asteroids back and still send the spy asteroid for a flyby and have it come here without it coming back to you,” Marc said. “We don’t want to risk them watching it change course.”
“We need the gravity drives from the asteroids. Those are the only big ones we have,” Catie said. “We can push around the asteroids we’re mining with an Oryx if we need to.”
“Okay, I’ll ask the miners to send them over on the next Oryx,” Marc said. “Anything else?”
“I’ll work with ADI to make the observation station,” Catie said. “It shouldn’t take too long. We might want to steal a few things from the Sakira.”
“Take what you need. This stays within this room,” Marc admonished everyone. “We don’t want to get people excited until we know more.”
“Yes, sir!”
“Keep thinking, let us know if we missed anything, but no brainstorming outside the group,” Marc added. He rubbed his face with his hand and let out a big sigh, then mumbled, “It never gets easier.”
Chapter 16
Asteroid Mission II
Catie spent two days getting ready for the mission. She had to go to the surface to get the telescope and a sensor array from the Sakira; she and ADI decided it would be the best fit for their needs. She also grabbed a couple of other items that would be useful. Then they loaded the Lynx and headed out. This time there was no fanfare, just a few hugs and goodbyes before they left Delphi Station.
“How long will it take us to get there?” Natalia asked.
“Three days,” Catie said.
“That’s faster than last time,” Natalia said.
“I’m not stopping for microgravity training this time,” Catie said. “We’ve all had plenty of experience. I think two days to get our spy asteroid ready to launch, then a day each on the other two asteroids before we head back.”
“No side trips?” Morgan asked.
“Unfortunately, no,” Catie said. “I want to be home when the spy asteroid passes.”
“So do I,” Liz said. “I sure hope this is nothing more than a harmless planet-killer asteroid.”
“That doesn’t sound too harmless,” Morgan said.
“If it’s just an asteroid, we can handle it,” Liz said. “If there’s something more to it, then it might be more than we can handle.”
◆ ◆ ◆
“This is going to be more difficult than the last ones,” Catie said as she led Morgan, Liz, and Natalia down to the asteroid ADI had selected.
“Why?”
“We need to bury everything,” Catie said. “That means we have to dig out big holes to put the drives and reactor in.”
“And we’re burying them because?” Liz asked.
“We don’t want anything about the asteroid to be interesting to Paraxeans,” Catie said. “We don’t want any of the exotic material in the drives or reactor to show up on scans.”
“You think they would grab it for just that little bit of material?” Liz asked.
“You never know. If there are Paraxeans behind that asteroid, they might be running short of critical material, or they might be interested to know why the asteroid flying by them shows as having the exact combination of material to make a gravity drive.”
“But how do we bury them?” Natalia asked. “There’s not enough gravity to keep things in place.”
“We save as much of the material that comes out of the hole as we can,” Catie said. “I brought some stuff we can use as glue when we put it back in.”
“What is that?”
“A silicate and petroleum mix. We just melt it down over the other stuff and then let it freeze.”
“Now I know why you brought me,” Morgan said. Although she wasn’t as big as Natalia, Morgan made Liz and Catie look like little girls in comparison.
“Well, we did need some extra muscle,” Catie said.
It took them half a day to dig out the hole for the reactor. Catie had them set it right away since she didn’t want to take a chance that the material they’d excavated would get lost. They had the reactor in place with four cables extending from it, three for the gravity drives, and one for the observation post.
“Okay, bury it,” Catie said.
“How much?” Natalia asked.
“Just get it covered first, then we’ll put some of our glue on it,” Catie said. “Natalia, why don’t you and Morgan bring those bags from the hold. Liz and I can shovel dirt.”
“How many bags?”
“I don’t know, so let’s start with four,” Catie said.
In the end, it took six bags to bury the reactor sufficiently that ADI didn’t get a signal from her test scan.
“Okay, let’s take a break for lunch, then we need to set one of the drives today. They’re smaller, so it should go faster.”
That night, Catie and Liz made dinner, while Natalia and Morgan got their showers and rested up. Catie thought it was only fair since they had done most of the hard work.
“Nice spread,” Morgan said. “I was wondering if we’d be eating sandwiches while we weren’t accelerating.”
“Sam figured out all the tricks to cooking without gravity on the last trip,” Catie said. “We all got lessons from her.”
“She was pretty good about it, but she wasn’t willing to do all the cooking,” Liz said.
“Well, she had to watch the twins,” Catie said.
“Twins?” Morgan asked. “Don’t tell me you took those two little monsters on the last mission.”
“We did,” Catie said. “They were a lot of fun, but a lot of work as well. And why are you calling them monsters?”
“They ran my ass into the ground on that obstacle course,” Morgan said.
“That doesn’t make them monsters,” Liz said.
“No, but the way they enjoyed it does,” Morgan said.
“They can be a little heartless,” Natalia said. “Last time I worked out with them, they ran me into a wall.”
“That’s what Kal wants them to do,” Catie said.
“And they do it well, and with relish,” Morgan said. “Hence, they’re little monsters.”
Catie laughed
while thinking of the last time she’d tried to catch one of the twins. She was getting better, but you’d swear you were having to chase two of them. After one of Kal’s men had refused to believe he was just chasing one of them, they had started making them wear different color shipsuits. It was amazing how they could bounce between two walls and exit the passage traveling parallel to one of the walls.
The next day they set the other two gravity drives. “How long before it gets us a picture of the target?” Liz asked as they sent the spy asteroid on its way.
“ADI, how long?” Catie asked.
“Sixteen days, four hours,” ADI answered.
“Why so long?” Liz asked.
“We have to send it out on an elliptical orbit, so it looks like it’s in a natural orbit around the sun,” Catie said. “First, it has to travel along the asteroid belt to get to the right place to start out, and then it has to go beyond Neptune’s orbit before it can start toward Thalia. It’s just a long way to go. We’re really accelerating it fast to get there; then we have to slow it down to the right speed. We’re counting on the fact that it’s so small the Paraxeans won’t notice it.”
“So, we’ll be home before we know anything,” Natalia said.
“Right.”
The four women were exhausted when they finally headed home.
“Three days before I get a bubble bath,” Natalia said.
“Oh, that sounds nice,” Morgan said. “That shower is nice, but my muscles are screaming for a good hot soak.”
“I might soak for a week,” Natalia said.
“You’ll be a prune if you do.”
“But I’ll be a relaxed prune.”
They all laughed at that.
Three days later, when Catie docked the Lynx with Delphi Station, the four women barely said hello to anyone before they were locked in their bathrooms for the next few hours.
◆ ◆ ◆
“Hey, Sweetie,” Marc said when Catie finally came out of the bathtub.
“Hi, Daddy,” Catie said.
“Hard mission?”
“Long, and lots of work, I’m still sore.”
“Well, ADI says we’re getting a good signal from the asteroid. All systems are working as expected.”
“That’s good. But it’s still ten days before we know anything.”
“Yes, we’ll have some idea in nine days, because the spy satellite will be over Thalia’s horizon.”
“True, just depends on what’s there.”
“So are you ready to go to dinner with Sam and Blake to celebrate the success of your mission?”
“Is my crew invited?”
“Of course.”
“Then yes. Where are we going?”
“Deogene’s”
“Now?”
“As soon as you’re dressed.”
“Okay, I’ll let everyone know,” Catie said.
“I already have,” Marc replied.
Chapter 17
Waiting and Waiting
“What’s up with the Russians?” Catie asked as she sat down to breakfast with her father, Uncle Blake, and Samantha the next day.
“It’s mostly been quiet,” Samantha said. “They made a few protests about the sudden disappearance of all their spy satellites.”
“What did we say?” Catie asked.
“We offered to go look for them if they would tell us where they were supposed to be,” Samantha said.
“How’s Meg doing?” Catie asked.
“She’s enjoying the job,” Samantha said. “Wasn’t too happy with Ambassador Lobanov’s threats, but he seems to have a lot less bluster lately.”
“What about the U.S.?”
“No real movement there. Admiral Michaels says that things are quiet, but there have been no overtures toward us.”
“What price are you going to ask for access to the fusion reactors?” Blake asked.
“Denuclearization,” Marc said.
“What about China?”
“Same thing; after the first twelve, we’ll start demanding a reciprocal level of denuclearization for each reactor, starting with their ballistic submarines,” Marc said.
“Do you expect a problem?” Catie asked.
“We’ve gotten positive signals from the ambassador,” Samantha said, “especially after that meteorite hit Iwaki Island. I think all the major powers got that message.”
“Good,” Catie said.
◆ ◆ ◆
“Gawd, another six days,” Catie said as she and Liz got ready for their run.
“It’s just six days,” Liz said. “Just keep doing what you would if there wasn’t some big asteroid that might be hiding a Paraxean fleet heading for Earth.”
“Oh, now that helps take my mind off of it.”
“There’s nothing to do but to keep doing what we’ve been doing. Did you hear that Blake is going to extrude another hub starting tomorrow?”
“Yeah, we talked about it. He wants more room to make space fighters, might as well make a hub while he’s at it. He’s only going to do the inside shell.”
“Then how’s he going to connect it to section one?”
“He’ll make the endcaps and the magnetic bearings. Later, when they do the outer hub, they’ll extrude it down around the inner hub, then extend the endcaps to lock it in place.”
“How many laps are we running?” Liz asked.
“Two,” Catie said. “Five-minute pace.” With the outer ring being one thousand meters in diameter, that meant they would be running 6.28 kilometers, just under four miles, in twenty minutes.
“I hear the twins are coming up tomorrow,” Liz said. “That should take your mind off of the waiting.”
“Or make it seem that much longer,” Catie said. She and Liz both laughed at that thought as they picked up their pace.
◆ ◆ ◆
“Hi, Sophia,” Catie said as she joined her at the table for lunch.
“Hi, Catie, where have you been?”
“I’ve been around, just busy.”
“You look antsy,” Sophia said. “Kind of like my father. Do you know why he’s so nervous lately?”
“I didn’t know he was.”
“Liar.”
“No, really,” Catie said. “Might be the stuff with the Russians. We’re all wondering if they’re going to behave themselves or start attacking our freighters again.”
“Why would they stop?”
“Because Daddy dropped them a note,” Catie said as she dropped a piece of ice from her glass onto the table.
“What do you mean, dropped them a note?”
“He demonstrated what a meteorite that is dropped from orbit can do when it hits the earth.”
“Oh, that doesn’t sound very nice.”
“Well, sinking a freighter with people on it isn’t very nice either.”
“But they didn’t sink a freighter.”
“Not yet, but they blew up their own boat and killed the pirates that were working for them. Clearly, they didn’t care about lives.”
“I guess not, so did they get the message?”
“There haven’t been any more attacks,” Catie said, “but it’s still early.”
Chapter 18
What Is That?
Marc had instructed ADI not to allow anyone, including himself, to view the footage from the spy asteroid until the meeting he had called for Tuesday, March 17th.
“How did this all line up for Saint Patrick’s Day?” Blake asked as they all assembled in the boardroom.
“I have no idea, I never even thought of Saint Patrick’s Day while the timeline was working itself out,” Marc said. “Are you going to switch to Irish Whiskey in honor of the occasion?”
“I just happen to have a bottle of fifteen-year-old Redbreast,” Blake said. “I hope one is enough.”
“So do I,” Marc said.
“Does that mean you really haven’t seen any of the data?” Blake asked.
“Hey, two days wasn’t going to m
ake a difference, and I figured that the only way any of us was going to get any rest is if I made it clear that there would be no way to get a preview.”
“Didn’t Catie find a way around your gag order?”
“No!” Catie said. “I tried, but it was airtight.”
“I hope you didn’t waste too much time trying,” Samantha said.
“Just a few hours. ADI told me I didn’t have a prayer.”
“Good for her. Now do we finally get to see what we came here for?” Samantha asked.
“I’ve asked ADI to make a presentation,” Marc said. “ADI, please proceed.”
“Yes, Captain,” ADI said. An image came up on the display.
“Oh my god,” Samantha said.
“What you are seeing are two Paraxean carriers and what you would call a Paraxean battleship,” ADI said. “The carriers are five hundred meters in length, two hundred meters wide and one hundred sixty-four meters tall. They can each carry four hundred fifty FX4s in a battle-ready configuration and a thousand or more in a transportation configuration.”
“What about that battleship?” Admiral Michaels asked.
“The battleship is designed around four plasma cannons. Each has its own antimatter reactor. They are capable of delivering a pulse that even through a planet’s atmosphere would yield the equivalent of one hundred megatons.”
“Antimatter reactor?” the admiral asked.
“Later,” Marc said.
“What else does it do?” the admiral asked.
“It also has a railgun that can deliver large projectiles at very high velocity; the yield would be equivalent to two hundred megatons.”
“Oh my god,” Samantha repeated.
“It has lasers and close-defense plasma cannons, but its true purpose is to destroy other ships or to bombard a planet,” ADI said.
“How do you stop one of those?” Blake asked.
“Unknown,” ADI said. “Another battleship could potentially stop it, but there is no recorded case of one of them being destroyed. The Husari, the civilization that designed them, only used one once during their civil war. They used it to subdue their sister planet that was trying to break away from them. It took the destruction of five cities before the planet surrendered.”