by Bob Blanton
“What would it take to change the slugs in the Foxes from polysteel to iron?”
“The railguns would need to be redesigned,” ADI said. “They cannot carry a sufficient charge to accelerate a slug of that mass and composition.”
“How difficult is the redesign?”
“You would simply need to change the rails,” ADI said. “They would need to be more massive and have larger superconductors embedded in them.”
“Okay, so we have a way to hurt them,” Admiral Michaels said, “but will that be enough?”
“We won’t know until we engage them,” Marc said. “I’m afraid we’re going to have to engage and adapt.”
“But first we need to build a carrier and enough Foxes that we even stand a chance,” Blake said.
“Building the carrier shouldn’t be hard,” Catie said. “It’s kind of like building the space station, and we’ve been doing that for a year.”
“But, as you pointed out, the space station has nice symmetrical geometry; that carrier is symmetrical, but its cross-sectional radius is continuously changing as you go down its length,” Liz said. “We can’t spin a set of plasma guns around and make it.”
“Oh, I’m sure I can figure out how to do it,” Catie said. She quickly did some calculations in her head before adding, “We can do something like we’re doing with the solar arrays. We should be able to create a shell in about six weeks.”
“If we can do that, we can open, or take the flight bay doors off and slide in preassembled sections,” Liz said. “That way, we’ll be able to finish it off a couple of months after the shell is ready.”
“Good, you two figure out how to make the carriers; we should aim for at least two,” Marc said.
“We have to print gravity drives,” Catie said. “We’re limited by the number of printers we have. I think we should dedicate one printer to make more printers.”
“How long does it take to make a printer?” Admiral Michaels asked.
“Four weeks.”
“We’ve only got four months to be ready.”
“But after four weeks, we’ll be back to the same production capacity; after twelve weeks, we’ll be caught up and have three times the capacity, and will still be adding a printer every four weeks,” Catie said.
“Okay, you’ve convinced me,” the admiral said. “Do we have what it takes to make the printer?”
“I’ve identified the material we need to acquire,” Fred said. “It’s available; some of it is quite rare, but we don’t need much.”
“What about Foxes?” Marc asked.
“Like I said, we can start ramping up production, but they’re slow. It’s those wings that cause such a problem.”
“Why do you need wings in space?” Nikola asked.
“You don’t, but they’re designed to fly both in space and atmosphere,” Blake said.
“But we could just remove the wings,” Catie said. “Add some simple extension to mount the thrusters and missiles on; then you could extrude the fuselage.”
“I’ll work with Fred on that,” Blake said. “We’ll come to you for help if we need it. We’ll change the railguns while we’re at it. How big a slug do you want the railguns to shoot?”
“ADI?”
“Captain, I recommend twenty-five millimeters for maximum energy and effect,” ADI said.
“Do we know why they are using an asteroid to transport the stasis pods?” Samantha asked.
“No,” Marc answered.
“Captain, I have a hypothesis,” ADI said. “I have not completed all of my analysis, but I am eighty percent confident that my hypothesis is correct.”
“Please tell us.”
“Based on the analysis from the scans we did as our sensors passed the asteroid, it appears that several of the structures housing the stasis pods are made up of a ship’s hull. The rest of them are made of polysteel. The gravity drives are also consistent with one of the larger cargo vessels used by the Paraxeans. I hypothesize that they started out with them in a very large vessel, and something happened which damaged that vessel beyond repair, forcing them to commandeer an asteroid to carry the pods,” ADI said.
“What could have done that?” Blake asked.
“It would have to have been a significant event,” ADI said. “The ship typically carries supplies and equipment sufficient to repair substantial damage.”
“Have you picked up any information in the Paraxean updates you receive?” Marc asked.
“Nothing in the updates have indicated that any mission such as this is underway,” ADI said. “I have not queried their systems for any information, as you have instructed.”
“I think we should stay with that for a while,” Samantha said. “We don’t want to risk tipping these guys off that we know they’re coming.”
“Okay,” Marc said. “We’ll wait.”
“Margaret arrives today,” Samantha said. “You’ll need to start working on your speech for the UN Security Council.”
“Oh joy,” Marc said. “We’ll meet each day for a short time to keep everyone in the loop. You can tie in virtually if you need to, but I only want you to do that if it is impossible for you to actually make the meeting in person.” He looked directly at Catie as he added the last part. Catie just smiled at her father.
◆ ◆ ◆
“How’s your speech going?” Admiral Michaels asked Marc as the board gathered the next morning.
“It’s going, do you want to write it?” Marc asked.
“Nope, I’ve always hated giving speeches, especially to a hostile audience.”
“Ah, they won’t be hostile,” Blake said. “Everybody loves to hear about an alien invasion; add on top of that that we have been sitting on alien technology for a few years, and they’re going to love you.”
“Thanks, Blake. I can always count on you to cheer me up.”
“That’s what I’m here for.”
“Everyone’s here, so let’s do the update and get out of here,” Marc said. “Blake, how’s the new fighter going?”
“Per the suggestions, we went back and created a fighter where everything can be extruded, so it’s fast to build,” Blake said as he brought the image of the new fighter design up on the display. The fighter looked like a giant arrow with a bubble poking out of the shaft.
“That doesn’t look like I expected,” Marc said. “Why the wings and that bubble on top?”
“Style,” Blake said. “We want the pilots to like their jets, so a little extra to make them look cool is important. Now, before you object, let me explain. The wings are extrudable; we just put an angle on them so we can attach them to form the arrow; it doesn’t take any longer to extrude them than it would some simple round arm. The bubble is the cockpit; it has to be separate so that it can be ejected if the jet blows up, so we just make a hole for it when we extrude the fuselage, then pop it in.”
“I like it,” Catie said. “I was worried it would look like a flying log; this isn’t so bad.”
“It only takes a little more material,” Blake said. “We also increased the hull thickness and the density of the superconductor mesh. That increases its survivability by thirty percent. It carries the same number of missiles, lasers, and plasma cannons. The railgun handles the iron slugs, and we’ve increased the power of the thrusters to make it more maneuverable. Catie gave us a way to make the nosecone so that we can extrude it also, and we had to have a nosecone either way.”
“Okay, so what’s our production capacity?” Marc asked.
“Our limiting factor will be the avionics and the internal displays,” Blake said. “We’ve been getting them from French suppliers.”
“Don’t put displays in,” Catie said. “The pilots can see everything in their HUDs, and nobody looks at them anyway. You have to have the avionics, but you can drop all the atmospheric ones.”
“We’ve already simplified the avionics, but good idea about the display,” Blake said. “So, the main bottleneck will be
producing fusion plants for them.”
“I’ve done the analysis on that with ADI; we should be able to make them fast enough. We’ll dedicate one printer, and make them in batches of twenty-five,” Fred said.
“Excellent job, guys. Catie and Liz, how are you doing on the carrier?”
“We’ve figured out how to make the hull in less than six weeks. We’re going to make two big printers and run them opposite each other to make the two halves; we’ll start one; then once it’s out of the way, the second one will start up and make the other half as a continuous piece,” Catie said.
“If it was insane for the Paraxeans to print their ships, why is it smart for us to?” Marc asked.
“Because we’re going to make a smart printer,” Catie said. “It’s really more like a plotter, able to move the plasma guns in both x and y directions. That way, we only trace the edge of the hull with the guns. If we run eight pairs of guns on each printer, we can do a hull in thirty-six days. The pairs run on opposite sides of the hull, one doing the top half and the other the bottom half. One printer prints the front half, the other the back half. And yes, we ran simulations with ADI.”
“We’ll build as much of the interior as we can while the hulls are extruding,” Liz said. “Then once the hull is done, we go in, add the ribs, then slide the pieces into place. That will give us eighty percent of the interior, then we finish the last twenty percent in place. Our big bottlenecks are the grav drives, and the DI to run the ship. We have the printer time allocated to them. We’ve finished ANDI, so we have a separate DI for Sakira, so he or ADI can actually run the carriers if we can’t make a DI for them. We’re prioritizing the main memory and computer circuits, plus the interface. We’ll add the DI last if we’re able to finish them in time.”
“Do we have the material we need to build all this?” Marc asked.
“I talked with our miners yesterday,” Blake said. “They told me no sweat, they’ll run double shifts. When Catie’s new asteroids show up, they’ll double up and work on them at the same time. We have the Oryx capacity if we stop lifting stuff from Earth. That will slow down the build-out for the station, but I think we’re all willing to live with that.”
“We need the material to make the new printers,” Catie said.
“I’ve got the response from my inquiries; the materials are available, we just need a little help acquiring them,” Fred said.
“What kind of help?”
“Between Japan, China, the US, and the EU, most of it is tied up, so you’ll have to convince one or more of them to let some of it go,” Fred said.
“I’ll be asking for help when I talk to the Security Council,” Marc said. “Good job on the carriers, ladies. Kal, I don’t know if we’ll have to do any boarding actions, but we need to be prepared.”
“We’re working on it,” Kal said. “Catie lit a fire under us about our microgravity skills, so we’ve put a training program in place to work on them. We’re getting excellent results. I’ve got a few guys that used to be Navy Seals; they’ll know a lot about boarding actions.”
“Admiral, anything you need or want to tell us?”
“I’m working through scenarios; the more I know about what we have to work with the better I can plan, and when I have something that looks real, I’ll bring it here for review.”
“Okay, then back to work.”
Chapter 20
The UN Speech
“Mr. President, Excellencies, Ladies, and Gentlemen, I wish to thank you for agreeing to hear from me,” Marc said to open his speech to the UN Security Council. “I bring you dire news that will affect the fate of the entire planet.” Marc paused as there was a series of outbursts from the various members.
“Please, if you will give me a moment, I will be able to make clear the reason for such a pronouncement. If you would focus your attention on the display.” Marc motioned to Ambassador Hannaford, who turned the display on. Then he used his specs to bring the first image up. It was a picture of the Paraxean fleet.
“What you see is an invasion force from a world called Paraxea. In a moment, I’ll explain how I know that, but first, let me apprise you of what it entails. The two largest vessels are essentially spacecraft carriers; between them, they are bringing approximately fifteen hundred fighters to pit against us. The third vessel is a battleship; it is what has brought me here. It is capable of bombarding the planet from orbit, delivering two hundred megatons of devastation onto any target on the surface with unlimited retargeting capability. As you well know, that is enough to obliterate any city in the world. Now you can see why I’ve come here.”
“How do we know that is real?” the American ambassador demanded.
“I will be providing proof if you will allow me,” Marc said. He waited for another five minutes before the room settled down.
“As many of you have suspected, MacKenzie Discoveries came across an alien spaceship. We were able to salvage several things from it, most importantly, its main computer core. Based on material samples gathered from the wreck, and from data recovered from the computer core, we have been able to replicate much of their technology here on Earth.” Marc paused as the room again erupted in chaos.
“Please, please! I know this is all hard to believe, but let me demonstrate!” Marc said. While he waited for the room to settle, he walked over to the terrace door and opened it. He had used one of their surveillance pucks to disable the alarm earlier. He’d had to sneak it in, having it crawl around the x-ray machine, before it slipped back into his bag. With the door open, he used his specs to guide a small drone into the room. He’d had Catie make it specifically for this presentation. It had gravity drives powered by capacitors; the charge would only last one hour, but that should be long enough for this demonstration.
Once the representatives saw the 1.5-meter ball float into the room, there was another uproar. “What is that thing?” demanded the French ambassador, the current president of the council.
“It is a small drone I had made to demonstrate the technology that the Paraxean fleet possesses,” Marc said. “As you can see, it is able to maneuver without any apparent propulsion. It uses a gravimetric drive. Feel free to examine it.”
Marc put the drone in hover mode and stood back as some of the braver members of the council walked over to it. The Chinese ambassador placed his hand on the top of it and pushed down. When it didn’t move, he used both hands, and then he placed his chest against it and brought all his weight to bear. Since he was a slight man, the drone had no problem supporting his weight. The Russian ambassador, emboldened by the Chinese ambassador’s attempts, moved in and took his place. The Russian was significantly heavier than the Chinese ambassador, and after putting his entire weight onto the drone, he was able to force it to the floor. As he lifted his weight off of the drone, it moved back into its hover location. The Russian ambassador then pushed the drone from the side. He was able to move it easily, but the drone circled around him and returned to its original position.
“The same technology is being used to drive those ships I showed you,” Marc said. “When they enter the solar system, the concentration of gravimetric waves will be sufficient for them to start accelerating toward Earth. The asteroid that we’ve been tracking also has these drives on it, and it will be able to accelerate along with the ships.”
“How can they possibly move an asteroid?” asked the Chinese ambassador.
“These drives are very powerful; when scaled up, they can easily move an asteroid,” Marc said.
“How can you be sure of that?”
“Because we’ve done it ourselves,” Marc said. He used his specs to change the display to an image of the three asteroids that MacKenzie Discoveries had moved into the Earth’s orbital path. The last two had not made it into orbit yet.
“This is where we have been getting the material to build our space station,” Marc said.
“This is preposterous!” the American ambassador said.
�
�Based on the records we uncovered, the original mission of the spacecraft we discovered was simply one of exploration and study. However, the records show an attempted mutiny by the second in command. The mutiny was thwarted, and the leader and his coconspirator were killed, but it rendered the spacecraft inoperable and unmanned, which is how I found it. Our goal on finding the ship was to use the technology to balance out the world income disparity, to solve climate change, and to prepare Earth for the eventual return of the Paraxeans.”
Marc uses his specs to change to the next image, which showed the surface of the asteroid. “They are using the asteroid as a cargo ship. Our analysis shows that during their voyage here, something catastrophic happened to their cargo ship or ships. They commandeered this asteroid and moved the cargo to its surface so they could continue their journey here. Most of those structures hold stasis pods; we calculate that the likelihood is that there are over one million pods on that asteroid. They are coming to colonize us.”
Marc signaled for the drone to exit via the door. It had to push the handle and the door open; then the Lynx’s pilot took over the control and guided the drone into the Lynx’s cargo bay.
“I am going to pause here. I will return tomorrow to answer questions and discuss the options we have to defend ourselves.”
◆ ◆ ◆
“Should we believe him?” the president asked.
“It does explain the sudden explosion of technology they’ve experienced,” Director Lassiter said.
“That drone was incredible,” Ambassador Rasmussen said.
“Should we have him arrested?” Chief of Staff Meadows asked.
“We can’t do that, he has diplomatic immunity,” Secretary Palmero said.
“No, we need him right now,” the president said. “Now you two,” the president said, turning his anger toward Director Lassiter and Defense Secretary Barrows, “I told you something was going on, now you see what I meant! Now go find out what you can; we may still be able to turn this to our advantage, but I need facts!”