Catherine Kimbridge Chronicles 2: Redemption (10 page)

Ken shifted in his seat. The command deck of the shuttle was cramped to say the least. In high orbit around Kepler-47b the
GCP Dante
was virtually undetectable with her cloaking systems engaged. The problem was that once she entered the atmosphere her cloak would become useless. Although she was built to take a beating, the
Dante
and her crew couldn't very well accomplish her rescue mission while fending off several thousand of the fighter drones that protected this planetary system.

The solution turned out to be deceptively
simple. A massive planet like Kepler-47b was a gravitational magnet for any number of passing asteroids. An asteroid so captured often entered deteriorating orbits, eventually becoming meteors as they entered the atmosphere. The
Dante
simply waited for a cluster of fragments to enter the atmosphere. As the fragments decelerated due to atmospheric friction, kinetic energy was converted to heat. They quickly reached temperatures in excess of 1650C, becoming incandescent in the process.

The
Dante
maneuvered herself so that she could follow these glowing meteors deep into the planet's gravity well. Once deep enough, the thick curtain of the planet's atmosphere effectively hid the combat shuttle from any of the orbiting observers.

Sherry deftly guided the craft through the increasingly dense atmosphere.
Like Captain Valen she sought the relative calm of a storm's eye.  She entered a clockwise-rotating storm called an anticyclone vortex. With boundary wind speeds well in excess of six hundred kilometers an hour she had to fight to maintain control of the craft. After a rough sixty minutes the
Dante
crossed into the calmer air of the lower troposphere.

"Ok, we're down below the level our friends in orbit are likely able to scan. Which target are we heading to first?" Sherry asked Ken.

"Head to
Heidman-1,
" which was the designation he had worked out with Cat over their com links for the larger of the two pieces of the ill-fated starship.

"What's your plan once we get there? The atmospheric pressure around that
hull is 40 percent over the rated capacity of our encounter suits."

"I know," Ken said. "The Commodore and I have been discussing the possibilities over the
commlink.  We are just going to take a look-see and then drop off a couple of those Canadian Dextre robotic avatars."

"We should be there in about six or seven minutes depending on head winds. Do you want to brief the rest or shall I?" Sherry said while making a hasty grab for the console as a stray gust buffeted the shuttle.

Ken watched her scramble to the controls again. "You better just focus on the ship."  He then accessed his internal commlink and opened a channel to the entire crew of the shuttle.

"This is Commander Kirkland
. We are a few minutes out from the larger of the two
Heidman
crash sites. Both sites have active power signatures but we have been unable to establish communications with this particular location. We are going to try and establish a self-repairing, reinforced high-pressure airlock seal. This will take our nanite systems a good hour at least once we reach the site. This step is critical as the exterior pressure is well beyond what we can safely handle with our suits."

"I want Red team to take point. Launch your skiff and try to establish the linkup with the forward airlock. Gold team is going to deploy two of the Dextre robotic avatar units and then head over to
Heidman-2
. That is all, you have your orders. Kirkland out."

Ken turned to face his friend. "Sherry, I want you to keep the
Dante
warmed up and ready to move. If any of our little friends appear I want you to run interference. If it comes to it, buy us as much time as you can. Understood?"

"Do you expect trouble?"

"Always."

***

The hive mother watched the actions of the super-mind from the remote recesses of her consciousness. She was virtually powerless to control what was going on. She watched as her people, now little more that automatons, hollowed out several of the largest iron-nickel asteroids in the inner system. These spaces were filled with technology which a few months ago would have represented the greatest possible future for her people, but now represented the greatest possible shame.

There was very little she could do, but what she could, she would.
The hive super-mind had detected two energy signatures on the nest host world. One of these was in fact growing. The hive super-mind had determined a need to investigate. The hive mother could not override this determination but she could influence its priority. She did her best to de-prioritize this concern. Her hope was that whoever was responsible for that energy signature could use the time she was buying them to effect repairs and escape. 

Unbeknownst to the queen, a secondary thought stream within the super-mind was actively countering her every action. Already a task force was being established to deal with the invaders that survived on the nesting host world.

***

Cat chuckled. Now that the communication barrier with the
Buggers had been broken she found their guest to be a very engaging person. Rasta-Tckner was delightfully funny. It had been humorous to learn that
‘
sh
e
’ was in fact
a‘
he
.
’ When Cat had explained the origin of his nicknam
e‘
Cinnabo
n
’ the insectoid became suspiciously silent. When pressed, their guest finally conceded the smell they were commenting on was associated with two conditions: Extreme nervousness and a need to defecate... one usually leading to the other. Ricky Valen had a field-day with this information and the smell of cinnamon only made him laugh harder.

Cat and Rasta
-Tckner sat in a conference room with Captain Jeffries, his first officer Rudy and Ricky Valen. Rasta-Tckner was explaining what had happened to his people. The invaders had arrived a little over three months ago. At that time there were six habitable moons orbiting the nest host which is what Rasta's people called Kepler-47b. The actual name for the world was sacred and, like the name of the creator, could not be said. It seemed Rasta-Tckner's people shared a sense of the divine with many of the member races of the GCP. Cat was sure Ken would have a number of fascinating conversations with Rasta on the subject.

The invaders entered into orbit, just as the
Heidman
had, and within moments the most populous of the moons began to spiral out of orbit.  Although they never developed interstellar travel, the Hymenopterans, or Buggers, had had interplanetary space travel capability for the better part of a millennium. Much of the population from that moon was able to escape the doomed satellite before tidal forces caused it to break up during its descent into 47b's thick atmosphere.

Unfortunately
, much of their race literally lived in the clouds on 47b. They had constructed massive floating cities suspended by buoyant airships that never touched the surface of the planet. The altitude they floated at was controlled precisely to maintain the proper temperature and pressure for his people. The atmosphere at that level, about twenty-nine kilometers above the surface, was composed of primarily nitrogen and oxygen which meant it could be directly breathed with minimal need for environmental engineering.

As the first of the moons was destroyed by the invaders, this delicate balance was also destroyed. Turbulence and kinetic energy from the moon's demise caused most of the floating cities to be displaced within the atmospheric pressure column. Most of the cities either imploded if the
y descended too far or exploded if they were pushed too high. Less than 30 percent of the cloud-based population survived. As the next three largest moons were attacked and plummeted into the nest host the destruction of the millennium old floating cities was complete.

Finally only two nest moons remained
, and each of these began their descent as somehow their orbits were made to decay. The invaders disappeared as suddenly as they showed up. Then, just as suddenly, the orbits of the two moons stabilized. Rasta-Tckner had no idea how or why. Cat suspected the Heshe had stepped in. This was confirmed when Rasta let slip that the star patterns had changed.

As Rasta-Tckner relayed this information to the room, Captain Jeffries bowed his head. It was clear he was just now realizing the scope of the disaster that had befallen these people. He could not forget the attack on the
Heidman
but he could understand why it had occurred.

Ricky asked the question that was on everyone's mind.  "If your people had space travel capability, why were the floating cities
not abandoned?"

Rasta-Tckner explained that every effort was made to do so
but they just did not have the transportation assets to carry out such an evacuation.

The cities relied on a series of dual-purpose space-elevators that ran from the largest three moons into the planet's atmosphere. It was a brilliant design in which a tethered cable was lowered to the planet's gravity well from a position in orbit. The other end was then lowered into the moon's gravity well. This worked so long as the moon in question was like Earth's and tidally locked so that the same face always presented to the planet it was orbiting.

Traveling the space elevator provided a low cost means of moving between worlds. As an added bonus, the cables generated a considerable electrical potential by virtue of their interaction with the strong magnetic fields present. This energy provided the bulk of the needs for each of the three moons directly involved. To leave one of the floating cities, one simply traveled by dirigible to the nearest elevator cable which itself was traveling through the primary's atmosphere in sync with the orbiting moon to which it was attached.

When the invaders collapsed the orbits of the moons
, they also destroyed the chief means of escape for most of the population.  Those that had escaped joined in an unprecedented hive super-mind. The intent was to come up with a means of defending against the invaders.

Rasta-Tckner's people had never known war. It was an alien concept to them.
Unfortunately the hive was ill-equipped to defend themselves. The best they could do was swarm the enemy ships and relegate them to the same fate as the moons that were being destroyed.

They never determined how the moons were being attacked. Their physicists speculated that it had something to do with enhancing the spacial interaction of matter with what the humans called the Higgs field. The effect was to increase the mass of the moons and thus degrade their orbits.

The hive super-mind, formed as a result of the attack, was unprecedented in size and scope. It was also out of control. The invaders had been gone for several months, but the super-mind continued to exert absolute control over the entire hive collective. Even worse, the highly ethical nature of their people was entirely supplanted by the super-mind and its unrelenting drive to eliminate any and all potential threats.

***

Mike Jeffries was on the refurbished bridge of the
Heidman-2
when the Gold team skiff docked and off-loaded her personnel. The critical materials, extra supplies, and helping hands would mean the ship would be space-worthy in less than a day. The
Dante
docked at the secondary airlock, which was on the other side of the ship. She would off-load additional medical supplies and then depart for her role as a forward defender against any possible attack.

Captain Jeffries asked for and received permission from Commodore Kimbridge to hitch a ride with the
Dante
to the second crash site. He wanted to assess the state of the ship and his crew directly. He had taken a turn at controlling one of the Dextre avatars, but HR Telepresence,no matter ho
w‘
high-realit
y
’ the HR system was, was never a substitute for hands-on observation.

He made his way to the combat shuttle. Had he realized this would be the last time he would see the bridge of this or any other GCP starship he might have paused to take a longer look. As it was, his mind was elsewhere.

***

"Hey Fluffy
, how we doing up there?"

Sassi keyed open his mike with a deft flick of his lower mouth part. The Ashkelon was becoming adept at using the various systems integrated into his
special encounter suit.

"Just
fine, Chief. The medical team went on ahead. I'm taking advantage of a communications port to see if I can't get ship-to-ship working again. I'm also poking around the AI.  I'm not an expert in computer systems, especially given that no one in my race had actually ever seen one up until a few weeks ago, but if I had to guess
I’
d say the logic core is online but none of the database systems are up. As it stands now, i
t’
s a hyper-intelligent machine with no direction."

Chief Wroblewski chuckled to himself. The Ashkelon may not have
known anything about electronic computers prior to meeting the GCP but they were a race of mathematical geniuses who had quickly mastered the fundamentals. Wroblewski doubted there was a single member of his team as proficient with this technology as Sassi, and that was after only a few weeks of playing around with it.