Encounters 1: The Spiral Slayers (2 page)

Chapter One –
Sightings

Planet: Amular (near the edge of the Great
Wall
[1]
)

Eleven years earlier…

“Fact,” one finger was thrust into the air and
held there. “In less than one hundred years depleting resources and rising
costs will strand us on our planet.” A second finger shot up, “Fact, the only
way our species can outlast the scores of extinct species that came before us
is to spread out to the stars.” Both arms flew upward, three fingers each, “Fact,
the only way out there is to build this five mile high rail gun. And fact,” both
hands came down in fists slamming the podium, “the raw materials we need,” an
arm shot up pointing outward at a forty five degree angle, “are at the Astor
Trojan points!” Both fists thrust upward, "We must approve Prop 824, The
MUEC Asteroid Mining and Collection Proposal!”

Congressman Ronald Raymore

Representative, Southern
District

Video Record of the 92nd Amular
Congress

Source: The Archive

Present time...

His name was Adamarus Maximus. He was the captain of MUEC
Asteroid Mining and Collection Project's flagship, The Bet'ti, and in charge of
the ten-year project. At the center seat of the bustling bridge, he thanked the
ensign for the cup of coffee and set it in the holder. As he looked upward
towards a cluster of status displays, he had absolutely no clue that within the
next twenty-four hours, his life and the lives of everyone on his world and
throughout the solar system would radically and forever change...no clue that within
a day a chain reaction would begin that would alter everything.

Within the next day, Adamarus would die and, as a dead man,
he would initiate his planet's first contact with intelligence from another
planet. In fact, within the next twenty-four hours, Captain Maximus would be
placed on a road that would first make him the most important person in the
solar system, and then in the distant future many millions of years from now,
the most important person...anywhere.

Currently Adamarus' ship was at yellow alert and the bridge
was bathed in flashing red and yellow light. His entire focus was on what would
be the conclusion of the massive effort that had collected iron-nickel
asteroids from around the solar system and placed them in orbit around Amular. Now
the process of extracting the metals and transporting them to the surface would
begin so they could be used to construct a giant rail gun to transport payloads
into orbit.

The Bet'ti was currently in a geostationary orbit hundreds of
miles above the planet. Against the blackness of space her bulky silver and
white form was brilliantly lit in shades of orange and yellow from Amular's red
dwarf sun. She was, at her core, a seventy year old Carrier-Class ship, an old
workhorse whose design had withstood the test of time and utility. Like her
seven sisters, the old gal was function before form. Her 841 feet was a maze of
storage containers of varying shapes and sizes that were all somehow strung
together with scaffolding to form a labyrinth of precise geometric alignment
around a mostly hidden core.

On her large bridge, crew members rushed about dealing with
assorted tasks while others manning various stations focused on their consoles.
However, everyone was intensely aware of what was happening on the main viewer.

The fifty-two year old Captain seemed to be studying one of
the display screens that dropped from the ceiling. Actually, he was mulling
over the fact that there were twice as many officers on the bridge as there
should be but, deciding they wouldn’t get in the way, he just suppressed a
smile—they had all worked hard for this moment. The Captain refocused on
stirring his coffee as if commanding the huge ship and today’s event was of
secondary concern.

 Adamarus was a good looking man with blue eyes and chestnut
hair parted on the side, just starting to turn gray at the temples. He stood
six foot one inches and had kept himself trim and fit. Like the rest of the
bridge crew, he was dressed in a crisp khaki uniform with short sleeves and an
open neck exposing a white t-shirt. Only the two gold bars on his collar marked
him as the ship’s captain.

His reserved nature and the serious set of his features sharply
contrasted the slight twinkle of merriment always in his eyes and a dry sense
of humor that made light of almost everything. However, still water runs deep
and this outside veneer hid the thick scars of a particular event which had
cost many lives. The mental wounds had taken two decades to heal and the pain
had to be held within due to the top secret nature of the event.  But finally, the
demons and bad dreams had faded—it was ancient history now.

He leaned forward and looked to his right where his first
officer, Commander Radin Talvin, sat. At fifty-one, Radin was a jolly, heavyset
man, with a deep suntan and a shiny bald head with a strip of brown hair
framing his ears. Utterly dependable on duty, but off...the women, drinking and
brawling were almost legendary. They had worked together for over a decade now
and knew each other well. No words had to be spoken. Radin just nodded back once
then fingered his headset; his deep voice boomed out over the bridge’s intercom,”
Attention all personnel:  Ten second countdown is eminent." Radin paused a
beat then, “And… detonation in… ten, nine, eight…”

Almost filling half the main viewer, an asteroid rotated slowly.
Strategically scattered across its surface small flashing lights marked the
locations of the Shaped Charge Array Units or SCAUs and indicated that they
were armed.

“…seven, six, five...”

Behind the asteroid lay the bluish purple and orange surface of
Amular a mere four hundred miles beyond. Amular's red dwarf sun lay behind the
ship optimally lighting the scene.

“…four, three, two…”

Everyone on the bridge stopped what they were doing and
looked at the main viewer.

“…one, zero.”

 Though they could not see it, on the asteroid, each of the
eight SCAUs now extended its twenty-foot pole to its full height. On top of the
poles were large saucers—these were the glober charges. From the saucer's
underside, four guidance jets fired and the saucer detached and flew straight
up.

From the main viewer of the Bet’ti’s bridge, it looked like
nothing was happening while the glober charges rose to their precise computer
generated positions. Then, the SCAUs’ buried liquidation charges fired and the
bridge’s main screen went white. Within the white, for just a second, the red
liquefied rock could be seen blasting outward. Then the glober saucer charges
fired and expanding balls of white could be made out forcing the liquid rock
inward. The white faded and everyone on the bridge held their breaths.

On the main viewer, instead of the asteroid was now a
turbulent churning ‘glob’ of glowing red liquid. Everyone was mesmerized by it. 
It seemed like it would break apart any second but… it held… one second, two…
cheering broke out on the bridge.

With a big grin on his face, Adamarus keyed his throat mic,
“Now, now…" his voice was filled with amusement, "quiet on the
bridge.” The cheering subsided with a few nervous laughs. “Zoom out to fifty
and justify left,” Adamarus ordered.

“Zooming out to fifty, left justification,” an officer
repeated and the churning red glob shrunk to half its size moving to the left
side of the viewer. On the right side, the Smelting Station came into view
heading toward the glob.

The Smelting Station was almost as large as the Anderson
Shipyards; almost three miles in length. Its scoop measured one point three
miles. Behind the scoop was the casting section where the molding and surface
preparation took place. This area was marked by the large heat dispensing
rings. The final section was the linking distribution area where the tugs
picked up the shaped and prepared ore for atmospheric entry. The control center
was a large circular structure at the end of a huge crane which was anchored to
the linking distribution section. The crane was long enough to suspend the
control center in front of the scoop. On the bottom of the linking distribution
section was a large circular structure which housed the officers and crew.

The glob started entering the scoop. The biggest danger now
was that parts of the molten metal would escape. This could be very hard to
recapture before it hit something or worse, made an uncontrolled fall to the
planet.

All seemed to go well until suddenly an alarm went off. At
the same time, the bridge crew could see that a large piece of molten ore had separated
from the main body and was spinning off to one side of the scoop. It was
solidifying quickly.

The Smelting Station maintained a fixed home station for
dispensing the long sections of prepared ore to the tugs. When it moved forward
to collect the molten glob, it then circled back to its home station while the
captured ore was processed. The huge facility was hard to maneuver and veering
away from its planned route was not something anyone would want to do.

The plan for this scenario was to have Explorer mining crafts
capture lost ore and move them to a safe holding orbit, but this was a lot
easier said than done. Lost pieces were almost always spinning making it hard
to lock onto, and they could also break apart, multiplying the problem.

This piece was large and spinning around rapidly. As they
watched, it elongated until it looked like a misshapen barbell. It was going to
be a bitch to capture.

“Scramble four Explorers,” Adamarus ordered.

At that moment the Smelting Station hailed the Bet’ti. It was
the station’s captain, Emit Walling, “Captain Maximus, I think we can clean up
after ourselves this time.”

Maximus agreed but said he’d have four recovery craft standing
by just in case.

The Smelting Station stayed on course until it had taken in
the main body of the glob. It only took forty seconds but seemed to take
forever. As soon as this was done, the Smelting Station rotated until the
funnel faced the now hardened piece, then moved forward and collected it. The
misshapen barbell connected with the station’s red hot grid, and after a few
seconds, the piece re-melted and entered.

Now came the tricky part, getting back on a course that would
bring the station back to its home position. However, as the bridge of the
Bet’ti watched, the station made a series of graceful turns and arrived right
on schedule back at its home position between the lines of waiting front and
rear tugs that stretched into the distance.

Adamarus keyed his throat mic, “Adamarus to Captain Walling.”

“Walling here,” came the reply.

“My compliments, that was nice flying.”

“I’ll pass that on to our computer,” Walling said with a
laugh.

The station’s heat dispenser rings were glowing red now. Eight
minutes later the first ”Load", a three-quarter mile long string of twenty
hardened rectangular segments, slid into one of three ”racks” at the end of the
station. Front and rear connecters had been added to each end, a small segment to
which the tugs connected. Green lights began to strobe around the left and
right connectors.

The first pair of tugs moved in. The front tug was half the
size of the rear tug, its wings were folded down. The rear tug had huge wings
that were folded down and rotated back. Both connected perfectly with each end.

The tracks which held the Load to the rear of the station
opened and pushed off the Load with its tugs, then both tugs extended their
wings. The rear tug fired her engines and the newly assembled tugs and ore
pulled away and angled downward.

Ten minutes later the assembly entered the planet’s
atmosphere, the front tug taking most of the air friction. As the assembly
descended it began to level out and the rear tug fired its eight large forward-pointing
engines, slowing the assembly down.

Finally, it crossed from the Western Ocean to the white sands
of the Eastern Desert. Descending through three thousand feet it was close to
the ground now. The forward tug fired its rear engines and separated, pulling
forward and up. Several minutes later the rear tug also separated.

The Load was on its own still hurtling forward faster than it
was falling with its nose slightly raised. Precisely as planned, it hit the
first huge sand dune and the sand exploded upward. There were fifty sand dunes
of decreasing size spread across two miles and the Load plowed through them all
in five seconds. From afar, the first twenty-five sand dunes seemed to explode
upward almost at the same time, but then the second half showed a noticeable
slowing as the speed bled off. Giant lifts immediately rose reforming the sand
dunes. After hitting the last dune, the ”Load” landed almost perfectly on a
flat plain of sand and sped across it. Three huge parachutes emerged from the
rear connecter and opened, slowing the Load further, and then it plowed into
the final three sand dunes and came to rest.

Four large vehicles raced to the Load’s side and began
pushing it off to the side. Three minutes later it slid onto a concrete surface
then right onto a string of flatbeds. Machinery on the flatbeds finely aligned
the Load, then clamps rotated up from the far side of the cars securing it.
Then, the train pulled away.

Four hundred miles above the surface, on the bridge of the
Bet’ti someone hollered out, “All right!” and clapping and whooping broke out.

Adamarus leaned back in his chair and smiled, “Yes, indeed.” He
now needed to take a shuttle over to the Smelting Station and inspect the
process there while Radin kept the process going here.

He rose from his seat, straightened his shirt, then keyed his
mic, “People,” the clamor quieted down, “that was absolutely perfect. I thank
each and every one of you for a job well done. Commander Radin will be taking
over now and we’ll baby in the next dozen or so before turning the operation
over to the Smelting Station.” Radin was already standing at parade rest with a
smile on his face. “Commander Radin, you have the con.”