Nu Trilogy 1: The Esss Advance (16 page)

Sted called Jessica as soon as he cleared Navy headquarters and was back in the spine transport facility heading for the AMC corporate offices.

“How’d your meeting go with the Admiral?”

“Well, as expected I’ve been reactivated and been ordered to report for duty. I’m coming up to AMC headquarters right now to record a message back to Cam. I’ll fill you in on the details when I get to your office. Can you have the secure recording facility set up for me when I get there?”

“I’m sure that won’t be a problem. With the communication restrictions in place, nobody has been recording anything lately, anyway. Our daily business has ground to a halt with all of the ships and mining platforms ordered to go dark. I hope they find some way to get us back up and running before too long. The staff here will be out of work once we finish confirming the location and status of all of our assets.”

“Okay, I’ll see you in about ten minutes,” Sted said. “We can talk about what I need to send to Cam in addition to what the admiral has tasked me to request. We might as well prepare a complete status report and get it all into one burst transmission. Please get the AMC staff working on the status report. We’ll want to limit that portion of the message to about fifteen minutes, so they may have to pare down to just the essentials. I will use an additional fifteen minutes of recording time. Once the entire message is ready, we can pass it on to the Navy. The admiral will be giving us a high priority in the message queue.”

Sted clicked off as he entered the spine transport cab and requested the AMC headquarters destination. His mind was racing with all he had to squeeze into his message to Cam.

The interview with Admiral Bain had been brief and unenlightening. Sted spent the next two days digging up as much detail about the inbound alien ship as he could. Astronomical observers all over the system were measuring the inbound visitor’s progress. At their current deceleration rate, and their current heading, they would be reaching an orbit around Jupiter in three weeks’ time. What to expect from that point was anybody’s guess.

Because the Navy had issued the orders to go dark at all facilities in the belt, it did not make sense for any ship from the belt to proceed to Jupiter to make contact. It had to be obvious to the visitors that there was intelligent life on both Earth and the moon based upon all of the broadband communication activity. Therefore, the Navy had decided to send the second new shuttle,
Discovery
, from the moon to Jupiter.

The Council of Eight and the various governments on Earth were struggling with who should be included on such a mission. Because of the urgency to get the shuttle started, The Council decided to limit the selection of personnel to those people already on the moon. This left many of the governments Earth-side furious. They wanted desperately to be included on the first contact mission, but they did not have any of the appropriate people on the moon.

The C8 ruled all things above Earth’s atmosphere. This time, however, the C8’s ruling stuck in the craw of many of the world leaders, even though it made sense. Being rational was much easier when you were in control. All they could manage was to get the lunar ambassador from the North American Union, Frank Pauling, included as a guest on the mission. This, of course, made all of the other governments on the planet even more jealous. How did the NAU get a representative on board while they were all left out?

The
Discovery
was scheduled to depart lunar orbit within the next twenty-four hours. It would be escorted by two Navy destroyers and one refueling tanker. Though the ships could refuel in the belt on the return trip, this was ruled out for obvious reasons.

The Navy was understandably concerned about the possibilities of the upcoming contact with some unknown race of beings and had ordered Sted to join the new research group being established to review the plans for a possible military refit of
Voyager III
. In particular, the Navy was exploring the possibility of incorporating the AMC Delta design into a small fighter craft that could be ferried inside the
Voyager
and used for both reconnaissance and close-in defensive support.

The
AMC Mantis
had been ordered to return to the shipyard not only because the shipyard was still the closest facility for docking but also because it would be turned over to the Navy for analysis and refitting. The
Mantis
was due back in another three days, and the R&D department wanted Sted on duty and available before it returned.

Cam leaned back in his desk chair thinking about the message from Sted and the AMC team out at Rickover. He had to prioritize.

Because Jupiter was currently on the opposite side of the sun from Rickover, there was little chance of them being discovered right away. He could postpone the decision on which of the Delta class ships he would turn over to the Navy. They wanted to pour over the
Mantis
first to see just how suitable the nimble little craft would be for the duties they were envisioning.

Bain had asked that the entire crew of
Mantis
be assigned to the Navy R&D wing for the next several months. Their input would be critical in determining the capabilities of the ship. He had also asked for the workup reports prepared by Sted and his crew during the trials. That was something that could be assembled and sent out to Rickover right away. They did not need the ship in dock to go over those reports.

Cam sent a quick note to has assistant to have the report files packaged and sent out to Rickover on the next outbound message packet. Because Vice Admiral Bunting had already signed a non-disclosure agreement with AMC, there was no need to worry about losing their competitive advantage in the construction of these small craft.

The status report received with Sted’s message was both good and bad. The good news was that all of their facilities were being shuttered quickly. Only three Gamma class assay ships were still in transit to their closest mining platforms, and they were all on a slow ballistic trajectory that would allow minimal deceleration upon arrival. The bad news was that all of the facilities were being shuttered quickly. This meant an abrupt halt to mineral deliveries and the associated cash flow. All of the staff would still be getting paid but would not be doing any revenue-producing work for an unknown period of time.

At least the resupply capsules were all on their way. Everyone would have enough supplies to survive the immediate future. Also, the engineers on the mining platforms were tasked to bring all of their equipment and the assay ships up to 100 percent readiness while mining was halted. This would keep most of the personnel busy for the next several months.

Admiral Bain had also requested that Cam set up a naval liaison office at the AMC shipbuilding facility. Once R&D had determined what was needed for these new escort class ships, they wanted AMC to be ready to produce them as quickly as possible. Bain had also requested that Cam expand their lunar docking facilities to handle some of the larger Navy transport ships. Apparently, Bain had ideas about some of the materials that the Navy would be supplying for these new escorts, and they wanted to be able to deliver them directly to AMC.

Again, Cam sent a note to his assistant to have the shipyard staff draw up plans for a larger receiving area for inbound craft. Cam attached the information sent by Bain through Sted on the size of the ships that would be arriving once construction began.

Finally, Cam sent a message to Vice Admiral Bunting requesting a dinner meeting that evening. AMC could not continue to operate with no income. The two of them needed to come to some kind of agreement about payment for changes to their facilities and for the escort craft. It looked like the company would be dependent upon the Navy for its very existence over the next year.

After meeting with Bunting, Cam would have to meet with the board of directors to get approval for a new five-year plan. The business was going off in an entirely new direction, and Cam was not comfortable making such momentous decisions on his own. Hopefully, the wise counsel of his board would make him more comfortable in drawing up the new plan.

As their ship was settling into orbit, the master chronicler gave the orders to release the scout ships. There was no evidence of any presence of locals in the vicinity. Therefore, the master chronicler also ordered the immediate release of the gas balloon pumping stations into the upper atmosphere of the planet. By the time the scouts returned, the fuel tanks would be topped off with liquid hydrogen and methane.

Now it could turn its attention back to analyzing the information that had passed by the ship since their arrival in system. All had been recorded properly and added to the report, but the addition of some local insight for the other masters would be helpful and might allow them to make more sense of what appeared to be only electromagnetic noise.

Instructions to the scouts had already been modified to include recording the source of these transmissions and possibly bringing back some of the equipment used to generate the signals. Perhaps examination of that equipment would lend some insight on how to decode the actual content.

A report was just coming in from the lead scout ship. Apparently, a convoy of four small ships was heading out toward them from the third world’s moon. The master chronicler ordered one of the three scout ships to make a slow pass by these ships and record all that it could and send it directly back for analysis. It must be determined if this convoy was a threat or some kind of delegation that wanted to communicate with the Esss. Life was becoming more interesting. Only time would tell how this encounter would work out.

Sted had moved his few belongings into a small apartment in the personnel housing ring. After reporting to the R&D wing, Sted had been assigned housing space and an office. The Navy had even pulled up his records and prepared a complete set of both regular and formal naval dress uniforms and had them delivered to his apartment. The first time he walked into the unit with Jessica and his travel bag in tow, he was more than a little surprised to find the place completely laid out. The furniture was all in place, the pantry was stocked, and the refrigerator and freezer were filled with several weeks’ worth of supplies. He even had a small office with current naval issue communication equipment.

As a ship’s captain, Sted was not used to having so much space. On a destroyer class ship, the captain’s quarters were about a quarter the size of this apartment.

“What do you want to do first?” Jessica asked. Both of them had worked the “day” shift (a holdover from planet-bound way of thinking), so they were free for the next sixteen hours. The twenty-four hour/three-shift mode of operating was still standard, even though they were far out from Earth and its twenty-four hour rotational cycle. Some human habits just seemed to have a life of their own.

“I had planned on spending time setting up the apartment, going to the commissary to stock up on supplies, and then getting some shuteye, hopefully with you by my side,” Sted replied. “Now it appears we have a little more free time. How about I put together a quick dinner for the two of us while you go out to the commissary and pick up some wine? After that, I want to spend some time with you. If it’s not too forward of me, I think we should discuss possibly moving in together.”

“Wow! You don’t mess around, Captain Richardson,” Jessica teased. “I’ll take a little extra time getting the wine while I think about your generous offer. Give me about thirty minutes. I’ll get a fresh set of clothes for tomorrow morning, too. I think we may be ‘discussing’ this offer for most of the night, and I want to appear at least somewhat fresh at the office in the morning.” She chuckled on her way out the door.

As Sted opened the pantry again to see what he might prepare on short notice, he could not keep the grin off of his face. Yes, this night had a lot of potential.

“Maintain course and speed,” Captain Julian Vasquez of the shuttle
Discovery
ordered. “Let’s kill our acceleration and maintain our ballistic speed and see what happens as they pass us. With no acceleration, the cameras on the destroyers should get high-resolution pictures of these craft. Pass those orders on to the rest of the convoy, Mr. Cochran,” he added to his communications officer. “We don’t want to spook our visitors with any unusual maneuvers.”

The convoy had been accelerating toward a Jupiter rendezvous for the last six weeks. They had started a full week before the visitors had established orbit around Jupiter and were now up to a speed of almost 145,000 kilometers per hour. They had cleared Mars orbit five days earlier and were speeding toward the inner part of the asteroid belt.

What Captain Vasquez found unsettling was the speed of the visitors’ ships approaching his convoy. One of the three ships was decelerating from a speed that his ships could never have attained. They had already covered the distance from their Jupiter orbit through the asteroid belt, and on their present course toward Earth, the first two ships would pass the convoy in less than five minutes.

“After the first ships pass, have Captain Wu from the
Revere
and Captain Essex from the
Nathan Hale
send over their camera feeds and give me a magnified visual on the main panel in slow motion,” Vasquez said. “We need full video recordings to send back to Luna as soon as the pass is complete, but I want to see them first. I also want an estimate included in the report of when they can be expected to reach Earth.”

“Mr. Cochran, are we receiving any signals from their direction on any known frequency?”

“No, sir,” Cochran replied. He had been scanning all frequencies for the past four hours, and there had not been a single blip on any of them. It was uncanny and certainly a bit frightening to be approaching an unknown, intelligent life form at these speeds and to have no attempt at contact from them.

The scientists on board had provided him with a recording to be sent out simultaneously on selected frequencies with a simple repeating tonal pattern of
one, one-two, one-two-three, pause, one, one-two, one-two-three, pause. . . .
The scientists were hoping for a response of the same pattern on any one of the frequencies so that a communication frequency preferred by the visitors could be established. Getting no response whatsoever was disheartening. Perhaps the single decelerating ship would respond when it got a bit closer.

“Captain, the first two ships are now passing us eighty kilometers to port,” said Chad Meacham, the astrogator on shift. “We are receiving the magnified visuals from both destroyers. I will post them side by side on the main panel as they are streaming in, but slowed down by a factor of one hundred, sir.”

Even at that reduced speed, what everyone saw was still a blur. Each of the two ships was shaped like an octopus with a bulbous front end and what appeared to be six tentacles pointing to the rear.

“Meacham, can you give me an estimate on the size of those ships?” the captain asked.

“One moment, sir.” The astrogator’s fingers flew over his keyboard. “I would estimate the ships are about one hundred and fifty meters stem to stern and about fifty meters in diameter. I will confirm exact size after we get final figures for distance and magnification from the destroyers.”

“Thank you. Now, please estimate the time to contact for the third ship, assuming it continues to decelerate at the same rate. Also, how close will it pass us on its current heading?”

Meacham worked his console for another thirty seconds before replying. “Sir, time to contact will be in approximately twelve minutes, and our relative speed will be about three hundred thousand kilometers per hour. At their current heading, they will pass us at a range of only two kilometers. That is close enough for a good inspection and far enough not to be threatening.”

“Okay. Cochran, I want the report of the first pass on the way to Earth in less than ten minutes. We have to be prepared for the worst from this second pass, so let’s get what information we do have headed Earthward. Whatever analysis we have can go along with the report, but make sure you include all of the raw data.”

“Understood, Captain. We still have no recognizable response on any of the selected frequencies from the third ship.”