Nu Trilogy 1: The Esss Advance (25 page)

The warning system on the Esss interstellar scout craft did not use sound waves like on a human naval vessel, but the spectrum of the light pulses used throughout the personnel areas of the ship were just as jarring to the nerves of the Esss onboard. The violet flashes reached right down into the core of their brains and demanded an immediate response.

The master chronicler dropped the task of preparing the water samples to be returned in the courier vessel back to the forward operating base and hurried to the bridge to take charge of whatever emergency the scout ship had detected.

Upon arrival, it saw that the master projection tank showed two diverging missiles coming from one of the locals’ ships, and one of those missiles was headed very close to their projected position in orbit when the missile overtook them. What was so unusual was the missile’s speed. The distance between them and the locals was not that far to travel in space, and many of their own missiles could travel that distance with little time to spare for defense. In this case, the local missile was closing on their position so slowly that they could shoot it out of space with their lasers when it got close enough and not worry about engaging it with defensive missiles.

The master chronicler raised its three-fingered hand indicating that everyone on the bridge should stop what they were doing and await further orders. Then it did a quick calculation in its head and found that with the amount of time available, it might be better to spend that time analyzing the capabilities of these missiles before destroying them.

With several quick thrumming commands, it indicated that the laser defense was to be used when the missile closed to within twelve ship lengths, at which point it was to be destroyed. In the meantime, all resources were to be spent analyzing everything they could find out about this missile. It wanted to know the means of propulsion, the actual size of the missile, whether its path would actually impact them or just fly by harmlessly if left alone, and whether the missile was emitting signals to them or back to the local ships on any electromagnetic frequency.

Since all bridge activity was recorded, the master chronicler did not even think about recording any of this for his report back to their forward operating base. Its focus was on the two missiles. Why two of them? What was the second missile doing at such a distance from the first? Was there any threat from the more distant missile?

Observation! That’s what these missiles must be about. The locals wanted to know more about them, and that could not be allowed.

It thrummed new orders. The closer missile had to be destroyed when it reached effective laser range. It changed the laser defense orders to fire when the missile reached twelve times twelve ship lengths and the more distant missile was to be destroyed by missile fire at the same time. Keeping the locals as ignorant of their plans and capabilities was of primary importance, and they already knew about the laser capability of the Esss from the incident on the surface of the planet. The only new information it would be giving up would be their anti-missile capability and what the range of their laser system was.

Again, it changed its orders with a few quick thrumming commands. Let them think the Esss lasers could only reach six times twelve ship lengths. That was still far enough away that they could not gain much intelligence about the ship’s features. It also cancelled the order to destroy the more distant missile. There was no need to give the locals any information about their anti-missile capabilities.

Satisfied with its decisions, it sat in the command chair and watched the altered response scenario develop in real time. It entered several notes about its decisions and the reasoning behind them into the ship’s logs to supplement the actual bridge recordings. Nothing could be left unrecorded when interacting with another sentient race. All of this would be returned to the forward operating base on the courier ship.

Captain Neil Essex had been working with his engineering team almost continuously for the past twenty-four hours to get the two missiles ready for their alien flyby. The difficult part of this mission was controlling the speed of the distant missile with the laser beam profiler (LBP). As the camera missile left the ship, the LBP missile had to be moving very slowly in a wide sweeping arc, staying at least 5,000 kilometers away from the alien ship. As the camera missile got closer to its target, the LBP missile had to accelerate to maintain its position, keeping the camera missile directly between the aliens and itself.

The
Nathan Hale’s
chief navigator had laid out the requirements for the engineering group with almost no effort whatsoever. Implementing those requirements in one of their store of missile types was a real challenge though. The final solution was not elegant, but it should be effective.

The amount of fuel being pumped into the combustion chamber controlled the amount of acceleration, so the chief engineer adapted a rheostat type control mechanism on the weapons console of the bridge. Moving the rheostat lever in a clockwise direction opened the spigot installed in the rocket’s fuel system. Moving the lever in a counter-clockwise direction restricted the opening size.

The camera missile was loaded with a limited supply of fuel so that it reached its desired speed almost immediately and then ran out of fuel. That missile was on a simple ballistic course. Its camera was mounted in the nose with the lens pointing at the alien ship, and a simple laser pointer was attached that emitted in exactly the opposite direction. This laser was intercepted by the LBP on the companion missile and feedback about laser strength was communicated back to the weapons console. With this arrangement, the weapons officer could adjust the rheostat to keep the laser alignment true.

If they had been given just a few weeks to work on this problem, he would have been able to automate the control between the two missiles, but such was not the case.

“We have only one shot at this Lieutenant,” Captain Essex said to Lieutenant Childers. “I know you ran a simulation drill with engineering, but this is the real thing. You may release the two missiles when you are ready.”

“Don’t worry, sir,” she replied. “I worked with engineering over the past two hours to desensitize the rheostat quite a bit so that it takes at least twenty degrees of turn to make a five percent difference in acceleration. After the changes, we ran a second simulation, and the rocket was much easier to control.”

“Excellent. Let’s get this show on the road.”

“Releasing the camera missile now sir. Camera missile burn has completed. Current velocity is now nine kilometers per second. We should overtake the alien ship in nine minutes. I am releasing the LBP missile now with almost negligible acceleration. Okay, the LBP has acquired the laser pointer signal from the camera. We should be good to go, sir.”

“Okay,” Captain Essex replied. “Commander Evans, please bring up the camera feed of the alien ship on the main screen. Let’s get a good look at that monster.”

“Yes sir.” Commander George Evans punched a few buttons on the communication console. “We are feeding the information from the camera to the main screen and back to
Discovery
. I have superimposed the LBP signal in the lower left hand corner of the camera feed, and I am feeding the composite directly back to
Discovery
. If the aliens fire their laser at the camera missile, both ships will get the frequency distribution graph in real time.”

The next seven minutes were uneventful. The image of the alien ship was still void of details when the anticipated laser event occurred. The camera image disappeared abruptly, and the LBP graph showed twin spikes in the infrared range.

“That’s it,” Childers said. “We have a laser profile. The distance from the alien ship was approximately twelve hundred kilometers, so our images from the camera are not very detailed.”

“Thank you, Lieutenant Childers,” Captain Essex replied. “I want a comprehensive report available for Captain Vasquez in the next fifteen minutes. Evans, open a line to
Discovery
. Let’s see if there is anything specific they want in our report with regard to how we accomplished the mission or if they are just interested in the results.”

Jessica turned back to Sted with such a mischievous grin on her face that Sted could not help but smile. They had just gotten off the transport cab at the shuttle docking facility with their transport bags for the trip back to Luna. Jessica had been gloating for the past two days since the orders had been received for the two of them to board the shuttle for this return trip. Apparently, her suggestion to Cam that Sted was anxious to get back to AMC to work on the new Epsilon fighters had struck a chord with not only Cam but also with the Admiralty.

“Will you stop gloating?” Sted asked, smiling. “Yes, it was probably your suggestion to Cam that got the Admiralty to lift the lockdown of the shuttle. I’m sure they were considering it anyway though, because there are several dozen people here that are needed urgently on Luna and Earth. The shuttle will also be able to bring back some additional specialists for altering the
Voyager III
design to turn it into a fighter-carrying ship instead of a peaceful interstellar explorer.”

Jessica grinned. “You look so good eating crow! I promise to stop serving it to you now that we’re boarding the shuttle. I think I’ll let the cooks on board prepare our meals for the long trip back, and I’m sure they don’t have any crow in the larder!”

“That’s it! You’re definitely going to have to be punished once we get onboard.”

“Well, you get almost three months to figure out the best way to administer your punishment,” she said. “If you need some suggestions, I’m sure I can think of a few!”

They moved across the large shuttle receiving area and took the lift down into the shuttle. With the shuttle docking facility on the opposite arm from the interstellar development platform, and with both rotating around the central core, the shuttle had been designed with its main entrance on the top of the craft, where it locked onto the docking facility.

With so few returning on the shuttle, and with Lockheed still trying to lure Sted into their service, they had been assigned a luxury suite for the trip back. The suite was almost as big as Sted’s apartment back at the shipyard. The only difference was the presence of a real office facility right in the suite and the lack of a kitchen/dining space. All dining on the shuttle took place in the main dining room, similar to a cruise ship on Earth’s ocean liners.

As Jessica unpacked their few belongings, Sted palmed the desktop communication screen to find out the details of his orders. He knew the Navy would not let him be idle during the long trip, so he was not surprised with the number of emails with attachments waiting for him. Only one of the emails was highlighted in red, so he touched the screen to open it. A video recording from Cam popped up on the desktop.

“Hello, Sted,” said Cam’s recorded voice. “There is a locked drawer in the desk that will only open to your right thumbprint. Inside is a chip containing the latest design specs for the Epsilon class fighters we are starting to put together here on Luna. As soon as you get settled, I want you to review the designs and draft any suggestions you might have beyond what you’ve already communicated to us through Rear Admiral Cunningham and directly to me when you disagreed with her assessments.

“By the way, your suggestion for interchangeable skins for the Epsilons created quite a stir among the engineers here. We have already redesigned the mounting of the outer shell layer, and one of our youngest and brightest engineers has come up with a way to change the surface of a single outer layer to switch to matte black from mirrored by running a current through the transparent surface layer. When current is applied, the layer changes from transparent to a dusty charcoal black. When the current is turned off, the layer switches back to being completely transparent, and underneath is the mirrored surface. We just got the frequencies of the alien laser used to destroy a camera-carrying missile out in Jupiter orbit, so we will be adapting the mirrored surface for those specific frequencies.

“What we are looking for from you is a set of fighting tactics to be used by the Epsilons against one of those smaller craft that came to visit us so recently. Based on those tactics, we need to know what changes need to be made to the fighters.

“We have arranged for your communications to have top priority from the shuttle, so if you have specific questions or need additional information to continue your research, just store your requests on this console in the High Priority Request folder, and they will be routed to us automatically on the next transmission. Likewise, we will have our responses and any requests that we might have in the High Priority Response folder on your desktop. When any response is posted in this folder, you will get both a visual and auditory signal from the desktop. Also, if you are not in your quarters at the time, your personal communicator will be notified.

“I look forward to hearing from you in the very near future. By the way, Vice Admiral Bunting sends his personal regards to both you and Jessica. Her suggestion to bring you back to Luna came at just the right time based upon the intelligence the Navy has been gathering about the aliens. We can’t get you here any faster than the shuttle can fly undetected back from the shipyard, but at least we can take advantage of your expertise while you’re in transit.”

As the message went dark, Jessica tapped Sted on the shoulder and then put her arms around him from behind. She knew how valuable Sted was to the Navy right now, but did they know just how valuable he was to her? She sincerely doubted that.

“Well, honey,” she said. “I know they’re going to keep you busy most of the way back. Just remember, you promised some punishment for me on this trip, and I expect you to deliver.”

With that she kissed him on the top of his head, swiveled his chair around, and then sat in his lap for a hug of reassurance that she needed desperately.