The Catherine Kimbridge Chronicles #5: Liberation Read online

  Cat leaned back to consider what the Head Archivist’s avatar was saying. “To be honest, I’m not sure I understand what you are trying to tell us. Especially with regard to what we need to do now.”

  Sna’st face smiled again in a kindly and grandfatherly way. “Such is always the way with children.” With that his image disappeared.

  “What the…,” the two men said in unison.

  “Am I the only one who did not find that particularly enlightening?” Ben asked.

  “Actually, he told us quite a lot,” Cat said while pouring herself a cup of coffee. She nodded towards the pot but both men declined. “The key to this message is the key to success.”

  “The key was a name and a number,” Ben said. “How does that help?”

  “John 3:16 is a famous passage in the Christian Bible. Is the Bible somehow the key?” Ken said.

  “Somehow I don’t think so,” Cat shook her head. “Humanity would like to think sometimes that we are uniquely tied to the Creator – that we are made in the Creator’s image –but I suspect it is our intellect… our self-awareness that links us. Something that is shared by all intelligent beings. No, it’s not our uniquely human Bible… but perhaps something in it… specifically in that passage.”

  Ken, a fully ordained chaplain in his own right, as well as the ship’s captain, thought for a moment and quoted a contemporary translation:

  “’This is how much the Creator loved the world: He gave his most beloved, his one and only Son. And this is why: so that no one need be destroyed…’ The passage is referring to the Christ. But I’m not sure how it applies to our current situation,” Ken said.

  “The passage also talks about sacrifice… the ultimate sacrifice,” Cat responded. “I suspect that the key to this message is an acknowledgement that we may need to be willing and ready to sacrifice what we hold most dear in order to win the day.”

  “That’s fine but…” Ben began but before he could finish the lights flashed and the emergency klaxon began to blare.

  “CAPTAIN TO THE BRIDGE!”

  Chapter Eleven – One Battle Begins

  “Status Report!” Ken barked as sat in the recently vacated command chair on the bridge of the GCP Yorktown.

  “Sensors indicate a massive energetic discharge consistent with an SJ round at the exclusion boundary,” Ben said as he slipped into his First Officer’s chair. Ken envied his ability to receive updates directly from Yorky, the ship’s AI.

  “How far out is the current exclusion barrier?”

  “We’ve been deploying hyperfield dampeners as fast as we can fabricate them. The current barrier is sphere extending out to roughly the orbit of Ceres,” Ben replied.

  “Helm. Set course for the incursion zone. Make speed 0.5 C.”

  “Acknowledged Captain. Course laid in. Speed ramping up to 0.5C,” the helm answered smartly.

  Ken looked over at Cat who was standing next to her Admiral’s chair. He could see the tension in her face. She was a woman of action and for the moment she was just a spectator as the Yorktown was his primary responsibility and not hers. She saw him looking and the corner of her mouth twitched. She knew that he knew how tough it was for her to stay her hand in the current situation.

  “Scenario two?”

  She nodded. “Scenario two it would seem.” Of all the potential attack options the team had considered this was the one she dreaded the most. The enemy would attempt to literally destroy the inner planets. It had been consider a long-shot option because to date the Modos Syndicate had not demonstrated anything remotely similar to SJ rounds but apparently that had changed. If the Yorktown taskforce had not proactively started seeding the inner system with Hyperfield dampeners the Modos weapons might well have materialized just outside of Earth orbit. The results would have been nothing less than catastrophic.

  Cat toggled a control on her chair’s armrest. “Attention Yorktown Taskforce. This is Admiral Kimbridge. We are declaring an ‘Option Two’ incursion scenario… repeat ‘Option Two.’ All ships are to take their cue from the Yorktown. We expect the Modos fleet to attempt a jump-in in the next few minutes to confirm a kill. Remember they have no reason to suspect their weapons did not reach their intended targets. All ships are to deploy fighter escorts as well as decoy drones. Stay sharp people… the stakes don’t get any higher than this. That is all. Kimbridge out.”

  Ken looked over at his First Officer. “Ben confirm interlink.”

  “Interlink confirmed Captain. The Exeter, Mador and Relentless are all accepting guidance suggestions from the Yorktown. They have the ability of override but for the moment we are tightly coupled.”

  “Excellent. I want a full active and integrated sensor sweep by all ships, fighters and drones. Paint me a picture gentlemen… let me see what’s out there.”

  “Oh my God…,” Lieutenant Christopher Roland said from the astrometrics station.

  “Talk to me Chris,” Ken said. “What are you seeing?”

  “Sir… it’s just gone!”

  “What’s gone?”

  “Ceres Sir. The entire planet… it’s just an expanding cloud of rubble. Whatever weapon they used, it must have hit the planet at point blank range.”

  Ken slammed his hand down on the comm button on his armrest. “Yorky… priority analysis. Link with the other ships if you need to. Analyze the debris and calculate the probable course of everything with enough kinetic energy to be a problem. Question… are any of the pieces going to pose a threat to Earth?”

  “The requested analysis will require several days however I can report with virtual certainty that Mars will suffer catastrophic impacts over the course of the next several thousand years.”

  “When you say ‘catastrophic’ just what do you mean?” Cat asked.

  “Projections are consistent with eradication of the biosphere as well as ablation of 98% of the atmosphere. In very short order Mars will look very much like it did prior to man’s efforts to terraform it in the late 21st century.”

  ***

  Nicked-Tail strummed his Suhtii’s fingers impatiently. The MS Tsunami was preparing to jump into the Sol system. In a few moments he would have the privilege of seeing his life’s work fulfilled. The biggest threat to the Modos Syndicate as well as to the Uruk was even now, in all likelihood, a smoldering collection of lifeless rocks in orbit around a sun that the universe would soon forget.

  “Jumping in four, three, two, one,” Commander Herringbone announced. The next words, “Jump Complete,” were drowned out by the blare of alarm klaxons.

  “REPORT!” Nicked-Tail screamed.

  “We are not where we are supposed to be and our shields are taking a battering!”

  “Return fire and rotate the shields,” Nicked-Tail barked.

  “Sir,” Commander Herringbone yelled over the din. “No one is firing on us. We are being hit by rocks. We jumped into the middle of an asteroid field!”

  “Emergency jump! Get us out of here.”

  “Jump drives are offline. There appears to be some type of damping field in place,” Herringbone answered.

  “Sublight then… best possible speed. Get our ships out of this asteroid belt!”

  “Aye Sir. Best possible speed,” the First Officer acknowledged.

  The bridge of the Tsunami rocked violently as inertial compensators fought to maintain control.

  “Sir,” Ensign Bluewater interrupted, “that was the Reefdiver. She lost containment and her engines went critical. She’s gone Sir.”

  “Damn it,” Nicked-Tail growled. “Fleet-wide radio… NOW!”

  “Aye Sir. Fleet-wide Sir!”

  “This is Nicked-Tail, all ships retreat. Clear the asteroid field and regroup.”

  ***

  “Captain, our remotes are picking up radio chatter.”

  Captain Purohit leaned forward in his command chair. “Is it our friends from the Edmund Fitzgerald?”

  “Negative Sir. It appears to be Modos traffic. They appear be
in distress… taking damage from an asteroid field.”

  Vigit looked at his First Officer. “Do they know we are here?”

  “Unlikely Captain. We are a good three light minutes out,” Commander Trifa answered.

  “Signal the Yorktown. Let them know what we’ve found and then jump us three light minutes to the other side of that asteroid field so it is between us and them.”

  “Aye Sir,” the Hupenstanii said. “Jumping now.”

  ***

  Pfc Jimmy Stevens was not a happy camper. His combat suit was hot. To make matters worse… He was huddled inside an assault shuttle with fifty other soldiers waiting for the other shoe to drop. They were in their standard ‘hurry up and wait’ mode as the big-wig officers discussed what they would do next. The shuttle in question wasn’t even onboard the Yorktown any more. They had launched with the fighters so they could be available on a moment’s notice should the powers-that-be decide they needed to board a Syndicate ship.

  He hoped they did. He would enjoy seeing the look in his so-called comrade’s faces as he turned and mowed them down. They deserved it… after all they were part of a corrupt organization that had betrayed and utterly failed humanity.

  The no-name private on his right started to jostle him and he turned to give him a piece of his mind when he saw that Chief Brodhead had taken the other soldier’s seat.

  She tapped his helmet and signaled him to go to secure channel three.

  “Are you ok Private?”

  “Yeah sure… why wouldn’t I be?”

  “I’m sure you heard the chatter about Ceres?” she asked.

  He grinned. “That would have been a sight to see!”

  “You realize the target was Earth… do you have a problem with that?”

  He turned to look at her. Unfortunately the helmet of her combat suit made seeing her expression almost impossible. The Mark Five ‘Stark’ suit was many things but transparent was not one of them.

  “No, why should I?”

  She reached forward to rap on the helmet of his suit with her metal-clad hand. “Hello… anybody home?”

  “Give me a break Chief! That’s freak’n loud!”

  “For one thing… Private… had the attack succeeded as planned… neither you nor I would be alive to hold this conversation. For a second thing, had the attack succeeded you and I might never have been born.”

  Jimmy paused to consider this. “They may not have known we were there,” he said finally.

  “And point two?”

  “Geez Chief! My head hurts when I think about stuff like that. Maybe future Earth wouldn’t happen but we’d still be here. Hell you and I might end up being the next Adam and Eve.”

  “In your dreams Private!”

  Jimmy made to look at the older woman from head to toe… “They can do amazing things with rejuvenation treatments now.”

  Chapter Twelve – Feign

  Cat watched the floating holographic display in the Yorktown’s Command Information Center. Now that the fight had moved from imminent to actual, she had shifted from the bridge to the more suitable CIC. Here she could see real-time feeds and collate data from the multitude of streams coming into the Yorktown from the taskforce.

  By any estimation the screen was a mess. Hundreds of thousands of asteroids were slowing having their orbits tracked. Those that posed no threat were systematically dropped from the display. Those that were still unknown where coded light blue. Those that were a possible threat were yellow while those that were already determined by orbital data to be a real threat were coded red. There were far too many red lines.

  The first of many asteroids heading towards Earth and Venus had been diverted. The problem was there were far too many. They needed another solution.

  “Yorky, how large a gravity well would we need to create at the gravitational center point of the asteroid belt in order to sweep up the majority of the currently identified threats?”

  “An attractive force of roughly 10 to the 27th Newtons will stabilize the orbits of 80% of the potentially hazardous asteroids but only if the field can be maintained for approximately one hundred hours and is initiated within the next four hours. The efficacy of this approach falls off by the square of the time delay.”

  Cat walked around the display table as if peering at the problem from another angle might present another solution. “Question... Does the Yorktown have the means of generating a gravitational field of that magnitude?”

  “Negative Admiral. Such a field is well outside of our power generation capabilities.”

  Cat continued to walk around the table, using her hand to adjust the magnification of a given section periodically. “Are there any options you can recommend?”

  “The Yorktown’s inventory currently includes thirty-six SJ rounds. These devices could potentially be reprogrammed to open hyperfield conduits between a sufficiently large gravity well and the desired locus for the gravitational well,” Yorky speculated.

  “Any field they generated would be highly directional and not spherical,” Cat countered.

  “True, Admiral, however thirty-two devices could be constructed in a roughly spherical pentakis dodecahedron configuration that would simulate a spherical field with sufficient fidelity to accomplish the goal at hand.”

  “That would only leave us four left and without Heshe fabrication technology we would be hard pressed to replace them.”

  “That is, of course, correct Admiral,” Yorky replied, “but a hull full of unused weapons systems verses losing Earth to a kinetic impact is hardly an even trade.”

  Cat smiled. It was exactly how her father would have presented the argument. “Point taken… draw up the plans and get it down to engineering.”

  Cat hit the intercom button on the table. “Ken, can you spare me a minute of your time. I have a job that needs doing.”

  ***

  Nicked-Tail spit in disgust. The twice cursed Admiral Kimbridge had managed to deploy hyperfield dampeners far faster and far more broadly than any of his staff had anticipated. He would have disciplined them more thoroughly for their incompetence but he had no way of replacing them and so he dare not inflict permanent damage.

  He turned towards his recently promoted junior sensor officer. The young officer’s shell was a sickly green. He was properly nervous. The fact that his predecessor was even now recovering in sickbay did wonders for his apparent desire to excel.

  “What can you tell me about the disposition of enemy forces Lieutenant?”

  “Sir, for the most part they seem to be chasing rocks.”

  Nicked-Tail looked at the young man – not sure if he was joking – but absolutely sure he would not do so again should the explanation not prove satisfactory. “Continue,” he said dryly.

  “We have several dozen probes jumping in as far as they can into the system. They are actively scanning everything they can find while exploring the inner system at extreme sublight speeds. If they detect an alien vessel they seek to follow it and analyze it until detected themselves.”

  “All this I know Lieutenant! Do not presume to try my patience.”

  “No Sir, I only meant to highlight the fact that on the surface there seem to be too many GCP ships. I programmed the probes look for energy signatures, heat profiles, and gravitational displacement. Once I did that, most of what we are finding seemed to be decoys designed to mislead us. That said, those that are not seem to be engaged in hunting down and deflecting the path of some of the larger asteroids that resulted from our destruction of the sixth planet – the one just past the orbit of the one they call Mars.”

  Nicked-Tail sat back in his command chair. Perhaps this young officer had potential after all. “Speculate… why are they pursuing such asteroids? Any impact with the inner planets would not happen for years or even decades.”

  “Well Sir, my best guess, and that is all that it is, is that the sooner they deflect these asteroids the easier it is to do. The longer they wait, the more dispersed
they become and the harder the task is to account for them all.”

  “How much of a threat do these rocks represent?”

  “They are not big enough to destroy any of the inner planets but many, perhaps several thousand – if not more, will have accumulated enough kinetic energy falling towards the sun to effectively sterilize any world they hit.”

  “So the Admiral will have her hands full for a while,” Nicked-Tail mused. “Interesting.”

  ***

  Admiral Faragon looked out the observation window of Space Habitat One at the world slowly spinning below him. The crew had voted to name the world Kimbridge after his lost friend and comrade Catherine Kimbridge.

  It was a warm and wet blue world with excessively high CO2 levels but it was well within the capabilities of Human/Heshe engineering to terraform. Already nano factories were busy converting the atmosphere into something humans could more easily breathe. As the CO2 levels declined, the greenhouse effect would diminish and the world would cool somewhat. He had seen computer projections, in several hundred years the world known as Kimbridge would be ideally suited for un-augmented humanity.

  Even now there were augmented people living on the surface. These had been the members of his crew who were too impatient, after decades in space traveling to this world, to wait any longer. Taking advantage of the FTL communications network that still existed, and working with GCP scientists across the universe, a series of reprogrammed nanites had been developed that allowed members of the Galactic Coalition to survive and flourish in environments that had previously been less than ideal.

  As he looked down he imagined he could see cities growing next to the shorelines of the various lakes and oceans. He imagined seeing Hopper joeys playing next to six-legged D’rlalu puppies as well as human children. He smiled.

  ***

  Silver-Fin jostled his state-of-the-art Modos fighter into position. He pressed the interlock and his cybernetic systems took over. Electronics embedded in his exoskeleton interfaced directly with the ship’s systems. In essence, the ship became his host much like the Bearephant that he normally rode. Unlike the organic Suhtii, however, this host would not pass out during high acceleration which meant less energy had to be used for inertial dampeners and life support… which meant there was more available for thrusters and weapons systems.