Usurper of the Sun (23 page)
The long, narrow ship looked like the stem of a wine glass protruding from the back of the graser. During an actual attack, a second ship, the UNSS
Becquerel
, would link with the
Thompson
. Together the
Becquerel
and the
Thompson
would form the final line of defense, attempting to intercept the Builders.
“The UNSS
Thompson
is currently unmanned. It’s being controlled from the UNSS
Becquerel
, located thirty thousand kilometers behind the
Thompson
. The targets being used for tonight’s demonstration are three spent fuel tanks positioned some two thousand kilometers ahead. The ship should be ready to fire any minute now.”
Three egg-shaped objects spaced some distance apart from each other came into view. A countdown timer appeared in the lower right of the screen. As the clock neared zero, silence fell upon the stadium. Only the faint sound of traffic and other random background noise coming from the city were audible. As soon as the countdown reached zero, there was a blinding flash.
When the view of space returned, the fuel tanks were nowhere to be seen. The scene was replayed in slow motion several times. The blast vaporized the tanks in a mere five one-thousandths of a second. The vapor from the explosion dispersed at the breakneck speed of ten kilometers per second, leaving the vidlink’s field of vision instantaneously.
“Unbelievable, ladies and gentlemen, truly unbelievable! We have just witnessed the incredible power of the graser. Needless to say, the graser firing test has been a complete success! You have been a witness to the true potential of humanity! The Builders are about to meet their match!” The deep and booming amplified voice of the announcer, which was overwhelming in and of itself, collided with the roaring exultation of the crowd.
Aki wondered if people could possibly be this obtuse. Perhaps the UNSDF had discovered how to trigger the graser, but no one knew how the collimation device worked or how to recharge it. She wondered how many people were aware of the flaws in the plan. The military had been sly, convincing hundreds of millions of viewers that slicing the graser from the Island and carrying it to a new location meant that the military knew what it was doing. The situation was certainly not going to be that simple.
Aki stared up into the clear, cold darkness of the night sky. Above the nocturnal skyline, she could make out Orion. Next to Orion’s belt was a new star that was shining almost as brightly as Sirius. Although the composition of the light could not be determined with the naked eye, Aki remembered the nausea she had felt when she read the analysis of the data collected by the satellite telescopes—iron, lead, aluminum, hydrogen, silicon, carbon, nitrogen, and oxygen. The Builders were burning the elements that made up their ship, probably even themselves. The light carried proof of the atomic decomposition. The Builders were willing to sacrifice 99.99 percent to ensure that one ten-thousandth would arrive at the destination.
How are you managing to do this? Why are you so utterly committed to coming here?
She sensed one thing for sure. The Builders were not lacking for backup plans. When the lasers from their deceleration system had not arrived, the Builders had put their mission ahead of their lives and resorted to nuclear-pulse propulsion to slow themselves. A new group of lights appeared in the southwestern horizon.
“Look, there in the sky! Our ships are about to do a flyby.”
Aki watched the exhibition play out with its incredible precision. Four hundred kilometers above the earth, the UNSDF battleships were aligned in a parking orbit alongside their support ships. Aki counted seventeen lights in all. She wondered if the demonstration was planned for this moment because the ships were visible from North America. As lost in the spectacle as anyone else at the stadium, Aki snapped back to reality when somebody grabbed her arm.
“I’ve been looking for you!” It was Collins, her bodyguard. “What were you thinking, alone in a crowd of this size?”
“Sorry, Collins.” Aki followed his lead as he escorted her out. Looking up to the night sky again, she got into the car that had been waiting for her.
THE DECOR IN
the Strategic Air Command Director’s office was modest. In one corner sat an antique Rand McNally globe encased in glass. The brightly colored globe was the only object in the room that caught Aki’s attention. In contrast, the northern exposure offered a breathtaking view of the main hall below. Standing at the window, Aki realized that the hall was large enough to house two large tanker ships. UNSDF Fleet Headquarters was, in essence, a self-sufficient underground city. The threat of an attack by the Soviet Union during the Cold War paled in comparison to the potentially catastrophic severity of the current situation. Even if Earth underwent an attack by kinetic energy weapons or nanomachines that stripped away the planet’s atmosphere, this facility was prepared to endure the attack and sustain five hundred people for up to two years. For a moment, Aki wondered whether the five hundred would try to rebuild or exact revenge, but she quickly realized the answer.
Even though it was highly automated, the interplanetary nuclearpowered battleships housed here still needed at least sixty specialists, including relief personnel, to keep them running properly. The UNSDF faced substantial logistical challenges in operating and coordinating the actions of its nine battleships simultaneously. The weapons on each of the battleships were essentially spacecraft unto themselves.
In addition to the Battleship Group, there was also the Tactical Situation Group, which collected and processed data from the twenty-seven terrestrial and eighteen orbital observation stations. Together, those observation stations monitored the Builders’ ship, Mercury, Venus, various parts of the Vert-Ring, and the area of the inner solar system. Their monitoring processes were managed by computers working in sync with forty human beings to sift through the exabytes of data that poured in.
The interception point with the Builders’ ship was estimated at what, by now, seemed like a short distance, a mere twenty light minutes from Earth. That interception point was on the opposite side of the sun, meaning that there would be a significant time lag in communications with Earth. Since the battle might need precision down to the millisecond, all major decisions would need to be made by tactical computer systems integrated directly into the weapons.
This went contrary to the prevailing desire to decide the actions months, if not years, in advance. The battles of this form of space warfare were better suited for long-term strategic planning because it could take months or years for the targets to be within range. Given the high speed of their target, decisions would need to be made almost instantaneously once the target came into range. Besides the time lag, any person or processor calling the shots would face the hazard of metadata inundation. According to the simulations, there could be up to several petabytes of data flowing in at once. Each byte of data needed to be sorted and distributed to the proper team, who would then decide what responses might need to be implemented. The decisions were prioritized and transmitted to the fleet via wide-spectrum laser, high-frequency wave, and microwave lines simultaneously. The fleet would then respond to whichever incarnation of the command signals arrived first.
Before being seen by the crew, however, these commands were first reviewed, evaluated, and compiled by onboard computers that filtered out commands that had already been executed or had become irrelevant based on real-time changes to the situation. Finally, any commands still left unexecuted and also still applicable were then organized and sent to the crew for interpretation or implementation.
“What an amazing facility,” Aki said, trying to show more than the minimal interest she felt. She respected how carefully the operational systems had been designed to process chaos and complexity, but could not help but notice that the strategic planning was all geared toward defense, not communication.
Director Robbins looked like he had not expected her to speak. He stared at Aki and weighed her comment carefully. “You must hate me,” he said.
“I apologize for turning down your invitation to the ceremony. It was childish of me not to accept.”
“It’s fine. I worried what might happen if you gave a speech in your current state.”
He placed two porcelain pedestal cups on a tray and poured coffee from a thermos.
“I’m a bit sad to know this entire facility will have no use within a few years. Having served in the Strategic Air Command for as long as I have, this kind of extravagant spending doesn’t faze me anymore. When we first scrapped the entire North African radar network, it bothered me to consider how many starving children we could’ve saved with the wasted money. At the end of the day, I accepted that we needed to do what was in the long-term best interest of the whole of humanity.”
Aki looked at her cup while sipping her coffee. It was a handpainted Nippon cup. It depicted a scene of a country farmhouse.
“It’s true that you saved the earth, Aki. In my book though, Mark Ridley is just as much the hero as you are. He was navy, right?”
“He is a hero in my book as well.”
“Then you understand when I say that I don’t want his sacrifice to be in vain.”
Aki looked up from the porcelain cup.
“I’ve gotten your attention. Let’s get down to business. We cannot accommodate your request to allocate three of our ships for the Contact Phase.”
He motioned for her to sit in the chair facing his desk, then pulled an envelope from the top drawer of his desk.
“There will be a single contact ship—the
Phalanx
. You will be in charge of that ship. You are the only one for the job.”
Aki tore the envelope open. It contained military orders requesting her to report for duty as commander of the UNSS
Phalanx
.
“Oh, and don’t think that we’re going to send you up in that bucket of bolts the way she was before. We’re doing major modifications, bringing her up to date, even adding an atomic second stage. Only the
Phalanx
will be capable of rendezvousing with the Builders’ craft. I’m taking a lot of flak from my superiors for making this decision.”
The
Phalanx
alone would meet the Builders’ ship and attempt to make contact. The other eight craft would be in position for interception. For the plan to succeed, the fastest ship needed to be her contact ship. The other eight ships needed payload capacity more than they needed speed.
“Your contact ship will be weaponless. As you can guess, it’ll have a high risk of being destroyed. You accept the position?”
“Without hesitation.”
“Excellent. Congratulations, even though there wasn’t any doubt. You’ll have a crew of five. A team of three—the Contact Team—will attempt to board the alien vessel. You, of course, must be one of them. The second will be a Marine guard for protection; you may select the guard, or we can assign one. The third should be another science expert, one with an engineering background. I would like you to decide who that one will be too. There is no need for an application process or approval by committee. This is a military mission: make your selection and it will be done.”
“Yes, sir.”
WHILE RIDING AWAY
in yet another black limousine, Aki wondered what qualities to look for in the other two members of the Contact Team. She imagined that there were millions of people who would do anything for the chance to speak with the Builders. She thought of several dozen people she knew fairly well who had the drive and skill sets required to be part of the mission. Of them, there were only two whom she would want to have at her side at this incredible moment of truth. Of those two, only one of them was still alive.
Selecting him would cause talk, but this is too important for chatter to be relevant. I should ask him right now.
She decided to ask him over the phone since calling him to her office by official request struck her as pretentious.
“Hi, Raul,” she said. “I wanted to thank you for your help the other day and your encouragement. I hope you’re glad to hear from me again.”
“Maybe I am, maybe I’m not,” said Raul. “Every time we talk, you give me something hard to do, crazy lady.”
“I bet I can change that
maybe
to a
definitely
.”
“Oh, yeah? How?” His enthusiastic reply was what she had hoped for.