Star Glory: Empire Series, #1

CHAPTER ONE

I never expected to be homeless in the galaxy. To be afraid to return to Sol and Earth out of fear that a return would bring the dreaded Empire fleets and subjugation for Earth. Course, I’m not really homeless. Not on the Star Glory, which has 369 humans on board and small private rooms for a petty officer like me. Still, homeless is how I feel now. It all began right after the Glory exited from Alcubierre stardrive and arrived at the outer edge of the furthest star yet visited by humans, a place called Kepler 37, which lies about 215 light years out from Earth.

PO Nathan Stewart! Are your antimatter injector tubes ready to feed the thrusters! yelled Chief Engineer O’Connor from the other end of the giant room that houses our Alcubierre space-time graviton generators, our stern fusion reactor and my post.

I looked up at the flare of nine flexible metal tubes that feed negative neutrons to the deck below, where it will be spit into the star flame of our fusion pulse thrusters. The shimmer of the rainbow colors that indicated perfect functioning of the containment magfields that enclosed each tube told me the system was ready.

Chief O’Connor! The tubes are ready to feed antimatter to our thrusters, sir!

The barrel-shaped man twisted his wide shoulders and looked my way. Beady black eyes squinted. You don’t have your goggles on! How the hell do you know your magfields are operational!

Sir, I don’t need the goggles. I looked up again. The color shimmer matches exactly what they taught us to expect at NS Great Lakes!

The stocky, short man grimaced. I don’t give a damn that you have super-duper eyes. Put on your goggles anyway and report!

I did as ordered, even though Robert O’Connor was just being official for the overhead videyes that record the active duty behaviors of every human doing anything anywhere on the Star Glory. He doesn’t object to my special eyesight. It just isn’t in the Engineering operations manual, so he had to insist I put on the goggles. That was to ensure no EarthGov official could gig Captain Neil Skorzeny for irregular crew function. And the captain was a fair man, unlike Lieutenant Commander Mehta Nehru, the Second Watch line officer. Nehru had been a real bent shitcan all the days of our FTL transit. The man from India did not like Colorado country boys who raised cows to eat, he being Hindu and a lover of cattle wandering through one’s streets, dropping turds everywhere they went. The man had made it a point to gig me for improper uniform appearance. Spots of oil and clumps of Teflon fibers are hard to avoid in Engineering. Plus I wasn’t a Marine, a line officer or an academic and thereby deserving of his respect. So he dumped on me every time he saw me in the Mess Hall, in Recycling or anywhere else on the twelve decks of the ship. I shook my head and decided to pay attention to the job I liked doing. That meant ignoring the amused looks from the three Spacers and petty officer who sat beyond us at the fusion reactor station. I pulled my head strap tight and looked up through the goggles.

Chief O’Connor, checking by way of goggles confirms the magfield shimmer colors meet regulation criteria, I said, hoping the words fit what I recalled from my years spent studying antimatter engineering at Naval Station Great Lakes, on the north side of Chicago.

Good. The man looked away and focused on his own control panel, which held the controls for the ship’s three fusion pulse thrusters. Then my fellow American tapped his seat’s right armrest, activating his comlink with the Bridge. Captain Skorzeny, Chief O’Connor reporting from Engineering. Thrusters are a go! Antimatter injection tubes are a go for afterburner push! Sir.

A nearby bulkhead vidscreen, presently filled with the white star dots of interstellar space, changed to an overhead view of Skorzeny as he sat on the command pedestal in the middle of the Bridge. To the man’s left and lower down sat the XO, Commander Nadya Kumisov, whose black hair now held several white streaks. Like the captain and everyone on the Bridge and elsewhere in the ship, she wore a vacsuit with helmet thrown back, in case of deck pressure loss. This being First Watch, she looked very alert. As did Major James Owanju, commander of all the Marines on the Star Glory. The man’s deep black skin seemed to soak in the yellow-normal lighting of the Bridge. Beyond Owanju, and to the lower right of the captain, sat the only civilian on the Bridge. Strapped in but appearing bothered by the tightness of his vacsuit was Doctor Magnus Bjorg, expert in stellar cosmology and planetary systems. The Swede represented the Science Department geeks who partly filled a deck lying between Bridge and Engineering.

Acknowledged, chief, Skorzeny said, his broad hands resting on his seat’s armrests, the gloved fingers hovering just above the control patches on each armrest. The man nodded his head at the front vidscreen, which lay beyond the pickup range of the ceiling mounted videye. All Ship! We have arrived at the edge of the magnetosphere of Kepler 37. Our sensors tell us we are in the outer portion of this system’s Kuiper Belt of comets. As you can see, he said, tapping an armrest control patch, ahead of us is this system’s G8V yellow star. An outer gas giant is present, as are four very small inner worlds that Kepler documented. They lie too close for liquid water to survive on their surfaces. There are also two asteroid belts between us and the gas giant.

I looked away from the bulkhead vidscreen to a different vidscreen that was close to the chief’s duty station. It showed the tiny round dot of a yellow star. To one side of the true space image was a system graphic image that showed an overhead plan view of the system, with the circular orbits of the five planets and two rock belts showing as dotted lines. The outer Kuiper Belt of comets showed as a blue zone that began at 38 AU and reached out to our position at 45 AU. The spot where we had exited stardrive. That spot now lay behind us as our ship and our two sister ships raced inward at one-tenth lightspeed. As I had learned at Great Lakes, whatever inertial speed a starship had when it entered Alcubierre was the speed it had upon exit. Hence the chief’s yelling at me. The man wanted to be sure the Star Glory could fire her thrusters for maneuvering, and then speed up to eleven psol thanks to antimatter injections from my tubes. The tubes connected to the antimatter reservoir on the deck above Engineering. Feeding the reservoir was the particle accelerator coil that wrapped around the stern of the Star Glory and every other starship of EarthGov. The extra thrust provided by the antimatter injector tubes helped when any Earth ship was chasing pirates in Sol system, or was faced with the need to move faster than usual thanks to an incoming rock or comet.

Captain! yelled Kumisov. Our bow sensor array reports stationary and moving neutrino emissions from three large moons above the gas giant! Tactical, give me a readout on those emissions. Are they asteroid rebels or generation ships?

Negative XO! called Hilary Chang from Tactical. The flavors of the neutrino emissions do not match any Earth fusion reactor or fusion pulse thruster. Sir!

Heidi, called the captain. "Do the neutrino emissions match anything ever recorded from Sol system?"

They do not, responded the ship’s AI, her normal light-hearted tone gone and replaced by a seriousness that sounded almost masculine.

Aliens then, Kumisov said firmly. Captain, suggest we go to Security Protocol Alpha Zed Forty-three. And that we advise our sister ships to do the same.

In the vidscreen near my work station the captain nodded, his curly brown hair bright in the light of the Bridge. "Communications, connect me with the captains of the Dauntless and the Pyotr Velikiy."

Neutrino comlink established, said Jacob Wetstone from his Communications station in front of the command pedestal. Incoming imagery and voice. Sir.

The nearby bulkhead vidscreen split now, with the overhead view of the Bridge moving to the left and two images filling the right side. I recognized Leslie Jacobsen, captain of the HMS Dauntless and Gregorii Nutsov, captain of the Russian battlecruiser Pyotr Velikiy. Both men looked darkly serious.

Neil? called Jacobsen.

Comrade Skorzeny, these are aliens, yes? muttered Nutsov.

So it seems. Captains, go to Security Protocol Alpha Zed Forty-three. The captain pursed his lips, then spoke again. Heidi, eject a comsat to handle our radio and neutrino communications with whomever that is down there. Apply Security Protocol—

Launching. Protocol applied, the AI said quickly. Firewall established between our ship and the comsat.

We’re doing the same, reported Jacobsen.

Same for us, Nutsov said. Activating our electro-optical telescopes. Tactical! Get me imagery of those three moons!

I saw the captain nod again. Tactical, get us a feed from our scopes.

Captain, our scopes are pulling in true light from the inner system, Chang said hurriedly.

Whispers came to my super-sensitive ears from the Spacers over at the fusion reactor station.

PO, have we finally found aliens? called a young man who went by Gus.

Looks like it, said Petty Officer Dolores Gambuchino in a low whisper that most people would not hear. Shut up, you three! And be ready to feed max power to ship weapons and systems if the captain orders it!

Real aliens were a surprise. A very big surprise. My profs at Great Lakes had said it was probable the Milky Way held other space-going peoples, but emphasized we were unlikely to meet them given the 90,000 light year width of the galaxy. Now here they were, in our own galactic arm of Orion, and just 215 light years from Sol! Damn. I looked over to where the chief sat, his vacsuit tight about his muscular frame. The man looked troubled. His hands were hovering above his thruster control panel, clearly ready to activate the ship’s three fusion pulse thrusters. The action of the chief made me look down at my own antimatter control panel which stood on a pedestal in front of my seat. The automatic straps that had criss-crossed my chest upon our emergence from Alcubierre kept me from moving forward very much. But I could reach the touchpanel. And the control patches on the armrests of my seat were easy to access. What was going to happen? Would the captain order us and our sister ships to turn back to the magnetosphere, there to re-enter Alcubierre space-time and head back to Sol? Heading back would take a good hour since we would have to stop our forward momentum, then reverse ship orientation so we could head back to the edge of the magnetosphere. Explosive experiments in Sol system had confirmed that no starship could safely activate its Alcubierre stardrive within the magnetosphere globe that surrounded any star. Or would the captain allow our small fleet to continue inward, eventually to make contact with the first aliens ever found by any Earth ship? The questions made me wonder about my friends Bill, Warren, Oksana and Cassandra, who was my higher math tutor. Cassie had a master’s in exobiology and was expert on the lifeforms found on our twelve colony worlds. She or her boss should be up on the Bridge, ready to help the captain. Old Magnus just knew planets and stars. This first encounter with aliens was not anything I could help with. Growing up on a cattle ranch outside of Castle Rock, Colorado does not prepare one to go head-to-carapace or whatever with intelligent space-going aliens!

Captain, scope imagery going up on the front vidscreen, reported Chang, her voice business-like. There are 47 moons of various sizes that orbit the gas giant, which lies three-fourths AU out from the star. The three moons each have an oxy-nitro atmosphere, they range in size from Venus to Earth, and . . . She touched her control panel. The front sensor array is detecting extensive emissions from laser coms, masers, coherent gamma rays and stuff on the radio and visual channels. Sir!

The captain touched gloved fingers to his clean-shaven chin. Com, how long will it take a radio signal to reach those moons and the ships and structures emitting these radiations?

Sir, eight point three hours to reach them, the same for any return reply. Wetstone looked back to Skorzeny. Captain, I could try sending unencrypted neutrino signals from the comsat? They’re FTL in nature. Wetstone blushed, as he recalled the captain and everyone on the Bridge well knew that neutrino com signals passed through an alternate dimension that allowed for instant talk-talk with another ship no matter how far away it might be. If there is a reply, the comsat will retransmit to us in AM radio. Which will be filtered by Heidi’s firewall.

The captain looked to his right and down. Doctor Bjorg, your Science Department people must have a standard First Contact package ready to go. Correct?

The big-framed man, who took pride in blond hair that reached his shoulders, nodded quickly. Captain, we have such a package. It’s a mix of math sequences, followed by basic English words with visual imagery that match the words. Shall I make it available to Heidi?

Do so. The captain sat back and folded his hands in his lap, appearing thoughtful. Heidi, transmit the audiovisual package to the comsat. Then remove your astrogation data files from any form of digital access through our optical fiber lines. Put them into the Secure Block in Astrogation Department. That should protect the files from signal hacking. Captains Jacobsen and Nutsov, you should do the same. Who knows what these aliens may be capable of doing once they contact us?

I agreed with the captain’s decision to segregate the astrogation data files into the Secure Block. That data held the stellar coordinates for Earth and for our twelve colonies. Whatever came of this first encounter with aliens, they would not be able to discover where humans lived. And if one of our ships was captured, there was a self-destruct sequence that was both digital and manual. And I had no doubt Captain Skorzeny would destroy the ship, if faced with capture. While it had been a remote possibility when I was drafted by EarthGov, the discovery of so many habitable worlds close to Sol meant the galaxy was filled with places where life could exist. The Great Lakes profs had made clear that First Contact was just a matter of time. And that time had now come.

Files are segregated, Heidi said, her tone still somber serious. Your Bridge astrogator can still maneuver this ship through normal space-time. But transit into Alcubierre space-time modulus will require physical access to the Secure Block and release of its data back into my ship optical fiber veins.

Understood. The captain sighed, then nodded abruptly. Com, emit the open neutrino comsignal from the comsat. Transmit the AV package. Let’s see if anyone is listening to neutrino com chatter.

Transmitting, sir. Wetstone’s face looked grim in the image on my bulkhead wall.

Did I look like that? Did the Chief look like that? The imagery of the Bridge and the two other ship captains showed everyone looking somber, serious and worried.

Those looks were something I knew well. Delivering a calf from a cow in the early morning in our family’s barn was something I knew all too well. But living in a big city like Denver or Chicago was not something I had ever done, until I got my draft notice right after high school graduation. While the notice had showed up on my Facebook page, my family’s business page and by old-fashioned letter sent to our woodframe house, it had been a shock. While everyone knew America was one of the seven nations that made up EarthGov, and was a prime supplier of commercial spaceships and combat spacecraft to the rest of the world, the fact the President had agreed to make the Constitution subservient to the EarthGov unification document was still sinking in seven years after the fact. Yes, a majority of Americans had voted in favor of joining EarthGov. Yes, that joining had resulted in increased trade and the creation of many new jobs. And yes, the joining had given America an equal voice with Russia, China, India, Britain, the African Union and Japan. But joining also meant the American president was the EarthGov boss just once every seven years. In high school we had learned how EarthGov was modeled after the Swiss national government system, where the governors of each Swiss canton rotated the national leadership among themselves. In EarthGov the most powerful nations now rotated planetary control among themselves, with citizens being heard in the Global Parliament in Geneva. But forced conscription had come with EarthGov membership. And the White House now sent out draft notices to American youth. I shivered, then told myself to put the memories of my fear of big cities into memory hold. Meeting unknown aliens was more serious than a country boy adjusting to big city life.

Captain! yelled Chang from her Tactical station. "We’ve got moving neutrino emission sources behind us! Long ways back but they are between us and the magnetosphere edge."

How many? growled Skorzeny.

Twenty-seven sources, sir. Chang tapped her panel, looked back to the XO, who gestured upward, then she faced the captain. They are spread out in a dome that covers ten million miles. The dome reaches out to our starboard, port, foc’sle, keel and stern directions. We are surrounded. Except for the space directly ahead. The sources are going up on our system graphic. Sir.

What is their speed?

Same as us, one-tenth psol. Chang looked back to her station, focusing her attention on a holo that showed the system graphic of planets, asteroid belts, cometary zone and the green dots of our three ships. Behind and around our ships were twenty-seven red dots. All the dots were moving inward, toward the local star.

Range to the nearest alien ship?

Sir, the nearest ship is fourteen million, three hundred sixty-eight thousand kilometers directly behind us. Two other ships are at the same range.

That was equal to almost nine million miles. At our current speed of one-tenth psol, or eighteen thousand six hundred miles per second, our ship could cover that distance in about eight minutes. It began to sink in just how close these aliens were. Are. And can be.

XO, how did we fail to detect those neutrino emission sources? Skorzeny said, his expression worried.

No idea, sir. Kumisov tapped on her own control panel, then looked at a system graphic hologram that sprang into view in front of her. We passed through the middle of this dome formation. We should have detected those ships’ fusion reactors and thruster emissions. Sir, even if they were on the other side of a rocky planet, the neutrinos would pass through. Nothing material can block neutrinos. We should have detected them. We didn’t.

Astrogation, put us on a vector track away from our sister ships. Move to position 195 degrees down from the ecliptic plane. Skorzeny looked to a different area of the function stations that filled the front of the Bridge. Weapons, put our lasers, missiles and railguns on Hot Ready status.

Sir, new vector set, called Louise Ibarra from Astrogation.

All Weapons stations moving to Hot Ready status, muttered Bill Yamamoto, a Japanese-American from San Francisco I had met twice in the Mess Hall.

The captain touched his right armrest. Chief O’Connor, fire up our thrusters. Give me flank speed in forty seconds.

I saw my boss’s thick shoulders tense. Sir, thruster containment fields going up. DT pellets injecting. Fusion implosions are nearing max plasma density. Exhausting!

My feet felt the deck vibrating from the pumps that transported frozen deuterium and tritium pellets from our fuel bunkers down their feedlines and into the implosion chambers where they were hit by a dozen terawatt-power lasers, causing fusion and the creation of excess energy that became glowing yellow-orange plasma. The plasma was contained by each thruster’s containment magfield. Then the Chief tapped another control to open the exhaust funnel of each thruster. Those funnels were enclosed in magnetic fields that kept the positively charged plasma from touching the metal walls of the three implosion chambers and exhaust funnels. At the outer edge of the exhaust funnel for each thruster were three antimatter injector ports. They would shoot negative antimatter into the positive plasma exhaust when the Chief ordered an afterburner push. No such order came.

"Astro, move us ten thousand kilometers away from the HMS Dauntless. The man looked up. Captains Jacobsen and Nutsov, I suggest you do the same. Let us adopt formation Victor Unity. The sudden appearance of these alien ships is not welcome news."

Moving out, called the captain of the HMS Dauntless.

"Pyotr Velikiy is moving to its formation position," the Russian said bluntly.

Since the Chief had not told me to open the antimatter injector tubes to feed AM to the thruster exhausts, I could not help visualizing the new formation. It was basically a triangle, with the Star Glory at the apex and the other two ships at the lower angles. Each ship lay just beyond the 10,000 kilometer range of our carbon dioxide and proton lasers. The point of the formation was to prevent blue-on-blue collateral damage from laser firing, while being close enough to allow each ship to use its railguns in defense against incoming missiles and Smart Rocks. The formation allowed for mutual defense while maximizing the laser targeting angles.

Captain, do we launch some x-ray thermonuke warheads? called Kumisov.

Not yet. Skorzeny hands hovered above his armrest control patches. Let us see what response we get—

Incoming neutrino signal! cried Wetstone. Going up on the front vidscreen. Also going out on All Ship vidfeed. Sir, the signal perfectly matches our ship-to-ship neutrino comlink!

How had this alien learned our neutrino comlink frequency? That was the signal that even now conveyed the images and voices of the other two captains. It was not the same signal frequency which Com was using to communicate with the comsat. Unease filled me. I looked up at the nine shimmering antimatter tubes that flared down from the overhead deck, spreading out like the spines of an umbrella and then heading straight down to our floor deck. And through the deck to the three thruster funnels. The reactor Spacers had teased me about hiding inside a cage of antimatter tubes while they sat ‘in the open’ at the control panels that fronted one side of Engineering’s fusion reactor. I wasn’t confined, not really. There was a meter between each tube, which left plenty of room for me to pass out from my station, and to return later. It didn’t matter. The rainbow colors of the tube magfields were beautiful. A beauty I had long ago come to need since I was not good at being sociable. Putting aside my yearning for something meaningful to do, I focused on the nearby bulkhead.

The vidscreen grew an image in its middle, forcing to either side the overhead view of the Bridge and the images of the other two captains. A creature that resembled a black-furred otter took form. White fur stripes swept down to either side. The otter alien stood on two thick legs. Its two slim arms hung down to its curving hips. The shoulders flowed straight into a curving neck that supported an otter-like head that held two black eyes, a brown nose, sharp white teeth and flaring whiskers. The dome of a large braincase rose up above the creature’s eyes. Looking lower I noticed a black-furred tail hanging from its rear, its smooth fur shiny under a white light. The tail moved lazily from side to side. To either side of the creature and behind it were nine other aliens, their forms far more bizarre than a giant walking otter. The creature’s mouth opened. Inside a pink tongue moved.

"Greetings to Captain Neil Skorzeny, manager of the Earth starship Star Glory and leader of two sister ships that have now reached the limits of your formation Victor Unity. The words stopped as shock filled me at the conversational English being spoken by an exotic creature from who knew where. It lifted an arm and gestured sideways with a black-furred hand that held four claw-tipped fingers. As you can see, the bridge of my starship Golden Pond contains crew working at their