Stars & Empire 2: 10 More Galactic Tales (Stars & Empire Box Set Collection) Read online

  “Don’t forget, we have flight training in the morning,” Jason reminded Greg. He was looking forward to learning how to fly one of the shuttles. “We have a lot to learn before we’re ready to go to Ceres.”

  -

  Jason and Greg were in a small room just across from the flight bay. Lieutenant Addison, the young pilot that had sat in the pilot’s seat when the shuttle had brought Jason and Greg to the Moon, was explaining to them how the simulator worked.

  “There were half a dozen simulators in this room to begin with,” he explained, pointing at a number of partially disassembled machines. “Ariel had the technicians cannibalize parts from the others to get this one functioning.”

  “How does it work?” asked Jason, looking with interest at the simulator. There were two seats in front of him with what looked like a flight helmet with a full visor on the front hanging above them. This wasn’t like any simulator he had ever used before.

  “It’s virtual reality,” explained Addison, grinning. “Put the helmet on, and a virtual world is created which mimics the inside of the cockpit for the shuttle. We don’t really understand how it works, but everything seems extremely real.”

  Jason looked over at Greg and then, shrugging his shoulders, sat down in the indicated chair for the pilot. Greg sat down in the other.

  “You’re sure this thing is safe?” asked Greg, glancing uneasily at the lieutenant.

  Lieutenant Addison laughed and nodded his head. “I’ve used it dozens of times over the past four weeks. It’s perfectly safe.”

  Greg tried to relax. He wondered how this would work.

  Lieutenant Addison stepped over and lowered the helmets, making sure they were in place. He then stepped up to the control console in front of them. Then, looking back at the two, he said. “Okay, get ready to be amazed.” The lieutenant flipped several switches and pushed a large green button.

  For a moment, Jason thought nothing had changed. Then, looking around, he realized that his surroundings were different, and he was no longer in the simulator room. He was sitting in the cockpit of a shuttle. Looking over to his side, he saw Greg sitting in the copilot’s seat looking equally surprised.

  “This is interesting,” spoke Greg, looking around in amazement. “How the hell can they do this? Everything looks so real.”

  “If you two are ready, we’ll begin the instrument familiarization part of this simulation,” Lieutenant Addison spoke. His voice seemed to come from a speaker that was on the console in front of them.

  Looking over at Greg, Jason nodded. “Let’s do it.”

  -

  Jason was sitting in what at one time had been the officer’s mess. Lisa Gordon and Adam Timmons were sitting across from him. They were eating a simple meal of sandwiches, chips, and sodas. A few others were at other tables eating and discussing their current projects.

  “What do you two think about this mission?” asked Jason, eyeing the two.

  This was the first time he had been able to get together with Lisa and Adam to discuss the trip to Ceres. He highly valued their opinions. From his time with them on the Avenger before he and Greg returned to Earth, he had gotten to know both of them quite well. They were both highly intelligent and capable of thinking outside the box. He was glad they were both going on this mission; their expertise could be quite valuable.

  Lisa took a sip of her drink and then with her right hand moved a strand of blonde hair from in front of her eyes. She had let her hair grow out some since the Avenger had initiated its artificial gravity field. “I’ve spoken to Ariel about what she thinks we may find. The fleet had two large colony ships with them that were capable of building almost anything they wanted.”

  “Colony ships?” Jason asked his eyes focusing on Lisa. “Any idea how big they were?”

  “Ariel says the colony ships were nearly 2,000 meters,” Lisa replied her blue eyes studying Jason waiting for his response.

  “Two thousand meters,” Jason repeated slowly, his eyes growing wide. “That’s three times larger than the Avenger!”

  Jason leaned back in his chair and thought about what Lisa had just said. He could scarcely imagine a ship that large. The technology to build such a ship was so far in advance of anything Earth was capable of. It made Earth’s space program look like a joke.

  “Yes, it is,” responded Lisa. Then she smiled. “The colony ships were capable of setting up a complete colony. They had numerous manufacturing systems on board, which could build almost anything the colonists wanted.”

  “What kind of base does Ariel think they were going to build inside the asteroid?” Jason asked.

  The more information he could find out about the goals of the Federation survivors, the better the mission would go. He was still trying to come to grips with the technology available to the Federation. He still found it nearly incomprehensible that the Federation had lost to the Hocklyns. It made him realize even more just how dangerous the Hocklyns were.

  Lisa looked over at Adam. They had discussed this already. “It would have been massive, Commander. The base they had planned originally would have been capable of housing over 100,000 people, plus all of their ships.”

  “That’s big,” responded Jason, trying to imagine a facility that large inside the asteroid.

  “Perhaps larger,” continued Lisa, smiling mysteriously. “The base was to be a military one and would contain all the facilities necessary to repair damaged warships as well as build new ones.”

  “Build new ones!” repeated Jason, drawing in a sharp breath. “How’s that possible?” A facility like that would be a Godsend for Earth if it were still intact.

  “You have to remember,” Adam said, leaning back and laying his sandwich down on his plate. “Their science in most areas was far ahead of ours. What we would consider impossible, they would consider to be routine. Many of their construction operations were totally automated.”

  Jason looked at the two, thinking about what they had just said. He also remembered what his sister had said before he left about not taking any unnecessary risks. Going into a large unknown military base might be extremely dangerous. There was a good chance a base such as this, if it had actually been built, might have some type of automated defenses.

  “Lisa, I need you to talk to Ariel about what type of automated defenses this base might possess, and what we can do to turn them off if we need to.”

  “Automated defenses,” Lisa said with shock on her face.

  “Damn!” Adam spoke his eyes growing wide. “We never thought about that, but it makes sense.”

  “I’ll talk to Ariel,” Lisa replied, her face turning slightly pale. She had never thought about automated defenses. None of them had.

  -

  One week later, Jason and Greg were going through their final flight simulation. They were in the process of landing the shuttle on the Avenger. Only in the simulation, the Avenger was in space, and they were coming in at a high speed. Jason carefully adjusted the controls and watched as the Avenger’s flight bay doors slid open. Adjusting several flight controls and decreasing their speed, he brought the shuttle into the bay and landed.

  “We made it,” Greg spoke with a relieved smile. The first few times they had tried this simulation they had crashed into the ship. According to Lieutenant Addison, they had only died twelve times in the last ten days.

  “Not bad,” Lieutenant Addison said with a smile as he shut everything down. “I think I’ve died over fifty times in all the scenarios I’ve run.”

  “We leave tomorrow,” said Jason standing up, feeling pleased with the landing. In many ways, the flight simulator had reminded him of the days he had been a military test pilot. He looked over at the young lieutenant. “Are you ready?”

  Lieutenant Addison smiled and nodded his head. He would be operating the shuttle’s scanners and sensors on their trip to Ceres. “I’m ready and excited. Just imagine what we might find.”

  “Don’t get your hopes up too high, Lieu
tenant,” cautioned Jason, understanding the young man’s enthusiasm for this mission. “We don’t yet know if there is anything on or in Ceres.”

  “Perhaps not,” Addison replied his eyes focusing on Jason. “But we won’t know until we go there.”

  Greg just shook his head. He wondered if he had been that enthusiastic when he was the same age as Addison. “I’m going to go call Elizabeth,” he said, nodding at Jason. “You should probably give Katherine and Trevor a call also. We don’t know when we’ll be able to talk to them again.”

  “You’re right,” replied Jason, thinking about his overly protective sister. At least Katherine was still talking to him. She had been highly upset when he had told her that he was leaving again.

  They left the flight simulator room knowing the next day would be big. The mission to Ceres was due to launch in the morning. Ceres was currently 262 million miles from Earth. The flight would take a little over seventy-two hours for the shuttle. Ariel had told them that they could do a micro-jump once they cleared the Earth and Moon’s gravity well, but she didn’t recommend it due to the age of the shuttle. The small craft’s FTL drive was one of the few things she couldn’t explain to the technicians how to properly repair or check. They would have to depend on the shuttle’s sublight drive. Ariel had assured them the drive would function properly. Jason and Greg both hoped the AI was right.

  Chapter Eight

  Jason and Greg were strapped into their acceleration couches on the shuttle, watching the control consoles in front of them. Lieutenant Addison was sitting behind them, in front of the console that controlled the shuttle’s scanners and sensors. The rest of their mission crew were in the passenger compartment waiting anxiously for the launch. Ariel would control the launch and would be flying the shuttle by remote control. It was hoped that she would be able to do this all the way to Ceres.

  Even though Jason was used to computers being in partial control on space missions, he still preferred the hands on approach. Of course, Ariel couldn’t really be classified as a computer. Her avatar was absolutely gorgeous, and she seemed almost human if you spent any time talking to her.

  “Launch in one minute, Commander,” Ariel spoke calmly over the com system. “All systems read normal.”

  “Thank you, Ariel,” replied Jason, taking a deep breath.

  He wanted to fly the shuttle out himself, but he knew it was better to let Ariel handle it. Perhaps someday he would get the opportunity to fly the shuttle without computer control. In some ways, he truly missed his old days as a test pilot.

  “Here we go,” spoke Greg, looking over at Jason with a nervous grin. “We’re going to go farther than anyone from our world has ever gone before. I just hope we make it back.”

  Greg had spoken to his wife for quite some time the previous night. If everything went as they hoped, this mission wouldn’t last more than a few weeks and he would be safely back home with his family. He was already missing holding his infant son.

  Jason heard the shuttle’s engines increase slightly in pitch and knew it was time. He watched the flight controls, ready to take over at a moment’s notice if there were any signs of trouble. His heartbeat quickened. He took a deep breath and then slowly let it out.

  The shuttle rose above the deck in the flight bay and flew smoothly out the large double door. It made a slight popping noise as it passed through the atmospheric force field. Ariel sent the shuttle up at a gentle angle and slowly accelerated the small ship. For twenty minutes, the speed of the shuttle increased until it was moving at slightly over one thousand miles per second. Ariel knew that, at this speed, they would rendezvous with Ceres in a little over seventy-six hours. The mission was on its way. Everything had gone smoothly with the launch, just as she had expected. She did a quick scan of the shuttle’s systems and saw that everything was functioning smoothly. Perhaps in a few more days, she would know if Clarissa had survived. She hoped so, it would be wonderful to have another AI to talk to.

  “All systems are functioning normally, Commander,” Ariel reported. The shuttle had enough redundancy built into it that she wasn’t concerned about a minor system failure. “Shuttle is on the planned flight path.”

  “Thank you, Ariel,” replied Jason, allowing himself to relax. “That was a very smooth launch.”

  Jason looked over the controls on the console in front of him. There were several screens that showed the current status of the ship’s systems. All of these showed normal as Ariel had said. A slightly larger screen in the center of the console showed the shuttle’s planned course. To the right of the large screen was a smaller one that showed what the scanners were picking up in the shuttle’s immediate vicinity.

  Behind Jason, Lieutenant Addison was watching his own screens, which showed everything within 100,000 miles of the shuttle. “All screens are clear,” he reported as he leaned forward and entered some information on the computer in front of him. At the speed they were traveling if something did show up on the scanners or the long-range sensors they would only have one hundred seconds to react to it.

  Greg looked out the cockpit window, mesmerized by the sight. The Earth was visible, and the friendly blue-white globe was slowly shrinking as the shuttle sped away from it. He was leaving his wife and child behind and embarking on a journey the likes of which no one on the planet below had even thought possible. He also knew they were traveling faster than any human from Earth had ever traveled before. They were on their way to Ceres and with luck, he would see sights that no one else ever had. This was why he had joined the private space program and embarked on the New Beginnings mission. Now he was in space again on a new mission of discovery.

  “We’ll be back soon,” spoke Jason, looking over at Greg and seeing him watching the planet below. “Your wife and son will be waiting.”

  “I know,” Greg replied softly, finding the spot on the shrinking globe where his family was. “We had a good talk last night. She just worries when I’m gone.”

  “You have a good wife,” Jason added with a smile. “I talked to Katherine last night also. She’s still not happy with my decision to take on this mission.”

  “At least she’s still talking to you,” Greg commented. Even though he was going to miss his family, he was glad he had made the decision to come on this mission.

  Jason nodded; he hated upsetting his sister. However, this was the career that he had chosen. It had started with him becoming a test pilot, then working for the private space company that had launched the New Beginnings mission, and now for the government flying this mission to Ceres.

  Lisa poked her blonde head into the cockpit and looked nervously around. “I guess we’re on our way.” She wasn’t used to space travel. Her only trip into space so far had been on the lunar lander that had landed on the Moon after Jason and Greg had crashed.

  “Everything looks good here,” spoke Jason, nodding at Lisa with a reassuring smile. “Next stop should be Ceres.”

  “Don’t worry, Lisa,” Ariel’s calm voice came over the com system. “This should be a smooth flight, and we’re going at a speed that will not put any stress on the shuttle’s systems.”

  “How fast can this shuttle go?” Greg asked, curiously. In the simulator, they had flown the shuttle at speeds in excess of 2,000 miles per second.

  “Maximum speed for the shuttle is 4,000 miles per second,” Ariel answered in a calm voice. “Normally the shuttle would use its sublight drive to travel out of a planet or moon’s gravity well and then perform a short micro-jump to its destination.”

  “Any idea what we might be facing in the way of defenses once we arrive at Ceres?” Jason asked. He had requested that Lisa talk this over with Ariel to see if the shuttle might be in danger from any automatic defenses the Federation survivors might have installed years in the past.

  “Ariel, tell Commander Strong about the possible defenses that might surround this base we’re going to,” Lisa requested.

  She had spent a lot of time going over
this with Ariel and asking questions. Some of Ariel’s replies had been quite disturbing. This mission might be a lot more dangerous than they had originally thought.

  For a moment, nothing came over the com system. Then finally, Ariel spoke. “Lisa has a data disk which describes in detail the possible defensive systems that might exist around and inside of Ceres.”

  “What might we be facing if the base is indeed intact and fully operational?” Jason asked. From all the scans and observations that had been made there were no signs the base had ever been built. However, Jason wasn’t willing to take any chances.

  “Tell him, Ariel,” Lisa spoke her eyes looking out the viewports at the stars. The view was breathtaking. “We can go over the disk and more details later. Just give the commander a general idea of what we may be facing.”

  “Orbital missile platforms, railgun platforms, and even high intensity lasers will be the biggest threat,” Ariel replied in an even voice. “My guess would be that some weapon placements might be embedded in nearby asteroids to reduce their chance of discovery.”

  “How do we get past those?” Greg asked, uneasily. It sounded as if they might be blown out of space before they even got near the asteroid.

  “Once the shuttle gets within range of Ceres, I will begin transmitting the Avenger’s identification codes,” Ariel responded in a confident voice. “The codes should allow the shuttle to pass safely through any exterior defenses that might exist. The weapons will not fire on a Federation vessel. The defenses, if they exist, were designed to fire on a Hocklyn vessel.”

  “What about once we reach the asteroid?” Jason asked his forehead creasing in a frown. He knew there were bound to be some interior defenses as well. “Will there be defenses inside the asteroid also?”

  “I don’t believe the interior defenses will fire upon a human,” Ariel replied in a more hesitant voice. “They would have been designed to repel an invading Hocklyn force. Their version of our marines are called Protectors.”