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Part VII
March 11th, 2001
EDWARDS AFB
Two days later, Eric woke up early to the sound of his vid-pad chiming. He had new orders: Report to Edwards AFB, building #12, Yeager Rd. by 1200 hrs, PDT this date. There were no details. As he got dressed, Eric wondered what this was all about. Was he being disciplined somehow for his testimony? Did General Tyler somehow throw his influence across Commands and get him reassigned as a T-49 instructor? Or worse? All this was very unusual and had Eric intrigued and filled with anticipation.
When Eric arrived at the flight operations center, a Sabre had already been assigned to him and fueled for the flight. It took an hour for him to don his pressure suit and then, holding his AC and oxygen unit, he was given a ride out to the flight line. His flight plan called for 77 minutes to the Azores, land for fuel and then 117 minutes to Edwards AFB. With a 1000 local departure time, he would land at Edwards about 0530 in California. Along the way, out pacing the Earth's rotation, he would actually see the sun set behind him in the east. After landing, he planned to have a second breakfast, check in to the BOQ and catch a nap.
It was an Indian Summer morning without a cloud in the sky. Contrails crisscrossed overhead, and the sounds of jet planes lingered in the distance. At 1151 hours, on October 21st, 2050, First Lieutenant Eric MacDonald removed his flight hat, took a deep breath, and walked into building 12 at Edwards Air Force Base. As soon as he entered the small reception area, an airman manning the desk looked up and motioned for Eric to step forward. The airman glanced at Eric's name badge and, without a word, led him down a hallway and into a large office. Eric left his duffle bag with the airman.
There, sitting at a desk, was someone Eric immediately recognized. Eric saluted.
"Lieutenant MacDonald, reporting as ordered, sir."
Colonel John Kelso stood up, saluted, and walked around his desk to shake Eric's hand. He smiled broadly. "Good to see you again, MacDonald. Here. Let's sit at this table." As they sat down, Kelso slid a vid-pad on the table over to Eric. "Here, fill this out." Eric looked at the display. It was an application for Space Command, starship duty. Eric stared at it for a second in disbelief. "Just fill it out, lieutenant."
Eric called up his personnel records, mapped them into the application, and digitally signed the document. He slid it back to the Colonel who glanced at it briefly, and then slid another vid-pad to Eric. "Okay, now read this and sign it." It was a security briefing for Special Compartmented Information. Eric took somewhat longer to read it, and then digitally signed that one as well.
"Good, now we can talk," the Colonel said. "As you can see, I've been promoted to O-6, and put in charge of the next deep space mission. I asked for you specifically."
"Just wondering, sir. Didn't General Tyler resist that?"
"You're damn right he did."
"How'd you get past that?"
"We had a talk. I suggested that he do the right thing and let me pick the best qualified crews."
"That didn't work, did it?" Eric smiled.
"Shit no. So then I reminded him that his son was responsible for getting my son killed in combat. He owed me."
"Your son. I'd forgotten! I didn't make the connection. Did that work?"
"Nope. So then I told him that I'd publicly resign, tell the newspapers why I couldn't work for him, and publicly suggest that he promote his incompetent son to Colonel and have him lead the assault on the ETs. Meanwhile, I'd go fishing in Oregon."
"I'll bet that worked."
"Damn right it did," Kelso said as he grinned. "So that's why you're here." Kelso paused and looked out the window for a second. "You know, besides you, Major Forney, me and three others are the only people alive today who have engaged the ETs. Those other three are enlisted people who were rotated back to earth-side duty for various family and administrative reasons. One has left the Air Force. The other two declined to volunteer for this duty."
"And Major Forney?"
"He's been in Sunnyvale working with the design team since before you left the Academy. He'll join us for the mission."
"Aha. I wondered where he disappeared to."
"He's been working on two projects. The first is system vulnerabilities. Based on the Lovell's first encounter, Major Forney is helping the design team build a two Tokamak system and hull design that is much less susceptible to radiation damage."
"And the second project?"
"A new weapon."
"Right. I read about that. Proton beams," Eric said grinning.
"That's just the cover story."
"Huh?"
"This is highly classified. That's why you just got briefed into this compartment. Now listen carefully. For the last three years, physicists at Fermi Lab have been working on a way to create a high intensity beam of strange matter. The so-called quark nuggets."
"What the hell is that?" Eric asked.
"Here's what they tell me at Fermi Lab. Ordinary matter, like a proton, for example, has two up quarks and one down quark. The total charge is plus one. But what they've been able to create is a proton beam that encapsulates a stable stream of quark nuggets. Each nugget has an up quark, a down quark and a strange quark. The total charge is zero. And they last for several seconds. About a million kilometers at the speed of light.
"So," Eric sat back and looked at the ceiling. "When the proton beam hits their magnetic field, the nuggets as you call them, keep right on going."
"You got it. And those strange particles will destroy anything in their path. Ordinary matter is toast. Splat. Our team calls them Quark Bullets. The Fermi Lab guys hate that, but so what? We think it's cool."
"Quark Bullets. Holy shit."
"What I need you to do now is go up to the Slayton, whose construction is almost complete, and tie the Quark Bullet weapon system electronics into the bridge fire control system so that you're comfortable with the operation of the weapon as well as the ship's maneuvering system. Create a combat ready system for me. Then do the same thing on the other three starships. Then train the computers and the weapons operators."
"How long do I have?"
"When you're ready, then we go."
Eric smiled. "Those ETs are in for a nasty surprise."
"Yes indeed they are. Any questions?"
It crossed Eric's mind that it would be awfully nice to go visit his dad before things got too hectic. And he'd promised himself that he'd look up Walt Podolski for that matter. And maybe even Chandler. But that list was growing long, and time was short. He took a deep breath and let it out. "When's the next shuttle leave, Colonel?"
"About two hours." Kelso seemed to sense what was on Eric's mind. "By the way, if we're successful in knocking out this, ah, barricade... then we'll come back to Earth and everyone will have ten days leave before we head out. Okay?"
"What's our destination?"
"Tau Ceti, of course. G class star, seven planets. Many sub-Jupiter sized. Gonna be an interesting trip."
"Yes, sir!" Eric said and saluted. "Looking forward to it."
Eric's eyes lit up. Good old Tau Ceti. The stuff of legend. One of the first two stars ever to be listened to with radio telescopes during project Ozma nearly a hundred years ago. The stuff of countless science fiction stories. He, Eric MacDonald, was going to Tau Ceti. The thought held him in rapture.
As he walked back into the reception area, he turned to the airman. "Can you get me a seat on the next shuttle to the Slayton?"
"Yes, sir." The airman looked at his display. "Leaves at 1430."
As he walked outside into the bright sunshine, Eric paused, set his duffle bag down, and looked up at the sky, trying to figure out where Tau Ceti would be at Right Ascension 1h 44m, but decided it was below the horizon. Just then, what looked like his Sabre thundered off the runway and accelerated away from him. Flaming blue sheets of Triethylborane shot out of the exhaust as the Sabre's afterburners kicked in, and the black, majestic jet streaked into the distance, climbing rapidly. Someone was probably ferrying the jet back to his Squadron in Izmir.
Ah, yes, Izmir, Eric thought to himself as he leaned over and picked up his duffle bag. Good old Izmir. The armpit of the planet. No, actually, that was Ankara he reminded himself. But here at Edwards, the weather was so beautiful, and he was so full of joy and anticipation, he decided to walk to the shuttle hanger and enjoy the sights and smells of Earth along the way. The thought crossed his mind that this could be the last time he'd ever see the good green Earth. The ETs might have developed some tricks of their own after four years, even if they were far from home.
He promised himself that wouldn't happen. He was going take his shipmates to Tau Ceti, and that was that.
No one paid much attention to him as he walked into the shuttle hanger. He looked very official indeed in his blue flight suit with silver Lieutenant bars and pilot wings on his chest. He walked around the shuttle and inspected it, curious about its technology. He kicked the tires just for fun.
"Hey you!" came a voice from the other side of the hanger. Eric looked around to see a young woman running towards him. "What are you doing to my shuttle?" The small, slender woman was in a shuttle pilot's uniform, a gray jumpsuit. Eric squinted for a better look, but he couldn't see much about her. What brown hair she had was stuffed into a Shuttle Service ball cap, and she was wearing aviator sunglasses.
"Just curious ma'am." Eric stepped away from the landing gear and held out his hands to show that he wasn't up to anything. "I'm one of your passengers."
"Well, sure," she said as she looked up at him. "But I don't care if you're the President. You gotta wait in the gate area until we're ready to board."
"You bet. I'm on my way."
Eric walked into the gate area on the far side of the hanger and looked for something to eat. It had been a long day since he woke up in Izmir.
Later, as they were boarding the shuttle, Eric remembered the last time he walked down a spaceway into a shuttle. He was eighteen, out of work, and desperate to find a young, redheaded starship lieutenant. His life had changed very much indeed, and things were happening so fast, events seemed to simply swirl around him.
As he boarded the shuttle, instead of taking his seat, he stepped forward to the cockpit. The woman pilot was in the left seat, going over a checklist. "Mind if I sit here instead?" He pointed to the empty right seat.
"No one sits up here but me, got it?"
"As you can see, I'm a pilot. But I won't touch anything, promise."
"Why don't you go back outside and kick the tires again?" She wasn't smiling.
"Hey, I was just curious. I trained to be a shuttle pilot a few years ago."
"Oh, yeah? Looks like you found a better job."
Eric sat down in the seat and smiled. "Look. We're going to war against the ETs soon. I just thought it might be nice to see the Earth from up here. Better view. Might be my last time, you know?"
The pilot frowned at him and sighed. "Okay. But don't tell anyone, or I'll be fired. And don't touch anything!"
Eric buckled himself in and watched the pilot tap some keys. "What happens now?"
"What a damn chatterbox! I thought you were here for the view, fly boy."
"Just curious."
"I'm sure. So, after the hatch closes and the spaceway pulls back, I start the launch sequence. The shuttle taxis out to the runway, and in about an hour, we dock with the Slayton."
"What do you do?" Eric asked, growing more and more amused.
"I watch over things."
"Just watch?"
"I mostly read on the way up."
"I see."
"I'm sure you do. Hey, it's a living. Don't knock it."
"What if something goes wrong?"
"I call for help... Duh."
"Well, don't worry. You've got me on this trip."
"Oh yeah? Such a comfort that is," she said and returned to her checklist.
The young woman in her ball cap and sunglasses reminded Eric of Chandler the first time they met at the glider school at the Academy. He pulled out his vid-pad and thought he'd check in on Chandler to see what she was up to. Instead of her beautiful face, he got a text message instead.
You've reached Chandler Whitcomb-Herbert. I am on my honeymoon in Hawaii and not accepting communications. Will return on Nov 1st.
Eric was expecting that. He knew that a beautiful woman like Chandler wouldn't stay single for long. He sighed and put the vid-pad back in his pocket. It was better this way, he thought.
Soon they were hurtling down the runway at 220 knots, and he felt the nose come up as the shuttle became airborne. He had a magnificent view out the window to his right as they circled around Edwards in a steady climb to the right. As they climbed over the Mojave desert, Eric pressed his nose to the glass, happy that he didn't have to attend to any flight duties. At 90 kilometers, the main engines stopped and he no longer had to fight the acceleration pushing on his body. He had only seen the Earth from this altitude once before, when he returned from the Lovell, and the view just as easily took his breath away the second time.
They coasted the rest of the way to apogee, approached the Slayton from the rear and slowly rose up to it. Eric leaned forward, trying to take in the huge expanse of the ship as they closed. Unlike the Lovell, which was slim, and silvery white, this starship was black, irregular, and menacing. The Lovell had been designed by dreamers and explorers. The Slayton was a ship of war, almost ugly in its form.
As Eric unbuckled and twisted slightly so that he could float back to the exit hatch, he accidentally brushed the pilot's shoulder. She grabbed his arm for a second. "Hey, fly boy. Go out there and kick some ass for us, okay?"
Eric laughed. "Yes, ma'am. I believe we're going to do that this time. That's a promise."
Copyright 2001 by John
Martellaro, All rights reserved. Quantum Threads banner
artwork by Tracy Haynes.
About the Author
John Martellaro lives in Colorado at 2,800 meters above sea level with a Ph.D. wife and two cats, Nikki and Data. He holds a B.S. in Astrophysics and an M.S. in Physics. His hobbies, include amateur astronomy, downhill skiing, bicycling, and listening to piano solos. His personal Macs are a B&W G3/400 with a flat screen Studio Display and a blueberry iBook.
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