Star Fields

Chapter No.33 Attack

Chapter No.33 Attack

Always be prepared for anything.

A few days after we had inserted the human volunteers on Earth, we were confronted by a crisis.

"I've detected a large asteroid on a collision course for Earth," Molly said. "I measure it at 2 kilometers, and it's mass at around 10 to the 22nd kilograms."

"Wow! That's a killer! When will it collide?"

"I calculated that it will intersect at 12 days."

I turned to Judy. "Take us there."

Our vessel left orbit and accelerated to a location 10 million kilometers from Earth. The asteroid grew quickly on our main screen and then stopped moving relative to our vessel as we matched its velocity and course.

"That's a craggy looking rock," I said, staring at its sunlit surface.

"How are we going to divert it?" Molly asked.

"Well," I said, rubbing my jaw. "We could use the tractor beam on it. We may be able to nudge it a bit so that it misses Earth. How much of a change does that require?"

"I would think at least a few degrees," Molly said. She typed some numbers into her keyboard. "A change of 2.5 degrees would make it miss by at least 50,000 kilometers.

I turned to Judy. "Okay, deploy the tractor beam at full power and apply maximum propulsion."

Judy opened the shuttle bay door and activated the tractor beam, which employed graviton radiation to pull objects, usually a damaged shuttle or fighter, into the flight deck bay. At the same time she used the main plasma engines to back away while pulling the asteroid off course.

Molly monitored the asteroid's trajectory change. After several minutes, she announced the result. "We've moved it 4.3 degrees."

"Okay, Judy, turn off the tractor beam."

The sudden drop of the beam made our vessel jerk away from the asteroid.

I blew out a surprised breath. "Wow!"

"We'll have to monitor the trajectory of this asteroid," Molly said. "It could change before it arrives at Earth."

"What I would like to know is why is it on a collision course in the first place."

"There are millions of these large asteroids in the asteroid belt and many of them are in Near Earth orbits."

"Yes, I know that, but why, just as we settled humans on Earth, did this have to happen."

She looked at me with alarmed eyes. "Do you suspect that some species did this?"

"Yes, I do!"

Molly looked at her screen. "You might be right. There are three vessels approaching at a million kilometers. "

"Go to Red Alert. Arm three antimatter missiles."

The command deck lights dim to a dull red. Madison soon came out of the elevator and took her place alongside Judy. Our vessel's shields were raised and we moved into an intercept course.

The three vessels broke formation and began to attempt an encirclement maneuver. The way to break the effectiveness of this is to pull up into a vertical trajectory, causing the three vessels to pursue, thereby forcing them to move in a tight formation.

However, that put all three of them together posterior to our vessel.

"Fire an antimatter missile from the aft tube at maximum velocity and time its detonation," I told Madison.

She didn't hesitate to follow my order. The missile flew out and accelerated so quickly that the three vessels didn't have time to split up. The explosion lit up space for a thousand kilometers and the gamma ray bursts hit our shielding like a sledgehammer, causing a very loud ringing sound.

"They 're toast!" Molly said.

"I wonder what species they were?"

"Their configuration is . . . was Scath."

"Why the hell did they follow us all the way from Andromeda?"

"Maybe they have a base in our galaxy," Molly said.

I blew out a disgusted breath. "If that's the case, we'll have to locate it and blast it to hell."

"That might not be easy. I'm sure that they've made it detection proof."

"All we can hope for is that they screw up and lead us to it." I turned to Judy. "Take us back to Earth."

Our vessel accelerated quickly away from debris left from the Scath ships.

We arrived back at Earth and settled into orbit. The first thing that we did was check up on our humans on Hawaii.

"Everything appears to be normal," Molly said while looking through a telescopic binocular eyepiece.

"Good. I don't think that the Scath will be back anytime soon. We may as well proceed with the updates to our vessel.

Molly flashed a smile at me. "And the uniforms."

I nodded with a subtle grin. "That too."

I went down to Engineering to check on what the androids there were up to.

"We're enhancing the weapon's systems, Jason," Queen told me. "We will enhance the gamma ray blasters a thousand times."

I squinted at her. "How is that possible?"

"We are employing Molly's quantum particle position equations as applied to 4d space."

I swallowed hard. "I would like to look at her work, please."

Queen brought up the math on a screen and gestured to me. "Enjoy, Jason."

I sat down and went over her equations. I soon realized that Molly had done something that had never been done. Her work was simply astounding. She was way ahead of me in working on complicated quantum physics problems.

I turned to Queen. "Looks good to me. We can use the extra weapons' power."

"We're also improving out maneuvering capabilities," Queen said.

I smiled. "Great!" I stood up. "I think I'll go see what Molly's up to."

Queen gave me a grin that telegraphed her pride, something that was not normal for an android.