Minus Epsilon

  MINUS EPSILON

  The Earth Saga I

  Donald B McFarlane

  Copyright Donald B McFarlane 2013

  Editor

  Jim Sells

  Cover Art

  James Gilleard

  www.donaldbmcfarlane.com

  For Mom and Dad

  Acknowledgments

  I would like to thank the following people for their unwavering support since 1980.

  Nick Beaudrot

  Leo & Milos

  Tom Lindley

  John McFarlane

  Zach North

  Asa Sherrill

  Jim Sells

  Mike Tattersall

  Nathan Pullin

  “The Real Joe Hunt”

  Minus Epsilon

  1

  Adrenalin and fear. Two of the greatest naturally occurring elements in the known universe. The first barrage of enemy fire that hit the ship had knocked Communications Officer Ranix out of his seat and onto the floor of the bridge. His heart was racing, his throat was dry, and he had a dazed look on his face. After the first enemy missiles had hit the ship, his communications instrument panel was lit up from left to right, mainly in red, indicating the ship no longer had the ability to communicate with friendly forces in the galaxy.

  Shaking his head to regain his composure, Ranix wondered why the ship wasn’t firing back. He didn’t know the level of damage that the corvette had taken. Her front batteries, consisting of 2 twin 88-millimeter ballistic cannons, had fallen silent 30 seconds ago. The hull of the ship, going by the call-sign Epsilon, was peppered from two years of solid combat, but the last sixty seconds of action had been the worst yet.

  Bringing up his finger, Ranix rubbed his eyes, trying to get his senses under control before standing up in the narrow aisle that ran down the centre of the bridge and moved forward to the navigator's position and checked the stations screen before glancing at Navigator Second Class Yuli, who had a steady stream of blood slowly oozing from a gash on her forehead.

  “Ship Master,” she checked her board. “I’m reading massive systems failures. Navigation systems are failing, manoeuvring thrusters losing power.” She looked to her right, the Ship Master’s seat was empty.

  “Ship Master’s dead!” Yelled Master Star Pilot Rais. “Who’s in command?”

  “I am!” Ranix replied. The ship’s alarms were making it nearly impossible to communicate on the bridge without shouting. A loud scream pierced the bridge from behind Ranix's position. He whipped his head around just in time to see the dying breath of the ships gunner, whose console had overloaded and exploded, showering the front of his body with hot glass and plastics.

  Bringing his attention back to the front of the bridge, Ranix noticed Ship Master Vankens was lying on his back in the forward corner of the of the bridge. His right leg severed at the knee, blood gushing from the wound, forming a wet red puddle in the middle of the tiny bridge.

  Ranix, a recent transfer from Fleet Headquarters, crawled as fast as he could along the floor forward. He knelt over the Ship Master’s dead body, which had fallen forward from his command chair. Sweat pouring from his brow, his light grey tunic covered in blood, some his, some of his shipmates. With Ship Master Vankens incapacitated, the command was his.

  Ranix looked up at the ships primary monitor and tried to get a grasp of the tactical situation. A minute ago the screen had just shown the major celestial bodies of the Aries System, now it showed various hostile Coalition vessels, and zero friendly forces in the system. As he squinted to make sense of the jumbled mess of ships that were in pursuit of the small corvette, another blast of plasma hit the ship, forcing the nose of the ship down, and Ranix into the ceiling of the bridge, knocking the wind out of him, and when the nose pitched back up, he slammed into the floor, breaking his right arm and shattering his hip.

  Coughing up blood, Ranix pushed himself into a sitting position with his left arm and looked at Rais, who was flying the ship with desperation.

  "We need to get the fuck out of here!" The veteran pilot yelled.

  “Two more missiles inbound!” Detection Technician 4th Class Jonas shouted from his position towards the rear of the narrow, rectangular shaped bridge. A small fire was burning away just a meter to his left along the bulkhead of the compartment. “Impact in twenty seconds.”

  Ranix wiped the blood from his chin and blinked twice. Smoke was starting to build up in the compartment. Ranix knew that the Epsilon couldn't take much more of this beating. He looked over his shoulder at Yuli and just as he shouted out a command, another barrage of fire hit the ship, throwing Ranix away from Ship Master Vankens’s body, slamming him heavily into the bulkhead at the front of the compartment. Ranix’s body, not being light, gave off a loud bang as it slammed into the aluminium siding. “Shit!” He hit the floor, dazed, feeling a warm sensation on the back of his neck. He lifted his hand, and found he had a deep cut along the back of his skull; blood was now soaking the back of his tunic.

  “Yuli!” He yelled. His vision was starting to go blurry.

  “Sir!”

  The bridge was filling with smoke. Ranix gazed around the bridge. Of the original crew of nine, he could tell that three were dead and at least two were injured. The scene was horrific. Blood had covered half the display console in front of Yuli. To her right and rear sat dead Gunner Second Class Demu, whose body was impaled by a section of panelling from the ceiling of the compartment that had given way.

  “Weapons offline!”

  Epsilon, like any standard corvette of the Alliance Fleet, had an integrated defence network melded into the control systems. Anytime the ship came under attack; the network would automatically respond with the appropriate weapon system unless given more specific instructions from the bridge crew. With the enemy ships appearing so rapidly and then engaging before the organic crew could react, the network had fired its entire catalogue of weapons as soon as it could in an attempt to buy them some breathing room.

  Unfortunately for the Epsilon and her crew, when the network fired off a barrage of the light ship to ship missiles, light energy weapons and 88mm rounds at a light cruiser and four frigates, it was like stirring up a hornet's nest. In response to the light ship to ship missiles and ballistic rounds, it felt like the enemy forces had responded with everything they had including high energy plasma batteries, heavy calibre guns, and nuclear-tipped anti-ship missiles.

  Ranix staggered to his feet before slipping on the wet floor and landing hard on his back, knocking the wind out of his lungs. Fleet headquarters had not prepared him for this. After three years of monitoring Fleet communications from a large office on Mella II, he had expected his first assignment as an executive officer would be an easy way to integrate into the forward facing elements of the fleet. Before joining the crew, Ranix had gone through an intensive five-month train-up on interstellar combat tactics and necessary light ship manoeuvring. What the course had not done was prepare him for a full-on battle with one enemy capital ship and four support ships. Getting out of the sector was the only answer.

  “Yuli!” He stood again. “Jump the ship!”

  Staggering to the Ship Master’s seat, Ranix could see Yuli was furiously pounding keys next to the jump control board. At the same time, the claxon that had been ringing over the intercom since the engagement had started sixty seconds ago changed its tone, and not for the best.

  “Warning! Warning!” The flashing lights that accompanied the claxon suddenly turned from red to a combination of red and blue. “Nuclear ordinance inbound! Nuclear ordinance inbound!”

  Ranix knew that the ship was not capable of sustaining a hit from a nuke round. “Yuli!” Ranix mind was racing, he forgot something, but it was too late for anything but es
cape. “Jump the ship!”

  “The system won’t lock in coordinates, Sir!” Her voice was high-pitched, filled with fear and anger, her fingers danced over the control panel, trying to plug into the network the appropriate jump destination.

  “I don’t give a damn!” He moved forward to her position just as another burst of enemy fire hit the ship. The impact sent debris flying through the narrow bridge. A large piece of metal hit Yuli on her right shoulder, knocking her against the bulkhead to her left. Ranix watched her eyes slowly close after her head slammed into the wall. She was out of the fight.

  Ranix moved towards the control panel. The jump computer was randomly rotating ten-digit codes through the display screen. “Fuck!” Ranix knew he was in trouble. Fleet Command had hundreds of safe ten digit emergency jump coordinates for ships in distress to use. If the system were unable to lock in a set of coordinates, then they would have no idea of where the ship would end up. Shoving Yuli's unconscious body out of the way, Ranix checked the Nav station. With the display grid in front of him, he knew his options were gone. The nukes were seconds away, and the ship's power was fluctuating. Jumping was the only way out.

  “Nuclear impact in five, four . . .” the claxon yelled the impending destruction of the ship “ . . . three . . .” Ranix brought his left arm up and then slammed it down on the purple handle that sat next to the jump board. With the grip he had, he pressed the handle down, initiating the jump.

  When Ranix activated the ship’s jump system, the ships 7th Generation Quantum computer immediately took the ship out of Real Space into Sub-Space, a region of the Universe where the laws of physics could be bent and manipulated to allow ships to travel great distances with the right technology. A fraction of a second after the jump was initiated; the ships external field generators formed an ion field around the ship, allowing it to slip into Sub-Space. Half a second later, the ships ten-digit destination code and its current position code were synced into the jump drive, enabling the ship to bend space to create a singularity where the ship existed at both locations for 1/100th of a second in Sub-Space before returning to Real Space at the destination coordinates. The process was like opening a door in one room, closing the door behind you, then opening another door to the adjacent room, all the time being in the same room at the same time for the briefest moment, before stepping through to the next room and having travelled hundreds of light years.

  Ranix used the reprieve from the enemy attack to get his bearings. He looked at Yuli, her exposed red skin covered in sweat with her long red hair covering her face.

  The bridge was awash in red lights, smoke, and the screams of the wounded. Ranix knew the jump had bought the crew a respite, but for how long? Without knowing where they were heading, Ranix knew that the likely hood of a positive outcome was slim. He looked to the front of the bridge, the Helmsman, Master Star Pilot Rais, was still locked in his position towards the front of the bridge, controls at his fingertips.

  “Rais,” Ranix got to his feet and limped towards the Ship Master’s chair. “What is the status of manoeuvring thrusters, fuel, and other guidance systems?” His voice was dry. Throat was cracking from the brief, but intense yelling during the battle.

  “Sir,” a quick left-to-right glance of his control panel and display boards gave Rais all the data he required. “We have limited manoeuvring thrusters, several of them seem to be damaged or destroyed. We are very low on fuel. The jump took our reserves down to ten percent, and we are venting, slowly, that ten percent into space. Guidance systems are off-line. I have no data to get a Star Plot.” He looked over his shoulder from the front of the bridge at the acting Ship Master. “We’re blind, and when we materialise from this jump, we’ll be dead in space as soon as we run out of our remaining fuel supplies, which won’t take long.”

  Ranix did not have time to take all this in; the ship’s computer reminded him of his predicament. “Ship will arrive in three seconds.” The automated tone of reason, never letting the crew forget what was going on.

  “Look sharp, Rais!” Ranix stared at the view screen for what seemed like an eternity. Wherever they jumped, they were going to stay there until rescued or killed.

  From nothing but the empty blackness of hyperspace, the view screen jumped to life the second the ship rematerialized in normal space, and the screen was quickly filled up by a giant blue planet. Instantly the ship began to shake violently; loose pieces of the bulkhead, already hanging on by a thread from the fierce battle, gave way and started to peel off.

  “We’re caught in the planet's gravity!” Rais was fighting with the controls.

  Ranix sat up, gripping the Ship Master’s chair for support while grasping his injured hip. Between the ship, which was still travelling at a high rate, and the planet was a large object orbiting the globe.

  “What is that?” He whispered under his breath. It looked like a space station, but of a design Ranix had never seen before, and it was directly between the Epsilon and the planet, and closing rapidly at a range of 1000 meters.

  2

  Doctor Susan Ivanova of the Russian Space Agency had enjoyed her first month aboard the International Space Station, but in recent weeks things had settled into a monotonous regime of tests and calculations, very similar to her work in Russia, only in space she was left without her favourite duvet.

  With her jet black hair neatly tied in a bun, she glided her way from the animal research laboratory to the command centre. She was eager to finish her conversation with the mission commander, Captain Scott Bader, about the virtues of using Russian rockets to get to and from the ISS, over the defunct American shuttles, which Scott seemed to prefer.

  When she reached the command centre, it was humming like a finely tuned watch. But at that hour, roughly 2 pm Greenwich Mean Time, most of the crew were getting their daily reports ready to be sent back to their respective institutions, which left the centre sparsely manned.

  “Scott,” Susan beamed a big smile at the American. He was handsome, even if his hair was thinning out. He had that wise university professor look that Susan loved. “How has your day been?”

  The command centre was not the largest room on the station, and it was filled with a variety of instruments designed to monitor the conditions inside and outside of the ship, giving it a cramped feel. Scott had been bending over a computer terminal which controlled the station’s ability to receive video and radio broadcasts from Earth.

  With a look of calm reassurance and confidence, he glanced up from the monitor and took a long look at Susan. “Everything is going very well, thank you, young lady.” With a gentle push, Scott propelled himself towards the main television in the room. “I’ve figured out how we can watch the opening game.” Touching the power switch, the large TV flickered alive. “Soccer. Great game.” He fiddled with the controls, searching for the proper channel.

  “It’s football, Scott.” Susan corrected him.

  Scott shrugged his shoulders, “Either way, it’s a great game.” Kick-off for the tournament was about six hours away. Scott had been watching nothing but analysis and news in his free time leading up to the first game, which just happened to feature the United States playing the Brazilian team in Oslo. “I don’t think my boys are going to be able to pull this one out of the fire.” He conceded.

  “Neither does anyone else. Should be an exciting match. Pity your team is in the Group of Death.” Susan was referring to the unpleasant reality for any American football fan that their team had been grouped with Brazil, Spain, and Nigeria. All teams that could beat the US squad. Looking at a spreadsheet that Scott had put on the wall of the seven groups, she found Group C which held her nation's team. She couldn’t complain about Russia’s draw: Honduras, North Korea, and Australia. Most pundits thought that Russia should be able to make it to the second round without too much trouble.

  The smile was quickly wiped off Susan’s face when a loud alarm sounded.

  “What the hell is that!”

&
nbsp; “Collision alarm!” Scott swung himself into position in front of the stations scanning unit. “We’ve got a large, fast moving object about one thousand meters away on an impact course. Probably a meteor, asteroid.” He shook his head as he continued to examine the screen. “How could it get so close?”

  Susan’s gaze drifted away from Scott to the nearest portal. “Where’s it coming from?”

  “What in the name of hell is going on!” asked Burke, the senior astrophysicist on board the station, as he floated in the zero gravity environment into the command room with a worried look on his face.

  “We’ve got an incoming meteor,” Susan replied, trying to disguise her discomfort.

  Burke moved towards the view screen and looked over Scott’s shoulder. “You’re right.” His hand quickly found the alarm switch and killed it. “Nine hundred meters and closing fast. Why wasn’t this detected earlier?”

  Susan’s grip on the nearest support was getting tighter, her knuckles turning white. “What can we do?” She looked at Burke and Scott.

  Burke and Scott exchanged a fatalistic glance. “Very little at this point.” Burke said.

  Scott nodded his head in agreement. “At this distance, and at the rate this object is moving, we’ll be hit in about thirty seconds. And this thing is big.” Scott re-checked the monitor. “Ringside seats from window three in the next section!” and he was off, gliding quickly through the air to the open hatch to the adjacent part of the space station. Burke and Susan didn’t need an invitation; they were right behind him.

  Entering the next compartment, Scott was met by Doctors Smith and Francis, “What the hell was that, and where are you going?” Francis demanded.

  “Window three!” Scott didn’t slow down as he slammed into the bulkhead just next to the portal. “We’ve got incoming.” He said with a bit of a smirk on his face.