Center of Gravity: Star Carrier: Book Two

312 Pages·2011·1.4 MB·English

by  Ian Douglas

C G
ENTER OF RAVITY
S C : B T
TAR ARRIER OOK WO
Ian Douglas
v1.3 (2013.05)
C
ONTENTS
P
ROLOGUE
C O
HAPTER NE
C T
HAPTER WO
C T
HAPTER HREE
C F
HAPTER OUR
C F
HAPTER IVE
C S
HAPTER IX
C S
HAPTER EVEN
C E
HAPTER IGHT
C N
HAPTER INE
C T
HAPTER EN
C E
HAPTER LEVEN
C T
HAPTER WELVE
C T
HAPTER HIRTEEN
C F
HAPTER OURTEEN
C F
HAPTER IFTEEN
C S
HAPTER IXTEEN
C S
HAPTER EVENTEEN
C E
HAPTER IGHTEEN
C N
HAPTER INETEEN
C T
HAPTER WENTY
C T -O
HAPTER WENTY NE
C T -T
HAPTER WENTY WO
C T -T
HAPTER WENTY HREE
C T -F
HAPTER WENTY OUR
C T -F
HAPTER WENTY IVE
C T -S
HAPTER WENTY IX
E
PILOGUE
P
ROLOGUE
12 December 2404
Emergence, Arcturus System
36.7 light years from Earth
0310 hours, TFT
The recon probe emerged from its Alcubierre bubble of tightly warped space,
bleeding off excess velocity in a burst of high-energy photons. An artificial
gravitational singularity the size of a small dust particle and as massive as a star
flicked on and off a few meters beyond the craft’s bulbous nose, dragging it
forward with an acceleration of nearly five thousand standard gravities. At that
rate, the craft would be crowding the speed of light within another one hundred
minutes.
Only slightly larger than a VG-10 Krait smart missile, the ISVR-120 probe was
too small to carry sentient organics; its pilot was a Gödel 2500 artificial
intelligence packed into the solid-state circuitry that filled the pod’s core and so,
technically, could be said to take up no space at all. Certainly it needed none of
the bulky life-support equipment necessary for organic life.
The AI was called Alan, named after Alan Turing, one of the giants in the
development of the first computers four and a half centuries earlier.
Within seconds of the probe craft’s emergence from the warp bubble, Alan had
scanned the system ahead, a volume of space dominated by a single bloated and
brilliant orange star. The Confederation Naval Standard Ephemeris entry on the
star resided within Alan’s surface memory.
Star: Alpha Boötis
Coordinates: RA: 14h 15m 39.7s Dec: +19°0’56” D 11.24p
Alternate names: Arcturus, Alramech, Abramech, 16 Boötes
Type: K1.5IIIFe-0.5
Mass: 3.5 Sol; Radius: 25.7 Sol; Luminosity: 210 Sol (Optical 113 Sol)
Surface temperature: ~4300oK
Age: 9.7 billion years
Apparent magnitude (Sol): -0.04; Absolute magnitude: -0.29
Distance from Sol: 36.7 LY
Planetary system: 6 planets, including 1 Jovian and 5 sub-Jovian gas giants, plus 47 dwarf
planets and 65 known satellites, plus numerous planetoids and cometary bodies.
One gas giant satellite, Jasper, is of interest with somewhat earthlike conditions due to
gravitational/tidal effects…
Arcturus, depending on how one measured such things, was the third or fourth
brightest star in the night skies of Earth, a bright orange point at the base of the
kite-shape of the constellation Boötis. From Alan’s emergence point some
eighteen astronomical units out, Arcturus was a dazzling gold-orange beacon
113 times brighter than Sol would have been at the same distance. At infrared
wavelengths, Arcturus was even brighter, flooding ambient space with sullen
heat.
Alan’s primary objective lay almost directly beyond the star from his
emergence point. His final approach would be masked by the star’s glare… if
everything went right.
By the time Alan had traveled a third of the distance toward Arcturus—some
900 million kilometers—he was moving at a hair better than 99 percent of the
speed of light. Velocity transformed his view of the surrounding universe,
compressing it into a circle of light dead ahead—most of it infrared light from
Arcturus, blue-shifted into optical wavelengths. The AI’s sensory correction
program, however, was able to untangle the flood of speed-distorted light into its
separate components and correct for the distortion. His velocity also distorted
time, by seven to one at this velocity. Each passing minute for Alan was seven in
the universe outside; it created the illusion that he was hurtling deeper into the
Arcturus system much faster than he actually was.
Some two hundred minutes objective after entering the Arcturus system, Alan
passed the star, skimming the giant’s photosphere. The probe’s electromagnetic
shielding deflected the worst of ionizing radiation but had little effect on radiant
heat. Briefly, the probe’s hull struggled with temperatures approaching 900
degrees Celsius. Nanotechnic currents within the hull laminates helped distribute
the heat, radiating much of it harmlessly astern.
And then the star—its monstrous, turbulent, and roiling girth nearly twenty-six
times larger than Sol’s—fell away behind, red-shifting abruptly to a near-
invisibility, illuminated at optical wavelengths solely by red-shifted X-rays.
Alan’s objective now lay directly ahead, 20 astronomical units out.
Long-range detectors were already picking up ships, enemy ships, though at
this distance those images were more than two and a half hours old. As expected,
most of the enemy targets were grouped closely around a Jupiter-sized gas giant,
listed in the database as Alchameth, and its Earth-sized moon, Jasper. Orbiting
the moon was Arcturus Station, a terraforming base established by the
Confederation three years ago to begin the process of turning Jasper into a
human-habitable world.
But fourteen months ago, the Turusch had come. A Confederation naval task
force stationed here had been all but wiped out, the orbital station had been
captured. So far as could be gathered, nearly six thousand technicians,
planetologists, xenologists, terraform specialists, and first-down colonists on the
station—men, women, and children—had been butchered.
The probe’s sensors were picking up the faint reflected gleams of Arcturus
Station two hundred kilometers above Jasper, and two Beta-class Turusch
battleships hanging close alongside, each a small asteroid, crater-pocked and
immense. Numerous smaller vessels swarmed in the giants’ shadows—Juliet-and
Kilo-class cruisers.
If more distant Turusch warships were positioned far enough from Alchameth
that they could have observed the emergence flash of the probe on the far side of
Arcturus, there was no sign… though he was picking information out of light
that had left Arcturus Station less than an hour after his entry into the system. A
warning might well be on its way to those docked warships from sentries more
than a light hour away.
Long minutes crawled past. The probe was hurtling toward the enemy vessels
out of the glare of the local star, invisible… but before long the Turusch sensors
would detect the distortions in space caused by the probe’s enormous AGM, its
artificial gravitational mass. For a time, Alan considered the possibility that they
simply weren’t looking in his direction, that he was not going to be noticed at
all… and then the smaller warships alongside Arcturus Station began
accelerating. Moments later, a cloud of missiles streaked in his direction. Alan
began shifting the singularity drive randomly in different directions, causing the
speeding probe to jink unpredictably. The time lag between his position and
theirs gave him an advantage, time to calculate incoming trajectories and arrange
not to be at their endpoints when the missiles detonated.
Alan’s recon pod was unarmed.
He increased acceleration, tacking additional nines onto his current percent c.
Anti-ship missiles closed with him, and for a few moments Alan engaged in a
deadly game of tag, jinking hard this way and that to confuse enemy missiles
and defense systems. A nuclear fireball flared to port, dazzling and intense, the
hard radiation sleeting across his screens.
Alan survived.
The gas giant Alchameth showed a disk, now, swelling rapidly as Alan’s
sensors continued correcting for the speed distortion, becoming a vast, ringed
and banded gas giant almost directly ahead. Alan focused on Jasper, visible now,
high and to one side. A final course correction put him squarely on target. At
99.99% c, he flashed through the final 10 million kilometers in just 4.8 seconds
subjective, passing Arcturus Station at a distance of just 315 kilometers.
He was prepared for the passage, with certain sensor collection heads extruded
through the nano-liquid outer hull of the probe, trained on the enemy-held base,
on the surface of the planet-sized moon, and on a large volume of surrounding
space.
There was something else there… something just emerging now, not from
behind Alchameth, but from within the gas giant’s seething, turbulent
atmosphere, something unseen until this moment. Something huge…
High-energy beams lanced toward him as he passed, one grazing his screens
and melting a portion of his hull.
And then he was past, speeding outbound at just less than the speed of light
itself, as enemy ships and missiles scrambled to pursue.
But they needed to accelerate first, and would never be able to catch him.
Alan was injured, however; the grazing near-miss had burned out critical
sensors, parts of his lateral maneuvering projectors, and his energy screen itself.
That last was serious, because it meant that incoming radiation would fry his
circuitry within the next few subjective hours.
Somehow, though, he needed to get the accumulated data from his near-passage
of the station back to Earth.
And he was going to need to commit the AI equivalent of suicide to do so…
C O
HAPTER NE
21 December 2404
TC/USNA CVS America
Approaching SupraQuito Fleet Base
Earth Synchorbit, Sol System
1235 hours, TFT
The star carrier approached the gossamer structure with a delicate grace that
belied the vessel’s titanic mass. Her hemispherical forward shield, pitted and
scarred by innumerable impacts with dust motes and radiation, bore her name in
sandblasted letters ten meters high: America.
Mushroom-shaped, the ship was 1,150 meters long. The forward cap, 500
meters across and 150 deep, served as both radiation shielding and as holding
tank for 27 billion liters of water, reaction mass for the ship’s maneuvering
thrusters. The slender kilometer-long spine was taken up primarily by quantum-
field power plants, maneuvering thrusters, and stores; twin counter-rotating hab
rings tucked in just behind the shield cap carried the ship’s crew of nearly five
thousand. Around her, escorting vessels paced themselves to their ponderous
consort’s deceleration, minnows in the shadow of a whale.
Thirty-six thousand kilometers ahead, Earth gleamed at half phase—with dawn
breaking across eastern North America, while the Atlantic, Europe, and Africa
lay in full light between swirls and shreds of brilliant white cloud. At this
distance, the planet spread across just 20 degrees of arc pole to pole, appearing
delicate and impossibly fragile.
More fragile still, though, was the web of orbital structures just ahead in
America’s path. SupraQuito hung suspended on the slender tether of its elevator
cable in synchorbit, directly above Earth’s equator some 35,783 kilometers
above the top of the mountain to which it was anchored. The structure—or
interconnected series of structures, actually—was an enormous collection of hab
modules, shipyards, orbital factories, environmental facilities, power plants and
collectors, agro spheres, and docking facilities suspended between the elevator
dropping to Earth, and the support tether leading up to the anchor some thirty
thousand kilometers farther out.
From here, SupraQuito—including the tangle of structures that housed the
Earth Confederation government—was visible, barely, as a thread-slender gleam
of reflected sunlight, with constellations of tiny stars showing in the shadows.
Some day, a thousand years hence, perhaps, SupraQuito would join with the
other two space elevators, at Singapore and at Tanganyika, and become a true,
inhabited ring encircling the Earth. At the moment, the entire massive structure
appeared gossamer and delicate, far too insubstantial to trap the oncoming bulk
of the Star Carrier America.
America herself was at the helm. The powerful AI residing within the carrier’s
electronic network possessed far more memory and processing power—by
several orders of magnitude—than did a merely human brain. Exact comparisons
between the relative brainpower of man and machine were meaningless,
however, and probably impossible to calculate in any case. America’s mind, if
that was the proper term, was wholly focused on the ship, its systems, its
functioning, its navigation and control. At the moment, she was judging the
remaining distance between her prow and Docking Tube One at the SupraQuito
Military Fleet Base now just a few hundred kilometers ahead, and her own rate
of deceleration. With a closing velocity of 8.64 kilometers per second, she
needed to increase the gravitational mass currently being projected dead astern
by 37 percent in three… two… one… now.
America kept up a running dialogue with her counterpart at Fleet Base
Approach Control, with every aspect of her vector checked hundreds of times
each passing second. The docking facility was not stationary, of course. Its
omega, its angular velocity, kept it precisely above its attachment point in the
Andes Mountains of Ecuador. At synchronous orbit, this worked out to 3.0476
kilometers per second.
For ten long seconds, America decelerated. With the ship enmeshed within the
gravitational field of the projected singularity aft, the deceleration was unfelt by
the vessel’s passengers and crew. For them, the slowly rotating hab rings
provided spin gravity. America slowed… slowed…
A final, precisely timed nudge from singularities to starboard gave her the
necessary 3.0476 kps lateral velocity.
And with perfect choreography the massive carrier dropped into the sweet spot
just five kilometers off the docking port, all singularities winking out before they
could warp the delicate structure of the base. Grappling tethers, extended along
the carrier’s length, reached toward the dock. America would be warped into her
berthing space—an ancient seafaring term that had nothing to do with her space-
bending Alcubierre faster-than-light drives. The tethers connected with grappling
points along the berthing area and began to contract. A small fleet of powerful
little tugs emerged from the base, taking up station and nudging the carrier
toward the dock. Slowly, very slowly, the quarter-million-ton carrier was hauled