Starshine: Aurora Rising Book One (7 page)

She both thought and exclaimed “Yes!” Her father chuckled softly at her ear.

The world lit up around her. A wall of semitransparent screens overlay the viewport. They painted a canvas of aeronautical splendor in radiant white light.

Airspeed. Altitude. Bearing. Pitch angle. Air temperature. Atmosphere pressure and air density. Radar. Engine load. Other readings whose purpose were a mystery. The screens’ relative focus and opacity responded to every shift in her gaze, then to her intentional thoughts. Secure in her father’s lap, she grinned in delight.

Her life would never be the same again.

At seven kilometers altitude she began maneuvering toward the Northeast 1 Pacific Atmosphere Corridor. Technically two corridors—one for arrivals and one for departures to avoid nasty collisions—it was one of twenty-two such passages located on the planet, spaced 4–5,000 thousand kilometers apart at 55° N, 0° and 55° S latitudes.

Nearly all starships possessed the drive energy, hull strength and shields necessary to pass through any planetary atmosphere having an escape velocity value within fifty percent greater or lesser than the habitable zone. The exceptions were dreadnoughts and capital ships, which were built and forever remained in space. But that didn’t mean it was an especially fun or comfortable experience, and the wear and tear from frequent atmosphere traversals wreaked havoc on a ship’s structure and mechanics.

The solution was the corridors: reverse shields which held back the majority of atmospheric phenomena from a cylindrical area. A series of rings made of a nickel alloy metamaterial absorber generated a plasma field between each ring to create the corridors.

On Earth the rings measured half a kilometer in diameter and stretched from an altitude of ten to two hundred sixty kilometers, well into the thermosphere. The details varied on other worlds, but every planet with a population in excess of about twenty thousand had at least one paired corridor.

It was midmorning back on the coast and traffic was brisk. She slowed and eased into the queue of vessels departing Earth.

For basic security or record-keeping purposes or perhaps merely to give a few bureaucrats something to do, a monitoring device recorded the serial number designation of every vessel to enter the corridor. If one was flagged for any of a variety of reasons—but most often due to a criminal warrant—a containment field captured it at the second ring, immobilizing it until the authorities arrived.

She’d seen it happen once or twice and found it an absurd annoyance. The system was ridiculously porous; if someone wanted to avoid capture, he or she simply wouldn’t take the corridor (except for the brainless idiots who evidently did). But thankfully there appeared to be no brainless idiots in the vicinity this morning, and in minutes she was accelerating into the rings.

Without the buffeting forces of the atmosphere fighting against her, it was a brief four minute trip. A swipe of her hand brought up the engineering controls and she initiated the transition to the WM impulse engine. Then she curled her legs underneath her and surveyed the view.

Earth’s outer atmosphere constituted a barely organized chaos of commercial and residential space stations, zero-g manufacturing facilities, satellites and military defense platforms. The cornucopia of structures sped along a dozen progressively larger concentric orbits. Up close, it made for an extraordinarily beautiful vista: sunbeams reflecting off gleaming, smooth metals streaked in the luminous glow of the lights within. A testament to the triumph of human ingenuity.

As her distance from Earth grew, however, it began to more closely resemble a swarm of ants feeding upon the discarded remnants of a meal, a dichotomy which had always amused her. The ship’s acceleration increased as the engine reached full power, and the ants soon faded into the halo cast by the sun.

She stood up and stretched. It would be four hours before she reached the Mars-Jupiter Main Asteroid Belt and was ‘allowed’ to engage the sLume drive.

Originally named the Alcubierre Oscillating Bubble Superluminal Propulsion Drive when the first working prototype had been developed nearly two hundred years earlier, a clever marketing executive had quickly coined the far more consumer-friendly term ‘sLume Drive.’

The mechanism which propelled her ship across the stars bore little similarity to the initial prototype. The ring which held open the warp bubble was now dynamically generated and consisted of exotic particles too small even en masse to be visible. The energy requirements were met in full by the He3 LEN fusion reactor thanks to the boost in negative mass provided as a byproduct of the impulse engine.

And while the first prototype had achieved a mere seventy times the speed of light, her drive was faster by a factor of thousands. Admittedly, it was a
very
high-end model.

The particles released by the bubble’s termination were funneled into micro-singularities so as to not destroy everything in a 0.2 AU vicinity. Still, space traffic in the Earth-Lunar-Mars conjunction was quite heavy, as the region housed greater than fifteen percent of the galactic population. Though volumes of research indicated it was perfectly safe, Alliance bureaucrats insisted on concern over the idea of billions of micro-singularities being created every day in such a congested sector—some notion about destabilizing the space-time manifold.

So superluminal drive operation by private spacecraft was forbidden inside the Main Asteroid Belt; military vessels and commercial transports naturally got a pass. And she wasted half a day on 0.1% of her trip.

Her natural instinct would normally be to work up a case of righteous indignation at the blatant capitulation to fear rather than science, but she just couldn’t muster the necessary outrage.

After all, she was home.

4

EARTH

V
ANCOUVER,
EASC
H
EADQUARTERS

T
HE MEMBERS OF THE
E
ARTH
A
LLIANCE
Strategic Command Governing Board positioned themselves around the oval table. Five of them were present in the flesh, the four Regional Commanders via full-dimensional holo.

The table was a true antique, crafted for the Politburo Standing Committee headquarters in Zhongnanhai in the waning years of CCP rule. Constructed of natural Burmese Teak and lacquered in the ancient Chinese tradition, the finish now lay buried beneath multiple layers of AgInide secure conductive glass.

The table was, of course, impressively large—far larger than required for a mere nine occupants—but a more practical table would have been less
grand
and not befitting the importance of those who utilized it.

A late afternoon sun shone through the floor-to-ceiling windows lining the penthouse conference room. Shielding filtered the sunlight to reduce the glare without marring the view of the Pacific, seeing as the room had been placed on the western-facing side of the building specifically for its magnificent view.

General Price Alamatto waited until the door had closed behind the departing aides before turning back to the gathered Board members. “As I was saying prior to the interruption, with a minor readjustment to the Sol System construction budget we will have the funds to assemble an additional six high-orbit arrays and deploy them to the Fionava and Deucali Provinces.”

Miriam Solovy leaned forward in her chair while keeping her shoulders firmly squared. It was an assertive posture she used often to persuasive effect. “And if we supply them to Fionava and Deucali, then New Cornwall and Messium will want them as well, and probably Karelia and Nyssus, too—all on account of a mythical threat from nonexistent aliens forever on the cusp of the frontier. And indulging them will
wipe out
the Sol System construction budget.”

She shook her head in a terse but firm motion. “No. If those funds are truly available, better for us to use them to reinforce Earth’s outer defense web with a redundant backup power grid and install the new longer-range emission signature sensors. Added redundancy will increase security and the sensors will give us significantly earlier warning should unwelcome visitors target Earth.”

General Liam O’Connell cocked an overly bushy eyebrow in her direction. “Careful Admiral, lest someone insinuate you were advocating an ‘Earth First’ agenda.”

O’Connell was the Southwestern Regional Commander, and seemed to believe overseeing the largest region in terms of kiloparsecs gave him the right to be an arrogant prick. He was incorrect, not that it stopped him.

She regarded him coolly. “I don’t particularly care what
someone
insinuates about me, General. I am doing no such thing, save for the irrefutable fact that both the knowledge and capabilities of the Earth Alliance are concentrated here on Earth, and we should recognize this and act accordingly.”

Alamatto cleared his throat from the head of the table. “You make a commendable and valid point, Admiral. Nevertheless, we must not appear to be Earth-centric in our decision-making. Earth has plenty enough resources on its own. We need to be cognizant of the reality that the colonies often lack our inherent means and require our protection.”

A strong Earth
was
a strong Alliance; she’d never understand why more people didn’t see this. She worked to protect the best interests of the entire Earth Alliance, colonies included.

Her glare was steel across the table. “Which protection we won’t be
able
to provide if our defense web goes down and we come under attack.”

O’Connell snorted from the safety of his holo. “Who do you think is going to attack Earth, Miriam? Seneca? They wouldn’t dare. Raiders from New Babel, or maybe some nutcases from Pandora? Be realistic. Earth is by far the most fortified, heavily defended world in settled space.
No one
is coming for Earth.”

Inwardly she sighed, though she was careful not to let it show. At this point the Board was in danger of becoming completely dominated by the Regional Commanders. Alamatto was too weak a leader to keep them in line and there wasn’t another faction to counterbalance them. The other three Earth-based members were too beholden to competing political benefactors to act in concert with her
or
Alamatto.

She was fighting a losing battle and she knew it. But so long as she held a position of any power, she would
not
fold. She dropped her chin and gazed slightly up and sideways at O’Connell, one eyebrow arched; the impression created was of a master disappointed in the ignorance of the student.

“If I could predict the nature of the adversary, rest assured we would already be meeting the threat. You believe we’ve thought of everything. But the real danger is, as it has been since the dawn of history, the enemy we cannot predict.
This
is what I seek always to defend against.”

Alamatto placed both palms on the table and pressed into it in an attempt to reassert control over the meeting. “You
both
raise valid concerns which we must weigh alongside other considerations.”

He paused to grace the table with a smooth smile; the poised, confident yet nonthreatening countenance ranked as one of his strongest assets.

“In my view the defense web is sufficiently strong for the time being, but mine is not the only opinion which matters. Are there any further observations, or shall we vote on the initiative?”

DEUCALI

E
ARTH
A
LLIANCE
SW
R
EGIONAL
M
ILITARY
H
EADQUARTERS

G
ENERAL
L
IAM
O
’
C
ONNELL BARRELED
down the hall from the QEC room toward his office. His nods to the junior officers he passed, when they occurred at all, were curt. The base headquarters bustled with activity even on this most typical of days; nevertheless, the crowd unfailingly parted to let his tall, burly form pass unhindered.

The Board meeting had gone well he thought. Personally he wasn’t all that worked up over the need for additional high-orbit defense arrays, but as a power play he must admit it was a shrewd maneuver.

Fionava seemed to be genuinely concerned by potential dangers from the frontiers of space beyond its borders. This world wasn’t subject to those concerns to so great an extent, but he was more than happy to join their cause if it meant greater resources and increased influence would come his way.

Deucali was one of the largest ‘2
^nd
wave’ colonies, and its population continued to grow. With each passing year it exercised greater control over the smaller settlements in the Province. The colony’s star was on the ascension, no question about it. Without slowing he barked an order at a passing Lieutenant regarding the unfinished upgrades to the QEC room.

Alamatto was a weak-willed pussy. His entire career had been based on nothing more than the military establishment’s respect for his father—but were he alive, the elder Alamatto would be mortified by his excuse for a son. Solovy could be a royal pain in the ass, but she was little more than a pencil pusher; if she had ever seen live combat it had been back in the Bronze Age. As for the remainder of the Board, they weren’t worth wasting energy over.

At a crossway he abruptly stopped and pivoted to face the young man traversing the opposite hall. “Corporal, did your babysitter teach you to tuck your shirt in like that? Sharpen those creases before I lay eyes on you again, son.”