I examined the vessel I was in. Or, I guess, the vessel that was me. It was a converted interplanetary freighter. The body had been split halfway along its length and a SURGE drive ring had been installed. The fusion drive had been removed and replaced with extra cooling units for the oversized reactor.
I also noted that the viewports had their shielding in place. Made sense. I wasn’t going to be sitting in the pilot’s chair, so a window would be a weak point.
It wasn’t really a pretty ship. It didn’t have the classic lines of an Enterprise, or the smooth aerodynamic shape of a space shuttle. The body followed an elliptical cross-section, with lots of airlocks and cargo doors. The running lights followed the standard nautical red/green format, with the addition of blue as a nod to the three-dimensional nature of space travel.
The addition of the SURGE drive, ramscoop generator, and all the other stuff required by a Von Neumann probe left very little extra space for extras like, oh, weapons. Against opponents who probably would have them. Plus anything I might run into out there, as well. It was becoming increasingly obvious that the whole HEAVEN project was a rush job, using existing assets wherever possible, to save time.
And I was beginning to understand what toast felt like.
Well, Dr. Landers had warned me about this. Installed in Heaven-1, about to be shot out to the stars, I still didn’t have the whole picture or complete training. I decided I was going to have to dive in. I set up some interrupt conditions with GUPPI and started looking for a mission profile.
I very quickly found some useful information. As part of my bag of tricks on Heaven-1, I had the ability to adjust my personal time sense. I could perceive time anywhere from one minute of personal time for each year on the clock, right up to the highest frame rate that my hardware would support. The docs weren’t clear on what that would be, so I turned the setting all the way up, and watched my Real-Time Clock slow to a crawl.
The ship used a fusion reactor for power. Although there was an onboard supply of hydrogen, fuel would be gathered in-flight from the interstellar medium. However, unlike in the old science-fiction novels, the gathered hydrogen wasn’t used for propulsion—at least not in the traditional way, as reaction mass. Heaven-1 used a reactionless system, the SURGE drive. I wanted to sigh. These people were so hung up on acronyms. I had yet to read up on the theory, but it seemed to push against the fabric of space in some way. Must read. Goes on the TO-DO.
There was a hail from the comms subsystem. I slowed to real-time and accepted a voice-only link to the station command.
“Heaven-1, Statcom, please verify receipt of mission profile.”
“Yep. Got it right here.” I imagined myself grinning—best I could do—at the stunned silence.
“Er, you’re a little light on procedure there, Heaven-1.”
“Ya think? Sorry Statcom, but this part of my training was scheduled for next week. We’re going to have to wing it, I’m afraid.”
“Wing it. Okayyyyy. Heaven-1, per countdown, we have just over four hours ten until launch. There will be several official bafflegabs at the following times…”
The briefing took almost ten minutes. I was able to get through it with my sanity intact by slowing down my internal clock until Statcom sounded like an irate squirrel.
As soon as Statcom signed off, I jacked up my frame rate to maximum, hoping to get in as much study-time as possible.
Some days, though, the universe just has it in for you.
I was interrupted in my reading by another radio message. At my current frame rate, the transmission was still droning through the first word. When I compressed and replayed it, I recognized Dr. Landers’ voice. The word was “missiles.”
Um. Ways in which a sentence beginning with the word “missiles” could be a good thing… Nope. I got nuthin’.
External sensors showed two objects approaching at high speed along my scheduled launch vector, presumably the better to overtake me if I launched early. It was a reasonable and predictable tactic, but I had no intention of being predictable.
I spent a full five milliseconds mulling over my options. In short order, I had a rough plan.
Fortunately, the ship had long since been fully prepped, and could leave any time. I blew the grapples and brought all flight systems to full function. While I waited for physical reality to catch up with my awareness, I sent a query to my libraries about the approaching missiles. The libraries gave three possible models, with generally similar flight characteristics. I chose the most pessimistic and calculated a takeoff vector as close to 180? to the missiles’ vector as I could safely manage.
As soon as sensors indicated that I was free, I gave a burst of the SURGE drive, just enough to clear the station. I rotated the ship and cranked up the reactor to maximum. That’s going to be hard on fuel reserves, but I guess being blown to smithereens would be harder. When reactor output rose to the required level, I engaged SURGE at maximum acceleration.
The ship shot away from the station in the opposite direction from the published launch trajectory. The first missile went right past me, its trajectory unaltered. I realized with a jolt that it had locked onto the space station. The second missile was altering its trajectory to follow me. I hoped that the published specs for the reactor and SURGE drive were accurate. If my acceleration fell short of expectations, I wouldn’t be able to avoid interception. And that would be the end of Heaven-1. And of me.
While I waited for velocity to build up, I checked the progress of the voice transmission. It now sat at “Missiles detected heading your way. Get away…” I checked acceleration using SUDDAR to monitor the increasing distance from the station. Calculations indicated a steady 2.5 g acceleration. The SURGE drive seemed to work on the entire ship, so there was no way to measure it internally.
The space station began firing on the approaching missile. The weapon appeared to be some kind of Gatling gun. I hoped they knew what they were doing. If those bullets ended up in a periodic orbit, they’d be coming back, sooner or later.
The flash of an explosion in the distance saturated one of my cameras. It couldn’t be either of the missiles, which were still accounted for. I did a quick calculation and realized that the explosion came from where the missiles had originated. Someone had blown up the shooter.
A second flash indicated the destruction of the missile that was targeting the space station.
This was all fine and interesting, but I still had a missile on my tail. Given enough time, I could outrun it. I did another quick millisecond calculation and realized that I could almost outrun it. Sadly, almost wasn’t good enough.