Chapter 21: Shoot and Scoot

Underground habitat ring, Stickney crater, Phobos

Saturday, December 9^th, 3116 (two hours later)

The virtual tour had been very informative. As I suspected, the tunnels running through Phobos did indeed hold additional laboratory and research areas along with a surprising amount of heavy automated industry and manufacturing capability. When we reached the huge conduits which carried energy from the fission power dynamos to the wormhole machinery, I understood the need for all the local heavy industrial manufacturing capacity.

The power conduits ran in a long, curving bore shaft which extended nearly eighteen kilometers, connecting the atomic dynamo field on the asteroid’s trailing end to the big wormhole installation centered on the far side of Phobos. Spaced within the tunnel were sixteen heavy conductors, each over 160 millimeters in diameter, not including their thick, insulating coatings.

Though the huge power transmission grouping was capable of transferring well over a hundred gigawatts of electrical energy, it was now simply a backup, as Phobos had recently been upgraded to use direct wormhole coupling to bypass most of the physical conductors. This not only provided redundancy, but increased efficiency by eliminating a sizable amount of resistive energy losses incurred by not using the resource-costly superconductors.

The other benefit of the virtual tour besides saving time was that it enabled us to explore the more-dangerous elements of the complex at close hand. Specifically, this meant we could safely observe the deadly, highly radioactive, and thermally intense environment of the atomic dynamo field. In addition to mitigating the physical dangers, Truffles had bypassed many of the realism filters for convenience and it made for quite the unforgettable spectacle.

I could barely keep from grinning constantly as the eight of us, Riho and Hannah now included as they were able to join the virtual tour from where they had remained on Elon II via telepresence, stood, unsuited but perfectly fine, in the full vacuum and highly radioactive environment of a dynamo’s primary reaction chamber.

The virtual tuning reducing the hellish thermal radiation emanating from the red-hot fuel injectors just a meter away, to just a mild warm sensation, as if one were standing near a small fireplace. The tuning also allowed us to converse audibly despite the hard vacuum. Another benefit was that I felt normal Earth gravity and, as Ben and Dejah didn’t appear burdened, their personalized virtuality must have been subjecting them to the lighter Martian gravity.

The bulk of the time savings allowed by the virtual tour was in the area of travel. Once we had seen one area, and all questions for that area answered, Truffles would whisk us off to the next point of interest. I had to admit, despite my general dislike of the high-tech simulation technology, this was far more efficient and I was able to see the logic and benefits of such a learning method.

We finished the tour at the big wormhole installation on the moon’s outer face. Even though I’d been involved with the early planning, and had seen many images of the place since it had been constructed, seeing it up close with my own eyes, albeit virtually, was still an awe-inspiring eyepiece.

First, the military wormhole complex was gigantic! I’d known that, of course, but had not really appreciated how BIG it was. Think football stadium big! The outer containment gantry was a three-hundred-meter diameter hemispherical construction half embedded into the surface of the far side of Phobos. The wormhole mechanism filled most of the interior volume.

Our tour started at the gantry foundations where twelve boreholes extended three kilometers deep into the moon to provide anchor points for the multiple carbon-fiber tensioning tendons. The extensive underpinnings were needed in case of an accidental energy release as it was feared anything substantial would rip the facility free from the moon’s porous substrate.

We stood, again naked in a hard vacuum, on a rim of the smooth-faced crater-like cavity excavated into the Phobos surface. Right next to us was one of the twelve massive support columns which extended up and outward from the rim. All twelve supports curved inward before converging, forming the skeletal shape of the outer half of the hemisphere.

Inside this spherical space was a massive circular ring. The ring was attached to the convergence point of the overhead skeleton and also at the base of the crater by two enormous rotating trunnions. Complex swiveling couplings surrounded the lower trunnion, providing rotating connections for energy, pressurized gasses, and exotic matter. I remembered from the planning sessions that the couplings had enough freedom of movement to allow the ring to rotate well beyond 180 degrees in each direction.

Inside the outer ring was a second, inner ring, also attached at two trunnion points. These inner points were offset ninety degrees from the outer ring’s trunnions and were located approximately in line with the moon’s horizon. Again, there were complicated, rotational connections for utilities joining the two rings.

Inside the inner ring, and almost completely filling the two-hundred-meter diameter interior void, was the actual wormhole torus itself. From where we stood, not much of this gigantic ring could be seen as it was covered with auxiliary equipment and devices. I’d seen something similar back on Vesta, although on a far smaller scale.

I was pleased to learn from their questions and comments that the group’s newcomers to the facility, Adele, Ben, and Dejah, were able to deduce that what we were looking at was similar to a gyroscope. Truffles and Uxe confirmed their speculation and explained how the massive gimballing mount was needed to compensate for the rapid, eight-hour orbital period of Phobos, although the motion of Mars and our Sun added to the complexity.

Despite my participation in the early planning sessions, I still learned many new details. One of these was that we’d modified the original design to include eight smaller wormhole mechanisms installed around the big, inner coils of the main portal.

These were local shunting wormholes and were used not only for bringing the antimatter munitions from the Lagrange point depot, but also for providing the energy and exotic matter streams needed to transition the big wormhole up to the enemy Ark’s fractional light-speed velocity.

There were also two redundant personal wormholes to quickly bring in space-worthy mobile units and human personnel needed for emergency repairs. The two fixed portals also fast-acting to serve as a rapid escape path while humans were present. With the massive pressures and quantities of energy, it was a highly dangerous area to occupy.

We wrapped up the tour by watching the machinery in motion as it performed a simulated ultra-long-range wormhole projection. The massive gimbal moved faster than I’d expected as the rings compensated for the moonlet’s motion.

Experiencing it while riding along inside the central mechanism was nerve-wracking. Not only was there the motion, but Truffles had augmented the virtuality by adding crackling energy discharges along with a deep, bone-jarring vibration. Afterwards, when I had thanked Uxe for her part in designing and building the facility, she admitted that some of the rumbling we’d experienced was just theatrics added for the virtual tour.

The actual mechanism operated nearly vibration-free as any rumbling would have affected the wormhole’s targeting. I had to admit that it did enhance the experience, as did hearing Strauss’s Also Sprach Zarathustra playing in the background during the wormhole demonstration. Ben, Dejah, and Adele had loved the tour, especially the thrilling conclusion. I’d enjoyed seeing their reactions as much as I had my own.

The only downside to the tour was that it made me realize how complicated the Phobos facility was. There would be an enormous setback to the war effort if something happened to the big mechanism.

After the virtual tour’s conclusion, Uxe directed us back to the control center where she would be overseeing the deployment of the tungsten punji into the path of the enemy Ark. Since the second attack was kinetic only with no antimatter warheads, the moon was deemed safe enough for me to be allowed to remain.

Still, I had been offered the choice to be poked back to my apartment on Elon II. Riho had messaged that she preferred me to join her where it was marginally safer but would understand if I wanted to stay. After what I had seen today, I wanted to stay simply to pay tribute and acknowledge the hard work done by those stationed here.

So now, here I was, entwined in a gravity cradle positioned near Uxe’s control console as if I was a visiting admiral about to lead a huge fleet into battle. Ohmu was nearby, a recharging cord extending from her abdomen and hardwired into a junction box which also powered the cluster of consoles. Adele had stationed herself towards the rear of the big room. She was hanging from a high-mounted handhold which provided a good vantage to image the ongoing countdown.

Ben and Dejah had abandoned us, already back on Mars after having taken advantage of the available wormhole queue slot I’d declined to utilize. Before they had left, the Princess had surprisingly expressed her thanks to me personally for the tour. Maybe she was not as bad as I had first suspected.

The countdown clock to wormhole activation dropped below one minute. I looked around the room but the majority of other humans were occupied with their displays or off in virtual monitoring areas under their responsibility.

Three others, the safety and rescue personnel, were currently observers like me. Each of the three was wearing emergency vacuum gear with helmets left open. They were here just in case there was a pressure breach or some other accident and would assist if someone had trouble disconnecting from their cerebral connection. When I had been introduced to them earlier, I’d noticed with some amusement that all three had suit patches that read “Zombie Herder.”

Still, as they were currently my only ‘aware’ companions other than Adele and Ohmu, I caught their attention.

“Here’s to good shooting today ... or luck!” I said, raising my fist in solidarity.

The three responded with nods and raised fists of their own. We all knew that the odds were slim that the first kinetic attack would score any hits. Despite recent improvements with its initial guidance, the big wormhole was simply not accurate enough to place the spikes where we needed with any surety.

Still, I was happy with the improvements. Where before, the best we could hope for was that the big wormhole would form within a hundred kilometers of its target over an eight-light-year distance, we’d improved that by almost an order of magnitude.

Now, it could form the terminus at that distance in a twelve-kilometer diameter sphere, or, if measured perpendicular to the vector of the enemy, the wormhole would form anywhere in a circle of roughly 130 square kilometers. Since our target was only 2.6 square kilometers in area. Our odds were slim, perhaps one in fifty, but miracles happen all the time. We’d need one tonight.

Tonight’s first kinetic attempt would be a quick, blind shot in the dark. Even though we would almost certainly miss, we still hoped to gain valuable intelligence on the Ark’s ability to detect oncoming objects and debris and deal with them. To gather this data, Sarissa would be creating a nearby surveillance wormhole to record the Ark’s passage through our new minefield.

Tonight’s test was to also verify the delivery and deployment mechanism of the punji bundle. A window showing the waiting bundle had just opened on the room’s large view screen. Other windows opened as well on the control room’s large viewscreen and I quickly began scanning the new data.

One window was displaying the three atomic dynamos needed for tonight’s deployment as they throttled up to full power. Four seconds later I felt a slight vibration in my gravity cradle. This small moonquake being caused by the distant operating magnetoplasmadynamic engines! I didn’t notice any acceleration, but that was to be expected given the enormous mass of Phobos compared to our current usage of only a fraction of the total array.

The big wormhole was also coming alive with activity. The bundle of tungsten rods had already been delivered and installed into a deployment mechanism which had been attached to the main portal torus. The other shunting wormholes were active and coupled to the big mechanism. Exotic matter was streaming into the compensation coils and being spun up to incredible velocities.

I focused on the window showing a close view of the kinetic payload bundle. Thirty-seven hexagonal rods, each about 80 millimeters across and just over a meter and a half in length, with each massing in at 102 kilograms, made up the four-ton bundle. They were spaced evenly into a larger hexagonal package that was just under a meter across.

Once they arrived in Ark space, the package would separate under mechanical spring pressure and spread out at around forty meters per second. Each rod was tipped with a star tracker on one end and a set of tiny reaction wheels on the other. Both would work together to orientate the narrow rods and ensure that each remained end-on facing the oncoming ark, thus minimizing their radar footprint.

The countdown dropped below ten seconds. The window showing the big wormhole shimmered from the gravimetric distortions caused by the tunnel being forced through space. Because of the large size of the aperture portal, the formation process took almost three times longer than it did with the smaller wormholes.

The compensation coils stopped accelerating the exotic matter earlier than they had when we sent our missiles. This was because we were sending the tungsten bundle through without accelerating them to Ark velocity. We were providing some spatial velocity however, enough to counteract the motion of Mars and the Sun and deliver the bundle at dead rest to the local conditions near the Ark’s vector.

“Five,” Uxe said with her odd ‘deep-immersion’ voice. “Four ... three ... two ... one ... wormhole open and stable!”

The big viewscreen now showed the huge spatial disruption ring. A sensor stalk was quickly inserted off to one edge, leaving plenty of room for the four-ton bundle of tungsten rods. The recording camera shook as the deploy magnets sent the heavy package through. A new window appeared which showed the view from the sensor stalk. Its camera was locked on the departing bundle, tracking it as it quickly moved away from the terminus. Two seconds later, the bundle burst apart and the window panned out slowly to capture the controlled, uniform expansion of the individual impactor rods.

“Deployment successful. The kinetic impactors are moving apart as planned and the spacing is uniform and within margins,” Uxe reported.

We’d tested the bundle of course, but watching it work when needed was still a relief. The rods quickly became difficult to follow even with the thermal enhancement of the sensor’s imager. I was able to follow one individual impactor for only a few seconds before it vanished into the black. It was amazing that such a diminutive object had the potential to wreak such havoc.

I recalled the figures. Thanks to the fractional light speed of the enemy Ark, colliding with just a single 100-kilogram rod would result in an energy release of about six megatons TNT equivalent. That would surely put a dent in the enemy’s plans. The view screen showing the relayed image from the sensor cut off and I saw on another window that the big wormhole had closed. The abrupt shutdown had severed the sensor stalk.

“Um ... we forgot to retract the sensor cluster,” I commented dryly.

“It was disposable,” Ohmu replied.

The android caught my curious look and continued, “It was left behind intentionally. We even increased its mass to just over sixteen kilograms by filling the tubular stalk with lead granules. Hopefully, the enemy will run across it.”

Ah, of course. ‘Run across’ in the literal sense and collide with it! I felt embarrassed that I had not realized sooner. “Um, do we know how accurate the wormhole placement was?” I asked sheepishly, trying to cover my slow thinking.

“Data from the brief sensor deployment is still being analyzed by the Argus discrimination processors,” Ohmu reported. “They should return a location fix in five seconds or less.”

Our target had been a point in space located two light seconds ahead of the oncoming Ark. Two light seconds equated to a distance of just under 600,000 kilometers. With the Ark approaching at 7.496 % of C, or 22,472 kilometers per second, this meant that the enemy vessel would arrive at the area we’d just seeded with tungsten punjis in about twenty seconds.

Of course, if our wormhole had been aimed perfectly and had still been active when the Ark arrived and the two merged, well, the convergence back blast into Phobos would make for a very bad day at the gimbal complex. This danger was only one reason we’d closed the wormhole so quickly though. The other, more important primary reason was that we wanted to minimize revealing data to the enemy.

The Ark obviously scanned interstellar space in its path looking for debris. We hoped our brief wormhole opening would limit the chances of the Arks scanners from noticing the six-meter spatial rift. The brief opening duration was also wise because the Ark likely had some form of shielding barrier traveling at some distance ahead of it.

We had targeted our impactor deployment almost too close to the ark because of this shield. We wanted to form our wormhole in the gap between any shield and the trailing ark. This was that, even though the mass of the shield was likely miniscule as compared to the Ark, convergence between that shield and our wormhole would still cause a tremendous backwash of energy.

So, with the wormhole now shutdown, we’d avoided much of the potential danger of the attempt. Uxe’s shell began to decouple itself from the console’s cranial attachment. Her part of tonight’s operation was over and I was pleased she was exiting deep-immersion to join me in watching from the real.

She opened her eyes and found me. Her smile caused the old familiar warmth I’d always felt from seeing my longtime friend. “Well, that’s a relief. Now we just need to be lucky with our aim.”

Our hopes faded quickly as Ohmu spoke a moment later.

“Minervus reports that the Argus discriminator has completed its initial scan of the sensor imagery and has located the enemy Ark,” the android reported. “Wormhole formation occurred approximately twelve kilometers outside the predicted convergence point of the current vector of the ark.”

“That’s eight kilometers outside the minimum margin of error to expect a successful convergence,” Uxe added with a frown.

“Shit!” I exclaimed. We missed! Our punjis had been sown too far off course from the oncoming ark.

“It was expected,” Uxe said softly. “This first attempt was for data gathering with minimal risk.”

A new window appeared on the main screen. I recognized the familiar shape of the smaller Sarissa wormhole mechanism.

“Eighteen seconds until Ark convergence,” Ohmu reported. “Sarissa is now opening its observational wormhole.”

“How far from the Ark and the impactors will the Sarissa wormhole be located?” I asked.

“Twenty thousand kilometers,” Uxe answered, preempting Ohmu. She was rubbing her temples and sounded fatigued. “It’s on a parallel trajectory to the Ark,” she added.

We watched the countdown fall below fifteen seconds. The window relaying the image from the Sarissa wormhole now was showing a distant star field. Its sensor was already deployed and panning around rapidly searching for the Ark. The now-familiar shape was soon centered in the window. Our viewpoint this time was interesting. Instead of looking at the area behind the ark, we were now slightly ahead and looking at its nose from a shallow angle off to one side.

I quickly extracted myself from the gravity cradle and pulled myself over to Uxe. I arrived behind her and locked one leg in the base of her cradle for support. Thus anchored, I gently began massaging her neck and shoulders hoping to ease her fatigue. She sighed and smiled back at me before relaxing. We both turned back to the window showing the Ark to find it growing smaller. The imager was zooming out to increase the coverage area.

With four seconds remaining a quickly-moving red-colored zone appeared at the extreme edge of the Sarissa feed. This was the region we’d seeded with the kinetic impactors. I was surprised at how fast the closure rate was between the seeded region and the Ark.

“How far will the punjis have spread when the Ark passes?” I asked, still hoping for a miracle.

“At convergence, they will have spread evenly across an area approximately 2.5 kilometers in diameter,” Uxe said quietly.

I remembered that the front end of the Ark was about 1.7 kilometers in diameter. Our deployment had occurred off center of the ark’s course by 12 kilometers and we had thirty-seven rods spreading over a diameter of 2.5 kilometers. My faint remaining hope faded.

The countdown reached zero and as expected, no explosions blossomed on the bow of the Ark. The countdown began counting up as the red zone representing our minefield disappeared out of view behind the ark. The attack was officially over, our impactor rods lost forever to the void.

I felt Uxe’s shell slump in my arms as my ex-wife fled back into virtual to parse the incoming data. Oh well, at least she’d joined me for the important moment. The sudden emotional surge I felt surprised me. The recent events were beginning to affect me. I frowned as there was still so much to do.

Ohmu began speaking and it took me a moment to focus on the androids’ words. “ ... sensors from Sarissa detected high energy emissions during the final seconds before the Ark passed the impactor field. This confirms that the enemy does have an active detection network for oncoming objects that may have bypassed any debris shield.”

“How soon can we try another kinetic attack?” I asked, ignoring the android’s message.

“At least forty hours,” Uxe replied, surprising me. She’d not gone fully into virtual after all. “Double that if we want to send the upgraded impactor package.”

“The guided option?” I asked.

“Yes, the upgraded impactor bundle with terminal maneuvering capability,” She replied. “Of course, there will be a much greater risk if we attempt that option as the impactor bundle would need to be deployed much further from the ark.”

I recalled the parameters for deploying the enhanced impactors. The guidance package needed time to maneuver the four-ton bundle from wherever the wormhole dropped it back into the path of the enemy. We’d estimated that this would take roughly two minutes and this meant that instead of deploying at two light seconds separation, we’d need eight to ten light-seconds of separation.

In terms of physical distance, the additional six to eight light seconds meant that the deployment would occur 2.4 million kilometers in front of the ark instead of 600,000 kilometers. This increased the danger in two main ways. First, it gave the enemy five times longer to spot the bundle in its path. Worse, detection would be much easier because the bundle would be using powerful thrusters to rapidly shift the bundle onto an interception trajectory.

Worse, the actively maneuvering objects in front of the Ark would scream to our enemy that they were under active, intelligent attack instead of just dealing with abnormally dense space junk. While our days of enjoying such anonymity were rapidly dwindling, once that point was passed, it was passed for good.

The second major danger of deploying the impactors five times further away was that we ran the risk of colliding with the Ark’s aforementioned leading interstellar debris shield. We had still not yet spotted this protection but it was likely that the more-distant deployment would rectify that.

The AIs reasoned that the Ark utilized a type of Whipple shield similar to that which our own interstellar colonizer vessels employed. We had not yet spotted the enemies, mainly because we were not sure how far in front of the Ark its shield, or shields, were deployed. Hopefully, we could deploy rapidly enough to again fall in the gap, far enough ahead or even behind.

Of course, our theories about the shield could be completely wrong. Maybe the Ark used some other method? Maybe an active protection mechanism like a big laser or even a magnetic deflector. We knew that they communicated across interstellar distances by laser. Maybe it was dual function?

One of the topics scheduled for discussion in the upcoming briefing was whether to continue with our attacks or to pause our offensive and instead perform more scouting and reconnaissance. I still wanted to keep attacking but I was torn. The risks to the big Phobos wormhole mechanism were very real.

“As I was saying,” Ohmu said, after pausing to make sure she had our attention. “Sarissa’s reconnaissance, in addition to confirming active scanning for nearby incoming debris, detected physical activity on the nose of the Ark itself.”

“What activity?” I asked while feeling Uxe relax again a second time in my arms. I tilted her head back and verified from her slack expression that she had gone fully into virtual this time.

“Please direct your attention to the main display,” Ohmu instructed.

I did and saw that the live Sarissa telescope view had now zoomed in tight on the bulbous nose of the alien ark. I could see a blip of motion ... a few pixels of artificial construction were shifting amidst the chaos of craters, scars, and rents which pockmarked the nickel-iron bow of the enemy vessel.

“What is that?” I asked.

“The AI advisory council estimates that what you are seeing is an active interstellar debris defense in the process of standing down,” Ohmu said.

A second window appeared next to the first and displayed an enhanced view. I could now see that the object was hexagonal in shape. The motion resembled a six-sided flower closing in on itself.

“Are those petals doors of some kind?” I asked.

“More correctly, the objects in motion are overlapping hatch covers,” Uxe answered instead of Ohmu.

She had spoken with her normal voice which indicated that she was not too deeply interfaced. As I was holding her neck with its unconnected cranial shunt, I should have realized that she was just skimming the virtual data feeds.

“I am attempting to quickly augment the Sarissa deployed sensor with a spectral laser scanner before the hatch cover fully closes,” she stated.

It took me a moment to parse her statement. I recalled when we had earlier scanned the Ark with such a laser to determine the materials of its construction. If we could scan the inside of the closing orifice, maybe we could deduce the mechanism’s function from the materials it was constructed of.

The small window that showed our side of the Sarissa facility was busy with activity as mobile units rushed around trying to maneuver a bulky object into position near the stalk penetrating the small active wormhole. I tried to follow both windows, comparing the closing hatch to the activity to install the additional scanner.

Suddenly, the frantic work on Vesta stopped. I looked back to the two windows displaying the nose of the ark and watched the hatch complete its closure, sealing the interior of the hexagonal shaft off from view. We were too late! Moments later, the windows went dark as the sensor was retracted, the Sarissa wormhole terminating immediately after.

Uxe sat up partially. “Fuck! Not enough time to deploy the laser and Sarissa ran too low on energy.”

Uxe swearing was a rarity. “What were you hoping to find?” I asked, soothingly.

“I was hoping to scan the interior of the shaft way under that heavy cover. Depending on the spectral backscatter, we’d have a better idea if the mechanism inside was an energy beam weapon or a linear accelerator. Now we will have to wait for it to be deployed again.”

I was still confused about what had happened after our failed attack. “Help me understand, Uxe. I get that our impactors were deployed too far off course. But what do you think was happening on the bow of the Ark?”

“What likely happened, John, and remember, this is just a guess, is that the enemy’s forward-looking scanners detected the impactors right after they were deployed. Before it could verify that the rods did not pose a threat, it began activating some form of close-in debris protection system. The orifice that was exposed was probably the firing port for that device,” Uxe explained.

“The Sarissa sensors also detected the signatures of discrete focused energy emissions reflecting off many of the closer impactor rods,” Ohmu added. “This indicates the enemy ark employs a scanning method capable of independently tracking multiple incoming objects at once.”