CHAPTER 1
The
Year 2217 C.E.
Heavy
mining machinery crunched and chugged and ripped apart slabs of black rock from
the cavernous hole that twisted and turned nearly two miles beneath the surface.
A powerful arm, marred by a jagged
scar that tore through a Special Forces tattoo, pushed against a heavy drill—powered
by the same mysterious phosphorescent blue ore, HydraDioxidine3, trademarked by the energy company
Exxon-BP HyDox, being mined—as the man cut the rock slabs into smaller, more
manageable pieces.
The miner’s filthy work clothes were
stained with sweat and black grime. He had two cylindrical tanks strapped to
his back. The larger of the two tanks provided oxygen that ran through a tube
to the mask covering his mouth and nose. The smaller tank contained HyDox,
highly compressed and reformulated to provide unlimited power.
A stencil on the larger tank read, Hammer, which was his nickname and his
job, to use the heavy jackhammer to extract the raw ore, which, when processed
in various formulations powered all things mechanical and electrical that drove
mining companies to travel to not only the far ends of their world, but the
universe to secure it.
The ore’s unique properties of
HyDox not only powered every type of hand tool and machine, but in particular
the Alcubierre Drive systems aboard every spacecraft that propelled them at greater-than-light
speeds (SOL), enabling the species previously confined to the planet Earth not
only interplanetary travel, but intergalactic as well.
The Alcubierre Drive, reversed
engineered from an alien craft discovered on Mars in the 21st
Century, operated on an entirely different principle of traveling through
space. Rather than breaking SOL within its own frame of reference, a spacecraft
powered by an Alcubierre Drive would travel great distances by shifting space
in front of it while expanding space behind it. In effect, creating a wormhole,
or an Einstein-Rosen bridge, once only thought of as a science fiction plot
device.
The feasibility of the Alcubierre
Drive was only theory based loosely on the Einstein field equations and the
need for the existence of negative
density and the requirement of exotic
matter. Then when the first arrivals on Mars discovered the wreckage of an
alien mining spaceship and its cargo of the rocks containing the blue liquid
everything changed.
By putting the blue liquid through
the femtotechnology process, it proved
possible to manipulate excited energy states within atomic nuclei and resulted
in new chemical element composed of exotic baryons that was comprised of
different properties than the regular chemical elements.
An entrepreneurial endeavor backed
the Martian subsidiaries of Exxon and British
Petroleum, in a joint venture with The Spacecraft Company—comprised of Virgin
Galactic and Mojave Aerospace Ventures—and Boeing Mars Ltd., resulted in a
crash program to simultaneous develop the new negative-density fuel, HyDox, and
the build the first generation Alcubierre Drive power system. Together, the
faster-than-light power drive and fuel would push the envelope of space travel
far beyond what early private enterprise space explorers such as Burt Rutan and
Richard Branson would ever have thought possible.
Jake Hammer
Lane’s brilliant green eyes stared intently through the dust covered goggles as
his headlamp illuminated the section of the mine the foreman had assigned him
to work at. As he pounded away at the black rock his breathing rasped through
the oxygen mask.
Next to him other drillers and
hammer operators worked at the same section of stone wall. Nearby, the foreman
directed four men as they guided a heavy ore processing cart into the cavern.
The cart hovered a few inches above the dirt floor as they placed it where the foreman
indicated. He nodded and one of the men
used a remote control device to lower the bulky cart to the ground. The other three men used large, powered
bolt-hammers. With each pull of the trigger a metallic CLUNK! CLUNK! CLUNK!
CLUNK! echoed through the chamber as four massive bolts anchored the
cart to the ground.
Immediately, miners used power
tools to maneuver huge chunks of black rock that contained the ribbons of the liquid
phosphorescent ore on to the cart. Men, called
blasters attacked the rocks with
white-hot flame-throwing blowtorches. The blue ore oozed away from the black
rocks and flowed along grooves to rows of metal collection canisters attached
to the sides of the cart.
As each canister filled up, a man
quickly capped it, took it from the cart and slipped it into a pneumatic tube,
then hit a button to shoot the canister and its valuable contents to the
surface. The man would then put a fresh canister in place of the one just
removed. It was a smooth-working
assembly line designed to extract the new gold standard that powered the mankind’s
journey out into the furthest corners of the universe.
Slowly a crack began to widen in
the wall in front of Jake and quickly spread across the wall past the other men. Jake and the others snapped their drills off,
pressed buttons on their duty belts and were lifted, as if on invisible wires,
away from the wall. A siren warned the other miners.
When they were about twenty feet
away from the wall, they touched another button and settled to the ground safe
behind the massive ore processing cart. The huge slab of rock began to break
away, tilted slightly exposing a river of brilliant phosphorescence— and ONE HUGE BUG!
The slab broke away, but did not
crash to the ground. Instead, it hovered in mid-air. All eyes were on the big bug.
Most of the miners had not seen such a bug before, but by the foreman’s
reaction they immediately knew it was not to be messed with.
“Bug! Everyone back!” the foreman shouted the
warning, holding out his arms to push men aside.
Suddenly exposed, the four-foot
insect arched its body and ejected a stream of hot, yellowish fluid. Men dove
for cover, but one was too slow. The vile fluid hit him in the face and he screamed
in agony as it instantly burned through the skin and muscle, exposing raw bone.
“Strykers!” the foreman commanded,
talking into the mic of his comset. “Main chamber, now!”
Moments later, two men came
swooshing into the cavern and landed on the dirt floor. Each carried high-tech crossbows. They took aim as the bug scurried across the cavern
walls trying to get out of the glare of floodlights.
The strykers hesitated.
“Shoot the goddamn thing, will ya!”
someone screamed.
The two men aimed and fired.
Heavy metal darts pierced the wall;
both missed the deadly bug.
It arched its body towards its
enemies and shot back a stream of yellow acid in defense. One of the strykers
dodged the stream just as he pulled the trigger of his bow. Jake ducked as the
dart zipped by his head and struck the oxygen tank of the miner standing next
to him.
The tank took off like a rocket with
its human cargo along for the ride careening off the high vaulted roof, killing
the man instantly.
The other stryker fired his weapon.
Another
miss.
Miners scrambled to get out of the
way of the dead body as it continued to bounce off walls like a cue ball gone
mad.
Jake grabbed one of the blowtorches
and shot a stream of fire, incinerating the bug. It let out a piercing screech—and
the entire mine shuddered.
For an instant, no one was sure if
it was the bug’s dying scream or something else had caused the ground to shake.
Jake looked curiously at the
flaming torch in his hand as if to question what just happened.
“Now what?” he said, dismayed.
The entire cavern shook violently
and men were knocked off their feet. Rocks exploded inward and heavy metal
support beams bent and started to give way.
From long experience, everyone knew
what was happening as alarm sirens began to blare.
The foreman motioned for everyone
to head out of the cavern. “Emergency evac!” he shouted the order. “Everyone to
the surface, now.”
The monstrous cavern began to
crumble around the miners as they ran for their lives. Flying rocks hit one man
in the back. Jake helped him to his feet and handed him off to two miners.
A support beam started to give way.
Jake stopped and grabbed a heavy piece of emergency bracing wedge and forced it
under the beam. He knew it was only a temporary fix, at best.
He heard a wall giving way down the
tunnel and men’s screams, knowing they were being sucked out through the hole.
“What are you doing? Get out!
It’s coming down!” a miner shouted at Jake.
“There’re others back there,” Jake
called to the frightened man.
“It’s too late.”
“Get out,” Jake ordered. “I’ll catch up.”
“Your funeral,” the man called over
his shoulder as he ran away.
Jake grabbed another wedge and tried
to hold up the ceiling a just bit longer. He hoped there was no one left
further back in the mine.
Rocks were falling all around him
and choking dust filled the air. He heard
someone shout; then three men came out of the dark tunnel. Two struggled to
drag a big, badly injured man between them.
Jake leaned into the wedge, holding
the roof up by pure brute willpower. The
men moved passed him. He recognized one.
“Zane, anyone else down there?” he shouted above the building roar.
“They’re all dead,” said Zane,
fearfully.
Jake released the wedge and grabbed
the injured man, throwing him over his shoulder as he ran down the tunnel to
the two men’s amazement.
“Let’s get the hell out of here!”
he shouted as he passed them.
They ran through a gauntlet of
flying rocks and equipment. As they ran through a processing room, a heavy
machine suddenly broke free from the floor and careened right at them.
Zane saw it just before the others and shoved
them clear as the machine crushed him against the wall. His friend stopped and struggled to pull the
machine away.
It wouldn’t budge.
“Go! Get out of here,” said Zane in agony.
The man looked at Jake, then into
his friend’s eyes. Jake put the injured man down and shoved his shoulder into
the machine. “You know we never leave a trooper behind,” he said.
Zane gritted his jaw in pain. “Sarge,
get out of here,” he pleaded.
“I didn’t pull your ass out of
Arsia Mons to leave you in this pit,” Jake said and nodded to the other man. “I
can use your help here.”
The man leaned into the machine
beside Jake. At first, it didn’t
budge. They looked up at the sound of an
explosion from somewhere deeper in the mine. The noise level rapidly increased
and a hurricane-force wind came rolling through the tunnels. The men could barely keep their footing as
they struggled to move the machine.
Then the wind came to their aid and
the machine started to slowly slide across the floor. They had to lean over and shout into each
other’s ears to be heard over the incredible noise.
“It’s moving!” the miner shouted.
“Just a little more!” Jake yelled
back.
They finally managed to get the
machine clear and the miner pulled Zane out from under it. Zane cried out in pain as Jake hauled the
other injured man up and the four of them made their way through the wreckage to
the tube elevator.
Deep in the mine a tremendous fiery
explosion erupted. Flames billowed
through the mine shaft racing toward the men as they stumbled into the
elevator. Jake shouted a command at the
automated elevator, “Surface! Maximum
emergency ascent!”
The elevator shot up, pinning the
four men to the sides and the floor.
Below them, a firestorm raged
through the tunnels and raced up the elevator shaft. Looking down through the
elevator’s wire floor they saw the fire racing up toward them. It was a deadly race to the surface and it was
beginning to look like the fire was going to win.
The elevator slammed to a stop at
the top of the shaft and the men lurched out, running as fast as they could
through a large chamber carved out of solid rock. The chamber was full of
miners; too many for a waiting shuttle emblazoned with the logo, Vestacorp 3.
The terrified miners were pushing
and shoving and shoehorned their way into the already overcrowded shuttle.
Those nearest the doors turned and starred as Jake shouted to them as more men
shoved their way into the shuttle.
They turned as Jake shouted to them,
“Blow out!”
Every
man knew what was coming—a burning inferno.!
Men waiting for the next shuttle jumped
for cover and those already on the shuttle turned inward and shoved in panic
even harder against those men next to them. There just wasn’t anywhere else to
go. The doors slid shut, squeezing the men together like sardines. Those with their face pressed against the
doors peered out through small portholes.
Their faces turned red and their
eyes reflected the blazing maelstrom as it erupted out of the deep shaft and
exploded into the chamber. Men helplessly turned their backs to the fire and
involuntarily bent their backs as the raging heat incinerated them where they
stood.
Jake dove behind a rock with the injured
man as the miner who was helping Zane dropped him and ran for the shuttle
calling out desperately as the shuttle lifted away.
“No! Wait for us!” he pleaded.
Those in the shuttle stared through
the portholes, watching in horror being engulfed by the inferno as it moved
inexplicably toward them. Wide eyed, they watched helplessly, mesmerized, as
the fire bellowed and took on a life of its own, blasting against the shuttle
just as it was pulling away from the mine. There wasn’t time for the more than
one hundred fifty men to take a single breath.
The shuttle and its human cargo
were vaporized in midair.
Outside the mine entrance the
shuttle Vestacorp 5 pulled away and began to rise over the steep ridges of a
mountain range that reached up over eight miles high surrounding a crater two
hundred eighty miles wide. Below it a huge mining facility built into the face
of the cliff. A terraforming facility stretched for miles along the valley
floor.
The shuttle began to climb up
towards the blackness of space filled with hundreds of thousands of asteroids—the
remnants of two massive planets that had collided billions of years before.
The shuttle picked up speed as it
headed upward through a bubble of blue energy and artificial atmosphere toward a
gigantic, space-scarred interstellar ship that, as big as it was, was dwarfed
by the planet Jupiter that loomed behind it.
Inside the shuttle the men stared
out at the mining spacecraft that filled the viewing portholes. Below the
shuttle lay the Arizona-sized asteroid just as a meteoroid the tall as a
two-story building sailed by, sending out a shower of sparks as it smashed
through the atmosphere bubble and began breaking up into several smaller pieces
that plunged toward the asteroid and straight for the terraforming facility.
“Son-of-a-bitch! It got through!” said one miner.
“It’s those bastards at corporate
and that low-bid deflection unit they put on Vesta,” said another in disgust. “They don’t care what happens to the grunts
who go into those death holes.”
“It’s breaking up!” someone
shouted.
“Not enough,” the first miner said dismayed.
One jagged piece of the meteoroid
streaked across the sky thin atmosphere above the asteroid Vesta, leaving a
trail of fire as it plunged downward.
“It’s headed for the terraforming
plant,” someone said.
“There’s no time to get enough
shuttles to get them all off,” said another.
“God help them,” pronounced yet
another.
“God’s on Earth. We’re alone out here.”
The men watched numbly as the
shattered pieces from the meteoroid plummeted toward Vesta and the miners who
were still inside the mine.
The smaller meteorites began
striking the ground close to the mining site, exploding like small atomic
bombs.
Inside the mine, a pile of rubble
shook from the force of the explosions outside.
Jake slowly pushed the rocks and
metal off him and the other miner. He
checked the man’s pulse and knew he was dead.
He felt another explosion, got to his feet and ran.
Jake dodged falling rocks and metal
structures as he ran passed dead bodies that littered the cavern. He found an
emergency locker, opened it and slipped on an oxygen mask. He made his way to opening
in the rock wall where he knew there would be a conveyer to the valley floor
where the mining office complex was located.
Far below he saw the ruins of the
mining complex and the shuttle’s smoldering remains. Above him, he saw hundreds of meteoroids
streaking across the artificial sky. One huge chunk of rock suddenly slammed
into the terraforming installation.
It was vaporized in a blinding
flash.
The atmosphere immediately began to
lose its light blue coloring and a howling wind ripped across the land as the
vast terrain began to be purged of air.
Jake struggled to keep his footing
against the ever increasing maelstrom and made his way to the communications shack.
Inside he found the radio equipment and snapped up the microphone as he shouted
over howling wind and explosions, “Mayday!
Mayday! This is Jake Lane. The terraforming plant is gone. Last shuttle destroyed. Does anyone hear me? Mayday!
Mayday!”
Only static came back in answer,
then, “I read you, Lane,” came a familiar voice from the mining ship hundreds
of miles above the asteroid. “What’s
your situation?”
Jake looked out a window just as a
meteorite destroyed a building far below.
“Not good. Can you send pickup?”
“Negative. Surface stability is below
minimum requirements for inserting a shuttle.
Sorry, Lane.”
“You’re sorry,” Jake said as he
watched the landscape being torn apart. “Control, are there any personal
shuttles still on the site?”
There was a long pause, then, “Wait
one.”
Jake looked out the window at the
rapidly changing terrain as the air continued to bleed from the asteroid. A
tower array on top of the highest mountain disintegrated and was sucked up into
space.
“Come on, come on,” Jake said
desperately.
“There’s a transponder reading
coming from the maintenance facility,” came the controller’s voice.
Jake glanced down at the facility
and saw just as its roof one building was ripped off and flew across the giant
crater.
“You sure, control? I don’t see it.”
“Affirmative.”
The communications shack began to
shake even more violently and the front door was torn away. He couldn’t wait any longer. He dropped the
microphone and headed out the door.
The only way down to the crater
floor was a small tube elevator that ran alongside the sheer cliff. Buffeted by the fierce winds, it bounced
around, threatening to rip lose from its braces that held it to the cliff. He
jumped in the elevator and shouted a command, “Maintenance yard!”
Nothing happened.
“Maintenance yard! Emergency descent,” he shouted again.
He braced himself as the wind beat against
the elevator. But it didn’t
activate. He took out a small
pocketknife and pried open the control box, then hotwired the device. The
elevator jerked violently then headed down.
It was a long way to the crater floor and it seemed to be taking
forever. He was running out of time.
Below, another building was torn
apart and a large chunk of wood flew up and hit the elevator, knocking it off
its rail and nearly decapitating Jake.
He tried the wires again. The
elevator moved a bit, then there was a loud screeching and it jammed. He jumped up and down, trying to break it
free.
No good.
Then he climbed out of the elevator
and started to shimmy down the framework. Struggling against the wind and blowing
debris, he inched downward. Still far above the crater, he suddenly lost his
footing and dangled precariously by one hand.
It took all his strength to grab hold and continue the descent.
Hand over hand he made his way
slowly down the metal framework; all the while the wind threatened to rip him
away to certain death on the rocks below. His muscles ached and he struggled to
breathe as he desperately clutched at each handhold. He didn’t dare take the
time to look up at the gaping hole in the atmospheric shield; there was no time to contemplate what might
happen. He knew what would happen: he would die. At least it would be quick as
he would freeze solid when the air finally ran out and the vacuum of space
rushed in.
But
not today, he
thought when he finally reached the crater floor.
Jake crashed through a door to a
maintenance building. The wind was at
hurricane force and he could barely see where he was going. He found the
maintenance superintendent’s office door and opened it and almost fell into a
crater from a small meteorite strike.
The office no longer existed. There
was only a gaping hole where it had once been.
He regained his balance and looked
across the hole where he saw a two-man shuttle teetering on the crater’s edge.
A man’s mangled body lay beside it.
Something crashed behind him; he
looked over his shoulder and saw that what was left of the building was beginning
to collapse.
There was only one direction he could
go—out the door.
He looked around the room and spotted
a tool locker. Opening it, he tossed
several heavy wrenches and hammers aside until he found what he was looking
for.
Jake stepped into the doorway with
a device that was essentially a rifle with a grappling hook in the muzzle and a
spool of rope beneath it. He aimed across the crater and fired. The hook arched
out, trailing the rope behind, and draped over a rock on the opposite side of
the crater. Jake pulled in the rope slack and the hook snagged on the rock. He
quickly tied the end of the rope to heavy file cabinet, slipped on his gloves
and leaped out the door.
No sooner had he cleared the door and
the rest of the building began to disintegrate. As he slid across the deep
crater that was filled with jagged metal and sparking power lines the building
teetered on the edge.
Jake crashed landed near the
shuttle just as the building crumbled into the crater. He scrambled over to the shuttle, quickly
checked the body for any sign of life.
Nothing.
He jumped into the shuttle and began
powering it up. From his vantage point, he could see miles across the huge
impact crater that made up the valley floor. Something strange was
happening. It was as if an invisible
wall was moving across the crater as the vacuum of space began to reclaim the
asteroid, sucking into space every hint of air and every structure that had
been built over the years.
The canopy closed on the shuttle. Jake
hit a series of buttons and the shuttle began to lift off. He pulled on the controls and it headed
straight up toward Jupiter. He could see the wall of destruction racing toward
at him as he encouraged every ounce of speed he could muster from the craft.
The controller in the spaceship
watched his instruments. He could
clearly see the tiny shuttlecraft coming straight up and the disintegrating
atmosphere catching up to it. It was an
evenly matched race and not a sure bet that Jake would escape.
Several other people were watching
over the controller’s shoulders. Their
eager faces showed the strain as they tried to help Jake make it through sheer
willpower.
“Come on, Jake. You can do it,” said the controller.
Jake was pressed against the seat
and the craft vibrated violently. He clutch
the controls desperately. “Come on baby,” he urged the craft as if it were a
living thing. “You can do it. Get us out of here.”
The craft was racing straight up
toward what little remained of the atmospheric force field. The disintegration
and havoc of the asteroid that was once home and workplace for hundreds of
miners was about to overtake the craft just as it broke free of the remnants of
the artificial atmosphere and into the silent vacuum of space.
Wild cheering and back slapping
erupted in the mining spaceship’s control room. The weary flight controller
watched gratefully as the shuttlecraft floated toward the ship.
Below the shuttlecraft the asteroid
drifted away as the huge structures first exploded in flames that were quickly
snuffed out by the vacuum of space.
Jake sat motionless in the pilot’s
seat, looking up at the mining spaceship as it grew and filled the entire
canopy, blocking out Jupiter, the Asteroid Belt and the vastness of the Milky
Way.
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