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Chapter 21

Meeting

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The Sagan settled heavily on its wide landing pads outside the International NanoLabs hangars at Houston’s Hobby Spaceport. A hatch opened, and stairs unfolded as it lowered hydraulically to the ground.

Oscar Jessup hurried down the stairs and waited at the bottom. He discretely checked the area for any threats then nodded slightly to someone at the top of the stairs.

Kei emerged from the Space Shuttle and lowered her sunglasses from their position atop her head. They darkened the brilliant Texas sunshine. She paused to take a deep breath of air and looked up at the sky.

Kei wore a conservative business suit and carried a small leather valise.
John appeared behind her. He took her by the elbow, bent over and whispered something in her ear. She smiled and nodded then descended to the ground where a black limousine waited for them.

Oscar opened a door and stepped into the limo behind them.

“Johnson Space Center please,” said John.

The robotic limousine drove over the ramp and through a security gate then headed toward I-45 and the Space Center.

“Something tells me the threat is not against Cosmos but Kei,” said John speaking to his Security Chief.

“I wish you'd have let me bring more men,” said Oscar.

“I know, but we’ll have to manage on our own.” John patted the bulge where Oscar had fastened a shoulder holster complete with a Barrette 45 beneath his smart Captain’s Uniform.

“We’ll be fine,” said Kei. She was a little irritated by John’s over-protectiveness of her.

Previously a conference room was arranged for meetings to accommodate the needs of the AI representatives.

The Directors representing the United States, Canada, European Union and the South American Union would all be there in person. Those from the Union of African Nations, China, Russia, India, and Japan would all be remotely attending. Only Titan, Fermi and Sequoia would be participating for the AI’s. A representative from INL was there to address the issues with the subcontractors they hired for the construction of the starship.

Captain Finley and Kei arrived ten minutes before the scheduled meeting and stood outside visiting with the Canadian Director until they were called to begin.

Source

Security personnel at the door stopped Oscar.

"Sir, you are not on the list of attendees I can’t let you enter," said a uniformed guard.

Kei walked over and spoke to the young guard. “Young man,” she said smiling at him, “our meeting is about to begin, and you are preventing my technical advisor entrance. Why is that?”

“He’s not on my list Ma’am,” said the young guard.

“Am I on your list.”

“Yes, Ma’am, you are, ‘Representatives from Starship Cosmos.’ But ma’am, I was told only you, and the Captain were attending.”

“That is wrong,” she said. “My technical adviser, also, is a representative of the starship. Come on Oscar.” She took his arm and led him into the meeting room.

Titan brought the meeting to order. “We have been requested by Captain Finley to have this special meeting of the Directors of the Cosmos Project to discuss some issues that have come to our attention concerning the contractors for the project. Captain, I see you’ve brought your Security Chief along, for those who don’t know him, please meet Colonel Oscar Jessup, Security Chief for the starship.”

Oscar stood and gave a slight bow before returning to his seat.

Kei took a thumb drive from her valise and plugged it into a slot on the edge of the table. She nodded at John, and he stood.

“Directors,” he said addressing the people and holographic projections of remote Directors and the AI avatars. “Last week we discovered, while attempting to tow the starship into a higher orbit, some debris that prevented us from closing a device called a cleat.”

He picked up a remote Kei had placed before him and pressed a button. The view screen flickered, and a photo of the piece of scrap hydraulic line appeared.

“A crewman from Space Dock One recovered this item from the cleat bay. It was jamming the plates and preventing the doors from closing. Previously we had an issue with a ground wire not being attached during testing of a fusion generator. After this incident, I initiated a complete inspection of the ship by my engineering staff, and this is what we found.”
He advanced the slideshow a frame and an image of all the debris they collected appeared.

The representative for INL raised his hand. “Captain, I do apologize for this, and I will certainly have the ship towed back to the Space Dock and these discrepancies corrected, at our expense of course.”

He glanced around at the disapproving looks from many of the Directors.
Captain Finley paused a moment. “That won’t be necessary sir. My people have already taken care of the problem, thank you.”

“Well, anything we can do we will.”

“It’s no longer a problem sir, but thank you,” said the Captain.

When the murmurs died down the Captain continued with his summary.
“During the inspection, we found several of these.” He advanced the slideshow to an image of the original package Jimmy found.

“A package,” asked Titan?

“Not just a package,” said the Captain. He advanced the slide, and the bomb inside was revealed.

“This is four bricks of military grade C4 hooked to four blasting caps rigged to this quantum communications device.” He took a communicator from his pocket.

“As you all know a Quantum communicator can be linked to one other communicator or several, depending on the number of entangled pairs associated with it. It is untraceable. This device links to only one.”

“How many of these devices did you find, Captain,” asked Titan?
“There was a total of…,”

“This one, was enough to destroy the entire ship and crew!” blurted Oscar. He caught the Captain’s eye and gave a slight shake of his head.

“Yes, quite enough explosive to do the job,” said the Captain.

Kei was secretly monitoring satellite information through her wifi connection to the supercomputer in Japan. “John,” Kei whispered, “I've detected the signature of a rocket launch in northern China.”

Source

He bent down and had Oscar lean in. “Should we be concerned,” he asked?

“I have it too,” said Sequoia who overheard their conversation and tapped her temple.

John stood up and continued. “If we can trace those responsible…” John shook the communicator for emphasis and depressed the call button by accident.

“Tweede deetle.”
“Tweede deetle.”

All eyes turned toward the United States Director. The color left his face.
John took another communicator from his pocket and pushed the call button.

“Tweede deetle.”
“Tweede deetle.”
T
his time the sound came from the projection of the Russian Director.
The USA Director stood up and stared around the room. “He threatened my family, I only agreed…”

The left side of the man’s head exploded. Pieces of skull and brains splattered over the INL representative and the European Union Director.

The Russian Director’s projection stood up, and he was about to scream when his head exploded.

“That rocket is capable of carrying a nuclear warhead!” shouted Sequoia. “Titan you control the area where this launch occurred, explain.”

Titan grinned at Sequoia’s avatar and innocently said, “I could only disable the warheads we knew about this one must have escaped the network.”

John grabbed Kei and pushed her behind him. Oscar drew his weapon and began backing them toward the door keeping himself between them and the crowd.

Chaos erupted in the room. They gained the lobby and ran for the exit.
Outside they looked frantically for the limo.

A NASA engineer was pulling into the unsecured parking lot, and they ran toward him.

“We need your car now!” said Oscar.

“Not hardly…,” began the man. He handed the keys to Oscar when the barrel of a gun in his nose caused his eyes to cross.

John pushed Kei into the passenger side and slid into the driver's seat. Oscar tossed the keys to him and jumped in the back. The electric vehicle sped out of the lot and onto I-45. Kei reached under the dash and felt around, she yanked a component out and tossed it out the window. John looked over at her, puzzled.

“Emiko!” she said.

“Right! Smart girl!” said John.

John weaved in and out of traffic along the interstate.
“John! That rocket launched from China is a confirmed ICBM! Its trajectory will put it into the same orbit as Cosmos!”

John tapped his temple. “Carter! Can you move the ship?”

Carter was temporarily stunned.

“Uh, yes sir, but it will take us a while to get the Fusion Thrusters online.”

The color drained from John’s face. “Carter, there is a missile headed your way, I don’t know if there is a nuclear warhead on it, but you are in danger.”

Carter paused a few minutes. “Okay, Captain,” he said calmly.

John heard him speaking to the bridge crew.

“We have tracking on that rocket now, Captain, permission to use our weapon systems?”

“Yes, Carter! Anything to save the ship.”

Carter jumped from the Captain's chair and entering his security code activated the weapons command center at the engineering station.

“Jimmy, are you getting this?”

“Yes, boss, the rail guns are out of line with the target, we have to reposition the ship, but the port lasers are available.”

“Get them online!”

Source

Jimmy ran across the room and hit the toggle switches sending an electrical current to the weapon’s console on the bridge.

“Charging port lasers,” said Carter.

Deep in the interior of the ship a young crewman passing the laser banks in the central core heard the high pitched whine of a large capacitor storing the electrical charge fed to it.

“Port laser charged and ready,” said Jimmy.

From her post at the science station, Lydia sat silent and ashen.

“Lydia,” Carter said calmly, “ give me tracking on the view screen please, overlay targeting with continuous updates please.”

Lydia snapped out of her fear-induced trance. “Yes, sir,” she said and quickly had the information displayed.

The view screen split horizontally and showed a speck with a dotted green line from it to a small image of the starship on the top half. The dot moved progressively closer to the ship.

“Projectile impact in four minutes thirty-two seconds,” said an animated voice over the bridge intercom.

The bottom portion of the view screen split vertically and on the left side was a green circle with a crosshair inside. Within this circle, the ship’s computer displayed the distant point of light that was the missile coming toward the starship. The right screen was an actual view of the projectile Lydia scanned with one of her telescopes.

“Jimmy, reroute all available power to that laser bank, we may need to fire continuously.”

The ship's lights dimmed then shut down, replaced by emergency powered lighting as Jimmy diverted all electrical power to the lasers.

“Sound general quarters,” said Carter.

An alarm went throughout the ship. All hands dropped what they were doing and began to make their way toward the nearest escape pods.

“What’s going on,” asked Sophia as she passed Padma in the corridor?

“Must be another drill.”

Sophia stopped to help Padma struggle into her survival vest.
They walked calmly together toward the escape pod.

“Well, they sure made this one realistic, all the power shut down in Astronomy, I'm glad I have autosave on my system. I was working on something important.”

On the bridge, Carter focused on the lower right of his view screen until the green circle turned red and began to flash.

“Target acquired,” said an automated voice.

“Jimmy, fire when ready,” he said over the intercom.

On the right screen, a powerful beam of focused light lit up the metallic structure of the missile. Seconds went by until the rocket, weakened by the intense laser, broke into hundreds of pieces.

“Target destroyed,” said the ship’s computer.

A small explosion followed the break up when the fuel and oxidizer, released from their tanks, mixed in the vacuum of space. The warhead tumbled outward and without a motor to direct it to its target fell harmlessly back to burn up in the atmosphere.

“Lydia track that debris, I don’t want space junk to damage our hull. Jimmy keep that laser charged, get our fusion reactors up and running I want this ship ready to move if another threat comes our way.”

John and Kei were monitoring these events through the open communications connection, and both let out a sigh of relief.

“Oh, shit!” said John.

Oscar and Kei followed his gaze as they sped into the INL compound at Hobby Spaceport. On the other side of the chain link fence, a security detail raced across the ramp toward the Sagan, sitting in front of the INL Hangar.

John approached the security gate and increased his speed. The windscreen cracked when the top rail bounced across it and over the vehicle onto the road behind them. They raced the security team across the ramp and stopped beside the shuttle.

Oscar leaped from the rear seat and drew his weapon. He covered John and Kei as they raced up the stairs and into the spacecraft. Automatic weapons fire followed him into the compartment as he dove in behind them and slapped the hydraulic lift device to close the hatch.

“Get us out of here Sagan!” yelled the Captain.

Sagan’s fusion drive came to life, and he lifted above the ramp. “Sir, I am being denied permission to taxi.”

“Damn it!” said John. He rushed into the cockpit and jumped into the pilot seat. He reached overhead and toggled three switches, protected by red half-moon shaped guards. The placarded switches read ‘Manual Override.’ He slipped on a headset.

Punching 121.5 on the communications radio he dialed 7700 into his transponder. “Mayday, mayday, mayday, this is Space Shuttle Sagan at the INL hangar we are declaring an emergency and will be making an immediate departure from this location, please advise any local traffic.”

“Negative Sagan you are not cleared for takeoff, I say again, you are not cleared for takeoff!” said the Hobby Controller.

“Maybe so, but we’re about to launch anyway,” said John.

The controllers scrambled to divert incoming traffic and halt ground operations.

John vectored the thrusters on the shuttle for vertical take off and gave a quick bump to the throttles to warn the gathering security detail what was about to happen. He saw the swat team retreat to their vehicles and when he knew they were safe, advanced the throttles to lift the massive craft off the pavement. The car they arrived in tumbled across the ramp and slammed into the side of the building.

“MY WORD!” said Melanie. She rushed from her office to see what the commotion was.

The huge window in the observation room shattered and fell in thousands of small pieces as the Sagan lifted above the building and into an open area where John pointed it skyward and blasted into space.

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Thanks for reading Chapter Twenty One
in my first attempt at
Science Fiction
Read Chapter One here

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