The Hades Connection

by Gabriel S. Timar

Chapter 12

part 2 of 2

I was nervous when I arrived back at the bridge where Commander Nelson-Sired ruled with a calm air of competence over the luminous dials and indicators. Although he gave me an inquiring smile, he kept his mouth shut. He must have known about my or von Vardy’s friendship with Miss Forrest like the rest of the crew and was surprised that I had come back so fast. By virtue of his status, the Commander allowed himself an understanding little smile.

Lieutenant Scranton was sitting at the ship’s main computer working feverishly. He looked up: “You’re just in time, sir, I’m ready to report.”

I slumped into the comfortable padded chair of the captain and glanced at the control panel. As expected, everything was in order. I straightened out and buckled up the safety belts.

“Well, Mr. Scranton?” I intoned.

“Sir,” he started, “I’ve prepared a navigation diskette for the shuttle craft. Sergei... pardon me, Lieutenant Fedorov should reach the UFO in ten minutes. He should take an explorer team with him, consisting of three ratings, and two petty officers, all EVA qualified of course. He should personally defuse the weapon.

“I set up a five-camera con link to maintain continuous video and audio contact with the away team. I assigned to the shuttle the call sign ‘Baby’; Nimrod would reply as ‘Godfather’. I hope this will meet your approval.”

“It does, Mr. Scranton, it does,” I replied. “How soon can Fedorov leave?”

“As soon as you give the order and I give him his navigation diskette, sir,” he replied. “The team is in the shuttle craft now, ready to blast off.”

“Well done, Scranton; get them going as soon as possible,” I barked.

“Aye, aye, sir,” Scranton said and disappeared without a word.

He returned in a couple of minutes and reported that the shuttlecraft was ready. I found the launch process controller on my command console and turned the handle.

Fast-moving ships launch shuttles or torpedoes in a complicated manner. The fleet’s slang for the process was “virgin birth.”

The projectile was placed on the ship’s outer shell but was still covered by the shield of the mother ship. At this point, the shield generator of the shuttle or torpedo must start, with its output adjusted to match the strength of the mother ship’s shield.

Next, a shield-melt process on the mother ship’s force field should begin, permitting the shuttle to slide through the hole. At this point, its own shield covers the shuttle; the mother ship snaps its main shield shut; and the shuttle or the torpedo is on its own.

Usually the shuttle falls behind a little, but its powerful rams generate enough thrust to regain its relative position.

“Shuttle craft launched, sir,” Scranton reported.

“Thank you, Mr. Scranton,” I replied. “Kindly instruct the pen ray crew to give me triple saturation readings on the UFO.”

I wanted to see what was the output of its zero-inertia drive. If it were large enough to carry the shuttle, I could get to Earth Two in a matter of seconds, and I’d have a few extra months to negotiate with the terrestrial leaders.

“Triple saturation readings are complete, sir,” Scranton reported with a broad grin.

“Thank you,” I said absently and begun to study the interior of the UFO. Scranton’s voice shook me out of my thoughts.

“Mr. Fedorov reports clamping on to the UFO, Captain.”

I nodded and turned to the con link screens.

“Baby calling Godfather,” came Fedorov’s cheerful voice through the ether. “Do you read me? Over.”

“I read you five by five, Baby, over.” Scranton replied and looked at me. I just nodded.

“This is going to be a very simple job,” Fedorov said. “I cannot find any sign of shielding. We are clamped on the UFO and covering it with the shield of the shuttle. Over.”

“This missile must have the new slipstream shielding,” I murmured, then turned to Scranton and Nelson-Sired: “It is a new device, but it works on ships without any external appendages. Let him continue.”

“Okay, Baby, we got it,” said Scranton. “Carry on.”

“Roger,” Fedorov said. “I can see no tamper proofing anywhere. I am going to remove the detonator, clamp the mixing valves closed and detach the warhead. We could tow it back to the Nimrod and fit it with a delivery and guidance system. It would be nice to have a huge nuke like this on hand. Over.”

“Negative, Baby, negative,” I interrupted. “Just clamp the valves. Then the drive of the warhead delivery rocket and the UFO’s main engine will be dead. Next, remove the detonator. Do not, I repeat, do not detach the warhead from the carrier vessel, over.”

“Roger,” Fedorov said. “I just clamped the valves, and I am in the process of removing the detonator. I will not detach the nose cone. Over.”

“He is fast,” I remarked.

“He is,” said Nelson-Sired, “especially in mixed company. Surprisingly, most of the time he knows what he’s doing.”

We were watching the con link screens and could see the silver-clad figures of Fedorov with his petty officer working on the UFO. Fedorov was sitting on the slim nose cone as a bareback rider working with practiced efficient moves.

The petty officer was measuring something on the body of the UFO. I checked my primary sensor screen; it became obvious that he was trying to locate the rocket’s guidance system.

Suddenly Fedorov held up his hand, shaking some kind of a gadget in it. His voice came through our P.A. system clearly as a bell: “Pan, pan, pan, this is Baby. I have good news and bad news for you. The good news is that I removed the detonator. The bad news is that it was set to explode in twenty-five minutes. Over.”

“Son of a bitch,” said Nelson-Sired, “we just got to it in time.”

My mind shifted in high gear. This meant that the warhead was to go off soon. If I were the designer of the rocket, I would make sure that the warhead’s delivery system had a backup. This could be an extra controller added to the UFO’s main engine, commanding the ship to ram us after the nuke failed to take us out.

Following the explosion, the rocket controller would search for our planetograph signals and reactivate the neutron drive. If she found the echoes of our navigational aids, the rocket would come after the Nimrod and try to ram it. I recognized the device easily.

The designers had hidden the miniaturized, compact drive controller unit by mounting it under the warhead. However, its solid fuel reserve was very small. It had no more than twenty minutes of operating reserve left. Obviously, this was the second power source, which moved the ship in and out in response to our planetograph signal waves following the order to attack.

I thought we could not evade the ship for more than ten minutes even if Nelson-Sired were a magician. Although Fedorov had incapacitated the warhead and the rocket’s main engine, we were not out of the woods. The rocket could still ram the Nimrod.

I had no illusions about a head-on collision with another vessel traveling faster than many times the speed of light. Our shields were strong, but not that strong. The impact would pulverize the Nimrod.

If by some miracle we could evade the warhead and the UFO’s secondary neutron drive, as the designer I would have made sure that an inertia drive would kick in as the second backup. To catch up with anybody using a conventional gravac or neutron drive, it would take no more than one millionth of a nanosecond, practically zero time.

Although a collision with an object having no inertia would have no impact, the UFO would lodge in the center of gravity of the Nimrod, in the middle of our engine room. The damage would be extensive, perhaps destroying us completely. I was sure we had no more than fifteen to twenty minutes to shut off all the UFO’s last remaining drives.

I looked at the primary sensor sketch again pressing the communicator button, and I intoned: “Godfather calling Baby. Cut through to the guidance system at coordinates F45 and disconnect the control generator. It is a small, cube-shaped item, size eighty millimeters; it looks like a small, conventional transformer. There are three connecting wires; you can cut them in any order. Then go to F18 and disconnect the inertia block. You have less than fifteen minutes to do both. Get moving, over.”

“Roger,” came Fedorov’s reply.

I saw him signaling the petty officer and moving as fast as his cumbersome space suit permitted on the slim rocket.

“What the hell are the neutron drive and the inertia block?” Nelson-Sired asked.

I had to come up with a quick and plausible lie since I knew that the commander was an engineer second to none.

“We had a few top-secret research projects; the zero-inertia drive was one of them,” I said. “It is rather simple, but we did not have enough energy to build even a scaled-down prototype. The neutron drive is a new miniaturized power source; it uses solid rocket fuel. We did not have the resources to manufacture it either. This is why we are stuck with these old-fashioned gravac rams.”

Stu looked at me and calmly stated: “If I understand you correctly, the UFO must be extraterrestrial in origin.”

I nodded silently.

“Obviously, someone doesn’t want us to reach Earth Two,” he concluded.

I nodded again and remarked: “I believe this rocket was their last attempt. We are now too far from any known civilization for our progress to be monitored. If we don’t arrive at Earth Two, they will assume that their bomb has blown us into smithereens.”

“Have you any idea who is trying to do away with us and why?” Stu insisted.

“If I knew, I’d tell you,” I replied. “I’m just a lowly captain, not privy to all the state secrets. But The High Command alerted me to the possibility of outside intervention.”

Fedorov’s voice interrupted our discourses on the whys and wherefores of the extraterrestrial involvement.

“Baby calling Godfather, we have a problem. With the available equipment, it will take more than an hour to cut through the rocket’s hull. Please advise, over.”

I must have looked completely lost, however Stu came to the rescue: “May I answer that?” he asked.

I just nodded silently.

“Okay, Baby,” he said, “Increase the aperture of your laser cutter by shorting terminals seven and four. Over.”

“Done,” Fedorov stated, ignoring the communication protocol. “It is not much better,” he added.

“Short eight and two,” ordered Nelson-Sired, “but do not, I repeat do not operate the cutter longer than five seconds. Take a three-second break before restarting it. Over.”

There was a few seconds of tense silence.

“Atta boy,” shouted Fedorov triumphantly. “I’ll be through in no time flat. Over.”

I looked at Stu: “I don’t know what ‘no time flat’ means.”

“I’ve no idea either.” He smiled. “But let’s hope it’s fast enough.”

We watched intensely with eyes glued to the con link screen. My whole being was pulsating, willing Fedorov to succeed. As nervous tension is contagious, even the imperturbable Nelson-Sired appeared worried as much as a proper Englishman may betray emotion.

Fedorov was working the laser cutter as fast as he could.

He finished cutting, looked inside the rocket, and gave us the thumbs-up signal. Like synchronized swimmers, Stu and I checked our watches. We were okay; we had time to spare.

“Baby calling Godfather,” he intoned. “It is very easy to cut off the gadget. There is a switch between the gadget and the other thing, which you called neutron engine. I can throw the switch off anytime. Over.”

“Stand by,” snapped Stu. “What’s next?” he queried.

“Leave the switch on, Mr. Fedorov,” I said. “Cut through to the inertia drive control block just under the neutron drive. There is a yellow cube of daphnium crystal about the size of my fist embedded in the iridium alloy block. Remove it and hold on to it.”

“Roger,” came the reply.

I was thinking about the most economical way of bringing the rocket back to one of our cargo bays. Strangely, my newly acquired dual personality allowed me access to the knowledge of Captain von Vardy, thus I knew exactly what to do.

Stu’s voice disrupted my preoccupation with the method of bringing back Fedorov and the Baby.

“Fedorov finished the job,” Stu said. “He’s disconnected the inertia block and he has the daphnium crystal. How do we recover him?”

“As we want him to bring in the UFO, he should keep it clamped to the shuttle,” I explained. “Then switch off the UFO’s neutron drive. At this point, the two units become one ship. Fedorov should use the shuttle’s navigation program coming back. We have to recalculate the power settings and the firing intervals due to the increased mass. As we don’t want to lose him, we must go into deceleration mode. This way Fedorov can simply drive the shuttle back to the Nimrod.”

“I’ll get on with calculations,” Nelson-Sired replied. “It can be done.”

“Scranton,” I grunted, “convey my orders to Mr. Fedorov.”

“Aye, aye, sir,” came the prompt reply.

“We can bring the shuttle close,” Stu remarked. “How do we haul him in from there? There is no shuttle recovery routine established for a ship traveling full speed.”

I tried to think, but there was no need: my training took over.

“Then we’ll have to invent one,” I smiled. “Tell Fedorov to switch on the neutron drive for a few seconds to catch up with us and set the shuttle’s rams at maximum. Give him a course to intersect our path in, say ten to fifteen minutes. Then we put the Nimrod on manual control, and you can match the speed of the shuttle. Can you do it?”

“No sweat,” replied Stu with a smile. “It will be routine.”

“When the shuttle touches our shield, just lock on a tractor beam, have him cut the engines and have the virgin birth reversed,” I explained. “This way we won’t lose him. Is it clear?”

“I got it,” replied Nelson-Sired. “We can manage it without you.”

He was an understanding person. I undid the safety belts and said: “Okay, Stu, when you have the UFO, put it in the shuttle bay and call me. You have the con.”

“Aye, aye, sir,” he replied with a twinkle in his eyes. “May I assume I’ll find you in your quarters?”

“Yes,” I replied with a straight face, “although I may have a brief conference with Miss Forrest.”

To be continued...