Chapter 37 – Tell Tell Signs
T-Minus eight hours to zero hour…
Aboard the Fortune Miner, Charlie had finally managed to close his eyes to get some sleep; a process aided by two straight shots of Scotch and a musical compilation of Mozart's Late Symphonies playing in the background. He had found good rest harder to find these days as the stress of leading this mission weighed on his conscious along with the lack of any response from Earth. He woke suddenly with a jerk.
He lay still for a moment and listened to the music. Was it his imagination? Then it came again, several knocks at the door drummed through the rhythm of Mozart's Symphony #32. Charlie reached over and turned down the volume and said, "Enter."
The door opened and a crewman cautiously stepped into the room. "Sir? Mr. Porter, are you awake?"
Charlie grumbled, "Barely. What can I do for you?"
"Captain's been trying to raise you on your link for the past half hour."
Charlie glanced over at the comms panel next to his bed and noticed it was muted. "Sorry about that. I'll take care of it."
The crewman replied, "Aye sir," as he stepped back out of the room and the door closed.
Charlie switched on the comms and called Thad. Thad answered quickly, "Hey, it's about time you answered."
"Yeah, I forgot I had muted the comms link earlier when I was watching a movie. What's happening?"
Thad looked off screen again as he said, "You sure?" A voice off screen replied, "Yes sir, but we'll keep trying to reconnect." Thad nodded and returned his attention to Charlie. "We may have a problem or it may just be a comms disruption. We've lost contact with New Hope."
Charlie didn't answer at first; he just stared at the screen as if he were frozen. A few seconds later he muttered, "You sure it's not just a solar storm or some other of stellar disruption?"
Thad replied, "We're not sure yet. We just noticed it about an hour ago. Our second and third attempts to ping them also failed. That's when I started looking for you. I've got our people running a full diagnostic on the superluminal equipment, but that'll take a while. Plus, we're networked with Dark Miner and the Black Jack. I doubt all three systems failed at once."
Charlie nodded, "Yeah, probably not but it doesn't hurt to check the box."
Charlie just stared at Thad as he contemplated the problem. Thad said, "I think it's just a fluke. There's no indication of jamming or signal manipulation. Also there were no signs of an external threat before we lost contact."
Charlie interjected, "That may be so, but we're not paid to make assumptions. I want you to begin powering up the ships engines just in case."
Thad replied, "I can do that, but it'll shut down the mining operations and may cause some tension among the crew. After all, why power up the engines for no reason?"
Charlie's face looked puzzled as he considered Thad's argument. "I see your point. Let's power them up slowly. Bring them up to fifty percent. That way we can continue mining at a diminished rate and it'll keep the crew busy. If anyone asks, just say it's for maintenance. That way, if something is wrong, we wont be caught completely helpless on the ground. Also, pass it along to Dark Miner and Black Jack to do the same."
"You certain about this? Seems a little over the top for a simple comms disruption."
Charlie reiterated, "Just do it, Thad. I'm going back to sleep for a while. See ya in a few hours." Thad nodded and the screen when dark.
The Comms officer said, "I've opened a channel to Dark Miner and Black Jack, sir."
Thad said, "Belay that order."
The officer looked up with confusion on his face. "Sir?"
"I said belay that order, mister. I feel Mr. Porter's need for rest has made him a little jumpy tonight. I think he'll see things differently after he gets some decent sleep and I don't see any reason to cause alarm on the other ships right now. Go ahead and slowly power up our engines to fifty percent as ordered and continue to try to reestablish our connection with New Hope. If we still haven't reestablished the connection by the time Mr. Porter wakes up, we'll advise the other ships of the situation. Personally, I think we'll reconnect between now and then and this will all have been for naught."
The Comms officer nodded, "Aye sir."
Earth. U.N. Space Command, Ottawa, Canada…
General Marcus Hall was seated in his office casually reviewing the latest repair updates from Vigilance. He took comfort in the fact that her hull integrity had been fully restored, although it didn't look like either of the coil cannon batteries would be operational before they had to engage the Black Jack. He knew in the back of his mind, even with the rather unorthodox procedure to regain Commander Rolfe's experience they were at best, an even match for Black Jack, maybe not even that in her current condition.
Suddenly his train of thought was broken by an urgent knock at his office door. Marcus looked up and saw one of his young Lieutenants at the glass door, but what got his attention was the course change warning on the wall monitors behind the Lieutenant in the operations center. He put the report down and quickly went to the door to answer it.
Lt. Harris said, "General we have a problem you need to see out here."
Marcus glanced over the large monitors that were layered across the operation center's walls. "I see it, Lieutenant."
They both walked out to the command platform that looked over the entire center. General Hall climbed up to the platform. A Major along his path handed him a holo pad with data displayed and stated, "Sir, Kepler Station reports they've detected a course change for ISV Endurance, a.k.a. New Hope. Apparently she's assumed her new course heading ahead of schedule. So far, the Ptolemy Platform in Neptune orbit and Sagan Superluminal Observatory on Mars have confirmed Kepler's observations. It's only a matter of time before the change goes public, sir." General Hall nodded "The course is right, it's the timing that's early." He glanced up at the countdown clock, it read T-minus 7 hour, 39 minutes, 29 seconds and counting.
The Major asked, "What do we do now?"
General Hall turned to look at him with a serious glare, "There's nothing we can do. It's happened already and anyone watching can see it plain as day." He turned to Lt. Harris. "Get me the Brass Hat at the Pentagon."
"Right away sir" Lt. Harris hurriedly began to make calls at his station. General Hall said, "Major, recall everyone. Looks like our long night is going to start early."
The Major nodded as Lt. Harris said, "General, I have the Brass Hat for you."
General Hall took the phone receiver and said, "This is General Marcus Hall. Looks like Endurance made her move early for some unknown reason. We need to initiate an immediate system-wide comms blackout." There was as short pause as he listened. He replied, "For how long?" Marcus paused for a moment and said, "twelve hours to be safe. By then it'll be over and Ms. Langston's press conference should be underway in Huntsville. Oh and one more thing, for the blackout to be believable it must include everyone, no exceptions. Understood?" Marcus patiently listened and finally said, "Good, General Neeck will be my next call." Marcus listened for a moment longer and said, "Thank you General," and handed the phone back to the Lieutenant.
General Hall turned back to the Major. Just as he started to speak, over the operations center audio everyone heard, "Greetings, Earth Control. I am CALiE, the Central Artificial Intelligence assigned to operate ISV Noble Star. It's good to be back."
Marcus immediately observed a civilian engineer drop his coffee in his lap when he heard the words "Noble Star." He looked around and saw the disbelief on everyone's faces. Even the Major looked confused at what he'd just heard. Marcus chuckled as he commented, "Well, I guess that cats out of the bag."
General Hall said, "Lt. Harris, get General Neeck on the line. Priority one." The Lieutenant didn't answer at first. With a stern tone in his voice General Hall stated, "Son, did you hear me?"
Lt. Harris suddenly turned to look at Marcus. "Yes, sir. Sorry, sir. I'm on it right now."
General Hall turned around and switched on a holo console and accessed the HQ security system. He inserted several codes with biometric authentication.
A few seconds later, a voice came over the center's intercom, "Attention. Attention. A security lockdown has been initiated. Please remain calm." The message repeated itself.
Marcus turned to walk back to his office. He causally said, "Major, put General Neeck through to my office as soon as you get him on the line."
With a worried tone in his voice, the Major said, "Of course sir."
T-minus 1 hour, 3 minutes to zero hour…
Aboard the Black Jack, Captain Ute Dias relaxed in her command chair as she sipped a cup of hot tea and looked over the prior night's logs. As she went line by line, she started to notice something missing. Finally, she said, "Comms, I don't see any mention of link pings with New Hope for about the last seven hours in the duty log."
The Communications officer spun around in her chair and replied, "I was just going over my logs a second time because I noticed that too. Last mention of it in my logs was about seven and a half hours ago. Although my log does mention that Fortune Miner started running a full-scale diagnostic on their superluminal equipment. At least, that's what Fortune Miner reported when they checked in about four hours ago."
Ute nodded.
Ute activated ship-to-ship comms with the Fortune Miner from her command chair. An image of the Comms Officer on Fortune Miner appeared on the holo screen in front of her. She demanded, "Get me Porter."
"I'm sorry, ma'am, he's off shift. Would you like to talk to the Captain?"
She nodded. "Sure, put Thaddeus on."
A few seconds later Thad came into view, "Yes Ute, what can I do for you?"
"What's the deal with New Hope? We've noticed a discrepancy in the logs."
"Yes, Conrad asked about it also and I advised we'd temporarily lost contact. We expect to pick them back up anytime now. It's probably just a solar storm."
Ute snapped back, "We've detected no solar storms or otherwise up here."
"Well Ute, if your people are so damned good, maybe you can help us reestablish the connection with New Hope."
Ute sat back in her chair, "It's been over seven hours Thad, and how much longer do you want to try?"
Thad arrogantly replied, "What else could it be? We've detected no external manipulation, jamming, or threats prior to loss of contact. Life goes on, as boring as it may be; it goes on."
Ute growled, "Whatever." She cut the channel off and the holo screen went blank. "Just because he's got Charlie wrapped around his damned finger, he thinks he's the king of the Pandora. Well it'll be a cold day in Hell if he thinks I'm going to sit here and take his word for it like some sort of submissive bitch. Not happening!"
She stood up and walked over to the sensor station. "Sensor techs, I want an in-depth scan done on all ingress and egress routes to this system. If you don't find anything, start looking off the beacons. I'd say twenty percent should be far enough."
One of the Sensor specialists commented, "twenty percent. Seriously?"
Ute replied with a hint of sarcasm in her tone, "At least you won't be bored. Now, get on with it."
She walked over to Conrad's position and did a quick run through his station logs. They read just as Thad had said. She walked back to her chair, her mind running scenarios through her head and she found herself pacing the deck. About ten minutes later, one of the sensor techs exclaimed, "Well, I'll be damned. Would you look at that?"
Ute walked over to see two objects apparently traveling at high speed running parallel to one another on the same course.
The sensor specialist looked up at Ute and said, "Ma'am, I'd bet real money those aren't natural objects. They're both off the beacon by eighteen percent and on a direct course for Pandora."
Ute nodded as she recalled it was the same trick they'd used with New Hope. She punched a few buttons on the console and an estimated arrival time appeared. They were a little over two days away. Ute put her hands on her hips and paused to consider her next move. As she considered the situation some other data on the sensor screens caught her eye, "What's that over there?"
She walked over and checked some more data. It showed Fortune Miner's engines were powering up. She said aloud, "Now, if there's nothing going on, why has Fortune Miner started to power up her engines?" No one answered.
Ute spun on one heel and strolled back to her command chair and sat down. "Recall all our planetside personnel. Next shift comes on in about a half hour. At that time, we'll restart fully manned 24/7 shift rotations until further notice." She pressed another switch on her command console. "Engineering?"
A scratchy voice said, "This is engineering. What's up?"
Ute stated forcefully, "Stop energizers and reactor rotation. I want all reactors powered back up as soon as possible."
After a short pause the engineer asked, "We going somewhere?"
Ute replied, "I don't know, just do it."
"Aye, Captain."