Earth Roar: Book 7 in the Earth Song Series, page 10
‘That sounds like a much healthier approach to me,’ I replied, squeezing his shoulder.
But despite Jack’s enthusiasm, and what was obviously a fresh sense of purpose, deep down I couldn’t help but wonder whether the Procession Plan prediction algorithms had already factored in anything we might be able to do, even with all of Tempest’s resources thrown at it. But there was absolutely no way I was going to rain on his parade, especially when part of me had already accepted that if we were really going to win this battle that it might cost me my life.
Lucy joined us in the middle of the hologram. ‘So far, everything is looking good for this lift attempt, guys. Windspeed is a very modest two--miles-per-hour and not a cloud to be seen. This is the very definition of the best weather that Antarctica has to offer. Tempest’s anti-grav drive is spinning up to full power and our starship’s effective mass is heading south rapidly. We should be good to go for a lift attempt in five minutes when the last of the Earth fleet get to their designated lifting positions.
‘And you’re absolutely sure nothing can go wrong?’ I asked.
‘As much as is possible,’ Lucy replied. ‘There’s always the wildcard that something fails, but that’s highly unlikely.’
I nodded. ‘Good to hear.’
‘I always like to be the bearer of good news,’ she said as she headed back to her console.
Jack leant into me and dropped his voice to a whisper again. ‘Look, whatever else was in that prediction we did see Tempest there for the final battle. That tells me that this is going to be a walk in the park.’
‘That’s what I keep telling myself,’ I replied, deliberately not addressing the elephant in the room, that in that same prediction was where I had died.
On Ariel’s virtual cockpit in the hologram, we watched the last dozen dots of the final X-craft rising from the opening of one of Tempest’s hangar bays. Our starship, far below the X103 and despite also being invisible thanks to a photonic holographic shield, was beautifully rendered on Ariel’s bird’s-eye view.
At this distance, the starship’s design was as breathtaking as she was huge. The Citadel, where we were sitting, was a tiny teardrop-shaped dome at the pointy end of the starship. The rest of the craft stretched back behind it in a sort of sweeping triangular deltoid shape. An elliptical wing section encircled the rear part of the ship where two large fusion drive nacelles extended from the port and starboard sides. At the rear, was a sort of scooped out section where a massive single rocket bell engine was housed. If everything goes to plan, the backup ion drive would be utilising that once it was brought online after we reached orbit.
The only thing missing externally, according to Lucy, was the jump drive itself that distorted the space-time field around this behemoth of a ship. If we’d had that, we could have travelled instantly between two points anywhere in the universe. Unfortunately, that incredible ability had been lost because the plans to rebuild and operate it had been buried within one of the micro minds that the Overseers had managed to take out. Even though our starship was partly crippled by Angelus standards, the hope was that it would be more than enough as-is to tip the coming fight in our favour.
Jack, Lucy, and I watched the last X-craft slowly rise into position, each trailing its tether behind them until finally, Jodie gave us a thumbs-up.
‘Okay, the fleet is in position,’ she said.
‘Tempest’s anti-grav drive is approaching maximum output,’ Mike said. ‘In three, two, one…’ He glanced across to me. ‘Okay, Tempest’s effective mass has been reduced by ninety-nine percent. We are good to attempt the lift operation.’
Lucy nodded. ‘Okay, then everyone best get back to their seats, which have their own emergency gravity field if anything goes wrong,’
A moment later, I was sitting in the captain’s chair again. ‘Delphi, please open a channel to everyone in Earth fleet.’
‘Affirmative, ship-wide channel is now open,’ Delphi replied.
I took a moment to centre myself as the others on the command deck looked at me.
‘Hi, everyone, this is Commander Lauren Stelleck speaking. We’re ready to begin lift operations. Delphi will take control of each of your ships so that this manoeuvre can be coordinated across our entire fleet for what will be a very finely balanced operation. Good luck to us all and we will hopefully see you all soon in space for a celebratory drink. Out.’
With a wave of her fingers, Lucy overlaid the main holographic display over a zoomed-out view of all the Earth fleet with Tempest below them, all marked with metadata tabs.
My gaze automatically sought out and found Ariel near the zenith, alongside Thor. I knew Niki was aboard Thor, having decided to join them for this critical operation.
‘Delphi, begin operation Rolling Stone,’ I said.
‘Operation Rolling Stone has begun,’ the AI replied.
On the main hologram, we watched as each craft in the fleet began to rise slowly, drawing the cables taut beneath them.
I felt a hand take my mine and looked to see Jack beaming at me.
‘Here we go,’ he said as we both looked through the surrounding windows at the view.
There was a slight shudder that grew stronger and was followed by a cracking sound that echoed throughout the Citadel.
Lucy already had her hands up as we all cast her worried looks. ‘You can all relax, that’s just ice breaking free that has built up round Tempest’s hull.’
‘Now you tell us. I nearly spat my coffee out,’ Mike replied shaking his head at her as he placed his mug back in the chair’s cupholder that had been one of the other upgrades I’d asked for.
Another longer groan from the breaking ice was followed by softer rumbles as indicators lit up showing the increase in the amount of lift being generated.
‘Delphi is increasing fleet’s REV drives to maximum, whilst also throttling up their multimode rockets,’ Lucy said.
I pulled up the live feed from Ariel on my hologram console in front of my seat. I could immediately see that the cable dropping away from her had become piano-wire-taught.
A series of explosive booms came from all around us as the snow and ice around the starship seemed to dislodge all at once. Then, suddenly, Tempest was moving, pulling free and rising. Avatars and humans alike clapped and cheered.
I reached over and squeezed Jack’s hand as Mike and Jodie did the same.
‘You see, anything is possible when we all put our minds to it,’ Jack said.
‘It is, isn’t it?’ I replied with a fresh sense of hope.
Together we both looked out at the Antarctica landscape stretching around us. Snow was tumbling away from Tempest as she cleared the ground and my heart soared with her as she began to quickly rise away from it.
One of the views from the cameras mounted in the belly of the ship displayed a large crater that was being left behind by our departure.
‘It’s going to leave some Antarctica scientists very puzzled when they come across that hole in the landscape for the first time,’ Jack said.
‘Isn’t it just,’ I replied smiling at him.
Tempest began to accelerate, the ride silky smooth now that we’d lifted off. Above us, the constellation of ships were working in perfect harmony just like Jodie and Lucy had been planned. Small alterations were being made to each of the ship’s controls as our army of X-craft worker ants continued to haul our starship into the sky.
The landscape was opening out into a vast expanse of snowy plateaus and ice-covered mountains. It was then that it struck me that in our distant past, Tempest must have made this trip in reverse when its Angelus crew had brought her in to land. What must the Angelus crew have thought as they’d approached our planet for the first time?
As we passed a hundred thousand feet and the sky began to darken, and the tension I’d been carrying was just starting to lighten, there was a sudden lurch. Multiple alarms seemed to warble out at once as the deck began to lurch to starboard. At the same moment, dozens of thrust indicators started to turn red on some of the fleet as Delphi commanded them to max out their engines.
‘What the hell is happening, Lucy?’ I called over to her as she and the other avatars’ hands flew frantically over the controls.
‘We’ve had a partial power failure in one of Tempest’s anti-grav generators that’s dropped back to sixty-percent efficiency,’ she replied with a tight expression. ‘We’re trying everything we can to bring it back online, but it’s going to take us five minutes.’
‘But that’s five minutes we don’t have,’ Mike replied, his face pale.
Jodie was nodding. ‘There’s absolutely no way that the Earth fleet will be able to maintain this altitude, let alone lift us.’
‘Then, can we begin a controlled descent?’ Jack asked.
‘Again, not enough time,’ Mike said staring at his displays. ‘We’ll have crashed long before then, bringing down most of our fleet with us if they don’t cut the tethers.’
‘Bloody hell, but there has to be something we can do,’ I said, frantically looking around the flight deck for an answer to magically materialise.
And then as Tempest started to tilt even more I saw it on one of the monitor views of the hangar bay—a large number of Wolfpack drones that had already been built.
‘Lucy, launch all available Wolfpack drones now!’ I called out.
She stared at me and then quickly nodded as comprehension filled her eyes.
Jack was staring at me. ‘You’re going to use them to help our fleet?’
‘That’s the general idea. But as there obviously isn’t time to connect them by cables, we’ll just have to position them beneath us to provide lift. Although they haven’t got the lift-power of one our X-craft, there are enough of them to make up for it.’
‘Your seat-of-your-pants plans are genius sometimes,’ Jodie said.
‘It’s amazing how a bit of primordial fear sharpens my thinking like that,’ I said as the localised gravity field built into each of the flight deck chairs activated with a slight shudder.
I felt an immediate shift of localised gravity as my bum was now pinned to the seat even as the flight deck tipped past thirty degrees.
Like a swarm of dark seeds, three hundred Wolfpack drones shot out of the landing bay doors and gathered beneath the enormous spaceship.
Lucy and the other avatars had opened up hundreds of control windows, their reactions working ten times faster than any human could have as they controlled the swarm. One by one we watched them latch onto the bottom of the hull like some sort of mechanical leeches. The similarities to the way the Kimprak attacked their victims wasn’t lost on me. But the difference here, was that the drones were very much on our side, and more importantly, directly under our control.
Another judder went through the Citadel as Tempest was slowly righted. The metadata tags were practically all flashing red as the Wolfpack and the X-craft fleet resumed Tempest’s ascent into space.
I hardly dared breathe over the next five minutes in case I jinxed it, but slowly the Earth began to curve away beneath us. Then, one by one, the red warning tags started to go out on all of our ships as our planet’s gravity well began to lose its grip on the giant alien starship.
As we rose free of Earth’s atmosphere a deep black darkness engulfed us, followed by pinprick-sharp stars that started appearing one by one. Then, the alarms finally fell silent. Lucy and the other avatars shared a relieved look.
‘Full power has been restored to the anti-grav system,’ Lucy said. ‘We’re in the clear people,.’
This time there wasn’t any applause, but everyone seemed to breathe a sigh of relief.
As the localised anti-grav field in my seat was switched off it only heightened the sensation of me sagging into myself as the tension flowed away.
‘So it seems a bunch of ants can shift a mountain after all,’ Jack said grinning as he reached out to squeeze my hand again.
I nodded and shakily got to my feet. ‘I don’t know about anyone else, but I really need that stiff drink now.’
‘Heck yes,’ Jodie said.
I nodded. ‘Lucy, please relay my thanks to the entire fleet and tell them that the drinks will be on me when they get back onboard.’
‘Absolutely,’ Lucy said smiling.
‘Just as well you don’t have to pay for the bar bill,’ Mike said.
‘Under the circumstances, I don’t think Alice would mind,’ I replied.
‘Hey, no cost involved as you all can have any drink you desire, courtesy of the molecular printers,’ Lucy replied.
‘Oh my god, we really have fallen into the world of Forbidden Planet somewhere along this journey,’ Jack said, which made me burst out laughing as I hugged him.
I stood hanging on to him for a moment, just looking out at the stars and the fleet of ships manoeuvring towards us. I might not have a lot of time left, but I vowed, then and there, to make the most of every moment and that started tonight, celebrating what was, without a doubt, a very real reason to do exactly that.
CHAPTER TWELVE
I was pretty sure that every member of the flight crew had made it down to the parkland for the impromptu celebration after word had gotten out, especially when they heard there was free whatever you fancy booze on offer.
With Jack next to me, I sprawled out on a lounger that the nanobots had conjured for us and watched Ruby and Erin wildly dancing to the techno music that was playing on a massive speaker system that one of the technicians had quietly printed.
The avatars were mixing it up with the best of us and throwing themselves into the party vibe with both android feet. Poseidon, much to everyone’s amusement, had even mastered body-popping moves thanks to a quick crash course from Mike.
Lucy was heading towards us with Slick, who was sporting a bowtie that had been looped round his neck, just behind her. He was carrying a silver tray in his pincer hands and on which two drinks were balanced. Much to my approval, I spotted that one was a margarita for me, and going by the beads of moisture on the outside of the glass, a very cold beer for Jack. With the absolution precision of advanced robotics Slick presented us with our two beverages of choice.
‘Seriously, you’ve reduced our state of the art Tin Head to a waiter?’ Jack asked as he helped himself to the beer.
‘Hey, I didn’t want the big guy to miss out on the celebrations. He would have sulked,’ Lucy said. ‘You should listen to how much the Tin Heads bitch about you lot when they’re left out of the fun.’
I stared at her. ‘They do?’
‘Gotcha,’ Lucy said grinning at me. ‘You humans are so gullible sometimes.’
Smiling, I shook my head at her. I was feeling like a different woman compared to the one who’d been paralysed not long ago by the thought of her own death. Strangely, as I’d gradually come to terms with the idea, it actually felt liberating. It’s not often in life that you get to know your own sell-by date. Besides, as Jack kept reminding me, it wasn’t a given.
I took a margarita from the tray with a thank you thrown in Slick’s direction just in case he did actually have some rudimentary feelings buried deep within his metal skin. Then my eyes widened at the first sip.
‘Wow, Slick makes a pretty excellent margarita,’ I said.
‘And also serves a damned find cold beer,’ Jack added, wiping the foam from his lips. ‘You should let Kilroy know. I’m sure he could do with some extra help down at the Rock Garden back in Eden.’
Lucy draped a protective arm around what would normally be the shoulders, but in Slick’s case, because of the height difference, ended up being around his waist. ‘You ignore them, big guy. You’re always going to be with me.’
‘Hang on, let me get this straight,’ I said. ‘You’re an AI in an android body with a robot sidekick now?’
‘Hey, it’s the way I roll. Anyway, I wanted to see your faces for the big reveal to the crew.’
‘What big reveal?’ I asked giving Lucy a suspicious look. The last time she’d attempted to surprise us was with the breakfast culinary creation of pickled herring, combined with maple syrup pancakes. It still made my stomach heave just thinking about it.
‘Now that we’re in orbit, I thought it might be rather nice for the crew to see a view of Earth over the parkland, if only because it will help remind everyone what a beautiful planet you have that we’re all fighting to keep exactly that way.’
‘Great idea, so what are you going to do?’ Jack asked. ‘Project a live view onto the ceiling, a bit like Alice does with the virtual skydome back in her cavern in Eden?’
‘Oh, we can do way better than that,’ Lucy replied. ‘I told you before that the krine metal alloy that Tempest is built from has many properties, including exceptional strength. Well, another useful feature is that passing a mild electrical current through it alters its transparency, so if I do this…’ She clicked her fingers and the entire ceiling became a vast girder-panelled window. Now, above us, framed by the Milky Way behind her, was Earth in all her glory.
A collective gasp went up from the assembled crowd as all eyes turned towards the view.
Mike, Ruby, Erin, and Jodie who, until a short moment ago, had been dancing together, all headed over.
‘Did you do this, Lauren?’ Jodie asked. Because it’s utterly breathtaking.’
I gestured towards Lucy. ‘I can’t take any of the credit for this. This is all Lucy.’
Mike gave her an impressed look. ‘Very cool, Lucy. And I’m guessing that whatever you’ve just done to the roof panels to make them transparent doesn’t also reduce their structural strength?’
‘Nope, just as strong, and that’s without taking into account the extensive gravity shielding beyond it.’
The music had fallen silent as the people around us looked up, all mesmerised by the spectacular view of our world. If the Angelus had seen this view, no wonder they’d been so determined to protect our fragile planet.
