Jones snapped, “Those energy readings are back!”
Aaen pointed behind him, “Keep monitoring them! Wilson, maintain your course! All ahead—FULL!”
The image on the view screen was starting to shake. “Solar winds! You’re gonna have a heck of a time, Wilson!”
Aaen took his seat as the rest of the crew braced against their stations.
“—We’re three minutes out! Detecting some more energy readings at long-range. They match the readings we got from those drone ships that attacked us and New Horizon.” Jones declared.
“Hold your course, Commander!” Aaen commanded.
“Aye!”
“A bunch of rock debris ahead! They’re all over the freakin’ place!” Jones declared.
“I see them!”
Aaen eyed one rock in particular on the view screen that was closing fast from the port bow. The rock blocked the stars and the light from the center of the solar system ahead and was moving so fast there seemed to be a mist brushing violently off of its jagged edges.
“EVASIVE!” Aaen commanded.
Smith snapped and barked, “Standby weapons!”
Against a rock that size? Aaen thought skeptically.
Wilson executed an abrupt barrel roll climbing Odyssey over the top of the asteroid, bringing Odyssey back down rapidly and then leveled-out, rolling to offset inertia. The asteroids ahead were smaller and clunky but were putting off a larger and thicker dusty mist, and seemingly blurred across the screen as they sped through space.
“I’ve got weapons locked on the asteroids ahead!” Sandberg declared.
“WEAPONS RELEASE ON MY COMMAND, ONLY!” Aaen interjected.
“Standing by!”
Wilson executed numerous wild, sharp and abrupt evasive maneuvers—daredevil-like—narrowly missing hundreds of rocks that Aaen and Smith both knew could easily pulverize the hull on impact. . . And then there was a clearing as the solar system’s sun became visible in the view screen as the brightest dot among the black sea of twinkling stars, through a thinning haze of dust.
“We’re clear!” Jones declared with a cheer. The bridge cheered; Aaen relaxed, grinning slightly, as his curiosity piqued. The crew calmed and returned to their stations and began reading and analyzing the new floods of data filling the bridge computer stations.
“Alright! Hold position, here. All hands: we are in suspected enemy territory. Let’s look alive. Smith: alert condition three. Jones, let’s initiate high-resolution long-and-short-range sensor sweeps of the solar system—3D, multi-spectrum, thermal, ultra-violet, the whole-nine-yards. Hayes, send a mission update to New Horizon including current vessel status.”
“Beginning sensor sweeps of the solar system,”
“Commander Smith!” a male voice called from the back of the bridge. It was Lieutenant Commander Jorgensen. Smith turned around the corner. Jorgensen relayed several technical instructions, which Smith immediately carried out—adjusting instrumentation settings on his station. Aaen reasoned the upgrades he had ordered were well-underway. He grinned at this, eying the view screen. For the first time in several hours, his gut feeling was more good than not. He stayed focused.
A sensor alert sounded. Attention on the bridge fell on Jones. She squinted at her screen, and then quickly sat upright in her chair with a shocked look on her face. “There are ten planets in this solar system, fifteen orbiting moons throughout. . . and thousands of energy signatures all-over-the-place—they’re ships!. . . Looks like a combination of scout ships, cruisers, destroyers, and some that are comparable in size to New Horizon—and a few that are even bigger.” she said sharply, “Sensors are detecting all of the ships are fully-powered, weapons, shielding systems. . . Holy-cow!—Three high-volume space stations orbiting the third, fifth, and eighth planets in the solar system. Life signs are in excess of eight-hundred-thousand on the space stations,” She gasped, “. . .And a terawatt-level scanning array sweeping through the solar system!”
Oh, crap! Aaen snapped, “Is it enough to penetrate the stealth field?” Aaen asked directly.
Jones turned her head, “I don’t think so,”
“Where is the scanning beam coming from?” Smith asked without missing a beat.
“It’s being supported from multiple locations throughout the solar system,” she gasped in frustration, “they’re hidden. It’ll take a little while to triangulate them.”
“Get on it,” Aaen commanded. “Maintain silent running. I don’t want to risk being detected. Jones, keep doing scans of the solar system. I want to know why there are so many of those alien ships here,”
“Yes, sir,”
“Captain!” Hayes called.
Aaen snapped, “New orders?”
Hayes turned her head. “Long-range transmissions aren’t getting through.”
“Why?” Smith asked. “Interference?”
“There’s some kind of jamming signal in effect around the edge of the solar system. Our coded messages are coming straight back seconds after we send them.”
“For now, work on finding a way to get through the jamming signal,” Aaen commanded. Work to carry out the order began immediately.
“Scan results so far indicate a very high level of an element called ‘Olyphium’.”
Olyphium? Aaen wondered. What could they possibly be using that for?
“Looks like the bases are either being used for mining, refining, manufacturing, or staging ships.”
“This might be some kind of forward operating base,” Smith suggested to Aaen. “If that’s true, we might be looking at preparation efforts for a large-scale attack,”
“Why would they attack The Union?” Aaen asked.
“An existing quarrel, maybe? Or perhaps they’re just hostile? If The Union is on defense. . . and they’re as powerful as they’ve demonstrated so far from what we’ve seen,”
Aaen understood where Smith was going with this, and he decided what to do next. “We’re gonna take a closer look at what’s going on here,” he said to Smith, then sat upright and faced forward, “Wilson, take us to the nearest orbiting alien space station. Take us into a lower orbit. Steady as she goes,”
“Jones, keep an eye on those other ships. If they change course, I want to know it.”
“Understood!”
There was one thought lingering in the back of Aaen’s mind: something wasn’t right. . .
*****
Steve H. told Jordan Foutin, "You are the next Tom Clancy. You really are a gifted writer."
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