1340 hours CST, June 16th, 2673; the bridge of the Skate

Most of the John Charlie’s crew had already left the hanger when the red warning lights in the eight corners started to flash. The only ones remaining were the fuel handlers, and they secured their equipment and left the bay when the lights indicated an imminent launch. Three men in fluorescent orange and yellow suits came into the hanger, each carrying glowing signal lamps in their hands. Despite computer guidance that was more efficient, the final launch of a boat was handled by humans for the peace of mind of all involved. The massive armoured doors in the centre of the hanger’s long wall cycled open to reveal the air lock and elevator.

Murphy switched views on his display, making sure the checklist was filled out correctly and filed with the John Charlie’s central computer. He touched a button on his console and opened up the ship-wide intercom.

“All hands, prepare for catapult launch.” He cancelled the call and then called to engineering.

“Engineering, report full status of generators, engines, and fuel supply.”

“Main fusion generators are online and ready for one hundred percent power. Sub-light engines are ready and idle presently. Manoeuvring thrusters are showing unblocked. Curve drive is cold. Antigravity plates are fully active but not drawing significant power. Liquid hydrogen supply is at twenty percent.”

“Repeat the status of the curve drive.”

“It’s cold, sir.”

“I ordered all engines to be active for the exercise, Petty Officer. Why aren’t they idle?” Murphy had expected this, but his voice was more forceful than he had intended.

“The exer—”

“The exercise doesn’t matter; get the curve drive online and idle, bridge out.” He shut off the intercom, and silence ruled the bridge.

“Offensive, what is the status of the pressure test?”

“Pressure is holding at one-oh-six kps, sir.”

“Bring us back to normal pressure. Helm, verify that the boat is unobstructed and take us into the air lock.” Murphy watched the helmsman for a few moments. “Helm, verify our ability to enter the air lock.”

“Uh, yes sir!” Lead Hart responded, quickly looking back and forth out the window before bringing her head back and double-checking the camera views she had of the signal handlers.

“Are we clear?”

“Yes sir,” she said, her voice getting flustered.

“Take us into the air lock.”

Lead Hart adjusted the controls, and the deck sections directly under the magnetic wheels of the boat rotated sideways. The electromagnetic wheels of the boat were powered from the fusion generator; this, along with the channels the wheels were trapped in, ensured that the boat remained firm against the deck after the tethering chains were released. Some thrust was applied to the manoeuvring jets, and the boat moved toward the centre of the hanger. Hart’s eyes were firmly on the signallers, who were stationed to either side of the air lock door. When the boat was dead centre, she cut the thrust and applied the wheel brakes.

The deck under the Skate’s wheels rotated to line the wheels up with the air lock. The helmsman used forward thrust to move the boat into the air lock. A metallic clunk was heard and felt throughout the boat as the front wheels ran into the launch rails in the centre of the air lock.

“We have magnetic lock with the centre rail.”

Seconds later two similar thumps were felt as the rear wheels engaged with the two side rails. “Locked with the side rails, sir.”

“Very well, stop our forward momentum.”

Lead Hart had started to get back into the groove and follow the procedures again. She fired the forward manoeuvring thrusters and applied the brakes to stop the forward momentum of the boat, until the boat was most of the way into the air lock, and then released the brakes.

“Signals, tell the launch officer we are ready to be brought into launch position.” The launch rails were much like tram rails, with a solid conductor at the bottom that the magnetic wheels of the Skate rode on. The wheels were still trapped inside channels to keep the boat from floating off the tracks.

The Charlie’s launch officer applied electric current to the wheels, negative to the left-side wheel and positive to the right-side wheel. This moved the boat forward using the same force used in a homopolar motor to fully drag the boat into the air lock. A reverse of the polarity brought the boat to a stop. The air lock door closed behind the Skate, followed by the lights in the air lock being extinguished. The only lights on were the red lights in the four corners, indicating that air was being pumped out of the compartment.

The red lights went out less than fifteen seconds later, and the elevator moved the boat up to the launch tube. Torpedo boats could be launched in two ways from the Charlie. The first was to simply lift the boat up to the hull of the tender and let it float gently away. The second was bringing it up to one deck below the surface and launching the boat out a launch tube. Murphy had requested a catapult launch, which meant the boat was going to use the second method.

“Signals, tell the Charlie we are in position for launch,” Murphy ordered as the launch elevator stopped and locked into position.

Lieutenant Sinkovich signalled the tender, and no sooner had she finished the final verification that the crew on the boat felt the pressure of acceleration. The launch tube ran along the hull of the ship and was over a kilometre long, roughly five times as long as the torpedo boat. With electric current applied to the wheels of the boat, it was moved forward at an increasing acceleration, much like a rail gun shell. The buildup of acceleration started at one G, and within five seconds, the torpedo boat was accelerating at five Gs. The boat left the launch tube in less than six and a half seconds and was travelling at over three hundred metres per second.

The vibrations from the generator increased as the boat left the zero gravity area around the Charlie and moved into the roughly one-G area by Clearwater Prime. The boat now had to provide its own means of resisting gravity. The Skate shuddered as it was drawn downward toward the station’s gravity plates until the antigravity systems took up the load. The generator’s vibrations finally settled down as the power draw stabilized.

Murphy waited for half a minute and then switched his console view to the navigation radar.

“Astrogation, I read us ten kilometres clear of the Charlie and Clearwater Prime.”

“I read that as well, sir.”

“Switch over to stellar spherical coordinates.” Murphy ordered the change from using the tender as the reference point to using the solar system’s largest object as the reference. “Lay in the course for the asteroid field.”

“Aye sir, inputting now. Helm, come to heading one-thirty-five by twelve, acceleration at four Gs for five minutes.”

“Coming to heading one-thirty-five by twelve, increasing acceleration to four G.” Lead Hart brought the boat around to point the boat’s bow in the right direction and then pushed the throttle forward to 80 percent of its maximum. The boat started to vibrate as the massive sub-light engines thrust the ship forward.

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“Acceleration set…to four G, heading is…one-three-five by…twelve degrees.” With the increased acceleration, everyone had to focus on what she said.

“Lieutenant Murphy…we are on course…time is twelve hours…with rollover in six,” Bell reported. He was having more trouble dealing with the acceleration than those from higher-G worlds.

“Thank you.” The five minutes at four G passed slowly for everyone onboard the boat.

“Lieutenant Murphy…we are…coming up to…the waypoint,” Bell reported.

“Lower our acceleration as planned.”

“Helm…lower acceleration…to one point…two G.”

“Aye sir.” The boat’s vibration lowered as the acceleration was brought down, the vibration settling down to a gentle thrum in the background. “Engines are answering to one-point-two G.”

“Secure from general quarters. Morning watch is on duty. Switch to afternoon watch at fifteen hundred hours as standard.”

The crew on the bridge got a good look out the window as they passed by the planet of Clearwater. A silent salute was given to the people below as the Skate accelerated toward the initial point of the exercise.

“Close the window hatch. Nothing more to see for now.”

Lead Hart pressed a button on her console, and the hatches moved to cover the forward window, blocking the light from the window and increasing the boat’s stealth profile. A holographic representation of the outside system was projected onto the window glass to give the commanding officer a tactical view of the system.

“ESO, activate the long-range radar and give us a few sweeps along the bow of the ship. I want to know what is between us and the asteroid belt.”

Lead Miller, sitting to Murphy’s right, entered the commands on her console. “We should have the updates soon, sir.” The tactical map started to be filled in as the radar returns came back. It took some time, as the asteroid belt was still over five light seconds away. Each second brought more and more detail to the tactical display.

Murphy waited as the updates came in, and then when there were enough, he expanded the view near the asteroid belt.

“Shut down all active sensors. Lieutenant Sinkovich, try to raise Shepherd Two.”

* * *

The Clearwater system was one of those systems fortunate enough to have a massive, main sequence star; it was about 10 percent more massive than Earth’s sun. The system was also fortunate enough to be located along the major export route of three large star nations and was included in minor trade routes of several other nations. With the invention of the curve drive in the twenty-third century, interstellar trade routes formed automatically. The curve drive relied on the space-warping aspects of gravity to shorten the apparent distance between two star systems. The more massive the stars in a pair of systems were, the quicker the interstellar trip became.

Clearwater was situated in the middle of a cluster of stars, and there were eight stars within ten light years. Seven of them led to the core systems of the three neighbouring star nations: the Republic of Terrace, the Democratic Commonwealth of New Terra Firma, and the Caliton Empire.

Terrace annexed the Clearwater system near the end of the war with New Terra Firma, which included the free port of Clearwater Prime. For the past ten years, Terrace had been increasing its hold on the system and absorbing it into the Republic.

The Clearwater system had a gas giant close to its sun, too close to be within the habitable zone of the young star. The gas giant prevented the asteroid belt from coalescing into a rocky planet, and the asteroid belt was spread over a ring that was forty-five million kilometres wide. One of the strange things was that the rocks were about twice the mass of Terra and should have formed their own planet or been swept up by the gas giant.

The planet of Clearwater was its own oddity. It orbited on an elliptical orbit that brought it as close as 1.2 astronomical units from the sun. This brought it very close to the asteroid belt that circled around the sun at roughly one astronomical unit. The gravity wells from the habitable planet and the gas giant were constantly playing havoc with the asteroids in the belt, causing them to either hurtle in toward the sun or back outward. Before the conclusion of the war, the rocky planet of Clearwater had a major meteor event every year and an extinction event roughly every ten thousand years or so.

The meteor events made the only habitable world of the system too dangerous to settle on, but the system was still too valuable to leave undeveloped. Clearwater Prime was the solution and was built as a commercial venture in 2615. Initially it was a simple station with a single set of counter-rotating rings to provide gravity.

The system became a good place to transship cargo between the various nations, and the station grew. Docking and cargo storage fees were the major source of income; tourism to the unoccupied but still habitable world was only a small highlight to the bottom line.

The rogue asteroids from the belt posed a major hazard to Clearwater Prime. Instead of being constructed in a standard orbit, it had been constructed at the LO2 Lagrangian Point that was formed on the opposite side of the planet from the system’s star. With a large moon orbiting Clearwater, the station was sheltered from most of the major meteor events that happened in the planetary system, and nuclear warheads took care of the rest.

The fortunes of the planet changed when Terrace annexed the system. The Republic left the station free and independent, for the most part. The station was paid for by the major independent shippers and larger commercial interests in the area. The docking and storage fees were paid by merchants from the three major star nations in the area, not just the two that were at war at the time.

Despite the independent nature of the station, the Republic still wanted to lay a proper claim to the system, so it needed to build a space colony or colonize the habitable planet. Terrace brought in the solution for colonizing the troubled planet: the asteroid shepherds.

The Three Shepherds, as the colonists called them, were massive boats that guided rogue asteroids back into the asteroid belt or into collision courses with other large bodies in the system. They were built out of surprisingly few major components. The components were massive, though; the most massive was a solid block of iridium at the rear of the boat. This block produced a small amount of gravity. Gravity plates were strapped to the surface of the iridium and were used to amplify the gravity so that the boat could nudge the rogue asteroids back to where they needed to go.

Other components of the shepherds were equally massive. A giant fusion generator that could almost independently power Clearwater Prime was used to power the gravity plates and the engines. The engines were mounted to the front of the boats, making them some of the few space vessels that were towed by their engines and not pushed. The last major component of the vessel was the fuel tank that carried enough fuel to power the boat for a three-month patrol.

Compared to those components, the rest of the equipment was small. The sensor array was larger than most vessels and could detect and plot the courses of the asteroids. They were hyperaccurate and helped protect both the crew and, more importantly, the expensive boats from damage.

Living spaces were added almost as an afterthought. Their mass was far less than the rest of the areas of the ship. The living spaces included housing for the twelve crewmen for the extended voyages. There were also decent recreational facilities, since there was a lot of space on the vessel.

With the Three Shepherds guarding the planet from major and catastrophic meteor events, Clearwater was ripe for colonization. Colonists arrived from the Republic and started to build farms, dig mines, and create communities. The tourism industry was booming for the planet, and tourism became the largest source of income for the fledgling community. The hazards of the system, the large metallic asteroids, and the nearby gas giant became a sight-seeing landmark. The sun’s light is affected by gravity, like every other thing in the universe. As the light passed by the gas giant and the asteroids, it was affected by gravitational lensing. This caused rainbows to appear in the strangest places and caused the sun to appear to sparkle and shimmer in ways that were unique.

Orbital mining was a growing industry for the fledgling colony. With the shepherds already in the system, they could be used to steer metal-heavy rocks into stable orbits closer to Clearwater and provide for that industry with a negligible increase in cost, which was covered by the mining corporations.

The two industries, mining, and tourism, ensured that the colony was able to cut the need for financial support from the Republic well ahead of schedule, and the colony became a tax generator instead of a burden. The planet also became a breadbasket planet, the multiple asteroid impacts that killed many plants and animals also brought many minerals that improved soil conditions. The settlers were presented with rich soil when they were able to finally secure a permanent settlement. The development of the system would not have been possible without the annexation by the Republic and the introduction of the asteroid shepherds.

Murphy’s call was to the second asteroid shepherd, named the Mighty Jim by its crew. Its commanding officer was a major in the engineering core, Michael Franklin, and he was working in the asteroid belt, less than a hundred million kilometres from where the Skate was due to start the training mission.

“Good afternoon, Captain Franklin,” Murphy’s communication started. There was a twenty-second lag for the communications over the current distance. “I’m Lieutenant Murphy, senior officer of TBC-four-seventy-three. My torpedo boat will be conducting a training mission in the area near the Mighty Jim. I’m hoping to get some information from you.”

“Major, not Captain,” Franklin replied. “We’re a boat, not a ship.” Though he did not say it with much conviction in his voice, and he seemed to be saying it for the record. “What sort of information can I get for you, Captain Murphy?” he responded in kind.

“We’re a boat as well; call me Phil or Murphy, if you like, Major.” Murphy’s image smiled on the communications panel. “I was wondering if there were any rogue asteroids in the area of our operations.” A data channel was opened to show the operations area.

“There is one we are working right now, but it shouldn’t affect you too much. We are preparing it for orbital rendezvous with mining around Clearwater. Give me a moment to check for any others in the area.”

“Thank you, Captain. I’m wondering if we can ask a favour of you…”