Phobos
When compared to the gray celestial body of Luna that orbited the Earth, Phobos was a very pitiful rock. It was small, lopsided, and ugly. And before the miraculous increase in Mar’s mass it had been on a predicted collision course for its parent world. The increased mass and subsequent increase in gravity counter-intuitively saved the satellites decaying orbit by increasing the slingshot like force that kept it from hitting Mars directly. It had no mineral deposits that were worth the effort of landing mining equipment. The only thing this world had going for it were the museums.
After the Martian colonial council had learned that the Earth was on borrowed time great efforts went in to finding permanent housing for the masses of humanity that would soon need new homes. Mars had already been colonized and terraformed by that time, but everyone knew that the former red world could never truly be a total replacement for our cradle. Many large celestial objects received lots of investment and infrastructure conducive to human life.
Venus received a partial terraforming that stabilized the atmosphere and dropped surface pressures enough for massive land-able cities to touch down on its surface. Those cities then became the agricultural heart of humanity, sucking Venus’s carbon rich atmosphere to feed humanity as farmland on Earth began to dry up and turn to dust. Ceres became the burning heart of Sol’s industry as the small world’s location within the asteroid belt made it the most suitable for processing the mineral rich asteroids. And Luna received massive amounts of development as massive domes were dug into the moon’s regolith in an attempt to act as a new home for Earth’s massive population.
But no matter how much money the Martian council borrowed from Galactic Union banks, none of these worlds would ever be a suitable new home for Terrans. The rise of Mammaloids, and the mass introduction of life extending medicines on Earth had caused a spike in global birth rates far beyond what the Council had ever projected. And now they were stuck in a cycle of borrowing more money to try and expand those less suitable homes for humanity.
Somewhere along the way someone had thought about the great amount of cultural heritage that would be lost to humanity if Earth truly became uninhabitable. And thus Phobos was deemed to be the placed that held the great reserve of Earth’s heritage. Massive domes housed the Taj Mahal, the White House, and the whole city of Venice. Other domes contained maritime museums; ships once commissioned for war now turned into floating museums. One could tour all four Iowa class battleships, and then walk only a couple hundred meters over to visit the Trincomalee. Aster had personally visited almost every ship in the Dome of Naval History, she had stood on the deck of a caravel and imagined herself as a pirate captain during the ‘golden age of piracy’, wearing a tricorn hat and raising the black flag. But today she wasn’t here to daydream, today she had come to do business. Today she had come to buy the Obama.
Bell and Karega had decided to join her, and since Bell was a naval historian, and Kar was a student of all history, Aster welcomed their presence and expertise. They had taken a private shuttle to the small moon, rather than ride in the overcrowded ferries that regularly went between Mars and Phobos, and landed directly on a platform just outside the Obama’s resting place. Unlike every other exhibit Obama was a space worthy vessel and didn’t need an expensive pressurized dome to house it, so instead they dug into the surface of the world and laid the Obama in dry dock that looked suspiciously like a grave for the mighty vessel.
Two finely dressed gentlemen and a women in a pantsuit met them on the platform just outside the docking hatch. The men were smiling and looked very pleased to see them, while the women didn’t bother disguising her contempt for their presence.
“Ms. Astarte it is a pleasure to meet in person at last” the lead men said as he shook her hand. “I am John Murphey; the director of all the heritage museums on Phobos.”
“It is a pleasure to meet in person Director Murphey,” Aster said with a bland plastered smile. She turned to the man at Murphey’s right “And Mr. Gomez, it is a pleasure to see you again” she said addressing the man who was personally responsible for arranging the budget of Phobos.
“Thank you, but last I recalled you had two eyes. What happened?” he asked sympathetically.
“There was a brutal pirate attack on Femeri a while back, grenade practically fell in my lap. I survived but my eye did not”
“Yes, word of that attack had the media in a tizzy for weeks.” Director Murphey said softly before he plastered on a smile and raised his hand to gesture to the women at his side “And this is Dr. Grace Martin, she is the curator for this particular museum, and the most educated woman alive when it comes to the Obama.”
Bell smiled “Its good to see again Grace”. Before Bell had joined the Hellworlders she had gone to school with Dr. Grace and had worked in the same department as her for years.
Dr. Grace scowled “I wish I could say the same Elizabeth, where have you been for the past five years? You just disappeared one day, and now you’re here dressed like some sort of Royal Navy samurai, trying to purchase the Obama and turn it into a luxury cruise ship.” She shot accusatorially. Their cover for wanting to purchase the Obama was that they wanted to make it into a cruise ship that would tour the nearby stars.
Bell frowned “Its Bell now, and I will explain everything in due time.”
Director Murphey glared at Dr. Grace “Please conduct yourself in a better manner doctor.” He warned.
“Or what, you’ll fire me? You’re already selling off my life’s work.” She shot back.
Aster smiled “Oh I like you” the Doctor glared back at her. “After we have our tour I would like to have a little chat with you. We’re going to need your expertise.”
“I don’t want any part in what you have planned for this ship, taking a revolutionary ship like this and desecrating it by turning into a cruise ship is an insult to all the man who died aboard her.”
Director Murphey glared at the angry doctor “I will remind you those men died killing the diplomatic mission the Union had sent to Earth.”
Aster felt her fake smile falter a little “Those men were only doing their duty Director”
He turned back to her and smiled again “Your absolutely right, my apologies. Shall we get on with the tour then?” he asked.
Aster put on her fake smile once more and reminded herself that after she was done dealing with this man she would never need to see him again.
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The tour had been very interesting. Aster had visited the Obama before, but not with an expert like Dr. Grace whose utter contempt for Astarte didn’t dim her passion for this ship. The Obama was the largest warship ever constructed by Humanity, that included her own Archdevil class ships. In the mid to late 21st century the US government had deployed SR-73 Void Hawks to the asteroid belt to prevent other nations from simply claiming the vast wealth of minerals they contained. The US instead forcefully developed a system that would evenly distribute the resources out to every country on earth with a developed space program, and even instituted means of regulation to prevent the price of many metals from dropping catastrophically. As those deployments surged in maintenance fees the US began to design a ship or a station that would better service the Void Hawks.
But when several Union 68-s lane runners abruptly arrived in Sol and began to deploy hundreds of unknown satellites across the system the pilots were forced to assume they were hostile and shot them down with tactical nukes that overwhelmed the lane runners shields. From then on the Earth knew that they weren’t alone and plans for a carrier ship were immediately implemented. The US spent billions of dollars just to launch orbital foundries and factories to jump start their space-borne navy, and a skeletal yard laid down the beam of USN CV-95 Obama. It was meant to act as not only a mobile launch station for Void hawks but also as the core of future fleets. It had extensive cargo holds, machine shops, and crew quarters to extend the range and duration of any mission.
Instead of an exposed flight deck, the Obama had four magnetic tubes to launch wings of aircraft in a matter of minutes. With recovery cranes that would extend out to the side and bring the ships back in. Analysts had studied the video of those lane runners extensively and determined the maximum limit of their pulse cannons and designed the hull to withstand five times that power. They had even devised very primitive shield emitters and means of warp field disturbance that could bring the enemy ships down to the sub-light speeds where humanity stood a chance at victory.
It was a very impressive ship indeed, filled to the brim with the most impressive hardware humanity had to offer at the time. But ultimately it was failed by a lack of aircraft and pilots. CV95 Obama had three times the carrying capacity of any carrier developed for maritime combat, and they used the magnetic launch tubes to great effect. But they put the cart before the horse, they built the ship before they had the enough planes to fill its wings, and didn’t have enough industrial capacity to build the Void Hawks fast enough.
The US had thought they could rely on allies like Britain and Russia to help fill the Obama’s space fighter wings, but Britain instead devoted all their aerospace industry on building and launching modules for the London. And not to be outdone by the British the Russians also devoted their industry to launching the Sankt Peterburg. And the Chinese refused devote any military spending on the defense efforts in a protest of the western militarization of space. The only reason the Obama was at half capacity by the battle of the belt was because the European Union and Japan had chipped in.
By the battle of the belt Earth had two cruisers who couldn’t put a dent in the Union destroyers, and a behemoth space carrier with only half of its hangers filled. The loss of the London was brief, and Sankt Petersburg’s commander ultimately realized that his multi-billion-dollar ship was best used as a battering ram. Only the Void Hawks scored grievous blows against the invading fleet, their speed, maneuverability, and versatility, had all proven to be vastly superior to anything the Union threw at Earth that day. But eventually they were picked off by automated AA, or died from failed maneuvers that caused a fatal collision. The Obama was then cut off from Earth and had all transmissions drowned out by jamming frequencies until the Flag admiral was forced to surrender his ship or else face a slow painful starvation.
Astarte placed a hand against the Obama’s exterior hull while Dr. Grace described the advanced new armor plating the US had devised by mixing over twenty elements to form an almost crystalline like alloy, similar to what they now used on the Astaroth. Sometimes she wished she could take her fleet back in time to that day, just a single one of her destroyers would have won the day and irrevocably change destiny of Earth and Mars. And if her whole fleet could go back then they could wreak havoc on the meager forces stationed in Orion at the time. But those were only idle fantasies, she had to focus on the here and now. And here and now she needed to breathe new life into this behemoth and right two centuries of wrongs.
Karega stood next to her out of ear shot of the group, “What do you think Star?”
“New reactors, new shields and new warp emitters.” She answered.
“Figured. What about the support systems for those things?”
“The cooling is pretty much as good as what we got despite being over a century old, its got over a thousand miles of total cooling pipes. The electrical wiring is another issue, we’re going to need to rewire everything with super conductive cabling. And we’ll need to replace the life support systems just to be safe.”
Karega grunted “Are we sure this is really going to be cheaper than building our own from scratch?”
“Yeah, but we can cut costs down if we cannibalize the Igrathoth, most of the systems on that ship are on the same level as what we have.” She said decisively.
“I thought the plan was to refit the Igrathoth for our own purposes?”
“It was, but I would rather strip its systems and put them into a Terran made ship than rely on an alien one. Besides the Igrathoth is going to need a lot more work than Obama, it might be more useful to use it as a defense station for Pandemonium.”
“Are you really sure we even need a carrier? The Union has been operating a massive interstellar navy for centuries and they never built a carrier.”
“That’s because they can’t fly for shit, Terrans can think faster, react to danger quicker, and are physically more capable of taking on G force.” She snapped.
He raised an eyebrow “Careful Star, your sounding a little xenophobic.” He cautioned.
“Am I wrong?” she challenged.
He frowned “No, but you need to be careful of how you phrase things. Those are the same words touted by xenophobic extremists. The ‘we’re stronger than them’ argument.”
Aster scowled, but knew he was right. Xenophobic extremists on earth used similar arguments to sway people over to their cause, they rallied the disgruntled mass’s by playing on their hate and mistrust for the Union and slowly radicalized them into their hateful ideology of Terran supremacy. Aster had grown up hating the Union, hating them for their callous disregard for the plights of a deathworld, and had her life gone down a different path she might have fallen in with those extremists. She had long thought that the Union shouldn’t be in charge of earth because they were all physically inferior to her people in almost every way. but she learned during her time with the Terran pirates that the other species of the galaxy faced similar issues on every world, that the Union wasn’t only failing the Deathworlds, but all worlds. And everyone was just too ignorant to admit it. And despite the physical weakness of other species, they all had their own unique contributions to the galaxy.
Aster let out a sigh “Sorry, but you know I’m right. Terrans would out class any other non-deathworlder pilot, which would drastically increase the feasibility of any fighter craft we build”
“That brings me to my next point, who is going to build those fight craft? I don’t think MDY will be able to fully capture both the speed and maneuverability we’re going to need.”
“I have a meeting with Lockheed Martin coming up, they will build our fighters.”
He looked puzzled “the sports ship company?” he asked incredulously.
“Yes, before they built sports ships they were the principle supplier of fighter and stealth craft for the US military. The U-2, the Blackbird, F22 Raptors, that was all them. After earth was demilitarized they turned their aerospace fabricating plants into sports and race ship manufacturers.” She explained.
He looked doubtful “And your hoping a company that used to make warplanes over a hundred and fifty years ago might be able to make one now?”
“Rumor has it that the CEO has a thing for restoring old Void Hawks, and I’m told he’s been working on some new advanced Void Hawk inspired ship. I think he has a great deal of nostalgia for the kinds of craft his company used to make.” She grinned at him mischievously. “And if I might be so bold, why are you suddenly against this? Last I checked you and I were the ones who initially schemed to buy the Obama”
He frowned “I’m… I’m having doubts. Do we really need this, or are we letting nostalgia for simpler times get ahead of us? And is it really right to take this old ship out of retirement and bring her into another nearly hopeless war?”
Aster considered his worries. “Place your hand against the hull Kar” he obeyed and placed his palm against the ships cold interior. “Feel that?”
He squinted “I feel a metal wall” he said bluntly.
Astarte chuckled “Well I feel the beating heart and spirit of this ship, I feel it in her steel ribbing, in her fiery heart, I can feel it building with anticipation and fervor. She’s just like the Astaroth, she has the heart of a warship and will never truly be happy sitting on some pissant moon. President Franklin negotiated the protection and care of this and every other old warship because she knew one day their people would need them.”
Kar smiled and pressed his hand against the bulkhead harder. “Sometimes I wonder whether your insane, or too insightful for your own good, you know that right?” he asked jokingly.
“A bit column A, bit of column B.”
Someone cleared their voice next to them, startling both of them out of their reverie. They turned to see that Dr. Grace had broken away from the main group and had likely overheard everything they just said. “My apologies, but did you say you intend to recommission the Obama as a warship?”
Karega turned to face the Doctor head on “You know its rude to ease drop?”
“I was going to try and appeal to your sense of compassion, and convince you not to buy the Obama. But now I’m more curious about your true intentions” She said flatly.
Karega glanced to Astarte, Aster shrugged “Oh well, she was going to find out anyway. Doctor, have you ever considered a career in privateering aboard a recommissioned space carrier?”