Into The Void: United Earth Nations, #1

By Terry Spinks

Tension between Earth and Mars is escalating over mining rights in the Trojan asteroid fields at Jupiter. Mars has the military upper hand, and some on the red planet want to use it. But scientists on Earth have discovered something that tips the balance in a way that will forever change the way space navies operate.

 

Into the Void is about the discovery of hyperspace travel.

 

• Language: English
• Publisher: Terry Spinks
• Release date: Nov 11, 2020
• ISBN: 9781393467090

Terry Spinks

I retired about five years ago. I'd worked in logistics; distribution planning for a crude oil refiner, and then sales replenishment for a retail national - both roles I enjoyed. But after decades of mind-numbing commuting, my wife and I decided to toss our corporate coffee cups and head for the hills. Now, with time to explore our bucket-list of hobbies, I thought, why not write a book. I certainly don't think of myself as a writer any more than I'm a chef because I mess up the kitchen. Who knows, one day I might be a writer. In case anyone wonders why GAI was published before Into The Void, or Asteroid 734 - it's because GAI was meant to be my one-and-only dabble. It turns out some of the characters had ideas of their own. Terry Spinks 2020

Book preview

Prologue

Location: Ceres

Year: 2271

Lieutenant Colonel Abraham Thorn sat in his patrol interceptor a few hundred kilometres above Ceres. He was suspended there, in the dead of space, as a visual reminder to Mars that the United Earth Nations had claimed rights on the rocky dwarf planet.

A Martian patrol fighter facing him about fifty metres away was doing the same, from Mars’ point of view.

Nearing the end of his shift, Thorn tapped a puff of gas into his manoeuvring thrusters and sent his tiny vessel forward at a snail’s pace.

The Martian pilot did the same.

A smile pulled at the corner of Thorn’s lips as he tapped in a bit more juice.

The Martian did the same.

The vessels’ sharp noses were precisely aligned as the craft inched toward each other. As the vessels came together, collision-avoidance programs nudged each fighter aside.

When the Martian’s cockpit slid past, Thorn’s smile broadened. He turned his helmeted head to the side, gave a nod and touched a gloved finger to his helmet. The Martian pilot returned the acknowledgement. Beneath his cockpit was a name: Lieutenant Colonel Thomas Haversham.

The pilots returned to their respective bases to end their shift.

Chapter 1

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Location: Earth

Year: 2321

Making tiny adjustments to his control column, Vance Pyne manoeuvred his small vessel through a black, weightless environment as he conducted his covert mission. In the pull-down visor across his face, he watched as thick links of heavy chain slid past his cockpit. He thought-clicked a command through the headband contacts at his temples, and the computer responded by superimposing a wire-frame outline of his vessel within its surroundings.

‘Don’t get too close to those chains, Vance,’ said a voice through his earbuds. ‘Remember, this is not a simulation. If I have to send someone out to untangle you, I will, but it would kind of defeat the purpose, wouldn’t it?’

‘Copy, Chief,’ said Vance as he applied some reverse momentum to his manoeuvring motors.

Light blossomed outward as Vance activated the vessel’s external floodlights. ‘Whoa, baby, whoa,’ he moaned, pulling his head back as if to help his vessel slow down. A column of chains slid worryingly toward his transparent cockpit. He added a bit more power to his reverse thrust as the heavy links pulled closer.

‘Say something, Vance?’

‘Just singing to myself, Chief.’

‘You’re doing fine, son. Maiden voyage; riding solo in the dark; weaving into the chains ‒ you’re doing good, Vance.’

As Vance’s forward velocity tapered off, the tension in his neck eased, and he relaxed back into the pilot’s seat. He peeled the VR goggles off and bent his head to look up at the dark chains disappearing above him into the distance.

‘How’s it look?’

Sitting forward and craning his neck to look out, he said, ‘Not good, Chief. I can see three empty cages on this set of chains. Want me to go further in?’

‘No, that’s all I needed to know. Come on out, Vance. Swing a few spirals around the perimeter as you head back up.’

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Four weeks prior

Vance Pyne tugged his harness webbing a little tighter across his shoulders and chest as the helicopter approached the OceanFarm-5. Wisps of cirrus clouds stretched high across the late autumn morning sky. The ship was facing head-on into a choppy swell. From their approaching altitude of about three hundred metres, the OceanFarm-5 appeared quite old. Patches of mismatched white paint here and there on the hull were streaked with long, thin runs of rust down to the waterline. The vessel looked a little over a hundred metres in length. A landing pad was at the bow, with a derrick at either side of the stern. The submersibles would be inside, aft, where an internal section of the ship was opened to the sea, allowing the little subs easier access to their environment.

‘Home sweet home,’ shouted the pilot, twisting his head back to call over his shoulder. ‘She’s an old girl, Pyne, but she’s a sweet little sailer.’

The buffeting wind was giving the pilot a tough time as he neared their destination. Vance scanned his surroundings, noting the internal landmarks: a handhold here, a door latch there ‒ anything that would aid his situational awareness if the chopper came down onto a rising deck and was batted, like a ping-pong ball, into the ocean.

The rotary wings of the helicopter bit into the air as the craft hung, suspended over the ship. Vance watched as the pilot scanned the ocean swell, judging the rise and fall of the deck, and matching his descent accordingly. They hit the deck with a solid thunk. The chopper danced momentarily on its skids, uncertain as the ship’s deck yawed sideways beneath it. A couple of deckhands rushed out, their clothing pummelled by the helicopter’s downdraught. With well-practised movements, they anchored the chopper securely to the deck before giving the pilot a thumbs-up signal. Only then did the thump thump thump of the blades begin to taper off.

One of the deckhands shouted over the helicopter’s whining turbine as he beckoned toward Vance. ‘Pyne! Grab your bag. I’ll take you down to meet the chief.’

‘I’m Dan,’ called the deckhand over his shoulder as he slipped through the narrow hatches and along passageways. As Vance hurried to keep up, the deckhand continued his monologue. ‘My main job is in the staging area. I’m training to be a crane operator ‒ it pays better. Mind you, it’s nowhere near what you pilots earn. Anyways, I don’t really have the head for all the stuff you guys need to know.’

Dan stopped at an open cabin and knocked on the bulkhead. ‘Yo, Chief! I’ve got your new pilot.’

‘Thanks, Dan, send him in.’

As the deckhand disappeared around a corner, Vance dipped his head under the arch and stepped over the lip of the chief’s office as he entered.

The chief stood up from behind his desk and began to make his way around. Tilting his head back slightly as the chief approached him, Vance guessed him to be a little over a hundred and eighty centimetres tall. He wore a heavy wool sweater with dark leather elbow-patches and faded brown corduroy pants. His face was a criss-cross treasure map of sun-etched lines and his meat axe of a hand, when he extended it, made Vance wonder if he’d survive the handshake.

‘I’m Warren Bailey, Vance,’ said the chief as they shook hands. ‘Take a seat and we’ll have a bit of a chat before I take you up to meet the captain. Coffee or tea?’

‘Coffee would be nice, Chief, thank you. Strong, with milk and no sugar, if that’s okay.’

‘What did you think as you approached the ship?’ asked Bailey as he crossed to a small kitchenette and made himself busy.

Vance chuckled briefly. ‘I wondered how long it would take me to get over my seasickness.’

‘Haha ... I take it you mean your impending seasickness?’

‘Something like that, Chief. I feel fine at the moment. But later ...’

‘Mm. Count on it, Vance. You’re going to do some heaving when we pick up a decent swell,’ said Bailey as he returned and placed a couple of cups on the desk.

‘Okay, Vance, let’s get down to it,’ said the chief, plopping himself down, ‘kind of a reverse induction with new crew. Tell me what you know about our set-up here and I’ll fill in any blanks.’

Vance pursed his lips in thought for a moment. ‘As I understand it, Chief, OceanFarms has several sea farms in the Pacific region. You’ve got some surface farms ‒ fish farms, up towards the equator, and some deep, cold-water vertical farms, down here in the Tasman Sea. The vertical farm north of us is where you grow cold water kelp. Here, where we are, you grow abalone in cages attached to long chains.’

Nodding, the chief asked, ‘And our need for pilots?’

Vance shrugged into the obvious answer. ‘You use submersibles to guard your abalone against poachers. You need pilots to operate the subs.’

Again, Bailey nodded. ‘And the drones?’

‘You use small aquatic drones to assist the submersibles in their guard duty.’

Bailey tilted his head one way and then the other, in partial accord. ‘Think of an aircraft carrier, Vance. Picture it as the mothership, controlling and orchestrating swarms of armed and angry drones. Now scale it down to your single-pilot submersible and a small, but equally vicious shoal of drones. You’re the mothership. You control them, and they do your bidding. It’s your shoal that gets the job done. You just conduct the orchestra.’

‘So, the submersibles aren’t actually armed?’ asked Vance.

‘No. Disappointed?’

‘More like relieved,’ replied Vance as he reached for his coffee and took a sip.

‘I’m glad to hear it, son. We’re here to stop the poachers, not kill them,’ said the chief, taking a sip of his own coffee.

Vance scratched his head and scrunched his face into a question mark. ‘Can’t you just watch for divers’ air bubbles?’

‘It’s usually more sophisticated than that. Abalone is expensive. A raider can strip over half-a-million dollars’ worth of shells in a couple of hours.’

Vance’s eyebrows pushed furrows up his forehead. ‘A couple of hours!?’

‘Believe it, Vance. We catch amateurs regularly ‒ they use scuba tanks, or worse, chemical scrubbing rebreathing apparatus,’ said the chief as his nose wrinkled in disgust. ‘Their tanks give them a very limited window of operation, so they usually come in by underwater scooters. They approach shallow and flat, and our subs can detect them from a long way off. Captain’s got a haul of cheap scooters in the hold. Grab one if you want one.

‘It’s the professional raiders that we’re really up against. They approach slowly, and from deep down. They’re either operating at their maximum blood : nitrogen saturation levels or flooding their lungs and breathing high-oxygen liquids, like perfluorocarbon. Likely as not, the poachers are motoring in on semi-enclosed Seabob scooters. They prefer the German ones because those bloody things can outrun our subs.’

Vance’s face telegraphed his thoughts.

‘Exactly. These guys are serious ‒ and extremely well rewarded ‒ when they get away with a haul. And it’s submersible pilots and their drones that we pit against them.’

Bailey tapped his data tablet and swiped through a few pages until he found what he was looking for. ‘You have a keen interest in aeroplanes, Vance. That’s probably the main reason I chose you for this slot,’ he said as he lifted his eyes to look at Vance.

‘Yes, sir. Planes ‒ modern, antique, atmospheric, civilian, military ... anything. And ships ‒ mainly naval history stuff. Lots of things, really. I seem to just gather useless information like a fluff magnet.’

Bailey smiled at the characterisation. ‘Well, it’s your piloting skills that hooked me, son. You’re twenty-four, and besides the standard air-car licence, you have a sports and aerobatic licence, a night-instrument rating, and even a Mach 12 qualification ‒ that’s as high as you can get outside of the military.’

‘You know military gradings, Chief?’

‘I do, Vance. But that’s a whole other story.’ Cocking an eye at the young man, Bailey said, ‘If you don’t mind me asking, I’m curious as to why you didn’t join up with the UEN Space Fleet.’

Vance pulled his shoulders into a slight shrug. ‘Once upon a time I probably would have joined the Space Fleet, Chief. But not now. My dad is ex-Air Force. He taught me to fly. He collects old planes and does them up. So, where most guys my age were hooning around in ground-cars and impressing their girlfriends, I was up in the sky in one thing or another.

‘When dad left the service, my folks moved out west to share-farm a cattle station. I took on the role of livestock mustering. When Mum saw me pulling aerobatic tricks in the helicopter she freaked out. Dad responded by trading up to a proper stunt copter.

‘But with droughts and parasitic bovine infections and whatnot, my folks needed a vet more than they needed a son in space. So, I started training to be a vet.’

‘And now?’ asked the old section chief.

‘And now my folks sold their share of the farm. My options were to continue studying to be a vet and then take contract work in the outback ‒ or do something else with my life.’

‘Like this?’

‘Why not? Not much need for me to do vet work, anymore.’

Bailey dipped his head to read Vance’s bio for a moment. ‘So, you’re not married – I’m assuming that means no kids – which is immaterial by the way.’

‘No wife. No kids. Chief, you were saying that it was my piloting experience that swung this deal for me. I admit, I was counting on me having transferable skills to pilot a submersible.’

‘It wasn’t so much because of your ability to fly a plane per se, Vance. It’s more about your situational awareness. If anything, it was your experience in those old Pitts Special aerobatic biplanes that got you the job. I’ve flown those old planes. When you’re tumbling through rolls, diving to gather speed for a hammerhead before falling end-over-end back into a loop, you need to know where the ground is. If you’re up there as part of a team show, you need your brain gimballed in a gyroscope to keep track of where you are in relation to everyone else.’

Vance’s eyes lit up: ‘You flew team aerobatics, Chief?’

‘Back in the day, Vance. Flown a lot of other things since ‒ but again, we’re getting off topic. It’s dark down there,’ said Bailey, nodding vaguely toward the surrounding ocean. ‘You can easily get fuddled in your head ‒ especially if you’re manoeuvring through the chains and trying to chase a raider. You need an inner compass telling you which way is which, and where you are in the picture. In that regard, yeah, I suppose it’s like aerobatics.

‘We have four submersibles. At any time two are usually on patrol, and two are recharging. We’ll take a look at them in the morning, and then get you into the simulators. I’d like to start your training as soon as possible. While you’re the reserve pilot, Vance, I’d like to give my regular pilots an occasional break, so I’ll be looking at weaving you into the roster when you’re ready. And to be honest, I think you’ll enjoy the experience of operating a sub.’

The section chief showed Vance to his cabin and then took him on a tour of the ship. On deck, with a fresh sou’wester spitting salty mist into their faces, Bailey squinted toward a dark dome hunched on the surface of the water some distance away.

‘You probably can’t tell from here, Vance, especially from this angle and the sun in our eyes, but that dome is the head of a chain-set. There’s a horizontal frame hanging just below the dome – picture a big wheel with five spokes – each spoke about five metres long.

‘Chains are fixed along the spokes and around the rim. The chains hang down about fifty metres. Spaced down along the chains are x-frames and at the end of each x is a wire abalone cage.’

Swinging his pointing finger a bit left of the dome, the chief said, ‘See that small boat-like thing? That’s an unmanned dome tender. It uses geo-sat positioning to keep the chain-set in place. It also monitors surface swell and adjusts the dome’s buoyancy. In a rough blow, the tender will pull some air out and send the dome down to ride out a storm underwater. Each dome has its own dedicated tender.’

Vance nodded his understanding and asked: ‘What stops the dangling chains from getting tangled around each other? Are they weighted at the end?’

Bailey twitched a simple shrug. ‘The chain’s own weight plus the weight of the baskets holds ’em all steady. That dome we’re looking at out there, that’s Dome-A1. It supports a chain-set.

‘We group six domes into a pentagon – five around the perimeter and one in the centre. That’s a dome-set. So now you have a chain-set under a dome, and a pentagon of domes – a dome-set.’

‘Dome-sets and chain-sets. Got it,’ acknowledged Vance.

‘Good. Take a helicopter up a few hundred metres and you’d see the pattern repeated. There are five dome-sets around the ship, and we’re in the centre. We call that big picture the tract. When you’re out on patrol, you go around the tract. Make sense?’

As Vance nodded, Bailey lifted a hand and waved up to the bridge. Vance swung his head around and saw someone waving back down to them. ‘Come on, Vance. Let’s go and meet the old man.’

‘Welcome, Mr Pyne,’ said the captain when they got to the bridge. ‘I’m Chez Hartnell. Call me Captain when we’re being formal, Chez when we’re not. You’ll get the hang of it.’

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After an early breakfast the next morning, Vance was introduced to the submersibles’ crew, the pilots, maintenance personnel and programmers. After meeting the team, he was led up to the simulator room. ‘You’re a fair pilot, Vance,’ said Warren Bailey. As he led Vance along the narrow companionways, the section chief dipped his head now and then as he ducked the bulkhead. ‘And that’s good, it’ll cut your time in the simulator. But you need to practise operating a shoal ‒ that’s what we call the drones. You’ll need to log a minimum of twelve operational hours in the sub, on its own, and another eighteen hours with a shoal. I’ve flagged the exercises that I want you to do ‒ just log in under your name, and you’ll find them. Complete them in numerical order; they get harder as you go. You start with one thousand points. The more abalone you lose, the more damage you accumulate on your equipment, the more physical damage you inflict to the raiders, the more points get deducted. You are not here to maim, injure or kill these poachers. In sim or reality. Clear? Learn to use the drones, son. Learn to trust them to do their job.’

‘Clear, sir. Can I trade credits to purchase replacement drones or make repairs to the submersible?’

Bailey stopped walking and turned to face the new pilot. A smile appeared, a crevice on the surface of creases he used for a face. ‘Congratulations, Vance. No-one’s ever asked me that before. Indeed, you can. Come on now, I have a feeling this might be interesting.’

Bailey stopped at a hatch and pushed it open. Judging from its dented and flaking surface, it had lived a colourful life – green being its current colour. When Bailey noticed Vance wrinkle his nose, he laughed and pointed to stacks of cages lashed to a far bulkhead. ‘It’s the algae. You won’t notice it after a while.’

Vance cocked a doubtful eyebrow as he cast his gaze about. He was in a dim storage compartment perhaps five metres wide by seven long. A couple of salt-etched round portholes splashed a bit of light into the room but did little to improve its overall gloom. The chipped cream coloured paint of the bulkheads spoke of the room’s utility. Squares of black rubber clip-together matting covered the floor.

A stained workbench was fixed to one wall, with oil drums tied beneath it. The oil added an overtone to the pungent scent of algae.

Bailey walked over to one of the two ground-car-sized boxes bolted to the floor and dragged away the fabric cover. He rolled the material into a rough ball and stuffed it into a container by the wall.

‘This is the main simulator,’ he said. ‘It’s old, but it’s in good nick. That one, over there,’ he said, pointing to another fabric-covered box, ‘is the backup.

‘In case I didn’t mention it, Vance, the ship operates on a standard shift basis ‒ six hours on, six off. Get used to it, son. If I get pinged that you’ve finished too soon or fallen asleep, I will not be pleased. And I will transfer that displeasure onto you.’

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After a brief walk-around and some basic instructions, the section chief left Vance to cruise around a virtual lagoon in basic free mode. Vance spent the time getting a feel for the sub’s acceleration, inertia, how quickly he could climb and descend. Whereas an aircraft used its wings and body to push against air and propellers or jets for forward momentum, the submersible did not. The subs were nothing more than a pilot’s chair within a thick perspex sphere sandwiched between pontoons, above and below. Each of the four pontoons held a fan-like motor, fore and aft. Quick-pump ballast tanks were integrated within each of the pontoons. On their stubby stalks, the motors swivelled freely and could generate forward or reverse propulsion. Rails holding a variety of mission-specific equipment such as lights, gripping claws and antennas were attached to the pontoons.

Vance brought his virtual sub up to top speed. He then spun it around on its axis, horizontally and then vertically. He grunted as the simulator spun within its frame, sending the inertia and centrifugal forces back to the pilot. Each time, he came out of the spin at a different point than he’d planned.

Sitting still and closing his eyes, he imagined himself in the cockpit of the aerobatics biplane. He fixed his eyes on a distant bright red coral, in the virtual lagoon, and brought the sub up to speed. Using combinations of forward and reverse thrust on different motors, coupled with the quick-pump ballast system, Vance swung the little vessel through one of his aerobatic routines. When he finished the set of manoeuvres, he regarded his actual exit-position in relation to his planned exit-position and then went back and tried again ‒ this time trying to compensate for water-resistance as opposed to air-resistance. Flicking the joystick over, he felt the harness dig into his upper trapezius muscle and blood rush into his head as the cockpit rolled through an inversion. Banking out of that manoeuvre and diving into a loop, Vance sent the sub through the bottom of the arc and then into a hammerhead, pushing the sub straight up. In the biplane, gravity would eventually claim dominion and claw the plane, tail first, back down; in the sub, Vance breached through the surface of the virtual lagoon and looked up at the bright blue sky. The tiny