Gravitys Hammer Read online

  Wiping his blade on the uniform of one of the dead aliens, he sheathed it and stood up, taking in his surroundings. The room was still too dim for him to see clearly, even after allowing several minutes for his eyes to adjust. He retrieved a flashlight from his backpack and turned it on, causing a bright beam of light to split the darkness. Quickly surveying the room, he noticed a large bank of equipment covering the far wall and several large strategy-planning tables in the middle of the room. Playing the flashlight over the surface of these tables, Mark was staggered by the information that was displayed there..

  The tables contained images of the surrounding areas in space, with each planet clearly marked as to its position. Earth was dead center on the table, the obvious target. The table contained markers to indicate alien fleet placement. There were massive squadrons of alien ships, and there were many of them, positioned in such a way as to surround Earth and leave no avenue of escape. Mark took in what he was seeing, a feeling of dread slowly overcoming him as he also saw Earth’s entire fleet clearly marked on the display, tiny in comparison to the alien fleet. The actual location of the fleet was a closely guarded secret, yet here it was on display for anyone to see.

  The planning for an invasion of Earth had been in progress earlier in this very room. Fleet dispersion and positioning were all laid out in graphic detail right in front of him. Removing a small camera from his backpack, Mark began snapping photographs of every table. The strategic information in front of him would be invaluable in the coming war. Mark continued to take pictures of everything he thought might be of use until his camera beeped softly. He glanced down and realized that its memory was full. He stowed the camera and began to scrutinize the room again, looking for any other valuable information he could glean. The glowing monitors along the back wall of the room caught his eye. He approached them in order to get a closer look.

  Mark examined the control consoles closely. The system was controlled by the same type of biometric security panel that had controlled access to this room. As he inspected the panel, an idea occurred to him. Mark returned to the body of the alien who had originally opened the door with his hand. He lifted the body onto his shoulders and carried it over to the system access panel. Supporting the alien’s body against his own, he placed its hand on the access panel. The panel glowed briefly, scanning the alien’s hand, and then went out. Mark held his breath and hoped his ruse would work. It was just possible that it would raise an alarm and jeopardize the entire mission, but he had to try. This might be his only chance to break into the system.

  Within seconds he was rewarded when a faint whirring sound began to emanate from the equipment banks. Mark dropped the body in a heap as the systems sprang to life. A screen next to the security panel glowed with some type of prompt that he did not understand. Having no way of comprehending the data before him, Mark had all but given up on getting any useful information from the system when he noticed two small slots on the front of one of the workstations with a stack of metallic disks next to them. Taking a chance on this being a default action that would not set off any alarms, Mark inserted the disks into the slots, causing the system to respond by dumping information onto them. He continued to swap out disks as each disk was filled with data. Once the last one was full, he placed them into his backpack and slung it onto his back. Turning around, he saw the aliens he had dispatched earlier. Not wanting to raise any alarms if someone came into the room, he dragged the alien bodies across the floor to hide them in a small anteroom. He cleaned up the area, removing all traces of his incursion.

  Sure he had everything he could use that was within his ability to get, he approached the door cautiously, unsure of how he was going to get out. When he got within three feet of the massive door, he was startled by a low rumble as the door again began to slide to one side. Mark jumped back out of view, fully expecting someone to enter. When no one did, he carefully peered out of the doorway. Relieved at seeing no immediate danger, he hurriedly exited the room and made his way down the hallway. He heard the door close behind him.

  Making his way down the passage, he once again peered into the first room he had entered just to make sure the inebriated alien was not a threat. The alien was no longer there. From behind, Mark heard the whine of a weapon building up a charge and a growled statement in a language he could not understand. Not knowing the capabilities of the alien’s weapon, he decided not to try anything and froze in his tracks, quietly laying his hand on the butt of his own weapon.

  The alien barked again in such a way that Mark thought it best to turn around. He did so, slipping his weapon out of its holster and holding it behind his back. Mark eyed the alien, waiting for the right moment to act. An automatic door slid shut in the back of the room, distracting the alien briefly.

  Knowing he might not have another chance, Mark seized the opportunity to level his weapon and fire a single shot at point-blank range into the alien’s chest. The impact of the slug flattened the alien against the far wall, where, with a stunned look on its face, it slid into a crumpled heap on the floor, leaving a streak of blue blood on the wall. Mark held his breath for a few moments, sure that the weapon’s discharge had alerted someone else. After holding his position for a few seconds, Mark decided that his luck was still holding as no alarms sounded.

  The alien’s body had fallen in a rear corner of the room, so Mark didn’t have to worry about someone discovering it before he could get away. Holstering his weapon, he turned off the lights in the room and crept out into the hallway. Mark looked up and down the length of the corridor; the coast was clear. He made his way to the closest window, opened it, and climbed out onto the ledge.

  The air was hot and muggy. He carefully checked the area as he wiped the sweat from his brow. Quietly closing the window, he adjusted his pack, making sure the disks were still tucked inside. He found the rope he had used earlier and slid silently to the ground, rolling to absorb the impact. Landing with a grunt, he brushed the dirt from his face and activated a control that released the grappling hook. The rope and hook fell into a pile in front of him. He coiled the rope, stowed it and the hook in his pack, and then waited in a hidden spot for the way to clear.

  Seeing no alien activity, Mark ran away from the compound, making his way back to the drop point without further incident. He fished out his communicator and keyed in his retrieval code. Within minutes a transport came around a bend in the clearing and hovered to a stop about fifty yards from his position. He used his communicator to key in a security code that only his contact would be able to answer. An acknowledgment came back immediately, so he came out from the underbrush and made his way toward the transport. He opened the door and climbed into the vehicle, quickly buckling himself in. The pilot gently eased the nose of the transport skyward, increasing their thrust as they climbed. The ship quickly disappeared from sight, fading into the darkened sky.

  CHAPTER 2

  As the transport left the surface far behind, the muscles in Mark’s neck began to relax. He adjusted himself in his seat, trying to get more comfortable.

  “Quit wigglin’ ’round back there, boy!” said the pilot.

  Mark could hardly believe his ears. Only one person he knew talked like that.

  “Jo? Is that you?”

  “An’ who else would risk their butt just to save a peasant captain like you? Hmm?”

  Mark grinned from ear to ear. The man in the pilot’s seat was none other than Johann Switzer, one of his closest friends from his academy days. Johann was a native Jamaican, dreadlocks and all. Even though his accent was not real, he insisted on using it at times to spice up what he called his “mystery.” Mark had not spent time with Johann since they had graduated and embarked on different careers.

  “It’s really good to see you, man. I just wish it were under different circumstances.”

  “Likewise,” said Johann as he brought the ship’s speed up to maximum.

  “And how, may I ask, did you get involved in this project?
” asked Mark.

  Johann chuckled. “Not much sense in working on anything else, is there?”

  “Yeah, right,” said Mark, settling himself into his seat, closing his eyes in a vain attempt to shut out the whirlwind of events that had swept up everyone’s lives and turned them upside down. For perhaps the millionth time, his mind replayed the last several days.

  A little over two weeks earlier, a large radio telescope in the Arizona desert had intercepted what appeared to be some type of coded military transmission. The personnel on duty that day were not unduly alarmed because even though their telescope was currently being used to examine a remote star in a newly discovered planetary cluster, it was not unheard of for stray electromagnetic radiation to become jumbled in with the signals they were receiving from the stars. However, standard procedure was to report all unusual occurrences to the director of the telescope station. Unable to determine exactly where the message had originated, the director had sent a printout of the message to Pentagon intelligence as a precautionary measure for evaluation and recommendations.

  When the printout was received, all hell broke loose. What should have been a simple decryption job baffled even the most powerful supercomputers at the intelligence section’s disposal. The top cryptologists in the world were brought in to analyze the message. They all marveled at the level of sophistication and degree of encryption. As hard as they tried, they could discern no patterns at all that would aid in their efforts to decrypt the message. Laboring over the data for several days and getting nowhere, intelligence made an urgent call to the station that had intercepted the message, requesting as much detail as possible about its origins. The personnel on duty that day had thought the message originated on Earth, so they had not paid that much attention to it, believing it was simply chatter that had bled into the frequencies they were monitoring. At the latest request from the Pentagon, they realized they had stumbled onto perhaps the first intelligent message that was definitely extraterrestrial in origin. Digging into their records and recordings of the transmission, the telescope station team was able to pinpoint the location of the signal and forwarded this information to the Pentagon.

  With the additional information, the Pentagon’s cryptography team determined that a mathematical pattern did exist in the message based on the location and orbit of the planets in the system of origin. Using this new information, the team was able to decipher the message. It was a code based on a coordinate system. The message contained sets of coordinates that directly triangulated with the new planetary system the telescope had been studying and Earth’s own star, Sol. Once the coordinates had been mapped out, much to the chagrin of the Pentagon, each and every one lined up precisely with every military installation on Earth. This news threw the entire world into a double shock: first, there was indeed extraterrestrial life in the galaxy, and second, the extraterrestrials knew the exact location of Earth’s planetary defense systems.

  Further intercepted communications seemed to indicate that the civilization in that area was indeed planning a full-scale invasion of Earth. The fact that the astronomers had been fortunate enough to intercept the message was the sole reason Earth forces had been able to mount a credible defense. Once the invasion plans had been confirmed, the military had gone into an immediate and massive buildup of weapons, both conventional and nuclear, in an attempt to prepare for the coming attack. Along with the weapons buildup, a corresponding increase in manpower had been achieved through a hastily passed law that required every able-bodied male on the planet to immediately report to the nearest military installation for duty. The entire planet had been a hive of activity ever since.

  While all this was going on, Mark’s old unit commander had come looking for him to enlist his services. His previous job had been in military intelligence as a field operative. It had been his assignment to infiltrate enemy lines and perform intelligence reconnaissance. He had been quite good at his job and had kept up his skills during his retirement. He supposed that was why he had been chosen to go on this mission.

  In his mission brief, the details of the overall situation and his assignment were laid out before him. The alien military had successfully established a forward base that initially appeared to be an outpost built for support operations for a large invasion force.

  The alien base was located on an asteroid that had been transformed to make it habitable and give it an atmosphere very similar to Earth’s. The technology involved in this feat was incredible and beyond anything available on Earth.

  Because the asteroid was in a stable geosynchronous orbit out of a direct line of sight, the alien forces had been able to build the base without being discovered by any of the observation stations located on Earth. It had only been discovered during a NASA space shuttle mission while the shuttle had been practicing emergency recovery maneuvers. Cameras onboard the shuttle had inadvertently captured an image of the unusual asteroid. When these images were analyzed back on Earth, scientists realized this was not a naturally occurring phenomenon and it warranted further investigation. Once the location of the enemy base had been spotted, the eye of the Hubble telescope had been trained on the coordinates provided, and what was discovered there made even the most jaded skeptics believe.

  An alien installation, large enough to provide support for a full-scale invasion, had been built and embedded into the asteroid—a massive war machine. The intercepted messages mentioned the exact coordinates for the alien installation, confirming once and for all that this base was indeed part of the coming invasion. The facility had been under constant observation ever since, and on more than one occasion, brief glimpses had been caught of the aliens themselves.

  Basically humanoid in appearance, they were generally a bit taller than the average human male, and their skin was a very pale blue. When this information was made public, the nickname Blue Devils was quickly adopted. However, the official name given to the alien’s star was Jerrol-1, after the man who had first discovered it. The aliens came to be known as Jerrollites.

  Weaponry was a whole different matter. Single-occupant spaceships had been spotted engaging in mock combat maneuvers over the asteroid. Their firepower was staggering. Most of the technology and tactics witnessed were so alien they defied understanding. The military leaders on Earth could only guess and prepare the best that they could.

  Military forces on Earth had been able to monitor the alien base’s activity without being discovered, which gave them a tactical advantage that they did not intend to waste.

  Mark’s mission was simple but dangerous. He was to go on a recon mission to that base and gather intelligence information on the pending invasion. Because the base was totally alien, he would be going in blind. It was with this sketchy information in hand that Mark had shipped out on the first high-speed vessel to leave the planet, ready to do his part in the defense of his home.

  “Coming up on the Hercules,” Johann said.

  Shaking himself out of his memories, Mark straightened in his seat, leaning forward to get a better view of the ship they were approaching. They flew beneath it in a gentle arc that passed within meters of its outer hull. Its skin was stark white in the reflected starlight, causing the ship to stand out against the blackness of space. Bristling with armament, the Hercules was all business, all the time. This craft was the best that human engineering had produced, the very pinnacle of technology upon which rested the defense of Earth. Mark felt the stirrings of an immense pride as they approached the docking bay.

  Johann swung the transport into a wide arc that encompassed the breadth of the ship. Both men stood in awe of the battleship just outside their cockpit window, thrilled by the strength and power represented but at the same time nervous about the future of humanity being placed in the hands of the military machine. Humanity had never before undertaken a mission of this magnitude.

  Johann spotted the docking collar off in the distance and engaged his automatic docking system. The flight computer chimed in ackn
owledgment and began the docking sequence. The system began bringing the rear docking collar in line with its mate on the ship, making minute adjustments to their speed and flight path until it looked like both ships were standing still. Once both ships were stationary to each other, the transport began moving slowly toward the battleship. The transport’s docking collar eased into perfect alignment with the one on the ship, and the two collars met and mated. A clang resounded through the hull as magnetic grappling hooks locked into place.

  “Seal is secure,” said the docking system as a green indicator light on Johann’s panel lit up. Hissing could be heard as the ship’s air pressure began to equalize with that of the battleship. A soft whine emanated from several panels on the transport as various flight systems began to power down. Turning in his seat, Johann addressed Mark.

  “I hope you got what you went in for, Mark. Matheson has been on pins and needles ever since you left.”

  “I think he’ll be happy with the presents I brought,” Mark said. The men shared a laugh. “Are you here for the duration?”

  Johann’s eyes sparkled with excitement. “Oh yeah, boy! I done been assigned to dis ship till de fighting is over!”

  “Good. Let’s get together later. I’m buying!” Mark said.

  “Okay, boy. You got a deal!” Johann waved him off as he returned to his control panel. Mark grabbed his backpack and climbed out of the transport through the rear airlock into the docking bay of the Hercules.

  The bay was a bustle of activity. Mark looked over the gigantic room and took in all the activity that was going on. Technicians and flight crews swarmed over the entire bay, checking and rechecking equipment, working together in an ordered frenzy that reminded Mark of a beehive. Mark’s observations were cut short by a loud whine followed by a shout.