Starcorp 1: Escape from Sol

The arrival to Perth, Western Australia, by the Heads of State of the United Front Pact members was a huge media event. News crews and spectators by the thousands were staked out at the Perth Aerospace Port, the five-star hotels and the Perth Convention and Exhibition Center. They waited at these locations in the hope of catching a glimpse of these leaders as they moved from one location to the other. The eyes of the world had been trained on the city ever since the summit was announced sixteen hours earlier. Eckhart’s arrival in Perth was the single largest news event occurring on the planet at that time.

Eckhart called for this gathering in a fiery speech that was broadcast live around the world the day before. The reason for the summit was the departure of BX01 two days earlier. Nearly all the peoples of Earth were engaging in speculative talk about this and the silence coming from space. Over this time, hundreds of sources began confirming each other’s suspicions that the Starcorps were cutting all ties with Earth. Reports of a sudden exodus of all starcorp intermediaries on the planet, three days earlier, began to trickle out through low-level government officials. By the time Eckhart started his speech, the world knew that something big was afoot. When he was done, everyone knew that the Starcorps were mobilizing around Mars.

The governments of the world and more importantly the United Front Pact members had been trying to track the movement of several starcorps over the past week, with little success. At the start of this time, it was their guess that some portion of the starcorps, situated outside of Earth space, had been on the move for past three weeks. The projected destination for this migration was confirmed when BX01 launched itself towards Mars. Their trajectory made sense of the sparse amount of data that suggested a movement of starships in that general direction.

The sudden departure of BX01 set off more alarms than all the speculative chatter about missing starships done. The speculative chatter was due to the limitations in tracking starships outside of Earth Space. Visual confirmations were difficult at best. To do this, the starships had to be spied on with powerful space telescopes, at regular intervals. The United Front Pact States had neither the telescopes nor the interest in maintaining a visual on the starcorps. It was far easier to just monitor the transmissions between BX01 and the outlying starcorps. This was something that the United Front Pact members had been doing as a matter practice. These transmissions provided them with continuous evidence of the starcorps’ general locations. What the United Front Pact members did not know was that the starcorps were launching, in silence, behind a veil of transmissions from decoy spaceships. Each starcorp left a single spaceship behind to produce these bogus transmissions. This was done to conceal the movements of the starships, but this deception was only partially successful.

Over time, an ever-increasing number of images from land-based telescopes were giving rise to suspicions that a portion of the starcorps were on the move. How big this portion was and the number of starships involved in the movement was unknown to them. Two weeks into this mystery they began an active search to verify the exact location of all starships in Sol Space. They were still working at this when the three starships of BX01 began their launch.

The magnitude of what was occurring began to register in the thinking of the United Front Pact leaders when all lines of communication between them and the starcorps went down. This happened a few minutes before the BX01 starships started to push away from Earth space. The telemetry that preceded all shipments to and from the starcorps came to a stop. The clerical communication lines that tethered the Earth and the starcorps together were silent. A flood of inquiries between low-level bureaucrats erupted immediately after this. They all wanted to know the meaning of this sudden silence. An hour later mid-level bureaucrats were collecting reports from their underlings, assembling them into a single report and passing it up to their superiors. Another hour into this quiet a report came in that all Earth ambassadors, emissaries, intermediaries and visitors aboard the BX01 starships had been evicted and were in flight back to the planet. Within seconds of hearing this, Prime Minister Eckhart issued a directive for all available space systems to track BX01 as it fell away from Earth space. It was right about this time that the transmissions from the decoy spaceships went silent as well.

Eckhart summoned for all his available ministers and his top military minds within minutes of learning that all starcorp transmissions had stopped. General Walter Gruenberg topped this list that included three other Generals. Among the ministers present for this meeting was George Wilkinson; Minister of Defense, Peter Carr; the Minister of Foreign Affairs and Ronald Kaplan; Minister of Public Works. The question that Eckhart wanted them to answer was this, what are the starcorps doing? To his frustration, they had no definitive answer. The nearest that General Gruenberg came to a credible explanation was that the starcorps were preparing for war and Mars space was their chosen battlefield. No sooner had he said this did he begin to tear down this thinking.

There was no imminent threat to the starcorps to warrant this reaction.

Given that they had the whole solar system to work with, it made no sense for the starcorps to position itself in a relatively convenient location for the space-fighters of Earth.

Mars was of no great value to the starcorps. Why would they fight to defend it?

If the starcorps were planning for a war, then it made no sense for them to take a defensive posture. Their only chance at winning it was by way of a surprise attack.

It was not until it was suggested that the starcorps could not win a war with the United Front Pact States that the group began to entertain the idea that the starcorps had a secret weapon. This thinking brought them to the question of the modifications that the starcorps had been making to their starships. This, in turn, brought them to Wilkinson’s update on that subject.

“Our engineers still don’t believe that these modifications have any offensive applications. They say that the most likely purpose behind them is to enable their starships to accelerate faster.”

“If they don’t have a military purpose then why are they spending so much time and money on these modifications?” Eckhart challenged with a flair of anger. “Since my Minister of Defense seems to be useless on this subject, does anyone else have any ideas about this?”

Wilkinson was more than a little offended by this rebuke. With a huff of breath, he slouched back in his chair, crossed his arms and sulked. He took some solace from the fact that the other members of the group appeared to be equally perplexed by the question. For a long pause, they said nothing while Eckhart scowled at each of them, one after the other. At the end of this time, Ronald Kaplan mumbled out an unfinished thought.

“They could be filling their stores with foodstuff from Mars and preparing to leave the star system altogether.”

Wilkinson was quick to scoff at that suggestion and pointed out the fallacy in it a second later.

“It would take them near to a century to reach the nearest neighboring star even with these improved engines,” Wilkinson reported in a surly tone. “The engineers tell me this would only make sense if they had a star drive.”

“Maybe that’s what they have,” Kaplan suggested without the timbre of conviction.

Kaplan was still developing this thought as he was speaking it. He understood that the mechanics of this idea was beyond the known capabilities of the starcorps. Despite this, he could not dismiss the thinking that these recent events fit within the logistics of such a plan.

Eckhart was confused by this thought. An instant behind hearing it he snapped out a question to anyone that could provide an answer.

“Is a star-drive possible?”

“The scientists say no, or at least not at the present,” Wilkinson reported with a look of tedium. “There’s only speculation about it, something about time being pliable outside of the space/time continuum. But there’s no theory on how to do this.”

“What you’re saying is that your scientist doesn’t have a theory,” Carr challenged.

Eckhart was quick to note Carr’s suggestion and turned his attention toward Kaplan a second later.

“What makes you think that the starcorps could have a star-drive?”

“I don’t know that they do,” Kaplan returned with a shrug.

This answer confused Eckhart even more. He gave Kaplan and then the room a look that said he did not know why this was being discussed. Two seconds later he got an answer to this question.

“The starcorps have some kind of X Prize,” Carr reported while searching through his memory. “I don’t recall the name they gave it. But it’s more than fifty-years old. The purpose of it was to encourage the development of a star-drive.”

“It’s the Bridge Competition,” Wilkinson educated with a hint of exasperation. “And no one has won it, yet.”

“And you know this how?” Eckhart queried with a puzzled look towards his Minister of Defense.

Eager to reaffirm his status as a valuable member of this group, Wilkinson responded to the inquiry with a hint of superiority.

“All of the Earth State Embassies inside BX01 have been keeping tabs on this competition since its inception. The competition is still running.”

Carr pondered this report for a moment and then presented an argument in opposition to it.

“It could be that’s what they want us to believe.”

Wilkinson took no objection to this challenge. In his mind, it was a second opportunity to demonstrate his expertise on the subject of the starcorps. He responded to Carr’s conjecture with a hint of an amused expression.

“The scientists and engineers that examine all of the intelligence we gather on these starship modifications say that none of it can be construed as a star-drive or a component for a star-drive. There’s no star-drive.”

The silence that followed this statement had Wilkinson convinced that he had brought all talk of a star-drive to an end. This perception lasted for only a few seconds. By the end of this time, Kaplan had pondered out another thought.

“It could be that they haven’t installed them yet?”

Wilkinson came to an immediate understanding why waiting until the last moment might make sense. He hesitated to respond to Kaplan’s conjecture so that he could think this idea through.

“If they’re preparing to leave the solar system then unveiling their star-drive is the last thing they would want to do,” Carr supported behind a moment of thought.

Wilkinson had considered the idea of the starcorps leaving the solar system and dismissed it a long time ago. All the evidence suggested that they were preparing for war. This was the assumption that all there had been working under from the beginning. After taking a moment to organize his verbiage, Wilkinson countered Carr’s argument by reminding them all of this.

“You forget the basestar. They’re not making preparations to run. They’re preparing for war. It doesn’t fit.”

Carr had no response for this, but Gruenberg did.

“Actually, it does fit,” Gruenberg interjected with a contemplative expression. “If they wanted to keep a star-drive a secret then installing them at the last moment in all their starships would be the way to do it. The last modification before launch. This would probably take some time to complete. A basestar might come in handy in a situation like that.”

Gruenberg’s face scrunched into a frown as he paused to give more thought to this thinking. A second into this his expression changed to one of comprehension as he looked to Eckhart then to Carr and back again. At the end of this he delivered his final thought on the matter with an inflection of finality.

“This is not about winning a war. This is about buying time to get away.”

Wilkinson had no retort for this. His mind struggled to find a flaw in the logic, but could not. The pieces fit together too well.

An instant after hearing this Carr concluded that this was a perfect read on the situation. He expressed this with a look of astonishment.

Eckhart absorbed this analysis with the look of a man that had just been punched in the stomach by an eight-year-old child. Suddenly it all made sense to him. From that moment on he knew exactly what he had to do. The starcorps had to be stopped, and they had to be stopped now.

Less than three hours later Eckhart was expounding on the starcorp threat to a receptive worldwide audience. He railed on their callous disregard for the suffering of the people of Earth, their greed and disdain for the planet that they come from. He accused the starcorps of having blood on their hands and of trying to lay claim to the entire solar system outside of Earth. He made repeated calls to the people of Earth to rise to the challenge and repeated promises to bring the starcorps to their knees. He spoke of the starcorps’ military buildup and insinuated that they were going to stop the shipments of foodstuff from Mars. He then accused the starcorps of preparing for war in defense of this act. The one thing he did not say anything about was his suspicion that the starcorps were leaving the system. The last thing that Eckhart wanted the people of Earth to believe was that there was a reason for them not to react. In the end, Eckhart reported that he had called the leaders of the United Front Pact States and scheduled a summit for the next day. He disclosed that the purpose of the summit was to establish a consensus on the appropriate response to the starcorp threat.

“This is no insignificant act.”

Eckhart roared out this declaration from his seat at the Perth Summit. Ninety-seven heads of state, each with their complements of aides and associates, along with the invited media and spectators, filled all one-thousand seats in a ninety-five-thousand square foot exhibit hall. The seating was positioned in the formation of a large U. The Chairperson, an ex-mayor of Perth, was situated outside of this formation at the top and center. The meeting had been going on for nearly an hour when Eckhart got his chance to speak. Enraged by Trent Chrisfield’s wait and see proposal Eckhart commenced to berate this thinking with all the intensity he could muster.

“The starcorps have positioned themselves around a food supply that is vital to Earth. They have cut off all contact with us. If they wanted to talk, they would not have severed all lines of communication. We MUST respond quickly and with overwhelming force. If we’re going to talk to them, then let it be from behind the point of a gun. We cannot afford to be slow in our response. The starcorps are, clearly, operating on a timetable that is configured to work against us. The one thing—the first thing that we must do is upset this timetable. If we wait for the starcorps to tell us their plan then we risk becoming victims of it. The time for debate has passed. Every second that our space-fighters spend on the ground is a second we can never get back!”

With this one vehement barrage, the overwhelming majority of the United Pact Leaders were won over to Eckhart’s side. The debate went on for two hours more, but there were few that were willing to dispute Eckhart’s reasoning. Most echoed his call for action. At the end of this time, a vote was taken. A resolution to confront and, if need be, engage the starcorps was passed with only three dissenting votes. Eckhart had his armada. Less than a day later thirty-eight-hundred and seventy-three space-fighters, thirty-two-thousand crewmen, two civilian scientists, three civilian engineers and six politicians, were falling towards Mars. Eckhart, Wilkinson, Carr, and Kaplan were among the six.