Gravity Wars: Extinction Orbit by Vaughn Heppner

Author:Vaughn Heppner [Heppner, Vaughn]
Language: eng
Format: epub, azw3, mobi
Published: 2024-10-07T00:00:00+00:00

-18-

Nestled within the thick atmosphere and methane seas of Saturn’s largest moon, Titan, contained a concealed chamber deep within the colony. There, Security Chief Vaul prepared an encrypted message, dispatching it himself.

The signal took four hours, eight minutes, and nineteen seconds to reach the automated space station in low Neptune orbit. Once the Master AI decoded the encryption, the command was clear and straightforward: eliminate the Sentinel 9 robot on Triton and erase all evidence of the ancient discovery and of the erasure.

The AI activated its highest-level security protocols. Deep in the hangar bays, hunter-killer drones awaited its orders.

The station AI programmed the Wasp 01 and 02 drones. These drones were half the size of those that had pushed the asteroids out of Saturn’s rings.

As the clamps released, the drones detached from the hangar deck. Lights blinked red on each. The cigar-shaped craft looked more like big missiles than drones.

A bay door opened.

The two drones slid through into space. The drone AIs plotted the course, calculating the optimal approach, constantly adjusting for the gravitational pull of Neptune and its moons.

The gas giant had a churning, deep blue atmosphere, with swirling clouds hinting at raging storms beneath. There was a Great Dark Spot the size of Earth, and the planet boasted icy rings, much smaller and fainter than Saturn’s rings.

As the drones pulled away, increasing their distance from the gas giant’s gravitational pull, the moon Triton came into view, a world of desolate cold. The surface was a mass of frozen nitrogen and water ice, broken by jagged cliffs and cryovolcanoes that occasionally erupted, sending plumes of icy particles into the thin atmosphere. The moonscape was illuminated by the bluish glow of Neptune.

The drones’ sensors locked onto the signal emitted by Sentinel 9, the robot’s operations visible as a series of faint blips on the monitoring systems.

Sentinel 9 was stationed near a crevasse, its instruments still analyzing the frozen human figure it had uncovered.

The missile bay doors of drones 01 and 02 opened. A long, gleaming missile lowered into view in each bay. These were no ordinary weapons. The outer shells of the missiles were composed of a composite alloy, designed to withstand extreme conditions and penetrate deep into the target.

Inside, the warheads were primed with Kill-strike technology. Each missile housed a dual-stage warhead: the first stage was a high-velocity kinetic penetrator, capable of piercing through thick ice and robust structures. The second stage was a thermobaric explosive, engineered to create an immense overpressure wave, incinerating everything within a large radius.

As the drones drew closer, they adjusted their trajectories, ensuring the missiles would strike with pinpoint accuracy. The AIs attempted to calculate for every variable—the thin atmosphere, the icy surface, and the exact location of Sentinel 9.

Without warning, the missiles launched. They left the drones and streaked through the thin atmosphere, leaving trails of vapor in their wake. The first missile struck the ice near Sentinel 9 with a terrible impact, the kinetic penetrator burrowing deep into the frozen ground before detonating.

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