Latent Flaw: Xenophobia Series - Book 2 by Andreas Karpf

Author:Andreas Karpf [Karpf, Andreas]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2022-08-09T06:00:00+00:00

Chapter 14

Jack felt as if he were floating among the countless stars that lay before him. Though he had experienced it many times, Alpha’s synthetic view of what lay outside was still unnervingly real – to the point that he felt defenseless and exposed. He held up his hand in front of him and wondered for a moment if he was actually seeing it or if it was simply a simulation projected on top of his view of open space. The sight of his bare skin in the vacuum said it didn’t really matter; the scene was simply too unreal to be worth analyzing. He simply chose to accept the fact that he was safely encased in an alien shuttle and said, “Display L2 debris and target locations.”

A faint, wispy sheet of shimmering yellow fog appeared, overlaying most of the stars before him. Barely a second later, three small, bright-green circles materialized, spaced evenly throughout the mist. Jack pointed to the one furthest to his right and instantly moved toward it with unnatural speed. The fog enveloped him and revealed itself to be a myriad of tiny yellow-highlighted specks – the debris from L2. The nearest particles transformed into ephemeral streaks as he sped past them. Despite the motion, the silent scene felt benign and peaceful until he swerved sharply to his left to avoid a larger metal fragment. It was a jagged piece of aluminum that retained enough of its original shape for him to recognize it as the detached skin of a destroyed crew module.

His approach slowed as suddenly as it had begun, and he found himself floating among the glass and metal shards of the former space station. Their shapes were random, though here he could tell that most were remnants of solar panels. The black and gold pieces rotated haphazardly, causing them to randomly reflect the surrounding scene and sparkle in the sunlight.

A voice interrupted the silence. “Captain, you should deploy the first of the explosives here.”

“Thank you, Alpha,” Jack answered. The task was as elementary as it could get. He simply pointed at the green circle hovering in a gap in the debris and said, “Deploy package one here.” A pair of translucent, one-meter wide, golden sheets floated into view from beneath him. They curved slightly inward, were separated by about a centimeter, and held in place at the top and bottom by thin silver rods. It was difficult to think of it as an explosive; however, its yield would be equivalent to several kilotons of TNT. Each sheet was only a few billionths of a meter thick. The front one was comprised of a solidified form of hydrogen; the rear was antihydrogen. Alpha had explained that when the command was given, the two sheets would be propelled together with perfect symmetry, yielding a gamma-ray burst so short that human instruments wouldn’t see it. The resulting force, however, would send a small number of particles hurtling outward – two of which would strike the surface within centimeters Copernicus base’s modules.

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