-4-
I never made it to the big council meeting between all the major players in Star Force. I regretted this later because it would have been good to show them all that I was back and in charge of myself again. But it just wasn’t in cards.
Immediately after Marvin told me about the strange structure forming on Eden-11, I ordered heavy probing of the planet’s thick atmosphere. Like most gas giants, it was a mix of hydrogen, methane and other compounds. We’d never directly seen a solid or liquid core, but we suspected there was one. Marvin’s readings indicated there was something down there, on the “surface”, which was growing unnaturally large. The conclusion that it was artificial seemed inescapable.
We didn’t have to wait long before new data came in. Perhaps our probing triggered the events that transpired next, I really don’t know. But what I do know is that in the depths of their soupy world the massive contact began to stir.
The moment I heard the contact had shifted position slightly, I called an all-hands and ordered the Gatre and two of her sister ships to fly toward Eden-11, the Blues’ homeworld. By the time everyone started obeying those orders, the thing on Eden-11 was moving faster, rising up slowly out of ten thousand miles of atmosphere.
“Colonel?” Captain Sarin called as she pressed her way through the smart metal hatch and stepped on to the bridge. She crossed the deck to the command table. “Why are we making a maneuver in the middle of the night shift? I like to be informed when drills are being executed.”
“This is no drill,” I told her without taking my eyes from the table.
I zoomed in the perspective and isolated the object itself with spreading motions of my fingers.
“Tell me Captain, what do you make of that?” I asked her.
She examined it briefly. “It’s some kind of satellite. An asteroid or small moon. What’s it doing? Which planet is it orbiting?”
“None of them. It is, in fact, lifting off from the surface of Eden-11.”
I backed up the perspective so the entire sphere of the Blues’ homeworld was visible. The ship—if that’s what it was—took up a relatively tiny portion of the massive disk representing the gas giant. But the fact it was big enough to be distinguishable at all when the entirety of its huge mother planet was onscreen was alarming.
“That can’t be happening,” she said.
I looked at her, and her big brown eyes were as wide as I’ve ever seen them. Her smart cloth uniform was not quite all the way on yet, and I could see her left shoulder under her flowing hair. Usually, she kept her hair tied up and her arms covered professionally while on the command deck, but I didn’t think now was the time to bring up regs. She’d rushed right out of bed to the command deck when she’d heard I was giving her crew flight orders without advising her.
I reached out and tapped the smart cloth over her shoulder, and her uniform sealed itself, covering her skin. I turned back to the images on the command table.
“It’s a ship,” I said. “There’s no other explanation. I suspect that it’s lifting off in reaction to our probing and increased scrutiny.”
“It’s too big to be a ship.”
“We look big to ants. Size is all a matter of perspective. When under low atmospheric pressures, an individual Blue can be a mile or more across. In order to accommodate such a crew, they appear to have decided to go big.”
“May I interject, Colonel?” asked Marvin. He came closer, his tentacles all aflutter. I hadn’t seen him this excited since he’d asked me permission to resurrect Sandra.
“Go ahead, Marvin.”
“This vessel might not have a living crew. The Nano ships indicated in the past the Blues didn’t want to leave their natural habitat.”
I put up a finger. “But that was because they were under an agreement with the Macros to stay on their homeworld. They stayed there because they didn’t want to start a war. At this point, there are no Macros watching them.”
“An important tidbit,” Marvin said, “but we don’t really know why they’ve never gone into space personally. After all, they built not one but two species of robot to explore the cosmos in their stead. That seems to be a powerful aversion to spaceflight.”
“All right, I grant you all that. We don’t know they’re personally flying this moon-sized ship. What’s your point?”
“What if they’ve developed a third species of inorganic being to man this vessel?”
I stared at him, and Captain Sarin joined me, sharing my shocked reaction. I couldn’t argue with him—it was a possibility. Jasmine and I took a second to absorb this grim thought. Marvin seemed excited about it, but we were horrified. The Nanos and the Macros had both been invented by the Blues, and they’d caused no end of trouble for Earth and many other worlds.
“Given their track record on the topic of creating artificially intelligent crews,” I said, “I seriously hope they didn’t take that course again. But I thank you for voicing this disturbing thought.”
“No thanks are necessary. If, however, I should be proven right…I would like to be given the chance to interact with the new form of machine life. I’ve met numerous biotic species, but my own kind seem to be relatively rare.”
Jasmine cast me a dark look that indicated she didn’t think it would be a good idea, but I didn’t respond to her expression. Instead, I nodded to Marvin. “You’ll be front and center when it comes to talking to that ship, regardless of who’s flying it.”
Marvin churned away happily to check more of his specialized instrumentation. New reports were being processed and transmitted to us by our sensory systems in orbit over Eden-11 every minute. Although we’d always had difficulty examining what was going on down in the depths of the gas giant, we’d set up a large number of orbital probes to scan anything that came near the surface.
“What if he’s right, Colonel Riggs?” Jasmine asked me.
I shrugged. “Then we’ll either talk our way out of a fight, or destroy this new monstrosity. We’ve defeated two machine races. A third won’t change the situation.”
I said this loudly, and with absolute confidence. Internally, I was far less certain. I really hoped that ship was full of talkative cloud-people rather than some kind of new, nightmarish machine.
Really, the more I thought about it, the more I should have expected the Blues to come up with something like this. After all, they’d built the Macros and the Nanos and had to have spaceships to get them into orbit. Those accomplishments demonstrated an amazing technological capability. No matter who was manning that ship, I had to assume the vessel could wield vast firepower.
“How long until we reach Eden-11?” I asked the lieutenant manning the helm.
“We’ll have three carriers there with a full complement within four hours, sir.”
“Okay then, Marvin, could you stop fooling with that and help me translate?”
Reluctantly, the robot left his instruments and came nearer.
“The reports are fascinating Colonel Riggs,” he said. “There’s armament aboard the ship, that much is clear, but I don’t recognize the variety. Something big, with a nozzle—or maybe it’s a projector—at each of the moon’s poles.”
“The moon’s poles? I thought you said it was a ship.”
“The composition of the vehicle is largely silicon-based. Since it is made of rock and its big enough to have a significant gravitational pull of its own, I believe it qualifies as both a celestial body and a spacecraft.”
I grunted. If we did have to tangle with this thing, the matter couldn’t end well. It outweighed my four carriers significantly.
“How much displacement are we talking, here?” I asked.
“Difficult to say. But I would hazard to guess the vessel outweighs our fleet by a thousand to one.”
“All four of our carriers? A thousand to one?”
“No sir, I mean all the ships in Star Force put together.”
I stared at the moon-ship, which we’d decided to call Phobos. I typed the tag in on the flashing contact as it exited the atmosphere and rose up into space.
“What kind of propulsion does it have?”
“I can’t measure any appreciable energy expenditure,” Marvin said, his tentacles rasping on the command consoles. “There is a considerable amount of disruption in the upper cloud layers of Eden-11, however.”
I could see that for myself. There was something of a divot in the top layer of the planet—like a depression that was slowly filling back in. I wasn’t up on my fluid mechanics, but I had to assume that the ship’s passage through the thick air had disturbed it.
“Velocity?”
“Approximately thirty-six thousand miles per hour now and accelerating steadily.”
I frowned. Any normal type of propulsion system would require some kind of released energy. But this ship didn’t appear to have any engines, and there was no exhaust—nothing.
“I don’t like this at all,” I said. “It’s bigger than our entire fleet and we don’t even know how it flies. We have to assume it can blow us from the sky if it wants to.”
“In that case, maybe we should try diplomacy, Colonel?” Captain Sarin suggested.
“That’s why the best translation robot in the known universe is right here. Ready a transmission to the Blues, Marvin.”
“Ready.”
“Do not transmit until I give you that specific order, do you have that Marvin?”
“Understood. Standing by.”
“Record this,” I said, then cleared my throat. “Blues, this is Colonel Kyle Riggs, the commander of Star Force. We’ve had peaceful contact with your species on several occasions, but we’ve also had encounters that were less pleasant. I would like to hear your explanation for the large ship rising up out of your atmosphere. We had an agreement that you would stay on your planet and not attempt to contact the machines.”
I turned to Marvin. “Stop recording. Do you have that?”
“Yes.”
“When you transmit, can you make it appear it isn’t coming from this ship? I don’t want them to pinpoint our command vessel.”
“Done.”
“All right, send it.”
Marvin did so, and we all waited. It was a long wait as we were about ten light minutes from Eden-11. The message had to travel there, the Blues had to generate a response, and then that message had to crawl back. I figured we’d hear something within a half-hour.
In the meantime, Phobos rose up completely out of the atmosphere but didn’t park itself into orbit. Instead the big ship kept coming.
I frowned, studying the data. “What’s the escape velocity of that gas giant?”
“About five times as great as Earth, sir,” Marvin answered promptly.
“But that ship isn’t moving that fast. It’s accelerating straight up and up, but not going fast enough.”
“With enough power, you can blast away from any world at any rate of speed.”
My concerns deepened. What was the vessel capable of? Was attacking it suicidal? I had no idea. I didn’t even know if it was going to attack us if we did nothing or if we could even hope to damage it if we struck first. I began to feel hot in my flight suit.
“Sound battle stations,” I said, “and get everyone into a vac suit. If you have full battle gear—put it on. Oh, and get ready to scramble the fighters.”
Sarin stared at me for a moment. “We can’t be in range yet, sir.”
“Probably not. We’re just taking precautions.”
“But if we send out the fighters, won’t that look like an aggressive move to them?”
“I don’t know, and I don’t give a damn. I want them out buzzing around for any contingency. Personally, I doubt they know much about carriers and fighters, anyway. They’re unlikely to see the move as aggressive.”
She relayed the orders. Klaxons rang, and people scrambled over the decking getting their kits in order. The lights changed, dimming and gaining a reddish tint.
“It’s been nearly half an hour,” I said a few minutes later. “Any response from the Blues yet? Even a blip?”
“Nothing, Colonel.”
“Do we even know if they received the message?”
“The transmission was sent using their own language and utilized channels known to work in the past.”
I stared at the command table, fuming. Damn these gas-bags. They always made me sweat. They often didn’t answer any signals until forced to. In the past, I’d bombed them to get an answer. I didn’t have that sort of option today. I didn’t want to appear as if I was threatening their homeworld.
“They’ve changed everything with this move,” Jasmine said next to me. She’d been standing there quietly for quite a while.
“What do you mean?”
“They built a fleet. Or at least one monster ship. Now we have to give them respect. We can’t just order them around because today they have the power to strike at us.”
I guessed she was right, but I didn’t like it. I glared at the screen. The situation could very easily get out of hand. I’d ordered my tactical teams to come up with a strike plan against Phobos, but they weren’t having much luck.
When dealing with alien ships in the past, we’d targeted either their engines or their weaponry. With this vessel, we were having trouble even identifying a target. There were protrusions at the poles as well as other, smaller structures here and there on the surface, but I had no idea if these represented vital systems we could knock out.
I finally voiced my thoughts and frustrations. “Hell, for all we know this is a colony ship. Or a freighter full of merchandise to trade.”
“Do you really think that’s a possibility, Colonel?” Marvin asked.
“No,” I admitted. “But we just don’t know. Marvin, we’re going to send a second message. This one will be more diplomatic.”
“Ready.”
“Same deal as before, don’t transmit until I give you the command, and make it look like it came from someplace else.”
“Still ready.”
I glanced at him sidelong. Sometimes I wondered if he was a smart-ass or a straight-man. I supposed it was a little of both.
“Blues, friends, comrades,” I began. Several people perked up and looked at me in surprise. I did my best to avoid eye contact with them. I didn’t want them to distract me from my speech. “In the name of friendship, I ask you to respond. We’re willing to discuss new terms. We wish to change the nature of our relationship with your people and come to a new understanding between our two peoples.”
I glanced at Marvin. “Did you get that?”
“Ready to transmit.”
“Do it.”
“Message sent.”
The next half hour was worse than the first one. They’d ignored my first message entirely, and we were getting closer by the second. How much range did they have? Was this a battle or a misunderstanding?
“We could fire missiles, Colonel,” Sarin said.
“I know that. But that is a very clear attack. Words of peace followed by a flock of missiles? I know where that will end. With one side or the other destroyed.”
“Yes sir, but they aren’t talking, and we’re reaching what I’ve calculated to be their maximum possible range.”
I frowned and went over her figures. I scoffed at the numbers. “That can’t be. Millions of miles? What kind of laser is effective and focused at that range? To the best of my knowledge, these people are blind and might not even understand optics.”
“I doubt there is any region of basic science they have not mastered,” she argued. “A laser would not have to be focused precisely if it was powerful enough. The beam could be as big as this entire vessel and still vaporize us if it was fired with sufficient power.”
I shook my head. She was right mathematically, but I didn’t think the Blues would use lasers. After all, their natural environment didn’t permit vision of any kind. Beams of intense light wouldn’t be natural weapons for them.
“I’ve been down there on their world,” I told her, “It’s as dark and dense as a sandstorm at the bottom of an ocean. How would you even test a long range optical weapon in such an environment? They would have to have come up into orbit to fire it, and we would have seen it months ago.”
“I’m just being cautious and looking after my ship.”
I couldn’t fault her for that. Ten more minutes passed, and I became antsy again. There was only time enough left for one more transmission and response before our two paths crossed.
“Marvin, prepare—”
“Excuse me, sir,” he said. “I’m detecting an energy surge—”
“Kyle, look!”
We saw it on the command screens first. One of our four carriers winked out—or rather, it rapidly reduced in size to a blip no bigger than a gunship. The new configuration was misshapen and irregular. It looked like a wad of gum someone had chewed and spat out on the sidewalk.
“Emergency evasion!” Captain Sarin screamed. “Ready all missile tubes, scramble all reserve fighters, transmit e-code delta-delta to Shadowguard!”
I stood beside her, but didn’t interfere, she was listing off every emergency command she had on the books. That was the right thing to do, and I wasn’t going to second guess any of them.
“They just destroyed Defiant,” she said, still in shock.
“Is that confirmed?” I asked.
“Yes,” Marvin said brightly. None of our stress or dismay was evident in his voice. “The carrier Defiant is now reduced in composition and size, but not in total mass.”
“What’re you saying?” I demanded. “Didn’t they blow it up?”
“No sir. They appear to have crushed it somehow. It is now flat and crumpled. The alloys are fused, and although there are secondary explosions, the central mass seems stable now. I expect no survivors will be found.”
“No kidding,” I said. “Marvin, when I told you to hide the source of my transmissions, what did you do?”
“I relayed them through Defiant, sir,” he said brightly.
I nodded. “That’s what I thought.”
-5-
The next few minutes were like a mass panic. We scrambled every fighter we had and threw every emergency plan into action.
Black metallic tentacles sprouted from the smart metal decking and entwined themselves around our legs. More came down from the ceiling and ensnared our upper bodies. They were programmed to let us move as freely as possible, but the end result was like moving around with car restraints all over you—restraints that had peculiar ideas about what they should let you do.
I let Sarin do her thing. In this action, I couldn’t use her as my exec for the overall battle. As I watched she moved to another station where she could manage her ships and her fighters. As the captain of Gatre, her first responsibility was to her own vessel. At the same time, she was operating as the ship’s CAG, which seemed like more than enough.
In her place stood Marvin and a few staffers at the central command table. The holotank hanging above it was full of contacts. All the missiles and ships were green because they were all ours—except for one big spherical mass the size of a baseball. It was red now, having been reclassified as an enemy target.
“Where’s Miklos?” I asked. “Was he on Defiant when it was hit?”
“Negative sir,” Marvin answered. “The Commodore is attempting to communicate with me right now.”
“Patch him through to me.”
There was a squawk and a few beeps, then a crackling sound. “Miklos? Do you read me? This is Colonel—”
“Yes sir, loud and clear.”
“Good. Did you escape the Defiant? If so, what hit you?”
“I’ve got no clue, sir. I was flying a pinnace between Defiant and your ship when the enemy struck us.”
I wanted to ask him why he was doing that, but I simply didn’t have time. I was very glad he had survived. He was the commander of the Defiant, but that didn’t mean he had to die with her. I valued him as my second in command more than the ship itself…well, almost.
“Well then, get aboard and come to the command deck. We’ve got a very hard battle ahead of us.”
“Sir, I think that would be a mistake.”
“What would be a mistake? Talk quickly and plainly, Commodore, we’re under fire here.”
“Yes sir. I don’t think we can fight them. We aren’t even in range to strike yet. If we launch every missile and fighter we have left, they wouldn’t even notice for twenty minutes.”
He was right. My carriers didn’t have heavy, long-range guns. They had a few cannons for aerial bombardment but nothing that was going to effective against a target as big as a moon.
“But what choice do we have, Commodore? If we get in close enough and attack, maybe we’ll win. If they kill us before that, well, then it’s over anyway.”
“We can run, sir.”
I frowned, looking at the boards. I shook my head. “I don’t think so. Have you looked at the tactical situation?”
“Yes, and I still say it’s our only option. Every second we spend closing with them is a second we could better use trying to escape.”
I gritted my teeth and tried to think. Around me, a dozen voices were shouting at once. The klaxons kept blaring until I ordered them shut off. I figured everyone had gotten the point by now, and they weren’t doing anything other than giving me a headache.
“We can’t reverse course, our speed is too great.”
Miklos tapped my arm. I startled, then smiled. I clapped him on the shoulder, making him stagger back a step. He’d been on his com-link, but had managed to reach me during the conversation.
“Glad to see you make it out of that mess alive, Commodore. Step into my office and use the screens to show me what you’re thinking.”
Miklos still had his vac suit sealed. He had to struggle out of it and I saw frost inside the helmet. Maybe his escape had been closer than he’d indicated. We didn’t have time for chatting about it so I let him do his job.
“We can’t turn around due to inertia, but we can veer off at an angle,” he said, running a finger in an arc across the screen. The brainboxes immediately interpreted his gesture and plotted a theoretical course with many slight corrections of their own. I watched as he directed our ships toward the homeworld of the Blues, right past the enemy fleet.
“Why do you want to head that way? To convince them we’re on an attack run? Or maybe you want us to threaten to bomb their world?”
“Possibly sir, but really I wanted to achieve maximum velocity. If we head for their planet, we’ll get the added benefit of the extreme gravitational forces exerted by Eden-11 to increase our speed. We can then slingshot around it, changing course rapidly by using the gravity again, and make good our escape. We can choose practically any destination we want, and they won’t know where we’re going until we break orbit.”
I nodded. “We’ll do both. I want our fighters to head at them in a loose cloud formation. They’ll do a passing run then rejoin us in orbit over Eden-11.”
“Is that wise, sir? That will end any chance of achieving a ceasefire with them.”
“Take a look around, Miklos. They aren’t even answering my transmissions. They have no interest in peace, and that won’t change as long as they think they have the upper hand. Besides, I’m hoping they might shoot at the fighters instead of taking out the rest of the motherships. Execute the plan.”
Miklos didn’t hesitate further. He turned and began shouting to every navigator present, and they tapped their screens to set the course. Soon, the ship was shaking and we all began sliding toward the aft bulkhead. I had three or four lateral Gs on me within thirty seconds, and it kept building. For the first time since the crisis had started, I was glad my feet were wrapped up by metal vines.
Once our course was established, we had a bit more time to breathe. I didn’t feel relaxed by any stretch of the imagination, however. At any moment that ship could reach out and snuff another of my best vessels.
“What was that weapon? Any theories?”
Marvin’s tentacles did a dance in response. “I have several, sir.”
“Give me the most likely one.”
“They have developed a weapon beyond our science and employed it in such a way as to leave no traces as to its origins.”
I rolled my eyes. “That’s obvious, Marvin. What I want is speculation as to the nature of said weapon. Are there any trace radiation readings? Any chemical signatures? Anything at all?”
“I believe my initial statement clearly indicated we don’t have that data.”
I turned away from Marvin in frustration. Sometimes his precision was irritating. This was one of those times. “Has anyone thought to ping that wreck? What have we got?”
The staffers gave me startled looks in return.
“People, pull it together. Someone should be out there in a vac suit by now, looking for survivors and taking samples. We have to know what we’re up against.”
I reached out and grabbed an ensign by a handful of his smart-cloth suit. I pointed toward the airlock. “Get to the Commodore’s pinnace, fly out to the wreck and report what you find. Take an instrument kit and a sensor box.”
“Both of those items are already aboard my pinnace, sir,” Miklos said helpfully.
The startled ensign looked at both of us with wide eyes. He found no comfort in either of our faces. He seemed too stunned to reply.
I decided to help him get moving. I lifted him with one hand until his boots were clear of the floor. The tentacles that were responsible for his feet were upset about that, and tugged to pull him back down.
“Sir?” he asked, as if dazed, “how will I get back? We’re accelerating away from the wreck on an angular course.”
I ripped him loose from the tentacles and propelled him toward the exit. He had the presence of mind to put his hands out in front of him before he hit the hatch, which turned to liquid at his touch.
“Someone will pick you up later,” I called after him. “Be happy, Ensign. You might be Gatre’s sole survivor today.”
As he drifted out of the chamber and into the airlock, he didn’t look happy. But sometimes I’m not good at reading people’s expressions.
“Sir?” Marvin said at my side. I felt his tentacles tapping and rasping at my suit.
I turned on him, glowering. “What have you got?”
“I believe we were just hit again.”
That got my full attention. I scanned the carriers and did a quick count. There were still five. I zoomed in on several in turn, examining their mass and their readings.
“I think you’re wrong about that, Marvin,” I said in relief. “Every vessel is accounted for and showing green.”
“I’m not talking about the carriers, Colonel.”
I suddenly understood. A second later Jasmine reported in.
“We just lost three fighters from 2nd Squadron. They were mine, Colonel.”
I nodded in sudden understanding. Really, this was good news. If they wasted shots against our fighters when they could take out an entire carrier with one hit, we were winning—well, at least we would last longer.
“Sir, I’m ordering my fighters to spread out farther.”
“Belay that, Jasmine.”
There was a moment of quiet, then a private channel request began blinking. I hesitated, then took the call.
It was Captain Jasmine Sarin, naturally. She was calling me privately, even though we were only a few feet apart. It was a technique we employed when we didn’t want our underlings to see us arguing in public.
“What are you doing, Kyle?” she demanded. “If I spread them out, they might only get one fighter with their next shot. Why risk more?”
“Because I want them to keep shooting at fighters, not our big ships. It’s grim, Jasmine, but that is the calculus of war. We only have three carriers left in this task force and I need them all.”
“So my fighter pilots are just out there to bait the enemy?”
“If all goes well and they don’t get any smarter, yes. Riggs out.”
I disconnected and turned back to Miklos. He nodded to me.
“You had no choice, Colonel,” he said. “If we make the fighters harder targets we could be cutting our own throats.”
“Do you have a timing interval between the first strike and the second?”
“I do, Colonel,” chimed in Marvin. “My best estimate is nine minutes and seven seconds. This interval may change as we close with the enemy. I can’t estimate the variation until I know more about the nature of the weapon system.”
“Nine minutes,” I said thoughtfully. “That’s a long time. That’s excellent news, in fact. I surmise from this data they have a very powerful, long-range weapon, but it has a serious weakness: a slow rate of fire.”
“I would agree with that assessment, sir.”
I turned back to the boards, thinking hard. We would be past them in roughly twenty nine minutes. Time enough for three more shots.
“When will the fighters hit them?” I asked.
“In approximately two minutes,” Marvin answered.
“Any sign of enemy point-defense fire? Any smaller weapons at all?”
“Not yet, sir.”
It was hard not to order the fighters to spread out on their final attack run. I couldn’t be sure if I was sacrificing them needlessly. But such decisions were the bane of all commanders in a tough fight. In the end, I knew I had to play it safe. The enemy had already struck us a grievous blow, and I intended to get out of this without suffering a second crippling strike if at all possible. In the end, fighters were much easier to replace than an entire carrier.
The minutes crawled by while we all watched the screens, staring until our eyes stung before daring to blink.
We were running, and I didn’t like that, but I didn’t see any better options. The enemy looked invincible. When faced with an overwhelming force, the only sane choice was to withdraw and study the target, hoping to find a weakness. We’d been surprised, and we had no plan and no real data on which to base a plan. Running was the only thing that made sense.
But my fighter pilots didn’t know that. As far as they were concerned, they’d been tasked with taking out a moon that was for all intents and purposes a flying wall of solid rock. I didn’t envy their situation. But I didn’t know how to help them.
“Two fighters more were just taken out—the ships were from the 6th Squadron,” Miklos reported.
“The interval has reduced, but it is still lengthy,” Marvin said. “I think the weapon may be limited to the speed of light, Colonel. That may explain why it hit us sooner this time.”
“Well, at least we’ve got that going for us,” I said.
My carriers were now passing the big rock and hurtling toward Eden-11. Soon, we would be out of their range. I began, for the very first time, to feel a tiny relaxation in my belly. It was a small thing really, just enough to realize that I’d been clenching up my guts for nearly half an hour now. My muscles ached from the tension. I wanted to rub my neck, but my helmet was in the way.
“Sir? The fighters have almost reached the target. The pilots are reporting a variation in the enemy ship’s attitude.”
“What’s it doing?”
“Uh, rotating sir. It’s coming around—to face us.”
“Emergency evasive procedures!” I roared. “All carriers, assume incoming fire is imminent.”
“It hasn’t been anything like nine minutes,” Miklos argued.
The ship was rolling and shaking at this point. Both of us clung to our table, and our bodies were whipped about. We must have looked like trees in a hurricane.
“We’re a lot closer than we were last time,” I told him. “That may shortened the timespan required to cycle their weapons.”
“You think they’ve decided to ignore the fighters?”
“Wouldn’t you? It only makes sense to worry first about the big ships heading toward your homeworld.”
“I see. Orders sir?”
“Fire our missiles. All of them. Target the structures at the poles. Maybe that will do something.”
Up until this moment, we’d held onto our limited supply of nuclear missiles. We had sixteen of them on each carrier. At first, I hadn’t given the order to fire them because we didn’t have a clear target. Later, I’d held back because I wanted the enemy to go for the fighters instead of our motherships. Now, it seemed to me I was in a use-it-or-lose-it situation.
I felt the vessel shudder as the missiles left their tubes. They fired in rapid succession. I hoped they’d do some good when they struck home.
There was a short interval then during which nothing happened. Gatre was still twisting and jerking from side to side. But there was no evidence of a strike against us, not yet.
Then, with no warning whatsoever, another carrier was hit.
“Hit confirmed. It was Excelsior this time, Colonel.”
I nodded to Miklos and he brought the data up on the screen. Looking at the ship, I didn’t see the damage at first. Unlike Defiant, it wasn’t a total loss. The ship hadn’t been crushed like a beer can. Could the enemy weapon—whatever it was—be weakening?
But then Miklos rotated the view and the secondary explosions became apparent aboard Excelsior. A hole gaped in the aft region of the hull.
“It looks like a shark has taken a huge bite out of Excelsior’s ass,” I said.
“Exactly what I was thinking, sir. I think our evasion had some effect. It was not a perfect hit.”
“Either our evasion, or the reduced timeframe. Maybe it takes them nine minutes to stoke up to a full charge with their system. Maybe if they fire it faster, it is less effective—or less accurate.
“It might be that. In any case, less than a third of the ship has been crushed.”
“That’s enough to cripple any vessel. Unless I’m mistaken, the engines are in that aft third.”
“Confirmed. The engines are gone and the ship is disabled, but what’s left is holding together and many of the crew may have survived.”
I wasn’t so sure about that, but I didn’t argue. I decided to let people believe they might survive this terror weapon if we took a hit. It might make them feel less helpless. But I was beginning to think this weapon did something to distort the fabric of matter in a localized area, and if that was the nature of it, human tissue was a lot softer than a ship’s steel hull. The ship might be left partly intact while the entire crew died.
“Sir, course corrections on Phobos,” Miklos said. “The ship is coming about and reducing speed. It is now heading in the precisely opposite direction it was traveling before.”
I nodded. “Reversing course and flying back home, eh? That makes sense. At least we know they can think rationally. Maybe we can use that to our advantage.”
Miklos gave me an odd look that I ignored. I knew he didn’t like the idea of threatening another biotic species’ homeworld. In the past, we’d bombed Eden-11 briefly to get them to cooperate. Possibly, this time things would go even more badly for the Blues back home.
Before Phobos could take another shot at us, the fighters made their run. The tiny ships had been forced to reduce speed in order to make an effective attack. If they’d just flashed by at a million miles an hour, there would have been little point to the attack. They’d been decelerating, and therefore reached the big ship after we’d already passed by.
We watched as the four squadrons of fighters, nearly a hundred craft in all, flashed over the rocky exterior. It looked for all the world as if they were attacking a moon or an asteroid. The surface was dusty, barren stone. We watched with unblinking intensity as they fired beams and what ballistic weapon they had against the behemoth, focusing on the strange superstructures which were mounted at either poll.
They kicked up a lot of dust and looked impressive, but I got the impression they weren’t doing much effective damage. The superstructure was still there after they’d passed by.
Our own ships were leaving them behind. We’d passed the enemy laterally and were now heading toward Eden-11 while Phobos was still flying away from it.
“Are they taking any flak?” I asked.
“Negative, sir,” Miklos said. “The enemy seems to be ignoring them.”
“I’m not surprised. They look like gnats annoying an elephant. Have them spiral around and hit again. This time, they can use their bombs.”
We’d held in reserve a small cache of fission weaponry for bombing runs. Normally, that sort of weapon would be unwieldy and overkill when attacking a ship. But this ship was the size of a planet, and so it needed to be treated like one.
“They are low on fuel, sir,” Miklos cautioned me.
“Yeah, and I’m low on ships. One more run, bombs hot.”
He nodded and the orders were given. The tactical display shifted as we watched. The fighters looped out and away, and then swept back toward Phobos. This time, explosions blossomed from the surface so thickly it was nearly hidden from view.
I smiled, at last impressed. “That should get their attention.”
“I’m getting an energy reading, sir…” Marvin said suddenly. “Something coming from the enemy ship.”
“Have you seen this before?”
“Only an echo of it, before the big weapon fired. And also, of course, back on Eden-11.”
“You’ve never said anything about an energy surge.”
“You never asked about it.”
I glared at him for a second. I was going to have to have a full debriefing from Marvin on exactly what he’d known and when. One of the troubles humans had when dealing with him was his tendency to withhold information. To this day, I was never sure if he did it to keep secrets or because he honestly didn’t know what we would be interested in.
I looked back to the tactical display, frowning.
“Pull them out of there,” I said, “get my fighters away from that moon.”
Miklos didn’t hesitate or argue with that order. Soon, a river of silver fish zoomed away from Phobos in a rush.
They didn’t make it far. From our point of view, it looked like Phobos shimmered. One second it was shrouded in plumes of dust and escaping fighters, and the next moment there was an odd waver, as if the camera were shooting the scene through a heat shimmer on a hot summer highway.
The contacts, which were green triangles on the screen, winked out by the dozen. I could see it, a wave emanating from Phobos, in the form of dying fighters.
“Sir, I…” began Miklos, but he trailed off. His voice sounded ragged.
All over the command deck there were sighs and gasps. I stared at the screen, feeling sick inside.
“Let me guess,” I said, “They were crushed. Are there any craft still transponding? Are there any survivors?”
“Yes sir—nineteen of them made it out, sir.”
I nodded. “So it has a second weapon. Something with a much wider area of effect. But this weapon has a shorter range. It looks like it extends a hundred miles or more from the surface of Phobos. They can reach out and destroy everything that’s close all at once. That’s just grand.”
“Colonel?” Marvin called for my attention.
I looked at him wearily. I’d just lost half my fighters and half my motherships. We’d been crushed in this battle, if one could even call it a “battle”.
“What is it?”
“There is a piece of good news. I estimate our motherships are now out of range of the enemy. Due to the combined velocities and widely varied course of our two fleets, they will not have time to recharge their long-range weapon. We’ve escaped.”
“That’s great. How long until our missiles hit them?”
“About three minutes.”
We all watched tensely until the flock of missiles reached the enemy moon. At the last possible second, the field rose up again and batted down the nearest half.
“Signal all the remaining missiles to detonate. Maybe the shockwave will shake them up a bit.”
Far from effective range, the missiles self-destructed, blossoming like a hundred tiny pinpoints of brilliant light. I saw Phobos blow through the radioactive cloud they left behind as if it was nothing.
I sighed and withdrew from the command table. I took my place in a crash seat, brooding. The command center was quiet and somber. The battle had been depressing. We’d lost a lot of good people and about half the task force hardware. In fact, counting everything Star Force had, we were down by ten percent after a single engagement.
Captain Sarin approached me as I sat and stared.
“Kyle, we’ve faced new enemies before.”
I looked at her, becoming aware of her presence for the first time. I forced a smile onto my features.
“That’s right,” I said. “We’ve learned a lot about this new player in the game, and we’ll be better able to deal with them next time.”’
She looked relieved to hear my brave, confident words. It never ceased to amaze me when my staff bought statements like that. I guess it was what they needed to hear, so they believed it. In my mind, we were in a grim situation. All the careful preparations I’d made to build fences and keep our enemies outside them had been for nothing. Here was a newly announced enemy, and they were standing right in the midst of our home system.
Worse, they possessed weapons that seemed to brush aside our best attacks and so far, they weren’t talking.
Yes, the more I thought about it, the more I was certain. We were screwed.
“Whatever you do, Kyle,” Jasmine said to me quietly, “please don’t do what I know you want to.”
I blinked and forced myself to look at her. I was thinking hard, and coming up with nothing in the way of a solution.
“What’s that?” I asked her.
“Don’t bomb their homeworld.”
I shook my head. I was about to say ‘with what?’ but stopped myself. We still had some missiles and half our complement of fighters. They carried bombs with them and could release them into the atmosphere of Eden-11.
“Wait a minute,” I said, “did you just say you think I want to bomb them?”
“Yes.”
“Why would you think that?”
She looked momentarily confused. “Because we just took a hard loss and you’ve bombed them before. This time, I would find it hard to argue with the move.”
“I don’t want to bomb them, Jasmine. I didn’t want to the first time, either. I’ll admit that I get tied up in these things. It’s hard not to when people you know are out there, dying while under your command.”
“I understand that perfectly.”
“I’m sure you do. But in any case, they’re fighting fairly, and I don’t see any logic in attacking their civilian populations.”
“They might withdraw if you do. They might go back home and stay there defending the planet.”
I looked at her thoughtfully. There was a tightness to her expression. She was maintaining a poker face, I realized. At some level, I figured she wanted to bomb them. I thought I knew why, after thinking about it. Her ships had been attacked with impunity. Her pilots had been expunged like fleas in a poisonous bath. They’d never had a chance. She was angry and reacting emotionally. I hadn’t thought I’d see that trait in her before, but perhaps being in command of a big ship had changed her somewhat. She felt personally responsible for the carrier crews and the dead pilots.
“Jasmine,” I said softly, “If we hit their cities—if they have cities—they may well fly to Eden-8 and erase our farming communities. Did you think of that? What if we lose this fight? You don’t want to endanger our own civilians, do you?”
It was her turned to look startled. “Of course not, Colonel.”
“Good. Now, have you got anything else to report?”
“Nothing that will help us win this fight.”
I nodded, unsurprised. “Carry on, Captain.”
On the main displays I saw Eden-11 looming close. Our ships, as big as they were, looked like microbes beside the gas giant.
I did some hard thinking. What the hell was I going to do next? After a few minutes, I thought I had it. There were plenty of dangers involved and some tricky details I hadn’t worked out yet—but at least it was a plan.
I walked up to the navigational tables. I watched as the staff plotted optional courses. The commander in charge of navigation waved me closer.
“I’m glad you’re here, sir,” she said. “I wanted to know which path you want us to take. We’re quite near the planet, and we need to make that decision now.”
“Give me some options.”
“Well, we’ve preplotted several. You could use the planet as a brake, swing around and face the enemy as they follow us. We could make another high-speed attack pass.”
I looked at the navigator and I could tell that she didn’t want me to take that option. But she was putting up a good front.
“What else is on the menu?” I asked her.
“You could slingshot around and head toward Welter Station.”
I nodded. “Right. If they follow us, they’ll have to contend with the heavy weaponry on the battle station. Not a bad choice. Is that it?”
“Well, no sir. We thought you wanted a thorough selection of options. We’ve worked out a course to take us back to Eden-8, where the rest of the primary battle fleet is stationed.”
“Absolutely no way on that one,” I said, “I’m not towing this monster back to our primary world. They may well decide to take the time to scrape every human off the surface—after demolishing the rest of our fleet, naturally.”
The navigator drew a blank expression. “Well…where do you want to go then, Colonel?”
“I’ve been giving it a lot of thought, actually. I think we’re going through the ring—the Helios ring.”
“Ah,” she said, brightening. “Let the Worms deal with it. Is that it?”
“Certainly not. Our allies don’t deserve that kind of treatment.”
“Are we just going to let it chase us forever, sir?”
I smiled grimly. “I know just where I’m taking this big bastard,” I said. “All the way to Earth. It will make a nice Christmas present for a certain Emperor Crow.”
The navigator looked at me as if I was crazy. I had to admit, she could be right.