B009NFP2OW EBOK (24 page)

Hours before, Gray had dispatched a message drone with a coded message intended for USNA Military Command on Mars, and for President Koenig. The message included details of the battle . . . and the all-important information that both Steiger and Delattre were dead, that the non-USNA contingent had broken off under Lavallée’s command, and that Gray had assumed overall command of the American ships.

They would know the situation back on Earth within twenty-five hours.

And Gray expected to be on his way to 70 Ophiuchi well before that time.

“Maybe we should high-tail it back to Earth too,” Gutierrez suggested.

“If we can manage to pull off a good spoiler, Commander,” Gray replied, “they might not need to make a last-ditch stand in Earth’s own backyard. The farther away we can stop them, the better, right?”

“Yes, sir. But if they’re waiting for us . . . if the Slan tell them we’re coming . . . we could lose the whole squadron.”

“Then we’ll just have to make sure they
don’t
know we’re coming.”

Much later, far into the night watch, Gray lay in bed with Laurie Taggart, holding her close. The gentle pattern of her breathing told him she was asleep. Good. He’d needed some time to think. . . .

He’d switched the bulkheads of his quarters to show the view outside
America
’s hull, partly so that he could keep tabs on the repair efforts outside, but also for the sheer, icy, spectacular beauty of the scene. Though his quarters were in a rotating hab module, providing a steady half-G of spin gravity, the image had been stitched together by computer from various cameras mounted on the non-rotating portions of the hull.

Hours before,
America
had been judged fit to make the short boost to the fourth planet of the 36 Ophiuchi A system, a hazy blue-green sphere two astronomical units out, an ice giant named Goewin by the original research station colonists. Like the larger Saturn back in the Sol System, Goewin possessed a spectacular ring system, multiple bands of white-silver light composed of uncounted trillions of bits of water ice, ranging in size from grains of sand to a fair-sized house. Swarms of shepherd moons tugged and nudged the rings into distinct bands separated one from another by narrow grooves of emptiness. Gray couldn’t see those grooves from here, though they’d been clear enough during the orbital approach to Goewin.
America
now orbited within the outer fringes of the outermost ring, and the ring system as a whole was visible only as a ruler-straight white line slashing through the center of the planet’s disk.

Scattered across the sky were moons showing various phases, the hazy glow of multiple comets, the shrunken orange face of 36 Oph A. A few kilometers away, the massive provisioning ship
Shenandoah
had docked in the shadow of a moon too small to have a name. The moonlet’s icy surface had been melted away, revealing the coal-black carbonaceous interior, and swarms of unmanned picker ships were busily ferrying raw material up to
Shenandoah
’s capacious storage bunkers in steady streams. The moon, a potato-shaped mass perhaps three kilometers long, had a CH-core beneath its icy crust, the letters standing for
carbon
and
high metal
. Carbonaceous chondrite bodies contained large amounts of organic compounds, as well as significant amounts of silicates, oxides, and sulfides, plus, in this case, over 5 percent water by mass. The metallic component was mostly nickel-iron, but there were traces of other elements as well.

And there were other mining targets within nearby space. Hours before, one of
Shenandoah
’s robot miners had been dispatched to rendezvous with a 1.5-kilometer asteroid half an AU sunward, together with the squadron’s ore hauler, the aging T-AK cargo ship
Altair
. Though it was not widely known even yet,
all
of the metals accessible on and within Earth’s crust had come from the rain of meteors and asteroids that had pummeled Earth’s surface after the planet had formed and cooled. All of the nickel and iron, all of the cobalt, gold, platinum, manganese and
all
of the other metals that had been part of the original accretion of the planet had sunk down into the unreachable core during Earth’s molten youth. The metals available to human industry, from the copper and bronze ages on, all had arrived much later. Human civilization had, in a sense, been mining the asteroids since the very beginning.

Mining asteroids
off
the Earth had been a large part of what had propelled humankind off its homeworld. In the mid twenty-first century, dwindling reserves of silver, copper, gold, lead and other common elements had been nearly exhausted. A single 1-kilometer type-M asteroid, however, contained over 12 trillion dollars’ worth of industrial and precious metals; a 30-meter high-metal asteroid might hold 50 billion dollars’ worth of platinum alone. Quite early on in the migration of Humankind into the Sol System, then, technologies for extracting and refining both metals and volatiles from barren rocks had become the principal drivers of space-born industry and colonization, as well as robotics, spacecraft propulsion, and space-based nanotechnics.

Those technologies were especially important for interstellar naval vessels now. The pure elements being separated and stored in
Shenandoah
’s bunkers would go into her nanufactories to create everything from air and food to missiles with fusion warheads, microcircuits for regrowing damaged electronics, raw materials for the repair robots now clustered around
America
’s shield cap, and even fresh uniforms for the crew. The robotic assembly lines on board
Shenandoah
were already cranking out new SG-101 and SG-112 fighters at the rate of one per three and a half hours.

The only question was how long the fleet could afford to wait before shutting down the repair and resupply operation and boosting out-system. At the current rate of nanufacture, the squadron’s reserves would be completely replenished within fifty hours, but Gray wanted to be long gone by that time. The longer they delayed boosting for 70 Oph, the greater the chance that they would arrive there after the Sh’daar had already departed for Sol.

Laurie stirred in his arms, nestling closer. “Mmm. You still awake?”

“Watching the repair,” he replied, absently stroking the hair at the back of her head. “Wondering when to boost for Osiris.”

Wondering if they
should
boost for Osiris . . . or make for Earth instead. Geary, Villanova, and
America
’s Exec all had raised some good points.

In particular, he wondered about the Slan. Throughout the day, and as
America
and her consorts had shifted out-system to Goewin, more and more of the Slan ships had been pulling back from Arianrhod and accelerating off into deep space. Analyses of their outbound paths suggested that some were heading for 70 Ophiuchi, that others were on their way to other, unknown places deeper into the heart of the galaxy.

He had to assume that the Slan would communicate with the other Sh’daar clients at Osiris, telling them human forces were at 36 Oph, that they’d beaten the Slan there and forced the Slan to pull out. Inevitably, that would mean the Sh’daar themselves would know. What would their response be?

And that, more than anything, was what decided him, in that moment, on carrying out the spoiling raid at Osiris. They would go, and they would depart as soon as the basic repairs on
America
were complete. The Sh’daar were—they must be—as much in the dark about human intentions and capabilities and the way they saw the universe as humans were about the Slan or Turusch or the Sh’daar themselves.

“You’ve already given all the necessary orders, haven’t you?” Laurie said.

“I suppose so.”

“Then c’mere, Sandy Gray. Spend some time with
me
.”

He snuggled closer, kissed her, letting his hand wander. But as he looked up at the bulkhead projections again, he saw the stream of picker ships flowing up from the crater already eaten into the shepherd moon’s surface and vanishing into the gaping maw of
Shenandoah
’s receiving bay, Gray had a new idea.

Or, rather, a new iteration of an idea he’d had once before, twenty years earlier, when he’d acquired the nickname “Sandy” in the first place.

He kissed Laurie Taggart again, but as he did so he was linking through to the bridge, and issuing a string of new orders.

Only after those orders had been transmitted to the
Shenandoah
and the
Altair
would he be able to turn his full attention on the woman in his arms.

He just wished he knew what Clear Chiming Bell was thinking right now. . . .

Slan Protector
Vigilant

Low Orbit, 36 Ophiuchi AIII

2330 hours, TFT

Clear Chiming Bell studied the aural representation of nearby space displayed above its console, and—not for the first time—wondered what the aliens were thinking.

Within Slan culture,
community
was everything, and what counted most in any conflict was that the community be protected. Part of what that meant was using the minimum of force necessary in an engagement . . . and that depended on the loser of the engagement accepting defeat when the victor showed the greater strength.

Simple enough . . . but for the system to work, both sides in an engagement had to be working by the same set of rules. And the more that Clear Chiming Bell learned about the humans, the more it was becoming convinced that they did not—
could
not—understand the rules of civilized behavior.

That prospect, the Slan leader thought, was the single most terrifying aspect of the human monsters. Clear Chiming Bell had become aware of this in the behavior of the prisoner they’d picked up in space after the battle for the planet. The strange being had been captured, had clearly been helpless . . . and yet somehow it had escaped from its quarters when the humans invaded the
Vigilant
when by all logic it
should
have stayed put. Apparently it had communicated somehow with the invading forces and joined them, managing to escape when they withdrew.

The fact that those forces had attacked at all, attempting to rescue the prisoner against overwhelming odds, was . . . unsettling, as was the audio of the prisoner attacking an entire
t’k’tch
of Slan soldiers from the rear with a low-powered weapon that appeared to fire bursts of tightly focused electromagnetic radiation. Soldiers scattered, startled by this unexpected assault, giving the main body of humans an opening to attack from the front.

The human should have stayed in its fighter . . . no,
should
have stayed in its quarters. Worse by far, the alien soldiers shouldn’t have sacrificed so many of themselves to save one captured individual. Risking so many members of the community for one life? The action was inexplicable . . . and completely un-Slanlike.

But Clear Chiming Bell had a terrible feeling that he was seeing a measure of the humans’ true strength, here, and it was a strength the Slan could not hope to match.

The Slan fleet commander was well aware that the humans had used the opportunity presented by breaching the
Vigilant
’s hull to implant devices that allowed them to penetrate the Slan computer network. Slan soldiers would have done precisely the same if they’d boarded a human warship. But the details of that desperate firefight within
Vigilant
’s docking bay were devastatingly incomprehensible.

It opened a channel to the ship’s navigational officer. “Cool Tunnel Deeps,” it said. “Program for transition to the main fleet.”

“We work together,” the officer replied, giving a formal reply. “What of the rest of our group?”

“We move together,” the commander said. “We will abandon this place.”

“Does such a decision align with the Community good?”

“It does,” Clear Chiming Bell replied. “Until we better understand these humans, it most assuredly does.”

Clear Chiming Bell found itself disturbed by the human view of the universe. Rather than thinking of
places
, like distinct tunnel complexes more or less side-by-side, they saw this place and that one as unbearably tiny and lonely motes lost in an immense vacuum, separated by unimaginably vast gulfs of emptiness.

The thought was terrifying, and bespoke a terrible, terrible loneliness.

The Slan commander yearned for the embrace of Community, the bigger, the busier, the better.

The Fleet Community would rejoin, and perhaps hold the emptiness at bay.

Chapter Twenty-One

15 November 2424

TC/USNA CVS
America

In transit, 36 Ophiuchi AIII

1130 hours, TFT

America
accelerated outbound, racing for the 40-AU limit, where the gravitationally warped topography of space was flat enough to allow her transition over to Alcubierre Drive. Sixteen ships flew in formation with her, including the provisioning vessel
Shenandoah
, which now had a vital role to play at 70 Ophiuchi.

Gray studied the readouts for the system. Little was known about the strength or deportment of Sh’daar ships around Osiris. The translations of Slan audio data suggested fifty to sixty ships, as the intelligence officer on board
Inchon
had pointed out, but it was unknown how many of those might be warships, and how many were transports. Dating the information was problematical as well; the Slan means of determining date and time were still a mystery, and the Osiris imagery might well be out of date.

What Gray was counting on was the sheer difficulty in targeting incoming ships moving at near-
c
. Even for technologically advanced cultures like the Sh’daar and their clients, tracking incoming targets that were only scant seconds behind the light revealing their presence was a monumental task, requiring high-precision optical systems, tremendous computing power, and a great deal of luck. The easiest way to deal with an incoming fleet, actually, was to spread “O-mines,” drifting obstacles, in the ships’ paths—bits of debris, KK projectiles, even BB-sized pellets. With the ships moving at near-
c
, and the obstacles drifting into their paths at normal orbital speeds, the release of energy when they collided was astonishing. Clouds of sand worked particularly well . . . the origin of Gray’s nickname, his handle.

The problem was that you had to know
exactly
where the target was going to be and make certain the obstacle was there at the same instant; even an exploded cargo ship full of sand rapidly dispersed when its cargo was sprayed across distances of more than a few tens of kilometers, and aiming the thing like a giant shotgun was more a matter of guesswork than precision. It was even tougher when the oncoming ships were jinking left-right, up-down, and giving the targeting networks electronic migraines.

The Slan had not demonstrated any particular proficiency in targeting high-velocity warships as they passed.

And Gray was counting on that to preserve his command during an Osiris fly-by.

But a great deal depended on just where the enemy forces were placed when the USNA ships arrived, and how many of them there were.

“Captain, this is Comm.”

“Go ahead.”

“Sir . . . a message drone just dropped out of metaspace twenty-three light minutes away, bearing one-one-five by zero-three-nine. The message is coded for us, sir. From the Joint Chiefs,
and
Mars.”

“Let me see it.” Something from the Joint Chiefs was essentially from President Koenig himself. And having it come from HQMILCOM Mars made it doubly serious.

“Message decoding, sir.”

In Gray’s mind, the message came up in print.

TO:
Radm Jason Steiger,
CO USNA CONTINGENT/CBG-40

FROM: JCS AND CO/USNAMILCOM, MARS

RE:
Orders

DATE/TIME:
14 November 2424/2340h

PRIORITY MOST URGENT

1. Confederation military forces have initiated hostilities against USNA base Tsiolkovsky on Luna and against periphery areas of the continental USNA. Initial actions successful but further attacks expected momentarily. It must be assumed that a state of civil war now exists within the Terran Confederation, and specifically involving USNA military forces against Confederation forces, particularly those of Pan-Europe.

2. All USNA military vessels are hereby required and directed to return to Earth synchorbit at earliest opportunity.

3. Use utmost caution in dealing with non-USNA Confederation vessels in the task force. Non-USNA vessels should be considered hostile. Assume orders from Geneva direct Delattre to seize or destroy USNA vessels CBG-40.

4. Use best judgment in disentangling forces, and in breaking off in the face of enemy forces.

This is a mess, Jas. Watch your back.

SIGNED
(1): Cutwaller,
ADM, CO/USNAMILCOM, MARS

SIGNED
(2): Armitage,
ADM, JCS

MESSAGE ENDS

Damn
. The message had been dispatched before news of Steiger’s death had reached Earth. That personal message tagged on at the end made the dry recitation of orders unusually piquant. Eugene Armitage, the commander of the Joint Chiefs, Gray remembered, had been both a personal friend and a mentor of sorts to Jason Steiger.

Even with faster-than-light travel, interstellar military operations were dominated by one factor—the sheer, mind-numbing vastness of the empty space between star systems. Fleet commanders had an extraordinary degree of freedom—and responsibility to go with it—in their operations. Gone were the days when the president and command-staff level officers could micromanage a battle via satellite from halfway around the world.

But the communication lag between CBG-40 and Earth had just dropped a nasty piece of hot shrapnel into Gray’s lap. He’d broken off from the rest of the Confederation fleet—or, to be fair, they’d broken away from
him
—so at least that wasn’t an issue. But the battle group was now minutes away from transitioning to Alcubierre Drive for a twelve-hour jump to 70 Ophiuchi. A strict interpretation of these new orders would require him to abandon the Osiris fly-by and return immediately to Earth.

That was not quite as simple an issue as it seemed, however. To reset onto a Sol-bound flight path, they would have to decelerate, come about to align with the fourth-magnitude speck of light in the sky that was Sol, then accelerate back up to near-
c
in order to engage the Alcubierre Drive. Either that, or they would have to make the jump away from 36 Ophiuchi, re-emerge, acquire Sol, then accelerate again. Either way, they might lose another day.

And the message from Armitage had been sent before Earth knew about the looming threat of an attack from Osiris.

“Comm,” Gray said.

“Comm here, sir.”

“Is the update transmission loaded and ready to dispatch?”

“It is, sir.”

“Send it now.”

“Aye, aye.”

Gray had recorded his intent to re-deploy to Osiris and attempt to cripple the Sh’daar forces being readied there for a strike against Earth. He’d not been requesting permission; his decision to launch the drone just before dropping into the unreachable darkness of metaspace under Alcubierre Drive had underscored that fact. By the time Earth learned of his intention, he would already be at Osiris engaging the enemy.

At least Earth would know where CBG-40 had gone, and would be able to reach him with subsequent drones at Osiris.

“Should I acknowledge receipt of that last communication, sir?”

Gray thought about this. He was tempted to say no. It would be easy enough to claim he’d deployed to 70 Oph before the order from Earth even reached him. Had the message drone emerged just a little farther away, the radio broadcast would not have reached the fleet before it had dropped into metaspace.

But . . . no. He might end up court-martialed for what in fact was direct disobedience of orders, but so far as Gray was concerned the greater threat to Earth was the gathering Sh’daar strike force, not political squabbles at home. He would play this one straight, and let the folks back on Earth know exactly where he was going and what he was doing.

Even if he was doing it before they could tell him not to.

Operating out here on the edge of damn-all, far from the oversight of command staffs and presidential advisors did absolute wonders for your sense of perspective.

“Acknowledge,” he said. Moments later, the drone accelerated off into darkness.

And minutes after that,
America
and the other ships of CBG-40 flashed over into Alcubierre Drive.

Osiris lay twelve hours ahead.

Executive Office, USNA

Columbus, District of Columbia

United States of North America

1325 hours, EST

“Mr. President,” the office AI whispered in his mind, “you
must
evacuate. The elevator is waiting for you.”

“Yes, yes,” Koenig said, irritably. “Just a moment . . .”

“The situation display is being repeated in the bunker, sir. You can continue your work there.”

“I
know
, damn it. Just give me a minute.”

His human aides and a couple of Secret Service agents were standing in his office, waiting for him, but he ignored them as he was ignoring the nagging voice of the AI secretary. A translucent display field hung suspended above his desk, showing planets and planetary orbits, and the arcing curves of incoming ships. So far, most of the incoming vessels were small stuff—destroyers, gunboats, the North Indian light cruiser
Godavari
—but five heavies had rounded the sun moments before and were clearly vectoring on Earth. Other ships—the carriers and other heavy capital ships—were expected soon. He was watching HQMILCOM deploying its meager assets to block the approach paths of the Confederation Fleet’s main body.

Things were about to get very interesting.

“Mr. President,” Marcus Whitney said, almost pleading. “We need to get to the basement
now
!”

“All
right
! All
right
!”

He switched off the display and rose from his seat. The Secret Service fell into step with him as he strode across the holographic carpet display, his aides scrambling to keep up in his wake. Through the outer offices and past the security station, the Executive Tower’s main emergency elevator was located down the passageway, still within the security suite. More agents waited at the elevator, holding it for him.

The secure bunker was located almost 2 kilometers below the Freedom Concourse in the heart of downtown Columbus, at the bottom of a high-speed maglev descent through the center of the Executive Tower and into the facility known as the PRESCO, the presidential secure complex. Privately, the people working in the Executive Tower simply called it the Basement. It housed the offices of the Joint Chiefs and most of the Earthside USNA Military Command complex, as well as the Situation Room and secure communications facilities that linked the office of the President with both civilian and military USNA assets across the solar system.

The underground base had been hardened to withstand—it was believed—a one-hundred-megaton nuclear explosion at the surface.

“Welcome to the Basement, Mr. President,” his first secretary, John Casey, said as the facility’s armored outer doors slid aside and he walked in. “We have a possible hostile strike force ten million kilometers out.”

“I know.” He’d been tracking those five Pan-European ships for the past hour as they’d skimmed past the sun and dropped into an intercept course with Earth, traveling at ten percent
c
. A week ago, those five vessels had been reported at the Confederation military base at Circe, at Epsilon Indi some twelve light years from Sol. Geneva had called them back to Sol, evidently to take part in this attack.

They’d been planning this for a
long
time.

“Analyses of their flight path suggests a weapons strike somewhere in North America.”

“I know.
Pittsburgh,
Missouri
and
Amazon
are vectoring to cut them off,” Koenig replied. “
Burke
and
Spruance
are still an hour away. What about the
Jones
?”

The frigate
John Paul Jones
was in space dock at Quito Synchorbital, undergoing a long-needed refit. Earlier that morning, her skipper—Don McCluskey—had reported that he might be able to get his ship clear of the dock and into action if he could take it slow. The aging frigate still had a gaping construction hole in her side, and was in no shape for high-G maneuvers.

“Captain McCluskey reports he’s still trying to get past the grudge list.”

“Tell him to boost with his painters dangling if he has to,” Koenig growled. “But
get the hell out there
!”

“Yes, Mr. President.”

Koenig walked to the workstation maintained for him and for the military chief of staff. Admiral Armitage stood up and stepped out of the circular cockpit. “Keeping the chair warm for you, Mr. President.”

“Thanks, Gene.” He looked up, scanning the floor-to-ceiling projection hanging in front of one wall, some fifty meters wide. Those Pan-European ships were a lot closer now. “How long before those hostiles launch?”

“Any second now, sir. Depends on how close they want to get.”

The
Pittsburgh
, Koenig noted, was vectoring toward the lead enemy ship, which was perhaps half a million kilometers in advance of the others. According to the data tag hanging beside the enemy vessel’s icon, she was the
Ognevoy
, a Russian strike cruiser. Her name reportedly meant “Curtain of Fire,” and she’d been designed with planetary bombardment in mind.

The two High Guard sentinels,
Missouri
and
Amazon
, were vectoring toward the main body of incoming hostiles. Koenig winced. Those two were heavily outclassed, the equivalent of a pair of frigates facing the heavy cruisers
Montcalm
and
Brahmaputra
, the destroyer
Kondor
, and a second planetary bombardment ship, the
Estremadura
.

Against firepower like that, the sentinel ships didn’t stand a chance.

Other ships were on the way in, but nothing else could arrive in time to block those five Confederation ships. There were reports of confused fighting elsewhere—on Mars, on Luna, even in Synchorbit; the civil war was spreading wildly, and out of control.