Center of Gravity (45 page)

But the last time she’d strapped on a Starhawk and tried to turn and burn with the bad guys, she’d ended up falling in toward that gas giant, helpless, her ship dying, and no way out… no way, at least, until Trevor had slipped in astern of her and nudged her into a new vector.

Forrester was her wingman, and she would do what she’d been told. But she didn’t have to
like
it.

Slowly, a fighter swarm began materializing around the perimeter of the carrier battlegroup, as more and more of the surviving fighters from VFA–42 and VFA–51 caught up with the fleet and fell into formation. Five Starhawks left out of the Dragonfires, and ten from the Night Demons, plus six from the Nighthawks and just two from the Black Lightnings. Twenty-three in all.

Fifty percent casualties for the four squadrons taken together. The realization of that statistic hit Ryan like a hammer blow in the pit of her stomach. They were getting slaughtered out here, and the gold braid back on board the carrier didn’t seem to give a starsailor’s damn.

“Right, people,” the voice of Commander Allyn said over the tactical net. “As senior officer, I’m taking command of the CSP element.”

Both Dodgson and Klinginsmith, the COs of the Nighthawks and the Lightnings, were dead. Commander Taylor, of the Night Demons, was still alive, but Allyn held seniority, and the Night Demons were newly arrived on the
America
, with damned little experience before Arcturus.

“CIC has given each of us discretion to break off. If your fighter is too badly shot up, pull out and get clear. You can reform with the fleet later. Any takers?”

There were no replies.

“Gray?” Allyn said. “Your telemetry shows your forward shields are out. If you follow the fleet through the protoplanetary disk you’re going to slam into a rock and vaporize… or fry, zorching through a dust cloud. Break off.”

“Thank you, Commander,” Gray’s voice came back. “I think I’ll stay.”

“
Mister
Gray…” Allyn began. But then she broke off.

“I need to be here, Skipper.”

“Very well,” she said after a slight pause. “But don’t try to make it through the disk. Set your AI to loose your weapons when the fleet does, then decelerate at fifty K gravs and change vector. Do not enter the disk. That’s an order.”

“Aye, aye, Skipper.”

Ryan wondered what made Gray tick. He was a squattie, like her, and squatties grew up looking for the main chance,
running
from trouble, not seeking it out. Like her, when those Rebs had tried to catch her in mangrove swamp. On the Periphery, you kept a low profile, kept your head down, and you were ready to cut and run in an instant if you wanted to survive.

Why was he following the rest of the surviving fighters in?

Well, for that matter, why was
she
going in? Her shields weren’t damaged, but flying through the tangled mess of that protoplanetary disk ahead was all but a death sentence for a fighter. CIC had said the passage was discretionary… which meant volunteers only. Allyn had interpreted that to mean that fighters with damaged shields could opt out, but she’d seen the order come through.
Any
fighter could break off, could avoid the firestorm of this final close passage.

So why didn’t she take advantage of the offer?

She wasn’t sure. Gray had a lot to do with it. What was it he’d said to her?
Us Prims need to stick together.

If he was going into the crucible, then by God she was, too.

Gray

VFA–44

Alphekka System

2009 hours, TFT

Gray was wondering why he’d decided to stick with the squadron. It wasn’t as though he felt compelled to do so. Of the four other survivors of VFA–44, one—Donovan—was a friend, while the skipper was a decent-enough sort. Collins and Kirkpatrick? He certainly felt no band-of-brothers connection with
those
two, nothing that justified risking his life. If they died in the next few moments, they were zeroes, risty assholes who’d made it quite clear what they thought about him and his kind.

The hell with them.

And yet, he’d refused an order to break off, choosing to stick with the fleet on its close passage of Al–01, a choice that was very likely to get him killed. His own decision had left him bemused. Maybe he was starting to buy all of that Navy bullshit propaganda about honor, duty, and glory.

Besides, Ben
was
a friend… and so was Shay, in the Night Demons. Friends were a damned precious commodity, one growing scarcer by the moment, and Gray believed in being loyal to them. He wouldn’t be able to live with himself if he flew clear of the coming fracas and then watched both of them get chewed up in the Turusch grinder.

He would stay, no matter what the cost.

CIC, TC/USNA CVS
America

Alphekka System

2011 hours, TFT

“The fighter CSP is in position around the CBG, Admiral,” Commander Craig told him. Eight more minutes to intercept.”

“Very well.”

His eyes never left the tactical tank. He was watching the red icons clustered about the larger symbol representing Al–01. Would they move? If he were the enemy commander, and had received intelligence like that which he’d just passed on to the Agletsch, he would wait until the last possible second before deploying.

And there was the speed-of-light time delay to consider as well. They were still a couple of light minutes out. The enemy could have redeployed that long before, and the incoming battlegroup still wouldn’t have seen—

There!

The red icons were drifting apart, moving out and away from Al–01, taking up positions across the surface of a flattened sphere two light seconds—over half a million kilometers—across. They were setting the trap, gambling on the all-but-impossible chance of pulling off an englobement of the Confederation battlegroup.

He opened a channel. “Dr. Wilkerson?”

“Yes, Admiral?”

“Our… guests.”

Koenig could feel Wilkerson’s sigh over the communications link. “I’ve been watching over the repeater down here. Damn.”

“The Turusch moved. Drop the hammer on them.”

Koenig had discussed the situation with Wilkerson days ago, before they’d even emerged from metaspace. Koenig had been thinking about his decision to help the H’rulka city, knowing that the ship on the floating platform might well warn the enemy of the battlegroup’s destination. Of course, the CBG’s actual destination, Alphekka, could only have been transmitted to the H’rulka by
America
’s two Agletsch liaisons.

And Koenig had been weighing all of the possibilities, even before the battlegroup had emerged at Alphekka.

Wilkerson was of the opinion that the two Agletsch, if they were passing information on to the enemy, were doing so innocently. “I know they’re alien,” he’d said, “but, damn it, they feel sincere to me. I think they’re telling the truth.”

In fact, Koenig was inclined to believe that they were. The two aliens had been under constant surveillance since they’d come aboard, through sensors in their quarters, security guards walking with them, and certain areas of the ship, like the communications center, the bridge, and CIC, being simply off-limits to all but authorized personnel. Most particularly, the ship’s AI had been monitoring their access to the ship’s Net and, through that, to the fleet’s Net. Never had they shown any interest in accessing secure or militarily sensitive information.

The danger was that one or both Agletsch carried microelectronics, perhaps even nanolectronics so small that they existed on a molecular level. Such devices could be implanted easily enough without the victim knowing it—through food or drink, for instance—and it was all but impossible to detect them. Or an ultra-small communicator could be hidden within the translators they wore, or even within the curlicues of silver body paint decorating their carapaces.

“So what are you going to do?” Wilkerson asked him. “Throw them in the brig? Their Net access is already restricted.”

“The Faraday Cage around their quarters ought to be sufficient,” Koenig replied. “At least for now. They’ll be restricted to quarters for the time being. See to it, please.”

A Faraday Cage was an electrified mesh enclosing a space—a room, for example—which blocked the passage of all electromagnetic signals. Personnel from
America
’s engineering department had grown such a mesh around the Agletsch quarters inside the bulkheads several days ago, just in case, and the normal physical access infrastructure—water, raw materials for nanufacture, Net access, electricity—could all be individually screened to block EM transmissions.

“Yes, sir,” Wilkerson said. “Under protest, sir.”

“Protest all you want, Phil. It’s that or chuck them out an airlock.”

Koenig was a little angry with himself, since it had been his decision to bring the two on board. And it wasn’t as though it was just aliens that could be passing information to the enemy. The Sh’daar had human supporters as well, some of them within the Confederation Senate, who felt Humankind’s best course of action was to accommodate the Sh’daar, to give them what they wanted. It was just possible that Sh’daar agents back on Earth had passed specifics about Operation Crown Arrow on to the enemy as long ago as the end of December.

It was an unpleasant thought, but all too plausible.

“Look,” Koenig added. “Confinement to quarters—house arrest—is our best option for right now. We can discuss the situation with them later on, see what they have to say about it. We might be able to arrange dropping them off somewhere where their fellows can find them and pick them up.”

He didn’t add that yet another option would be to continue feeding the two false information, “disinformation,” in the lexicon of the ONI.

“I understand the need for security, Admiral. I guess I’m just… disappointed.”

“Me too. Now excuse me. I have a battlegroup to manage.”

“Yes, sir.” There was a pause. “The Faraday Cage is on, Admiral. They’re cut off now, except for what we decide to allow through.”

They should, Koenig thought, have done that from the beginning. But the two Agletsch
did
have security clearances. Such measures should not have been necessary.

He reminded himself that, out here, so far from the rest of Humankind, they needed to make their own rules. Earth’s rules, Earth’s bureaucratic intrigues, Earth’s official clearances and approvals—none of that mattered here.

“Open a channel for me to all ships,” Koenig said.

“You’re on-line, Admiral,” Ramirez replied.

“All ships, this is Admiral Koenig. As you can see on your tac displays, the enemy formation is moving. I want you to stay with your assigned targets. Have your AIs track your target’s movement and adjust your firing solutions to match. If your target no longer has a viable firing solution—it’s hiding on the other side of the factory, for instance—reprogram for a secondary target. Secondary targets include Al–01 itself, plus the larger Turusch warships, the Alphas and Betas. Be very sure that a change in attitude doesn’t put a friendly ship into your line of fire.

“Good luck, everyone. Koenig out.”

He listened for a moment to the chatter of telemetry between the ships, watching the tank as individual members of the battlegroup began reorienting themselves. During the close passage of Al–01, there would be no time to point your ship at a target, no time to take aim. The entire setup had to be performed by the super-human intellect of the CBG’s interlinked AIs, with each ship positioned so that it would be pointed at a target as it zorched through the enemy position. As the number of light seconds between CBG and objective dwindled away, the AIs kept watch, continually tweaking each warship’s attitude in order to take advantage of the constantly updating tactical picture.

How long, Koenig wondered, before artificial intelligences ran all parts of the distinctly human game called war? In situations such as this one, there was simply no way human eyes or brains or reflexes could contribute.

For the next several minutes, it would all be in the electronic hands of the Fleet’s AIs, which could think thousands of times faster than humans.

Koenig was counting on this in the coming close-passage of the enemy factory complex.

“Three minutes,” he said. “All systems on automatic. Hand it over to the AIs. Tell the fighters to choose targets of opportunity, and to fire at their discretion.”

The enemy’s defensive fire was already reaching toward the battlegroup.

Chapter Twenty-five

25 February 2405

CBG–18

Alphekka System

2018 hours, TFT

Although there was no good way to directly compare the human brain with a computer, the raw computational power of the human brain was generally estimated to be around 10
15
operations per second, and good implant software could effectively increase this to 10
17
. Modern AI hardware typically ran in the range of 10
21
operations per second, some ten thousand times faster.

Among other things, that meant that AIs could think
extremely
quickly, by human standards. They could, in essence, speed up their processing of incoming data in such a way that time, for them, seemed to run slowly. What passed for a human in less than the blink of an eye could stretch on for seconds or minutes or even hours for a fast computer.

CBG–18, the individual ships already positioned and aimed in different directions, passed through the sphere of Turusch warships. A few seconds before reaching Al–01, they passed through the outer shell of waiting enemy ships.

The frigate
Knowles
was hit going in by an enemy proton beam that chewed through its shields and punctured its shield cap, spreading a cascade of water droplets across the sky. The hit was off center, the impact enough to put the
Knowles
into a tumble. Before the ship’s AI could get the ship back under control, the
Knowles
slammed into one of the Turusch ships, a Tango-class cruiser, and the fireball momentarily illuminated the scattering of disk debris below.

Turusch ships opened up then with everything they had. At some point, the enemy commanders realized that the Confederation ships were
not
slowing to engage the factory, but that they were passing through at high velocity. Missiles and KK projectiles were too slow at this point; proton and electron bolts and high-energy laser beams snapped silently across emptiness, seeking targets.

CBG–18 passed the outer defensive layer of Turusch ships, one light second from the factory. And three seconds later…

Close passage
.

Gray

VFA–44

Alphekka System

2018 hours, TFT

Gray had found a way to protect his weakened fighter during the passage. He’d slipped his fighter in tight behind the black curve of
America
’s huge shield cap.

The star carrier had rotated so that it was traveling backward along its line of flight, so that the twin launch tubes, their tiny, open ports visible at the center of the shield cap dome, would be aimed at the vulnerable rear half of the orbital space factory once it had hurtled past. Gray was hugging the surface that normally would have been the leading side, designed to protect the carrier from micro-impacts at high velocities.

America
’s current velocity was less than three tenths the speed of light. Gray was following the shield surface, maintaining a distance of less than one hundred meters. The carrier had ceased deceleration for the passage of Al–01; once it started decelerating again, Gray risked slamming into that surface at a relative acceleration of five hundred gravities. From his perspective, when her drives switched on again,
America
would leap toward him at five kilometers per second squared.

For the moment, though, this slot offered safety from the bits and pieces of debris that filled this area of space—the hurtling wreckage and debris from enemy ships hit by the fleet’s initial bombardment, and the first sharp-ticking dust motes of the protoplanetary disk beyond.
America
’s kilometer-long bulk swept along through space, leaving an empty, swept-out zone in her wake.

For now, both Gray and
America
were in free fall. Some of the other fighters tucked in with Gray as well. The others were spread through the fleet. Beams from enemy ships stabbed and probed, invisible to the naked eye but drawn by AI graphics on Gray’s tactical screens and in-head display;
America
was hit three times, but her screens absorbed the strikes, which were attenuated by distance.

The frigate
Reasoner
took a direct hit that burned through her shield cap, crippling her.

They passed the outer shell of the Turusch defenses, just over one light second from the factory. Almost at the last possible instant, the fighters loosed a Fox-Two volley of AS–78 AMSO missiles, sending expanding, high-velocity clouds of sand sleeting through battlespace.

But across a fire-laced sky, Confederation fighters were dying. The heart of a general fleet action was a deadly environment for small and relatively lightly protected fighters. As the CBG approached the factory, large numbers of Turusch fighters began accelerating to match velocities with the fleet, merging with it to attack individual ships. The Confederation fighters, fulfilling their space combat patrol function, engaged the Toads. Point-defense fire from the Turusch capital ships hammered at the human fighters, smashing down shields, overloading energy screens, and ripping the Starhawks to pieces.

The Starhawk piloted by Lieutenant Georg Kirkpatrick slammed into a fast-accelerating Toad and disintegrated in a glare of expanding hot gas. By the time the CBG passed the factory, nine Starhawks had been destroyed, and there were only fifteen left.

Three more seconds…

CBG–18

Alphekka System

2019 hours, TFT

Close passage
.

The roughly spherical deep-space factory was 112 kilometers across. The incoming fleet was traveling at 37,000 kilometers per second, which meant the human ships flashed past the factory in twelve one-thousandths of a second, far too swiftly for human reflexes to act. At a precisely calculated instant, every human ship carrying weapons fired, with beams and missiles and KK projectiles lancing out in all directions.

A very great many things happened, all at once. From the points of view of the fleet’s AIs, however, each action, each event, unfolded with crystal clarity and slow deliberation, as an avalanche of fire erupted around them.

Most of the battlegroup’s fire was concentrated on the Turusch factory, especially at the vulnerable rear open section hidden behind the gaping, armored maw forward. Beams, traveling at
c
or near-
c
had distances of only a few hundred or, at most, a few thousand kilometers to cross, and struck almost instantaneously. Missiles and KK rounds took longer; by the time they reached their targets, the battlegroup would be gone.

The railgun cruiser
Kinkaid
was aimed almost in the opposite direction of its line of flight. Its target was the unprotected back side of the factory, and as soon as the massive magnetic spinal gun was lined up, it fired, and then continued to fire, cycling off a round every two and a half seconds.

America
, too, had been rotated to face almost directly back along its incoming path, positioned so that it could use its twin launch rails as KK cannon. They weren’t capable of the same acceleration as the
Kinkaid
’s main armament, which ran along over half the length of her spine, but the two projectiles carried a considerable punch in raw kinetic energy.
America
was farther from the target than the
Kinkaid
, and its projectiles were slower. The factory shuddered as the railgun cruiser’s rounds struck first. Seconds later,
America
’s volley ripped through the target’s struts and structural supports and slammed into the collection of Turusch ships moored inside.

The heavy missile carrier
Maat Mons
was also targeting the factory, loosing swarms of multi-megaton nuclear warheads as she penetrated the Turusch defensive sphere. Designed as a bombardment ship, the
Maat
concentrated half of her missiles against the Al–01 factory, but had programmed the rest to seek out Turusch ships by their characteristic energy emissions and home on them. Only a few of those missiles made it through the defensive fire of enemy ships, but the fact that they were knocking down
Maat
’s missiles meant, for the most part, that they couldn’t lock on to the Confederation capital ships as they flashed through.

Nuclear violence erupted through the defensive sphere. Several Confederation ships took damage simply from overloaded radiation screens as the sky around them flared with a brilliance rivaling a swarm of nearby suns.

Maat
expended about half of her large store of nuclear missiles within the few seconds of passage.

The heavy cruiser
John Paul Jones
had as its target a Turusch Alpha-class battleship, and at the firing point it loosed every weapon that would bear, a swarm of nuclear missiles, lasers and PBP fire, and magnetically accelerated kinetic rounds, all slamming into the converted planetoid as the
John Paul
Jones
hurtled past at a range of less than twenty kilometers.

Close behind the
John Paul Jones
was a second cruiser, the
Isaac Hull
. Working in close concert with the
John
Paul Jones’
AI, the
Hull
targeted those portions of the enemy’s artificial structure, the domes and turrets visible above the solid rock, that were taking hits from the first cruiser’s salvo. Shields failed, turrets blasted open in the nuclear inferno, and the incoming volley of missiles slashed deep into the Alpha’s heart.

The Mexican destroyer
Tehuantepec
had been set to fire into a Turusch Gamma-class warship, a vessel that Confederation ONI had equated with a heavy battlecruiser, but the target had moved within the past several moments, and was now masked by the enemy factory. The
Tehuantepec
, then, had retargeted, adding her fire to the salvos being loosed at the factory. Sweeping toward the factory, while still 100,000 kilometers out, she loosed Krait missiles from every available tube, twenty of them. One second later, as she passed the target at a range of just under 12,000 kilometers, she opened up with lasers and PBP fire.

The energy weapons struck the target immediately behind the UV laser salvo fired by the Canadian frigate
Huron
, burning deep into the disintegrating structure. Eight thousandths of a second later,
Tehuantepec
slammed at 30,000 kilometers per second into an oncoming tumbling fragment of a Turusch Romeo-class cruiser massing nearly nine thousand tons.

Half-molten debris sprayed out along
Tehuantepec
’s forward vector like the blast of a shotgun, causing damage to two other Turusch craft.

Her missiles slammed into the factory nearly twenty seconds later, each nuclear detonation building upon the last in a cascade of searing fireballs burning ever deeper into the structure.

The destroyer
Drummond
loosed its volley at a Turusch Sierra-class cruiser, then took two direct hits from a Tango 80 kilometers away. The enemy beams sliced into the
Drummond
’s power plant, freeing the artificial singularity trapped inside. In a flash,
Drummond
whipped end over end, then crumpled into nothingness, its ten thousand tons of non-singularity mass crushed into the event horizon of a small but voracious black hole.

The Tango died in almost the same instant, as three Krait missiles fired by a Black Demon Starhawk during the approach moments before detonated alongside.

Within the space of a couple of heartbeats, three human capital ships and nine fighters had died, along with some fifteen hundred human naval personnel.

Enemy losses were unknown.

Gray

VFA–44

Alphekka System

2019 hours, TFT

Two Toad fighters vectored in toward the
America
in the final seconds of her approach. Alerted by his AI, Gray passed control of his fighter’s attitude and weapons system over to the computer. The fighter rotated sharply, the suddenness of the maneuver threatening to slam Gray into unconsciousness. His PBP beam fired twice, and then two Krait missiles streaked from his ship, erupting in intense and death-silent flowers of light; an instant later,
America
and Gray’s trailing Starhawk zorched past the enemy factory.