Europa Strike (35 page)

27
OCTOBER
2067

The Chinese assault down the spine of the E-DARES complex had lost steam after that. They'd found five bodies in the airlock between the Squad Bay and the first corridor section, and two more PRC troops badly wounded by the fumbled grenade. The rest of the attackers had pulled back to the Squad Bay itself, and seemed content to wait there.

They'd taken Doc to sick bay, pulled him out of his cracked armor, and bandaged his arms and legs to stop the bleeding. Dr. Spelling, the civilian physician among the scientists, set up an IV and began running a full-body pocket-PET series. His armor had saved his life, but his arms were badly torn, and he almost certainly had internal bleeding. Once they'd realized the Chinese had abandoned the airlock, they took the two wounded assault troops to sick bay as well.

Afterward, Melendez had joined them in the corridor, an M-580 in his hand. “I can't see a damned thing down in C-3,” he told them. “The com systems are down. I think our friends up there have pulled the plug. I might as well be up here.”

“What'd you think they're up to up there?” Lucky asked.

“Getting up their nerve for another try,” Pope told him.

“That, or deciding to give it up as bad business and just cut the base off of the ice and drop it into the sea,” Owenson said.

“Belay that,” Melendez told her. “If they haven't done it yet, they won't do it now. I think they really need this base. Maybe the attack at their LZ succeeded. We'll wait 'em out and see.”

There was no other way into the interior of E-DARES. When the enemy came, it would be through
that
airlock, down
this
ladder. They booby-trapped the upper hatch of the lock with a couple of grenades, then settled down to wait.

 

Chinese People's Mobile
    Strike Force

Asterias Linea, Europa

1514 hours Zulu

 

Dr. Zhao Hsiang sat in the command center aboard
Descending Thunder No. 3
, listening as Xiang faced General Lin.

Lin's face glowered from the flatscreen monitor on the bulkhead, filling the control deck with his presence. He was in his late sixties but looked fifteen years younger; TBE treatments had given him the time, and the vigor, to consolidate his grip on power.

“You have failed to carry out your orders, Xiang,” Lin said. The man's voice, paradoxically, sounded older than that of a man approaching seventy. “I am…disappointed.”

“General, our forces have secured the Cadmus base,” Xiang replied slowly, as though speaking to a child, “save only the headquarters facility, and that is being closely watched. We have beaten off a
major
attack here at Prime Base, one that cost the enemy heavily. I do not see where we have failed you, General.”

“You fail to see many things, Xiang.” Lin was aboard the
Xing Feng
, in orbit, and was floating on his side before the camera. In microgravity, his jumpsuit straps floated about his head, and his face had the characteristic puffy look of a man in free fall. “Among them the fact that you have squandered nearly three hundred precious troops in a siege that should have been over after a single attack. We should have made contact with the extraterrestrial intelligence by now.
You
should have made contact, using the CWS facilities! Failing that, you should have had the enemy base and its civilian personnel under your control ten days ago.”

Xiang rubbed his head, kneading the skin around his data jacks. His implants were hurting him, Zhao could tell.

His own implants felt like they were on fire, melting his brain. When he listened closely, in complete silence, he could hear the faint buzz as they responded to the alien ELF frequencies. He didn't like those times, though. Sometimes, when it was dark and quiet, he thought he could…see things. Every man in the expedition with data feed implants was experiencing some sort of sensation—acute headaches, idiopathic fear and panic attacks, inexplicable visions. Two were in the hospital bay, incapacitated by wracking migraines.

The source was almost certainly the alien artifact below, which had been giving off ELF waves of increasingly greater power over the past several days. It had everyone in the science team on teeth-gritting edge, and had obviously been affecting Xiang's judgment as well.

“The American ship will be here soon,” Lin said, looking at something to his right, off the screen. “They have failed to make their midpoint skew-flip maneuver and are still accelerating. Their plans are intentions at this point. I wish to be in complete control of the enemy facilities on Europa by the time that spacecraft enters Jupiter space, however. If you cannot do it, I will find someone who can.”

“The American base is under our control, General Lin.”

“Which is why the
Star Wind
can't bombard the American forces there. Yes, I know. And, of course, the enemy is still in possession of his command-control facilities, communications, computer system…in short, he still controls everything of importance.”

“General, I assure you—”

“No, General. I will
tell
you. Withdraw your forces from the enemy base at Cadmus. On our next pass, we will destroy it from space. As
you
should have done from the beginning.”

Xiang stiffened. “Sir. My orders directed me to capture the facilities at Cadmus intact.”

“I will not debate this further, General. Withdraw your forces to Prime Base. I will see to the destruction of the enemy base, then land the remainder of my forces at your site. We will conclude this conversation then.”

Zhao watched Xiang's shoulders hunch tighter as Lin's face vanished from the screen. This was not good. Not good at all.

He turned. “Zhao. The
Xiaoyu
. Has it been checked out?”

“It is undamaged, General. However, it was aboard the
Star Wind
's third Descending Thunder, the one that crashed. The main cargo ramp cannot be fully deployed.”

“We have tractors. We have APCs. We have men. We can right the lander, and get the Fish out of its belly if we have to cut through the hull to do it.”

“What…what do you intend to do, General?” Zhao had a terrible feeling that he already knew the answer.

“This…thing in my head. It is trying to…to communicate. I intend to talk to it, face to face.”

“Assuming it
has
a face. General, I recommend against—”

“Of course you do, Zhao. You wish the honor of first contact for yourself.”

“That is not the point!”

“Isn't it? Well, no matter. The Fish has room for two men, a pilot and myself.
I
will make contact with the Europan Intelligence, in the name of the People's Republic. Afterward, we will bring in the scientists to study our new…friends.”

“General, I suspect that you're trying to outmaneuver General Lin. It is not wise to rush things. We still know nothing about this phenomenon. We don't know if we need an…invitation. We don't know if it's hostile.”

“But we do know the Americans have their research submarines in the water. If they can use them to launch an attack on us here, they can use them to reach the Intelligence.” He frowned. “It's possible they already have. I must get down there, to block the Americans in their effort, if nothing more.”

“General, that is idiocy!”

“And I can still have you shot for insubordination, Doctor. Pick your words carefully when you address me!”

“Yes…sir.”

“I will leave as soon as the submarine can be made ready. You will give orders to have the vessel readied by the civilian team. I will see to freeing it from the lander and getting it to the water.

“And you will
not
inform Lieutenant General Lin.
I
will make contact with the Europan Intelligence.
I
will convince them to join with us against the Americans. And with the Americans eliminated, I shall return to China in triumph! In
glory
! Let's see Lin threaten me once I have accomplished that!”

The pain in Zhao's head was much worse now.

 

U.S.S. Thomas Jefferson

200,000 kilometers from Europa

1632 hours Zulu

 

“There it is,” Captain Steve Marshal said. “Just coming over the limb…there.”

Kaitlin leaned forward, trying to see the actual target. The bridge repeater screen showed the curve of Europa in false-color detail, the moon blue-hued, the linea bright red. Green brackets were moving on the screen, marking the exact location of the lidar/EM contact, but even at this magnification, she couldn't see the actual ship. A green triangle blinked against the blue background of the moon, marking the location of Cadmus Base.

“Two hundred thousand kilometers,” she said. And we're still moving at a pretty stiff clip. Can we hit it?”

Steve shrugged. “It's all a matter of physics and geometry,” he said. “The trick is having the crowbars arrive at the same space as the
Star Wind
, at the same time. Sir Isaac assures me he can pull it off, if we give control of the ship to him.”

Sir Isaac Newton was Captain Marshal's secretary, and the AI running the ship systems.

“Sir Isaac?” Steve said. “Project the
Star Wind
's course, plus our firing solution and intercept.”

A red line began drawing itself from the brackets, arcing along the curve of Europa, bearing down on the green triangle. Yellow lines reached out from the bottom of the screen, a series of them, in fact, nestled close together, following a slight curve in response to Europa's gravitational field. The lines intersected in rapid succession with the moving end of the red curve. Words scrolled up the right side of the screen, describing elapsed time, projectile velocity, and ending with the single word,
INTERCEPT
.”

“The launch/no launch decision must be made within the next two hundred fifty seconds,” Sir Isaac said, “in order to intercept the target before it is within firing range of Cadmus Base. This assumes, incidentally, a ten million-G acceleration to bring the projectiles up to a velocity of 171 kps, which gives a time-to-target of 19.4 minutes.”

“Colonel?” Steve said.

“Definitely,” she replied. “Go! This may be our only opportunity to take these people.”

“I agree. I'd rather not have to fight them coming around the back side. Okay, Sir Isaac. You have the con. At your discretion, take down the hostile.”

“Affirmative. Initiating launch sequence.”

Seconds passed, and Kaitlin felt a series of bumps transmitted through the deck. Sir Isaac fired maneuvering thrusters to precisely align the
Jefferson
with the distant target.

“All hands, this is the ship's control system,” Sir Isaac said over the ship intercom. “Stand by for maneuvering, possibly violent, within the next three minutes. I recommend you take seats and strap yourselves down.” An interesting distinction, that, Kaitlin thought. AIs were not permitted to give orders aboard ship, only to make suggestions. “Secure all loose gear and prepare for both zero-G and sudden acceleration.”

Currently, the
Jefferson
was under thrust, facing away from Jupiter as she decelerated down from her skew-flip point. They'd delayed the skew-flip, the one way they could dramatically shorten the travel time to Europa, cutting over two days off their ETA. The tradeoff was the maneuver they were going to have to pull at Jupiter in order to kill their excess velocity.

“Sixty-seven seconds to firing,” Sir Isaac said. “Cutting thrust in five…four…three…two…one…cutting thrust.”

Gravity vanished. The A-M cruiser dropped tail-first toward Europa, in free fall.

“Initiating roll-pitch maneuver.”

Kaitlin and Steve were strapped down now in adjacent seats on the bridge deck. She glanced across at him, trying to read his expression. She wondered how it felt to have his ship under the command of a computer—how it felt to leave the entire battle in a machine intelligence's figurative hands.

That was happening more and more in combat systems on Earth, certainly. Robot or teleoperated fighters could maneuver with accelerations that would kill a flesh-and-blood pilot. Some combat situations demanded a computer's speed and precision. If space combat ever became common, it would almost certainly be left in the hands of artificial intelligences that could draw on far more information much more quickly than humans, to make decisions in fractional seconds, with weapons and targets so fast that no human could react quickly enough to control them.

A semblance of gravity returned, a hard tug against the seat restraints and the feeling that she was hanging upside down in her seat, as the 250-meter length of the
Jefferson
spun end for end. There followed several more bumps and nudges, and then a long, weightless wait.

“Firing sequence in five seconds,” Sir Isaac said. “Four…three…two…one…Firing sequence initiated.”

The mass driver down the
Jefferson
's core began cycling, each launch causing a savage nudge, pushing them against their harnesses. The shots were staggered, with several launches seconds apart, followed by a sudden slam-slam-slam of rapid fire. In all, Sir Isaac launched fifteen ten-kilo slivers of depleted uranium, spaced out across twelve seconds, with several periods of maneuvering along the way. “I have ceased firing,” Sir Isaac announced. “With repeated hyperacceleration, temperature inside the railgun barrel was beginning to exceed safe limits.”

The first of the rounds would reach the vicinity of the
Star Wind
in just over nineteen minutes.

The question was whether the
Star Wind
would see them in time and be able to maneuver to avoid them.