Storming Heaven (21 page)

Tabitha scowled to herself as she dropped back into her own private perceptual reality.  Whoever had revealed the existence of the Illudium PU-36 Explosive Space Modulator to Patti had committed high treason, yet she couldn’t think of anyone who had had a motive for doing so.  They might even claim that
keeping
information from the President was treason itself, if it came to trial, but…it made no sense.  She had discussed the possible use of the weapon with others, true, but they had decided to wait until they had a stockpile of starbombs to use.  The President was pushing them to act faster than they had wanted to act…and there was no avoiding it.  Legally, now the vote had been taken, it would be treason to delay.

Unless Father Sigmund manages to round up opposition
, she thought, but she knew that that was unlikely.  The Deists would want to hit back at the Killers themselves, as hard as possible, and it was unlikely that more than a few million would try to oppose deployment.  The Father would probably lose his position over his opposition…

She shook her head and forced herself to relax.  Whatever happened now – and, after seeing Earth die, she knew just how bad it could become – the die was cast.  The Killers would know that they had been hurt.  She just hoped that it would make them sit up and take notice of humanity.  Who knew – maybe they would even
talk
to the human race…

And then she knew she was dreaming.

***

Admiral Brent Roeder snapped back into his office on Sparta, thinking cold thoughts about politicians in general and Father Sigmund in particular, although he also included the President on the list.  How had she learned about the starbomb?  It had been a classified secret for good reason – not least to prevent demands for premature deployment against the Killers when there wasn't even a massive reserve of the weapons – but somehow the secret had leaked out.  He considered the possible suspects, including Administrator Arun Prabhu and his staff, but dismissed them.  No one had a reasonable motive for leaking the secret.  It was a mystery that wouldn’t be solved easily.

“Damn it,” he muttered, and keyed his personnel console.  The console wasn't linked to Sparta’s own internal computer network and supervising AIs, let alone the MassMind and the Galactic Communications Network.  It was the most secure system on the asteroid and housed his personal files, including the highly-classified simulations of what would happen when the starbomb was deployed.  “Computer, show me the projections for a standard Class-I gas giant.”

The images unfolded in front of him and he scowled.  The Killers used gas giants as habitats – and, now one of their starships had been studied, it was easy to detect planets that might house a Killer colony – but there were millions of possible targets.  Gas giants emitted radio waves regularly and it wasn't easy to determine if a Killer colony occupied the gas giant, or if it was merely random radiation.  If they wasted weapons on uninhabited gas giants, the results would be, at best, nothing more than a waste of time.  At worst, the Killers would see the threat coming and move against the human race.  The only fitting targets were the systems with large structures – the strange devices they were building out of the rubble of entire planets – but they presented their own risks.  What if the Killers captured an intact starbomb?

“We should have tested the weapon,” he muttered aloud, but the old argument against testing the weapons still held true.  They couldn’t risk attracting the attention of the Killers until they had a proper defence in place, yet the Killers were already attacking.  “Where can we attack?”

Only one target suggested itself, the only planet where they
knew
for sure there was a Killer colony world; CAS-3473746-6, the system that had claimed the
Observer
.  Brent studied the records quickly and made his decision.  If they were going to commit themselves to detonating a massive gas giant and a star, they might as well push it right to the limits.

“Get me Captain Ramage,” he ordered, finally.  The Captain’s report from New Hope had passed across his desk days ago, reminding him that there were worse people in the universe than Father Sigmund.  He just hoped that Rupert was right about the Deists wanting revenge as much as anyone else.  A faction fight at the moment would be disastrous.  “Tell him I have a special mission for him.”

“Yes, sir,” his aide said.  “Do you want a direct communications link or do you want him to report in person?”

“In person,” Brent confirmed.  He glanced down at the Defence Force update and placed the
Lightning
several thousand light years away.  The Anderson Drive would have them at Sparta within seconds.  “Inform me when the
Lightning
docks.”

“Captain Andrew Ramage reporting, sir.”

“Ah, Andrew,” Admiral Brent Roeder said.  “Take a seat.”

Andrew sat down carefully.  A direct summons from the Admiral was unusual, yet he’d had two such summonses within a fortnight.  It normally meant either a dangerous mission or a chewing out for some misdemeanour, yet he couldn’t think of anything he might have committed to earn a chewing out, unless it was not challenging the Killer starship at New Hope.  It would have gained nothing and cost the Defence Force his starship, but if the Admiral decided not to see it that way…

“I read your report on what happened at New Hope,” Brent said, without preamble.  “I can’t disagree with your decision not to engage; the planet was lost and there was no way to evacuate the settlement, even if they would have gone.  The Elders would have fought and argued until it was too late.  You did the right thing.”

“Thank you, sir,” Andrew said.  He hadn’t expected a charge of Cowardliness in the Face of the Enemy, but with the war going badly, it was possible that the Defence Force would start looking for scapegoats.  He would sooner have died than give up the
Lightning
and retire.  “Why did we even allow them to set up that damned colony anyway?”

“We couldn’t prevent them, legally, if they believed that they were safe,” Brent admitted.  “If they had settled within a hundred light years of a Killer star system, we might have been able to deter them, but there were no known settlements within a thousand light years of New Hope.  It means nothing with wormholes and the Anderson Drive, but the Elders believed that they were safe on a barely-habitable world.  They were wrong.”

He shook his head, dismissing the issue.  “In any case, I have a more…interesting task for you,” he continued.  “Watch carefully.”

An image of a star system appeared in front of Andrew and he studied it.  It was a fairly typical star system with seven planets, four of them gas giants and therefore possible Killer colonies.  The remainder of the system was nothing particularly special; there were asteroids, comets and various pieces of space junk.  The largest gas giant was surrounded by beautiful rings, but Andrew had seen thousands of gas giants with comparable natural features and wasn't impressed.  Now, knowing that the gas giants might house billions of Killers, the beauty became a deadly trap.  Saturn was still a major tourist attraction, back in the Solar System, but were they attracting the Killers?  There was no way to know.

“This is CAS-3473746,” Brent said.  Andrew frowned; the CAS – Community Astrograph Survey – designation meant that no one had even bothered to give it a proper name.  “The system was surveyed five hundred years ago and considered as a possible location for a settlement, but – thankfully – we never actually established anything there beyond a handful of fuel deports.  The
Observer
fled to this system and…”

The display changed, focusing in on the large gas giant…and the Killer starship emerging from the mists, rising up to confront the human intruder.  Andrew stared; humanity could accomplish wonders – and would accomplish more wonders when the Killers were finally defeated – but nothing the Community had could lift so much mass out of a gas giant’s gravity well.  The Killer starship might not even have noticed the human starship racing towards it, or perhaps it was playing games with its comrade, pushing the
Observer
into a trap it couldn’t escape.  Andrew remembered the starship’s commander, who had picketed a Killer starship until it had been captured, and scowled.  There would be revenge for that day.

“This,” Brent continued, “is CAS-3473746-6; the sixth planet in the system…and a known Killer colony.  I don’t think I need to spell out some of the possible implications to you.”

Andrew nodded.  Humanity had always assumed that the Killers had started life as humanoids, born on an Earth-like world, and they had believed that locating the Killer homeworld was only a matter of time and patience.  If the Killers lived on gas giants instead, the Community might have its own settlements right next door, in the asteroid fields.  The two societies might be living side by side, neither one truly aware of the other.  Back in the early days, mining the gas giants had been a vital part of survival; it made him wonder if the Killers had simply ignored them, or if they had been lucky enough never to stumble across a Killer homeworld.

But humanity would have colonised as many worlds as it could.  There were literally millions of Earth-like worlds in the galaxy, or worlds that could be terraformed into becoming habitable by humanity.  The human race would have expanded rapidly even without the Killers, settling on those worlds and turning them into new human settlements.  The Community had only a handful of planetary settlements – including places like New Hope, which didn’t even pay lip service to the Community – but without the Killers, there would be a rapid expansion.  The Killers might have settled every gas giant in the galaxy.  God knew; they’d been around long enough.

Andrew recalled, not for the first time, the old Fermi Paradox.  Fermi had asked where the aliens were – and concluded, because no alien race had arrived at Earth, that there were no other races in the galaxy.  Fermi might have been right, had he anticipated the Killers, wiping out all humanoid forms of life and settling gas giants.  Races that might have been humanity’s friends and allies, or deadly enemies, had been exterminated a long time before humanity had learned to rub two sticks together to make fire.  If there was anything left of the Ghosts, or countless others, they were hiding very well.

And Fermi had concluded that even without FTL, it would only take a million years or so to settle the entire galaxy…

“The important thing about the system is that it is hundreds of light years from anything above a minor settlement,” Brent explained.  “It makes it a perfect target.”

Andrew frowned.  “A target, sir?”  He asked.  The massed power of the Defence Force would break like an egg against any Killer star system.  “Do we have a way to break their hulls yet?”

“Maybe,” Brent said.  “However, your mission is to destroy two things; the planet itself and the star.”

He pushed on before Andrew could say anything.  “We have developed two new weapons that are ready for deployment,” he said, shortly.  Andrew had the odd impression that he didn’t quite believe his own words.  “The first weapon is configured to wreck vast damage on a gas giant, perhaps even ignite it like a sun and exterminate any Killer settlements floating down in the mists.  The second will send a star supernova and blast the entire system.  You will deploy the first weapon against CAS-3473746-6 and the second against its star.”

Andrew nodded, concealing his surprise.  “And…what effect will it have on them?”

“We don’t know,” Brent said.  “There was a lot of debate about the first targets for the weapons, but CAS-3473746 has one advantage; they don’t have any major structures surrounding the star, ones that might be able to prevent the supernova.  We’re in uncertain territory here, Andrew; we may fail to destroy the planet, but the expanding supernova blast will cook it regardless.”

“I see,” Andrew said.  “How exactly do the weapons work?”

”Classified,” Brent said.  “And I mean
classified
.  You won’t know how they work, nor will anyone else onboard your vessel, or anyone – for that matter – outside the development centre.  If the Killers capture your ship intact and figure out how we do it…”

“They’ve never taken prisoners before,” Andrew pointed out.  The
Lightning
would probably be destroyed, as ruthlessly as the Killers had wiped out entire fleets.  “Could they understand what they’d captured even if they did take us prisoner?”

“We’re not taking chances,” Brent said.  “There are…ah, political considerations as well.  Let’s just say that we don’t want to cause an arms race or a panic inside the Community as well.  There’s also the issue of how the Killers will react when they realise that we can take out entire stars.  They may attempt to capture your ship just to find out how it was done.  If they do…”

His voice hardened.  “If they do, Captain, you are ordered to trigger the ultimate destruct,” he ordered.  “They are not to recover anything from the
Lightning,
understand?”

“Yes, sir,” Andrew said.  There was nothing else to say.  “When will the weapons be loaded onboard my ship?”

“Now,” Brent said.  He stood up and held out a hand.  “Good luck, Andrew.”

***

An hour later, Andrew examined the weapons pods thoughtfully, but there was no difference between the new weapons and standard warp missiles, at least on the surface.  Inwardly, there were considerable differences, but he’d already issued strict orders that his crew were to refrain from examining the missiles in any way.  Andrew doubted that the Killers would be interested in capturing them, but the Admiral had been right; the Community couldn’t take the risk.  They had to nip in, launch the missiles and vanish again before the star and planet exploded.

He turned and walked back towards the bridge, sealing the weapons compartment begin him.  The AI’s automated servitors could handle the missiles from now on, allowing him to bar all humans from the weapons bays entirely.  Merely looking at the missiles had sent shivers down his spine, even though he knew that they couldn’t detonate onboard the
Lightning
, and he wouldn’t really be happy until he had fired them both and fled.  He’d given the rest of the crew a briefing – and transferred five officers off the ship, to cut down on the number of possible casualties – but they didn’t have to worry about anything, apart from their duties.  He had to worry about the risks of losing the ship.

The Admiral hadn’t provided him with much information on what the missiles did, but there was considerable hard data on supernovas, including studies of two that had detonated in the Milky Way while under Community observation.  Andrew had wondered, briefly, if the supernovas had been nothing more than tests of the new weapon, but the Admiral had admitted that the weapons had never been tested before.  Worse, from what the Admiral said, the Killers
had
taken an interest in the natural supernovas; testing the human-designed weapons would certainly have attracted their attention.  It suggested a way to lure the Killers into a trap, but their sheer firepower would allow them to cut their way out of any human trap, if they recognised its existence.  They might not even notice…

But no one was quite sure what would happen when the weapon was used.  They didn’t know how much of the star’s mass would explode, or how far the destruction would spread, or even how badly the gas giant would be cooked.  The gas giant was large enough to survive the supernova, even though it would definitely be hurt, and if the weapon deployed against the first target failed, or was intercepted, it would all be for nothing.  He pushed the thoughts out of his mind as he stepped onto the bridge and took the command chair.  They had no choice, but to try.  Who knew?  Maybe the Killers would agree to make peace, or the horse would learn to sing.

“Helm, take us out,” he ordered.  “I want low power until we clear Sparta’s defence perimeter and then bring up the Anderson Drive.”

“Aye, sir,” the helmsman said.  Lieutenant David Dunagin looked as tense as Andrew felt; he’d been one of those who’d wondered if the weapons would explode if the ship shook violently.  The technical data said that they couldn’t be detonated without the proper firing sequence, but the techs had been wrong before and there was no data to help gage it for themselves.  “We’re on our way.”

Andrew watched as the
Lightning
slipped past countless other starships, mainly small destroyers and patrol boats.  There were no less than ten attack wings of destroyers at Sparta at all times – seven hundred and twenty starships – but he cherished no illusions about what would happen if the Killers came calling.  The Community Defence Force could – and had – build thousands of starships every week, but unless they improved their weapons, the results would be the same.  The Killers would smash the defences and then Sparta.  The nerve centre of the Defence Force would be destroyed.  If they knew what he was carrying…

He wasn't blind to some of the other implications.  The human race depended upon stars almost as much as the Killers, perhaps more.  Destroying a star would send shivers down the spines of everyone in the Community, fearing the results if the Killers retaliated in kind.  Or, perhaps, if humans and the Killers were sharing the same star system…they might fear being destroyed as collateral damage.  And then there were the religious implications…Andrew had read, long ago, that humans had been terrified of nuclear bombs, pitiful as they were on an interstellar scale, and the supernova bombs were worse.  No human settlement would survive a supernova.  The only defence was not to be there when the weapon was used.