Troy Rising 1 - Live Free or Die (39 page)

“You think that's pretty much max drive,” Steve said.

“Which means...” Tyler said. “God, I
wish
we had better modeling software.”

“Should you be using the hypernet so much?” Steve said.

“If they can detect it, no,” Tyler replied. “But here's the thing. Remember Baghdad Bob?”

“Those were the days,” Steve said, sighing. “You mean the guy who was insisting the
American forces had been destroyed when the reporters could hear tank fire?”

“Same,” Tyler said. “What I'm looking for is where we got the intel on the Horvath
cruiser. And I just found out, it was from the
Horvath
. It's their technical specifications on their cruiser screens. Six hundred gravities of
sheer. And it's
identical
to a Glatun destroyer.”

“Which we would find pretty much impossible to take down,” Steve said. “But, Tyler, you
understate
your open source data. Subs go a lot deeper than two hundred meters.”

“And faster than twenty knots,” Tyler said. “
We
understate. But I don't buy it. The Glatun don't help with military technology. They're
not going to give the Horvath the most advanced shield technology. Just enough technology
to make them better trading partners.”

“Stolen?” Steve said.

“The Russians stole stuff all the time in the Cold War,” Tyler said. “They couldn't equal
any of our systems. If their cruiser has six gravities of delta-v, that would make their
maximum grav output...” Tyler muttered to himself for a while and then shrugged. “I get it
as a one hundred twenty gravity sheer. I'm not sure how much that's going to take to take
down, though.”

“This is either going to work or it's not,” Steve said. “By the way, speaking of going to
work or not, have you taken a look out the window?”

“No,” Tyler said, looking through the small porthole. “Yipes! You weren't kidding about
low
!”

The view was cluttered and blurred given their velocity. But Tyler could tell mountains,
very close mountains, even when they were blurry.

“We're actually heating up a tad from atmospheric effects,” Steve said, musingly. “Given
the paucity of Luna's so-called atmosphere.”

“Did we
have
to go this low?” Tyler asked.

“Yes,” Steve said. “We built up a good head of velocity when we were accelerating. It was
go low or basically shoot out on a vector that had us behind them and completely out of
position to fire. Remember, we have to be able to get
physical
rounds on target. When we come in view of them, which will be in about thirty seconds,
we'll be slightly ahead of them in relation to their course. We're actually vectored so
that we'll hit their stern if either of us don't change course.”

“Ramming speed!” Tyler yelled.

“Very funny,” Steve said. “Thing is, with our present vector, we'll be coming in on their
flank at, if you're right about their systems, a very high velocity. We got some delta
from the slingshot.”

“We're black,” Tyler said. “And, I just realized as my cooling system went on overload,
that we're coming in out of the sun.”

“Now if it was just dawn it would be perfect,” Steve said. “Okay, time to bring the
systems back up.”

“And this is going to hurt,” Tyler said, breathing deep. “I've got the gun, if you can
handle the bird.”

“The way things are going, I can handle the bird,” Steve said, bringing the grav plates up
and spinning up the plates on the gun.

“Any last words?”

“ 'From the halls of Montezuma, to the shores of the Lunar Mare!'”

“That's music I can dance to,” Tyler said. “But it doesn't scan.”

***

“Gravity source at one-one-eight mark four point two,” the Horvath systems operator
commed. “Very scattered. Primitive.”

“That is the space fighter,” the tactical controller stated. “Lasers to engage.”

“The space fighter is non-operational,” Intelligence commed. “And human systems cannot
penetrate our shields. Further study is required.”

“Reality overrides theory,” tactical commed. “And intelligence.”

“Higher gravitational gradient detected,” the sensor center commed. “Analysis is gravity
driven mass driver. One hundred gravity gradient.”

***

“Holy hanna!” Tyler said. “I think we holed ourselves.”

Tyler had not quite gotten around to thinking about what firing the gun would be like. The
'rounds' were 150mm chunks of steel and depleted uranium with the breacher drive buried in
the middle. And the Boeing engineers had managed to get one hundred gravities of
acceleration, in relation to the rounds, out of the drive system. The rounds massed a
hefty two hundred and thirty eight kilos. The entire craft had a mass of barely sixteen
tons.

Firing the gun felt like the nose of the plane was being hammered by Mjolnir. The first
round had caused them to go into a flat spin. Fortunately, in space that's not hard to
correct but it nearly caused Tyler to pass out.

“Just keep firing!”

“Unkph!” Tyler said, sending another round downrange. It was kind of hard to target
because the Horvath ship might be big but they were a long way away and Steve was jinking
all over the place trying to avoid Horvath lasers. “Ow! Frack!”

“I'm going to stabilize for just a second,” Steve said. “Fire as fast as you can.”

“Firing,” Tyler said as the craft stabilized for just a moment. The targeting reticle had
the distant Horvath ship centered. “Uhnk! Unkh! Uff!” The last round, he thought, sent
them into another spin.

“We're hit,” Steve said. “I've lost stabilization.”

“And they're maneuvering,” Tyler said. “I don't know if we're going to hit them with
anything
.”

“They're not maneuvering fast,” Steve said, trying to get the craft oriented again. “Okay,
just start firing. We'll fill the space with chaff and hope for the best.”

“Space is a big place,” Tyler said then set the system to fire as fast as possible and
crunched up. “I wish
I
had a space suit.”

“Be glad you're not on earth,” Steve said.

***

“Report,” the CJCS said, coughing. “Do we have anything?”

“Hypernet is still up,” the colonel in charge of NMDC said. She wiped some blood from her
lips and coughed as well. The air was filled with dust and the ring of plasma screens that
had given instant access to information around the world was now a shattered mass of
expensive plastics. “We're getting scattered reports. New York, Washington and SF are all
hit. Energetics are about sixty megatons. They're all gutted. I'm surprised
we're
here. The round in DC looks to have landed more or less on the Capitol. We tried to
deflect the SF round with THAD, but it didn't even phase it.”

“Casualties?”

“Megadeaths,” the colonel said, shrugging. “Until we get satellite BDA we're not sure how
bad. People were trying to get out of town but...” She shrugged again.

“Who else?”

“Every major capital. London, Paris, Berlin, Moscow, Beijing, Tokyo. Then Jakarta, Seoul
and Mumbai.
We
got pasted. I don't think they like us.”

“There were fourteen rounds,” the general said, counting on his fingers. “Is there one
still circling somewhere?”

“The last one is believed to have hit Vernon Tyler's 'Lair,'” the colonel said. “We don't
have BDA from that but given the energies... it's probably gone.”

“What about VLA control?” the general asked. “Do we still have SAPL?”

“For what it's worth,” the colonel said. “We still have control through the controls at
SpaceCommand.”

“What's the word on the
Fury
?”

“They're... engaging,” the colonel said, looking at the papers she'd been handed. There
wasn't a surviving printer in the place and reports were what the techs and NCOs were
getting off the remaining hardened computer systems. “It doesn't look good.”

***

“You know how I said I had to pee?” Tyler grunted. They'd fired off all their rounds and
now we're just trying to survive the Horvath laser fire. It wasn't going well. “Forget it.”

“Thought something smelled,” Steve said. “Coming around to port...”

“I think the stabilizer being shot off is helping,” Tyler said. “I never know where we're
going. How can they?”

Lasers move at the speed of light. But
The Tub
had opened fire at about a hundred and sixty thousand kilometers or a bit over a half a
light second. The likelihood of any of the breacher rounds hitting was, therefore, low. On
the other hand, getting closer to the Horvath ship was suicide. You pays your money and
you takes your choice.

Tyler's guess about the Horvath ship's abilities, though, appeared correct. The 'cruiser'
maneuvered even worse than
The Tub
.

The ship took a sudden, hard, lurch and all the power shut down.

“We're leaking air,” Tyler said, looking through the rear porthole. “I mean, like blowing
it out. I think something broke.” He craned his head around more and winced. “Let me
rephrase. They just shot off the rear of the bird.”

“That's something you don't see often,” Steve said, quietly.

“The rear of your ship floating away?” Tyler said.

“No,” Steve said. “A laser in space. I think it hit a chunk of debris. Well, nice knowing
you.”

“Same,” Tyler said. “I wonder how it's going on earth?”

***

“We need to engage,” Dr. Foster said. “It's a second and a half from the point that we
open fire until we even
hit
the Horvath ship. And they are dead in space.”

“Their telemetry is gone,” the commander of SpaceCom said. “There's no gravitic emissions,
there are no particle emissions, there is no hypernet transmissions. They're
dead
. So losing our one chance to take out the cruiser is out of the question. See the ripple
of distortion around the Horvath ship? They have their shields at maximum. We can't punch
through that, right?”

“We hit them from every BDA array,” Foster said. “Maybe we can overwhelm them. The full
SAPL is damned near one hundred and
sixty
terrawatts. We just hold back the VSA mirror.
That
we've only got one shot with.”

“Do it,” the general said.

“Setting it up...” the laser technician said, starting to hit the icons.

“Let me,” Foster said with a sigh and closed his eyes. “I can do it with plants faster.
And all the arrays are... retargeting.”

***

“Hey,” Tyler said. “I can see your house from here!”

“More importantly, I can see the Horvath ship,” Steve said. “Barely. It's just a dot.”

“Can you see if they're still firing?” Tyler asked.

“You can't see lasers in space,” Steve said. “But they haven't hit us. Yet. That's a good
thing.”

“Again,” Tyler said. “Got to wonder about their targeting systems. I mean, we'd have a
hard time hitting something this small from that far away even with the SAPL. And I think
that mirrors in space are probably less jittery than a ship. So...”

“Whoa!” Steve said. “I can really see it, now.”

“Why?”

“I think they just opened up with SAPL.”

***

Tyler had been building
a lot
of mirrors. Mirrors to pick up sunlight. Mirrors to reflect it. Mirrors to move it
around. It all added up.

Forty separate BDA systems, each capable of concentrating their reflected four megawatts
of solar energy to a beam the diameter of a coffee cup, had engaged the Horvath screens.
Which turned black as night as they attempted to deflect the massed photons.

***

“Screens at maximum,” the defensive technician said. “They
are
holding.”

The entire ship was thrumming like a steel guitar, though.

“The power is intense,” the engineering technician noted, cautiously. “There is a
possibility of failure of one of the systems under so much load. Also, it is using a
significant amount of fuel to maintain power. Engineering recommends ending this condition
at the earliest possible moment.”

“We are unable to engage under this much power,” the tactical technician said. “There is
no targeting. We cannot respond.”

“No more gravitics or other emissions from the space fighter,” the sensor technician said.
“We could see it before the attack. It was not entirely destroyed, but effectively.”

“We will close to the planet and fire mass drivers on all control points for this laser
system,” the battle manager commed. “That taken care of we will reduce this planet to
ash.” There was a sudden shudder through the ship and a wail of alarms. “What was... ?”

“Breacher round,” the engineering technician wailed.

“Shield sixteen has failed!”

***

After adjustment for the dual cockpit,
The Tub
had forty-two breacher rounds. Forty-one had drifted off into deep space and become really
nasty navigational hazards.

Round Seventeen was one that had been rather carelessly aimed. But between the nearly
random maneuvering of
The Tub
and the maneuvering of the Horvath ship, it had just happened, by a stroke of not quite
luck, to drift into the path of the ship. And, as programmed, having detected a high
gravitational gradient, it spun up its breacher system.

Four of the toughest, smallest, nastiest gravity plates Boeing could create were fed power
by a half dozen equally small Honeywell carbon-nanotube capacitors. The amount of power
was staggering, enough to run a nuclear attack sub. For, as noted, about a half a second.

The Horvath were not technological gods. Their systems were barely beyond what Boeing had
devised. More stable, more refined, but essentially similar. They used magnetic bearings,
for example. Magnetic bearings designed to withstand one hundred gravities that were
suddenly subjected to four
thousand
gravities of power in an area the size of a walnut.

The backlash turned them into very small pieces of rapidly spinning molten bronze. Which,
following simple Newtonian physics and a touch of thermodynamics, turned into a gaseous
cloud of burning bronze.

BDA complex twelve was pointed, more or less, at the hole created by the breacher. More or
less because it was nearly three light-seconds away and despite better steering systems
the BDAs were still not terribly accurate over that distance. So it was swooping all over
the surface of the Horvath ship, out into space, back in, cutting across the shields and
back out. The combination of the relatively low power of the BDAs and their poor targeting
was the main problem with taking down the Horvath shields in the first place.