They waited. Six seconds later the main tactical screen showed the flare of a thermonuclear warhead over eight hundred thousand kilometers away: three light-seconds. It took three seconds for Alexander’s command to reach the missile and then three more seconds for the light of the detonation to get back to them. Ten or twenty seconds later Bermudez spoke.
“Sir, targets have ceased acceleration. Target aspect ratio changing, I think they’re rotating their ships, sir.”
Sam said nothing, not wanting to jinx what was happening out there with premature self-congratulations, but he knew what he wanted that Troatta admiral to think. He wanted her to remember Humans used nukes to prevent detection of threats. Sam had detonated the Five-One missile, which had already passed them by to make the Troatta think the threat was coming from behind them. Sam wanted that admiral to turn her ships so their meson guns were ready to engage any missiles emerging from the hot debris cloud that a moment before had been Five One. He wanted those ships pointed the wrong direction—and looking the wrong direction—until it was too late.
“TAC, how much power does Drone One have left?”
“Seventeen minutes at maximum output, sir. Six hours on high-res passive, seventy-two on low power standby.”
“Okay, drop it back to passive mode for now. We’re going to need it later.”
Now nothing to do for half an hour but watch the battle clock, stare at the tactical displays, and wait. Might as well do something to fill the time.
“Say, is that damned bridge drink dispenser still on the blink?” he asked.
“Still broke-dick-no-workee, sir,” Chief Bermudez answered as she sent the command to Drone One to power down.
Sam squinted up the commlink to the ready wardroom.
Yes, Captain?
“Steward, I got a bridge full of thirsty people. Think you can manage to send some delicious beverages up here? Make mine coffee black and take everyone else’s order.”
Doctor Däng Thi Hue had been the first person on the ship to speak to Te’Anna, had defended her against the imagined murderous intentions of the captain—incorrectly imagined, as it turned out—but she and the Guardian had hardly spoken since then. Whatever Hue needed to do her work had involved tissue samples, not conversation. Now Te’Anna stood here in the medbay where Hue had spent so many hours studying the Guardian’s chemical, cellular, and genetic makeup. She had come to help Hue save the lives of Koichi Ma and one hundred twenty-seven more. Hue had not been sure what to say at first but, once they began examining the structure of the biological agent in the blood of Koichi and the infected Marines, their shared curiosity took over and within an hour they had formed a desperate partnership—desperate because of the aggressive, virulent agent they observed in the samples.
“My God, it is actually re-engineering their DNA,” Hue said, sitting back from the display screen. “Have you ever heard of anything like this?”
“Oh, yes,” Te’Anna replied calmly. “This is a favorite technique of K’Irka’s. It requires more work in the original invasive construct, but once that construct is introduced it works very quickly. Notice how she has sped up metabolism. Also, the viral agent stimulates cells to replicate more often than normally. Both changes speed the transformation. The subjects are already shedding their outer epidermis. The extreme body and joint pain is symptomatic of accelerated bone replacement.”
“But why? She could have just killed them.”
Te’Anna did one of her peculiar neck stretches and then looked at Hue with her head turned nearly on its side. “There is no art in simply killing, Doctor Däng.”
“Did you say art?”
“Yes. K’Irka thinks of herself as an artist, and one whose work runs to the ironic and grotesque. I think she is simply pretentious, but then I cannot recall ever appreciating art of the more challenging sort.”
Art, Hue thought. K’Irka was turning Koichi and the others into twisted caricatures as an expression of art. What was wrong with these so-called Guardians, these . . . these things?
“What can we do to counteract this virus?”
“We can do nothing,” Te’Anna said.
Hue felt unsteady for a moment, and then experienced a surge of rage, murderous rage. “I want to kill K’Irka,” she admitted. “I know it’s wrong, and yet I want to very much. I want to do it with my own hands.”
“That seems a very sensible reaction,” Te’Anna said, “and yet you think it is wrong. Humans have so many rules. It makes me dizzy just thinking about them.”
“We can do nothing to save Koichi,” Hue said, “so all I am left with is vengeance.”
“Why do you say we cannot save Lieutenant Ma? There is nothing we can do to reverse the virus, but I am certain K’Irka can. It is only a case of finding what will motivate her to do so.”
Twenty minutes later Sam looked at the battle clock: nine hours and forty-one minutes. The lead Troatta battleship crossed the forty-three-thousand-kilometer line—meson gun range—from the small, cold, silent cylinder of the Cold Charlie missile. The battleship did not fire. The next nine minutes seemed to Sam to last an hour. One minute before their missile was within detonation range of the enemy, Alexander spoke.
“Captain, we’ve got something interesting here. If we wait eight more minutes after we’re within detonation range of the lead long ship, we’ll have both of them in range of Cold Charlie. We can split fire and maybe cripple both of them.”
Both? Two with one blow? The odds of killing them both were vanishingly small, but still . . . damage on both ships, even a little, would put them back on their heels. But the missile would have to live eight extra minutes. At what point would the Troatta close-in collision avoidance sensors pick it up?
“No. Take the shot we’ve got as soon as we’ve got it. All laser rods aimed at the proximate target.”
“Aye, aye, sir,” Alexander said, and Sam sensed no disagreement, no resentment in the voice. He’d had an idea, made his recommendation, but was happy with someone else making the call. Either that or he was a good actor.
“Firing range in twenty seconds, sir. Ten seconds. Firing range . . . mark.”
“Fire,” Sam ordered.
The Ship was in pain. Chief Helm Kakusa by-Vrook through-Kuannawaa felt the ship’s pain in her own arms, immersed in the living orifices of the control interface. She felt the pain rippling up and down her limbs.
“Is it bad, Ship?” she asked.
It hurts, but not so much as that time we fought in the last great battle against the Keen-Kee Armada. My long eyes and long legs are broken. My short legs are as well, but I think I can repair them with the help of our crew. Some of our crew are broken, also. I am sorry.
“I know, Ship,” she answered. “I am sorry too.”
How did he attack us from behind? it asked.
“It was my fault, Ship. My fault. I let him deceive me, turned to face a threat which was not there. Repair your short legs if you can. The long legs are unimportant for now.”
They did not need the Ship’s long eyes—active sensors—so long as her sister’s Ship still had its own and the datalink between them remained active, and the long legs—star drive—could indeed wait. But the short legs—the Ship’s thrusters—were needed to slow the Ship and eventually bring it back to the shipyard for repairs. Without them, they would probably all die. The Ship itself certainly would. She felt the tingle of her sister, Helm Tamari, trying to open contact.
Sister Kakusa, are you alive?
“Yes, Sister Tamari, most of us still live. There is damage, however, and it is serious. Our active sensors are inoperable as well as both our star drive and reaction drive. The reaction drive may be repairable.”
We will dock with you and help make repairs.
“No! Our mission remains unchanged. S’Bitka has won the first contest, but there may still be a path to our own victory. You must listen and follow my instructions exactly.”
“TAC, what am I looking at?” Sa
m said.
“I think it’s a crippled Troatta long ship, sir,” Alexander said. “It’s cooling, so its powerplant is either inoperable or she’s playing possum. The ship is still on its original course and will pass between Destie-Seven and Seven-Echo, but it’s not radiating energy and it’s tumbling slowly, about one rotation every seventeen minutes. The other ship has resumed lateral thrust, so it’s not going back to render assistance. That can mean a lot of things.”
Yes, it could, Sam thought. He was glad to hear Alexander wasn’t jumping to any conclusions. They knew they’d hit that one ship, knew they’d done something to it, but what? Either it was so lightly damaged it didn’t require assistance, or so badly damaged it was a lifeless shell, or the Troatta admiral wanted Sam to think it was one of those two things, or maybe it meant something else entirely. One thing was clear: the remaining ship was still bending orbit to get as close to them and Destie Seven as they could when they made their fly-by.
“What sort of firing solution can you put together on the undamaged bandit?” Sam asked.
“Nothing simple, sir. The gas giant’s gravity well is so deep it’s got an escape velocity of about sixty kilometers per second. We’ve got an orbital velocity of twenty-six klicks, and we can only put about four more klicks per second on a Mark Five with the coil gun, so all we can do it throw it into a higher orbit. We can lob stuff at them, but they’re likely to see it coming.”
Sam brought up the course projections on his display. At the current closing rate, they’d be in range of the Troatta’s meson gun in under three hours. If the Troatta kept up the lateral acceleration, they would just about graze the upper atmosphere of Destie Seven. He still had twenty-five Mark Fives and eight Mark Fours.
“Helm, time to disengage from the spin habitat. As soon as we’re clear we’ll burn some of that reaction mass we just scooped. Give me a full gee for twenty minutes, kick us into higher orbit and leave the spin habitat down close.”
“One gee for twenty minutes, aye, aye, sir,” Barr-Sanchez answered. “Do you want a second correction to even out the orbit, sir?”
“No, let’s leave it eccentric, give them something to do with those fancy computers they’re supposed to have. TAC, give me some firing solutions on the active long ship: decoys and Mark Fives in sequence. Keep the Mark Fours in their canisters and hold back a couple Mark Fives, but throw at least twenty missiles at her. Give me one decoy cluster and one Mark Five on the cripple, too. Let’s see how crippled they really are.”
The next ten minutes were consumed with preparing the ship to undock with the habitat ring, and then actually undocking. Alexander was silent the entire time, absorbed with the firing solution calculations and course projections. As the Bay’s main hull cleared the habitat ring, Alexander’s head snapped up.
“Captain, don’t accelerate!”
“Helm, belay acceleration,” Sam ordered and then he turned to the TAC boss. “Time is limited, TAC. This better be good.”
“I hope so, sir. I may be crazy, but look at these orbit tracks. I’m not used to fighting this deep inside a gravity well, but orbital eccentricity . . . I think we can really mess them up. We don’t have to just lob missiles at them. We can do all sorts of screwy things, like shoot a missile down into the atmosphere and get a slingshot effect. I mean, we’ll have to retard the decoy release until after the missile clears atmo, but—”
“Settle down, TAC. Take a breath. Why does that matter?”
“There are so many different ways of putting a missile on target, I think we should do all of them, sir. Some missiles will get there quicker, some slower, but if we stagger the launches, we can time them all to get there at about the same time. And here’s the kicker: some of them are going to come from weird angles. Arc of fire, sir. I think we can flood the zone, overwhelm their point-defense ability, hit them from more directions than they can bring fire to bear against. Look, sir.” He pointed to his display. Sam saw a tangle of missile tracks, but all converging on a common point. “The thing is, we’ve got a very narrow launch window. For this to work we’ve got to start launching now, not twenty minutes from now.”
Sam felt an almost overpowering urge to begin crunching the numbers, to see how the solution worked—or didn’t work—but he resisted it. Alexander already had crunched the numbers. That was his job.
“Is this fire plan ready to execute?”
Alexander’s eyes opened wider and for a moment Sam thought he would falter, but he swallowed and then nodded. “Yes sir, it is.”
“Okay. It’s your boat, TAC. Execute.”
The next twenty minutes were physically as well as psychologically disorienting. The Bay spent much of the time rotating, coming to new firing bearings at Alexander’s commands. The sound of the acceleration klaxon became as familiar as the shudder of the ship when it fired a missile or decoy cluster from its coil gun. Sam did not give a single command the entire time; Alexander executed the fire mission without bravado or self-consciousness. His personality seemed to disappear into the job. Sam spent the time crunching the numbers, making sure the solution would work. If it wouldn’t it would at least keep the Troatta busy for a while and he would have to come up with something else, but the numbers worked. By the time the last missile was fired, he was convinced the Troatta were dead. Now the only thing left to do was convince them of that.
“COMM, get me a text link to both Troatta ships. Mister Alexander, that is one brilliant attack plan. Well done, TAC. Well done. Now get me a copy of our fire-plan course trajectories, but code all the decoys as live missiles as well.”
Pride and confusion fought for mastery of Alexander’s face. “Sir?”
“We’re warriors, Mister Alexander, not murderers. If they want to fight and die, we’ll oblige them, but they should at least have the chance to surrender. Because I’ll tell you the truth. TAC, that’s the only way they’ll survive the next two hours.”
Sam hoped they would surrender. He’d killed enough. Whatever score there was to settle was settled many times over, and these beings had no part in the murder of his landing party. He’d like to take a piece out of P’Daan, but how many of his own crew was he willing to expend on that item of personal satisfaction? Not a single one. He squinted up his contact list and pinged Haykuz.
Captain?
“Mister Haykuz, I have a diplomatic task for you, one which if carried out can save a lot of lives. No one has dealt with Troatta senior officers more directly than you. I need you to persuade these two Troatta ships facing us to surrender. You’ve got some leverage: we have them in a hopeless tactical situation. Negotiate any terms you like, so long as they’re out of the fight long enough for us to finish our business on Seven-Echo and get away.”
I will do what I can, Captain Bitka.
CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
The next day, aboard USS Cam Ranh Bay,
approaching Destie-Seven-Echo Highstation
15 July 2134 (one hundred forty-nine days
after Incident Seventeen)
The light in the medbay was so bright it hurt Sam’s eyes at first, but this was where Doctor Däng and Te’Anna wanted to give their report. He could taste the coffee coating his teeth and tongue. That was one thing the galley still had. They’d been carrying a big shipment of concentrate in the cargo hold, which was a good thing. He’d been running on coffee for the twenty hours since the two long ships had emerged from J-space—all through the strangely one-sided battle, the temporary truce negotiations with the two alien ships, the tense moments until the one undamaged ship had begun accelerating away from Destie-Seven and toward a rendezvous with the cripple, the inevitable recriminations from Ka’Deem Brook, and the agony of listening to and seeing the last conscious moments of their people on the shipyard highstation. Running on coffee and protein bars made by Acho’s logistics crew: pressed soy protein with dried seaweed for texture and flavored with hydroponically grown beet sugar.
Yum.
“So what do we kn
ow?” he asked.
Doctor Däng glanced over at Te’Anna, but if she believed she would get any comfort there, Sam thought she was mistaken. Whatever sense of fear or loss Däng felt for her friend on Highstation was foreign to their Guardian . . . their Guardian what? Not really prisoner so much these days. Guest? Traveling companion? The continued presence of the two armed Marine guards suggested otherwise, but the relationship had definitely altered since the battle with the pair of long ships. The first pair of long ships.
“We know the agent which infected Koichi and the Marines,” Doctor Däng said, “and probably the means by which they were infected. The delivery system is a retrovirus, human-specific, clearly engineered for this one very specific purpose.”
“How did it get past Merderet’s security precautions?”
“It did not, Captain Bitka. We believe it was always present in the space they selected as a safe environment. It does not require oxygen and so reducing the space to vacuum did not destroy it.”
“That’s crazy. How did they know to put it in those specific spaces?” Sam asked.
Doctor Däng shook her head. “They did not, nor did they need to. Since it is human-specific, it is harmless to both Guardians and New People, so we believe they simply spread it everywhere in the station, assuming our landing party would have to choose some place as a refuge.”
Däng again glanced at the Guardian and this time Te’Anna spoke.
“There may be a way to rescue Lieutenant Ma and the others. But you must first promise to release me to K’Irka. This is actually an essential part of the plan, but I cannot explain it to you until you agree. And your agreement must be without condition. I believe the term is ‘a separate peace.’ In your capacity as senior military official of the United States of North America, or at least senior of all officials present in the theater of war, you agree to a cessation of hostilities between your realm and the Guardian Te’Anna, effective immediately.”
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