Star Destroyers

by Tony Daniel

  “Okay,” Strode said. “Let’s watch our steps.”

  They moved on into an open space. Morris pointed at the door on the far side. “That’s KGB quarters.”

  Strode eyed the Cyrillic lettering on the door. “Is that what it says?”

  “No—it says ‘zapreshchennyy.’ ‘Forbidden.’ That can only mean one thing.”

  The door was locked. Strode sent a couple men back to search the corpses for keys. They returned with two sets.

  The third key opened the door . “Careful,” Strode said, hoisting the Gyrojet. “He may well be in here.”

  He wasn’t. The quarters, slightly more impressive than the ones below, were empty. They went from room to room until they spotted the international radiation trefoil.

  “Here it is,” Morris whispered. He examined the door. “It’s got two locks.”

  “They’re using the double-key system.”

  “Right.”

  Strode handed him one set. Once they found the keys that fit, Strode counted off and they turned them simultaneously. The door slid open.

  Glancing inside, Strode spotted a small package floating in midair accompanied by a couple of tools. Others were strapped on the bulkhead near the door at the far end. He saw a coded lock with a keypad on the door but it was dark—somebody had disabled it.

  He and Morris moved toward the door. Strode batted aside the package, a pack of Russian cigarettes. Morris reached for a box strapped to the wall. “Geiger counter.” He switched it on.

  He jerked his hand back as the counter started chattering wildly, with almost no space between the clicks. He gazed wild-eyed at Strode. “Something’s wrong.”

  Strode stared at the closed door. He licked his lips. With a single jerk on the railing, he pulled himself toward it.

  The door swung wide. In the glow of his helmet light, he spotted open bomb casings, the wiring and parts scattered around the space. And beyond them . . .

  He stepped farther inside. A man lay strapped on a makeshift couch. His skin was dead white, his lips red with blood, his scalp nearly hairless. Strode thought he was dead until the eyes opened wide and one hand rose gripping a mechanism with wires trailing to an intact bomb lying behind him.

  Strode’s voice came as a shout. “I am Major Francis Strode, USAF . . . I am here at the request of Mikhail Gorbachev . . .”

  Krilov died two hours later. They spoke to him over the intercom—anybody who spent any time at all in that room would be as sick as he was.

  After that they were busy—stripping the ship of its pills, getting it aligned, at last wrecking what remained of its control system.

  Before they left, he made one last effort to contact Plekhov—for the record, if nothing else.

  “You’ll be alone,” Morris called out over the intercom, as Strode told him what to say. “Everybody else is dead. You’ll have no chance.

  “This ship is aimed at Jupiter. In a few weeks, it will dive into the atmosphere, and there is nothing you can do to stop it.”

  That had been decided back in Washington, to calm any potential Russian paranoia. They had never caught up with the Rokossovsky. It had lit off for Jupiter as they approached, leaving them behind. That’s how the record would read, anyway.

  “You’ve got five minutes, Plekhov. Then we’re gone.”

  That five minutes passed slowly, and in dead silence. They left Plekhov behind and headed back to the ship.

  Strode sat in the observation deck, his ribs bandaged, dead with exhaustion, unable to think very straight at all. The only thing he knew was that he’d had a brush with something that he’d long thought existed nowhere in this world. He thought of endings, and how they were sometimes transformed into beginnings. He thought about the ship he was watching plunging past the rings and into the great frozen cloud that was Jupiter. He thought of Titan, and Mars, and places as yet without names. He thought of the promise he had made to Anton Lazarovich.

  A light-off warning sounded, and Strode closed his eyes. Five seconds later his eyelids flashed red. When he opened them once more, the Rokossovsky was gone.

  I will see it all for both of us, he promised one more time, and went to get some sleep.

  J. R. Dunn is the author of the novels This Side of Judgment, Days of Cain—widely hailed as one of the most powerful time-travel novels to deal with the Holocaust—and Full Tide of Night. He was the long-time associate editor of The International Military Encyclopedia and is now an editor at The American Thinker. His nonfiction appears regularly on Baen.com.

  HATE IN THE DARKNESS

  Michael Z. Williamson

  The perfectly executed move in art, sport, or war often seems effortless, an act of Napoleonic genius or Alexander-like daring and guile. But as most artists know, grace comes from planning, practice, and cunningly concentrated resources. Ships may be massively powerful, and insults, anger, and tenacity may abound. But sometimes the real resource is the ability to weigh the odds and calculate the best moves. At those times, no resource is more important to marshal than a calm and collected mind. Battles and, oftentimes, the fates of civilizations themselves, can turn on one man thinking clearly.

  Space is deeper than most people can grasp, even those who work and live in it. Star systems are islands. One can hop between those islands in days, with enough power and a jump point or phase drive. Doing it the long way requires even more power, and literal decades to centuries of time.

  Which means those vast gulfs of scattered dust, subspace matter, and scarce chunks of rock or frozen gas are devoid of anything of interest to anyone not a specific class of scientist.

  Except a fleet of military ships hiding for their lives.

  Freehold Military Ship Malahayati departed the remotest berth in human history, isolated in interstellar space at a location provided only to two of her officers, with instructions to scramble and destroy the data if the ship were captured. The idea of capturing a ship was ridiculous, except it had happened twice, both times to the enemy from Earth. One had been threatened into submitting, the other boarded through subterfuge by an elite team, and turned back on its former owners, until being claimed by yet a third party.

  Malahayati was a destroyer, equipped with her own star drive, not dependent on a tow from a fleet carrier. She could operate independently, but would be woefully outnumbered and outgunned anywhere in UN space. She wasn’t going to fight head to head.

  Instead, she was going to live up to her nickname of Hate, and strike hard and fast in enemy territory.

  Earth’s fleet was numerous and well-supplied, though limited to and bottlenecked by the jump points between systems. The Freehold ships were few, with little backup, no major resupply and no defensible bases. The war wasn’t being fought head to head.

  Until now, Malahayati had ferried stealth intel boats around using her phase drive. She could go virtually anywhere, though there were few places worth going that weren’t covered by jump points. It did mean she was less predictable, however.

  Then the astro engineers had built a clandestine base, in deep space, where no jump points reached and which only a phase-drive ship with the proper astrogation could locate. It was nowhere, near nothing, with cold, distant stars the only scenery, and four warships the only company. Fewer than ten officers present knew where they were.

  Astrogator Lieutenant Malin Metzger was one of them.

  He was on this mission because of his mathematical skill. The proposed mission involved rapidly evolving four-dimensional geometric zones. After the strike, whatever Earth forces were available would try to hunt and kill the Freehold ship. The Freeholders had to fight, but they dare not lose any ships if it could be avoided. On the fly, he’d have to calculate zones of threat, velocity, evasion. He would be de facto commander during the operation.

  Once clear of the station, Malahayati boosted long and hard at 1.5 G, building up velocity to use later. Crews cycled through watches as she accelerated endlessly, her powerplant humming near full power.
A supplemental fueling craft, precious and necessary, ensured she had full capacity once at speed. It detached and braked for reuse.

  Captain Commander Hirsch was half-visible through the display tank in the pie-shaped C-deck. The command crew all had the battle display to share, and their own overhead displays for task-specific matters. Technical staff were a half deck below.

  Hirsch said, “Proceed with mission.” He wrote his departure order into the log, and it appeared on Metzger’s display.

  Warrant Leader Jaqui Tung on the helm said, “Sir, I am ready.”

  The captain flashed his maneuvers to her display, and she took it from there.

  “All hands prepare for transition . . . phase entry imminent . . . Maneuver commencing.”

  There was really little to see or say. She had her sticks and display, and she made the warship move. He felt a momentary odd sensation, very déjà vu-like, only over his whole body, as they entered phase drive. That was it.

  All the drama would be at the terminal end, and most of it merely mathematical figures.

  Metzger reviewed his op-plan. It was content-heavy, and filled his screens, the hologramatic space in front of him, and the chart display. There would hopefully be minor updates in-system, but what they had was what the assault was based on.

  More important than the assault was the evasion-and-escape phase afterward. He’d instruct Tung if he could. He might have to take instantaneous control or engage the AI to avoid eating all the missiles he was sure any Earth ships would throw at them.

  He then closed and darkened his station, and reclined in his G couch. He’d spend most of the mission lying in it.

  With medical help he slept. It was productive sleep, but not enjoyable. It was a military necessity and felt like it. Three divs, just under eight Earth hours later, his system woke him.

  Captain Hirsch said, “Welcome back, Metzger. Are you ready to commence?”

  “Sir, I am. I have the deck and the conn.”

  “They are yours.”

  They precipitated far out of Earth’s normal routes, deep in the Kuiper Belt. They’d planned their original acceleration to give them the velocity they needed here. They were near five percent of c, devoid of most emissions, plunging in-system fast enough to wipe life off a planet if they didn’t mind sacrificing themselves in the process.

  They’d prefer not to do that. Nor would Earth, any inhabited planet, or major habitat let anything in such a trajectory impact. But that depended on detecting an approach, which was based on the assumption such an object would be reflective or under power, not a mostly black body against a mostly black background. Only planets had enough sensor area for that kind of defense. Habitats were vulnerable.

  They fell in-system, taking only Earth hours to transit what would normally take days.

  As they shot in, ship systems were reduced in power. The engines were shut down, reactors at standby, generating only enough for life support and basic operation, thermal leakage radiating aft. They needed to conserve energy for later, and minimize any outputs at all now.

  Hate wasn’t invisible. Her outer hull was going to radiate at some temperature warmer than 3 K. Part of the mission profile, while they weren’t under thrust, was to put miniscule puffs of liquid helium out on the hull to cool that spectrum.

  Playing the odds on someone else’s sensor skill was part of the operational planning. It didn’t make Metzger any happier . . . even if the inverse-square law worked in their favor.

  For now.

  Metzger rested again under mild tranqs to maximize his function time later.

  He woke on schedule, went below and refreshed himself and ate, and dragged back through the passage to C-Deck.

  Once ensconced, he donned headset, visor, and touch gloves, brought up his screens, then waited. He attempted to appear casual, but was tense inside. This was it. And there was the time tick. It pinged all the command crew, and the ship came alive, even if not under power.

  “Battle stations, battle stations. All hands as assigned and stand by for low emission protocols.”

  Metzger settled farther into his G couch. Even at their current insane velocity, he expected to lie here most of a day, with a very quick head break or two, and have food delivered.

  If they’d miscalculated, he might very well die here.

  The first part was intellectually easy, morally tough. It was a declared war. The target was a military terminal. It was unquestionably a legitimate attack.

  It was also, practically speaking, a rear-echelon facility that never expected anything beyond sabotage. A major combat strike wasn’t something they were prepared for.

  The trajectory was clean, their ship all but invisible. The captain’s orders gave Metzger final approval over launch, because it used his figures. The attack had been planned by himself, Hirsch, and the Strategic Office aboard the station. Everything that followed, though, was done with his calculations and his input. The execution was his.

  He was about to kill a lot of people.

  Their people had killed a lot of his people in his system, even if these individuals hadn’t personally done it.

  But they hadn’t personally done it, and they were the ones taking the punishment.

  It was time. He stomped on the quandary, secondarily unlocked everything the captain had already unlocked, and brought up his imaging displays.

  He sipped water. He was thirsty now. He had no idea how he’d feel later.

  “Separation,” he announced. He thought he could detect a fractional change in the ship’s balance as the drone, munitions, and impactor mass detached, but it was probably just a psychological effect.

  Then it was back to waiting.

  The station’s active search functions should detect the Freehold weapons at a given radius, and not before. They were optimized for the standard range of orbital debris. Any runaway or sabotage ship was expected to show boost phase and be readily identifiable. Malahayati was a fuzzy nothing with near no emissions in the primary search band, as far as sensors went. They should not be detected. The infalling mass, however, would be, eventually.

  Metzger turned command back over to the second officer, lay back to tranq out for a couple of more divs.

  It was near midnight ship time when he woke, examined the image display, and checked status.

  A dot showed their position, other dots showed the station, two known patrol ships, several in-system cargo haulers, and the Freehold weapons’ assumed positions. Slowly, as he watched patiently, the positions changed.

  It was another long div of him staring and doing little before anything significant happened.

  Next to him, but separated by a divider, Sensor “officer” Doug Werner said, “They just went hot. Their threat warnings are live. Subjectively.” Werner was in fact a contractor who’d been conducting training aboard ship when the war started. Their regular sensor officer was somewhere unknown.

  It was important to remember that what they saw had happened long seconds, entire Earth-minutes previously. The decision cycle would get shorter as they got closer. Though even distant exchanges might be unavoidably lethal, giving them only more time for regret.

  The station’s first response was fast and reasonable. An energy battery fired, and seconds of travel time later, a massive energy flux vaporized the incoming threat.

  Which flashed into chaff that curlicued across space.

  The second projectile was masked by the cloud, and didn’t become visible to them at once. When it did, the battery fired again.

  Then there was activity and re-set as one of the drone-launched missiles arrived on a completely different trajectory. Another battery fired, and another plasma flare lit the space. It was an expensive decoy, almost a ship itself, but the growing background clutter was degrading the station’s ability to respond.

  It was obvious to the station command that this was a deliberate assault. They sent out an open broadcast.

  “Station Control to all vessels,
we appear to be under attack. Remain clear of the Docking Control Zone and stand by to provide support. Gather any intel available and forward.”

  Watching their defense collapse was fascinating but tragic. Their tactics assumed rogue space debris or a critically damaged ship on collision course. There were plans in place to deal with a sabotage or suicide mission. There was no way they could yet have prepared for a non-jump-point entry by a warship that evaded all interception options.

  The entire strategy of system defense was being rewritten right now.

  Then the third frontal warhead arrived, too close for them to do much. They tried to destroy it, but it was designed to and did detonate close enough for a wave front that lit their shields with overload and scattered more metal dust. It was probably beautiful and terrifying up close. Here, it was numbers and icons in the airspace of Metzger’s display.

  The decoy’s trailing booster stage detonated, a pure dummy, but close enough to require more reaction. Then a mass of lithic warheads, rocks, hammered down from behind the chaff screening, followed by one last warhead.

  This one was a killer. It was an antimatter-triggered fusion device visible all the way out here, with a detectable radiation front. It flashed in the entire spectrum, even in visual range. It detonated close enough to melt some of the superstructure, and drive that vaporized material through the rest of the station.

  What had been a UN spacedock was melted vapor and shattered debris. Thousands of people and three ships still docked no longer existed. Hundreds died within the next several seconds, some few having just enough time to cry “Mayday!” into the void. Then silence reigned. The debris disappeared from sensors as it cooled into slag and ash, dispersing into the Kuiper Belt.

  At least it was a clean death, he reassured himself. They might have had time to be scared. They probably wouldn’t have felt a thing when it actually happened. Boiled, crushed or overloaded by enough radiation to cook every neuron instantly. Anyone else suffocated within seconds.