by Douglas, Ian
In transit
36 Ophiuchi A System
0725 hours, TFT
Emergence . . .
The tightly-wrapped bubble of spacetime surrounding America opened in an intense burst of photons. Gray watched from his command chair as the stars flashed back on, after more than twenty-five hours of unyielding, impenetrable darkness. In the navigational tank below and in front of him, other ships in the battlegroup, one by one, began dropping into existence, the nearest vessels first—the USNA destroyers Bradley and Henderson . . . the Simon Bolivar . . . Napoleon—then more distant ships as the light bearing their images crawled across intervening space and reached America’s sensors—Kali, von Metternich, Normandy, Ariel, Caesar Augustus, Illustrious.
After a transition of less than twenty light years, most of the constellations ahead remained recognizable—Scorpius, the teapot of Sagittarius, the backward question mark of Leo well off to starboard. To port, the familiar summer triangle was missing one star; Altair, only sixteen light years from Earth, now lay astern.
Astern, too, a faint yellow star had winked into being between the outstretched horns of Taurus, just north of the familiar constellation of Orion—Earth’s sun, now shrunken to a fourth-magnitude star.
From forty astronomical units out, the star system of 36 Ophiuchi showed as three orange suns, with two, A and B, appearing perhaps 20 degrees apart from this angle, and with C a dimmer companion much farther off to one side. Star A was a type K0 orange star, its close companion a K1, while 36 Ophiuchi C was a K5 that didn’t even orbit the other two, but simply shared their proper motion through the galaxy. Stars A and B circled each other in an extremely eccentric orbit, coming as close together as 7 AUs and moving as far apart as 169 AUs, the two taking about 570 years to make a complete orbit. Currently, the two were 30 AUs apart, about the distance between Sol and Neptune.
Gray studied in-head downloads of the triple system. The twice-per-millennium close passage of B around A sharply limited the size of A’s family of planets. There were four. Planet III, Arianrhod, was 0.766 AUs out from its star, a hair farther from its primary than was Venus from Sol. Planets I and II both were hot Jupiters, gas giants in the process of evaporating in the heat of their star like enormous comets, though both were closer in size and mass to Sol VII than to Sol V. Planet IV was the size of Neptune’s moon Triton, ice-clad and frigid at 1.5 AUs out, while beyond that was a ring of planetoids, left-over bits and pieces from the system’s formation, which could not form planets because of the periodic gravitational interference of 36 Ophiuchi B.
Both 36 Ophiuchi B and C had planetary systems of their own, but surveys made during the late 2200s, while Arianrhod was being set up as a base, had established that none of those other planets even came close to the idea of habitability for human visitors. Ice giants, ice-cloaked moons, heat-baked and barren rocks, hot Jupiters, planetoid belts—worlds of interest to planetologists, perhaps, but not to xenobiologists.
At least, not yet. There was life beneath the ice of several of the gas-giant moons in Sol’s planetary system, as well as the recently discovered alien growths at the radiation-warmed deep boundary beneath Pluto’s icy surface and its still-hot interior. If life could exist there, under such extreme conditions, it might well have evolved here as well . . . but for the time being, humanity’s focus on the 36 Ophiuchi system was centered entirely on planet AIII, the oceanic and poisonous super-Earth named Arianrhod.
Gray still wondered if the place was worth it. . . .
“We’re starting to pick up the opposition,” Commander Mallory reported. “Fifteen targets, clustered in close orbit over Arianrhod.”
“Very well.”
“Captain Gray?” Connie Fletcher’s voice said. “All strike squadrons are ready for launch.”
“Thank you, CAG. Stand by.”
Gray turned in his seat, glancing up and back at the closed bulkhead behind him. America possessed two primary bridges, one immediately behind and “above” the other, though both resided in the command tower rising from America’s spine and therefore were in zero-G, where concepts such as “above” or “below” were meaningless. The bulkhead between them could be opened, but during combat operations it was generally sealed shut to avoid losing both in the event of catastrophic depressurization. Gray’s was the ship command bridge, from which he ran the ship. Aft was the flag bridge, formerly Admiral Steiger’s domain, but now ruled by the Confederation’s Admiral Delattre. Steiger was wired in next to Delattre, and Gray didn’t envy him one bit.
According to long-fixed tradition, the admiral commanded the entire fleet, while the captain commanded the ship. As flag captain—the commanding officer of the admiral’s flagship—Gray was also expected to serve as the admiral’s chief of staff, offering both strategic advice and coordinating the admiral’s tactical planning staff.
Delattre’s arrival had risked scrambling the USNA battlegroup’s command structure, however. Rather than demoting Steiger to the post of America’s CO, or putting him ashore at SupraQuito, both moves that would have seriously affected shipboard morale, Steiger had been shunted off to one side. In theory, he still commanded the 23-ship USNA battlegroup, but only under Delattre’s direct supervision. Technically, he was on Delattre’s staff and served as a senior advisor, but everyone in the fleet knew this was a polite fiction masking the fact that the Confederation didn’t trust the USNA CO, or the forces under his command.
So morale had plummeted anyway.
Gray was aware of shipboard morale as a graph created by America’s AIs. Electronic monitors throughout the ship recorded overall levels of efficiency, and also picked up certain key words in overheard conversation. Those sound bite recordings were supposed to be anonymous—a human could listen in on them only with a court order or a direct and unanimous request from a court-martial board—but certain words and phrases, taken en masse, could provide a snapshot of the emotions of the entire crew. Bastards, gold braid, mutiny, stupidity, idiots, damned Confed, REMFs . . . there were actually several hundred key words and word groups in the database the AIs used to assess crew morale.
The words themselves were not the problem . . . even potentially nasty ones like mutiny or take over the ship or disobey orders. Naval personnel always griped, bitched, and complained. It was considered a time-honored tradition, and “a griping sailor is a happy sailor” had been a cliché in the Navy’s lexicon for at least five hundred years, perhaps more. But when the frequency of those words picked up in overheard conversations shot up nearly 300 percent literally overnight, something was seriously wrong. Efficiency was down by 8 percent, too, with more mistakes and slower reaction times from sensor suite, engineering, and flight-deck personnel. Not good. Not good at all . . .
America’s fighting trim might well be compromised in the coming battle, and Gray didn’t know how he could change that.
It would help, he thought, if the bastard would give the damned order. . . .
Standard naval tactical doctrine required that the strike fighters be launched as soon as the carrier emerged from Alcubierre Drive. Each second, the light emitted by the fleet’s arrival out of folded metaspace traveled another light second toward the waiting enemy sensors. Five hours and eighteen or so minutes after the fleet’s emergence, Slan sensors would record its arrival. If the first wave of fighters arrived within a few minutes of the light wave announcing the fleet’s emergence, the enemy wouldn’t have time enough to deploy and meet the threat.
What the hell were the Confed idiots playing at?
“Captain,” Fletcher said, gently prodding. “Do we have a launch command yet?”
“Negative, CAG,” he said. “Wait one.”
He checked his internal timekeeper. Almost four minutes had passed. Incoming vessels out to a range of four light minutes were now visible in the tank, representing perhaps half of the entire fleet. Was he waiting until every ship w
as logged in?
“Captain Gray,” Delattre’s voice said. “You may execute the launch order.”
“Aye, aye, Admiral,” Gray replied. He opened the CAG channel. “CAG, you may launch the fighters.”
“Yes, sir,” Fletcher said, and he heard the emotion, the relief in her reply. “Launching fighters!”
An instant later, the first pair of SG-101 Velociraptors from VFA-210 flashed in hard-vacuum silence from the side-by-side launch ports centered in America’s broad forward shield cap. There was a pause, and then two more SG-101s followed the first two . . . and then two more . . . and two more. . . .
At the same time, the fighters from other squadrons began spilling into space from the three rotating hab modules aft of America’s shield cap, flung into space at 5 meters per second by a half-G of spin gravity.
Other carriers in the battlegroup were launching as well, and, minute by minute, the fighters began forming up for the assault. At 0758 hours, they initiated boost: twenty squadrons in all—240 fighters—accelerating at fifty thousand gravities toward 36 Oph’s inner system in a single wave.
It would take 339 minutes Objective for them to get there.
The main body of the fleet, however, continued to drift in the emptiness at the remote fringes of the star system. A few of the Confederation ships were still unaccounted for as the light bearing news of their arrival continued its agonizingly slow crawl toward America’s position.
Gray assumed that Delattre was waiting until all of the ships of the combined fleet were accounted for, but the delay chaffed at him. The longer they waited, the more time the enemy would have to prepare.
Gray wondered at Delattre’s delay in getting the rest of the fleet under way.
Lieutenant Donald Gregory
VFA-96, Black Demons
36 Ophiuchi A System
0759 hours, TFT
Gregory felt the jolt as magnetic grapples released and his Starhawk plummeted through the launch tube. For an instant, gravity vanished and he was in free fall; stars burst into view ahead and around him, as the vast, flat surface of the forward shield slid past his keel.
Once clear of the underside of the shield cap, Gregory nudged his fighter’s controls with his thoughts, accelerating just enough to get well clear of the carrier and drop into formation with Commander Mackey, Lieutenants Esperanza, Nichols, and Kemper, and Jodi Vaughn, his wing. One minute before, fighters from other squadrons had begun boosting hard, vectoring toward the nearer of the two stars 40 AUs ahead. VFA-96, however, had another mission. They were flying CAP—Combat Air Patrol—around America . . . an ancient term from the time of atmospheric fighters and navies cruising Earth’s oceans.
The remaining six fighters of VFA-96 dropped from the hab module flight decks and took up station with the others.
“America CIC, this is CAP One,” Commander Mackey said. “Handing off from PriFly. All Demons clear of the ship and formed up.”
“Copy, CAP One,” a voice replied from America’s Combat Information Center. “Primary Flight Control confirms handoff to CIC. You are clear for maneuver. Take up station at Delta-one-five starboard.”
Primary Flight Control—PriFly—was in charge for fighters during launch or trapping aboard the carrier at the end of a mission. The Combat Information Center, or CIC, a cavernous chamber located immediately below America’s command and flag bridges, ran the actual missions.
“Okay, Demons,” Commander Mackey called. “Assume station. Eyes sharp, brains sharp. We don’t know what surprises the Slan have waiting for us.”
Delta-one-five starboard was the code designation for the Demons’ station, 15 kilometers to starboard of America and slightly behind. The idea was that if Slan ships tried to close with America, the CAP squadron was in a position to move up and engage them.
“So why the hell are we on nursemaid duty?” Esperanza asked.
“Shit, Espie, the velocicrappers don’t want to be seen with the likes of us,” Caryl Mason told him.
“That’s right,” Del Rey added. “We’re flyin’ antiques. I don’t want to be seen with us!”
“Can the chatter, people,” Mackey told them over the taclink. “Focus on your sensor feeds. If one of those bastards so much as twitches, we want to know about it.”
Gregory was already immersed in the scan data being fed to him by his fighter’s AI. He wasn’t much bothered by “nursemaid duty,” as Esperanza had put it. The older SG-92 Starhawks were better suited to close defense than to mixing it up with the enemy planetary defenses.
He was far more upset that the brass had elected to attack 36 Ophiuchi rather than stage a liberation of his home, just ten light years away. He’d been sitting on his anger ever since learning that the fleet’s destination would not be 70 Ophiuchi.
To say that the inner system of 36 Ophiuchi A was a mess was understating things by far. The system was young, a fifth the age of the Sol System, and still populated by clouds of asteroids. Repeated close passages by 36 Oph B kept things churning, and there were numerous strays outside of the established belts. Comets stretched ghostly fingers out away from the star by the dozens. The picture was much as it would have been in the solar system three and a half billion years before, with migrating gas giants stirring the orbits of worlds, moons, and planetoids, and the resultant late heavy bombardment slamming the newly formed planets.
The fighter CAP wasn’t interested in stray rocks at the moment, however, but in the blips representing Slan spacecraft within the inner system. The trouble was that those myriad rocks strewn across the inner system, ranging in size from gravel to dwarf planets hundreds of kilometers across, provided ideal hiding places for alien warships. AIs on board America were busily separating the wheat from the chaff, identifying Slan ships and orbital facilities from rock by their infrared and microwave emissions. The enemy ships were warmer than bare rock, but only fractionally. Either the Slan environmental systems operated at fairly low temperatures, or their ships’ waste radiation outputs were well screened. Enemy ships that had been positively identified so far were tagged red; unknowns were yellow. Right now, there were entirely too many yellow blips scattered across the sky.
One cluster of red targets was entirely too close . . . just ten astronomical units away from the fleet’s position. They weren’t moving toward the battlegroup yet; it would be eighty minutes from the time of the battlegroup’s emergence before they were aware that the fleet had emerged from metaspace, and eighty minutes more for the light revealing the enemy’s response to make the return trip.
“Hey, Commander,” Ted Nichols called. “We have a cluster of Slan ships designated Tango One, at zero-one-nine slash one-zero. They’re right off the flank of our inbound course. Should we hit them?”
“Negative,” Mackey replied after a silent moment. “CIC says to maintain our position at Delta-one-five starboard. The battlegroup should be accelerating in another few mikes.”
A few minutes? That could be an eternity in space combat ops. What was the brass waiting for?
“I thought the idea was to hit the bastards before they could hit us,” Gregory said. If the fighter squadron was to accelerate at maximum boost, they would be pushing c in less than ten minutes, and slam into those enemy warships scant minutes behind the light bearing the news of the battlegroup’s arrival. Ignoring them raised the specter of an intact enemy strike force on the battlegroup’s flank during boost toward the inner system.
This, Gregory told himself, was not the way to do things.
TC/USNA CVS America
Emergence Point
36 Ophiuchi A, Outer System
0801 hours, TFT
“I suggest, sir,” Gray said, “that we deploy part of the CAP to go hit them. Now.”
“Your suggestion,” Steiger said, “has been taken under advisement.”
Gray’s hands clenched at his side.
He was floating on the flag bridge, speaking in person to Admiral Steiger rather than using virtual presence through a neural link. Admiral Delattre was strapped down in the main command seat, obviously listening in from above and behind Steiger, though such terms were purely relational in zero gravity. A dozen of America’s flag bridge personnel plus members of Delattre’s personal staff were scattered about the large, roughly circular compartment manning their own workstations and pretending not to eavesdrop.
“Sir—” Gray began.
“I understand, Sandy,” Steiger told him. “But our orders are to concentrate on the Slan vessels orbiting Arianrhod. We will redirect the CAP should the ships of Tango One take an interest in us.”
Tango One numbered about twelve Slan vessels, though the exact number was difficult to determine because they were mixed in with a small cloud of planetoids. They were located roughly 8 AUs off of the fleet’s inbound flight path, and about 5 AUs closer to Arianrhod, with a straight-line distance from America’s current position, a hypotenuse, of 10 AUs.
“Basic fleet tactics, Captain,” Delattre put in. “We must not allow ourselves to be distracted by what may be a diversion. I want the group to stay together.”
Delattre’s words startled Gray. The Confederation admiral had not spoken until now. He allowed himself to rotate slightly in space, facing the man directly.
“It can’t be a diversion, Admiral,” Gray said. “They wouldn’t know we were going to emerge here. But they are in a good position to hit us in our flank while we’re accelerating toward the planet.” Almost as an afterthought, he added a bitter, “sir.”
The predominant tactical problem in defending an entire star system was the sheer ungodly size of the thing. Incoming ships emerged from metaspace at 40 AUs out or more because of the need for a flat spacial metric for the Alcubierre Drive. Even a single AU was an unimaginably vast stretch of territory—the distance between Earth and the sun, almost 150 million kilometers, or eight light minutes. A sphere with a diameter eighty times larger enclosed an immense volume of space. The surface area alone of that sphere was something just under 450 quintillion square kilometers, a staggeringly huge number. In terms of tactics, there was simply no way to patrol such an aching expanse of emptiness—much less protect it with orbital forts or fleets—and have a chance in hell of having your assets by sheer chance be close enough to an emerging fleet to be able to engage it. The problem became inconceivably worse when you realized an incoming fleet could pop into normal space anywhere out to a hundred AUs or more from the target star . . . within a volume of some 1.3 × 1031 cubic kilometers. While emergence generally took place along the Alcubierre line of flight between one star and the next, the fact remained that the emergence point of a fleet was more or less random among all of that emptiness.