by Alan, Craig
But from what Elena could see, they were in no danger at all.
“Not every one, Mr. Yukovych,” Elena said. She highlighted several of the contacts. “SouthStar-3, PULSAR 2145, BCP Gamma…these are all independent platforms.”
The Space Agency had firmly threatened to shoot down any armed vehicle that the independents sent into orbit, but peaceful platforms like communication satellites and solar collectors were permitted, as there was no way for a modern technological society to function without them—the Storm had taught that lesson well. And now Victory had taken aim at every one she could find.
“Mr. Masri, get me a channel to Solstice.”
Before he could do anything, the communications board lit up with another emergency call.
“It’s Victory again.”
Do not approach. Maintain distance 100 km. Say again do not approach.
“Do as she says, Mr. Yukovych,” Elena said. She turned back to Hassoun. “What about Solstice?”
He shook his head.
“Autoresponse.”
“They’re overwhelmed. Hit them with emergency calls until someone picks up. And send this to Victory while you’re at it.”
Victory, Gabriel stands ready to give aid.
The answer came back momentarily.
Gabriel, do not approach. Nuclear device onboard.
Elena and Vijay locked eyes, and Hassoun muttered to himself in Arabic before switching back to English.
“Solstice is coming in now.”
Gabriel, do not approach. Maintain current course and speed. Orders will follow.
“Are there any other Agency ships nearby?”
“Atlanta is two thousand kilometers out,” Vijay said. “A few civvies, and a lot of satellites. It’s just us, Glenn, and Victory out here.”
“And the station is completely unarmed. How many missiles does Victory carry?”
Vijay checked, and whistled softly.
“Forty eight. Eight in each turret.”
“Mr. Masri, tell Solstice that we have a clear shot.”
Hassoun stared at her.
“That’s an order, Mr. Masri.”
This time, the reply was immediate.
Gabriel, stand down. Do not fire. Do not approach.
“If there was a nuke onboard Overstar, there could be one on Victory also,” Hassoun said.
“Maybe,” Elena said. “But who wants to use a nuke in orbit? We’re far enough above the atmosphere that there’s hardly any air for a blast wave. A nuke would need to detonate within a kilometer or two to do any real damage.”
“Not if they plan to strike the Earth,” Vijay said.
“True, but look at who they’re aiming at,” Elena said. On the holo, dotted lines spidered out from Victory to her targets. Not one of the strands reached down to the surface. “All the hostages are up here with us.”
Solstice, believe nuclear threat false alarm.
Negative, Gabriel. Nuclear threat confirmed.
“Bullshit,” Elena said. “How?”
“They do seem quite sure,” Vijay said.
Elena could feel the deep waters stir beneath her. There was something down there, but she couldn’t quite see it.
“Do we have the crew roster for Victory?”
Names and faces appeared one the holo, and Elena began to scroll through them. She had no idea what she was looking for. But Victory had only eighteen officers—she would either find it soon, or not.
Elena stopped on a middle-aged man with sandy hair, brown eyes, and a trim mustache.
“Group Captain Winston Campbell-Azzam,” Vijay said. “Is that who I think it is?”
“Oh, fuck,” Elena said.
“Beg pardon?”
Down in Tahrir Square in Cairo, Jacob Erasmus had just taken the oath of office. And so had his Sovereigntist allies. As the staff stared at her, openmouthed, Elena called up the footage from the ceremony. There was almost as much white in the square as Liberal gold. She hurriedly scanned the dais and its ranks of dignitaries. Erasmus was there of course, next to the president of the World Court, along with Liang, his new deputy, and Helena Dixon, the outgoing premier.
But Sir William Campbell-Azzam was nowhere to be seen.
Victory, Gabriel stands ready to assist. Awaiting orders.
“If there’s a nuclear terrorist on that ship waiting to blow a couple cities off the map, he’ll tell us to go to hell. If not….”
Gabriel, expecting attack. Nuclear device will deploy if destruction imminent. Please defend.
“Clever bastard,” she said. “He just drafted us.”
“Chief, you will explain just what the hell is going on here when you find the time, correct?” Vijay asked.
“Mr. Nishtha, keep the guns trained on that ship. Kill any missile it launches.”
“Aye, Chief.”
“And transfer the ballista to forward control,” Elena said.
“Chief?”
“I need your eye on the ball, Vijay.”
He nodded after a moment, and Okoye acknowledged the transfer from his position at the firing chamber.
“Hassoun,” Elena said, “I’ve got a new recipient for you. Emergency traffic.”
“Sure, Chief.”
“But whatever you do, do not route it through standard Agency protocols. I want a direct connection if possible. If not, commandeer civilian channels. Do whatever you have to do, and I will take responsibility. But not only do I not want anybody to hear what I’m saying, I don’t want them to know that I’m saying anything at all.”
“Okay, Chief.”
Hassoun nodded, just once, and she knew that he could do it.
“Very well. Contact Global Command Authority.”
The entire bridge stared at her this time. Elena didn’t repeat the order, but merely settled back in her chair to wait. Hassoun bent over his station and went to work.
“I think I’ve got it,” he said a few minutes later. “I also think I just cut off every Transcom mobile phone in North Africa.”
“Here’s the message I want.”
Sir William sends regards.
They waited.
Gabriel, explain your communication.
Believe nuclear threat false. Within close combat range. Awaiting orders.
How do you know that the threat is false?
Winston Campbell-Azzam aboard Victory.
There was a long pause.
Gabriel, a coup attempt is now underway. HMS Victory is demanding that I arrest Deputy Prime Minister Liang for the creation of a nuclear weapon and giving aid and comfort to the enemy, and that I order retaliatory strikes on all satellites owned by the independent nations. If I do not, they will open fire on civilian and military targets in orbit.
Prime Minister, Gabriel awaits orders.
Elena wondered where Erasmus was right now. There hadn’t been much time at all. He had probably been hustled off the dais just seconds after his installation, into a car, a plane, a bunker. He had spent the first hour of his administration under siege, wondering what in the hell he had got himself into.
Is it possible to eliminate the threat without collateral damage?
She looked around the room. In unison, her staff nodded.
Gabriel has first strike capability.
Then do it.
“How do we know that it is truly him?” Vijay asked.
“Can we have him transmit visuals?”
“Sorry, Chief, it’s a secure phone,” Hassoun said. “No camera for a hacker to remotely access.”
“Any ideas, gentlemen?” Elena asked.
“He’s South African?” Hassoun smiled. “Then let’s try this.”
Prime Minister, answer quickly. How many balls in an over?
Th
e answer came back immediately.
Six.
“He knows his cricket, at least,” Vijay said.
“That’s going to have to be good enough,” Elena said. “And if we’re wrong and there really is a nuke on that ship, then we might as well take it out now.”
“In direct violation of our orders from Solstice,” Vijay said.
“The commander-in-chief outranks headquarters, Mr. Nishtha. But if anyone still wants to step outside, they may do so,” Elena said. “Just be sure to close the door behind you. We need to concentrate in here.”
No one made a move.
Stall him, Prime Minister.
Victory was watching carefully.
She gave the nearest ships a wide berth. The enormous warship that had emerged from Glenn Station was completely unknown to Victory, which almost certainly meant that she was one of the new Archangels. She was pitifully underpowered by Victory’s standards—no cannons visible anywhere, just a few guns and a pair of missile pods. She must have launched early, without her full armament. But Victory would leave nothing to chance—her radar swept the area continuously, and she kept one cannon trained on Gabriel at all times. There would be no ambush.
Gabriel’s attitude thrusters fired gently, and nudged her into a different orbit. Victory tensed, but there was no further provocation. Gabriel had maintained the one hundred kilometer buffer, and the fingers on the triggers eased off. Nearly an hour had passed since the crisis had begun, and the two ships had traveled from one end of the dark side of the Earth to the other. The first rays of light curled around the horizon, and then the sun exploded into view. It wasn’t until its rays struck Victory’s scopes and washed out everything between them that she realized what was happening. Gabriel’s orbit would take her across of the face of the sun.
The fingers on the trigger tightened once more, as Victory counted down the seconds until the exact moment when the other ship would slide across that disk. The moment came, and Gabriel vanished. Victory held her breath and counted.
Gabriel reappeared only a few seconds later, speed and course unchanged, still one hundred kilometers away. There was no rocket exhaust, no missile on a constant bearing. Even a swarm of cannon shells, small enough to evade radar, wouldn’t be enough to bite through her armor. Victory relaxed and settled in to wait.
The ballista round slammed into the turret and buried itself inside. It bored a path deep into the tower and trailed a shock wave that blew the turret apart down to the hull, then struck the armored bulkhead and exploded in a flash of heat. The blast shattered the shield like glass, and a storm of metallic fire swooped into the exposed compartment. The plasma vaporized everything and everyone inside, and melted the bulkheads to slag. Those on the other side were burned to death in an instant.
The shock of the impact spread out and rippled through the outer hull like an ocean tide. Cracks in the armor burst open as the pressure wave raced across the equator and shrank to a point on the opposite pole. It blew the turret free of the hull and off into space, exactly one second after impact. Victory looked as if the shell had punched a hole straight through her.
But she was still in the fight, and a moment later her surviving cannons opened fire. Not a single round struck Gabriel. Instead they lashed the independent platforms, and a score of satellites died within seconds. Four missile pods were still standing, and all four fired simultaneously. The missiles were so close to the target that they converged and went to hard burn almost immediately. But Gabriel had lit her rockets as soon as the shell had hit home, and she drove on Victory and opened fire with every gun she could bring to bear.
Streams of bullets whipped past the missiles and ignored them completely. The missiles homed in on target and prepared to burst, but Gabriel fired her thrusters and shoved herself up into a higher orbit. All four missiles detonated simultaneously, too low for a kill. Gabriel skated over the top of a ten ton cloud of shrapnel and walked her fire onto Victory and into her wound.
Each of Gabriel’s guns had six barrels, and each barrel fired five rounds every second. Hundreds of bullets tore into the gaping hole in Victory’s hull. With no armor to stop them they cut a path through the soft metal sludge that once been the bulkhead and peppered the outer wall of the bridge. The sturdy barrier sagged and shredded under the onslaught. The dam broke, and a swarm of red hot metal rampaged through Victory’s heart and cut the bridge crew to pieces.
Gabriel somersaulted end over end high above the Earth, and fired her rockets once more. Her thrusters touched on and off until she had matched velocity, once more a hundred kilometers away. The guns ceased. Victory was dead.
On the bridge, Elena finally felt it was safe to breathe. Vijay broke the spell first.
“It would appear that the ballista works.”
“Damage report,” Elena said.
“Not a scratch on the old girl,” Vijay said. “Which, I must admit, is not what I expected to be saying. I am not certain I expected to be saying much of anything right now.”
“Hassoun, contact the Prime Minister. Let him know that we won.”
“Yes,” Demyan said, quietly. “We killed the enemy.”
Silence fell after that. This had been the first combat for all of them, and Gabriel had just earned her first battle star, eighteen months ahead of schedule. It was also the first time in the history of the Global Union that one of its ships had fired upon another. They had just killed dozens of British subjects. Not outsiders, not even independents, but their fellow citizens. Elena hoped that she had not fired the first shots of a civil war.
A black and gold light flashed on her watch screen. Elena didn’t recognize the color combination, and frowned at the familiar symbol that had appeared—an orb, surrounded by three blades.
Vijay brought the warning up on the holo, then traced it to its source. Hyperion-1, launched only five years before, had been Australia’s first orbiting solar power station—designed to gather sunlight and beam it down to a waiting collector hooked into the power grid. It was a triumph of the independent technology sector, and Victory’s guns had wrecked it beyond repair. If not for orbital records, Gabriel would never have been able to identify it.
But even in death its ashes still shone, strongly enough to trip Gabriel’s radiological sensors at a distance. Scattered among the remains were chunks of plutonium-239, weapons grade.
Promised Land
Elena sank into the darkness, and used the grapple once more to brake her momentum. The beams of light from her helmet mounted lamps wavered wildly as she fell and bounced. Once Elena had settled inside the airlock she aimed them floor, so that the others could see where they were falling.
She could tell it was Rivkah from the clumsiness of the fall. Elena reached out to steady the doctor and helped her to her feet. Rivkah still hadn’t spoken, and when Elena searched for the doctor’s face through the helmet she saw only her own reflection. Any illumination inside their helmets would have reflected off their own faceplates and interfered with their vision.
Ikenna threw the bags in after her, and then hopped down easily and looked around. The door inside the chamber had been sealed with multiple fasteners arranged above and below the handle, and he tested one and found that it released smoothly. Ikenna undid each of the latches, and tugged on the door handle and pulled.
Then he pushed. Nothing happened. He even tried sliding it in every direction, as if it were a pocket door. The compartment on the other side was unbreached, and the air pressure kept the door firmly shut. Elena motioned Ikenna and Rivkah against a wall, and pulled a shaped thermate charge from the toolkit. She fixed it to the center of the door, then armed it and joined them out of harm’s way.
The charge ignited with a dazzling flash. Streams of white hot iron sparks gushed and filled the airlock, and Elena threw her arm across Rivkah’s shoulders and held the doctor against flat against the wall. The thre
e of them were showered with embers that clung to their suits and died slowly. If not for their visors the glare would have blinded them.
The thermate burned for over a minute and started to gutter, and it began to look like a second charge would be needed when the door exploded. A geyser of air erupted through the breach and fogged the airlock. It hissed silently for a few moments, and then exhausted itself. Elena stepped forward and peered through the hole she had cut in the door, careful not to get her helmet anywhere near the white hot brim. She turned the handle, and the door swung easily this time.
The second lock was identical to the first, but for the large metal valve handles on her right, and the pair of spacesuits that hung on the wall to her left. These were not the sleek body armors used by the Agency, but clumsy, awkward pressure suits that brought to mind the astronauts of old, and left her to wonder how anyone could possibly work in them. Each of the garments was at least two meters tall, and the helmets were bulbous and huge.
Ikenna brought up the rear once more, lugging the toolkits. He pushed the door shut, and quickly sealed the breach by filling it with a glut of foam that hardened as it cooled. He slapped a thick patch over the hole, and sprayed it with a thin layer of liquid. The patch began to smoke, and then to glow. It melted onto the breach and created an airtight seal.
They turned to the valves. Above each was a single Hebrew letter, and Rivkah pointed silently to the one at the top. Elena turned the wheel and opened the vents, and atmosphere rushed into the room to replace what had been lost. Her visor indicated that it was about four parts nitrogen to one part oxygen, standard Earth atmosphere.
“Helmets stay on,” she said. Elena didn’t really think that either of them needed the warning. She found the next hatch unlocked, and opened it.
The man was dead. He floated at the center of the compartment, and his arms and legs turned so slowly that Elena could barely see the motion at all. What little inertia he had possessed had been bled from his mass over the past two days by a thousand impacts against the bulkheads, and he had come nearly to rest in midair, too far from the walls to reach them even if he could have tried. Elena had, with a bit of bad luck, gotten herself into this position before. It felt like paralysis, and reminded her of nightmares where she was unable to even scream.