by John Ringo
Tyler had determined by the time he reached the command center that the next thing on the agenda for construction was grav walks.
"Door's closed," Colonel Helberg said. "No missiles entered the bay. Unless you count the Myrmidon."
"Ninety percent of missiles expended," Captain Sharp said. "We're not getting through their anti-missile defenses. Eighth Horvath ship through the gate."
That was clear on the screens ringing the command center. As he said that, the ninth battleship entered the system, effectively unchallenged.
"Fortunately, they're expending all their fire on us." The battlestation rocked to another hammer of missiles. "Powerful stuff, too."
"The SAPL is moot," Admiral Kinyon said as Tyler bent over, holding his knees and panting. "Their fire had closed the firing port and they've destroyed every array within a light second."
"Use it . . . anyway," Tyler panted. "Coming from two . . . light. It's . . . going to cut through."
"And we just lost the single missile port," Sharp said, shaking his head. "This would work with enough guns and ports!"
"We could throw Myrmidons at them," Colonel Helberg said.
"Fire . . . the . . . SAPL," Tyler panted. "You . . . don't . . . FIRE THE SAPL."
"Do we have SAPL?" the admiral asked.
"Except for a slagged firing port," Captain Sharp said, "yes, sir."
"Fire the SAPL," the admiral said.
"Here goes nothing," Sharp said. "We don't have much in the way of aiming."
"Nothing," the admiral said. "As I said." There had been no effect.
"Wait," Tyler said.
The tenth ship exiting the gate suddenly seemed to ripple, its image distorting. Then the rear of the ship blossomed in fire and the ship listed off to the side. A moment later, it exploded in a flash of red and yellow.
"Yes!" Admiral Kinyon said.
"Burn through," Captain Sharp said. "The SAPL must have melted the damage." He stopped and shook his head. "That port was closed! The aiming collimeter was totally slagged."
"You're pushing sixty petawatts of power," Tyler said. "What you just did was burn out the damage. Paris, can you adjust fire using the internal mirrors?"
"About three degrees," Paris said. "But it will be expended on the material of the tube . . . For about two seconds. I see your point."
The eleventh ship ran straight into the main fire of the SAPL. The shields held for a moment, going nearly black with power, and then failed. The heavy laser sliced through the refractory armor as if it were butter and the ship cut in half from just abaft the bridge. It didn't explode, though, and the screen was suddenly marked with distress beacons as the Horvath crew abandoned ship.
"Athena is requesting power to engage the ships already in the system," Paris said. "I have argued that we should take out the additional ships exiting the gate. Especially since the emerged ships are concentrating their fire on us."
As the AI said that, the twelfth ship ran into the UNG beam. It had come in at an angle to take a VDA cluster under fire and the beam cut it in half just forward of the bridge. The forequarters spun off in one direction as the rear spun in the opposite. Another shot from the UNG and the rear portion, which was still under power, exploded.
"Paris," Tyler said. "Pardon, Admiral. But if we aim carefully we can probably salvage more of these ships."
"Salvage is the least of my worries," the admiral said as the twelfth ship exploded. "I'm quite happy with scrap."
"We're taking out their shields in about three seconds," Tyler said, bringing up a schematic of the Devastator on the main holo tank. "If we then concentrate fire here and here," he said, pointing to two spots on the ship design, "we'll take out their primary forward and aft capacitor banks. That will leave them more or less powerless."
"Paris?"
"I may be able to do it," the AI said, shredding the next battleship.
"Ensure that they are not a threat," the admiral said. "To us but especially to earth. If you can do that and simply damage them . . ."
"We can easily convert them for our own use," Tyler said, smugly.
"The beam . . ." Paris said as the Troy started to hum. "I have discontinued fire and transferred control to Athena. The enemy fire is sufficiently powerful to have shifted us off position and the supplying UNG beam was impacting on the surface of the station."
"Looks like we're spectators for the rest of this," the admiral said, crossing his arms. Another flight of missiles rang the station and he grimaced. "I'd like to have more internal power. The SAPL is great, but I'd like to have my own firepower, thank you."
Tyler was looking at the drifting parts of ships and smiled.
"Admiral, there's four hundred terawatts of emitters drifting around," he said. "I think we might just be able to accommodate that."
"That is all the ships which were reported on the far side of the gate," Paris said.
"Damn we're going to be busy," Tyler said.
Parts and pieces of sixty ships drifted near the gate. Three of them were, mostly, intact. Athena, despite losing the two second UNG cluster, had managed to not only destroy all the ships that cleared the gate but use Tyler's suggestion on three of them. They mostly related to meter wide holes that went all the way through the ships' two main power transfer centers. Tyler was practically rubbing his hands in anticipation of getting his salvage crews on them.
"I'm seriously going to need some help from Captain DiNote."
"Noted," Admiral Kinyon said, his arms still crossed. "Status of the missiles sent earthward?"
Towards the end of the battle the few remaining ships got the message that throwing missiles at the Troy was a losing proposition.
"Athena or Argus caught all of them, Admiral," Paris replied. "Earth is unscathed. Two personnel shuttles inbound to us were lost with all hands. Several manned construction sites were lost as well."
"Crap," Tyler said, his jaw flexing. "I hate losing people."
"Damage?" the Admiral said.
"All the ports are closed," Colonel Helberg said. "And lasers from the ships that got around our backside have spot-welded the door shut. Other than that . . . scars."
"Chicks dig 'em," Tyler said. "Admiral?"
"Yes, Mr. Vernon?" Admiral Kinyon said.
"Do we have SAPL returned to civilian control?"
"Under the circumstances, I'm almost loathe to do so," Kinyon said. "This thing is too powerful for anyone to have control over. But . . . yes."
"Thank you," Tyler said. "Colonel Helberg, you're about to receive more damage."
"What?"
"Argus. Initiate program Ilius," Tyler said.
"What are you doing?" Admiral Kinyon asked, tightly.
"It was supposed to wait for the commissioning ceremony," Tyler said. "But I think the Troy can be said to be officially commissioned."
"Incoming SAPL fire," Captain Sharp said. "Every direction."
"Mr. Vernon?" Admiral Kinyon asked.
"Watch," was all Tyler said.
From all over the system, VDA and UNG beams converged on the Troy in flashes of fire. It seemed, for a few seconds, as if the entire battlestation was being mauled apart.
When the fire cleared, on five hexants of the battlestation there were, meters deeply etched into the nickel-iron, the clear silhouettes of a helmeted hoplite with a legend λιον. There was a smaller emblem on the door and under it the words 'Born of Winter.'
"Born of Winter?" the Admiral said.
"For the warriors of Illium were those most powerful and fell," Tyler said. "They were those born of winter. Rough translation of a fragment they think is part of the original Iliad cycle."
"I'll take that," the Admiral said.
"And you can have it," Tyler said. "The alternate translation is that they were cursed."
Epilogue
The Starfield drifted amongst the residue of the battle, so powered down as to appear as nothing more than more scrap, as Per L'Eternita played on the speakers an
d Tyler nursed a snifter of Centennial and a Cuban.
Paws and Myrmidons picked among the shredded ships, searching for survivors, moving the scrap into a more manageable configuration, salvage crews doing a survey to see what was still useable and what might as well be melted down for the fabbers.
Tyler had turned off the news after one glance. For the first time, Earth had emerged unscathed from a battle and the masses of people who would never set foot in space were dancing in the streets. There was, for a few minutes, nothing but praise for the Troy and SAPL and even LFD. It pissed him off. Soon enough the mobs would be calling for blood again. Mobs were mobs, whether they were called hooligans or activists or pundits. They just followed the latest fad, the latest mood. They never looked at the future. They feared the sky.
The Troy had shrugged off the incoming fire and even if it had lost its own fighting ability, that was just a matter of completing Phase One.
But if the enemy had fired all those thousands of missiles at Earth, some of them, many of them, would have gotten through the defenses. Senator Gullick had a point. Earth's defenses were on the wrong side of the gate.
Twenty thousand tons of osmium. Well, that was just a matter of infrastructure.
He stubbed out his cigar.
"Pilot. Set course for the gate. Destination Wolf 359."
"Aye, sir."
Time to visit the Night Wolves.
Author's Afterword
This is usually the part where the author inputs about things in the novel. From whence the idea originated (it wasn't illegal drugs, by the way) or something about the genesis of the novel.
In this case, it's going to be purely personal. My book, I can get away with it.
I don't exactly remember when Aunt Joan and Uncle Charles first came into my life. They just sort of appeared at one of Mom's parties in Iran and thereafter, for two years, were a fixture. After Iran I saw them little, once in England on one of the trips and the single time they were in the States when I was around at the right time.
But I can think of no two people other than my parents, and including my horde of brother's and sisters, who more affected my life.
Aunt Joan had been, prior to being married, one of those sorts of characters you only see these days in an Agatha Christy novel. She had settled into a life of being a professional barmaid and serving gal and seemed to have no issues. No more than she had issues with being of the 'professional' class in a cosmopolitan city. She treated life as it came and never seemed to care if it was up or down. Of all the characters of fiction I have read, the one that most strikes me as similar to Aunt Joan is Nanny Ogg, the 'Mother' character of the three witches in Pratchett's Discworld. She had that same permanently applied joi d' vie, 'And top up my glass, there's a luv!' I cannot think of Aunt Joan and remember a single time when I saw her somber or anything other than on the cusp of a laugh.
What I learned from Aunt Joan:
• Serve from the left, take away from the right. Except drinks which are both served and removed from the right.
• How to pile up food on an upside down fork held in the left hand. 'And mush up the peas!'
• How to properly serve salad with spoon and fork. (It's a bit like using chopsticks. Backwards.)
• How to properly poor beer. ('Nai! Tip the glass or you'll be all head!')
• Ice, scotch, soda. The order is important.
• How to bargain down a rug salesman.
• Proper language for addressing an Iranian taxi driver.
• How to bob curtsey.
• Corner folds on a bed. (Helped when I joined the Army.)
• 'Ma'am' is pronounced 'Mum.'
And most of all, and the one that I forget all the time:
• Life is short, squeeze joy from every second.
I rarely drink but at my next event I intend to raise a pint of Guiness in her honor. I've missed you for years, Aunt Joan, I guess I shall have to go on missing you.
John Ringo
Chattanooga, TN
August 2009
THE END
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Table of Contents
THE MAPLE SYRUP WAR
Prologue
One
Two
Three
Four
Five
Six
Seven
SAPL
One
Two
Three
Four
Five
Six
Seven
Eight
Nine
Ten
Eleven
TROY RISING
One
Two
Three
Four
Five
Six
Seven
Eight
Nine
Ten
Eleven
Epilogue
Author's Afterword