Bio-Weapon ds-2

by Vaughn Heppner

  The Bangladesh, as it passed Mercury, had changed heading so that given time she would reach Mars. Meanwhile, three SU missileships from two very different locations sped up to match the beamship. They would all join a little beyond Venus’s orbital path. Two battleships, two cruisers and a missileship also built up speed to join them, but they wouldn’t link up until near the Earth’s orbital path.

  Once all together they would be the strongest SU Fleet Flotilla. Still, any of the Doom Stars could take them, expect perhaps for the badly damaged Genghis Khan.

  The Highborn, damn them, hadn’t been idle while all this took place. The Doom Star in orbit around Venus had left the planetary system and now gave chase, building up speed at sixteen Gs acceleration. The Gustavus Adolphus Doom Star that normally circled Mercury also gave chase. The goal of two such super-ships would usually be to bracket an enemy ship, although with the Bangladesh’s head start and the two Doom Stars’ starting locations that wasn’t going to be possible.

  Even so, General Hawthorne had countered the Venus maneuver. He sent two SU battleships and six cruisers at Venus. They came from seven different places in the voids of Inner Planets.

  To Admiral Sioux and probably to the Highborn as well, it looked as if the General had finally given up his game. Either that or he was trying to keep the Highborn honest and force them to keep their Doom Stars around each of the planets. Venus only had the one. So if Venus’s Doom Star traveled very far and built up too much speed, it wouldn’t be able to turn around in time to stop the two SU battleships and six SU cruisers that headed to Venus. That force could probably take on the HB laser stations in orbit around Venus and whatever orbital fighters they had. But if the Doom Star returned to Venus, those ships would have to alter course and flee. So it wouldn’t do for them to get to Venus too soon.

  Fleet maneuvering in space was an intricate business, one of speed and heading and fuel and armor and missiles and lasers and re-supplies. Each side heavily leaned upon its predictive software and AI’s. Even Highborn minds couldn’t cope with the bewildering amount of data and spatial decisions.

  Admiral Sioux twitched off the VR-monocle. In her gut, she wanted to gather all the SU spacecraft and try to hit one lone Doom Star. Look at what the Bangladesh had done to the Sun Works Factory. The Highborn weren’t invincible.

  Concerning that, there had been a strange call five days ago from a Director Gannel, asking her opinion about gathering the Fleet. She’d decided to play it safe and had wanted to know what the Supreme Commander thought.

  “Never mind that, Admiral. We want your opinion.”

  “Who are we?”

  “I speak for the Directorate of all Inner Planets.”

  Arrogant politician, she hated their political games. She had not been able to avoid such games on her way to the top, but hated them all the same.

  “I would of course obey a more aggressive policy,” she’d finally said.

  “I’m not asking you about your loyalty, Admiral. I want to know what you think about hitting the Highborn harder.”

  “If the correct safeguards are taken, it could be very beneficial to Social Unity.”

  There had been a pause, much longer than the transmission time. Then he’d said, “I’d thought better of you, Admiral.”

  And that had been the end of that. It meant a power struggle was going on, she was certain of it. But of whom and over what she didn’t know. When General Hawthorne had beamed his message he’d said nothing about new policies, but he had ordered this gathering. What did it mean?

  She frowned. Better to concentrate on matters at hand, on things she could actually affect.

  “Tracking,” she said.

  “Yes, Admiral,” said the officer in her module.

  “How soon until the HB missiles reach beam range?”

  What she meant was how soon until the enemy jinking and ECM drones wouldn’t adversely affect the proton beam so that it would miss 19 out of 20 times. Usually that began anywhere from 100,000 to 80,000 kilometers, depending of the intricacy of the enemy’s electronics.

  The Tracking Officer studied her board, studied the HB mass of missiles that had converged toward them, closing day by day, hour by hour.

  “Soon now, Admiral. Say, two hundred and fifty minutes.”

  Admiral Sioux rose and walked carefully toward the tracking module. They fled from Mercury, building up speed at one and one-half gravities, which played havoc on her knees if she moved around too much. They had burned at eight Gs for several hours, with everyone in the acceleration couches, but now they slowed and jinked. Zigzag jerks and starts and slow-downs and sudden accelerations were a matter of course during combat flight.

  The Gustavus Adolphus had given chase ever since the Doom Star had dumped masses of lead impregnated aerogel and prismatic crystals near the Sun Works Factory. Social Unity had discovered this by an optic observer carefully hidden these several months between Mercury and Venus. The small ship with its powerful telescopes was sheathed in the latest stealth technology. The Gustavus Adolphus had no chance of hitting them at this range, but with those masses of missiles fast approaching, the Bangladesh’s choices had been narrowed. Its cones of probability weren’t as large as before.

  The Tracking Officer sucked in her breath.

  “What’s wrong?” asked Admiral Sioux.

  “This can’t be right,” said the Tracking Officer. “It must be Highborn ECM playing tricks on us.”

  Admiral Sioux hurried to the module, a bad mistake. She had to step down to reach it. The one and one-half Gs caused her to twist her leg and put too much force on her left knee. She hissed, and collapsed as pain shot up her thigh.

  “Admiral!” shouted the First Gunner, shucking off his VR-gloves and moving out of his module to assist her.

  “Never mind me,” she said, using the tracking module to help her stand. Then she groaned. She couldn’t put any weight on her left knee.

  The Tracking Officer looked pale as she kept rechecking her board.

  “What is it?” said the Admiral, as she peered into the module.

  “The missiles,” said the Tracking Officer, shaking her head.

  “What about them?” They were small red blips on the officer’s VR-screen.

  The Tracking Officer looked up, her thin lips trembling. “They just began hard deceleration. And I count twice as many missiles as before.”

  Shock swept through Admiral Sioux. Twice as many missiles as before? The idea made her dizzy. Then she shouted, “Battle stations!” She shoved the First Gunner’s hands off her—he tried to help her to the command chair. “To your post, mister,” she said. Then she threatened to twist her right knee too, by hopping on her good leg back to the command chair. With a groan, she sank into the cushions.

  “Admiral!” shouted the Shield Officer.

  “Calmly,” said the Admiral. “I can hear you quite well, thank you.”

  The Shield Officer stared at her, nodding a moment later. “Yes, Admiral,” he said in a quieter, more professional tone. “Ship’s AI suggests that we get into the acceleration couches.”

  She checked her own compulink to the AI. Hmm.

  Several seconds later, she opened intra-ship communications. “Attention crew, this is the Admiral speaking. Prepare for extended acceleration. I repeat, extended acceleration.”

  2.

  Needles stabbed. A gross, awful, smothering feeling threatened Marten’s sanity. It made him recall a story of his mother’s, the way they say a dying man sees his life flash before his eyes. She’d been a strong-willed woman of faith, a Bible reader, and she’d often spoken about this passage.

  Marten recalled the story of Jonah and the whale and he felt like Jonah right now diving into the depths. The pressure, oh it was awful, compressing and mind destroying. He raved, as he heard Vip raving over the comlink, and as their Storm Assault Missile began hard deceleration.

  Vip’s screams broke through to Marten. The small man’s cries were hoars
e and wild, desperate beyond dementia.

  “Vip!” shouted Marten. “Listen to me, Vip!”

  More screaming and sobbing.

  “We’re going to make them pay, Vip. Hang on. Fight it. Resist. I promise you we’re going to make the HBs pay as they’ve never believed possible. So we’re the sub-human’s, eh? We’re nothing but dung beneath their feet? Their lord highnesses, Highborn, lofty ones, arrogant bastards! We are men! Do you hear me, Vip? You and I are men. Omi, Lance and Kang are men. The shock troopers are men. Hang on, Vip. Because once we have that beamship… oh Vip, we’re going to surprise them. Ha! Surprise, Vip. A really big surprise is what the HBs will get when we sub-humans take over the Bangladesh.”

  Kang hissed, “You’re raving.” Then the maniple leader groaned in misery and could say no more.

  “Not raving, Kang,” whispered Marten. “I’m promising. Do you hear me? Promising!”

  The crushing pain, the nausea and Vip’s screams became too much. Like a dumb beast, Marten endured the horrible deceleration.

  3.

  The HB missile barrage didn’t sweep at the Bangladesh in one vast clot. They came from a 60-degree arc, from all their various cones of probability originally fired at. Nor did they all fly at the same speed. Some had been programmed to travel faster, to reach the target sooner.

  In front sped ECM drones: electronic countermeasure missiles. They scrambled and jammed the Bangladesh’s radar. They had kept secret the true number of missiles, hiding and halving the actual amount. Now they created electronic ghost images. They sprayed aerogel with lead additives, shot packets of reflective chaff and they worked around the clock to break the beamship’s ECM. AI’s, artificial intelligences, ran the drones. Predictive software, battle-comps and probability equations gave them a seeming life of their own. One thing the drones didn’t have was biocomps like the New Baghdad cybertanks. The Highborn loathed biocomps. They felt such things to be unholy and monstrous. Life shouldn’t be mated to a machine, not in such a way—although they found nothing sinister about hooking the shock troopers to the G-suits and packing them into the missiles as biological bullets.

  The masses of cocooned space-warriors suffered under the crushing grip of deceleration. Many screamed. Some stared dully. Others wept. A few laughed. Only thirty-nine died from heart failure, strokes and lunatic panic seizures. The rest longed for an end to their agony. The entire time, the missiles remorselessly closed as the Bangladesh fled.

  At 80,000 kilometers separation the proton beam stabbed into the eternal night. It slashed through a ghost image. Immediately HB radar and optics recorded the beam, the fact of its being and that the enemy at last tried to hit them. Most of the incoming missiles slowed hard. Twenty others leapt ahead because they slowed less. Each of those mounted a single laser. In three seconds, they were pumped and ready to hotshot, a special process that burnt out the tubes faster but delivered a stronger initial punch. ECM drones locked-on target and fed the battle-data to the missiles. Twenty beams flashed at the Bangladesh.

  4.

  Everyone aboard the Bangladesh lay on A-couches or belonged to damage control parties, where they were lodged in special repair vehicles that could move about under eight Gs. VR-goggles supplied information, although ship’s AI made the majority of the decisions while the Bangladesh was under eight gravities acceleration.

  In the armored command capsule, hidden deep within the beamship, Admiral Rica Sioux presided over her officers via comlink.

  “Particle Screen 1 is degrading,” said the Shield Officer.

  Outside the beamship, sixteen enemy lasers burned into the 600 meter-thick rock-shield. The hotshotted lasers chewed deeper and deeper into the particle mass. If they broke through and breached the Bangladesh’s inner armor the battle would quickly be over.

  Ship’s AI aimed giant spray-tubes and pumped an aerosol cloud in front of the beams. At the same moment, the Bangladesh’s mighty engines quit. The enemy beams leaped ahead of the ship. Six seconds later the beams re-targeted and burned through the aerosol cloud. More aerosols flowed out, tons. The engines re-engaged, quit, started and slued the beamship sideways tiny fractions of percentages. At this terrific speed, the Bangladesh was unable to veer very far and stay within the eight G limit.

  “Mine the seventh quadrant,” ordered Admiral Sioux, who had carefully studied the incoming missiles. Overlaying her view of the battle on her VR-goggles was a grid pattern to help her better understand locations, vectors and distances.

  Giant rotary cannons poked out the Bangladesh and aimed between the cracks of two nearly joined particle shields. They spewed mines the size of barrels, firing them by magnetic impulse. Every fifth round was a radar mine. Every tenth contained chaff. The rotary cannons fired continuously, so a vast minefield grew in the path of the on-coming missiles.

  “I have lock-on,” said the Targeting Officer.

  “Proton beam charged,” said the First Gunner.

  “Fire,” said Admiral Sioux.

  5.

  The distances closed rapidly. From their 60-degree arc, the HB missiles swarmed at the Bangladesh.

  Flashes winked in space as the proton beam destroyed HB laser missiles. One after the other they ceased to exist. By firing, the missiles had made themselves vulnerable to targeting. With cold calculation, the HB probability equators had accepted that. The majority of the surviving missiles decelerated. Those didn’t decelerate moved ahead of the mass.

  Twenty new lasers stabbed at the Bangladesh.

  HB optic and radar missiles recorded the breaching of the first particle shied. Behind a cloud of instant aerosols, that shield rotated away and a new one moved into place.

  In quadrant seven, as viewed from the Bangladesh, the HB missiles entered the minefield. A signal thus pulsed from the beamship’s AI, activating the radar mines. Mass and velocity was almost instantly verified. The radar mines screamed on their high-band frequency. Thousands of other mines in listening range detonated. They strew depleted uranium shrapnel into the path of the on-coming missiles. The missiles’ speed made such particles deadly. When they met, the shrapnel breached the missile’s ceramic-ultraluminum armor. Ten HB laser missiles disintegrated, as did several ECM drones and five Storm Assaults. Twenty-five shock troopers perished. Their bio-remains were simply another part of the debris of space junk.

  Ten EMP Blasters now leapt forward. Meanwhile, the bulk of the Storm Assaults dropped to one-G deceleration. And within them, or those that still worked, the three atmospheres of pressurized glop drained into space as needles and special drugs normalized the shock troops.

  The EMP Blasters inched toward the Bangladesh, closing the distance, closing—

  One vaporized, the proton beam catching it perfectly.

  Nine others exploded, sending a nuclear fireball that arced toward the beamship. Fortunately, they were closer to the ship and farther away from the missile barrage. Heat and blast damage had no effect at these distances and in space. Radiation, electromagnetic pulse and anyone caught in the immediate fireball were the dangers.

  In this initial phase of the attack, the nuclear explosions had only one purpose: the electromagnetic pulse, the EMP. It traveled toward and soon washed over the beamship and destroyed any unshielded electronics and played havoc with the rest.

  More lasers then stabbed at the new particle shield the ship had rolled into place, burning into it.

  6.

  “They’re too many of them!” shouted a SU officer. “The missiles closed too rapidly.”

  “Kill them one at a time,” said Admiral Sioux, her voice as relaxed as if she sipped coffee.

  “Rotating Shield Three into position,” said the Shield Officer.

  “Spreading the minefield to quadrant nine.”

  “Launch anti-missile torps,” said the Admiral.

  “Firing,” said the Launch Officer. “Admiral! Tubes three through eight aren’t responding.”

  “Reroute those torpedoes to the working tubes,�
�� said the Admiral.

  “What are those missiles to the rear of their formation?” asked the Tracking Officer. “I don’t recognize the type.” “Their ECM drones are fantastic. How could there be twice as many missiles as we suspected?”

  “Tubes four, five and six won’t respond,” the Launch Officer said.

  “Damage control,” said the Admiral. “Check torpedo tubes four, five and six.”

  “Roger, Admiral.”

  “How are we supposed to beat off all those missiles? They’re too many of them!”

  “Switch offline, mister, if all you spout is defeatist garbage,” said the Admiral.

  “Admiral!” said the Targeting Officer. “Look at those.”

  “Re-target the proton beam,” said the Admiral. “Don’t let—”

  Flashes showed on their VR-images as enemy missiles fired lasers.

  Admiral Rica Sioux clenched her teeth. She suddenly had the gut feeling that maybe it wasn’t possible to beat the Highborn, that the HBs truly were superior in every conceivable way. Oh, but what a horrible feeling that was. So she fought off the feeling and tried to think of a way to defeat these masses of clever missiles.

  7.

  Ten minutes after the one part ethylene glycol, two part molasses-like glop drained into space, water sprayed into the SA missile compartment. Soon the water also swirled out.

  Hiss—pop!

  The first G-suit cracked open.

  Pop!

  Pop!

  Pop!

  The others did likewise.

  More buckles snapped. A seam in a suit appeared. Someone groaned. Then a hand, smooth and naked, without any artificial protection, slipped out of the seam and pried at the suit.

  “Six minutes to combat acceleration,” crackled an automated voice.

  Weak-voiced curses were the only reply, although new hands appeared at the seams of the other suits. Slowly, the shock troopers struggled out of their cocoons.