The War Machine: Crisis of Empire III

by David Drake

  “Shields up, half-power, fast!” Tallen ordered. Half-power was the strongest shield that would allow the sensors to see anything at all. “The enemy is bound to have some sort of defenses this close in. Get the shields on, and get ready to snap to full power. Weapons, can you pick up missile tracks through half-power shields?”

  “Yes, Sir, though not very well.”

  “How the hell did we pop in so damn close to them?” Suss asked.

  “Not on purpose, that’s for sure,” Spencer said. “Any theories, Dostchem?”

  “Only two,” the Capuchin answered. The fur on the nape of her neck was bristled up, and her tail flicked back and forth nervously. “You had to come out somewhere, and by simple chance it was here. Either that, or the massive gravity-wave generation in the vicinity had some sort of attractive effect during the dimensional transition of the jump.”

  “Does that mean the other ships should be this close as well?” Suss asked.

  “Not necessarily. Even if we were drawn here by the gravity-wave generation, it could be a highly localized effect, or one of extremely short range. I have no data and cannot predict. I will investigate.” She turned and left the bridge, using arms, legs and tail to guide her toward the hatch.

  “Comm Officer,” Tallen Deyi asked. “Can you raise either of the other ships?”

  “Negative, Sir. No sign of either craft. But I can report a lot of civilian traf—”

  “SHIELDS ON FULL!” the weapons officer shouted.

  The lights in the bridge faded under the sudden power surge. The ship shuddered and yawed over, flinging bits of loose gear around the bridge. Two or three crew who had been out of their crash couches went sailing across the compartment.

  “That was close,” the weapons officer announced. “Some sort of free flyer missile lying in wait. It lit its engines two hundred klicks away. Probably hundreds more of them around.”

  The young officer sighed and swallowed hard. “Shields back to half-power.”

  “Weapons, can you drop that to one-quarter and still get to full power fast?” Tallen asked. “If the shields were weaker, they’d be more transparent, and we could get better detection on anything else that was incoming.”

  The weapons officer nodded uneasily. “Yes, Sir, I could, but it would take a few milliseconds longer to kick the shields on to full, with a bit higher risk of—”

  “Dammit, woman, we need to see!” Deyi snapped. “We can’t just sit here blind behind the shields.”

  “Yes, Sir. Shields going to one-quarter power,” the weapons officer responded, regaining a bit of her singsong speech cadence.

  Does she only talk that way when she’s scared and doesn’t want to show it? Spencer wondered. As if that mattered at the moment.

  “The asteroid has put a shield up itself!” Suss cried.

  Spencer looked, not at the tactical display, but at an external view monitor. Where the greyish blob of rock had been a moment before was now nothing but the inky, gleaming darkness of an electromagnetic shield, a perfect sphere of black. Coruscating lines of sparks flickered and swam over its surface, as minor magnetic interferences chased each other over the shield’s exterior.

  Spencer swore. An EM shield that big and powerful required an incredible amount of energy to create—or to crack.

  “So much for a hell-bomb,” Tallen Deyi said, looking over what the sensors had to say about the enemy’s shield. “That shield is too strong. We can’t bust through that to get a missile in.”

  Dostchem’s voice came over the intercom from Search Control. “I am examining the asteroid on the gravity-wave detector,” she said coolly. “We are fortunate that the EM shield does not block the G-wave emanation. There are many, many G-wave sources of the size we are familiar with. And one much larger, more energetic one.”

  “The helmet,” Spencer said. “That has to be Jameson, wearing the helmet. If we could bust open that shield somehow, get a hell-bomb through—”

  “Sir, I was about to report before our shields went up,” the comm officer said. “It’s blocked now by the enemy shield, but I heard a lot civilian radio chatter. Not on military frequencies, or on military topics. I’ve had the computer run some referent checks on the traffic I was able to record, doing word matches. It hasn’t spotted any military slang, but has picked up a lot of traffic that indicates a large number of civilian workers on that asteroid. Probably contract workers from Mittelstadt and Købnhavn, judging by accent analysis.”

  “What the hell are civilians doing aboard that asteroid?” Tallen demanded.

  “Construction of some sort, the best I can tell,” the comm officer said.

  “It makes sense,” Spencer said. “The helmet needed work done. Ship conversions, maintenance, piloting. So it hired crews. They wouldn’t know why they’re on the jobs, but if the money’s good, they wouldn’t care either.”

  A tone warbled on the comm officer’s panel; he worked a series of controls. “I have acquired a signal from Lennox” she said. “Relaying data to tactical.”

  The scale on the tactical swelled, compressing the previous display to a small patch in the center of the screen. Far off to one edge of the screen hung Lennox.

  Spencer checked the range and swore. The other ship was over a million kilometers away. Too far away to do any good any time soon. Even at massive acceleration, it would take hours for her to arrive. It seemed unlikely that the helmet would tolerate Banquo’s presence for that long.

  The lights dimmed again, the shield snapped on, and the ship rebounded as the defensive system stopped another missile. Another close call. At least this time it wasn’t a surprise. They couldn’t just sit here. Sooner or later, a missile was going to make it through, and the Banquo would die.

  It was useless to hang in space, soaking up missile attacks. Banquo’s weaponry wasn’t intended for a static battle like this. She was meant to be quick, meant to dive in, hit hard, run fast. Now they couldn’t even retreat quickly. There was no question that they needed the shields at least on standby, and the engines couldn’t manage more than a tenth of a G with the shields at minimum. They would be sitting ducks for hours as they crawled away.

  All right, what was left if staying and running were no good? Spencer felt the need to talk over the situation. He caught Tallen’s eye, and Suss’. The three of them moved over to a quiet corner of the bridge.

  “We need to get in closer,” Spencer said, speaking in low tones. “Boost toward the asteroid, at the best acceleration we can.”

  Tallen looked stunned. “Closer?”

  “We could drop every missile we have onto that shield and not crack it,” Spencer said. “Even if we did get a hell-bomb in there, I’m not any happier about killing civilians today than I was yesterday. Meanwhile, they’re going to continue bombarding us. If we back off, we’ll be exposed to fire the whole way. Maybe if we get in close enough, we’ll be under their guns.

  “Besides which, we’ve still got the bulk of Duncan’s Marines aboard. We can use them. And if we can capture the asteroid intact, we might be able to learn something from it. I say we fly in, find a way to crack those shields, and drop an assault force, finish this hand to hand. If we fail, then Lennox is on the way. Maybe Macduff too—unless she’s lost forever. But neither Macduff or Lennox carry enough troops—they don’t have the assault option. They can try direct bombardment if we don’t make it.”

  “But they’d still be up against that shield,” Tallen objected.

  “If it comes down to that, one ship can ram the asteroid shield, with the other ready with missiles once the shield cracks,” Spencer said quietly.

  “That would destroy the ramming ship!” Tallen objected.

  “Which is one reason I don’t want things getting to that point,” Spencer replied, his voice suddenly strained and weak.

  Tallen remembered a heartbeat too late that Spencer had already lost a ship. He would not expend another craft lightly if he could avoid it.

  “I wa
nt to try the assault,” Spencer said again. “Which means we need to find a backdoor through that shield. Somehow.”

  “That’s my job,” Suss said. She could feel her heart pounding, the palms of her hands turn cold with fear even as she spoke. “There have to be sally ports in that shield, ways to allow ships and missiles in and out. Banquo’s detection gear should be able to spot them. I get on a pressure suit and flypack, jump out the door as we go past, and get in through the sally port. Then I find a way to knock out the shield generator. Getting past shields isn’t exactly a new problem—the KT trains for just this sort of run.”

  It was true, she was trained for jobs like this—but no amount of danger could hide the fact that the job was all but suicidally dangerous.

  She was volunteering to die—and asking the man she loved, a man who had lost so much already, to risk the last precious thing in his life by sending her.

  Suss looked into his face, and saw the struggle between her commander and her lover. Her own feeling lost in tempest, she prayed both sides, and neither, would win. She had to try this thing, even if the odds against success were long and the risk of death great. If they could not get past that shield, then hundreds more on both sides would have to die before the helmet-creature was defeated.

  “Very well,” Captain Spencer said at last. “I don’t really have much choice but to send you. Or much time to work things out before you go. Let’s get this planned before those robot bastards get a missile through our shield.”

  ###

  Banquo and her crew moved rapidly away from the chaos of the breakout, driving toward some semblance of order and purposeful planning. Spencer, intent on preparing the assault team, was swept up in one direction, Suss in another.

  There was something frantic, manic, and yet resolute about the atmosphere aboard ship. Suss sensed a cool desperation in the air, born of the knowledge everything had to be done right if anyone was to survive.

  This crew had seen a whole ship die of bad luck and bad judgment days before, and the fear of battle seemed to have a strange, calming effect. They knew they could not afford mistakes.

  Suss found herself being handed from one set of briefers and experts to another as the plan was finalized. Her briefers were cool, correct, precise, wholly impersonal, as if they were programming a weapon rather than briefing a colleague.

  She recognized the behavior pattern, and it made her blood run cold. They were trying to stay detached from her, avoiding eye contact, struggling not to think of her as a person—because they were not expecting her to come back. If they did not smile at her, cheer her on, offer an encouraging hand, it would hurt less to send her out to die.

  The experience made her feel numb, as if she were dead already and just hadn’t noticed it yet. Suss moved through the next two hours as if in a dream. All was fog, vague backgrounds, a confused hurried stream of people telling her things, showing her things she needed to know.

  But sharp-edged moments, clear images, bits of sure knowledge seemed to leap out at her, setting her on the way that she was going.

  “—The sally ports would be suicide,” the remote sensor tech said firmly, if none too delicately. “They’re too small, stay open too briefly—and they have missiles launching through them. We’ve had a chance to analyze their shield now. It’s big, it’s strong—but it’s crude. An advance control system would allow the controller to open and shut portals anywhere on the shield—but this one only has static openings. They can open or shut them at will, but only at a set of predefined static points. We’ve spotted a series of communications ports, holes in the shield to allow antennae through. They are pretty big, nearly four meter across, open almost continuously. They don’t seem to have any visual systems, just various radio antennae to keep in contact with their own fleet. Optically, the comm ports are blind. As long as you don’t use radio or other electromagnetics, they’ll probably never spot you—”

  ###

  “—This is the suit and flypack we use for outside repair work under our own shields,” the assistant engineer explained. “Virtually no metals in it at all, all ceramics and plastics, with a compressed-gas propulsion system. If there were any significant metal in the suit or on you, if you wore a stainless-steel earring, the shield’s electromagnetic fields would grab at it, pull it out of your ear and through your helmet at the speed of a repulsor bead if you got within twenty meters of the shield. In a standard suit, with metallic components, you’d be ground into confetti if you even got close to a shield. In this suit, you’ll be okay as long as you don’t actually touch the shield in any way—that would be like sticking your arm in a slicing machine. Do that and the lines of force will—would—rip your body apart. That’s an energy-shear, not strictly speaking a magnetic effect. Of course, the EM field would yank the hemoglobin right out of your blood cells before anything else could happen anyway—”

  ###

  —Navigation AutoReport Download via Nav Computer. Subject vehicle Nanabhuc/flypack ceramic memory system programmed to transit vehicle from Banquo to vicinity spatial coords, designated ref. Shield Comm Port 4 at zero relative velocity. Percentage of fuel supplied to be used in maneuver: 98 percent, plus or minus four percent—

  ###

  —Manual of Operation, UV visor vision system model 643/b. Primary purpose of system: enhanced view of electromagnetic shield. The microscopic low-power circuit in the system is specifically designed for absolute minimal interference with an EM shield system. This circuitry can be brought to within ten centimeters of a high power-density shield with no effect. When activated, the visor downshifts far-UV radiation to visible spectra . . .

  ***

  —Once, twice, three times the ship shuddered and lurched sickeningly around her as the Banquo’s shields destroyed another missile—

  ###

  —The images from the Dancing Bear’s drilling operation and salvage operation as transmitted on a secure beam from the Fleance, played over and over again until Suss would know those strange corridors in her dreams—or at least her nightmares. Then the screen cleared, and the latest iteration of the three-dee map Santu had drawn would appear again.

  It was crude, barely more than a set of guesses strung together. Did those heavy cables mean that compartment was the power room? Were those automated weapons half in that corner? Where did that corridor lead? Was it reasonable to hypothesize a whole system of connected passageways in that pattern based on the hints from a recording?—

  ###

  Unnoticed, somehow, somewhere along the line, weight returned as the engines rumbled to life. Suss knew, without truly understanding, that now they were accelerating toward the enemy.

  ###

  —Dimly heard, an argument between two petty officers, one arguing that the Banquo’s shield wasn’t rated to permit a two-tenth-G boost, the other pointing out that war was about risk, and the Banquo wasn’t rated to wait around until an enemy missile vaporized her either—

  ###

  . . . The suit seemed too light to protect her, the helmet with its complex vision system too big and awkward. How had she gotten into the suit in the first place? Suss didn’t even remember putting it on . . . Strange, strange. Strange to be alive, strange to walk, stumblefooted as a sleepwalker, moving willingly toward her own death . . . Not knowing why, or how she did it, she stepped into the air lock.

  That action seemed to bring her back to a place where the world around her seemed real. The air lock was tangible, solid, certain. It was brightly lit, its switches and dials very ordinary-looking and easily seen. She put her hand against the bulkhead and could feel it. She could hear the high-pitched whistle of the pumps sucking the air out, smell and taste the tang of bottled air, tinged with the sweat of her own fear, feel the stiffening of the odd suit around her body, see the outer hatch open. She felt the decrease in vibration that meant the ship’s engines had shut down, so as to facilitate her own exit. She was back in zero G.

  The suit’s flypack spu
ttered to life of its own volition and boosted her out of the lock. She resisted an urge to take over manual control, and instead let the autopilot do its job.

  It lifted her out of the air lock, out into space, toward the Banquo’s shield, a black wall of nothingness, rippling with shimmering starlike sparks of light, the steady light of the true stars barely visible behind.

  For a brief, horrible moment Suss thought the shield was going to stay on as she went through it. The flypack was driving her closer and closer, twenty meters, ten meters away, so close she could imagine the magnetic fields plucking at the fabric of her body. Then the sparkling wall snapped out of existence and she sailed through empty space.

  Suss looked behind through the rearview mirror set into her helmet. For the briefest of moments, she could see the ship back there—and then the ship’s shield reappeared, shrouding Banquo in darkness.

  She looked ahead, looking for the black-cloaked asteroid that was her destination. Without magnification or sensors to guide her eyes, she couldn’t find it. Then she remembered the UV vision system built into her visor and switched it on. The visor clouded for a moment as its delicate electronics came on, seeking far ultraviolet radiation it could translate down into visible light.

  Suddenly, a blindingly bright wall of violet-white lit up the sky, dead ahead. She had not been able to see it because it took up half the sky, and what she had taken for a backdrop of stars was the telltale pattern of surface sparks, moving too slowly for her to notice.

  In down-shifted UV, the shield was a huge, garishly bright blast of radiance, far too intense for her to see anything. She fumbled with the visor’s controls and adjusted the intensity. With the brightness cut back, she could see patterns, surging, dark-blue lines of force weaving their way around the blue-white glare of the energy field itself.