Torino Nine

by Mark Anson

  ‘Firing checklist complete. Bomb is ready for arming.’ Collins spoke hesitantly, but was gaining confidence. ‘I’ll update the target site when we’ve got an updated spin rate.’ He looked at the displays. ‘Twenty seconds for the Arlington.’

  Clare glanced at the ship’s orientation, checking that the big dozer blade lay between them and the Arlington’s target site. The blast of gamma rays and neutrons from the nuclear charge wasn’t lethal at this range, but plenty dangerous if they caught it head-on.

  Ahead of them, the Arlington released its nuclear charge, and its engines flared in the darkness as it changed course to clear the asteroid.

  ‘Bomb away. Forty seconds to run.’ Randall’s voice confirmed. ‘We’re getting out of here.’

  Clare turned down the brightness on the monitors and checked the timing. ‘Here it goes.’

  There was a long pause as the seconds ticked away.

  ‘Let’s hope he nails the target site,’ Collins said quietly. ‘Otherwise those guys might die for nothing.’

  ‘He’ll hit it,’ Clare said quietly. ‘Three … two … one …’

  A supernova of light erupted in the centre of the forward display, and slowly faded, giving no hint of the stupendous explosive force that had just been unleashed on the asteroid. The gamma and x-ray readings shot up, and then slowly fell back again.

  ‘Whoa, that’s a big one.’ Collins glanced at the readings of the light pulse. ‘Full yield – five megatons plus.’

  ‘Detonation successful. We’re measuring the result now.’

  Clare adjusted the monitor again so that they could get a proper look, and let out an involuntary gasp. She didn’t need the computer’s reading to tell that the asteroid’s spin hadn’t been reduced as much as they’d hoped.

  ‘What the hell’s happened?’ Collins asked.

  ‘That.’ Clare jabbed a finger at the screen. A plume of rocky debris fountained up from the detonation site. ‘It’s fractured the asteroid – look.’ Several lumps of rock, which must have been huge at this distance, turned in the sunlight as they receded into space. Some of the bomb’s energy had been wasted in breaking the asteroid apart, instead of reducing its spin.

  ‘Shit,’ Collins commented, ‘what’s that going to do to our aiming site?’

  Clare didn’t answer; she was having exactly the same thought, and was assessing the likely target site with her eyes, making mental calculations. ‘We’re going to have to get very close to be sure of hitting it.’

  Randall’s voice came back on the radio, against a background of sizzling and popping from the cloud of ions that lay between the two ships.

  ‘Mesa, Arlington. Spin reduction is forty percent of target. You’re going to have to hit it on the turn. Can you and Collins do it?’

  Clare glanced across at Collins, who nodded emphatically. She thumbed the transmit. ‘Roger that, sir.’

  ‘Okay Foster, do a good job. We’re firing to change course and go help the Las Vegas. Good luck.’

  Clare stared at the targeting computer, which was displaying the aiming point on the image of the tumbling asteroid. It vanished from sight as the asteroid turned, then came back into view again for a few seconds before disappearing again. The asteroid was turning in such a way that the target site was obscured by its bulk for most of its rotation, only affording them a few seconds when it had to hit.

  ‘We’ll have to get closer. Recalculate for half the distance.’

  Collins raised an eyebrow, but bent back to the bombsight and punched in the new release distance. The display changed to show the target sight staying in sight for longer, but it still wasn’t enough.

  Inside Clare’s head, the pressure was building. There was only her training stopping her from screaming at the impossibility of it all. Her father, the Las Vegas spewing its air into space, now this – she had to keep it together, she had to.

  She reached across to the bombsight keypad and punched in some fresh numbers. They had to get closer.

  ‘Oh, you are out of your mind,’ Collins said as he saw the new distance, ‘that’s too close, we’ll never make it out past the asteroid’s surface!’

  ‘Yes we will. I need you to bring up the main engine ready for firing – we need maximum thrust as soon as we’ve fired, to clear the asteroid as it comes round.’

  ‘There isn’t time to prep the main engine!’ Collins was staring at her. ‘All we’ve got is the manoeuvring rockets – you’re going too close to the target!’

  ‘You want us to miss?’ Clare yelled. ‘This isn’t a training exercise, we have to hit it spot on or we won’t get a deflection!’

  ‘I’m your XO. This is too close for safety.’ Collins enunciated each word clearly, so that it could be heard on the cockpit voice recorder.

  ‘Noted,’ Clare said icily. ‘Now I need you to bring up the reactor ready for immediate firing. I need maximum thrust the moment we release, is that okay or are you going to argue about that as well?’

  Collins glared at her for a moment, then bent back to the console. ‘I’ll be ready. We’ll need to turn the moment we release.’

  ‘Just be ready with the engine. I’ll handle the firing, you turn the ship and hit ignition the moment it’s gone – don’t wait for the order, just do it.’

  Collins turned his attention to the nuclear engine controls, and flipped a safety cover off a switch and pressed it, holding it down while the reactor power increased. ‘We won’t have time to manoeuvre properly – I’ll have to fire the engine before the turn’s complete. We could overstress the ship.’

  ‘It’ll take it. Just get us clear.’ Clare swung the bombsight across so that she could look directly through it at the target.

  ‘Four minutes to firing,’ Collins said coldly, ‘Reactor power rising.’

  ‘How’s that debris?’

  ‘Nothing on radar.’

  ‘Okay. Slaving autopilot to computer – now.’ Clare pressed two buttons together on the console, and the ship moved slightly beneath them as the autopilot started following the tiny adjustments made by the targeting computer. She bent back to the eyepieces of the bombsight, concentrating on the asteroid that was expanding steadily in the field of view. They were getting very close now, and the ground rush effect was starting; she fought the urge to flinch away, and concentrated on the aiming point as it came around, adjusting the crosshairs of the bombsight so that it was bang-on as the target point swung past.

  ‘Coolant flow rising.’

  ‘One more rotation and I’m firing. Arming now.’ She punched in her command code into the console and pressed ARM, and a brief warble confirmed that the nuclear charge was armed and fuzed. She adjusted the burst distance to fifty metres to give them a fraction more time to get clear.

  Below them, in the breech of the bomb cannon, there was a Mark 82 nuclear shaped charge, set to maximum yield. It was a cylindrical charge, delivering most of its energy along the long axis of the weapon, so that a concentrated jet of x-ray and gamma radiation would be directed against the target site, and an equal blast in the opposite direction. It had to be positioned in exactly the right attitude to be effective, so the long, rifled barrel of the gun imparted a bullet-like spin to the charge as it left the muzzle.

  The thrusters on the outside of the ship fired briefly, turning the ship fractionally. Through the bombsight, the asteroid had expanded beyond the edges of the field, and was moving towards them faster with every moment.

  ‘Neutron flux is normal. Safeties off for full power. Arming ignition for manual firing.’

  ‘Ready.’ Clare’s eyes didn’t move from the bombsight as her fingers moved out to flick the cover off the firing safety switch. Once the safety was off, the gun would fire the moment it had the target.

  From outside the cabin, a loud bang, then another.

  ‘Debris!’ Collins called, ‘lots of it – hold on!’

  The ship shook with an onslaught of tiny particles, each no bigger than a grain of sand, but ca
rrying enough kinetic energy to cause enormous damage. The dozer blade took most of the impacts, shuddering on its mounts, but several grains hit the metal window shields with loud cracks.

  ‘Shit! Losing pressure in Number Three tank!’ Collins had to shout to make himself heard above the din.

  ‘Continue!’ Clare ordered.

  ‘The tank’s been hit – we’re losing fuel pressure!’

  ‘Here we go.’ The surface of the asteroid swung past the crosshairs again. Clare’s finger poised over the safety switch, and as the target point appeared in the top-right of the field, she released the safety. A moment later the target went straight through the crosshairs and the gun fired with a dull whoomp, sending a wave of recoil through the ship.

  ‘Bomb away,’ the voice of the flight computer confirmed.

  ‘Turn!’ Clare barked, but Collins was already on it, slewing the ship across the sky. The huge bulk of the Mesa started to turn, gradually at first, then slowly building up momentum.

  ‘Foster, get out of there!’ Randall’s voice erupted from the speaker.

  ‘We’re trying,’ Clare muttered. ‘How many degrees?’

  ‘Fifteen.’ Collins’s eyes were wide. ‘We need at least forty to get on the escape vector.’

  ‘Get ready with the engine.’

  ‘Twenty seconds to detonation. Proximity alert,’ the flight computer warned.

  ‘Thirty degrees of turn.’

  ‘Terrain, terrain.’

  ‘Fire main engine!’ Clare yelled.

  ‘We haven’t turned enough – we’ll hit the asteroid!’

  ‘Do it!’

  Collins flicked the safety cover off the ignition switch and pressed it. A moment later, they were pressed into their seats by the thrust of the nuclear engine. The command deck quivered, and a distant rumble came through the ship’s structure as fifty tonnes a minute of liquid ammonia fuel was rammed into the incandescent heart of the reactor and ejected into space behind them.

  ‘Detonation.’

  Behind them, somewhere on the asteroid’s surface that had rotated out of view, the nuclear charge exploded. A sizzling jet of x-rays and neutrons, liberated by a fission and then a fusion reaction, punched into the asteroid’s surface.

  On the Mesa, the x-ray and gamma-ray detectors rocketed off the scale, and an intense violet-white light flickered through the narrow gaps in the window shields. Clare had never been this close to a charge going off, but she couldn’t worry about the radiation dose; the impending crash into the side of the asteroid that was now swinging directly across their flight path filled her mind.

  ‘Terrain, terrain. Pull up.’

  ‘We’re moving,’ Collins said breathlessly, and Clare could see it too; their velocity vector was changing, curving their trajectory out and away from the asteroid. But would it be enough?

  Clare couldn’t bear it any longer – if she was going to crash, she wanted to know it was coming, and she flipped the switch to raise the window shields.

  ‘Holy fuck,’ Collins breathed, and involuntarily recoiled from the sight that opened up in front of them. The asteroid filled their vision; it had gone from being an astronomical body, to a landscape below them, and the ground was rising up to meet them as the asteroid’s rotation brought it round.

  ‘Terrain, terrain, pull up.’

  ‘We’re going to hit it!’ Collins yelled, as the ground rolled up towards them.

  ‘Are we at maximum thrust?’

  ‘Yes!’

  ‘Fire the rockets as well, emergency thrust!’

  Collins seemed to hesitate, and Clare reached across, knocked his hand aside, and pressed the manual firing button, and keyed full emergency thrust. The flight deck filled with the roar of all the engines firing at their maximum possible thrust.

  ‘Caution, overstress.’

  Clare could feel it herself; the structure of the ship groaned from the excessive manoeuvring under full power. The asteroid’s surface drew closer.

  ‘One hundred metres. Pull up.’

  ‘Shit!’

  ‘Fifty. Pull up.’

  ‘We’re not going to make it!’ Collins yelled, as the surface rose upwards to smash them from the sky.

  ‘Thirty.’

  ‘Come on, you can do it,’ Clare whispered, watching the navigation display count down the metres to their deaths.

  ‘Twenty. Impact ahead. Brace, brace.’

  Clare closed her eyes.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  ‘Ten.’

  Clare and Collins were frozen, motionless, waiting for the end. A loud bang sounded outside as one of the ship’s radio antennas hit the ground and snapped off. It could only be moments away …

  ‘Ten.’

  ‘Twenty … Thirty … Fifty.’

  Clare opened her eyes.

  ‘One hundred.’

  She glanced at the nav display, hardly daring to look at the figures. The white line of their trajectory was curving away from the asteroids surface, which turned silently beneath them.

  ‘Holy fuck,’ Collins breathed, staring at the surface, and then again: ‘Holy fuck! I didn’t think we were going to make it.’

  Clare breathed out, slowly. ‘Cut thrust on main engine. Bring back manoeuvring engines to one hundred percent and bring us back on course.’

  Collins swallowed, leaned forwards, and reduced the power to the main engine, then shut it down altogether. The low-frequency rumble of the nuclear engine fell away, leaving the roar of the rocket engines. He cancelled the emergency power setting, and reset the autopilot to bring them back onto their assigned course.

  ‘Hey, next time you’re planning on doing something like that, let me know and I’ll sign up for another ship. Holy shit.’ He shook his head in disbelief. ‘That must set a new record for the closest miss.’

  ‘Yeah, don’t I know.’ Clare was steeling herself for what she knew was coming next, but she had to know if they had succeeded or not. ‘Have we got a reading on the asteroid?’

  ‘One moment.’ Collins safed the main engine, then turned his attention to the targeting system. He waited while it computed the asteroid’s new state vector. ‘We’ll need another—’

  ‘Mesa – report!’ Randall’s voice exploded across the flight deck.

  Clare cringed, and then said, in as matter-of-fact voice as she could: ‘Arlington, we are clear of surface, climbing away.’

  ‘How close were you?’

  Clare hesitated for a moment. ‘Ten metres.’

  There was a long silence, and then Randall spoke again, in an icily calm voice that made the hairs of the back of Clare’s neck stand up: ‘We’re picking up the survivors from the Las Vegas. Match course and speed with the Arlington, and stand by to assist. Report to me on board the moment we’re done.’

  ‘Yes sir. Have we got a new state vector for the asteroid?’

  ‘We’re measuring it now. You’d better hope it was worth your career.’

  Three hours later, the Mesa and the Arlington were joined together nose-to-nose, latched in place by powerful hydraulic clamps. The two ships had been sent into rotation, so that they turned slowly about their centre of mass, allowing their crews the freedom of a small amount of gravity.

  A short distance away, the hulk of the Las Vegas floated, its lights out now that the survivors had all been moved on board the Arlington. One dead, and three injured, including Captain Garcia himself – fortunately the crew were all wearing spacesuits and had their helmets on for the bombing run, otherwise it would have been far worse.

  The Las Vegas was wrecked; one glance was enough to see that it would never navigate again. The entire ship was bent down its centreline, and it was surrounded by a widening cloud of vapour from its leaking tanks and fuel lines. The crew module had been torn open by a huge gash that ran down both decks, and most of the external equipment and radio aerials had been blown off. They had received orders to retrieve the warheads and scuttle the hulk before leaving the area; it was beyond any
hope of economic repair.

  Clare pulled herself hand-over-hand through the airlocks that joined the Mesa to the Arlington. Here at the centre of rotation, the gravity effect was almost zero, and she turned around in mid-air to descend the long ladder into the Arlington’s crew module below her.

  Randall was waiting for her, his face stony, as she stepped off on the command deck. Around him, his crew glanced at her, then quickly averted their eyes.

  ‘Permission to come aboard, sir.’

  ‘Granted,’ Randall ground out. He didn’t bother with any pleasantries, but instead pointed downwards, towards the hibernaculum. ‘Let’s talk.’

  With a sinking heart, Clare continued down the ladder into the inner refuge of the hibernaculum. Around her, the coffin-like stasis chambers were dark and silent. It felt like a tomb, and the feeling grew stronger as Randall came in after her, and swung the heavy, radiation-proof door shut behind them.

  With the door shut, nobody could hear them.

  Randall turned on her.

  ‘What in the name of flying fuck did you think you were doing?’ He looked away for a moment, trying to control his anger, and then his eyes bored into her again. His face was haggard and lined; it looked like he had aged ten years. ‘I nearly lost everyone on the Las Vegas because none of our highly-paid mission planners thought that there’d be any debris on our approach, and then you nearly crash the Mesa into the fucking target! Ten metres! Ten metres! You were so close you snapped off your radio antennas! All you needed was a boulder in your path, and you and Collins would have made a crater in the surface big enough to, to – Jesus Christ, Foster, what in hell were you thinking?’ He slammed his hand down on one of the medical consoles.

  ‘We had to get closer,’ Clare began, ‘we couldn’t hit the target from the normal—’

  ‘You might have been off-target, but we would still have had a deflection!’ he yelled, and this time, his face went crimson with anger. ‘You do not endanger any of my ships or my crews! I’ve lost Petersen on the Las Vegas today – he was a good officer – and you nearly added yourself and Collins to the list! I’ve listened to the cockpit voice recordings – Collins clearly warned you that you were too close. You deliberately ignored the advice of your executive officer and wilfully risked your ship and your crew. I’m surprised he hasn’t made a complaint, and if he does, I …’ He closed his eyes, and shook his head.