by Ian Miller
The attack seemed directed at the Americas, with two ships apparently concentrating on the northeast United States. It was then she realized the Americans had, to save money, and also as a consequence of the strong anti-military protest movements of two hundred years earlier, placed their entire interceptor launch areas adjacent to the communications and monitoring stations. The scopes began to tell the story she had already begun to expect. All American interceptors had been destroyed. The casualty figures began climbing.
"Tashkent squadrons, disperse!" she roared into the ether. In principle, attacking as a squadron was a good idea, because it concentrated the force and made it more likely to break through. But in this case, where the enemy had the power to destroy a whole squadron with one searing beam, there seemed to be less point. If they were all going in different directions, at different velocities, perhaps there was a greater chance. But first, they had to find their targets.
When they reached America there was no sign of the enemy. They were forbidden to use any radar-type devices, and their sensors found nothing, or at least nothing useful. The thermal sensors were useless, largely because it seemed half of New Jersey was on fire, and the thermal heat detectors were automatically drawn to this heat source like flies to rotten meat. American ground control gave "last sightings", some of which were low over New Jersey, although there was even one claim for a ship to have landed on Manhattan. The force circled and circled, but saw nothing. Reluctantly, Natasha ordered the aircraft to return to Tashkent; these particular aircraft were designed for turning capacity rather than their fuel supplies.
It was over half an hour after the squadrons had been recalled that small M'starn ships were seen again. They climbed to about a kilometer, cruised around, destroyed some further power stations, then soared high into the sky.
* * *
The position at the Junkyard was confused. Two M'starn vessels had attacked, and placed concentrated fire on what seemed to be the captured M'starn vessel. One beam weapon was fired from the decoy, but this made little impact on the M'starn vessels, other than to attract their fire. It was just as the decoy was beginning to disintegrate under the furious blasting that the Ranhyn vessel emerged. Great chunks flew off the side of one of the M'starn vessels, and the two ships turned their attention to this new upstart. The Ranhyn ship withdrew into the junk, and the huge derelict objects began to glow as they got in the path of the M'starn fire. The giant M'starn ships got closer, and the odd fire brought to bear on them by the Ranhyn ship was easily deflected by the shielding systems.
It was then that Natasha entered the fray; she fired a number of missiles by remote control; although the targeting was commanded from her desk, the local missile computers insured that the target was not missed, not that it was easy to miss the giant M'starn vessels from such close range. The missiles shot forward, powered by the new drive system, and exploded against the shield. The warheads were a little old-fashioned; one hundred megaton hydrogen bombs. There was no appreciable damage against the M'starn ship. Natasha commanded instant video replays of the strike, and all showed the same effect; the hydrogen bombs that got through did little. Then she saw it, on the fifth replay. The decoy had also fired one beam. The beam did nothing, then the hydrogen bomb did nothing, then the beam penetrated for just an instant. The hydrogen bomb had overloaded the shielding system.
She immediately commanded the launch of missile combinations from the Junkyard defences at the leading ship, with arrival times of one fifth of a second difference. The enemy seemed to sense its danger as it tried desperately to destroy the missiles, but eventually a combination broke through. The effect was dramatic. As expected, the first bomb did no direct damage, but the second arrived during the energy decay, and the side of the ship absorbed the whole energy of the bomb. One third of the side of the ship vaporized, but there was more to come; the bomb had struck the section just in front of the main motor systems, and a secondary energy leakage began, which intensified until the entire rear of the ship became incandescent. The giant battle cruiser remained an intensely glowing object for some hours as it drifted aimlessly through space.
The remaining battle cruiser concentrated its fire on the few remaining sources of missiles, and large lumps of junk were vaporized as the defences were destroyed, then it turned its attention back to what it believed was the captured ship. Energy was pumped into the decoy at a furious rate, until the entire decoy began to glow. It was then that Natasha's foresight was rewarded. She had placed a small hydrogen bomb in the decoy, possibly as a booby trap should the vessel be boarded in an attempt to recapture it. This bomb now detonated, and the entire decoy gave a considerably more violent encore to what had happened to the previous ship. Satisfied, the giant ship turned away and disappeared into the depths of space.
* * *
Delivery of the "bats" had created an extreme problem. Since the point of the exercise was to raise the morale of the settlers, it was highly desirable that these be delivered without the enemy intercepting them. On the other hand, this might just be an opportunity to engage some further enemy ships in a minor skirmish. As Gaius noted, the more enemy ships that could be chipped away before the main battle, the better their chances. So it had been decided to bait a trap.
The bait was a new robot-controlled freighter, powered by the new "strangely charmed" drive. This would carry the bats, and the necessary crews. Not only that, but the decision to send them was admitted, under questioning, to the Council. While the GenCorp facility in England had now ceased to transmit, a new means of communication using M'starn technology had been detected by the Actium, and as expected, the M'starn had been informed of the delivery. They had also been informed that Gaius had promised the Council that the captured enemy ship, together with the disabled Ranhynn ships, would be protected by all the Ulsian power they had until the repairs were completed. Hopefully, with the full defences around Earth, the sending of this robot ship would look as if a wheel had fallen off defensive thinking.
So, through bad fortune, too much repair work, or even ineptitude, the robot ship had to leave Earth unprotected by Ulsian ships. The Council had stated that the objective was to test the new drive, and to get the military equipment to Mars 'before the M'starn could stop them'. Hopefully, the sending of a ship with the new drive would be seen as bad strategy. Gaius believed that the M'starn would see this exercise both as a challenge, which had to be met if they were to retain the support of their allies on Mars, and also as a golden opportunity to examine this new technology, and to assess Earth's ability to fight.
While the pilots for the "bats" had nominally been sent to Mars on the freighter, in reality they had travelled to Mars on the Actium, and had been shuttled down to the surface to hide until the "bats" landed. The bats were carried in the robot-controlled freighter, to be flown down by reprogrammed gardening androids. The plan was, the bats would fly past the observation point and stop up-valley, out of sight, when the human crews would exchange positions with the androids and taxi the craft into the hangar.
Gaius had decided to leave Earth to its own devices, and both the Actium and the Romulus lay cloaked beside Deimos. The robot-controlled ship arrived on schedule, the bays were opened, and androids prepared the craft for their descent to the surface. Gaius and Lucilla watched as the bats emerged from the freighter's bay, powered up, then flew down towards the surface of Mars. The robot-controlled ship remained in orbit. Nothing further happened.
Gaius was almost beginning to think that this day was a complete failure when he realized the Romulus was moving and powering up. He then he saw what Lucilla had seen. At the edge of that pitted blackish surface, a giant black battle cruiser was gliding into view. The enemy had had a similar idea of having a concealed approach and had drifted up to the other side of Deimos. It was then the enemy became aware of its danger, and the giant weapons on its side suddenly became activated. The Romulus moved towards Mars, thus avoiding the beams, and its own pulse cannon began spit
ting, each pulse having enough energy to melt a small hill. The side of the M'starn ship became incandescent, then the pulses broke through, and the motors of the ship blazed into a mini-sun, then died. However, a second ship, this time a battleship appeared, and began firing at the Romulus.
As expected, the Romulus immediately began evasive manoeuvres. As it slipped away towards Mars, the battleship followed, weapons firing. Gaius drove the Actium directly at it, and as a piece of its starboard side flew off into space, it twisted and in an evasive move, it pointed itself at Altair. Its giant motors opened up, and its size almost immediately reduced itself to a small rapidly decaying light. Gaius opened the motors of the Actium to full power and gave pursuit. For four minutes the gap increased, then it held constant, then gradually the gap began closing.
"Romulus engaged with three enemy vessels!" Marcellus informed.
"About turn!" Gaius ordered. He suddenly realized that the trap, such as it was that he had set, had been turned upon him. The M'starn had realized what had happened, and while two ships had investigated the freighter, a further three had approached Deimos and had remained hidden behind the other side.
The problem with an about turn, he also realized, was that if he had accelerated under maximum power for six minutes, it would take a further six minutes to lose motion in that direction. Still there was nothing else for it. He had to hope that the Romulus could hold out for almost a quarter of an hour. At first the information he was receiving was promising. Lucilla was driving her ship around the outer atmosphere of Mars, just keeping her pursuers in view.
This tactic worked for two revolutions, but then the three M'starn ships separated. One moved higher, and away from the planet, while the other moved to intercept Lucilla as she emerged from the other side. Lucilla anticipated, sent some guided mines to compete her trajectory then she changed that trajectory, which was polar, so that she emerged on an equatorial trajectory, on the other side of Mars to the stationary ship. Her pursuer followed, to find her pointing directly at it, pulse cannon spitting. The M'starn ship took the punishment, and drove directly at her all weapons firing. It got closer, closer, then suddenly she ducked out of the way and the enemy ship saw it was heading directly at Phobos. It evaded upwards, only to find the Romulus appear from below, tearing its underside with cannon fire. Great swathes of white hot metal flew off, and the vulnerable motor section became exposed.
The Romulus could not deliver the final blow, as the two remaining battleships came directly to it, all weapons firing, however the Ranhynn vessels now emerged from hiding on Phobos, guns spitting. Their firepower was not great, but with most of the motor exposed, they were sufficient, and a further M'starn vessel began its death throes.
Meanwhile the Romulus ducked and weaved, and released further guided mines as it sped off away from the Martian North Pole. As the two enemy ships moved to intercept, once again the Romulus changed direction and dived towards the distant fringe of the Martian atmosphere. As it looped around Mars again, once again it changed direction and came up beside the freighter. By remote control, it started the freighter's motors, and sent it out into space ahead of the natural motion of Mars, and slightly out towards space, and in the direction of the dying M'starn ship. The Romulus once again looped around Mars, the two enemies in pursuit. One followed too directly, and had its side badly torn by a guided mine left behind.
At last the Actium was heading back in the direction of the battle, when Marcellus announced, "Enemy ship on collision course, one twentieth light speed!"
"Evade up, maximum g!" Gaius ordered, not that the order was relevant because that was a standard default evasion, up being defined as away from the planetary north pole and normal to the ecliptic.
When the enemy ships ignored the freighter, Lucilla elected to come around Mars at full power, with maximum acceleration towards Altair. The remaining two ships, following previous experience would have separated. She was correct, and while she passed uncomfortably close to one of these enemy ships she was fortunate that she chose the side she had already damaged, and hence that ship had limited firepower. As she approached she poured every Joule of cannon fire she could into the ship, and she passed as close as she dared. The other M'starn ship was too far back, and because of the proximity of its own ship, could not fire. It would have to evade its own ship, so Lucilla sent the last of her mines out to cover the shortest trajectories it could use to follow. Then, on full power, she aimed at the freighter.
High speed passes leave very limited time to do damage, but in this case, any strike on the motors would cause the freighter to explode in a micronova, sending streams of strange matter directly towards her attacker. Gaius watched this on his long-range viewer. The freighter would be directly in front of her pursuer as Lucilla flashed by it. The explosion would produce a shower of debris that no pursuing ship would wish to encounter. She would escape.
Except that the high-speed lunatic of an enemy was also going to collide with the other side of the freighter at the same time Lucilla passed. Gaius watched in horror as the enemy barrelled into the zone, there was a ball of energy of an intensity that sent the meters on the Actium off-scale, and Gaius knew he had to wait before investigating further. As the energy ball died, no ship emerged. The remaining two enemy ships had also fled.
Search as he would, there was no sign of any part of the Romulus. There was also precious little sign of anything else either. He searched in ever-increasing spheres, in the unlikely possibility that Lucilla had made it to an escape pod. There was no such pod.
* * *
The enemy tanks had descended into the ancient watercourse and were making their way over the sandblasted boulders. Akiro ordered his tanks to fire and clouds of rubble burst over the oncoming tanks. They in turn drove behind shingle mounds and began firing back. Huge piles of dust rose into the air and it became impossible to see what was going on. Akiro then ordered his tanks to retreat, and they began to speed off down the InterMars highway. The dust would take hours to settle and the enemy would be too frightened to emerge until they could see what was happening. Akiro felt satisfied.
It was at this instant one of the M'starn battle cruisers crossed over the Margaritifer Sinus. Its sensors detected the fleeing tanks, and it trained its heavy armaments on them. The two tanks were vaporized instantaneously. A small scout car had returned from the convoy and saw what happened. It turned south, into the edges of the Margaritifer Chaos, and fell into a hole when the ground collapsed underneath it. The ground erupted around the car and its side was torn off. A jagged piece of steel penetrated the driver's pressure suit, and as the pressure slowly dropped, he screamed his account of what had happened into his intercom. His message ended in a dreadful gurgle, as the blood from his ruptured lungs frothed out through his throat and mouth, to boil away into the void of Mars.
This message was heard by Misako directly through the intercom system before she went to the belfry to inspect the launch. She went for one reason; it was the only place where she could get away from the demands being made on her. It was impossible to be alone, but she could be somewhere where she would be left alone. As McDonald said later to her, Akiro's death would have been mercifully quick.
* * *
The elderly Shibatus were seated in Misako's office and had just finished a cup of Martian tea, a drink that, despite the fact the plants were derived from Earth, never quite tasted like tea, probably as a consequence of the rather strange growth characteristics under the lower gravity and the alien "soil". As Misako put down her cup, there was a knock at the door. Misako wearily admitted the caller.
"Miss Shibatu, I'm here representing a delegation of concerned workers," Karl Groza began. "We have a suggestion."
"Yes?" Misako asked in a drawn-out tone.
"We think we should negotiate with the Syrtis Major group."
"Oh, you do, do you?" Misako asked caustically. "Why?"
"Because settlers are going to get killed. It's not our fight. Ea
rth just sits there smugly while we're in danger. We've heard a rumour that the M'starn, when they landed at Syrtis Major left a lot of extra tanks –"
"That is correct," Misako said coldly. "We estimate the enemy has approximately forty tanks."
"Well, there," Groza continued. "We're going to be outgunned. You saw what happened yesterday. We lost two tanks, so that leaves us with about eight."
"Earth sent a further eight tanks with those bats, as you call them," she interrupted wearily.
"Yes, well, Earth may smugly think that solves everything, but we're still outnumbered," Groza muttered, "and as for those bats, you saw how much use they are, and we all think –"
"I've got news for you," Misako interrupted coldly, as she stared at his eyes. "At least two million people died yesterday on Earth, so they're not sitting smugly. And do you know why they died? Because they had to weaken their defences to bring us that equipment! You talk about settlers dying," she said, her voice rising, and becoming harsher with every phrase. "I'll tell you something about dying. One of those who died yesterday was my brother, Akiro. He wasn't trained to be a soldier, and he wanted nothing of this war."
"I'm sorry for that –"
"All he wanted was to live in peace," Misako continued, her hands beginning to tremble, "but without oppression. You know why he started fighting? Because those scum you want to negotiate with wanted to sell me off as a whore. You call yourself a worker," she spat, her voice dropping. "You haven't done a spot of work since you've been here. You just sit and grouch, and make everybody thoroughly miserable. You're about as helpful as a tapeworm. Sure, you've got the right to speak, and you know why? Because people like Akiro die to protect that right. In your case, it's a misplaced gesture. You've got the right to speak, and you've spoken. Now, get out of my office."