Dark Matter

by Ian Douglas

  In fact, she was still well within the planet’s ring system. Beyond the edge of bright, well-­defined A Ring lay a broad gap known as the Roche Limit, extending all the way out to the F Ring . . . but in fact, this gap was occupied by a tenuous sheet of debris. Three thousand kilometers beyond the A Ring lay the F Ring, the outermost discrete ring in the system, narrow, twisted, knotted in places, teased by passing moonlets until it formed a central core ring with a more slender spiral of material encircling it.

  Beyond that, 180,000 kilometers from Saturn’s cloud tops, was the orbit of Enceladus, and that tiny moon was imbedded in the E Ring, which it had created and continually renewed with cryovolcanic material spewed from its south polar vents. Unlike the inner rings, the E Ring was more of a debris cloud than a plane, its individual ice particles microscopic in size. Ring particles out here were more dispersed, too; there was less of a chance of a direct collision with a rock big enough to inflict serous damage.

  But at the same time, flying through this zone was like pushing through a blizzard. Connor could hear the steady hiss and crackle of particles sleeting across her Starhawk’s outer hull, and her in-­head instrument feeds showed her that she was losing nanomatrix to a steady, high-­velocity sandblasting effect that would strip her hull down to the support struts in minutes if she kept up this speed.

  Ahead, Enceladus showed as a hard, diamond-­brilliant, and tiny crescent bowed away from the shrunken sun. With much of its surface constantly being renewed by ice particles dropping back to its surface, Enceladus was the brightest reflective body in the entire solar system, its sunlit portions reflecting better than 99 percent of the light that hit it. The moon, barely 500 kilometers across at its longest, gleamed like a minute, brilliant jewel.

  Closer, between Connor’s ship and Enceladus, the Black Knights of VFA-­215 were engaging individual enemy fighters, both human and alien. There were six Velociraptors remaining of the Knights—­half of their original contingent—­and they were up against a ­couple of dozen enemy ships. Not good. . . .

  Astern, more squadrons off the America were funneling through the hole the Demons and the Knights had punched through the enemy fighter defenses. Off to starboard, VFA-­224 had reached Titan and was scattering a small enemy contingent there; and to port, and back closer to Saturn, inside the Cassini Division, between the A and B Rings, the Starhawks of VFA-­99 were clearing out a gathering of Pan-­European fighters at the Huygens Station. Pulses of brilliant light flashed and flickered, casting oddly shifting bursts of hard illumination across the vast sweep of the rings.

  Silent explosions were erupting to port as well, where enemy ships were trying to flank the incoming USNA squadrons.

  The greatest concentration of enemy forces, however, appeared to be up ahead, at small and brilliant Enceladus. Why that should be was unknown . . . but it certainly wasn’t up to Connor to figure out that part of the enemy’s motivations.

  “Form up on me, Demons,” said Mackey. “We’re going to help out the Knights.”

  “Shit,” Kemper’s sour voice put in, “when did the damned Velocicrappers ever take any help from us?”

  It was an old rivalry—­the gleaming new-­tech of the Velociraptors versus the near obsolete Starhawks.

  None of that mattered now in the least. Those were fellow pilots out there . . . shipmates.

  And they were outnumbered and needed help.

  USNA CVS America

  Saturn Space

  0946 hours, TFT

  “How long?” Gray demanded.

  His tactical officer stared into the highly detailed, 3-­D projection tank, his face eerily stage lit from below. “An hour twenty minutes before we can engage, Admiral,” Mallory told him. “We can’t push too hard or we’ll ablate ourselves in the rings.”

  Gray let more data through his conscious mind, data revealing the ship’s status, the coherence of the ceramic-­plastic composites covering America’s shield cap, of power drain, of rising temperatures on the ship’s leading surfaces as friction clawed at them.

  The star carrier America was shaped like a colossal mushroom, a pencil-­slender stalk trailing behind a 500-­meter shield cap. That cap was, in fact, an enormous water storage tank holding some 27 billion liters, the water serving both as radiation shielding when the carrier was plowing through supposedly empty space at near-­c velocities, and as a store of reaction mass for her plasma maneuvering thrusters. Of the two, the radiation shielding was actually the more important; individual hydrogen atoms or stray protons adrift in hard vacuum were perceived as hard radiation when they were encountered at relativistic speeds.

  Here, just beneath the plane of Saturn’s spectacular rings, the particles America was encountering were considerably larger than protons. The carrier’s shield cap was slamming through a cloud of particles—­mostly flecks of ice—­that ranged from microscopic in size up through occasional chunks a meter or more across. The largest could be vaporized by the automated point-­defense lasers mounted around the shield-­cap rim, but there was simply no way to clear out all of the debris floating in America’s path. The carrier had been forced to slow sharply to avoid vaporizing herself in the storm of minute ice crystals and debris.

  “What’s the tacsit on our fighters up ahead?” Gray demanded.

  “They’ve all suffered pretty heavy casualties, Admiral. VFA-­99 is down to three fighters left, plus a ­couple of streakers. Most of the action right now is centered around Enceladus. Mackey’s squadron reports that they’ve punched through the main enemy defenses, but they’re outnumbered and beginning to run low on expendable ordnance.”

  “Meaning nukes.” Gray had received the report earlier about the alien fighters and their resistance to beam weapons. For a time, space ahead had been bright with the flaring blossoms of nuclear detonations, as America’s fighters had hunted down the swarming aliens, but they would be running low on missiles by now. Even their stores of small and efficiently compact Kraits wouldn’t last forever in a fight like this.

  “Any sign of planetary defenses?” Gray asked.

  Mallory shook his head. “No, sir. Not yet.”

  “Capital ships?”

  “A few, in orbit around Enceladus. A ­couple of monitors protecting that big alien ship, plus two cruisers, a light carrier, some destroyers. We’re reading some destroyers at Titan, too. They may be preparing to break orbit and join the main force.” Mallory hesitated. “The biggest question right now is the alien capital ship. It’s in close orbit around the moon, but has not opened fire on our fighters as yet. It may not be armed.”

  “It carried those fighters,” Gray said. “That makes it a warship.”

  But did it, really? The aliens were still a complete unknown . . . and that meant that their psychology, their way of looking at the universe, their motivations, their essential codes of morality or ethics were still unknown as well. The aliens might see nothing wrong at all with bringing space fighters into the system on board the equivalent of a hospital ship or a diplomatic courier. What humans considered to be violations of the rules of war might be completely unfathomable to another species.

  Gray pushed the uncomfortable thought aside. The aliens obviously had had contact with Confederation representatives, and were working closely with them. They’d stepped into the middle of a major civil war . . . and Gray intended to show them exactly what that meant.

  “Here’s what we’re going to do, Commander,” he told Mallory. “We’re going to start putting out AMSOs, a lot of them . . . and we’re going to sweep ourselves a tunnel from here to Enceladus.”

  Mallory looked worried. “You think that will work, sir?”

  “We’ll find out. I want this task force to be over Enceladus in ten minutes or less. Now move!”

  And America’s tactical officer began issuing orders.

  Chapter Nine

  5 March 2425 />
  USNA CVS America

  Saturn Space

  0957 hours, TFT

  Braking hard, America’s carrier battlegroup plowed into and through the Confederation fleet at 10,000 kilometers per second—­just over 3 percent of the speed of light. It was a daring, even reckless approach this deep within a planetary subsystem, burning through walls and veils of drifting ice specks that comprised Saturn’s rings.

  But they were coming in behind clouds of high-­velocity sand, coming in tightly clustered around and behind the giant mushroom shape of the carrier America, coming in behind a steady barrage of AMSO rounds that continually replenished the sand clouds ahead, sweeping clear the CBG’s path.

  Admiral Gray sat on America’s flag bridge, studying the virtual tactical tank before him, his mouth set in grim determination. The main portion of the enemy fleet lay directly ahead . . . a light carrier that America’s warbook had identified as the São Paulo, a Brazilian vessel of about 95,000 tons, plus two heavy cruisers of roughly the Edmonton’s class, and three destroyers. Two more Confederation destroyers were at Titan now, and a sixth at the Huygens facility in the Cassini Division of the rings.

  The big unknown, still, was the 700-­meter alien ship, which appeared to be closely guarded by two monitor gunships, both German—­the Rostok and the Emden. Meant for defensive operations in orbit, they were massive, slow, and clumsy vessels each massing over half a million tons, but they were heavily armored and bristling with heavy-­weapons turrets. They were by far the most dangerous warships in the enemy squadron, and they would be the principal targets of CBG-­40 in the coming bloody minutes.

  The task force had entered battlespace behind the expanding, fast-­moving clouds of sand grains launched from hundreds of AS-­78 anti-­missile shield ordnance rounds at high velocity. America was releasing AMSO clusters through its two spinal railgun mounts every few seconds, as quickly as the magnetics could recycle. Already traveling at a few percent of the speed of light, the AMSO rounds accelerated for a few seconds at 50,000 gravities, and when they released the several kilos’ worth of sand-­grain-­sized lead spherules in their warheads, each grain was traveling at nearly 10 percent of the speed of light.

  Those grains carried kinetic energy enough to vaporize ice fragments, sweeping clear a tunnel through which the USNA ships were traveling at high speed. There weren’t enough lead spherules to get all of the debris, especially within a few kilometers of the visible surface of the rings where the ice cloud was thickest, of course. America, in the lead, got most of the rest, plowing through the remaining particles and wisps of hydrogen and oxygen and vaporizing anything solid still in their path.

  The leading surface of America’s shield cap had been polished clean, the enormous letters spelling out her name and hull number sandblasted away by billions of ice chips that had escaped the sand clouds. As the carrier continued to close on the enemy, her shield cap began to get hotter . . . then hotter . . . then hotter still, as the alloyed metals and ceramics covering the water storage tank boiled away.

  “The water tank won’t take much more, Admiral,” Captain Gutierrez told him. She sounded worried. “We’re going to get wet.”

  An exaggeration, that. Gallows humor. If America’s shield cap ruptured, billions of liters of water inside would instantly and simultaneously boil and freeze in hard vacuum. The ship might well not survive as her leading structures were torn apart.

  Even more worrying was the loss of America’s forward gravitic projectors, a forest of antennae a few centimeters high that bent space around the ship’s hull. They were important in establishing and balancing the Alcubierre warp field around the entire ship . . . and in combat they bent space enough to deflect incoming lasers and particle beams, providing a measure of protection.

  That protection was gone now, ablated away by temperatures high enough to make America’s shield cap glow a dull red in places.

  But the trick with the sandcasters appeared to have worked well enough that America had survived the passage, so far, at least.

  “Everyone still with us?” Gray asked.

  “The John Young and the Ramirez report minor damage, Admiral,” Mallory told him.

  The destroyers had been out on the flanks, outside of the protective cone swept by America’s disintegrating shield cap.

  But none of the CBG vessels would have made it without the AMSO sandcasters. Years before, as a raw, young fighter pilot, Gray had earned the nickname “Sandy” when he’d used AMSO rounds as antiship missiles. AMSOs were primarily intended as anti-­missile defense systems, to detonate incoming warheads well away from friendly ships as well as to scatter beams of radiation, but it turned out that grains of lead sand traveling at close to c were a damned effective weapon against enemy fighters, against capital ships . . . and even planetary bases and defense systems.

  So the “Sandy” handle had stuck with him through the years. He had a feeling he was going to be hearing more of it in the future.

  Assuming they survived the next few minutes, of course. Using AMSO rounds to clear out an approach corridor allowed CBG-­40 to maintain a high-­velocity approach. Now, though, they would have to use that velocity to good effect against an enemy fleet that outnumbered them—­and that represented some serious unknowns in the capabilities of the alien capital ship and its fighters.

  “We’re reading high temperatures on some of the enemy ships, Admiral,” Captain Gutierrez reported. “I think some of the sand that got through the ring particles must have scoured the Confed ships. Not enough to destroy them, but . . .” Her mental voice trailed away.

  “Every little bit helps, Captain,” Gray replied.

  At 9,000 kps, the battlegroup swept out from beneath Saturn’s glowing rings, and in an instant, Enceladus loomed ahead, a brilliant white crescent swiftly growing larger. Decelerating sharply, America’s battlegroup slashed its forward velocity, and the tiny moon’s swift growth slowed.

  Enceladus was only about 500 kilometers across, a frozen flyspeck all but lost in emptiness. As the crescent expanded, however, and just for an instant, Gray could clearly see those enigmatic ice and water geysers at its south pole, backlit and glowing in the light of the distant sun. Pinpoint flashes sparkled across local space as fighter battled fighter in the near distance . . . and hammered away at Confederation warships orbiting the moon.

  “Any time you’re ready, Commander,” Gray told America’s weapons officer.

  Taggart’s mental command snapped out an instant later. “All weapons, when you bear . . . fire!”

  The other ships in the squadron opened up a second or two later. America’s weapons were relatively light—­mostly lasers and plasma weapons for close-­in point defense, though she did have the paired spinal-­mount rail guns that could accelerate multi-­ton kinetic-­kill warheads to high velocities. The other capital ships, though, possessed heavier and longer-­ranged weapons—­the cruiser Edmonton especially. She was slamming high-­velocity KK warheads into the nearer of the two monitors, the Pan-­European Rostok.

  The Rostok returned the fire, her massive quad turrets pivoting to track the fast-­passing cruiser, but her target acquisition antennae had been damaged by the scouring effect of incoming sand moments before, and she was having trouble locking on. Edmonton’s shield cap took several solid hits, and she was trailing bits of glittering wreckage and the telltale bleed of ice crystals escaping from her punctured tank, but she was still in the fight and giving much more than she was taking. The Rostok staggered under a trio of heavy KK projectiles that punched through weakened gravitic shields and thick armor. Atmosphere spilled into space, an expanding silver fog as air and water boiled . . . then froze.

  The big alien ship opened fire in the next instant, dozens of high-­energy X-­ray lasers stabbing out through the night, slamming into the Edmonton. Part of her shield cap exploded in a dazzling spray of freezing water.
/>   “The alien has opened fire, Admiral,” Dean Mallory said.

  “I see it. He’s declared himself as a combatant. Return fire.”

  America was pivoting as she passed, targeting the alien, slamming a pair of depleted uranium shells into the huge craft at thousands of kilometers per second . . . the velocity of the magnetically accelerated rounds plus the forward velocity of the star carrier. Those rounds struck at hundreds of kilometers per second, but had a sideways vector equal to America’s current velocity, and so they ripped through hull metal like savage can openers, doing horrific damage.

  As America hurtled close to the icy moon, Gray strained for a glimpse of the alien, magnified and projected on one of the flag bridge tactical displays . . . but then America was past Enceladus and hurtling on out into open space, away from Saturn.

  The sun lay directly ahead, shrunken by a billion kilometers.

  America continued her turn. When she was pointed back at the receding Enceladus she engaged her singularity drive again, slowing her outbound passage, then slowly building up speed back toward the moon. The other ships of CBG-­40 matched the maneuver; enemy fighters closed on the USNA ships, hungry for blood, but the point defenses of the cruiser and three destroyers burned them down like moths in a candle flame.

  “Order our fighters to close with us,” Gray told Mallory.

  “Aye, aye, Admiral.”

  “Rostok is breaking up!” Gutierrez called. “She’s had it!”

  A flare of antimatter annihilation seared across the sky. “What the hell was that?” Gray asked.

  “That was the Spruance, sir,” Taggart told him. “X-­ray burst from the alien . . .”

  Damn . . .

  There’d been three hundred in the destroyer’s complement. Her skipper, Commander Craig Yashimoto, had been a friend.

  But right now, Gray’s principal concern was for more than five thousand ­people on board the America. She was . . . struggling.

  The space-­warping shields that protected a starship in combat were created by gravitic projectors extending out from the vessel’s hull just a few centimeters. They could be melted away by a nearby thermonuclear blast—­or by the sandblasting from a high-­velocity AMSO round—­and when that happened, that section of shield would fail, exposing the ship’s hull to incoming missiles or radiation.