by Ian Douglas
Well . . . assuming they had noses.
In any case, that was what he was counting on here.
The ships of TF Eridani had dropped into line . . . led by the frigates Wyatt, McDonnell, and Brewster, and followed by the destroyers Semmes, Young, and Ramirez, and the cruiser Milwaukee. America had fallen into line astern of the battleship Long Island, with the Maine flanking them to port and the Russian Slava just astern. As one, they switched off their gravitic drives, traveling now at a residual velocity of just under 8,000 kilometers per second.
“All ships,” Gray said quietly, “stand by. Tacnet link, AI control . . .”
One disadvantage of the line ahead formation was the fact that most of the ships couldn’t fire at the enemy without risking a hit on friendlies in the van. The most devastating fire, however, would be delivered during that split second as the task force swept past the enemy at several thousand kps and at a range of just 10,000 kilometers in this case. Human reflexes simply weren’t fast enough to direct such fire, so the actual targeting and release would be handled by ship AIs. The computer tactical links connecting the ships of the task force would control the fleet as a unit, concentrating fire and making sure that no ship blocked another as it passed the target.
“The van is taking fire, Admiral,” Dean reported.
Gray saw the volley on his tactical screen, computer-controlled graphics filling in the otherwise invisible bolts of coherent X-ray energy as they snapped out from Target Alfa, aiming at the lead human warships. The McDonnell took a direct hit that vaporized a large central portion of her shield cap. Wreckage and glittering ice spilled into space, still traveling toward the objective at nearly 8,000 kilometers per second.
Fifty kilometers ahead of the McDonnell and just a bit to one side, the Wyatt took a near miss, losing a pie-wedge chunk of shield cap. Both stricken frigates were tumbling, now, their control systems fried. And the alien’s deadly weapons were questing deeper up the human van, now, ignoring the damaged ships, searching for new targets. The frigate Brewster vanished in a vast, eye-wrenching flare of white light as several X-ray beams converged on her, burning through her shield cap and vaporizing her power plants.
But a new danger threatened. Another ancient dictum of war held that no battle plan survives contact with the enemy . . . and that was abundantly demonstrated now as Grdoch fighters began piercing the human task force’s line. Many had been destroyed by the human fighter wave, of course, but not all by any means. Dozens of Grdoch fighters converged now on the larger human ships—in particular the carriers. Their X-ray beam weapons weren’t nearly as powerful as those on the mother ships, but there were so many of them, a swarm of scarlet attackers seeking to overwhelm the human defenses.
Gray had expected some fighters to get through, of course. Carriers and the other capital ships farther back in the line mounted effective point defenses to defend against just such an attack, and each carrier had at least a squadron of fighters flying CAP nearby. But the number of surviving enemy fighters, and the sheer ferocity of their attack, was already stretching those defenses to the limit.
America shuddered as something struck her amidships, aft of her rotating hab modules. Seconds later, a nuclear warhead detonated to port, less than ten kilometers off, and the carrier’s gravitic shields struggled to handle the sudden incoming tide of deadly radiation.
Gray could hear Captain Gutierrez snapping off orders in the background, using ship comm channels, but his focus had to be on the entire battle group, not on just the one ship. The ship lurched again, hard.
Things were getting damned rough.
Gray checked the positions of the Confederation warships. At their current acceleration, they were still at least some twenty-five minutes away.
“Give me a channel to those Confed ships,” Gay ordered.
“Channel open, sir.”
“Confederation squadron!” he snapped. “This is Admiral Gray of the USNA carrier task force now approaching Vulcan. I am engaging the Grdoch warships between me and the planet. What are your intentions? Please respond.”
If the Confederation ships were still allied with the Grdoch, he likely would not get an answer . . . but it was worth exploring the possibility of an impromptu battlespace alliance. The Confed vessels weren’t close enough to make a difference in the coming fight one way or another in any case. At that range, it would take two minutes for the radio signal to reach the Confederation vessels . . . and another two minutes for the reply. Four minutes was an eternity in combat. By the time the Confed reply reached America, the battle with the Grdoch would have been over, one way or the other.
But it was worth a try, and it would be damned useful to know if the USNA ships were going to have a second fight on their hands after the line hurtled past Vulcan.
“The Long Island is taking heavy fire, Admiral,” Dean reported.
“Very well.”
Everything was set and locked down. There were no more decisions to be made, no more orders to give. The battleline swept toward the planet and its defenders.
“Admiral! Target Alfa is reversing course! Looks like he might be running for it!”
On the flag-bridge display, the red icon marking the Grdoch warship was, indeed, furiously dumping its forward velocity, apparently in a bid to reverse course back toward the planet, leaving the battle to the fighter swarms. Gray heard several technicians on the ship’s bridge cheer . . . and Captain Gutierrez ordering them to stop. “We’re not out of this yet!”
But the Grdoch ship had waited too long. Before changing direction, it had to kill its forward velocity, and in that time the USNA battleline flashed across the intervening distance. Each ship in the line rotated to bring its primary weapons to bear on the target . . . and then the shipboard AIs opened fire, sending volley upon volley of deadly beams and missiles slamming into the fleeing target.
And in less than an eye’s blink, the entire line was past the target, hurtling across the remaining 20,000 kilometers toward the planet in under three seconds.
Target Bravo was accelerating clear of Vulcan now, trailed by a number of surviving fighters, both Grdoch and human, and closely pursued by the Chinese contingent. On the display, one of the Chinese warships, the destroyer Laiyuan, was tumbling, its shield cap sheared off, and both the Shi Lang and the cruiser Fu Zhun had taken heavy damage. Grdoch fighters appeared to be focusing their attention on the Shi Lang.
“Make to all ships,” Gray said. “Close on target Bravo. Let’s take some of the pressure off of Admiral Guo if we can.”
Behind them, Target Alfa was engulfed in the brilliant flashes of detonating nuclear warheads, and appeared to have been crippled. The balance point of the battle—its center of gravity—was shifting now to Target Bravo.
“Get me Guo,” Gray ordered.
It took a moment, but Guo’s face appeared within Gray’s in-head a moment later. The bridge visible behind him had been wrecked, and the air was thick with smoke. Guo’s face was soot-streaked, and he was bleeding from a gash in his scalp. The artificial gravity was off; the hegemony commander was floating clear of his command seat.
“Admiral Guo!” Gray called. “I recommend that you break off your attack.”
“Admiral Gray,” he acknowledged. “It is vital that this . . . this foreign devil not be permitted to escape.”
“He won’t, sir. Break off, and save your ship!”
“I trust, Admiral,” Guo replied slowly, “that you will give a full and accurate accounting of this engagement when you return to Earth. Enemies . . . enemies can become friends. . . .”
The image vanished in a burst of sharp static. On the main display, the Shi Lang blossomed into an unfolding smear of intolerably brilliant light.
And the Fu Zhun continued to press the attack despite the loss of the Chinese flagship. As Gray watched, helpless, it drifte
d in closer to the far larger Grdoch ship, pouring fire into the alien vessel at close to point-blank range. X-ray lasers lashed out, their invisible radiations burning through the human ship, knives through soft butter.
The Fu Zhun exploded.
“Damn it!” Gray shouted, loudly enough that several of the technicians on the flag bridge looked up, startled.
“The Chinese flotilla has been wiped out,” Dean reported.
“I know. Get us in there!”
Why the hell had Guo split off from the allied fleet? Bravado? A political statement, a stubbornly independent refusal to be bound by a Western commander’s orders? Gray suspected that it was a lot more than that. The Chinese hegemony had been persona non grata within the world community for nearly three centuries, ever since the Fall of Wormwood into the Atlantic. Guo’s comment about enemies becoming friends . . .
Maybe he’d been under orders to make damned sure that the USNA knew that the hegemony forces were friends . . . allies against the common enemy.
Well, he’d proven his point. The Grdoch ship, however, was still accelerating . . . headed in roughly the same direction as the incoming flotilla of Confederation warships. Just a little longer, and they’d have the bastard boxed in.
Around America, in a vast and hazy sphere, drifted wreckage, damaged fighters, and tumbling debris, the sad but inevitable detritus of a battle in open space. To port and astern, Vulcan loomed.
“Make to Inchon,” Gray said. “Secure the planet!”
The Marine transport had already launched her fighters going into the fight. Now those fighters, and the Inchon herself, began braking hard, changing to a new vector that would bring them into low orbit over 40 Eridani A II.
Grdoch fighters were in orbit over the planet already . . . and more were coming up from the surface. The Marine transport-carrier would need cover.
“Slava!” Gray said, checking to see which ships in the fleet were best positioned to respond. “Decatur! Calgary! Close on the planet and give the Marines support!”
Acknowledgements came in.
And the USNA battlegroup began to divide. . . .
Lakeview Arcology
Toronto
United States of North America
1431 hours, EST
Koenig smiled, rising. “Deb! Thank you for coming.”
“With an invitation from the president himself?” she said, laughing. “How could I refuse?”
“Simple,” he replied. “By saying no. ‘Hell, no,’ would also have been an acceptable reply.”
Koenig had left the underground fortress of the Presidential Emergency Command Center, taking a travel tube in to the Lakeview Arcology tower, then up the mag-el to the rooftop restaurant, 900 meters above Lake Ontario.
Deb Johnston, meanwhile, had caught the mag-lev tube train north from Columbus, which had covered the five hundred kilometers between there and Toronto in ten minutes, though it had taken her considerably longer to get untangled from her work schedule and a mid-afternoon meeting with the city nanarchitects.
Koenig hesitated, glanced at some of the members of the security detail near the broad, slanting windows of the restaurant . . . then spread his arms, offering a hug. The hell with what they thought.
She accepted the offer. “Oh, it’s so good to see you again, Alex,” she said.
“Hungry?”
“Uh-huh. Starved.”
“This place is pretty good,” he told her. He grinned. “Human waiters.”
“Which means expensive, not necessarily good. But I’ll take your word for it.”
His decision to invite Deb north for lunch had prompted a minor crisis within his presidential security detail, but if they weren’t used to his spur-of-the-moment decisions by now, they never would be. As a former USNA senator, Johnston already had numerous high-level security clearances; mostly what had been required was hiring the entire restaurant so that it could be closed to the public . . . and running computer checks on the twenty or so members of the staff. Koenig had eaten here before, and there’d been no problems.
“So why did you call me?” she said, stepping back from his embrace and taking a seat. “Not just hunger, surely.”
“Not just hunger,” he agreed. “I need . . . I need to talk politics.”
She made a face. “Please not over lunch . . .”
“You’ll like this. I’m beginning to come over to your way of thinking.”
Her eyes widened. “That’s a bit of a bombshell! In what way? You’re thinking of defecting and becoming a Unionist?”
“Not . . . quite. But what we heard this morning . . . it shook me, Deb. I’m wondering if the Globalists are right. Do we need to surrender to the Sh’daar?”
At least she had the grace not to laugh at him.
A member of the waitstaff approached the table—under the security detail’s watchful collective eye—and offered them old-fashioned menus instead of the usual holographic displays. The conversation was put on hold for a few moments as they made their selections—chicken piccata for Johnston, with real chicken, he assured her—and a selection of sushi and sashimi for Koenig.
Deb Johnston had been—still was—a member of the Global Union party, a political mélange of several smaller groups advocating a one-world state. It had been part of the Confederation Globalist party, and as such opposed the war . . . though they’d stopped short of an open break with the current Freedomist government. They now constituted what was politely known in government circles as “the loyal opposition,” and continued to debate current USNA policy. While they tended to support the idea of a rapprochement with Geneva, they were still divided over the larger question of whether or not to accept the Sh’daar Ultimatum.
“Where do you stand on the Sh’daar issue, Deb?”
“You mean, do we join their collective?” She sighed. “I’m really not sure. I do think we should have self-determination when it comes to our technology. Anymore, we humans are so much a part of our technology that accepting the Ultimatum’s limitations would be like putting ourselves in a box.” She dimpled. “I heard that somewhere.”
The box analogy had been a favorite refrain of Koenig’s in a number of political speeches over the years. “Me too. We’d be like Schrödinger’s poor cat. Are we alive? Or dead? Open the box and find out.”
“You’re thinking of the many-worlds hypothesis.”
He nodded. “Except that it’s not a hypothesis any longer. According to what we heard this morning, we now know there are other universes, maybe an infinite number of them. No matter what we decide, here and now, it turns out that in another universe we’ve decided something else. Makes it seem like it doesn’t really matter what we choose. . . .”
“Nothing’s changed, Alex,” she told him. “We only have this universe. We still have to make the best choices that we can, based on the best information available. And when it comes down to a moral choice, we have to do what we think is right.”
“Sometimes, what’s right isn’t all that clear.”
“It never is. Are you really worried about the Sh’daar? Or is it the Grdoch?”
“Both, I suppose. We’re stretched way too thin to fight three wars. The universe, this universe, is turning out to be incredibly complicated, you know?”
“And you’re looking for ways to simplify things.”
“Have you heard of Operation Luther?”
“No.”
Briefly, he described the recombinant memetics program, and the rise of a new religion in Europe. Johnston’s security clearance was still high enough to let her hear the details.
“This d’Angelo is a fake?” she exclaimed. “I’m disappointed!”
“Why?”
“I like his message. Personal responsibility, human freedom to choose, an end to narrow-m
inded jingoism and fanaticism.”
“He preaches against joining the Sh’daar.”
“He preaches the union of Humankind.”
“He’s not a fake,” Koenig told her. “Not really, not if enough people believe in him and his message. From what we’ve seen, there’s a lot of public sentiment in Europe now against the war. Especially after Columbus.”
She made a face. “That was bad. They’re still finding bodies in the ruins, you know. And partial bodies. The nano strike would have been like being eaten alive.”
“You know about the Grdoch?”
“I saw a news feed editorial just the other day, yeah. Not people, I think, with whom we would be comfortable associating. Not when they might get the munchies in the middle of a trade conference.”
“Geneva’s been getting more desperate. I think that’s why they allied with the Grdoch. We’ll know more after our fleet returns from Vulcan.”
“Well, you won’t get an argument from me, if that’s what you’re looking for. I don’t like the idea of civil war with the Confederation. I don’t like the idea of Humankind divided against . . . against aliens, whether it’s the Sh’daar or the Grdoch. I think you and I are pretty close on that, don’t you?”
He nodded. “We are. I don’t like the civil war either . . . but we’ve got it. It’s not just the Sh’daar problem. It’s Geneva wanting to annex our Peripheries, control the free oceanic cities, control Konstantin and the other super-AIs . . .”
“None of which would be a problem at all if the Confederation really was united.”
“No. It’s the getting there that’s the problem. That . . . and the greed, corruption, and power-hunger along the way.”