XD:317 (Fourth Fleet Irregulars)

by S J MacDonald

  Alex laughed.

  ‘Well, it makes sense to us,’ he assured her. ‘D7 worlds are classified D7 because it’s been determined that no higher order of life than bacterial slime is evolving or likely to evolve in the foreseeable future, so they’re approved for terraforming. There is a policy, now, that any worlds discovered with environments suitable for humans but no intelligent life will be given protected status till it’s determined whether or not there are any species there of special scientific interest. Sadly that hasn’t always been the case; historically, we would colonise any world we found with a breathable atmosphere. We are, I think, more responsible about that now. But slimeworlds, basically, are fair game, only fanatics complain about us contaminating them, and given how many of them there are out there in the galaxy and how few of them we visit even in the League, I really don’t see an issue with that, myself. But no, Shion, we wouldn’t blow up or risk devastating even a slimeworld. I suppose we must, at some level, have some kind of instinctive respect for life-bearing worlds.’

  Shion gave a little hoot of ironic mirth, at that, since she’d been learning quite a bit about the state of pollution on many League worlds, and would not have said that respect for nature was a feature of human culture, at all. It pleased her, though, that they were so careful to ensure they didn’t destroy a world with life, and she joined in the cheers when the final survey came in and it was confirmed they were good to go.

  Next came the process of geological survey of the planet they were going to blow up. The officers and crew alike took a keen interest in following that, and mining jargon like ‘mole a hole’ and ‘hot toffee’ became part of everyday conversation. There could not, Alex felt, be many Fleet ships where the announcement that the mole had hit hot toffee and that it was ferropericlase would get well informed applause from the crew. What that meant was that the surveying mole had bored down into semi-molten mantle rock and that it was of exactly the type predicted and required for the Ignite test.

  On day five, Denni confirmed that planet four was indeed a perfect target, with all the characteristics of a typically inhabited world other than for being too cold to support it. It was well outside the goldilocks zone, and no world had yet been discovered with any kind of life that didn’t require the presence of liquid water.

  ‘It seems a pity,’ Denni said, as she filed her official report, ‘It’s such a pretty world.’

  She had a point. It was a rose-red world, its surface dry sand and rocks under a pale pink sky. It had a tenuous atmosphere that could sometimes kick up playful little will-o-the-wisps, swirling dust about. There was frozen carbon dioxide at the poles, too, like sugar crust on a candy world. There were majestic though long extinct volcanoes, vast and beautiful canyons and great, rust-coloured deserts. There were features they’d all come to know, too, over the last few days, like the combination of mountains and a meteor impact crater that looked like a barking dog. They were not, however choosing their target on aesthetic grounds, and even Denni didn’t suggest that they might look elsewhere because this particular planet was scenic.

  Day six was spent doing final preparation on the Ignite missile. This would have been the day that Candra Pattello was actually here for, carrying out the pre-launch tests. Her absence was felt, but without regret. She’d been so abrasive and hostile even in her everyday dealings with the crew, there wasn’t one of them felt sympathy for her missing this. They managed very well without her, anyway. Morry Morelle had undertaken to work with Mack McClaver to carry out the tests that Candra Pattello would have done, assisted by Leading Star Micky Efalto.

  At least, that was what it would say in the official paperwork. In reality, the tests were carried out by Mack McClaver and Leading Star Micky Efalto, assisted by Lt Commander Morelle. Micky was one of the Heron’s bullocks, sent to them after one too many incidents where he was found to be gambling for money, serious money. He had quite a good sideline going on, on and off the ship, betting people to test him on his knowledge of missiles. He would offer them the chance to ask him ten questions, from any tech-spec of any kind of missile in the League in the last two thousand years. He would even allow them as long as they liked to research and come up with the most fiendishly difficult questions they could. Then he’d answer all ten with a grin and walk off with their money.

  He had been introduced to Candra Pattello, on that basis, as someone she might like to work with, either to bring in on the Ignite project or just to talk to about ordnance development in general. Candra, however, found it inconceivable, even offensive, that a rating might lay claim to knowledge even better than her own, and she had snubbed him cold.

  Now, Micky got his dream come true moment, as the Ignite missile was finally unpacked from its many layers of protective casings, exposed for all to see and for Micky, at least, to get his hands on it.

  Shion, for one, was quite surprised by how small it actually was, compared to the size of the outer crate. When it was eventually unpacked and sitting in its testing cradle, it was revealed as no more than two and a half metres long, an octagonal prism about a metre in diameter. It had no fins, since it was not designed to enter atmosphere, but it did have little stubby thrusters circling the ends, for rapid manoeuvring. The all-important triggering device, for which Candra Pattello really had been responsible as scientific advisor, was tucked into the heart of the missile, cradled in liquid and forcefields.

  ‘It’s ugly,’ was Shion’s verdict, after being allowed to inspect, but not touch. ‘I mean, the design. I thought missiles were meant to be sleek, graceful, like sharks. This is just like boxy piping.’

  ‘It doesn’t need to be aerodynamic,’ Morry pointed out. ‘Designers only give starships and space-tech that aerodynamic look because people like it. I don’t have a problem with functionality design, myself. Though I agree, it could have a little more something about it, given what it’s for.’

  ‘It should look deadly, and terrible,’ Shion said, ‘not dull.’

  Micky, as much in love with the Ignite as Shion had been the first time she took the controls of Firefly, gave her a look of hurt indignation for that.

  ‘You wait till you see what it does, Sub,’ he told her. ‘Then call it dull.’

  They had to wait till the following day for that. They might have had to wait longer, but Morry did his part in the testing by nudging Micky now and again when he’d fallen into a particularly long rapturous gaze, so the tests were completed well before midnight.

  Then, the next morning, they had to charge it with superlight fuel. The ship went to action stations for that, everyone suited up, though as Alex remarked, that was a ludicrous precaution.

  ‘If anything does go wrong, if the fuel dephases in transfer, the ship and everything around it for around twenty five thousand kilometres will vaporise instantly into tachyons. I’m not entirely sure myself what use the Fleet considers survival suits to be in those circumstances. But those are the regulations for fuel transfer, so that’s what we do.’

  He was speaking to Terese, who’d come to the command deck to watch the fuel transfer from there. That part would be carried out by Morry, as the ship’s engineer.

  ‘This is the point,’ Terese informed the skipper, with a meaningful look, ‘at which you assure me that nothing is going to go wrong, that you’ve done this operation hundreds of times and it is perfectly routine.’

  Alex gave her a slightly startled look.

  ‘Actually, no,’ he said. ‘Fuel transfer is one of the most dangerous operations we ever undertake. More so than any combat we’ve been in yet, that’s for sure. If we seem relaxed about it then that is, frankly, because we all understand that there is absolutely nothing we can do. When you take arcons out of their containment core, they start to dephase, obviously, because the containment core is the only thing stopping that. In theory you have about three minutes to get the fuel into another containment, but if it fritzes out, which can happen very occasionally for reasons we still don’t properly
understand, you won’t know anything about it. And I won’t say what you asked me to, frankly, because making definitive statements of the ‘nothing can possibly go wrong’ variety is regarded by spacers as pretty much inviting the universe to kick you in the pants. All I’ll say is that I have every confidence in Morry to accomplish this quickly and calmly. Forget the three minute thing, that’s the theoretical limit. Engineers traditionally hold their breath while moving fuel, not because of any kind of sensitivity in the physical handling of it but because of the time constraint, awareness that they have to move quickly. I would be surprised, knowing him as I do, if it takes Morry any more than ten seconds.’

  Eight point four seconds, as it turned out. The missile had been set up next to the fuel containment unit in the missile room. Handling waldos had been set up and tested repeatedly, with emergency manual grapnels ready as a fallback. When the time came, with an ‘uncontained fuel’ alert sounding throughout the ship, Morry took a breath and held it. Then he opened the containment doors, waldoed out a tennis-ball sized sphere that was already glowing white hot and making little chittering noises, glided it into place in the missile’s own containment unit and shut it down, snap. As the lights on the unit flickered amber into green, Morry let go his breath, noted the time, and smiled.

  Terese breathed again, too, and as they were stood down from alert, looked searchingly at Alex.

  ‘Seriously – more dangerous than combat?’

  ‘Well, more dangerous than any combat we’ve been in yet,’ Alex said, considering. ‘The most hazardous combat we’ve experienced was when the Pallamar started throwing cargo containers at us, along with gunfire and shrapnel missiles. That got a bit hairy for a while and we took some damage. But handling uncontained fuel, you know, that is an actual dephase. It’s an enormous bomb in the process of detonating and you don’t have very long to stop it. It’s a similar level of hazard to bomb disposal, really. Only when we’re evaluating hazard we take into account the probable damage and casualties. It is extremely rare for any ship to be completely destroyed even in the most violent combat operations, and even if it is, there’s usually time to get shuttles and survival pods away. In an uncontained fuel dephase, no chance, no time, seriously, anything within the dephase zone is vaporised so fast there’s barely any unit of time small enough to measure it. You’ll see that when the Ignite goes off, because that’s exactly what it does, removes the containment on the fuel and triggers a dephase at the point where it’s close enough to take out the planet.’

  Terese saw that he was serious, and shook her head.

  ‘There has to be a better way of doing that,’ she said. ‘I’m sure there must be a reason why you don’t just put the two containment units together with some kind of transfer system between them.’

  Alex managed not to laugh. ‘You can’t put containment systems together,’ he told her. ‘They’re forcefields, very highly energised forcefields. They physically resist one another when brought into proximity, like trying to bring two matching poles of a magnet together but massively more powerful. A hundred army tanks pushing with all their strength couldn’t shove two containment units close enough to touch. And it is also like bringing two live electrical systems together. If you do get them to make sufficient contact, fzzzt, they short each other out. So the only way really is to bring them within tolerant proximity, a couple of metres apart, and transfer the fuel pod between them. All sorts of completely automated systems have been tried, of course. One, I’m aware of was tried about thirty years ago, at a remote high-hazard testing facility in an otherwise uninhabited system. They were testing some system that had one unit shut down, transferred the fuel, then activated the second one, all supposed to happen in a fraction of a second. Fortunately, they were doing it by remote control from a good safe distance away. The lab, the moonbase and the moon it was on just, you know,’ he snapped his fingers. ‘So, we handle fuel the safest way we know.’ He looked at her curiously. ‘You did read the Fleet’s passenger advisory and disclaimer before you signed it?’

  Terese grinned. That was a joke, referring to a very similar question she’d asked him about whether he’d read the Citizenship documentation when he’d first registered as an adult eligible to vote.

  ‘Actually, no,’ she admitted. ‘As always, with official documents, I read the point-précis and relied on the relevant advisor to tell me if there was anything that I should be made aware of. It’s all right, I don’t mind,’ she assured him. ‘I came aboard prepared to experience every aspect of life on a Fleet ship and this, clearly, facing the imminent risk of instant vaporisation, is a routine part of your day.’

  Alex agreed with a little chuckle.

  ‘Most people get the jitters the first time or two,’ he told her. ‘After about the tenth fuel transfer you’ve been through, though, you do just get so used to it that it becomes routine. And it is for Morry, engineers handle fuel far more than any other officer does, of course. Anyway,’ he smiled, ‘all over now.’

  Terese laughed. Alex was eight years younger than she was, and it was absurd for him to adopt a fatherly manner with her. She found it comforting, though, all the same, with a sense not only of Alex knowing far more than she did about these things but of his care and concern for her welfare.

  ‘Thank you, skipper,’ she said, and gave him a playful little salute that was the nearest he ever saw to an indication of her relationship with Davie North.

  Later that day, though, it was all very serious as they prepared for the missile launch. You had to have learned to read the ship, in all its subtle moods, to pick up on the buzzing sense of anticipation, the thrill beneath the calm, methodical procedures.

  They left the system, cruising uneventfully out of the same hole they’d blasted through the comet cloud to get in. The missile would not be using that hole; it was designed to jink through, dodging the debris that was regarded as a system’s natural defence. They moved two hours out. That didn’t sound far but the system had dwindled into nothing more than a point of light in the starfield before they were fifteen minutes out of port, and from two hours away it was barely even distinguishable.

  The actual launch was unimpressive. The missile was designed to be released into space rather than fired out at high velocity, so all that happened was that they opened an outer tube door and the missile moved gently out of it and slowly pulled away ahead of them.

  If it was being fired for real, the ship would have turned away at that point and left it to run on alone, minimising the chances of it being detected by other ships or system defences. For the test, however, they accelerated and stayed with it, though remaining at a safe distance.

  Tass Curlow was not the only one of their passengers to get a little uneasy over just how close they seemed to be remaining with the missile, though. Like many groundsiders, they struggled with the concept that something that was only seconds away was actually at a vast distance. The fact that it was still on their visual scopes, too, even as a fuzzy little pixellated blur, made them feel that they had to be rather alarmingly close to it. In fact they were more than a million klicks away, far outside both the vaporisation zone and the debris push zone that surrounded it.

  They would not, however, follow it into the system itself. Live fire tests could be unpredictable, after all, and if the missile went off in the wrong place there’d be all manner of hazards. So they curved around into long orbit as the missile beavered in through the Comet Cloud, all eyes on the countdown as it ran down through the final seconds.

  The missile detonated a fraction of a millisecond before it was meant to. At that speed, that put it twenty thousand klicks or so from where it was meant to be. There was a flash, so fast that anyone who’d blinked missed it entirely and so bright that it was immediately blocked out by the ship’s safety systems. A dark circle covered the visual, in just the same way that eye-damagingly bright light was obscured when ships were tight-in close to stars. It didn’t look like very much, set against the s
cale of the solar system they were orbiting, just a bright flare on the scale of a match being lit in a major sports stadium. It died rapidly, too, energy flashing out as highly energetic sub-atomic particles.

  Planet four was destroyed in something under a tenth of a second. A large chunk of it was vaporised, the dephase taking out about a quarter of the planet in an instant, as if taking a huge bite out of it. As the shock of that began breaking the rest of the planet up anyway, the push began.

  Spacers did not call this a blast. ‘Blast’ implied a shockwave of the kind that passed through atmosphere, and this was nothing like that. It was like a highly intensified solar wind, more like water droplets splashing out than a wave motion. Right in close to the edge of the vaporisation zone it would tear rock apart and hurtle it at high speed. What that amounted to was the sand-blasting of the remains of planet four, disintegrating it into rubble and dust. In accordance with Denni’s request, they had positioned the missile so that the bulk of any debris would go into orbit within the goldilocks zone. There was a great deal more debris than had been expected, though.

  The detonation created millions of asteroids and unimaginable quantities of space-dust, a vast plume of rubble and ash hurtling at more than sixty thousand klicks an hour.

  There was total silence aboard the Heron as they watched. Shion was not the only one to have her hand over her mouth, gaping as she tried to make sense of what she was seeing. One moment there’d been a planet there, a pretty rose-coloured world with sugar-frosting icecaps. Now there was a hurtling mass of debris.

  Denni swore, not in amazement but in dismay. She was the first of them to recover her capacity to do any more than stare at screens, wide eyed, as she saw, immediately, what the debris was going to do. She wasn’t looking at visuals, but at astrogation screens, plotting not just the current position of every fragment big enough to be measured but their projected course. All fragments on courses that would impact them with other bodies in the solar system were being flagged up red. There were a great many of these. Some fragments would end up being drawn into gas giants. Others would enter cometary orbits and were destined, one day, to hit other asteroids.