The Hot Gate: Troy Rising III-ARC

by John Ringo

Said hatch, responding to the laws of physics, then tumbled outwards. Into the plasma wash of the nuke. Followed by Butch’s sled.

  What saved Butch’s life was distance, angularity and the door. The nuke had been installed in a crater made by one of the Rangora missiles that had closed the Therm’s door oh so effectively. Thus most of the blast was upwards and away from Butch’s position. Most. Virtually all of the rest hit the hatch. Since a kilometer matters in space, it had both cooled a good bit and spread out. There was still some serious velocity, however, which tumbled the hatch back into Butch’s sled, cracking it and spinning it back into the maintenance tunnel to carome until it hit something solid. Which it quickly did when it hit Jinji’s suit.

  Jinji’s suit was fairly robust and since joining the Apollo team they’d made sure it was fully up to snuff. So it withstood the relatively low velocity impact. Butch was wearing his own suit so the cracks in the sled were not immediately fatal.

  Butch had survived being in the blast front of a nuke. Few could say that.

  The question was, whether he’d ever get a chance to tell anyone. Because while he had physically survived and the nuke being “super-clean” he had no danger of death from irradiating radiation, that left one last tiny issue.

  Electro magnetic pulse.

  EMP was rarely an issue in space. EMP from nukes was caused by atmospheric atoms being stripped of their electrons and thus creating an electrified “wave front” which in turn did all sorts of damage to complex electronics. Even the clean fusion reaction didn’t create the issue.

  However, when a clean fusion bomb is detonated in contact with nickel-iron, the nickel-iron atoms are stripped of their electrons. And any delicate electronics, such as a suit’s navigation and atmospheric control pack, shut off.

  Butch took a suck of air and...there wasn’t any. Not vacuum, just...not circulating. No more air was entering his helmet. Probably ever. He could suck and suck and suck and he wasn’t going to get any air.

  Apollo, with the exception of the placement of ship fabbers, planned well. There was a plan for this. There was even training. All that Butch had to remember was to remain calm and, oh, yeah, that long-ago training class.

  There were, in fact, two choices. Both involved exiting the sled.

  Some of the Apollo systems had been designed with the input of experienced professional divers. One thing that technical divers know is that air is a good thing when there’s not any around you. So there was a way to extend a line from the suit to another suit and “borrow” their air.

  Butch thought there might be a couple of issues. While he knew where the emergency air link was on Jinji’s suit, and that they were compatible, he wasn’t sure if it needed a functioning suit on his side to work. And he wasn’t willing to try one thing and not have it work. Since he had, like, zero time. So that left plan b.

  On the exterior of the sled was an emergency body pack. It had an air recirculation system. Butch didn’t know why all his electronics had gone dead, EMP was barely a word to the welder, but he knew something had screwed everything electronic. However, the air pack in the body bag was manual. Just a little oxygen valve attached to an unfortunately small air-pack. Nothing electronic. Butch didn’t know that a junior engineer when they were designing the emergency survival pack, one each, pointed out that in the event of an EMP or similar space event such as a coronal mass ejection they wanted something manual. And for a wonder the more senior engineers and even the engineering managers nodded and stroked their beards and wondered if little jerk was angling for their job but went with it anyway.

  All of that went through his head when he sucked and there was nothing there. No air. No air. The second thought that went through his head, instantly suppressed, was to tear his helmet off and breath the nice vacuum around him. Immediately following that was the word “MOMMY.” Clear as a bell.

  Butch was never sure, afterwards, exactly how long those thoughts took. He knew he took one more breath, just to be sure, then decided he wasn’t going to keep trying. The air wasn’t coming back.

  He calmly hit the quick release on his harness then the fast hatch on the sled. The fast hatch was to be used only in emergencies. It blew the hatch off with a light jet of nitrogen and required that the entire hatch be essentially rebuilt. Bottom of the list on what was going to have to be rebuilt on this sled. And this was, definitively, an emergency.

  No air.

  Butch calmly grabbed the hatch and pulled himself into the corridor. Jinji started to reach for him using one of his waldoes and Butch, making sure he didn’t tumble, waved the waldo away. The wave was somewhat wild, panic sneaking through his hard held calm. It triggered him trying to take another breath and one leg kicked a bit too hard, almost sending him out into the corridor in a tumble. That would have been...bad. So he controlled himself.

  No air.

  He moved his hand to the grab bar then pulled himself to the rear of the sled. At that moment it occurred to him that what with everything else the bag’s container might have been damaged or lost. But there it was, a small ovoid like a big orange pill.

  Butch carefully detached it, one mistake and he was never ever going to breathe again, and pressed the red button on the ovoid with both thumbs. The bag deployed smoothly, flex metal components opening it into an orange tunnel, closed at the bottom, open at Butch’s end.

  No air, no air...

  Butch realized that his vision was closing in but ignored it. He was either going to get in the bag successfully, get the air going and open his helmet or...he wasn’t.

  He carefully slid both boots into the rather narrow opening then reached down, one careful hand at a time, and pulled the two red tabs on either side of the tunnel. They wouldn’t give until his boots hit the bottom at which point the top of the bag snapped shut. And, according to everything he’d been told, the oxygen system should flood the bag with O2.

  Butch carefully reached up and popped his helmet seals. The rush of gases coming out of his suit, not to mention the icepicks in his ears and the sucking on his eyeballs, almost panicked him again. But he exhaled as he’d been trained to prevent pulmonary embolism. Probably took a second for the bag to pressurize. That was all. Few seconds, max. Or it had a puncture he hadn’t seen when he skipped the step “examine the exterior for cracks, dents or punctures.” What the hell, he could breathe vacuum for a looong time.

  Eternity.

  * * *

  “Status on the nukes?” Admiral Clemons asked.

  “One team is down,” Guptill replied. “Caught part of a blast when they were opening their hatch. The rest are still working the problem. Five teams. About ten minutes apiece to get them in place. Two minutes apart.”

  “That’s fine,” Clemons said, nodding. “We don’t want to actually close. Just give the impression we can.”

  “Getting ready to fire the laser,” Dexter said.

  “I hate everything about this battle,” Clemons said. “I hate the feeling we’re not winning. I hate the casualties. I hate that we’re essentially trashed. Why do I like this part?”

  “Because it’s the first thing that’s felt like a really science fiction laser fire?” Guptill asked.

  “Straight out of the movies. Okay...fire.”

  “All hands! All hands! Prepare for momentary loss of power!”

  Every light in the already dim CIC except the readouts themselves shut down as did the air recyclers. There was a somewhat unpleasant hum as overworked and jerry-rigged transformers tried to handle the, fortunately reduced, power. Then the air started again and the lights came back up.

  “Laser shot complete,” Guptill said. “Clean miss.”

  “That’s tellin’ ’em,” Clemons said. “Now get me more power.”

  * * *

  “Admiral Marchant.”

  “Field Marshal,” Marchant said, nodding at the system commander.

  “Just get out of the system,” Marshal Hampson said. “You may continue to engage the en
emy, but maximize running away and surviving.”

  “Yes, sir,” Marchant said, bitterly. “Sir, with the AV unable to engage, we have numerical superiority. We can still win this one.”

  “We’ll be back, Danny. Sooner than you’d expect. Just get clear of the gate.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  * * *

  “Humans have changed their posture,” Colonel Ishives said. “They appear to be heading for the gate and are maximizing defense over attack.”

  “Good,” Captain Be’Sojahiph said. “They have seen reality. Even with our damage they cannot hold the system.”

  “However, they are so far into our fire basket... I’m not sure it matters.”

  * * *

  The Aggressor groups had been holding back behind the AVs until the loss of the first AV. At that point they had started to move forward, their fire combining with the AV.

  Fortunately, they were in gate exit posture. Marchant’s force simply had to screen past them.

  Simply.

  The Aggressors had oriented their axis towards the retreating human force, their spinal lasers combined with the fire from the AV pounding the human shields.

  “Let’s try fourteen x-ray,” Marchant said. “Get the Indies out of this fire. They don’t have the screens for it.”

  “Fourteen x-ray, aye,” Captain Whisler said. “Kansas is out. Still there but no longer under control. Bush is...”

  “Gone,” Marchant said. “Close formation.”

  “At least we’re exiting the AV fire basket.”

  “Small mercies.”

  * * *

  “So you ask us to be merciful?”

  Envoy Ve’Disuc recognized a break-through when he saw one. Speaking directly to the American president, functionally the Alliance Supreme Commander, was a breakthrough.

  “The mercy cuts two ways, Envoy,” President Robards said. “There are tens of thousands of stranded spacers from both sides. Temporary truces to clear the wounded from the battlefield are common in even Rangora history. No more than that. Enough time to get non-combat ships into the system to clear the wounded. Your Marines on the Thermopylae, for example, are in a rather difficult position. They are short on consumables, cut off from resupply, outnumbered and in most cases frankly lost. We’ll supply them with consumables and permit them to be evacuated. You can have them back. No prisoners taken on either side. Remaining Rangora ships to be towed off by the Rangora, same for human ships. E Eridani to be in a state of cease fire until such a time.”

  “And the Thermopylae?”

  “Will take some time to move out of the system,” the President said.

  “Unacceptable. Madame President, we hold the system.”

  “For how long? You know the timetable on upgrades, not repairs, upgrades, on the Troy. In twelve days you had better have twice the fleet you have already thrown away. Or be gone from E Eridani. And, Envoy, we still hold ships in the Terran system. What do you have in reserve?”

  “We have, I assure you, a quite sizeable reserve,” Ve’Disuc replied. “And we know your ship strength to the last corvette. So we know that you have no sizeable force available. I am authorized to discuss a cease fire to recover wounded and stranded in the system. No attempt may be made to recover the Thermopylae or any other derelict human ship. You may surrender them to the Rangora Imperium but not recover them. Furthermore, personnel aboard the Thermopylae and other human combat vessels in system shall surrender to our liberation forces and be taken prisoner pending further negotiations.”

  “Unacceptable.”

  “Then I suppose we are at an impasse, Madame President.”

  “Agreed.”

  “To our terms, Madame President?” Ve’Disuc asked.

  “That we are at an impasse. Which is, frankly, too bad for your surviving Rangora since we have few ships left to do recovery. And we will, obviously, have to prioritize recovering human survivors.”

  “Again, Madame President, we hold the system.”

  “Not for long. Goodbye, Envoy. Admiral?”

  “Ma’am?”

  “Can we take the system?”

  “No, ma’am. Not until the Troy is mobile again. But I think we can get them to agree to our terms.”

  “One last cast of the dice, Admiral?”

  “He fears his fate too much and his desserts are small...”

  “Admiral, please don’t quote Vernon Tyler to me at a time like this.”

  * * *

  “Oh thank God,” Captain Whisler said. “Now I know how Villeneuve felt.”

  “Not...quite,” Admiral Marchant said, looking at the updated tactical display.

  “Where did those come from?” Whisler asked. “And what is that...thing?”

  “Troy strikes again?”

  * * *

  “Skew us to engage the Thermopylae,” Captain Be’Sojahiph said. “Now that the light units are gone, that is the next priority.”

  “And the survivors, sir?”

  “The ones in boats will survive for several days,” Captain Be’Sojahiph replied. “The ones in suits...will survive or not. Begin rotation.”

  “Skew aye, sir,” Colonel Ishives said.

  “Aggressor squadrons redeploy to surround the battleglobe. Let’s see if we can support the Marines.”

  * * *

  “Not your first battle, is it, sir?” Sergeant Ghezhosil said.

  “Not my first battle, sergeant,” Lieutenant Lanniph admitted.

  Birds of a feather do indeed flock together. But in this case, Lanniph had simply followed orders to “rendezvous with reinforcing personnel.” He still wasn’t sure exactly what he was dealing with in Sergeant Ghezhosil.

  “First battle in vacuum?”

  “Not even close.”

  “Ever notice how three day’s worth of consumables never seems to last three days, sir?”

  “Yes. And I know the first rule of vacuum operations, sergeant.”

  “Seriously?”

  “Seriously, sergeant. And I do have the bigger knife.”

  “Cracker?”

  “That’s “cracker, sir?” Problem with that, sergeant?”

  “Just that it doesn’t seem quite fair, sir. You get the rank, you get the pay and you know the scams. There should be a rule, sir.”

  “There pretty much is, sergeant.”

  “Lanniph, Sector Fourteen control.”

  “Fourteen control, Lanniph.”

  “Take your platoon left at the next junction. Report of human forward command post in that area. Assault, clear and report.”

  “Roger. Fourteen higher. Several personnel with damaged suit systems. Request life support resupply. Ammunition low. Request ammunition resupply.”

  “The humans should have both, Lanniph. Fourteen control, out.”

  “Hmph. That would be, I suppose, incentive. How long, sergeant?”

  “About twelve hours, sir. I suppose there’s always the Perrechoa Option.”

  During one of the Rangora’s frequent minor civil wars, the Loyalist garrison on the Perrachoa battlestation found itself so low on consumables, mostly air, that wounded personnel voluntarily transferred their “consumables” to more functional combatants. Their Ma’Lholhafeqist opponents were not much better off. The battle mostly came down to who could hold out longer. Given that the Ma’Lholhafeqist wounded and clerks weren’t willing to give up their precious air to the hale fighters, the Loyalists won.

  All seven of the regiment’s survivors.

  “Twas a famous victory.

  “Hopefully not,” Lanniph said. “Rather don’t want to go through that again. Move “em out, sergeant.”

  “Yes, sir,” Ghezhosil said, getting to his feet. He started to look at the name karats and decided he really didn’t care. “You. Point. Rest of you, on your feet.”

  “Why m...?” the private scrambled to his feet in the face of two laser rifles pointed at him.

  “Because the sergeant gave you an order,” Lanniph
said. “It was not a request.”

  “Moving out, sergeant.”

  “You’re quick, sir,” Ghezhosil said.

  “And still alive,” Lanniph replied. He pulled out a sensor ball and contemplated it for a moment. “How many of these do you have left?”

  “Balls? Don’t usually carry them, sir.”

  “Hmmm. Learn.” The lieutenant keyed the sensor ball and dropped it in the corridor.

  “Sir?” Ghezhosil asked. Since the LT hadn’t ordered him up front, he was just as happy to hang in the rear.

  “Have you once in this ixi screw had higher give you a definite target? Beyond “find the control center.”

  “No, sir,” Ghezhosil said.

  “Nor I. Therefore I would like to know what is behind us as we go forward to this supposed objective.”

  “Good thinking that, sir,” Ghezhosil said.

  “That is my job, Sergeant Ghezhosil.”

  “Yes, sir,” Ghezhosil said then paused. “Sir, what did you mean by “again”?”

  THIRTY-FOUR

  “And here we go again.”

  Two more battleship groups weren’t going to help in Admiral Marchant’s opinion. Not against seven remaining Aggressor groups and the semi-invalid AV. The rest, however...

  The battle seemed to have taken days. In fact, since the Thermopylae entered the system and discovered more than the Horvath had come to call, a bare ten hours had passed. Since the Troy expended all its missiles, six hours beat their measured tune, slicing away the time until the heat death of the universe one precious millisecond at a time.

  The Troy under optimum conditions produced four hundred missiles per minute. Twenty-four thousand per hour. Alas, conditions were not optimum. That assumed sufficient supply of critical parts which currently were not sufficient. However, since it had sent “all its missiles” it had produced seventy-three thousand Thunderbolt missiles. The partially functional Malta had produced an additional six thousand.

  And then there was Vernon Tyler’s latest abortion. Although in this case the tycoon would probably blame Granadica.