Whether as a result of those aboard the Ranger failing to appreciate their predicament, or if they realized the risk but decided to try a run for it anyway, given the choice, the Milicorp executives involved would also have preferred the first alternative. Not only would present an opportunity to test the effectiveness of Marduk’s long-range weaponry in the space environment, but it would also send an important message. As more contractors worldwide entered the lucrative defense and security business, analysts and political realists agreed it would only be a matter of time before mercenary organizations hired by rival interests found themselves directly in conflict with each other. This was felt to be as good a time as any for Milicorp to stage a show of strength affirming its readiness and ability to assert itself belligerently if challenged.
CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE
The business of bringing the Ranger up to flight readiness proceeded regardless, with the primary fuel connection established and recharging initiated. Polapulos, one of the former Tacoma officers, had arrived in the satellite’s storage section with a labor detail to take care of the supply transfers. Shearer was still with Lang in the control center when Wade came back in after going out to explain things as best he could to the confused group of intended stay-behinds, who had thought they were to be be collected by a second shuttle. All Wade had been able to tell them was that the crew members and others who were supposed to have joined them had already gone, and nobody knew what it meant or could say for sure what would happen next.
“Where are we at?” Wade asked, looking around. The screen was still showing Callen on the Ranger’s bridge.
“All long-range communications are out — from here and from the ship,” Shearer told him. “Obviously nobody’s interested in talking.”
Wade took a few moments to digest the implication. “So whatever happens next, the world only gets to hear their side of it.”
“Exactly.”
Callen had described the potency of the weaponry carried by Milicorp’s recently commissioned orbiting platform, Marduk, and confirmed that it could be deployed to engage long-range targets in space as well as for surface bombardment. It was painfully clear now that they had walked right into a stratagem whose sole purpose was to set them up as an easy mark. Marduk was equipped with a prototype X-ray battle laser, which at this range would pick the Ranger off like a duck in a barrel the moment it detached from DSX-14.
Marduk had emerged from behind Earth in the last few minutes and was just starting to cross the planetary disk. Lang had been for trying to make a run for it as soon as Marduk entered eclipse again, but Callen had dissuaded him. Just estimating Marduk’s orbit by eye, Colonel Yannis had given them no chance. Even if Marduk had been orbiting in the same plane as the satellite, which would have given a maximum obscuration period of something like forty-five minutes, it wouldn’t have made much difference. The energies involved in Heim electromagnetic-gravitational conversion were so tremendous that field buildup had to be done gradually. Once the Heim field had been allowed to collapse by a full system shutdown for recharge, at least an hour of running under conventional drive would be needed before it would be ready to effect a transfer.
Wade exhaled a long sigh and seemed to deflate visibly. Shearer knew from long experience how much it took to make Wade this disconsolate. The vision he had held for what Cyrene could become, and his dream of being a part of it, must have been more intense than even Shearer had realized. “So they’ve got us cold,” Wade said in a dull voice. “We have to stay put until they’re ready to round us up, and then we get marched off. I guess we get that paid vacation in a camp somewhere after all, Marc. I hope it’s not one of the ones up north. I never did care too much for the cold.”
Shearer shook his head violently. “Evan, that’s not the way it works. You haven’t figured it through yet.”
“What are you taking about?”
“Callen’s been spelling it out to Jeff. The next things coming to DSX-14 won’t be bringing nice guys in gray tunics coming to take us away. They’ll be in heavy-duty suits with EV gear and assault cannon, blowing their way in through the walls. If we fly or stay, it won’t make any difference. Nobody’s going to walk off of here.”
Wade was shaking his head disbelievingly. “But what... Why?” He turned to the screen showing Callen. Yannis had moved into view behind. “Why would they take such extreme action? We’re no threat.... Very well, okay, we had a plan to try and go back.... It’s over.” He threw up his hands uncomprehendingly. “Are they concerned about the Ranger’s armament? But nobody here knows how to operate it, even if we wanted to. So we set up a light signal that they can see. Doesn’t the satellite have approach beacons or something? We only have to let them know.”
On the screen, Callen was shaking his head. “You don’t understand, Professor. They cut our communications precisely to avoid anything like that. Marc Shearer already said it. They don’t want to talk.”
“But why?...”
“Let’s just say, big-time corporate politics. We represent a risk that’s unacceptable. There’s a lot about the way they run their business that they don’t want the world to hear about. It’s nothing new, Professor Wade. Just about all of history is a much dirtier affair than the sanitized version everybody gets taught. Nothing was ever truer said than that the winners and whoever they pay are the ones who write it.”
Lang had been staring out through one of the control center windows at where the Ranger’s upper core section and part of the main structure were visible over the curving top of the toroid. As the satellite turned, optical shutters automatically blocked off the window panels on the sunward side to shield the inside.
“Doesn’t the Ranger carry a couple of ship’s boats?” he asked suddenly, turning back to the screen. He meant the two small daughter vessels normally berthed in housings on opposite sides of the peripheral ring. They could be used as surface landers or as lifeboats in an emergency, and were to have been the means of getting back down to Cyrene if it turned out that the Tacoma had departed by the time they returned.
“What about them?” Callen asked.
“Ramships!” Lang said. “What kind of speed could one of them get up to over the distance to Marduk? Enough to take it out, surely.”
Callen turned his head inquiringly toward Yannis. But the colonel looked dubious. “I can’t see it. You’d have to aim it by sight after Marduk appears over Earth’s rim. They’re not Heim drive. The run in would take too long.”
“What other chance do we have?” Lang insisted.
“He’s right,” Callen said. “With the weapons and targeting that Marduk’s got, boats like that would never get close.”
Wade turned away in frustration, clenching his fists. “There must be something we can do. We can’t just sit here.”
“What?” Lang asked him in a flat voice.
“The freighter!” Shearer exclaimed. He was looking out at the robot vessel from Cyrene, still standing off while it awaited its turn to unload, just coming into view again as the satellite turned. “It’s a Heim ship. I don’t know.... Would it have shut its field down already?”
“No.... It wouldn’t.” On the screen, Yannis stepped forward alongside Callen. “You do that after you dock, so the field energy can be tapped and stored. It’s still hot out there.” He licked his lips and looked at Callen. “He might be onto something.”
“How would you fly it?” Callen asked.
Yannis was obviously thinking frantically. The others fell silent. “It would have been brought in under remote control from DSX-14 after reentering three-space. There should be a drive profile with parameters all set up still live on the system, somewhere over there where you are.” An excited note crept into his voice. “If I can find it, all I’d need to do is switch it back to Active. That should give me full access to the Heim system too. I’m coming over there!”
Callen turned to ask something, but Yannis had already disappeared. “Wen Siyu,” Callen called up
past the screen to somewhere in the background. “Keep an eye on this channel. We’re going over to the control center.” And then he disappeared too.
“The laser is fired from a self-aiming ordnance pod ejected to a safe distance from the platform,” Borland explained to his attentive listeners. “Energy from a fission device detonated in a precisely shaped cavity is focused via a set of heavy metal lasing rods in the instant before they are vaporized. At this range a target the size and hardness of the present one will be annihilated instantly. With progressively longer dwell times, we can guarantee total lethality for such a target up to a hundred thousand miles in less than five seconds. It would even be an effective weapon for, say, interdiction and harassment operations against the lunar surface, should such things ever become a consideration there.”
“What about targets on Earth’s surface?” the smooth-headed general asked.
“Absolutely,” Borland replied.
“How would it compare in ground suppression capability with the strike at Tiwa Jaku? Could you achieve obliteration power levels over a greater area?”
“Not significantly. But within the kill zone you would be talking about neutralizing targets of considerably greater hardness.”
“Do you have the resolution and tracking capability to target, say, individual vehicles — aircraft and ships?”
“That is the next intended development phase.”
“I see. Very good.” The general sent an inquiring look to his colleagues, who returned satisfied nods.
The officer who was monitoring Marduk’s orbital progress turned from his console. “Five minutes, Mr. Borland.” It meant that DSX-14 would be coming out from behind Earth for the third time. This was the decision point at which Borland had said he would send in the assault force. A preview of DSX-14 coming in from a surveillance satellite on the far side of Earth showed no change in the situation, or any indication that the Ranger was preparing to move.
“We were hoping very much to see the laser in action,” the general said pointedly.
Borland bit his lip. There was no question that it would be straightforward to take out both the ship and the satellite together. It would certainly provide a more spectacular and convincing demonstration — and the complication of having to justify undesirable collateral damage in the form of extraneous personnel had been removed. They would probably be talking about a lawsuit involving the owners of the satellite or their insurers, but taking care of things like that was what legal departments were for.
“Nobody would deny Milicorp’s obligation to put the safety of its visitors first,” the general pointed out. “We would, of course, be willing to corroborate that use of offensive weapons against Marduk appeared imminent.”
Borland thought for a few seconds longer. Then he looked across at the ordnance officer, manning another console. “Prime the laser for ejection. Target on computed rise of DSX-14. Set trigger arming to code three. Maintain safety override.”
Colonel Yannis had located the control log from first contact with the freighter after its reentry into 3-space, and from there retrieved the file of course directives and settings used to bring it in to where it was now waiting. Although no longer active, its main drive was still idling in accordance with normal practice, the Heim field intact and uncollapsed. Everything depended now on Yannis being able to figure out the command protocol that had been used. His needs were a bare minimum. First would be to renergize the conventional nuclear drive in order to launch the freighter on an intercept course as Marduk came into view, for which he estimated a run of between ten and fifteen seconds would suffice; next, flip a transfer into Heim space before Marduk could respond; and finally — trickiest but most crucial of all — estimate the moment for flipping back to 3-space. The last would have to be by pure guesswork, since there was no time to set up an exact computation. Yannis would have one chance. Making a Heim transfer this close in to the gravitating mass of Earth would soak up just about all of the power reserves, but since there would be no drawn-out voyage to anywhere to make allowances for, it really didn’t matter.
Recharging and restocking of the Ranger was complete, and everyone not involved in the last activities taking place in the satellite’s control center were reimbarking, disconnecting the service couplings, and making ready for immediate departure. If this crazy gamble with the freighter worked, the sooner they were away from any reserve force possibly lurking in the vicinity, the better. If it didn’t... well, it would have been a way of keeping them busy. The group who had intended going on to Earth had reconsidered and were throwing their lot in with those heading for Cyrene. If Marduk was taken out, they didn’t want to be the only ones left around to face whoever showed up next in the kind of mood they were likely to be in. Their futures on Earth, they had decided, would be better negotiated more amicably and in a calmer atmosphere at some later time, via whatever administrative channels proved to be available.
Shearer had just about contributed all he could. His role now was reduced to watching some ancillary displays for any changes in radar signatures that might be significant, while an operator monitored a telescopic view of Earth’s rim. Yannis had moved the freighter to a position in-line between the satellite and the point where Marduk would appear, its thrust axis trained like a rifle barrel. The image slid slowly across the screen as the satellite rotated. Every ten seconds, the view switched to a different camera around the satellite’s toroid to keep the freighter and target area in view.
At the console that he had linked as a remote control station, Yannis read off check functions to another operator, who responded with numbers from a status screen showing readings from the freighter’s Heim system.
“C-field J vector?”
“Seven-seven-zero.”
“Ramp at max?”
“Check.”
“Injector phases?”
“Two-five; four-four; and, ah... zero-one-three.”
As Shearer listened, the chilling awareness crystalized that the future before him had reduced to just two extremes. Either he would very likely die within the next few minutes if Yannis failed and Marduk fired its laser; or he would see again all the things he had remembered and dreamed of since leaving Cyrene.
Strange though it had to be at a moment like this, he thought of Jerri and all they had talked about and planned. He wondered where she was and what she was doing right now. Was she still at Linzava, and what was happening there? Or would she have moved somewhere that would be safer? He thought about the hills and forests of Yocala, Revo with its lake on one side and the sea on the other, the color and life of the town, and its people leading lives of kindness, trust, honesty, and integrity. Never had he been more mindful of how much it all contrasted to the things they had returned to. He found that he was easy in his mind that it had all come to this. It simplified all the heart-wrenching and soul-searching. If the alternative of returning to Cyrene was not to be, then he would be content to accept the other. Earth, he now realized, was not an option that he could live with. A number in one of the displays he was watching changed below a critical value.
“Thirty seconds,” he said, alerting the operator.
The operator checked and called to Lang. “Rising imminent. Due in twenty-eight seconds.”
“Roger. F-main and boost, ready to fire?” Yannis had the alignment view copied to his console.
“Ready.”
“Fields loaded for immediate cut-in?”
“Check.”
Yannis took a final glance over his screens. At the same time he managed to muster a faint grin. “I’ve never heard of anyone flying an H ship by the seat their pants before.”
“Please concentrate on the objective, Colonel,” Callen pleaded dryly from one side.
“Twelve seconds.”
The view on the screen switched to another camera, resetting to one side the image of Earth’s curve with the freighter hanging in the foreground, which then began the slow crawl back toward the cen
ter.
Five seconds.... Four...”
“Marduk sighted!”
Lang’s voice came in. “Trim attitude left point six, up point three.”
Yannis tensed over the console, his eyes judging the angle and distance, fingers rapidly entering last-moment corrections. “Let her come.... That’s it.... Just a little more, baby....”
The surveillance operator checked a screen again. “Mr. Borland. Something’s changed here.”
Borland moved to investigate. Ranger was still docked at the satellite, but a freighter that had been standing off to one side had changed its position and was now in front of it. Borland frowned. The control staff from the satellite had all been taken off. And why should they want to move the freighter anyway?
“Is something wrong?” the general asked from the visiting military group.
“I’m not sure.”
“Radar alert. The intervening object is beginning to accelerate this way.”
Borland stared in confusion for several seconds, and then it clicked. They were going to try and use it as a ram. A good try, he complimented inwardly.
“Intercept ETA?” he queried.
“Thirty-seven minutes,” a voice responded after a short pause.
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