by B. V. Larson
“It could be.”
“Hmm,” I said studying the screen. “Where’s Miklos? Get him over here.”
Jasmine looked up, catching me with her eyes. I knew what she was thinking: Didn’t you just fire him, Kyle? But I didn’t care. Now wasn’t the time for petty squabbles.
Miklos, once called, wandered over almost in slow-motion.
“Yes, Colonel? Is it urgent? I have fuel calculations to make.”
“Yes, as a matter of fact it is. Take a look at this.”
Miklos studied the screen and the data. “Am I permitted to speak?”
“Dammit man, why do you think I brought you over here?” I demanded.
“Well, I would say the enemy is more worried about the Worms than the missiles. That could mean Tolerance is confident he can take the missiles out when they get in close.”
“Yeah…either that, or he thinks he can ride out the missiles. But I don’t get that. Nuclear impacts seem far more likely to do real damage when we’re talking about a mile-thick rock armor shell.”
“Do you have data on that thickness, Colonel?”
“Certainly not. I’m guessing. But it’s got to be at least that thick. Such a huge ship. I wonder how they built the damned thing.”
“At least we know the gas giant has a solid core of rock down there somewhere.”
I nodded absently, then I came to a sudden decision. “Jasmine: slow down our missiles.”
“What, sir?”
“You heard me. Turn off their engines. Let them coast in. Run the projected numbers on impact as soon as you do.”
She was startled, but she did as I asked immediately. Miklos stared at me, looking like I’d killed his cat.
That was the difference between these two, I thought to myself. Miklos wanted to be in overall command, which was not his place. Captain Sarin had ambitions, but she didn’t firmly believe she’d make a better commander than I would. Therefore, she didn’t second guess everything I did. When I gave her an order she followed it first and questioned my sanity second.
The screen changed after she brought up a screen and tapped in the unusual command. Our missiles could be remotely self-destructed, and they could also change course suddenly. But they were so far out, it was going to take a good thirty seconds for any command we gave their tiny brainboxes to reach them.
“Come on, come on,” I muttered. “Not much time.”
Jasmine didn’t even look at me. She didn’t get flustered. Her fingers flew over the dialog box she’d popped up on the big screen. A moment later she looked up.
“Transmission sent. We’ll have to wait to see the results, though.”
It was a long minute. First, our command had to crawl out there, then the missiles had to react. Thirty seconds later we’d be able to see them coasting.
Assuming that the missiles were following orders, the staffers laid in a predicted path for them. I watched the timing boxes carefully. I nodded.
“Now, the missiles will hit second. Not by much, but second.”
“Sir,” Miklos said, “what if the enemy defensive weapon can now hit both the Worms and our missiles at the same time?”
“Then we’re screwed.”
He pursed his lips and shut up.
“Timing, Jasmine?” I asked.
“We’ve got it on the display now. There will be about a minute between the Worm ships hitting and the missiles hitting.”
“Okay,” I said, “Now, have the missiles hit the gas again. Full thrust. Send them in for that final diving attack. I want them concentrated on the aft area where we identified some structures previously.”
Jasmine tapped wildly. Miklos looked at me like I was insane. But, to his credit, he didn’t say a word.
When she was done transmitting the order, she looked up at me. “Sir? What was the purpose of that exercise?”
“To throw off Tolerance. He’s all alone on that big ship of his, and he’s a rookie. I want to rattle him. I want all his plans to be in question. If he makes a mistake, he doesn’t have a staff full of caretakers to back him up like I do.”
I tossed Miklos a meaningful glance, which he did his best to ignore.
We had about twenty more tense minutes to wait around. During that time, Tolerance fired his cannon—whatever it was—twice more. Both shots were hits, taking out two Worm ships.
“Cut out the engines again,” I said.
“Sir?”
“I’ve been watching the missiles and the timing them very closely. If they coast now, they should still cross that last fifty thousand miles a minute ahead of the Worm fleet. I don’t think Tolerance can reload that fast.”
“You don’t think—?” began Miklos, then he broke off.
Jasmine and I both looked at him sharply. “What was that, Commodore?”
“Nothing, Colonel.”
We watched as the missiles flew in deadly silence. Everything was locked in by the last minute or so. One only has so much control over a missile that is millions of miles distant in any case. Soon, projected impacts were blossoming. We had no idea, however, if the projections were real or not. We had to wait for the optics.
“Marvin?” I called. “Where’s Marvin? Oh yeah…”
I realized that I’d let him run off to take samples of the wreckage that was once Gatre. I hoped he was having fun out there. I pulled up a brainbox substitute and formed a transmission to the Worms.
“What are you going to tell them, sir?” Jasmine asked me.
“To hit whatever they can and get the hell out of there in less than ten minutes. Honor will have been satisfied.”
The symbols suggested by the brainbox swam quietly into view on the screen. A warrior, pictured in full retreat.
“No, no!” I shouted. “That won’t work! What kind of a second-class box did Marvin build, here? The Worms must be told they’re doing something of great import full of honor—no matter what it is.”
The box tried again, this time coming up with two pictures: an empty chariot and a setting sun. Or was it the sun rising? I frowned at that, uncertain of the meaning.
“We have to send it soon if they’re going to get it in time.”
“All right,” I growled. “Just transmit it. And switch off our fleet’s engines, too.
“The screen is updating, sir.”
I watched the main table we all circled with interest. Frequently, I glanced up at the holotank as well. We were in close now and things were getting exciting. The holotank did a much better job of pinpointing a strike on a moon-sized object.
During the next update, the missiles vanished. All but two of them. I whooped with a mixture of relief and excitement. Everyone looked at me the way they usually did at such moments.
“The Worms are still on the board,” I explained. “That blanket effect doesn’t have the reach to nail an entire wave of missiles, much less the Worms. That’s great news. In fact, we should have staggered the missiles into ten small waves. Next time, we will.”
“The Worms aren’t all the way down to the target yet,” Miklos pointed out.
I nodded, conceding the point. “Yeah, but Tolerance has less than a minute to reload.”
“True, but we have no data on the reload time of this wide area effect weapon. It could be done in less time than the long range weapon.”
I frowned. “Well,” I sighed. “We’re going to find out soon. Or rather, the Worms are.”
They were on their final approach now. Our missiles zoomed down and impact marks appeared. They looked ridiculously small on the surface of that vast ship. It was as if a freshly-birthed moon had just gotten its first two craters.
“They aren’t going to be able to do a damned thing,” Miklos said quietly.
“Probably not,” I admitted. “It’ll be a shame if they get wiped out.”
The Worm ships swarmed around the two polar points where the vessel was shaped differently. I watched as they utterly ignored my suggestion to retreat. They fired their weapo
ns and churned in spirals. But what could they do? They were gnats attacking an elephant. Tolerance was probably barely aware of the damage they were doing to the surface.
We watched each update as the minutes crawled by. As the clock approached the ten minute mark, I began to wince every time a big redraw came in.
Finally, the inevitable happened. One screen showed Worm ships twirling around, firing rays of accelerated particles and the like. The next showed an empty surface. There were scorch marks, a few dents, and dozens of crumpled chunks of metal. It looked like someone had sprinkled glitter on the poles of Phobos.
The Worm ships were all gone. They’d all been destroyed.
“It looks like we have our data, sir,” Miklos said.
I looked up at him sharply, not in any mood to be mocked.
“It’s good news, actually,” Miklos continued. “The enemy’s defensive weapon has a timer on it. That has been proven. And it appears to be just as long as the primary weapon’s timer. In fact, I would hazard to guess that the weapons are one and the same. Tolerance can increase the area of effect while lessening the range, making a defensive weapon, or he can fire a very tightly focused attack at a distant object. But in either case, it takes a long time to recharge.”
I stared at him, unable for a moment to shake my thoughts of all those brave comrades dying at once. They’d been out there one moment, attacking for all they were worth, and then the next they were obliterated.
I gave my head a shake, sucked in my breath and nodded to Miklos.
“You’re right, Commodore. This is good news. The enemy has a limitation. Now, it’s up to us to figure out how to exploit it.”
-14-
The hours slipped by slowly after the failed attack on Phobos. I wasn’t in the mood to relax having just witnessed the deaths of so many brave allied crews.
I found it odd at times that I could grieve for aliens. I mean, when back on Earth years ago, I might have stepped on things that resembled the Worms without a thought. But somehow fighting against a common enemy brings beings together. It had worked many times in the past on Earth, making cultural enemies into friends.
Maybe it was because of all the aliens I’d encountered, I liked the Worms the best. They were brave, intelligent and would rather die than quit fighting. I could appreciate that attitude, and so I’d started thinking of them as a different kind of human.
I watched as the aftermath of the battle faded. Nuclear clouds of debris dissipated and scraps of crushed ships floated away from Phobos’ seemingly impenetrable hide to drift in space. We followed in the wake of the unstoppable ship, heading toward the ring that led to Alpha Centauri.
Miklos cleared his throat. I glanced up at him. “What is it now, Commodore?”
“I was thinking, sir, that we should recall our fighters.”
I nodded. “Yes. Do it. There is no point to losing them as well.”
With a sigh of relief, Miklos ordered the squadrons to stand down.
Turning my attention to the rest of the system, I located Marvin where he was visiting the abandoned Gatre. The ship was off course and wasn’t going to hit the ring to Alpha Centauri, not anymore. The loss of power from the strike by Phobos had altered her course enough to cause her to miss her original destination after a long drifting journey across the Helios System.
“Is Marvin in radio contact with us?”
“Yes,” Captain Sarin said. “He has a ring set with him, in fact. We can talk to him in real time.”
“What? Why didn’t we use him for translations with the Worms, then?”
“He wasn’t answering at that time.”
“I see. Typical Marvin. Connect me, please. Let’s see if he answers the phone when I call him directly.”
I waited while a com officer did some magic, shunting our connections to bring Marvin’s voice into my ear.
“Hello, Colonel Riggs. If you could excuse me, I’m rather busy at the moment. There isn’t enough time to do a thorough analysis, so I’m having to—”
“Not so fast, Marvin. I know you’re up to something out there and right now I don’t really care what it is. But I do want you to apply your engines to Gatre. We can salvage her if we have time later. But not if she drifts off out of the star system.”
“Use my engines, sir? I don’t have sufficient thrust to brake this large of a craft. It would take…approximately four years of steady thrust to bring the Gatre to a full halt. Is that what you’re suggesting, Colonel?”
“No,” I said, realizing he was right. I sighed. “Listen, can you just steer the ship through the ring? Apply enough lateral thrust to put it back on course. That way, it can sail right into the Alpha Centauri system with us.”
He was quiet for a second. I wasn’t sure if that meant he was doing hard calculations, distracted by whatever the hell he was up to on that ship, or if he was trying to figure out some entirely new dodge. I waited impatiently…for about eight seconds.
“Well Marvin? What’s it going to be?”
“I can do that, Colonel. In fact, that idea presents some fascinating new possibilities.”
“I can’t wait. Riggs out.”
No sooner was I done talking to Marvin than Jasmine was at my side showing me something on her tablet. It looked like a series of boxes with pictures on them.
“What’s this? More Worm dialect?”
“It’s a transmission sir, from the Worms—from their command center on Helios. We think it’s idiomatic.”
I frowned at the images. There was a pair of warriors riding chariots side by side, followed by a picture of a moon or a planet, then two pictures of…little squiggles.
“What the hell are these last two things?”
“Um, Worm young, the computer says.”
“Worm young? They sent us a pictogram of comradery, a planet, and two symbols of baby Worms? What the heck does the computer think it means?”
“Like I said, the best brainbox thinks it’s an idiom of some kind. A saying that is not clear to us without cultural knowledge.”
“Great. Get Marvin back on the phone. I want him to take a look at this.”
“It is probably too late for that, sir,” she said, directing my attention to the holotank.
I looked up and saw we were about to pass through the ring that led from Helios to Alpha Centauri.
“Send it to him. Now!”
She grabbed the tablet from me and began tapping swiftly. A moment later I saw her hit the send button. A spinning wait symbol appeared.
Then the universe shuddered a little. I knew that feeling all too well. We were now in the Alpha Centauri system, while Marvin had been left behind in the Helios system.
“Did he get the message?” I asked, staring at her tablet. The wait icon had stopped spinning, but that didn’t always mean it worked.
“I’m not sure.”
“Well, ask him.”
“Do you want to stop jamming the rings, sir?”
I gritted my teeth. Doing so, even briefly, might let a signal get through from Phobos. I didn’t want the Blues to hear anything from Tolerance—hopefully, they never would again.
“No,” I said. “We’ll just have to wait until he comes through the ring riding on Gatre.”
She looked at me with furrowed brows. “What’s he doing back there on my ship? Do you know, Kyle? I don’t trust him. I want to disconnect his flight systems again the second he returns.”
“You’ll have to get in line for that,” I said. “And he probably knows it, so it might be awhile.”
“Why did you let him run off?”
“I saved the wreckage of Gatre,” I said. I explained to her Marvin’s efforts to guide the ship through the ring after us.
She nodded thoughtfully. “That is a good move, actually. I’m impressed. But we could have just sent a destroyer to play tugboat.”
“Yeah,” I said, “but I have a feeling we’ll need every ship we have and more before this is over.”
&nbs
p; Jasmine nodded, took her tablet back out of my hands and walked away. I watched her walk. It was a nice walk. It had been months since I’d been with a woman, and I was beginning to feel my eyes wander. Just how long was a guy supposed to mourn? It was a question I’d never been clear on. With my wife, who’d died many long years ago, I’d played it by ear. Essentially, that had meant going on zero dates for years. But somehow after my kids and died and the world had changed, I’d begun to feel free to do whatever I wanted.
It wasn’t a good kind of freedom, not really. It was more like the kind of freedom you might feel when you know you’re terminally ill. That “what the hell, why not, I’m screwed anyway” kind of freedom. But after losing Sandra, I wasn’t sure how I felt about anything.
I sucked in a deep breath and let it out. Back to the here and now, I told myself sternly. Daydreaming about girls was a younger man’s game. I had a world to conquer—or rather, to liberate. That was more important than all my hopes, wishes and feelings put together.
I took stock of the fleet after the last of them wriggled through the ring. Four hundred ships or so. Was that going to be enough? I knew Crow had been pretty much totaled after I sent a Macro armada through for him to play with. But he’d also had time to build back up.
Miklos came to join me where I stood on the raised deck with the viewports. They weren’t actual glass, but they looked like glass. The difference was you could put your hand up to them and zoom in by stretching the amazingly clear image.
“It’s a lovely fleet, sir,” he said.
“Yes Commodore, it is.”
“I would hate to see it wasted.”
I looked at him. “Are you trying to annoy me again?”
He laughed. “No sir, that’s not my intent. I just don’t like to lose ships. You know, when I was a boy, I had a lot of fun building models from kits. I lined them up on shelves in perfect order and painted them for display. What kind of child were you?”
I thought about it and laughed.
“I was the kind that banged my toys together until they broke. Usually, I left them in the dirt overnight, or in the grass. Often, my dad would run them over with the lawnmower and curse about it. I did have some models, but the paintjobs were ratty. Come to think of it, I seem to remember blowing up a few of those every summer with firecrackers.”