Thunder & Lightning

by Christopher Nuttall

  “Missile separation,” Cindy snapped. “Seven…nine…twelve missiles, targeted on the Flamewar and the Fuck Them All!”

  They’re concentrating their fire, Ellsworth thought coldly. “Order all ships to continue covering the targeted ships with point defence, concentrate on bringing down as many as possible of their transports,” he snapped. The fiery waves of invisible light flickered out from laser point defence weapons as the new targeting priorities were unloaded into computers, which were controlling the fire. “Rotate ships as necessary to bring weapons to bear on the enemy!”

  * * *

  Mark Galvaton ignored the pounding music in his ears as his two teenaged children, both wearing the shipsuits he had insisted on despite their loud protests, prepared the fixed weapons position. He hadn’t wanted to become involved in the fight at all and intended to ensure that Kyle Short faced a vote of no confidence as soon as possible, but there had been no choice. His two girls and himself – his wife had been away on business before the aliens had started their advance towards Freeport One – had been tasked with controlling a handful of free-floating missile batteries that had been emplaced near their location in their tiny ship. Short – to give the bastard credit – had offered to have the ship crewed by other Rockrats, but Galvaton had been determined. The Heather was his ship and it would be crewed by his family.

  He hadn’t wanted the girls to join him, and had even threatened to put them somewhere safe on Freeport One for the duration of the battle, but they had insisted and he’d reluctantly brought them along. They’d watched the first phase of the battle in silence – the Heather and the platforms it controlled had not been required to engage the enemy – but they had been given orders, orders he knew would require him to place his daughters in terrible danger. The thought made him weak at the knees, but the girls were Rockrats; they’d grown up on the ship, and they knew the dangers. They had chosen to accept the risk…

  Somehow, it was no consolation.

  “Stand by to fire,” he said. In theory, the enemy couldn’t detect Heather, but the aliens had been using hundreds of active sensors – his missiles were going to home in on some of their radiating sensors – and they might know her location, even though they hadn’t yet decided to launch a missile at her. He had watched them growing closer and closer to Freeport One and knew what it meant; they would be in range to blow the asteroid apart, like they had shattered asteroids in Earth orbit. “Do you have the firing sequences locked in?”

  Sally looked up. “Yes, Dad,” she said, her voice for once serious. Her pixie-like face and blonde hair turned heads wherever she went; at fourteen, she was a very active teenager on the party circuit. Galvaton suspected that she had had more boyfriends than he’d had hot dinners…and didn’t want to know any more details. “I have the enemy craft targeted.”

  He glanced at Patty. “Our movement sequence?”

  Patty, dark-haired and somehow perfectly controlled, nodded once. “We are ready to move as soon as Sally sends the signal,” she said. “The course is already laid in.”

  “Good,” Galvaton said. He smiled at his daughters. “Fire!”

  The missile racks had been left drifting in space, almost indistinguishable from common or garden space wreckage, perhaps even salvaged junk that had been dumped onto a speculator rather than some Rockrat wasting time trying to determine who should be charged for the privilege of recovering it. At Sally’s command, they launched without warning, triggering short-term fusion drives that launched the missiles from their position of relative rest, using gas jets to steer the missiles onto the precise course as the drives burnt out. The aliens had been using their sensors too often; the missiles would home in on them, strike and destroy the sensors, forcing the aliens to activate more sensors to cover the remainder of their fleet…

  Sally’s voice was delighted. “Dad, they’re homing in on the large enemy ship,” she said, her voice showing no sign of grief or remorse at the aliens who were about to die like bugs. Galvaton privately mourned; one day, he was sure, Sally would feel grief for what she had done, no matter how much the aliens had deserved to die. The Rockrats had no tolerance for whining liberalism, but Sally was really too young to take part in such activities. “Ten seconds to impact…”

  Patty was already steering them away from the missile racks as they fired again, launching their second spread of missiles, and then their third. Galvaton smiled as the missiles homed in on the massive alien craft, a design that had impressed him when he had seen the images taken from Earth; it was large enough to transport thousands of tons of ore, or thousands of people, without the gravity ring of a bridge ship. The Rockrats had never understood the need for a gravity ring; it wasn’t as if medical science hadn’t advanced to the point where no human would have to take tissue damage from being semi-permanently in zero-gravity. He could have bought such a ship if he had had the money; he had occasionally wondered what would happen if his family grew to the size required to handle such a ship.

  “Impact,” Sally said. Galvaton smiled as the data download revealed the flash of a nuclear explosion, leaving a torrent of energy and a tiny amount of wreckage as the only sign the transport had ever existed. “Dad, we got the bastard…”

  “I saw,” Galvaton snapped. There was no time to spend in cheering and congratulating themselves. “Get up the other targeting solutions and watch the point defence, or I’ll take my hand to your backside.”

  The Heather jerked again. “I have an incoming missile, two incoming missiles,” Sally said, her voice suddenly very young and very scared. “They’re boosting towards us now and…”

  “Get the point defence on them,” Galvaton snapped, unwilling to let her be scared. One hand danced over a panel, clearing their modified mining laser to fire on any incoming target. “Damn it, girl; we’re depending on you!”

  Sally worked her console. “I got one,” she said, as the lights dimmed slightly, power shifting to the laser. “The other…”

  Galvaton had only a second to realise that the missile was going to detonate…and then it did, sending a wave of fire towards the Heather at point-blank range. The old craft’s hull couldn’t hope to stand up to the furious wave of heat and violence; it crumpled inwards and vaporised too quickly for anyone to react, if there had been anything they could have done. Mark, Sally and Patty Galvaton were dead before they knew what hit them.

  * * *

  Makra noted the destruction of the missile platforms and their controlling spacecraft without interest; his priority was to try to batter his way through the defences before it was too late. Space was strewn with wreckage, but his force had continued to press on, even though they had been reduced to nine ships in the knife-range fighting as they had come to grips with the defences. He was almost relieved; one way or the other, they would have broken through in moments and then they could escape and dare the humans to follow them back to Earth.

  “Alter course to evade that asteroid,” he ordered, as the fleet twisted slightly, although there could be no question of actually slowing down. They didn’t have the time or the room to decelerate; they would be blown apart when the human missiles and energy weapons zeroed in on their slowing hulks. Who would have thought of using a mass driver as a weapon? The Oghaldzon hadn’t…but the humans had…and they had blown apart one of his warships before the offending installation had been destroyed by a nuclear warhead. “Once we have a clear path, bring up all of the drives and take us forward.”

  He closed his eyes for a second, feeling the tension clicking through the air; his crew’s morale had taken a major blow. They had failed, he knew that now; they had tried to come and take Freeport One, only to be driven away. What state of that tiny size could have built the warships? Why would it have bothered? It was completely alien to the Oghaldzon; had these humans really been that concerned that the humans back on Earth would have taken over the asteroids? It was madness, but then…humans were mad. They were just…alien.

  Th
e drive kicked in and he allowed himself a moment to relax. The human missiles would have to punch through the drive flame before they could hit his ships; they would have a fair chance of simply being melted by the heat of the flame before they could detonate. One way or another, they were safe…

  “Incoming missiles,” the tactical officer snapped. Makra stared at the display; missiles were coming in towards them, not from the rear, but from ahead of them, from what looked to be a blank area of space. The active sensors were confused by the drive flare, but they probed anyway, finding…a set of nine more human ships, trying to sneak up on them. They had fired from close range, too close…

  “Contact the War Commander and inform him that we did our best,” Makra said, and closed his eyes one final time. “It was an honour to serve with you all in a righteous cause.”

  Moments later, the nuclear missiles blew the Righteous Rage and her crew into flaming superhot debris.

  * * *

  Jake Ellsworth stared at the newcomers. “Who the hell are they?”

  He rounded on Cindy. “More of your friends?”

  She shook her head. “Wrong angle of approach,” she said. “We didn’t plan anything like this; it would have made the KISS principle scream and die in horror.”

  Ellsworth took a long breath. “Open hailing signals,” he said. Had another alien faction intervened on their behalf? The ships seemed human enough, but the rules of engineering and physics meant there weren’t a lot of differences between human and Oghaldzon ones. “Ask them who they are.”

  The link-up established itself according to standard IAU protocols and a face appeared in the display. “I am Commodore Qiu Xiaoshuai,” a Chinese face said. The voice was very polite, and yet, there was a definite undertone of amusement. “I believe that you needed some help?”

  Ellsworth started to laugh.

  Chapter Fifty: Secrets and Lies

  Freeport One, Asteroid Belt

  Commodore Qiu Xiaoshuai turned out to be surprisingly short for a spacer, although Jake Ellsworth had to admit that height wasn’t such a disability in zero-gravity. Qiu was pure Han Chinese – which was strange out in the mixed-race environment of the Belt – with a neatly shaved head. It sent a signal of some kind, although Ellsworth didn’t understand it; he was trying to understand just what had happened. He had won a great victory…and he had no idea of just how he had done it.

  “So,” Cindy said, after Kyle Short had passed around a set of glasses with a small helping of Liberation Brandy in them, “just where did you come from?”

  Qiu gave her a mischievous look; there was little inscrutable about his face. “Where did you come from?” he asked. “I’m sure that there’s no major American position in the Belt?”

  “We are not ungrateful for your appearance,” Short said, carefully. “I would like, however, to know just what happened and what your intentions are.”

  Qiu leaned back into his chair. “It’s really quite simple,” he said. Ellsworth’s heart sank; whenever someone said that, it meant that things were about to become needlessly complicated. “The Party – in their infinitive wisdom – decided that it might be an interesting idea to have a small and secret squadron based out in the belt in case some of the personnel in the Belt decided that loyalty to China was not on the cards.”

  “In other words, in case they decided to come here and join us,” Ellsworth injected.

  Qiu favoured him with a smile. “Precisely,” he said. “I couldn’t have put it better myself. The squadron had been quietly based out near the mining area that belongs to us under IAU rules” – something of a sore spot with the Rockrats – “and crewmen were rotated every six months to keep them in fighting trim…and, of course, to make sure that they had more chance to socialise with their own kind. We assembled the ships out here so no one would know that they were here, just as a precaution, you understand.”

  Ellsworth smiled wryly. The Chinese Government had probably been wondering about the benefits of a possible land grab – well, asteroid grab. Before the aliens had arrived, they might even have gotten away with it; the other Great Powers would be delighted to see the Rockrats taken down a peg or two. The thirty-odd warships that had come to the aid of Freeport One would have been a formidable force if deployed against the Rockrats; the aliens had proven that in the battle, if nothing else. If they hadn’t had the Area 51 warships along, the aliens would have kicked their arses.

  “Anyway,” Qiu said, coughing meaningfully. Ellsworth met his eyes and felt cold inside; one seriously scary dude, he thought. “The aliens arrived and the higher command decided that it might be a good idea to keep the fleet under wraps, just to ensure that the secret was not revealed when the aliens turned out to be friendly. As it was, the aliens turned out not to be friendly and…we realised that they killed most of China…”

  His voice, for the first time, seemed to break. “Do you know what happened down there?”

  Ellsworth looked at Cindy, who shrugged. “We know that one of the asteroids went down roughly ninety kilometres inland,” she said. “Past that, we know very little; the aliens haven’t landed in China as far as we know, although our information is rather limited. We only have some microburst updates from American forces on the ground and spy probes near the Earth-Moon system.”

  Qiu nodded once, and then was back in command, the hardy old spacer. “We waited, trying to decide what to do, as our stores started to run out,” Qiu continued. Ellsworth frowned, puzzled; there was no reason why the Chinese couldn’t have equipped their asteroids to remain self-sustaining more or less indefinitely. Perhaps it was a political decision; an asteroid capable of sustaining itself might just decide that it wanted to be more than a fuel dump and mining station. Hong had come from such a place, if he recalled correctly; Qiu and his fleet might just have been intended to prevent a repeat of that incident. “A return to China was clearly out of the question.”

  You could have come to us, Ellsworth thought coldly, knowing that Qiu would probably have considered and rejected the possibility. And yet, he had clearly decided to bite the bullet afterwards; his intervention had turned a victory into a total victory…and the annihilation of the enemy forces. The cost had been high; nearly five hundred Rockrats had died, including nearly forty minors who would never normally have been allowed to see combat.

  “We decided, finally, that the only hope was to come here and offer our services in exchange for supplies,” Qiu concluded. Ellsworth nodded; whatever else one could say about him, the Chinese spacer was clearly a realist. “We saw the aliens coming toward you and decided that some level of stealth was in order…and then we altered course just enough to coast into a position where we could nail any survivors.”

  He grinned, openly. “And you know the rest.”

  “I think I speak for the entire Rockrat Association when I offer you and your people a complete vote of thanks,” Short said, after a short pause to consider. He leaned forward, carefully. “What do you want to do now?”

  Qiu’s face became completely inscrutable. “We would like to drive the aliens away from China and attempt to pull the nation together again,” he said. “As to what we actually want…”

  “Excuse me a minute,” Cindy said, and slipped out.

  “We would be very grateful for supplies,” Qiu continued, ignoring Cindy’s rudeness. “If you would like, we have around two thousand miners and refinery workers who would be happy to add their manpower to yours, on a temporary basis, of course.”

  “Of course,” Short murmured, a smile flickering around his lips. Ellsworth shared it; the odds were that the Chinese civilians would want to stay at Freeport One, rather than returning to a ruined China, or even the iron control of the Party Cadre out in the belt. They would be all intelligent people; they had to at least suspect that China was beyond help, or know the fallacies in the Chinese Government’s policies. “And your soldiers?”

  “We believe that we might be of some help defending the Freepo
rt,” Qiu said. There was a mischievous note in his voice, although he seemed just a little shaken; he had to have considered, at least, using his ships to threaten Freeport One into giving up the Chinese workers once they had found a new home. The presence of the ships from Area 51 had disconcerted him. “Do you have a much better use for us?”

  “We may have,” Short said. “How much of a support network do you have out here?”

  “Very little,” Qiu admitted. “We have stockpiles of fuel and some weapons in various asteroids that had been mined out decades ago, but we have only limited repair facilities, most of which are limited to slotting in new components from the stores. Why do you ask?”

  “Curiosity,” Short said. “There are a lot of curious Rockrats out there.”

  He wasn't telling the half of it, Ellsworth thought; the entire asteroid seemed to have gone mad with joy and relief. There had been a major party in the habitation zones, the brothel had declared itself open for free for a few days; he’d even run across couples having sex in the halls. Rockrats rarely just lay back and partied; the energetic release of the celebration was a reminder of just how nervous every Rockrat had been when the alien fleet had been detected. There would be a formal ceremony later for those who had fallen in battle, but they both knew that it wasn't over yet; there was still the trifling matter of defeating the alien fleet orbiting Earth…

  And that wasn’t really a trifling matter at all.

  “I have a question of my own,” Qiu said. “Where did your warships come from?”

  “Long story,” Short said. “I wonder…”

  Cindy came back into the room before Short could say anything. “I was just talking to my commanding officer,” she said, shortly. “He wanted me to pass on an offer to you.”