by Ian Douglas
The worst part was being this damned blind. On Earth, any Marine unit on the planet had almost instant access to whole constellations of military satellites, including battlefield observers that, on a clear day, could literally look over an enemy officer’s shoulder and read his maps and communications printouts. And there were IR sensors in orbit that could see warm flesh through the concrete roofs of buildings and bunkers.
He had none of that here—not even a naval ship in orbit that could call in sightings. The company inventory included five teleoperated BRDs, Mark VI Battlefield Reconnaissance Drones, “birds” in Marine parlance. He would have to hoard them like a high-tech miser, and when they were gone—birds had a very short lifespan on the battlefield—Bravo Company would be completely in the dark.
“Maybe we should try raising them, sir,” Lieutenant Biehl said. His first and middle names were Charles Andrew, but everyone called the Alabama native “Moe.”
“And what?” Lieutenant Randolph Quinlan replied. “Negotiate? For what? The only thing we can offer them is our surrender.”
“Screw that,” Graham said.
“We’ll talk if they want to talk,” Jeff said. “And they do not enter this crater. Understood?”
A chorus of “Aye, ayes” and “Yes, sirs” sounded in the narrow compartment. The flatscreen on one bulkhead was currently showing a view from a remote camera on the surface, set up on a tripod on the southwest rim. It showed the monotonous flat ice plain of the Europan surface, with faint undulations in the distance.
It had been four days since their landing. Since Europa circled Jupiter in three days and thirteen hours—a revolution that also defined the satellite’s day—they’d already been through one complete cycle of day and night. It was morning, but in eclipse, with the sun hidden behind the vast, black bulge of Jupiter. Enough light was coming off the silver-edged rainbow gilding one slim edge of the planet, though, to illuminate the gently undulating terrain in cold blue hues. The stars shone, steadily, unwinking, and ice-hard in a sky of empty black. In the distance, a working party was just visible in the dim light, digging a pit for an XM-86 Sentry, their tiny forms giving a sense of scale to the moon’s vast wilderness.
When they come, he thought, it will be from that direction.
Not that he wouldn’t cover all approaches. But recon parties had explored the surrounding terrain in lobbers, and reported that the smoothest ground lay along the gentle swell of the Cadmus Linea, extending west and then southwest in the direction of the Chinese LZ. Their first probe, he was sure, would be across easy terrain.
Damn, I hate the waiting.
“Zebra, Zebra, this is Recon One. Do you copy, over?”
“One, this is Zebra,” Wolheim replied. “Go.”
“We are in position, at one-five-niner by three-seven-four, and digging in. Looks like we have the ridge to ourselves.”
“Roger that, Recon One. Keep us posted.”
“Ah, affirmative, Zebra. One out.”
Jeff grinned. During the past couple of days, the Marines had begun calling the CWS base Ice Station Zebra. Cadmus Station was okay, the line went, but it didn’t have any character, didn’t describe the true, desolate feel of the place. A book by a twentieth-century author and a movie of the same vintage provided the new name; Sergeant Leslie Riddel had brought along a memclip for his PAD containing both the illustrated novel and the uncut 2020 remake of the movie, with virtual actors standing in for Rock Hudson, Patrick McGoohan, and the rest. He’d been passing his copy around the company, and the new if unofficial name for Cadmus Base had become inevitable.
It was fitting. The movie had been set on the Arctic ice pack, during the height of the Cold War. Bravo Company was now on the verge of a genuine shooting war, on an icefield that made the Arctic on Earth seem like a warm summer’s afternoon in southern California by comparison.
He’d ordered Knowles and Richardson to take one of the lobbers and establish an OP on the Cadmus Linea ridge a hundred kilometers west of the base. They would have to be relieved soon, and he might not be able to keep the OP permanently manned, but at least it was something to do, something to let the men know that action was being taken.
“Shi mi!”
“‘Ten meters…’”
He tried to imagine the Chinese LZ. They were probably using Descending Thunder landers, a model the CWS had code-named Fat Boy. No flame, no smoke from those plasma engines, but at ten meters, that one must be kicking up a hell of a lot of steam and fog right now.
“Ting lilang! Queding jie!”
“‘Cut power,’” Chesty repeated. “They are confirming that they are down.”
“That makes eight down so far,” Captain Melendez announced. “Do you think that’s all?”
“It matches the configuration Intelligence gave us on the Star Mountain,” Jeff replied. “Let’s hope eight was all they sent us.”
He tried to keep the words light. Eight Fat Boys meant at least two hundred enemy troops, and possibly a good many more than that, depending on how much comfort they’d sacrificed for numbers.
“Raise HQ, Staff Sergeant. Let ’em know the bad guys have arrived.”
“Aye, aye, sir. Any other message?”
Briefly, he toyed with a bit of bravado. In December of 1941, immediately after the attack on Pearl Harbor, the Japanese had assaulted the Marine and civilian garrison on Wake Island in the Pacific. The defenders had been able to hold out for sixteen days against overwhelming numbers…a situation not unlike the one Jeff was facing now.
The story had spread that, when asked if there was anything he needed, Major Devereaux, in command of the garrison, had cracked, “You can send us more Japs.”
The story was apocryphal, the result of a misunderstanding of the nonsense phrases used tacked on at the beginning and end of radio messages to frustrate enemy decoding attempts. Jeff’s idea, to tell them to send them more Chinese, would serve no purpose and might even backfire if it adversely affected morale.
“Tell them we need that confirmation on LZ coordinates I asked for,” he replied. “As fast as possible.”
“Aye, aye, sir.”
Before he could fight the enemy, he would have to find out where he was.
AI 929 Farstar
Kuiper Belt
2234 hours Zulu
Farstar was not pleased at the interruption of his work.
Though not technically capable of feeling emotions such as irritation or chagrin, the new orders that had arrived by laser fifteen hours ago had generated conflicts and interfered with Farstar’s maximum operating efficiency to the point that he believed he knew precisely what those emotions were.
He had been, with a mounting allotment of processing cycles and storage that might have been defined as excitement, observing a new-found world circling the F8 star 94 Ceti, only fifty-nine light years away. Spectral analyses of the atmosphere had already proven the existence of oxygen and, therefore, life…while other scraps of spectra stripped from captured light revealed the presence of a chlorophyll analogue staining broad swaths of the world’s continents with patches of blue and green. Oceans of liquid water gleamed beneath the harsh white light of the F8 sun.
And here, too, as on Alpha Centauri A II, were the remnants of a vanished civilization—towers of glass and mirror-polished crystal smashed and scattered; squat, conelike structures blindly ripped open; whole cities reduced to blast-scoured rubble and debris; craters, some a hundred kilometers across, sprinkled across the face of a devastated world.
And, in infrared wavelengths, some of those craters still glowed, proof that the destruction had been visited upon this world a few centuries ago at most.
The Institute for Exoarcheological Studies was keenly interested in this newest addition to the list of archeological treasure troves within a handful of light years of Earth. It suggested that whatever power struck down technic civilizations as they emerged upon the galactic stage was still present, still active.
Why
, then, this sudden and completely incomprehensible change in the scheduled observation itinerary?
Fifteen hours ago, an urgent request from the American Space Command at Colorado Springs had directed Farstar to shift away from 94 Ceti and focus his receiving dish on a part of the sky alarmingly close to distant Sol. Farstar had to use extreme caution here; optical circuits could be damaged by direct sunlight, even this far out. Light-gathering equipment designed to resolve objects as small as fair-sized islands at a distance of a hundred light years were trained on a target six and a half million times closer—Europa, where a tiny, glittering constellation of objects was falling into orbit around the glistening, ice-surfaced moon.
Farstar had observed the region around Europa for some hours before detecting the ship. An adjustment of magnification and resolution had brought the vessel into uncertain focus, a two-hundred-meter toothpick scattering eight tiny motes into the stellar wind. Farstar had watched for hours more, observing and computing orbit, velocity, and the descending trajectory of the eight motes as their plasma drives burned hot against his infrared sensors.
At this point, Earth and Jupiter both were approximately equidistant from Farstar’s position—a little over six light hours. It would take that long for the information gleaned here to make it back at light’s crawl to the humans who needed it.
With no instructions to relay to the U.S. force already on Europa, he began transmitting the information to Colorado Springs. If the humans on Jupiter needed the information, Space Command HQ would see that they got it. In any case, the information was already six hours old by the time Farstar recorded it, and six hours older still after his transmission had crossed the long, deep emptiness back to Earth.
Farstar just hoped they would let him get back to the job he’d been designed for. Observing humans’ spacecraft from only fifty astronomical units away was a colossal waste of resources and observing time.
ELEVEN
17 OCTOBER 2067
Chinese People’s Mobile
Strike Force
Asterias Linea, Europa
1517 hours Zulu
The refueling was almost complete.
General Xiang stood on the barren ice plain, watching as the line of men filed aboard the craft known only as Jiang Lie Si, Descending Thunder No. 4. It had been thirty-six hours since the People’s Army Mobile Strike Force had set down on the Europan ice cap close by the gently swelling ridge called Asterias Linea. During that time, the troops had been busy setting up the main base, using zidong tanke and APC crawlers with attached plow blades to dig trenches in ice pulverized by explosive charges, then burying habitat cylinders deeply enough to shield the men living there from the particulate radiation sleeting across the Europan surface.
Now, though, it was time to pay a professional call on the CWS base a thousand kilometers to the northeast. The Star Mountain had made several photographic passes over the site in the past hours, carefully noting every surface hab, storage shed, and facility. It was clear that some American troops, at least, had made it to the surface before the destruction of their transport. Two shuttles were parked on the landing field where none had been present before, and numerous groups of space-suited personnel could be seen working in the shallow crater that held the base. There were also lots of fresh tracks crisscrossing the ice of the crater floor and rim, evidence that many more than the expected complement of twenty-five scientists were now present.
No matter. Two orbit-to-ground shuttles meant eighty to a hundred men on the surface, and no more. With their ship and most of their supplies destroyed, they would be short on everything, including morale. A show of force might be all that was necessary to win the Americans’ capitulation.
Colonel Yang Zhenyang, in a white space suit with a bright red helmet, stood at his side, watching the marching column single-filing up the cargo ramp and into the yellow-lit belly of the 1,200-ton lander looming overhead. The craft, which had looked so delicate in space alongside the long complexity of the Star Mountain, seemed ponderously enormous at this distance, standing beneath the overhanging bulge of its equator.
“I doubt that you will have much difficulty,” Xiang told his subordinate, second-in-command of the People’s Strike Force, and his Chief of Staff. “The enemy will still be in shock at finding himself marooned on this ice ball. Supplies and ammunition may be short. And they have neither ship assets nor satellites in orbit. We have complete space superiority. Once you have demonstrated that superiority, you will give them the opportunity to surrender.”
“Yes, General.”
“Nevertheless, I want no heroics, no chances taken, no underestimation of the enemy’s capabilities.” He looked up at Jiang Lie Si and gestured with a gloved hand. “She looks invincible, but a single SAM fired from a man-portable launcher could puncture her hull and wreck her. While we will hold enough Descending Thunders in reserve to assure our own survival, I will be most displeased at the loss of even one.”
“The plan has been carefully worked out, General,” Yang replied. The words were soft, but it was almost a rebuke. A politely respectful one, of course. “We will need to take direct action to get their attention, as it were. But I do not intend to risk my command needlessly!”
“Good. And again: You must land outside the objective crater. We’re not sure of the ice thickness inside, but the hole they’ve cut through the ice to reach the Europan ocean proves it is unusually thin there. The plasma jets from a Descending Thunder could easily melt through deeply enough that the ice gives way when it accepts the lander’s weight. Use care!”
“Yes, sir. Our landing sites have been carefully surveyed from orbit.”
He realized he was beginning to sound like a mother—a particularly naggy and unpleasant mother at that. “Stay in close contact with us here, and with the Star Mountain,” he added, a final admonishment. “We can have another four landers at your position within minutes, should you need reinforcements.”
“As you say, General, I doubt that we will need them.”
“Agreed. But your men will be the scouts who lead the way, who first test the enemy’s mettle. This is a probe of the enemy’s weaknesses and strengths, not a contest of honor or of courage. If you encounter unexpectedly stiff resistance, you must break off at once. I rely on your judgment as to whether to break off or call in reinforcements.”
“Yes, General.”
The last of the troops on the strike team had boarded. It was time.
“Good luck!”
“Thank you, General! I expect to deliver the enemy base to you intact, the next time we speak!” Yang saluted smartly, his gloved hand touching the red helmet above the visor. Xiang returned the salute, and Colonel Yang turned and trotted up the ramp. Xiang moved away as the ground crew began raising the ramp and preparing the lander for boost.
Europa was a nightmarish place, but they were fortunate in one respect, at least. Water ice, with only a few simple contaminants like ammonia, sulfur, and hydrogen peroxide, was abundant and easily carved out of the surface, melted, and stored in the spherical landers’ reaction mass tanks, a never-ending source of fuel. He took his place beside the low, tracked form of a teleoperated zidong tanke on the perimeter, and turned to watch the launch. A command center had been set up on the bridge of Descending Thunder No. 3, and Captain Peng and Lieutenant Mu were handling the launch sequence from there. His hand was not needed, though he opened his suit radio to the command frequency, and listened to the soothing flow of checklist confirmations and countdown.
“Hydraulics.”
“Ready.”
“Reactor.”
“Ready, at forty-two percent output. Chamber temperature one-three-hundred. Power levels steady.”
“Pumps.”
“On.”
“Fifteen seconds. Initiate reaction mass flow.”
“Reaction mass flow, on. Pressure at one-three.”
“Checklist complete. All systems ready.”
“Pressure at
two-five.”
“Eight seconds. Six…”
“Main valves open. Plasma chamber, open. Firing sequencing activated.”
“Four…three…two…one…launch command.”
“Engines activated. Throttle up to four-five.”
Silent clouds of steam billowed from beneath Descending Thunder No. 4. A moment later, the spacecraft was climbing…climbing…accelerating quickly as it grabbed for the black night at the zenith, its upward course already bending over toward the northeast as it leaned into its programmed course.
Xiang was a fatalist, to a degree. He had never read Caesar’s words at the Rubicon, “Alea iacta est,” but he would have understood the sentiment perfectly.
The die was now irrevocably cast.
Observation Post “Igloo”
Asterius Linea
Europa
1530 hours Zulu
Corporal Duane Niemeyer stooped as he shoved the white camocloth aside and reentered the makeshift shelter they’d built up around the base of the lobber. “Damn, how much longer, BJ?”
Staff Sergeant Brenda Campanelli looked up from the portable radar/lidar detector on its squat tripod. “What’s the matter, Downer? Your HUD go chips-up, or what?”
Duane squatted on the ice beside her. There was scant headroom in their OP hide-hole, created simply by draping camocloth around the base of a requisitioned civilian lobber. It didn’t keep them any warmer—they were in vacuum, and most of their suits’ heat loss was through their boots and into the ice—but it did help cut the background particulate radiation by just a small bit more. Every little bit helped, after all.
For Duane, it helped by shutting out all that awful emptiness outside—and overhead. He hated Jupiter especially, that huge, silent, banded eye always suspended above the eastern horizon, slowly passing from new to crescent to half to full and back to half and crescent and new once more as it ran through its three-day cycle of phases. He sometimes felt an intolerable itching in his brain, a sense of unease, even terror, that seemed to emanate from this place like radiation, invisible but deadly.