by Ian Douglas
The data, he saw immediately, were coming in a tight and automated burst, a terabit pulse set to trigger if any human ship entered the system and was noted by Lucas’s sensors. The Lucas, it appeared, was on the surface of Heimdall, close beside an archeological site designated as the “Temple.” He was startled to see that the site was occupied by humans; America was picking up the IFF tags of a dozen Marine fighters clawing their way up out of Heimdall’s gravity well.
“Helm! Change course and take us clear of Heimdall!”
“Yes, sir.”
“I still want to brush these bastards off on Bifrost, though, if we can.”
With a spaceship the size of a planet hard on America’s heels, Gray was worried that the Rosette Aliens might follow the human ship as it skimmed around Heimdall. He was sure the aliens wouldn’t get too close to the moon. That hurtling rock was about a third the size of Heimdall, and they wouldn’t risk a direct collision.
But they might not be concerned about tidal disruption, and the seismic quakes generated by super-high tides across Heimdall’s surface could pose a very serious problem for the people on the moon’s surface. Better, he thought, to stay clear of the moon entirely . . . and hope the Rosette Aliens did as well.
On the bridge screens, Heimdall, directly ahead, slid smoothly off to starboard, and America arrowed past the chill world heading directly toward Bifrost. The gas giant’s rings spread out, enormous, ahead of and above the ship. A small, icy moon flashed past to port.
“The . . . uh . . . mobile planet is slowing, sir,” Mallory told him.
“Good.” Maybe even something that big had limits. . . .
Gray was scanning the data transmitted from the Lucas. The Grand Unified Fleet, he saw, was no more. A couple of dozen ships had been wiped out of the sky. Lexington had survived, at least so far, but was badly damaged . . . adrift somewhere out in the direction of Thrymheim. The Lex had recorded the battle, however, and a great deal of other data besides and transmitted it to the Lucas on Heimdall before powering down. He read the account of the mobile planet’s first appearance.
“They called it Romeo One,” he noted.
“Sir?” Gutierrez asked.
“That damned black planet,” Gray replied. “They called it Romeo One.”
“Where’s Juliette?”
“Very funny.” The Romeo designation was from the international phonetic alphabet, of course: “Romeo” for “R.” and “R” for “Rosette.”
Lexington had gathered a lot of information. It was all there . . . the attempts to get close to the Rosette entity . . . the appearance of Romeo One . . . the reports from the Pan-European fighter pilots—Schmidt and the others—electronically preserved within Heimdall’s alien planet-sized computer Net.
“Konstantin?” Gray said. “Is there anything here we can use?”
“I am as yet uncertain, Admiral. The Deneban e-virus is extremely adaptable since it was designed to merge with an alien network. However, the Rosette Aliens almost certainly have formidable electronic defenses in place. We will not have time to test alternatives.”
“I wasn’t expecting to have to try and use the thing right off,” Gray said. He’d hoped to have time to consult with the Grand Fleet, not try to patch something together on the fly. That wasn’t in the cards now, though. “Do what you can.”
“That, in fact, is all that is possible.”
“We’re coming down on Bifrost, Admiral,” Blakeslee reported.
“Steady as she goes . . .”
Like all gas giant planets, Bifrost had no actual solid surface. It was a slightly flattened sphere of hydrogen and other gasses, compressed by growing pressures with greater and greater depth until somewhere down there beneath those colored cloud bands rising temperatures and pressures conspired to crush the hydrogen core into a form more metallic than gas or liquid . . . but not quite solid, either. There might be a rocky center the size of Earth in there; one theory suggested that the central core was mostly carbon squeezed into a single planet-sized diamond . . . but no one knew for certain.
The upper limits of a gas giant’s atmosphere were as ill-defined as its depths. Well above the banded cloud layers, America encountered a rapidly thickening haze of hydrogen gas. The ship bucked and shuddered, and the outer hull began growing hot from friction. A ship like America, with no streamlining and no control surfaces, had never been intended for atmospheric flight. In moments she was thundering deep into an alien atmosphere, dragging out a long, hot tail of ionized hydrogen astern. The fast-flicker of the drive singularity forward was a tiny, hot sun as it devoured the gas and spit out light, X-rays, and hard gamma.
“Outer hull temp is up to nine hundred degrees, Admiral,” Mallory warned. Not even gravitic shielding could hold the atmospheric friction at bay for long. In fact, the sharp bending of space near the hull made it more difficult to shed excess heat. “One thousand degrees . . . eleven hundred . . .”
The pursuing planet was less than five thousand kilometers astern, now, filling the sky aft. Violet flame flashed along America’s starboard hull as an alien particle beam seared through superheated atmosphere.
At America’s current speed, a straight-line trajectory would have carried them straight past Bifrost’s day side in an instant. The ship’s helm crew cut the forward drive singularity and began projecting a maneuvering singularity aft to slow their headlong descent, allowing Bifrost’s gravity to curve their trajectory around the planet. Gray could hear the shrill scream of atmosphere outside the bridge tower, feel the ongoing, fast-building shudder as America plowed through hydrogen at thousands of kilometers per second. Still too fast by far . . .
“What’s the son-of-a-bitch doing?” Gray demanded.
“Still following us, Admiral,” Mallory replied. “But slowly. They’ve dropped to a few kilometers per second . . . and they’re still decelerating.”
“Are they stopping?”
“I think they’re being cautious, sir. Local space is damned crowded.”
That might give them their chance. Even something as massive as Romeo One was going to be careful not to slam into any of the hundred or so moons in orbit around Bifrost, from Heimdall, with a diameter of more than fourteen thousand kilometers, down to icy rocks a few kilometers across.
Romeo One had already swung well inside Heimdall’s orbit, close enough to Bifrost, now, that the brush of its gravity was beginning to disturb the rings. Gray could see sparkles flashing across Romeo’s surface as it swept through the ring debris; the plane of the rings was visibly twisted now, warped into three dimensions by Romeo’s gravity.
And then America swung over Bifrost’s horizon, blocking the artificial world from view. A shuddering rumble sounded through the ship, its metal and carbon skeleton protesting the stress. Gray felt a crushing weight on his chest. Gravitic acceleration acted on every atom within the singularity’s field, and was experienced as zero-G; the deceleration due to plowing through the upper reaches of Bifrost’s atmosphere, however, were piling on the Gs.
“Get us out of this atmosphere!” They needed to be in free fall and clear of atmosphere to launch fighters.
“Working on it, sir!”
Gently, America rotated about her own projected singularity, seeking a balance within the titanic stresses tearing at her spine. The rumble subsided a little as the ship continued to decelerate . . . and then the shuddering and the sensation of weight faded away. America was traveling up and away from Bifrost’s night side, now, once again in open space. The gas giant’s rings hung vast and spectacular like a color-banded ceiling parallel to the ship’s trajectory. They were still shielded from Romeo One’s view by the planet.
“Okay!” Gray said. “CAG! Launch fighters!”
“Aye, aye, Admiral.”
“Put our special package in with one of the squadrons. Have them escort it in.”
Special package. A mild-mannered and harmless-sounding euphemism for a converted Starblade fighter with a computronium c
ore, carrying a Konstantin clone and the deadly Omega Code virus.
He could only hope it would be enough.
Fletcher hesitated slightly. “That could be rough on our people.”
“I know. But we need to get it in close. If it’s one of a dozen, we have a chance.”
“Launching . . .”
“Captain Gutierrez, fighter launch has priority. When the fighters are clear, we follow them in.”
“Yes, sir.”
The question was whether the fighters could get clear of America before Romeo One came around the curve of Bifrost . . .
. . . and whether they would be able to survive more than a few seconds when it did.
TC/USNA CVS America
IS Department
Kapteyn’s Star
0131 hours, TFT
“Dr. Sanger?” the Admiral’s voice said. “Are we ready to launch?”
Carolyn Sanger didn’t like the touch of Admiral Gray’s mind, not at all. He seemed nice enough as a person, but deep down he seriously mistrusted AIs in general and Ricky’s internal network in particular, and that was just wrong. She doubted that he realized how easily Class-3s could read him; those thoughts certainly were not for public display.
But her hardware allowed her to connect with others on many levels far beyond those necessary for simple communication. Back doors to a person’s thoughts . . .
“Ricky?” she flashed through her network. “How’s the Ohmygod?”
Someone in the IS department had started calling the Omega Code the Ohmygod Code—inevitable, perhaps—and the name had stuck. Software for destroying entire civilizations . . .
“Ready for launch, Carolyn,” the ship told her and a dozen separate inner levels. The query and the reply were so quick, in human terms, that she replied to Gray without any apparent hesitation.
“Good to go, Admiral.”
“No sign of . . . contamination?”
“No, sir.”
Why did he keep going on about that, like two-way communication with the code was a bad thing? They could handle it. They had it covered. . . .
VFA-96, Black Demons
TC/USNA CVS America
Tabby’s Star
0135 hours, TFT
Lieutenant Donald Gregory hung face down in the close embrace of his Starblade’s cockpit, hating the wait, the sour anticipation before launch.
Come on, people . . .
“Black Demons, you are clear for drop.”
“Copy launch clearance PriFly,” Commander Mackey replied over the tactical net. “Launching in three . . . two . . . one . . . drop!”
Gregory felt the sudden surge of free fall as his Starblade slid off its launch rails and out into emptiness. Propelled by the centrifugal momentum of America’s turning flight bay, his ship accelerated at five meters per second squared until it was clear of the ship’s massive disk-shaped shield cap. Bifrost—swallowed in darkness save for a searingly bright crescent along one edge—loomed vast beyond the shield cap, the clouds faintly illuminated by the pale glow of Kapteyn’s Star’s light off the rings. Directly overhead—at least as he was oriented currently—it looked like a titanic bite had been taken out of those rings by Bifrost’s planetary shadow.
“PriFly, handing over command to CIC.” Mackey’s voice said over the tactical channel.
“Copy that, Black Demons. Good luck.”
“Okay, Demons,” Mackey continued. “Nice and easy. Start spreading out. Let’s not come around the planet in a tight bunch.”
The Starblades began accelerating, and the darkness of Bifrost’s night side rushed up toward them.
“Here comes our special package,” DeHaviland said.
Gregory saw it . . . another SG-420 Starblade accelerated by America’s spinal mount out through the shieldcap. Their briefing had just said that it was AI-crewed, its interior configured as computronium.
Dozens of other fighters were clustered around and ahead of the carrier, tiny silver motes dwarfed by the immense starship.
“What’s so special about it?” Ruxton asked.
“A downloaded clone of Konstantin,” Mackey replied. “With some software scarfed from those Gaki things at Tabby’s Star.”
“Jesus,” Caswell exclaimed. “The Admiral’s gonna try to do to the Rosetters what the Denebans did to Tabby’s Star?”
“I think that’s supposed to be the general idea. Now shut up, everyone. Let’s not tell the bad guys we’re coming.”
In fact, it seemed unlikely that the Rosetters would pick up anything, even if they had receivers clear of Bifrost. The Black Demons were using point-to-point laser communications; the radio spectrum was almost completely washed out in a sea of white noise from the gas giant’s magnetosphere. Gregory could see the cold, green glare of powerful aurorae circling Bifrost’s poles. Radio here was all but useless.
In silence, then, they plunged toward the brilliantly lit crescent—dawn’s edge rimming half the planet. Past the innermost rings, now, Gregory felt the thump and shudder as they began cutting through the tenuous hydrogen gas of the planet’s upper atmosphere. Plasma streamers trailed astern as daylight rushed toward them.
They began pulling Gs as they curved across the terminator, their gravitic drives vying with the immense tug of the giant planet.
“Arm weapons,” Mackey ordered. “Watch for bogies. . . .”
Daylight exploded in their faces as the tiny red starpoint of the local sun rose above the horizon.
There!
Gregory’s onboard AI was identifying one of a dozen crescent moons in the sky as Romeo One. At first, it was hard to pick it out from the natural satellites, but as they continued to close the range, he began to see details of light and shadow, the peculiarly geometric features that marked it as an artifact, a weapon, rather than a moon.
They’d crossed Bifrost’s equator in their close passage, and the rings were below them, now, a dazzling sweep across the entire sky. Off to the left, the rings had been savagely distorted by what looked like ocean waves. Romeo One was skimming past the outermost ring just 250,000 kilometers from the planet.
Antiprotons snapped across heaven; Lieutenant Rutherford shrieked and died.
“Evasive maneuvering!” Mackey said. “Use your nukes to go in behind a smokescreen.”
Gregory threw his Starblade into a series of jinks and lurches, twisting madly around the flickering singularity off the fighter’s blunt prow in an effort to be wherever the alien antimatter beam was not. At his command, his AI triggered a nuclear-tipped Krait missile, sending it streaking toward the alien planet and detonating it at a precisely calculated distance. The fireball swelled, silent and dazzling, filling the sky ahead, then began to fade moments before his fighter streaked through the fireball. Even the Rosetters would have trouble targeting incoming fighters through hot plasma, and if they couldn’t target, they couldn’t hit.
“Hey, Navy!” a new voice called. “Mind if we join the party?”
“Who’s that?” Mackey replied.
“VMFA-46, the Grim Rippers,” the voice replied. “TAD to the Lucas. Where do you want us, sir?”
“Just pile on where you can, Marines,” Mackey replied. “Nothing fancy.”
“We don’t do fancy. Okay, boys and girls! You heard the gentleman. Pile on!”
“Ooh-rah!” someone called over the tac channel. Marine AS-90 Hornets swung in from Heimdall, joining the assault.
Nuclear fireballs lit up the artificial world.
TC/USNA CVS America
Flag Bridge
Kapteyn’s Star
0155 hours, TFT
“Bridge, PriFly. The last of the fighters are spaceborne.”
“Roger that,” Gray said. “Captain Gutierrez? You may accelerate.”
“Course, Admiral?”
“With the fighters. Take us around the planet.”
“Admiral?” Mallory said, puzzled. “What are we doing?”
“It is absolutely imperative that t
he AI torpedo reach Romeo One. If we draw off some of the Rosetters’ fire, it’ll have a better chance of getting through.”
“And us?” Gutierrez asked. “The ship?”
“The mission comes first.”
Gray was well aware that America might not survive the coming minutes. But they had a weapon that might actually stop the Rosette entities, and it was their duty to see that it did. He felt Konstantin’s presence in his mind . . . and a kind of quiet approval. Waiting. Watching . . .
The hell with it. This was a human battle.
He opened a private channel to Gutierrez. “Sara?”
“Admiral?”
“Ready all escape pods, and be ready to abandon ship when I give the word. Everyone should be able to reach the forces on Heimdall, readily enough.”
“I’ll give the orders, Admiral.”
“Good . . .”
He’d done what he could to protect America’s officers and crew from the consequences of his disobeying orders. This time, however, there was precious little he could do to shield them. The mission, always, came first. . . .
Accelerating hard, America flashed beneath the plane of Bifrost’s rings, shuddered as she plowed again through atmosphere, then burst into sunlight with Romeo One directly ahead.
“You may open fire, Mr. Mallory.”
“Aye, aye, sir! Firing spinal mount . . .”
The carrier possessed twin railguns running the length of her spine and emerging in the center of her shield cap, inside the ring of massive drive singularity projectors. Powerful magnetic fields accelerated fifty-ton warloads down the tracks and into the void.
Romeo One was firing wildly at the fighters, which were scattered across the entire sky. Six squadrons off the America, plus several Marine squadrons from Heimdall . . . there were a hundred fighters out there at least.
Or had been. Thirty had been vaporized already, with more flaring into white fireballs and disintegrating with each passing moment. With America’s approach, the aliens did indeed have another target, a much larger and more threatening one, and they concentrated their fire on the star carrier.