by Chris Bunch
Eminent domain was suggested next. His ships would be seized. It was pointed out it might be a little difficult to "stop" a spacecraft that would outperform, at quarter-drive, any conventional starship. And how, exactly, did any government propose to do this, in deep space? Eventually even the bureaucrats were convinced that Halt in the Name of the Law was a little ludicrous between planets, let alone between stars. It was rumored someone had laboriously defined inertia to them.
Government ships could be armed, came the bumble. That brought a stinging release from Richards's headquarters. First, all basic interplanetary treaties had banned military development in space. Second, and more to the point, Kea's ships were armed. This was a fact—Kea had purchased some tiny lunar lighters, given them AM2 stardrive, put in a prox detonator in the nose next to a warhead—also AM2, of course—and adapted a standard commercial robot piloting system to the lighters. Each starship had been given a missile. Now each looked like a chubby shark with a remora. The ships themselves were also equipped with remote-controlled chainguns mounted inside each ship's cargo port.
Very well, the pols floundered. His ships would be arrested—seized for an Admiralty court—when they made planetfall. Kea's main lawyer announced quite coolly that, first, if Clive, Anon., became aware of any warrant being issued, the firm's craft would blacklist the city, province, etc., as before. If force was used, that would be regrettable. Any such country attempting this deviousness would be considered as beyond the law. No better than a corsair nation. And not only would charges be filed in the still-extant if ludicrous World Court, but force would be met with force. The uneasy peace continued. It was prolonged by the rumor—never verified—that all of the new starships were booby-trapped, so that any intrusion beyond Barrier Thirty-three would be a disaster.
Evidently there were disbelievers. Because, quite suddenly, as one of Richards's ships were clearing for lift from Ixion Port—Alpha Centauri's most developed world—the ship, most of the port, and some of the city's industrial section vanished in hellflame. Richards's enemies seized on this—the new engines were unsafe, and should be banned, and Richards himself prosecuted. Kea was worried—and then an amateur shipfreak surfaced with an amazing audio track. He had been recording ship-tower chatter, and, quite clearly, any listener could hear the takeoff drone being interrupted by shouts, the clanging of a hatchway out of crewspace, gunfire, and then silence. The critics were not only answered, but somewhat discredited. But that was too close for Kea.
He had been carefully winnowing through the personnel roster of his retained spookshop, and hiring away the absolutely loyal, and those who were qualified in certain irregular areas. The truehearts he used for personal and estate security. The others made up a very specialized hunter-killer team. They went looking for whoever had hired the hijackers. And they found them—the woman and her son who headed SpaceWays/Galiot. Somehow a commercial gravlighter went out of control and crashed into a mansion on a tiny, private Aegean island. Without any surviving heirs, SpaceWays went into receivership until the situation could be sorted out. Just to make sure that the robber barons and their thugs got the message, Kea hired more security people. These had a new task—to baby-sit, unobtrusively, his spacemen. Anyone interfering with one of his crew members, whether it was pumping for info in a barroom or trying a back-alley snatch for interrogation, was intercepted and "handled roughly."
Kea bought more shipyards and commissioned more ships, and they went out to the stars. For deployment around the worlds of man, he had a different class of ship built. These were AM2 warships, missile/rocket/laser/chaingun-armed patrol craft, which escorted the liners and freighters safely away from the dangerous—i.e., inhabited—worlds. Governments may have been banned from building warships, but no one had mentioned private enterprise, for the simple reason that before AM2 drive, a spaceship/starship built for combat was absurdly wasteful. Kea was spending a fair amount of his time thinking about weaponry. One of his technicians, a Robert Willy, had pointed out that there was no particular reason a tiny particle of AM2 could not be given a shroud of Imperium X and made into an explosive bullet, if the shielding was cast with a deliberate, high-impact-sensitive fault. He also believed that, if this "bullet" was made small enough, and the latest generation of hyperpowerful portable lasers was used, that the AM2 bullet could not be "fired" by laser. Kea Richards, thinking grimly of Alfred Nobel, his invention that was intended for the benefit of all mankind, and the effective if terribly dangerous "dynamite guns" that were produced, gave Willy his own research team and access to Anti-Matter Two.
The vids and the livies, reflecting public perceptions and feelings as the media have always done instead of creating it as too many fools believe, were beginning to banner Kea as a liberator. Greater than Edison, greater than Ford, greater than McLean, even. Kea knew they weren't even close, although the thought sounded like it came from a megalomaniac. They still didn't understand, any more than someone in the middle of massive change ever does, the total revolution that was going on. But they would.
Everything was running at full drive. Kea was worried, because he knew what would come next and wasn't sure that he would be able to block the next attempt to deny man the stars.
Perhaps the assault team had forgotten about Jupiter light and thought they would have complete night for their cover. Or perhaps they didn't care. But it was no more than three-quarters dark when they attacked, Jove hanging overhead like the largest color-streaked party light ever built. They were well-trained commandos and must have practiced on full-scale models or at the least livie-simulations of Richards's estate.
Alarms screamed, and Kea rolled out of the bed he had slumped into, exhausted, less than an hour before. Not awake, he stumbled to a closet and pulled on a dark coverall. Hanging nearby was an LBE harness with a pistol and ammo belt. A machine carbine dangled next to it. Wishing that he'd had more time, and Willy'd been able to perfect his AM2 weapon, he jacked a round into the carbine's chamber, tugged on zip-closure boots, and headed down the hall. The ground roiled beneath him, and Kea tumbled down. He didn't find out until later that was a small picketboat, under robot control, that had been sent smashing into one of his compound's perimeter labs as a diversion to attract emergency crews. Kea came up, ran on. Into one of the mansion's lobbies.
"Mr. Richards! The bunker!" Security's watch commander was waving at him. Then a crash, and supposedly impactproof plas and reinforcing alloy fell into the chamber. The officer spun, shouted, died, as two black-dressed men dropped into the room, weapons firing. One of them saw Richards, gun came up, recognized their target, the gun was knocked away, and they dove toward him. Kea held the trigger full back and three rounds on full auto/control shattered the pair. So they were under explicit orders, he thought. I'm not to be killed. That'll slow 'em down a little.
Richards's security men swarmed into the lobby. One of them flipped a blast grenade up, through where the skylight had been blown away. Another explosion, and screams. The hell with the bunker, Richards thought. If the bastards know enough about his mansion to hit close to my bedroom, they've probably got that targeted as well. Gunfire chattered from outside the main entrance and lasers flashed seen/never-seen red eye-memory. Shouts.
"Let's go," he yelled, and ran toward the main door. Absurd, absurd, he thought. Are you leading from the front, or are you playing Roland? You are an engineer and maybe a back-alley brawler. You've never been a combat soldier, nor been much interested in being one, or even watching the livies that glorify their slaughter.
The mansion's main anteroom was a haze of smoke and gunfire. Kea watched his "soldiers"—and most of them had been trained in one or another of the various armed forces of the Solar System—fire, cover, and maneuver forward. Amazing, he thought. Just like the vids. Just like the livies. Another thought came: Did the livies reflect reality, or are all of us aping what we've seen done by actors? Come on, man! You don't have time for this slok! There were four attackers left, crouched behi
nd the solid planters, containing now-bullet-shattered ferns. More grenades rained—never liked the ferns anyway, and there'll sure be a redecorating bill after this, amazing how the mind can spin all these stupid things out—and the first wave was obliterated.
Kea's security may have been surprised by the first assault—but now their training and constant practice took over. Great doors that appeared to be part of the three-story walls slid open, and wheeled autocannons were rolled out. They were set up—as intended—behind those planters that had been designed to double as a firing point, and ammo drums slammed home.
Outside, on the vast reaches of the grounds, Kea counted three, no four, small ships. This was not a small-time operation, he realized. The second wave rose from cover and charged. The front of Kea's near-palace had been laid out with graceful, flowing, low, close-barred railings that swept the viewer's eye toward the splendor of the house itself. It was considered part of the magnificence that had made the house a prizewinner in architectural circles. In fact, the flowing walls had been drawn up by Kea himself, working with his head security man, and were intended to channel not the viewer's eye, but an attacker's charge.
The railings were just high enough to be hard to hurdle, and the bars were far enough apart so they offered neither cover nor concealment. Now, they worked as intended, channeling the attackers directly toward the main entrance. Directly into the killing zone of the autocannon.
Guns yammered again, and blasts fragmented the night, and men and women shouted and died. A wounded, bloodied man stumbled through the smoke, gun hanging down, and was shot down. He was the last. Without a pause, the autocannon were pushed out into the open, and opened up on the four spacecraft. Two of the ships blew apart, the other smoked menacingly, and the last gouted flames.
Kea's security split into three elements. One group took up a defensive perimeter around Kea, a second charged the ships, their task to make sure all the attackers were down. The third element quickly, skillfully, began searching the bodies and, after making sure the wounded were disarmed, dragging them toward a common collecting point. Kea watched, his mind suddenly dulled. After some time, his Head of Security approached. "Sir, I have a report."
"Go ahead."
"There were at least seventy-three invaders, possibly more. We don't know how many were aboard the ship. Twelve are still alive."
"Who are they?"
"No IDs on any of the bodies. The two that're talking claim they're indies, hired out of Pretoria by freelancers they'd worked with before. Neither of them know who's the original hire. Assuming that this was a for-hire hit, which I don't."
"Keep looking. Will your two injured stand up to interrogation?"
"Negative, sir. Not now, maybe not ever. Those thirty-mill rounds tear hell out of everything."
"Do you have a prog?"
"Not really," the security commander said slowly. "Maybe meres, working for one of your enemies. Maybe coverts that got sheep-dipped and this is a deniable black." Kea nodded. It could have been the Federation, Earthgov, Mars Council, or any of the supercorporations.
"What about the wounded, sir? I mean, after we've gotten whatever we can?" Kea hesitated, as an aide approached.
"Sir, we have a com from NewsTeam Eleven. Leda. They say they've gotten six calls reporting gunshots and explosions, and want to know what happened. They'd like to talk to you… and they want to dispatch a team."
Kea thought quickly. At first his reaction was to welcome the newsies. He'd have time to change into a bathrobe and bewildered expression, and throw a conference on the basis of Who Would Dare, Why Would Anyone Attack an Innocent? and so on and so forth. He reconsidered. "You can tell them that my security was conducting an extremely realistic exercise. They're welcome to send a newsteam—Ganymede is a free world—but they are not welcome to land on my property. As for me—I'm offplanet. Testing a new ship. You have no contact with me at the moment. You can tell them that when I return, you imagine, I would be willing to talk to them, although about what, you have no idea."
The aide blinked—a thickie, Richards thought—frowned, then scurried away. Kea turned back to his security commander. "Does that answer your question?"
"Yessir." The officer took his pistol from its holder, chambered a round, and walked toward the enemy-casualty collection point.
Kea walked out of the shambles and looked up, beyond the sky-filling bulk of Jupiter, his eyes going beyond, toward the settled worlds. Now we'll wait. Until someone whines. And then we'll know who my biggest enemy is.
But he never found out. There were not even rumors in the grayworld of the mercenaries.
Kea grew even more concerned. This attempt could have worked. And it wouldn't be the only one or the biggest. It had been handicapped because "They" wanted Richards alive. But sooner or later someone would determine that at least the status quo must be maintained—and surely one of Kea's people knew the secret of stardrive.
No one did, of course. But that would not bring Kea Richards back from the grave. He needed a miracle.
Chapter Twenty-Six
Clarke Central, Luna, A.D. 2211
THE MIRACLE ARRIVED in late spring. It was first observed and tracked by a Callisto-Mars Yukawa drive ship. It was an irregular chunk of rock not much more than a kilometer in diameter. It might have been considered a small asteroid, but its characteristics showed no semblance to the rocks tumbling beyond Mars. The navigator noted the orbit and roughly calculated the meteor's speed. He reported and forgot it. The report was logged, and the navigator's figures checked, rechecked, and extrapolated. The tech at MarsNavCentral blinked, swore, and ran the problem again.
The figures indicated that this chunk of interplanetary/stellar debris was on a collision track with Earth's moon, plus-minus 15 percent probability. The tech told his supervisor. His supervisor, realizing the navigation center's annual budget was up for review, commed the existence of this hurtling rock to a local vid science-news reporter. And the reporter's editor knew what buill ratings and sold ads: FLASH: Scientists Report a New Interstellar Meteor on a Collision Course with Luna! Superspeed Asteroid to Crash into Moon in 158 E-Days! Mars Entire Population in Jeopardy! Earth Itself Endangered!
Chaos and craziness, from scientists to the media to the public. Early on, a literate antiquarian named the rock Wanderer. The name was seized on as the only thing everyone agreed about as the Solar System's sanity level dropped like the long-ago ocean in Hilo Bay. Kea, from Ganymede, watched and read in growing amazement and concern.
Theories were offered. Studied. The Solar Federation set up an emergency headquarters on Mars, in the central Clarke complex. It took a week or so, but eventually enough pols had been reassured there'd be more than enough time and ships to evac them before Wanderer impacted. And then the speeches and the "viewing with concern" went on. A state of emergency was declared. But nothing was done. Worse, as the probable impact time grew closer, nothing was even suggested.
Should the Moon be evacuated? How? There were almost two million people living under its cratered desolation. And what about Earth's population? Should everyone move to high ground, in the assumption Earth would experience the most erratic and deadly tides in humankind's history? Words, words. No actions.
Kea had thought his cynicism to be unshakable in his belief that society, as presently constituted, could muck up a rock fight. He should have been unsurprised as the media hollered, the pols debated, the scientists chased ever-receding decimal points, and the people clamored. The clamor included new prophets preaching that the sins of the past were about to be paid for. Mobs who knew that the world was coming to an end, and therefore utter license should be the order of the day. Cops and soldiery who seemed more worried about the possibility of riots than what response they would have to catastrophe.
Words, and more words, as Doomsday grew nearer and nearer. There were even some utter stiffs who suggested nothing should be done. This was part of nature, was it not? Man had evolved through cata
strophe. This was Intended to Happen. This would usher in the Next Level of Being. Intended by Whom varied from fruitbar to fruitbar.
Seventy-three days.
Kea sent for Doctor Masterson, his head scientist. He respected the man, as much for his pragmatism as for his ability to keep secrets and administer equally individualistic and iconoclastic scientists and technicians. Masterson ran his own prognoses: Prog: that Wanderer would collide with the Moon. 85 percent. Prog: that Wanderer would bankshot and crash Earth. 11 percent. Prog: that the Moon will shift its orbit closer to Earth. 67 percent. Prog: that the impact would be great enough to shatter Luna completely. 13 percent. Prog: that Wanderer would knock some fairly impressive chunks off the Moon. 54 percent.
Prog: that one or more of those moonlets could impact Earth. 81 percent.
The effects…
Kea did not need to listen. He was enough of a scientist to envision the radioactivity that would be produced if a decent-sized chunk of Luna, say about the size of Wanderer, hit land. And to consider the likelihood of great earthquakes and even the slight possibility of tectonic plateshift? Wanderer promised the cataclysm—but still no one proposed any action as it rushed onward. Pols were besieged with solutions, it was true, from using all the Solar System's rockets to push the Moon out of the way to building a great cannon that would blast Wanderer out of its lethal orbit. But none of them, even those that might be possible, were implemented. Studies were authorized. Military and police forces were put on alert.
Forty-one days.
Kea thought there were only two alternatives. First was that he was living in a completely mad universe. The second was that he was mad himself. Because a solution seemed quite obvious. But no one had taken it. At least yet.