The Last Valkyrie

by Dietmar Wehr

The asteroid that hit the Earth was so large that it would have taken days, maybe even weeks, to push it out of its old orbit around the sun onto a new collision trajectory at a much higher velocity. If one subtracted that time from the total unaccounted-for time, what it left for actually traveling to the Solar System and back again required the Trior to have much faster hyperspace drives than anyone was aware of. That conundrum wasn’t proof that they didn’t do it, but it certainly made it unlikely. The lack of complete data meant that there were plenty of other Compact ships whose movements couldn’t be verified or eliminated from the list of suspects. All of the trade missions were told to keep an eye out for those three large Trior ships.

  It was at the end of the six months when not one but two of those large ships were spotted docked at the same Trior station at the same time. Not a trace of them seen for months, and suddenly they’re both at a Trior station. Ronson’s gut was screaming at him that they were getting ready to engineer another asteroid strike, but it couldn’t be on a newly discovered race, because there wasn’t one. Could the Trior be trying to engineer an asteroid strike on Vesta? While that was theoretically possible, it wouldn’t be an easy task since Vesta WAS an asteroid, albeit a very large one, traveling along at roughly the same speed as all the other asteroids in the belt. In order to engineer a collision at a high speed, the Trior would have to push a smaller hunk of rock out of its solar orbit, causing it to narrowly miss the sun, and then use the sun’s gravity to slingshot it around onto the precise path that would eventually bring it back up into the asteroid belt just as Vesta was passing by. The precision required to calculate that path AND make the rock follow it was mindboggling. He was certain the computers that had been at Command Base would have been up to the task, but he doubted the Trior had that kind of technical knowhow. He checked his conclusions with Val Ky Ree.

  “You’re correct, Troy. Not only is that magnitude of orbital mechanics difficult to calculate but it is even more difficult to make the strike asteroid follow the exact path at the exact velocity. Part of the problem is determining Vesta’s exact position to within a few meters relative to this system’s sun and the other planets. The calculations need to be that precise.”

  “They must know how hard that kind of bank shot would be, so why would they even contemplate something like that?”

  “I don’t know enough about the way the Trior think to be able to answer that question, Troy. By the way, what’s a ‘bank shot’? Is that another poker term?”

  “Ha, no. It’s a reference to a particularly difficult maneuver in a game involving colliding balls on a table.”

  “Ah, clearly a game played by human children.”

  Ronson, about to correct her, realized how silly his explanation might sound to her and kept quiet.

  “We’re assuming that they’re working on another asteroid strike, but that may be an incorrect assumption,” she continued. “They may not even be targeting humans, but we have to assume they are, and the only other strategy that I can think of is a direct attack on Vesta by their ships using nuclear explosives.”

  Ronson snapped his fingers. “Yes! That has to be it! The colony is too deeply embedded into Vesta to be destroyed by lasers or particle accelerators. Only a nuke, and if it was big enough, one would do, could destroy the whole colony, especially if they managed to get it into the hangar bay before it detonated. But in order to do that, they’d have to get fairly close, and with all our defensive capability, plus the robot ships and Spearthrower craft on sentry duty, I don’t see how they could get that close.”

  “They can’t yet know about the three modified warships, Troy, because no Compact ships have been close enough to detect them, but your basic premise is valid. Enough time has gone by that all the Compact races should know that humans have more than just one or two Spearthrower-sized craft with superior detection and weapons capability. I think we should conduct what you humans call a ‘brain-storming’ session. If you were the Trior Commander knowing what he knows about human military capability, how would you attempt to attack the Vesta Colony, Troy?”

  “Hmm. I wish I knew more about their military capability. We know they have at least three ships that are significantly larger than their normal cargo-carrying freighters. If those are in fact warships, then why do they need to be that large? Laser and particle beam turrets, even powerful ones, don’t need that kind of room. What you would need room for are smaller specialized craft that could land on an asteroid and change its orbit and velocity, for example. The rock that hit Earth was large enough that it couldn’t be stopped by hitting it with nukes. Vesta is about a hundred times more massive than that rock. If those small engineering craft were able to sneak up on Vesta from the blind side, they might be able to change Vesta’s orbital velocity before we realized what they’d done. Speeding Vesta up doesn’t accomplish anything catastrophic as far as I can see, but slowing it down…?” Ronson paused, stunned by the implications of what he had started to say. “If they could slow it down by enough, then Vesta would eventually plunge into our sun. I doubt if we could prevent it. We’d have time to evacuate, but relocating thousands of people and starting over would be a huge problem for us. We’re still not ready to begin the colonization of Gunnir on a massive scale. The survey team hasn’t finished their work yet.”

  “Your analysis is quite logical, Troy. I have an alternative strategy to suggest. The star system containing Gunnir also has an asteroid belt. The astrogational data on Spearthrower would have included that fact, and therefore the Trior would know about it. What if they’re more concerned with human long term potential? If they made Gunnir uninhabitable through an asteroid strike, then humans would be forced to remain on Vesta for the foreseeable future. If I were the Trior Commander, I’d consider crippling human growth potential to be a more valuable goal than forcing humans to abandon Vesta. Would you agree?”

  Ronson frowned. “Did Spearthrower’s database have information in it that Gunnir was the only habitable Aesir planet that we could colonize?”

  Val Ky Ree responded after a barely perceptible pause. “No, it didn’t, and that means that my analysis is invalid. The astrogational database has information on multiple planets that my Aesir colonized. Therefore the Trior wouldn’t know which planet we intended to colonize, so Vesta has to be their target. This asteroid is almost big enough to be considered a planet in its own right. Trying to divert something so massive with a few small craft would take a long time. The risk of detection by us would be high, as would be the risk that we would know with certainty which race had made the attempt. Do you think the Trior would be that reckless?”

  Ronson sighed. “No. Now that you’ve pointed out the weaknesses of my theory, I don’t think they would try that. They’d go for something that would give them a much higher chance of remaining anonymous.” Both he and Val Ky Ree stayed silent as they struggled with their own thoughts. Knocking Vesta out of orbit, regardless of how the Trior might try it, seemed to be just too risky or difficult. So what did that leave? The only other place where humans were living right now was the station orbiting Earth. Could it be that the Trior were planning to attack the station? Knocking the station out would not seriously impact the volume of trade between humans and other races. The only reason the station was being made operational for trade by visiting Compact ships was that it could stockpile a wide variety of human and Aesir equipment that the small Spearthrower-type ships wouldn’t have the room to carry. It was also the final condition that humanity had to meet in order to be granted full membership in the Compact. Was THAT the reason for attacking it?

  “If we lose our only station, our application to join the Compact wouldn’t be accepted,” said Ronson.

  “And even with Aesir technology, it would take a long time and a lot of effort to build another,” said Val Ky Ree. “I think you may have deduced their strategy, Troy. The station is far more vulnerable to laser or particle beam fire from ships making a high-speed pass than the colony here
on Vesta. Even with my advanced detection systems, hitting a target moving that fast with a torsion beam would be difficult.”

  “Could a sentry ship handle the defense of our station or would you have to stand guard?”

  “There are advantages and disadvantages either way. The programmed warships could react faster, but they are limited by their programming. I could try to program specific counter-strategies for a wide variety of scenarios, but if the actual attack doesn’t fit one of those scenarios, then the programming may lead to sub-optimal results. On the other hand, if I guard the station personally, I can determine the best counter-strategy but may not be able to implement it fast enough. To cover both possibilities, I would recommend that both I and one sentry ship guard the station while the other two sentry ships continue to guard Vesta.”

  Ronson had a bad feeling about leaving Vesta solely dependent on the robotically-controlled warships but he reluctantly agreed. The Station had just under 100 people on board. Vesta had over 5,000. If he and Val Ky Ree guessed wrong and the target really was Vesta, then what was left of the human race might pay a terrible price.

  Chapter Seventeen:

  The ‘attack’ happened 13 days later, but the target wasn’t the human station or Vesta. Three of the very large Zeiss habitation stations, which housed tens of thousands of that race, were blasted into large pieces of debris. The destruction happened just as one of the human trading ships was in the process of leaving the area after conducting some trades at the Zeiss trade station. The pilot of that ship was Franklin. He brought the news back, and even though the trip back had taken almost two weeks, he still appeared to be shaken by the experience. The Emergency Committee demanded Val Ky Ree and Ronson’s return from Earth in order to be present during the official debriefing. Val Ky Ree had even taken the unusual step of making an extremely short jump through hyperspace to cut the travel time from Earth orbit to Vesta down to minutes rather than hours. To save even more time, Ronson stayed on the ship, and both he and Val Ky Ree were in video and audio contact with the Committee. Everyone on Vesta was observing the debriefing by video. When the Chairperson was certain that everyone was there either physically or electronically, she asked Franklin to relate what had happened.

  He was clearly nervous. “Well, ah…ah, I was piloting the ship away from Zontag Station when the long range detectors alerted me to the presence of the three large Trior ships that we’d been told to keep an eye out for. They were just coming into detection range on ballistic trajectories. Ah, I mean they weren’t maneuvering under power. I thought that was very strange, considering that their vectors were all wrong if they intended to head for Zontag Station. What their trajectories did do was bring them to within a quarter million kilometers of the cluster of habitation stations that orbit the Zeiss homeworld.” He paused to take a deep breath. “When the detection gear alerted me to huge venting of atmosphere from three habitat stations, I ordered the ship’s opticals to zoom in for a closer look. Normally at that distance, you can’t see much, but these habitats are huge! Even from where I was, I could see those stations literally falling apart, and there were NO explosions of any kind! Big chunks of those stations were being blown off, and that told me that whatever was hitting those stations wasn’t laser or particle beams.” He paused before continuing. “I also noticed something else. Damage to all three habitat stations seemed to be happening at exactly the same time. At first I couldn’t understand how that could be. It was only later on, on the way back, that I had time to take a close look at the sensor data, and I realized what had happened. It’s easier if I show you on the screen. This is a re-creation of the tactical data during the attack. Those three blue icons are the habitat stations under attack. The three red icons are the three Trior ships coasting past the habitat cluster with no transponder IDs squawking. Now watch carefully as the computer displays a line that runs through all three habitats. That line intersects the three Trior ships perfectly. When I saw that, I knew what was destroying those habitats. If those ships were firing torsion beams at one of the stations, it would disintegrate a path through the first one plus through anything behind it, which in this case just happened to be two more habitats. Somehow the Trior must have figured out how to build torsion beam weapons. I’m guessing they got enough of a clue from examining the spinal weapon on Spearthrower to be able to eventually make their own version, but that’s not the worst part of this.” He paused again and shook his head.

  “The Zeiss had more than three habitat stations in that cluster. By the time the attack was over, the other Zeiss stations were broadcasting that my ship had to have been the one that attacked the other habitats because it was clear to them too that a torsion beam had been used. There weren’t any ships that were close enough to pose a threat, so I kept accelerating. By the time I was ready to enter hyperspace, I was hearing calls for the assembly of a reprisal fleet to not only knock out our Earth station, but also attack our Vesta colony.”

  “Son of a bitch,” whispered Ronson. “Those bastards engineered an attack on the Zeiss and made it look like we did it!”

  Val Ky Ree noticed that Troy’s voice was not only full of rage, it also had what she recognized as self-recrimination, and she understood why. “You’re worried that your announced threat against Zeiss ships will give credibility to the perception that we were behind this attack.”

  “Yes, God dammit, and no one will care that we then traded peacefully with the Zeiss during the last few months. They’ll probably figure that the trading was just a ruse to get one of our ships into the system that had all those habitat clusters. Eighty percent of the entire Zeiss race lives on those habitat stations, and half of them are now gone. The Zeiss will want payback, and they’ll find plenty of volunteers from other races to help them get it! We could wake up in a few days and find our sky full of ships!”

  “Then we will destroy them all if necessary, Troy, but when those ships arrive, we should try to convince them that we were not at fault. We can show them our sensor data.”

  Ronson shook his head. “Huh, how much do you want to bet that the reprisal fleet will have a lot of Trior ships in it? If we try to blame them for this attack, they’ll only deny it and claim that we falsified the sensor data. And if we do destroy that fleet, what kind of relationship could we ever hope to have with the Compact after that? We’ll always be an outlaw race. Despite all your wonderful technology, there are still things we need that we can only get by trading for it. Without that, we’ll still be teetering on the knife-edge of extinction for years, Gunnir colony or no Gunnir colony.”

  “The Committee is attempting to call you, Troy. Shall I put them through?”

  “Sure.”

  “—you hear us, Ronson?”

  “I hear you now, Chairwoman. Val Ky Ree and I were discussing some things privately.”

  After a slight pause, the response was, “Anything you’d like to share with the Committee?”

  Ronson sighed. “Nothing that isn’t already obvious. Destroying any reprisal fleet will only be a short term reprieve with lots of long term negative consequences. And trying to convince them that we didn’t do it is going to be very difficult, especially if the Trior make up a disproportionate part of that fleet.”

  “How confident is Val Ky Ree that any reprisal fleet could be destroyed?”

  “I’m absolutely certain of it,” said Val Ky Ree. “But in order to achieve that certainty, all three sentry ships would have to be part of the defense of Vesta along with my own ship. That means Earth Station will have to be left defenseless, and therefore I recommend evacuating all humans from the station. However many trade ships we’ll have when their fleet arrives will not be enough to defend our station and they should be kept near Vesta.”

  There was a pause during which Ronson heard some background chatter he assumed was hushed discussion amongst the Committee members. “Is there no way to save the station too?” asked the Chairwoman.

  “Not without adding an ele
ment of risk in terms of the defense of Vesta. If the Trior send their three large warships, which apparently have torsion beam weapons whose effective range is not known with certainty, then I’ll need every available ship to keep the enemy fleet from getting close enough to be a threat. Even laser and particle beams could inflict surface damage at long range if they can fire enough weapons to compensate for lower accuracy.”

  “What about evacuating as many as possible to Gunnir?” The Chairwoman’s voice sounded desperate.

  “Not all of Vesta’s humans could be evacuated to Gunnir before the reprisal fleet is likely to arrive, and without proper preparation, the Gunnir colonists might find themselves in dire straits very quickly. I would remind the Committee that Gunnir is home to the night cats, and they are formidable threats.”

  Ronson shuddered at the thought of hundreds of poorly equipped and badly organized humans being attacked at night by dozens of night cats. His horrified imagination conjured up the image of a feeding frenzy of dark shapes darting among a panicked populace that would very likely contain the few children the human race had right now. And yet, If they were going to try an evacuation, leaving the children behind on Vesta would make no sense.

  The Chairwoman looked around at her fellow committee members and said, “We need to discuss this among ourselves. Thank you for your input.” And with that, the electronic connection disappeared.