Ephialtes had used its ion engines to reverse its attitude in space. It then fired up its main NFJ engine. The braking action had slowed the great ship down to a speed at which the gravity of Mars would capture it and hold it in its orbit.
Askel had triple checked her locked down software but had still been jittery about firing up the engine. It had to be done. The speed of Ephialtes on its outbound journey was so great that not even mighty Ares himself would have been able to stop her. If they hadn’t slowed down the ship would have skipped past Mars and carried on toward the outer limits of the solar system and deep space beyond.
The firing had passed without incident and afterwards the ship was once again turned around to face its destination. The bridge afforded a panoramic forward view of the rust-coloured planet which loomed large before them.
The lower speed - as well as ultimately ensuring their survival - afforded Askel the opportunity to test some of the other important systems. She had gone to the starboard day room to ask for volunteers. When none were forthcoming she had made a formal request to Soward through Lucero.
“I need a few commanders. Three, at least. I’m going to run through a simulated drop,” she had said to Lucero.
“Why do you need commanders if it’s a simulation?”
“The drop is simulated. I’d like to do a full rehearsal of everything else, including opening the drop-bay doors.”
Lucero thought. “Why? Why can’t you just sim the whole thing?”
“I could, of course. But I want to run through the exercise with as much real data as possible. You know that the malware that destroyed Otus was adept at feeding back phony data. I want to see these systems physically working. And I’d like real human feedback from the pilots, too.”
Lucero paced. “Well, it sounds fine to me. Just drop by one of the day rooms and pick up some volunteers.”
“I tried that.”
“Oh,” said Lucero. “Leave it with me.”
Soward had provided Steiner, Meades and Jennifer W Hayes. None seemed particularly happy with the assignment, but they listened patiently while Askel talked them through it.
“I will run data through the systems for a deployment over Marineris. Telemetry data for Ephialtes will be simmed, time will be simmed, but you will be using the physical systems in your dropships. That is to say the dropships and drones will be fully armed, and you will run through the full launch procedure. The bay doors will open - that is one of the prime tests we are running here - and you will then launch, but that part of the test will be simulation again.”
“So is this sim or actual?” said Meades.
“It’s a hybrid test,” said Lund. “I need data on a physical run-through of the arming procedure and the opening of the bay doors. I’ve adjusted the sim to accept actual data for those parts of the test. Obviously, we don’t want to launch out here, but apart from that I want this to be as close as we can get to a physical launch. Any other questions?”
“I have a question,” said Steiner.
“Go on,” said Lund.
“Why me?” said Steiner, with fake theatricality. Meades and Hayes laughed.
Lund took some steps closer to Steiner. “It’s your job, commander. Is that a problem?”
Steiner flashed Lund a shit-eating grin. “No, ma’am, not a problem at all.”
“Good,” said Lund. “Let’s go.”
Once the commanders were in their dropships the truculence disappeared. Commanders tended to be task oriented and once they had something to do they focused on it and gave it their full attention. The drill they were performing they had done many times before, either simmed in situ in their dropships or in IVRs back on Earth. This case was unusual in that it was a full rehearsal for a drop with real-world overlays. In the sims they would routinely skip over the arming process once they had programmed their loadouts. The simple reason for that was that arming a dropship and its drones took anything up to half an hour. The system was automated, so all the pilots had to do was sit and wait. In a simulated drop they could skip through that part. What was happening now was real - the dropships and their drones were actually being armed by maintenance drones. It made sense from an operational point of view - wars are not fought in simulators, after all - but it was tedious to be a part of.
Steiner considered chatting over the com to Meades and Hayes but he didn’t know them well and decided against it. Instead he reviewed the data coming over his com and HUD relating to the arming process. As far as he could see it all looked good. His dropship would be fully armed in ten or fifteen minutes. All other readings looked good, too.
Lund was monitoring the procedure. She had data feeds from all three dropships, all of the drones on board each ship and all of the maintenance drones. She had video feeds from the dropship cabins and the drones, too. She monitored these carefully to see the correlation between what was physically happening and what the data said was happening. It all tallied.
When the armoury drones had finished their work Lund spoke over the com to Steiner, Meades and Hayes. “This is Lund, all my readings are good here, please confirm your status.”
“Good here,” said Steiner, and the others followed suit.
“I’m depressurising the drop-bays,” said Lund.
“Acknowledged,” came the replies.
“Dropships four through six, please prepare for launch.”
“Preparing.”
Steiner ran through some final checks and made some last minute adjustments. He knew that Meades and Hayes would be doing the same thing.
Lund came over the com again. “Drop-bays are now fully purged, standby for bay doors to open.”
Lund ran the sequence that would open the doors. As she did so she moved on to the launch program. She knew this part of the process was to be simulated so she had to oversee it manually. Casually glancing back to the door opening sequence she was surprised to see it read ‘Complete’ when the visuals she had from the dropship cockpits clearly showed that the doors had not moved.
“Commander Hayes, can you please confirm for me that your drop-bay door has not opened?” Lund said over the com.
“Confirmed,” said Hayes. “The bay door remains closed.”
“Steiner, Meades. Can you please confirm that your bay doors have not opened either?”
“Confirmed,” came both replies.
Lund ran the door opening sequence again. As she looked at her display the data showed the doors opening while the visuals showed they were not. For a moment she thought she must be confusing the sim and actual part of the test. She switched the entire system over to manual.
“Commanders Steiner, Meades and Hayes, please do not do anything until ordered. We’re temporarily running a fully live system here. I’m just chasing down some bugs, please stand by,” said Lund. Now fully in control of the system she ran the door opening sequence again.
Nothing happened.
Lund flipped the system back to the simulation and ran the kill sequence.
“Commanders, this exercise is terminated, please stand by for further instruction. You’ve no breathable air in the bays at the moment so sit tight.”
“I’m glad that wasn’t a complete waste of time,” Steiner said to Meades over the com.
Lund repressurised the bays.
“That’s it guys for now, thanks for your time,” she said.
Askel Lund was passive by nature and not taken to storming either into or out of rooms. For this particular instance she had decided at some low animal level to make an exception. She entered the day room at a fair clip and launched into her tirade immediately.
“This is a ship of war, about to enter into theatre. Below us will be a hostile planet, prepared if necessary to kill us. We face a common enemy together. I have built you the best ship I could in order that we should prevail over our enemies. The ship is strong. The crew - you - are well trained and equipped. We are more than equal to the task at hand.
“One amongst you is trying to s
ubvert this mission. One amongst you actively wants us to fail. You have succeeded in destroying Otus but you will not succeed here. I will find you - we will find you - and you will be held to account for the wrong you have done us.”
The room was silent but for the short panting breaths Lund was taking when she’d finished.
A commander stepped forward. “Now listen here, ma’am, I don’t take kindly to being called a -”
Askel cut him off. “Traitor? I don’t like it either. But until we find who it is you are all under suspicion.”
“Excuse me, Dr Lund,” said Foley, “I think you mean we are all under suspicion.”
He looked at her pointedly.
“I know where I stand,” said Lund. “I’m the only one I trust. Look around you. Someone on this ship - one of the commanders on this ship - is working for our enemies.”
She turned about and left.
Kostovich had noticed an interesting phenomenon. As he looked at the clock on his terminal counting down to zero he had no sense that the crucial moment was approaching. When there were ten minutes left, it seemed that ten minutes was enough for an entire lifetime. Ten whole minutes! The luxury!
The momentous task, when it was ten minutes away, seemed as though it may have been ten months, or ten years away. It didn’t seem, somehow, to be immediate. But the really curious thing was this; the phenomenon repeated itself at every milestone. At five minutes it appeared that five minutes was broadly equivalent to infinite time. Kostovich waited and waited for 00:00:00 to roll around but the clocked kept ticking languorously down, each second slowly passing like a season in childhood.
When the clock hit one minute remaining Kostovich felt almost serene. He was aware that he had fixated on the clock and that that may have had the effect of some sort of meditation. Each second had filled his consciousness to the exclusion of all other things and now he was feeling mildly disoriented as the countdown entered the final ten seconds.
He heard himself speaking as if he was hearing somebody else, aware yet not aware that he was saying the words, “Are the missiles prepared and ready for launch?”
“Missiles ready,” came Walton’s reply, inevitably, like the next beat in a piece of music.
“Give me the range on Ephialtes,” Kostovich said to Baldwin, whose reply, like Walton’s, seemed to hit a perfect rhythm.
“Ephialtes in range in three seconds.”
As the clock flipped over from the amber coloured 00:00:01 to the green 00:00:00 it seemed that time really did stop. Kostovich thought this was the only time that would ever exist that would feature the universe lined up in this particular way; that everything was exactly where it needed to be right now in order for right now to happen.
“Fire the missiles,” he said.
“Missiles away,” said Walton, her voice now curious for its ordinariness. She was no longer his musical foil but an assistant imparting useful information to him. He had snapped out of his trance and had to focus on what he was doing, which was the most important task he had ever been entrusted with. It was his job to save the planet. Try as he might, he could find no way of arguing that that was overstating the case. No, simply put it was his job, on this day, at this hour, to save the planet.
“Roger that,” he said in reply to Walton, who was momentarily confused. Who says ‘Roger that’ to someone who is in the same room as them?
Back in her cabin Askel tried to calm down, but she was heaving with rage. For most of the journey she had felt that she was on top of the situation. Now that she had been beaten by the saboteur one more time she was deflated. She knew the mission was imperilled all the while the saboteur was out there. She had been so wrapped up in the idea of outsmarting and defeating whoever it was that she hadn’t given time to considering what the stakes were. Her life and the lives of the rest of the crew were in imminent danger. She knew she was smart but she didn’t know how long she would be able to keep outsmarting an enemy she could not identify. Maybe they were dumb and lucky. Maybe she was. She found it hard to bear.
She brought up her simulation routines and the bay control software and immediately began comparing them to the pristine copies she had behind the secure firewall on her comdev. They all checked out at a superficial level so she began to run another check, this time looking deep inside the software itself. It would take a few minutes. In the meantime, anticipating that the bay control software had somehow been compromised, she also began copying over her known good version. She wanted to complete the tests as soon as possible. She planned to pick up from where they had left off. They had left the dropships and the drones armed - that part of the test had completed successfully. She was already thinking about adding some routines to the bay control software and the armoury software that might help defend it against attack. She was thinking about which other software subsystems may have been compromised. She decided to replace them all on a rolling basis. From now on, at any given time, one software system or another would be being overwritten with a known good copy of itself.
As she watched numbers scrolling up her screen as her AIs did a thorough scan, comparing the sets of software, she thought about her outburst in the day room. She wasn’t sure whether it would be useful or not for the commanders to know there was a traitor amongst their ranks. Maybe it would lead to a breakdown in trust and efficiency amongst the teams. Maybe it would save their lives if they knew not to put unthinking trust in one another. Maybe their suspicion would help her trace down the offender. She didn’t know.
She was feeling sorry for herself for having made such an outburst. She disliked admitting to herself that she had lost self-control in that moment. As she inwardly berated herself she was startled by her comdev. It was Lucero.
“Lund, are you running any combat simulations at the moment?”
“I’m not,” she responded, “although I should be. I’m planning to -”
“You’re not running any combat simulations whatsoever, please confirm,” said Lucero with steel in her voice.
Lund picked up on the urgency. “I’m not. What is it?” she said.
“Probably nothing, please stand by,” said Lucero quickly as she closed the line.
Lund glanced at her terminal. It was three more minutes before the bay control software would finish copying over, and another ten before the deep analysis would be complete. She stood up and made her way to the bridge at pace.
At the bridge she was barred from entering by a guard. “You can’t come in here, ma’am,” the guard said. “The bridge is off limits to civilians.”
“For God’s sake just let me in,” said Lund, “I need to speak to Commodore Lucero. This is an emergency.”
The guard was about to insist that Lund was not cleared to enter when Lucero called out from behind him, “Let her in.”
The guard snapped smartly to attention and saying, “Yes, sir,” he stood aside to let Lund enter.
“What is it?” she said as she walked towards Lucero.
Lucero did not look up from the terminal she was stood in front of. “It looks like a missile attack,” she said.
“Missiles? How many? Are they from the orbiting platform?”
“I’m guessing that’s exactly where they’re from,” said Lucero. “There are three of them.”
“You have countermeasures in place, right?” said Lund. “How long do we have before impact?”
Lucero looked at her terminal. “Around three minutes. Of course we have countermeasures. We’ll be launching our own missiles shortly. I’m interested in the trajectory of these three coming towards us. They seem to be making fine adjustments every twenty seconds or so.”
Lund looked worried. “Are we in range for them? I thought we were taking that platform out at the earliest possible opportunity?”
For the first time Commodore Lucero looked up at her. “We are taking them out at the earliest opportunity; the earliest opportunity will be in about fifteen minutes or so. It looks like they have the dro
p on us.”
Lund was concerned. “Do we know what type of warhead these missiles have?”
“No,” said Lucero. “Speed and vector are all we have. Prepare to launch defensive missiles.”
“Preparing missiles,” replied the weapons officer.
Lund looked at the screens depicting Ephialtes and the three missiles streaking towards it. She had been aware of the development of Ephialtes’ defensive missile systems. Back then it had all seemed quite distant and theoretical. Right now she was desperately hoping that the system was good enough.
Lucero was concentrating on her terminal once more. “Fire three missiles per target.”
“Three missiles per, sir, understood,” said the weapons officer.
“Fire when ready,” said Lucero.
“Aye, aye, sir.”
Lucero and Lund stared at the encroaching dots on the screen.
“Missiles away, sir,” said the weapons officer.
Lund swallowed. “What happens if we miss?” she said.
Lucero shrugged. “Fire some more, I guess,” she said, adding, “some militarily tactics are quite complex. This one isn’t. We just keep firing until we’ve shot them all down.”
They waited in silence until the oncoming dots and the dots racing towards them met and disappeared.
“Weapons, give me an update on our status,” said Lucero.
“All missiles deployed successfully,” said the weapons officer. “There are currently no missiles vectoring towards us.”
“Weapons, please confirm, are there any missiles vectoring anywhere at the present time?”
“Negative Commodore, no missiles at the present time.”
“Okay,” said Lucero, “we are on high alert. Everyone needs to be at their post. This is just the beginning, there’ll be more. Until we’re close enough to take out their missile platform they’re going to keep throwing them at us. We just have to keep batting them away. Full alert, everyone, let’s go.”
“Commodore Lucero,” said the weapons officer, “I think you may want to see this.”
Ephialtes (Ephialtes Trilogy Book 1) Page 40