“Situation is . . .” He stopped to cough, but the coughing hurt and he winced. “Situation is I’m screwed,” he said.
Steiner pulled on his stick and managed to bring his ship around enough that he could get a visual on Meades. It was easy enough to do. He just followed the stream of debris and particles from where the missiles had detonated. That area was a huge ball of flame that was easy to pick out in the blackness of space.
“Listen, Meades, I’m going to come by there, okay. Try to stay conscious.” He pointed his dropship in Meades’ direction.
Meades pressed the button on his com, but was too weak to make a reply.
The tiny portion of the vast universe to which Steiner was headed briefly lit up, then blossomed into another bright orange ball.
“Shit,” said Steiner. He looked at his control consoles. The warning lights were still flashing. Guidance systems were compromised and life support, too.
He swung the ship up and to the right. In front of him was a large planet, the colour of light rust. He accelerated towards it.
“What happened?” said Kostovich.
“Ephialtes remains on course,” said Baldwin. “All communications have stopped. No further missiles have been released.”
“All our nukes detonated successfully,” said Walton. “Two EMPs stopped transmitting telemetry data before detonation. One EMP detonated successfully.”
“Where was the detonation?” said Kostovich.
“The detonation, according to the data the missile was sending back to us, was approximately three hundred metres off Ephialtes.”
“Other missiles?” said Kostovich.
“The three decoy explosive missiles finished up chasing down three dropships which Ephialtes deployed immediately before the EMP blast. They all stopped transmitting before detonation. We have to assume they were destroyed by enemy countermeasures, probably from the dropships themselves.”
“And where are the dropships now?”
“One appears to be electronically dead and drifting towards Martian orbit. One seems to have lost structural integrity shortly after we lost contact with our missiles. Friendly fire, maybe? The other is intact and heading towards us.”
“Give me the range on that one and keep monitoring Ephialtes,” said Kostovich.
“The remaining dropship is approximately fourteen thousand kilometres from Parry 5 and turning away.”
“That’s still in range. Prepare three more explosive missiles and fire them at it,” said Kostovich.
“Preparing missiles,” said Walton.
“Fire as soon as you’re ready,” said Kostovich.
“Fire when ready, acknowledged,” said Walton, absentmindedly.
“What’s Ephialtes doing?”
“It’s not doing anything,” said Baldwin. “Apart from drifting along its trajectory. I think we killed it.”
“I think we killed it too,” said Kostovich.
“Missiles away,” said Walton.
A Helios dropship was more than capable of taking itself through the thin Martian atmosphere and landing at a designated point on the surface. Despite that, and for fun rather than from a sense of diligence, Steiner had spent many hours manually piloting dropships from orbit to the planet’s surface in IVRs. As he glanced at the dead autopilot console he was glad he had. He still had some good orientation data available to him and enough fuel to make the trip. There was no contact from Ephialtes, and nothing from its transponder. He had to assume the worst; that the blast that had taken out Hayes and damaged Meades was nuclear. All indications were that Ephialtes was lost. That made Steiner the last survivor.
It was as he was concentrating on setting his flight plan that he noticed the incoming missiles. He was a thousand kilometres from the surface. He decided to abandon his route, pulling on his control stick to turn the ship around to face the oncoming missiles. His plan was to use the same technique as he had used with Meades; to face the missiles head on. The closing speed of his ship and the missiles would be far higher than if the missiles were chasing him, and that gave him an advantage: the guidance systems for the missiles would be working at the very upper limits of their tolerances. He planned to head directly at the missiles and then, as late as possible, deploy chaff and flares as he dodged out of the way.
He noticed that the ship was not as responsive as it should be. Although the stick still had a full range of movement one quadrant had limited effect. It was still there, but limited. He guessed there was damage to the aft left ion thrusters.
Pulling out of the turn he lined up with the incoming missiles. They were closing rapidly. His HUD was not working but he could glance down at a console and see the missiles represented there. It would be around ten seconds to contact. He flipped some switches, manually preparing the countermeasures. For a split-second he wondered if they had been damaged, too, before immediately discarding that thought. It didn’t help him, and he had no other options. This was the plan, and he was going to execute it. If any element failed - the equipment or his timing or judgement - so be it. He had no time to waste ruminating on the endless possibilities for failure. All his concentration was needed now for one thing only - executing the plan.
He set his remaining engines to full throttle, offsetting the pull with micro navigational ion drives. He programmed the launch of all counter measures to route through to a button on his flight stick. He stared forward through the cockpit window and looked for any sign that the three enemy missiles were about to be upon him.
Steiner knew that with the combined speed of his dropship and the missiles the point at which a visual could be established was likely to be a second or less before contact. He held his thumb over the fire button and stared intently at the point where the missiles should appear.
When it came it was like a new star growing out of the darkness and moving slightly, unlike the others which remained fixed in the heavens. The moment he saw it Steiner fired the countermeasures and thrust his stick forward. Before he’d even finished his twitch response the missiles streaked massively over the cockpit window and detonated.
Though the explosions were behind him Steiner was briefly blinded by the flash. He felt the torsion as the blast passed the ship and the flight stick wrenched itself out of his hand. As his vision returned he noticed a new array of alarms going off. All of his consoles were now dead except for one. He noted that the one live console was one that had been dead before. The second blast had somehow knocked it back to life. Ordinarily he would have dwelt on the weirdness, but with a planet looming above him and limited controls he forgot about it almost as he was noticing it.
Shaking the muzziness out of his head he grabbed the flight stick. Now there was even less response from it. He could drop the nose of the ship a little, and he could pull her to the right, but that was it. No up, no left. He tried adjusting power to the engines. Nothing happened. They were on half power, knocked back from the full they had been on. That was something he could work with. If he had been stuck with the engines on full his prospects might have been very different. As it were, they were not good.
Using his limited controls he skilfully guided the ship down to the surface. He was at one kilometre altitude, with an airspeed of six hundred kilometres per hour, when he started to realise that he had half a chance of making it. Until then he had ploughed on, almost automatically, doing everything he could to make the best of a very bad situation. He hadn’t really considered the end point. Now here he was, close to being in position for a survivable landing, and he had to figure out what he needed to do to achieve that. Not hitting a mountain seemed like a good place to start, so he pulled the nose around to the right.
For the landing he could redirect the thrust from two of the engines downward through ports along the fuselage. The dropships were VTOL. The problem was that he had no control over the level of thrust; half-power was far too much for a landing. He would also need to arrest his forward motion. He wasn’t sure if hitting the port
s with too much power would damage them, or even if the system would let him abuse it in that way. But again, he had no other option open to him.
He used the stick to tilt the nose forward, bringing the ship as close to the ground as he could. He was skimming the surface at a hundred and sixty-six metres a second, barely a hundred metres above it. The landscape streaked past him.
He flipped the switch, sending the thrust into his VTOL nozzles. There was an alarming ‘bang’ sound followed by two crunching scraping noises in quick succession. He immediately filed those under ‘Nothing I can do about that, ignore, move on,’ as he felt the ship leap upwards. That wasn’t good; he needed to lose height. He needed to lose forward momentum too, so he directed the VTOL nozzles forward. The negative-G was immense, and he felt the ship dropping, too.
With his consoles wrecked Steiner was judging airspeed by eye. As the ship slowed to what appeared to be an acceptable speed he directed the nozzles down again. This arrested the fall but the ship rapidly rose again. With no other options left, Steiner killed the engines.
As the engines died the dropship reached the top of a parabola. Its forward speed now was less than eighty kilometres per hour and as it followed down the falling edge of its trajectory Steiner felt that fairground feeling in his stomach, like he was on a roller-coaster. Four hundred and twenty thousand tonnes of dropship, deprived now of its upward thrust, was being greedily sucked down to the Martian surface.
He had no idea what his altitude reading was but the view from the window suggested the ground was coming up fast. In a mild panic as the speed of the onrushing Martian surface grew ever faster Steiner hit the button to restart the engines. He heard the characteristic hiss and whoosh as the engines started to fire, and he felt their force in argument with the Martian gravity. After that, he remembered nothing.
Lund believed she knew Ephialtes inside out. She had spent a good part of her working life pouring over its designs and walking through virtual simulations of its interiors. She would have said that she could find her way around it blindfolded. Now that she actually was trying to traverse the ship in total blackness it was much more difficult than she might have anticipated.
When all electronic systems on Ephialtes were destroyed the AG went too. Lund had nothing to orient herself with visually and didn’t even have the fundamental knowledge of which way was down. The Aloadae were built with artificial gravity in mind so they had very definite floors, ceilings and walls. Those designations were moot now.
Using her hands and guided by distant voices Lund pulled herself along. Quickly she met some maintenance personnel who had made their way from the hangar deck.
“Where are you heading?” said one.
“To the bridge. There may be some light there and that’s where the commodore is, I think,” Lund replied. “You got out of the hangar deck okay?”
“Yes,” a voice replied from the blackness. “We had to manually open the emergency escape hatches. What happened?”
“EMP strike, I think,” said Lund.
“Jeez,” came a reply. “So what happens now?”
“I don’t know,” said Lund. “We get to the bridge and figure something out.” She knew there wasn’t really much to figure out. Without electronics the ship was nothing, and there was nothing they could do to fix it. They had no coms, they had no tools. Without external help they had no hope whatsoever. She let all that go for now. “Come on, let’s go,” she said.
As they got nearer the bridge the voices grew louder. Lund caught a glimpse of light, dim but to her miraculous. As soon as they had that they headed rapidly towards it.
Floating into the bridge Lund was immediately greeted by Lucero.
“Lund,” she said, “what have you got for us? Anything?” Lucero knew the situation was hopeless too but she still clung to the idea that a smart person, someone like Askel Lund, would be able to come up with some sort of fiendishly clever plan. Lund for her part had nothing, but didn’t want to appear negative in front of the crew.
“First of all I think we need to make a full assessment of the damage. Hull integrity seems good, as far as I can make out. Were we hit anywhere?”
Lucero shook her head, “I don’t think so. The issue is power,” she said, somewhat redundantly as a good portion of her crew floated about her. They were lit by a low grey glow streaming in through the bridge window. Mars loomed in front of them, providing most of the light.
“And our trajectory?”
“Trajectory should be good. Speed and vector were adjusted before we were hit. We should hit the Martian gravity field and get captured into orbit sometime in the next few minutes.”
Lund nodded. “That’s good. So we’ll be in range of the Martians?”
“Absolutely,” said Lucero. “Any time they want to finish us off they can go right ahead. We’re sitting ducks up here, and there’s not a damn thing we can do about it.”
“They’re not going to shoot us,” said Lund. “That’s why they used EMPs. They don’t intend to do us any injury. They have us now how they want us - harmless.”
Lucero snorted. “Well, we’d better hope so.”
Lund knew their only chance of survival was to be rescued by the Martians. She hoped that the Martians knew it. The EMP avoided loss of life, but only temporarily. Ephialtes would remain hospitable for only a day or two at most. With no electrical or electronic systems the oxygen would become depleted and the temperature would fall rapidly to a point where life could no longer be supported. If the Martians had gone out of their way to avoid killing them - they could have just used their nukes, after all - then surely they must have considered that. Part two of their plan had to be a rescue. Hadn’t it?
“Can you do it? Will you do it?” asked Foveaux.
Bobby scratched his head. “Well, I guess I’m happy to give it a go,” he offered.
Foveaux frowned. “Mr Karjalainen, this is way out of our league. I know I asked you to start next week but we just don’t have anyone qualified for this sort of thing. I’m willing to go myself -”
“No,” said Venkdt, “you’re far too valuable.” He looked to Bobby. “No offence to you, of course, but Commissioner Foveaux’s role here is essential. We really can’t be putting her in this sort of position right now. There are many, many vital issues that she has to grapple with right here.”
“Like I said,” said Bobby, “if you want me to go, I’ll go.”
“We appreciate that,” said Venkdt, “I just don’t want you to feel obliged. We have other personnel capable of carrying out this task.”
“We don’t,” said Foveaux. “The only combat trained troops we have are a dozen or so ex USAN Army from the garrison. Even if we assume we can trust their loyalty they’ve never seen a shot fired in anger and all they’ve been doing for the last two years is polishing their boots and arresting shoplifters. This is a rescue mission, and it should be a straightforward one. But we don’t know how Ephialtes’ crew are going to react. They may be hostile, they may be resistant, they may even be dead. If Mr Karjalainen wants to go I say that’s great. He can pick a team from the MSS and lead them aboard. If there’s any resistance he can either overcome it or retreat.”
“What do you say to that?” said Venkdt.
“I’m more than willing to do it,” said Bobby, wondering why his acceptance was creating this debate.
“Good,” said Foveaux. “What do you need?”
“Well, the spacecraft is all booked and ready to go, right?”
“It is. We have the shuttle ready for launch tomorrow. There should be more than enough room to bring the Ephialtes crew back on it. That leaves you with around eight other seats, so you can take a team of eight with you. Will that be enough?”
Bobby nodded, “Eight should be fine. We have armour and weapons too? Helmets, HUDs? We’ll need to know where we are. We’ll need infrared and thermal imaging overlays.”
“Of course,” said Foveaux.
“Okay,” said
Bobby, “so who are my eight guys?”
“You can come over to the garrison and make your selection now, if you like.”
Bobby shrugged. “You pick them. You know them. Sensible people, no hot-heads. Okay?”
“Okay,” said Foveaux.
“Let me know when you’ve made your selection. I’ll come over and run through a few things with them.”
“Okay,” said Foveaux. “I’ll speak to Kostovich about the thermal imaging.”
“Thanks.”
“Thank you,” said Venkdt.
Bobby turned to leave.
“Where are you going now?” said Foveaux.
“Pub,” said Bobby.
C H A P T E R 2 9
Checkmate
Andrews was a heavy sleeper and it was unusual for her comdev to ring in the middle of the night. In the first few moments of waking she felt confused and disoriented. She looked at her clock before rolling over to grab the comdev. It was 04:35.
“Andrews,” she said.
“Secretary Andrews?” came an unsure voice down the line.
“Of course it’s Secretary Andrews. Who else would it be? What is this?”
Andrews swung her feet over the side of the bed and stood up.
“My name is Donaldson, ma’am.”
“Do I know you?”
“I don’t think so, ma’am. I work in your department, in fact I’m over there right now. I’m calling to let you know we’ve lost contact with Ephialtes.”
Andrews had clambered into her dressing gown and was making her way downstairs. “What do you mean, lost contact? Is it serious?”
“I think it probably is, ma’am. You might want to get over here.”
“Has the president been informed?”
Ephialtes (Ephialtes Trilogy Book 1) Page 42