Moon Dreams

by M.A. Harris

Battle of New Port

  It was very late, Major Terrance Maguire wanted to go to bed but his commander seemed to want his company, so he could hardly make his excuses. The coffee and the brandy were good and now they had switched from chess to gin he didn’t have to think too much.

  An alarm hummed and a red light lit up on the comm pad. The General leapt for it so quickly that he left Maguire wondering if it had been half expected. It was Micah, “General, a message from the command platform, they are under attack.”

  “Olarik’s fighters?” Conrad asked calmly.

  Micah shook his head, his expression worried, a bit confused, “No, it’s some kind of infantry raid. They’ve landed on the stealth shield and are shooting through it. The report’s very confused but there must be a lot of them. No ships at all, no warning at all, they appear to have come up from Earthside, not down from high orbit.”

  The General was frozen, his eyes wide in thought, then he looked up, “Get the fighters off; they may be able to kill the raiders from that side. They need to do it quickly; the raiders will be shooting to disable the fighters and the local defenses, probably in preparation for placing demolition charges before they call in pickup.”

  Micah nodded, “Will do, I’ll keep you informed.” The screen blanked to the aircraft.

  The General was tapping in a code; the screen flicked to a wait symbol, when it opened the Admiral General looked at the screen from an odd angle. Movement in the background and soft giggling indicated what Conrad had interrupted.

  But obviously Conrad wasn’t the first to interrupt the Admiral General’s pleasures. Mindow’s face was congested with anger, his eyes slitted, “Your failures, particularly the failure to wipe out Olarik and the rest of that scum infesting my moon base returns to haunt us Conrad.”

  “Admiral General, you have reason to be upset but we need to act, I wanted….”

  “You want…what you want is immaterial, you’re fired Conrad. I need real soldiers, warriors with fire in their belly, not cold, half-dead bureaucrats, in my service.”

  The General froze, then shrugged, “Very well, should I await your designated replacement’s instructions then?”

  Joseph Mindow’s face congested, “You will have all our space forces make for space with the nuclear devices and obliterate the Luna rebels once and for all.”

  “Admiral General we need to keep our forces near to home, I would guess that this attack may be the begin….”

  “Shut up Conrad…I will give Colonel Foster and Major Halberg their orders.” The Admiral General’s arm stabbed down and the picture returned to the peaceful photograph.

  The General glanced at Maguire, “Sorry you had to see that.”

  “Why sir? I’ve known for some time that he cannot control his temper and doesn’t really understand our military situation. What do you plan on doing?”

  Conrad shrugged, pointed at the cards, “Play some more gin, I doubt we’ll have long to wait.”

  Maguire smiled faintly, “Delighted sir.”

  Conrad and Maguire had played less than one hand before the comm panel chirped urgently again. The General had moved it closer to hand, he tapped a button and glanced up at Micah’s picture, “Yes, Colonel?”

  The Israeli looked a little desperate, “I’ve received orders to carry out a raid on Luna Haven sir.”

  “From General Foster or the Admiral General I assume. So why are you calling me?”

  “Sir, there are cruise missile strikes hitting Mindow City, and it’s possible there’s an airborne assault as well. Long range radar has picked up weak returns to the north, west and south of New Port, I think we have a massive cruise missile strike inbound here as well.”

  “So, ask General Foster or the Admiral General what to do, or make up your own mind.”

  “Sir...General Foster is frantic over the bombardment platforms, the raiders on the command platform managed to capture it largely intact. Luna Haven has control of more than three quarters of the bombardment platforms.”

  “What about the Admiral General?” Conrad sounded only faintly interested.

  “I can’t get through; I told you the American’s are bombarding the palace.”

  The general shrugged, “Very well. Micah get the Implacable and the fighters up and call in any that have taken off. The US and Luna Colony have apparently joined forces, they have to know New Port is going to be the tough nut to crack, they are going to send a big hammer, all these other attacks are sideshows.”

  Micah’s face relaxed, “Yes sir, understood sir.”

  Conrad closed the line and glanced at Maguire, “He was a good small unit officer. Goes to show how easy it is to promote people out of their zone.”

  He tapped the comm pad. The picture showed the wait symbol for several moments before opening. The sound that came with the picture was a cacophony of thumps, explosions and screams, the scene was one of the Admiral General’s bizarrely lavish bed-sitting rooms. Several figures cowered in the background.

  Then the Admiral General spun into view, “Damn it Conrad the bastards are attacking me! I want you to turn the White House, The Capitol Building, the Pentagon and all the damned memorials in DC into smoking holes in the ground, do you hear me? Then I want you to put a nuke into the heart of New York, Chicago and LA. Attack me will they? Bastards, do what I tell you Conrad, then we’ll tell them where to send the reparations for the damage they have done. Do you hear me Conrad?” The question was reasonable, given the rumble and crump of explosions in the background.

  Maguire saw the general’s body shake with a silent laugh, but his voice when he answered was almost devoid of emotion, “First we need to protect what we have Mindow, they already control most of the bombardment platforms, our only real strength. Now they are going to try and smash their way in here and take the rest of them away from us, along with the rest of the space force. If we survive this I’ll get back to you on your little exercise in retribution.”

  The Admiral General’s eyes almost popped out of his skull, veins swelled on his forehead, but an instant later he was almost calm, “General Conrad, I don’t like your tone or attitude.”

  The general shrugged, “OK, we can discuss it sometime, if we both survive. For now surviving and winning this battle are all that is important. I suggest you get down into the deepest cellar of your palace and fort up there; I won’t be able to send help for some time. Still, I don’t know how much you have to worry about in the near term; my guess is that they are making sure you’re pinned there.”

  The Admiral General’s eyes bulged again, the comm line snapped off.

  “Remind me to never get involved with megalomaniacs again, Terry.” The general’s voice was tired.

  Lightning seemed to light up the night outside, a crack followed, then the rumble of an explosion, drowned by the hissing growl of a missile launch. From a distance came the rippling snarl of a machine cannon followed by the boom of an explosion. In a few seconds the first explosion was followed by a string of them and the light from the veranda windows lit up with a hellfire flicker of white, red, orange, yellow.

  The house shook and the lights went out, then flicked back on, Maguire found himself crouching half behind a chair. He glanced over and saw the General standing, “Hadn’t we better get under cover General?”

  The Englishman glanced at him, “I doubt they’ll hit this building intentionally. They don’t know where the civilians are, particularly where our, somewhat unwilling, tech workforce is being kept.”

  He turned and walked towards the door. Maguire forced himself to stand upright and follow the General. He remembered for the first time in some years why it was he had begun his military career.

  -Fighter Lead-

  The glow of the sun fell behind as Helena’s space fighter fell around Earth its Stack thrusting outward to keep the splinter of aluminum from flying out into deep space. She tapped the comm panel, “This is lead, everyone still
green?” her three wingmen called out affirmative.

  The timer blinked orange and the fighters all spun and began accelerating at a higher rate, though each in a slightly different direction, killing velocity and beginning to position themselves to provide the Alexis the data she would need to carry out her mission.

  Each of the fighters, like the Hopper, was wrapped in dark, radar absorbing cloth, to a point that they looked more like boulders than anything else. But soon they would have to discard some of that protection; they would need to bare their nose antennas to carry out their mission.

  In the repeater from the targeting telescope in the fighters belly she saw fire light up the dark arc of land ahead, sparks leaping up, yellow white flares, columns of fire, the leading edge of the first wave. Helena tapped a button, there was a flicker of something and the cloth wrapping the nose of her fighter rippled, split then swirled back, the huge antenna began to suck in the electromagnetic cacophony ahead, behind her a laser comm found its repeater and began feeding information to the Alexis Aurora.

  -Alexis Aurora-

  Alone in the cockpit Paul jerked a little as the laser comm beeped and a series of pre-programmed event flags popped from orange to green on his screen. The Alexis creaked as he made sure the thrust axis was perpendicular to the deck. He tapped the comm pad, “You have the data feed Julia?”

  “We’re green on comm.” Julia’s voice was clipped by tensions, things were not going smoothly..

  “I’m a bit behind schedule, you have about five minutes. We going to be ready?”

  “Mostly, I hope…” she replied with a bit more animation, “Charlie, how are you doing?”

  “Ah, things are looking OK; I’m replacing the drive module.” Charlie’s farm hand accent was almost gone, which worried Paul, any time Charlie let his hick façade slip you knew you were in trouble. “Charlie you said you could have it done two minutes ago.”

  “Yeah…well I mighta bin a bit optimistic. Let me work at this for a bit, I’ll get back with you on that.”

  “We have the other racks and I’ve run the checks, they reprogram almost as fast as we hoped, we’ll start with the three good racks,” Julia cut her line before he could reply.

  Paul glanced at the course plot and shook his head, nothing much he could do. They would have to work with three racks worth if it came down to it, slow the drops so they made sure they had good targets for every weapon.

  He glanced at the video feed from the belly camera; the broad Pacific glowed under the light of a full moon, sixty miles below. Almost below the horizon he could see the broad dark smudge that was Palalo Sadong. The triangular valley that contained New Port was lit up with what might have been mistaken for a fireworks show. Mindow city, usually lit up like any other city, was only visible because of the flicker of explosives detonating on the palace.

  He saw the repeater from the rack Charlie was working on, still red. The repeater from Julia’s programmer told him the programming was going slow. Number thirty; one minute down, over three hundred to program, they were going to be a little late. He shook his head, maybe they would be fine.

  -High Spot Lead-

  Helena watched a stern camera shot of the Admiral General’s palace compound. It was lit up continuously by a stream of weapons hitting it mainly from the Marine strike force now steaming towards the island.

  Her fighter was hovering at something like sixty miles altitude and twenty miles east of New Port each of the other fighters were at the same altitude strung out in a broad arc so they could triangulate on any weapon launch or radar in the valley.

  The tactical plot showed streams of cruise missiles inbound from several directions. There were also shallow flight ballistic weapons inbound, probably carrying concrete penetrating bombs intended to destroy the space force’s revetments.

  Alejandro’s voice over the comm was calm, “Laser fire, targeted on the ballistic incoming cruise missiles. Ground and air sources.”

  Another voice, Smith, “Radar acquisition captain, missile battery down country. Launch, I have launch indications…more…four vipers in the air, SA-12 class coming up fast.”

  Helena spoke quietly, “Who?”

  “Us Helena…” a missile died.

  Helena glanced at her tactical display, “Alejandro what do we have over New Port; Fighters, MoonBeam or both?”

  “Both, three fighters and the ‘Beam, or whatever they’re calling her now. The fighters are still slivered, the other source of laser energy is not showing up and it’s firing harder and faster.”

  “High Spot lead this is South,” Knorr, her quiet Norwegian.

  Julia tapped the comm, “Knorr?”

  “Getting backscatter returns off three fighters, outbound west at mach 1, turning and climbing. I think they may be escorting something stealthy, I keep getting glints.”

  Helena glanced at the tactical display, they would be here in five minutes. She looked at another symbol, the Alexis passing over them.

  “Comms, anything from the Alexis?”

  “No captain, but we did get an update from the high raid. From Captain Sunil, the Command Platform’s in our hands.” Helena’s heart jumped.

  “Missiles in the air, multiple contacts,” Knorr called out calmly..

  Julia watched two clusters rising, one from New Port the other from the battery that had fired first. The cluster began to thin out rapidly.

  Smith spoke quietly, “Targeting laser.”

  In Helena’s ear a siren hooted, “Laser hit, from the ground.” The defense processor acted, the floor hammered, a voice spoke softly, “Glitter bombs fired.”

  The siren went out, Smith spoke, “Loss of signal, we broke the lock. Not sure for how long. Oh I see, a break in the missile stream on that axis for a few seconds. There are more for it to chew on for now. But this won’t last long.”

  Helena checked her telltales, no damage, apparently.

  Knorr’s comm blinked, “We’re going to have some trouble, I lost those fighters.”

  Helena glanced at the action flags, her jaw clenched, the Alexis was slow and late.

  Knorr’s line lit, “Spot Lead, I have reacquired the west bound fighters, they have now reversed course and are accelerating for us. Something odd about the formation, unclear what I’m seeing – wait, there are four stealthy craft with the fighters, have to be bombardment platforms.”

  “More Nukes,” Alejandro snarled.

  Helena had a sinking feeling, “Knorr, Smith sweep west, Knorr lay your IR camera on the target, they’re low enough to be punching air.”

  “Got you…got them… a single platform, two fighters?” There was uncertainty in the Norwegian’s voice.

  Smith snarled, “Shit, targets behind and climbing fast, Helena, one of them.....”

  There was a brilliant flash from below and behind her. Everything went dark and her fighter began to fall out of the sky. The only sound was the squawk of NED, the nuclear

  Helena fought to keep from blacking out, there was some light in her cockpit, and she was alive, the Nuke had detonated early and it had to be a lot smaller than the ones used in space, otherwise they’d have risked blasting New Port.

  Behind her there was a thump, her ship gave a savage whip and then settled down, the straps were dragging on her shoulders, and the world had a proper up and down again. She was still a dead bird but stealth sheets had ripped and were now hanging in strips from the wings, providing a drogue chute effect as the atmosphere thickened and the craft spun out of control.

  She now could see the lights; most of her systems were off line but showed ready for startup. She began flicking switches, the stacks first, they had already begun to cool down.

  -AlexisAurora-

  Paul was looking down at the repeater to see how Julia and Charlie was doing when three of the external video feeds lit up, jerking his attention back. The belly view was suddenly dark green, lit by some dim new sun, then green ble
d to black. His heart thumping Paul gently rolled the ship watching one of the side camera views. The sky was lit as if by a sunset or sunrise to the east, a misshapen bulb of fire expanding and dimming. Another Nuke, but why? It was hardly likely to have been targeted at the spotters. Had they been shooting for Alexis? But there was no indication of anyone targeting the moonship yet.

  Rubbing his eyes he tapped one of the secondary work panels, bringing up the threat receiver display. The electronic systems were fine, apparently the Alexis was in some kind of EMP shadow. Radar emitters showed up all around except towards the nuke.

  He was trying to decide what to do next when Charlie’s voice interrupted him, “Ahya, Julia I’m going to be a bit late on this, another two minutes.”

  Julia spoke, “Paul the first batch of bombs are finished and the rest are cycling, the problem was with two of the programmers, they’re defective, I’ve almost finished racks one, two and four, starting on three now.”

  Paul glanced at his course display he was shocked to realize that they were nearly over the target.

  “WOWOWO.” He slapped the silence button; radars below had seen him, he was being nailed by guidance pencil beams.

  The hull shuddered, “RRRRRRR” Laser warning, as he slapped the silence again, he heard the scream of pumps in the auxiliary systems compartment. High-pressure pumps spraying anti-laser glitter dust from heads mounted in the hull, it should at least help.

  “Paul, you OK up there?” Julia sounded a bit winded.

  “Yeah…we’re going to be receiving company real soon. We got tagged by a laser, any sign of damage down there?”

  “Oh, yeah, blew a hole in decking.” She sounded a bit faint.

  “Paul! Julia’s hit!, I’m binding her leg up now. You getting any indications on the cooling system, the hit was close to the coolant tank on that side?”

  “Julia?!”

  “I’m fine, a nick, fly the ship damn it. Charlie, back to work!”

  Swallowing hard, knowing there was nothing he could do he leaned over to look at the secondary status board where he could see some red. He kept his curses to himself, “We should be OK for a while; the tank’s holed so we are going to be bleeding cooling water.” He looked at the timer, “Party time Charlie, I need to open the hatch.”

  “Julia’s strapped down, the programming’s going smooth and the data feed’s good. I’m getting back to the drive. Go for one, two and four, I’ll holler when the hatch is clear?” Charlie’s hick accent was completely gone, replaced by the clipped tones the US Navy had drilled into him during a twenty-year career. The Alexis creaked and groaned as Paul rolled her slightly to give them a little less of a signature when the hatch was open, the tell tale on the hatch was green.

  “Hatch is open Paul, go for the drop,” Charlie called out.

  A camera on the cargo deck showed the black blobs streaming out the hatch, outlined against the moon lit sea far below and some distance north.

  -Spot Wing-

  Captain SS Smith, called Smith by one and all swore as his face plate went black, and the NED began its irritating alarm. When his faceplate grayed the bulb of hellfire was fading, and all he could think was that it had been a real baby, a kiloton or so, a real old fashioned anti missile warhead in all likelihood.

  “Helena.” No reply. “All Spot, this is Smith, anyone got Helena on comm?”

  He got a series of angry negatives in reply. He looked at his tac screen, “It blew well short, she may have been close enough to have the fighters systems knocked...”

  Alejandro spoke up, “Went active, her fighter is in one piece but falling away fast.”

  “Thanks Brazil, everyone keep your sensor feeds up, the Alexis is almost in position. That’s job one, we get the Marines on shore and Helena will be there drinking tequila’s waiting for em.”

  It was a poor joke, or boast but it got them back on job.

  “Knorr, do you see the rest of those fighters that were coming from the east, or those that went west?”

  “Everything east is hashed up Spot Wing. I see two fighters climbing to the west of us.”

  “This is Patsy in the Hopper, Spot Wing. I’m coming straight down, out of range still but the laser scope has a clear look. East of the fuzz ball, I see three fighters climbing with two bombardment platforms.”

  “When are you in range Patsy?”

  “Still twenty minutes out Smith.”

  “Roger that.

  The Alexis was slowing as she fell, she was nearly in position, almost thirty miles above New Port. Apparently she was still invisible to the enemy. The fighters with the modified bombardment platforms were above her now, still climbing to attack Helena and her fighters. They were accelerating, slowly, at those speeds the fighters had to be near their skin temperature limit.

  One of the mission flags had gone from orange to green, they were done up here, now to the more traditional fighter job, top cover, “Knorr, Alejandro, let’s get a bit closer to Alexis.” He cut thrust and let his fighter fall as he lined up the stack thrust line with the centerline and got the nose pointed down with puffer thrusters.

  -Spot Lead-

  Helena had fallen almost fifteen miles before she got her fighter back on line. Luckily for her it appeared that the enemy had decided she was just falling wreckage and gone on to better things. The next issue was getting rid of the rest of the stealth wrapping, and hoping her fighter was still fightable after the abuse.

  The explosive cords threaded through the heavy cloth detonated on command and fell behind leaving her little silver dart nose down and accelerating fast. The enemy still ignored her, far too busy trying to kill the latest wave of US launched weapons, this time including a mix of high speed attack drones doing their best to knock out the air defenses.

  To the east the sky still was roiled with the thermal and pressure overload of the nuclear detonation. The enemy formation was invisible, but probably still there. She rolled her fighter to point East, she did not have communication, she was pretty sure Smith and the others were fine and Smith would do what was needed, she was in a good spot for a little cover.

  She had not reengaged her laser comm but she did flip on the old radio and was shocked when she heard a voice through the crackle of static, “…fucking bitch…I know you’re there. You and that son of a bitch Richards answer me. I want to talk to you before I kill you.” Halberg’s voice was pitched at a near scream.

  Helena grunted, she’d always though the playboy was too tightly wound, apparently a mainspring had snapped. She smiled thinly, PS had gotten some nasty toys from their sponsors, this time so had the Luna Republic. Each of her fighters carried two of the latest generation US air launched missiles, weapons designed to kill other fighters but also capable of attacking almost any target that could be located. And even from this altitude they were deadly.

  Helena tapped a comm link, “So nice to hear from you Captain Halberg, I am afraid I am not quite sure where Julia and Paul are right now. But I am sure I can be of service.” She ‘pickled her missiles as she spoke.

  Ricky was still speaking, “Helena…you bitch, another unserviced target I’ve been looking for a chance at.”

  She felt the ejectors fire, flinging two interceptors into the air. A second later, well clear of fighter the rocket motors that in another time and place would have been called high energy explosive charges hurled the slim cylinders up, leaving their mother ship shaking in their wake.

  The weapons sliced across the distance; by the fifth second of flight the missiles’ sensor had picked up signals from the point in space it had expected to find a victim. At ten seconds the motors had burnt out, but by that time they were moving at almost ten miles a second. The weapons lined themselves up on their targets with finicky precision; the enemy never realized they were in danger before geometrically straight bars of smoke blotted them out in cataclysmic flashes of vaporizing metal.

  One interceptor
hit its platform dead on, the impact so energetic and sudden that the nuclear weapon was blown apart without detonating. The second interceptor passed through one corner of the pyramidal structure, missing anything critical, but at the velocities involved a clip was enough to blast two shell panels off the platform and send it spinning, which the weapon’s fuse interpreted as good cause for a salvage detonation.

  Halberg’s voice raged up to the last instant, “Goddamned coward bitch, stand and take it…what the hell?” Less than a mile away from ‘his’ nuclear missile, Halberg just had time to see the platforms blown apart, and realize what that might mean. He howled, “NOOOOOO,” and Helena’s radio died with an electronic shriek.

  The burst of light as the weapon detonated burnt out the solar screens built into Ricky’s helmet to stop him being blinded by the sun. He screamed as his eyes melted and more agony ripped through him as an alphabet soup of radiation sleeted through his body. His fighter’s electronics died at the same instant he started to die, radar, radio, guidance system, none of which were well enough protected from the electromagnetic pulse. The Stack tripped off as faults showered through its electronics, it was inherently ‘rad hard’ and could have restarted, but it never received the message. The three dead fighters began to tumble as they arced across the top of the atmosphere, breaking apart as they reentered. A few minutes later a shower of wreckage fell in the open ocean, off Palalo Sadong’s western coast, unseen by any human, vanishing forever.

  -Spot Wing-

  The Alexis’ icon slid into position. She was thirty miles up, almost stopped over New Town, the little symbol turned orange. As his three fighters fell down out of ‘near space’ Smith whispered, “Just a little longer.”

  Alejandro’s shout cut in, “SHIT! Missiles! Missile launches, two New Port sites just shot off a fire units worth of birds, straight up…at Alexis.”

  Smith reacted instantly, “All Spot, lasers!” he had cut his stack lift as his fingers designated missile after missile for servicing by his laser.

  Knorr, yelled, “One down!” One that Smith had designated winked out, then another, and another. Through his armor glass canopy Smith saw the pin pricks of light as the big missiles exploded.

  Then there was another much bigger flare of light, from behind him.

  -Alexis-

  Another camera showed sparks climbing fast, he glanced at his flight instruments, the Alexis was a sitting duck. Some radars would have lost them because they weren’t moving, but to other systems they were easy meat. He punched buttons, dispensers started to eject anti laser smoke, anti-radar chaff and anti-heat seeker flares. Maybe they would shield her, probably not.

  “Rack four is dispensing now.” Charlie’s clipped military voice barked.

  There was another titanic flash, almost twenty miles above and twenty miles east, but still far too close. There were squawks and horns and beeps all around him.

  “Glitch, rack drive glitch in three damnit!” Charlie’s mic was still active.

  “Shockwave on the way Charlie, “Keep clear!” Paul yelled as he partially unstrapped so he could reach buttons and switches to reset after the EMP pulse.

  Most of the horns were silenced, when he heard a sharp buzz that jerked him around, rack three was running again, dumping bombs over the side.

  An instant later the shockwave reached them and the Alexis heaved and shuddered as the blast hit her broadside. More red lights, more horns, a rending crash from somewhere, orange lights on two of the racks, but three was still operational, tossing the last bomb out the hatch.

  Paul knew it was too late but at least they had dumped their load. He was almost relieved that it was close to over, pain squeezed his chest, he hated getting Julia killed, and Charlie, but at least he would be with them, would not have to go through life without Julia.

  “Paul, we’re clear, done, get us out of here,” Julia’s whisper was more powerful than a scream. His fist hammered the hatch close button; he slammed in lift that pinned him to his seat. The Alexis groaned, almost screamed as he punched her sideways and rolled the hull to present a smooth, unbroken and stealthy shape to the enemy’s sensors.

  -o-

  The interceptors’ had been designed in an age when nuclear war had been all but expected, there were parts of their design that were all but archaic because they gave the system immunity to EMP. The surviving weapons all but ignored the nuclear burst, their target was still designated. Their boosters had burnt out by the time they reached the Alexis’s altitude but their divert motors still had fuel. The suddenly accelerating Moonship was a difficult target, one interceptor blew up when a divert rocket motor failed. A second missile got confused and missed completely, another passed less than ten feet clear of the ship but it’s laser radar fuse didn’t detect its victim, the missile detonated a tenth of a second too late and hundreds of feet clear.

  But the Alexis was a big target, and the interceptors accurate, one sliced into the ‘corner’ of the hull and exploded against one of the massive support struts that connected the freight deck to the cabin and propulsion module. The fifty-pound warhead was packed with half-inch cubes of tungsten carbide. The strut was massive and redundant but the explosive driven cubes chopped it apart and shredded the hull for twenty feet around. The second hit slammed through the base of the hull, and detonated between it and the freight deck, directly under one of the big coolant tanks. The tank and the lower hull took the brunt of the blast; the tank erupted, spraying ice, water and plastic across the freight deck. A huge section of the outer hull blew off, taking two landing jacks with it.

  The last missile detonated as it passed over the top of the hull. This fuse saw the target and detonated the warhead so most of its shrapnel was blown into the victim. The Alexis’ propulsion module was hit by a cone of sharp edged cubes that carved through the outer hull and the propulsion module’s pressure hull before ripping into the disaster sleeves inside. By the time some of them made it inside they were no longer the lethal danger they had been. The primary power distribution panel exploded, and one of the control panels was wrecked. Three Stacks ruptured, one started to burn, but the loss of air put the fire out in an instant.

  In the command module Paul was shaken like a rag doll as the impacts and explosions thrashed the hull one way then the other. Semiconscious he floated in his straps as the world spun and heaved around him.

  The scream of the master alarm caught his attention first, then the fact that he was floating. That couldn’t be right could it?”

  He shook his head and moaned, the world spun sharply right then left and dimmed. But some part of him wouldn’t let consciousness slip away. “Focus boy, focus damnit!” he snarled to himself. He opened his eyes, the world was fuzzy, his stomach was lurching, and he felt like his whole body had been dislocated. He squeezed his eyes closed then looked again. The status panel was a sea of red; he ignored most of it, focused on the propulsion system. Reds, a lot of them but more oranges and a whole bunch of green. His fingers danced over his keyboard and the flex panel.

  There was terrible moan around him as he sank into his seat. The ship shivered and shook; there was a terrible metallic shriek. But thrust built, the world swung around. The navigation system was still up, he swung the ship around until he was accelerating up again, breaking the fall the Alexis had started. The hull shivered faintly and there was a new note added to the screaming alarms. They were being hit by a laser again.

  He looked at the time, grinned, that wouldn’t last long, and then his face froze, unless they had shot all the bombs down. How could he know? It didn’t seem possible. Shaking his head he brought his attention back to his ship, rolling it so the laser couldn’t keep focus on one spot for long. The laser alarm went out; he glanced up, his eye caught on one of the two video screens still live. Flashes, dozens of them, rippling, marching across the moonlit valley far below. Paul yelled in triumph.

  The hull lurch
ed and shivered, alarms screamed again. He swore, another laser hit!

  Another alarm, missile alert, he focused on the threat receiver. It showed a new icon, airborne and above him, one or more of the space fighters! He looked around, he had stopped the Alexis’s fall, she was starting to climb and gain velocity away from New Town but they were talking the pace of a fast car, no more. He added power, the ship screamed around him, shuddered and lurched. She was in a bad way structurally. He glanced at the propulsion system and cursed. The cooling water temperature was rocketing upwards. He drew a mental picture of the incoming attack and rolled the ship.

  As he made ready for their last stand he remembered that he wasn’t alone in this, he swore to himself, as his fingers danced across the controls one punched the intercom, “Julia! Charlie?”

  The threat receiver had lost the incoming missile, the sensor on the side he had rolled to face the threat was gone. He counted down in his head. He’d almost forgotten his call to Julia and Charlie, when he heard her weak voice, “Hey Paul. Could you stop swinging us around, and get us out of the soup, we’re beginning to come apart.”

  His mind was focused on the threat, “Hold on Julia, incoming again.”

  “Oh crud.” Was the tired reply.

  There were only four of the air-to-air missiles, at the end of their maneuvering envelope they almost missed. But the target was an easy one, very slow and its ripped hull was a brilliant target to their radar eyes. One missile passed through the hole blown by the impact on the support strut, the fuse defaulted to delayed impact and sliced into the passenger compartment before detonating. The relatively small warhead blew the compartment apart, the steel ball shrapnel sprayed out shredding everything that came in its way. Several penetrated the propulsion module and wrecked two more Stacks. The flight bridge compartment decompressed explosively.

  Another missile penetrated the hull to hit a landing jack. The remainder of the stern’s exterior shell blew off, along with the mangled disk of moon scoured aluminum.

  The other two missiles detonated outside the hull, flailing the wreckage with shrapnel, ripping and smashing the hull, but doing no real damage.

  -o-

  Smith swore, as his tactical monitor came alive to show the Alexis falling away and red daggers merging with her green oval. The gasps and groans that sounded through comm link told him the others had the same picture. But there was hope, the moonship was a huge and tough, maybe, just maybe, she, and her crew, would survive.

  A screen showing New Port valley, flashes out to sea and over the mountains showed the relentless waves of cruise missiles breaking against the defenses. Or rather exploding in the fortress. “Impacts in the valley…lots of impacts…the Alexis’s bombs made it.” Smith felt a muddle of satisfaction and pain.

  Whump, his fighter shivered, “RRRRRRR.” He swore as he rolled the fighter hard and dispenses chaff and smoke, yelling, “Laser…laser hit.”

  “I think the MoonBeam’s firing at us.” Knorr yelped back.

  Alejandro swore, “Fighter down low launched on Alexis!”

  Smith wondered if he actually whimpered as the Alexis staggered and its radar image bloomed as sharp edged debris filled the sky, falling away and spreading. The oval emerged, trailing wreckage like a comet’s tail of gas and dust, the acceleration vector was gone and the freighter started to arc over as the Earth’s gravity pulled her down to destruction.

  “Firing missiles now!” Alejandro yelled, “Take that you worthless bastards!”

  Smith felt a tight grimace twist his face as he saw two of the fighters that had finished the Alexis off simply evaporate into aluminum chaff. He glanced at the lonely green icon with its comet tail of debris, arcing away. He felt pain and grief but pushed them away for later. Hopefully this had all been worth the loss.

  -New Port-

  Major Terrance Maguire brushed off his uniform, glancing around. All was calm and antiseptic here. Men and a few women in the dark gray of the Space Force leaned over their workstation screens, speaking into earboom microphones, listening to voices speaking from far away. He shook his head and sucked the graze on the side of his hand as he trotted up the steps to the General’s overlook. He’d hit the dirt just outside as a damaged cruise missile had screamed overhead and exploded in the forest nearby. The command bunker was on one edge of the air base and had received a couple of near misses by stray cruise missiles. It was amazing that they were killing more than ninety percent of the incoming weapons and there were still enough to do damage.

  General Conrad was sitting on the edge of a big conference table at the back of the theater like room, his arms wrapped around his torso. He glanced at Maguire, took in the disheveled look with a faintly raised eyebrow. “I felt an explosion, looks like it was fairly close?”

  “Wounded duck going into the forest. Lucky, it got tagged by the close in defense system on the hummock to the west. I think it was going for the missile battery at the end of the runway.”

  The general’s lips twitched, he shook his head, spoke quietly, “I don’t know what the hell is going on. I thought they must have gotten better intelligence than we thought on the weapons and radar sites. We can’t kill all of the missiles; eight have gotten through so far, not counting the one you saw. But only one of them was close to anything of importance and it detonated a hundred feet short of an armored radar station, the crew hardly noticed.”

  The major shrugged, was about to speak when one of the technicians yelled, “Large stealthy target overhead. One hundred and sixty thousand feet, holding, moving west at less than a hundred knots, it has to be the Alexis Aurora.”

  Conrad was on his feet, his hands on the rail around the command platform, his face tense, his voice cracked out, “Tell Colonel Tassinara to target the Alexis immediately, launch missiles now!”

  The comms tech working the channel to Micah started talking. The missile battery commander looked up, “General we have no good track yet, and the long wave overhead surveillance radar is not accurate enough for a launch solution.”

  The comms technician again, “General, Colonel Tassinara says he is unable to engage the Moonship effectively without letting too many cruise missiles through!”

  A radar technician yelled, “The Alexis’ has changed aspect, or the laser damaged her, I am getting strong returns from her...she appears to be breaking up?”

  Maguire and Conrad exchanged horrified, comprehending looks. As the General opened his mouth to order the ship shot down a yelp from someone in her team attracted the gray haired missile battery commanders attention, a mutter, then the battery commander yelped, “Fire then, fire all of them!”

  Conrad’s voice snapped out, “Short range defenses shift to zenith defense; she’s dropping guided weapons on us.”

  The radar tech had leapt half out of his seat, “ARMS, ARMS incoming from west zenith.”

  Maguire realized with helpless rage that they had reached saturation, they had been suckered into revealing their defensive disposition by waves of nearly harmless cruise missiles, and now the real enemy was going to hammer those defenses into ruin.

  “All weapons switch to focus on zenith defense, ARMS are priority one, the bombs from the Alexis second, cruise missile targets are to be serviced last.” The general’s voice was oddly laconic, he realized it was probably too late.

  The room shivered, and again, cruise missiles getting through the suddenly distracted defenses. The impact was distant but there were some gasps, Maguire saw people looking around, hesitating, flurries of almost manic button pushing. He smelt a pungent odor, someone’s bowels had let go. He grimaced in disgust, they were under dozens of feet of concrete and this was hardly a primary target at this stage.

  Then he looked up at the big display and saw what the fearful saw, it was almost as if the sky was falling on their heads. It was only an illusion but in battle illusion could kill you, if you let your fear break your will.
A couple of supervisors had leapt up and were working desperately over the shoulders of techs who had lost it. A big heavy shouldered man down in front had stood up as if to run but couldn’t tear his eyes off the screen.

  The General had stopped snapping orders, people were working, weapons were firing, and Maguire could see that the incoming missiles and bombs were being destroyed, but not fast enough. Both radar stations on the mountains shielding the south side of the valley went off the air in the same instant. A second later a short-range defense site flipped from green to orange.

  The room shuddered again, the lights and the computers screens in the control room never flickered, but the air was filled with dust and yells and screams. The ground and air was filled with a staccato rumble as the avalanche of explosives, dropped from more than thirty miles above, hammering New Port’s defenses with meticulous accuracy.

  -Mindow City-

  The air was thick with dust; the old man covered his mouth with a wad of cloth torn from his shirt. The room shuddered and creaked at another nearby explosion. They weren’t as frequent now, not the almost constant mind-numbing hammer of the first few minutes. But now the detonations were heavier and felt somehow deeper. He suspected these were ballistic weapons, probably from an American warship in Sunatra City harbor, firing the naval version of the US Army’s tactical ballistic missile. That meant that Mindow City’s air defenses had been destroyed, probably overwhelmed by waves of cruise missiles.

  He glanced around; his prison was an odd mixture of bleak and comfortable. Naked concrete walls, floor and ceiling finished with stainless steel fittings and bars across the wall opening into the prison vestibule, even the base to his bed and seat were concrete. But the floor was heated so it was comfortable for bare feet, there were solid concrete toilet and shower stalls, and the built in chair was comfortably padded, with a padded concrete ottoman.

  The floor shook again, a crack in the ceiling expanded then contracted, dust poured in. The concrete had begun to ‘breathe’ half an hour ago and it was getting worse. He was almost certain that the ceiling had sagged after a particularly close impact. He suspected that if things went on long enough the structure above would collapse into this room.

  It amused him more than frightened him, Joseph Mindow had really pissed the Americans off, never a good idea. It also seemed likely that the Luna colonists had made common cause with their native country, something that made him happy and sad at the same time.

  Solitary confinement had given Richard Aristide a lot of time to think. Alone, except for an apparently mute guard who brought him food and removed the remains, and the occasional gloating presence of Joseph Mindow, there had been nothing for him to do except think. No decisions to be made, people to persuade, projects to review. It had given him a chance to think about himself and his life, and more particularly about what he had been doing for the last ten years.

  He had come to the conclusion that in following his dreams he had wandered far from sanity. A dream connected to ambition and success had presented him with power, which he had taken up with arrogance. He had insulated himself from the world - except the world he could manipulate with his influence, money and power. Arrogance and insulation had blinded him to the ruthless ambition and arrogance of those around him.

  Arrogance had sucked him down, even at the last. He had realized that Howard Conrad had made common cause with Joseph Mindow. Instead of talking to the colonists, Conti, Paaly, Paul Richards and to the US authorities, he had called the Chinese and all but ordered them to bring Mindow to heel. They had arranged a meeting somewhere at a supposedly neutral site on an island off the coast of China.

  He shivered at the memory this chain of thought brought back. Instead of the very conspicuous Tubolev/Gulfstream Supercruiser he’d used a hired jet and crew.

  The delegation at the airstrip had been NightStalkers, not diplomats. They had charged aboard as soon at the airstair had touched the ground. He was fairly sure the jet and its crew had vanished from the face of the Earth.

  So many deaths because of his un-sane arrogance.

  The ground heaved as if in agreement and he staggered. The ceiling sagged a bit more in one corner, he could see the walls had moved out, the key between wall and ceiling had been too shallow and had failed. Not too much longer now.

  In the silence between explosions he heard a sound, a clank and thump. Richard strolled over to the stainless steel barred side of his cage to look. He was startled to see several figures through the dust. Three women, a couple of bodyguard types, and last and perhaps least, Joseph Mindow, the Napoleon of the Pacific. None of them looked good in plain clothes covered with dust.

  Mindow glanced at Richard, his face almost blank of expression; he looked back at his retainers and yelled orders, pointing down the hall. As the others went on, carrying various heavy boxes and bags, Mindow strode toward Richard’s cell. “Aristide…you’re the cause of this…your bloody Luna Colony rebels, and your military genius Howard Conrad.” The automatic the Admiral General was holding waved wildly as he yelled these rather confusing accusations.

  Richard didn’t say anything, didn’t move as the pistol came around to center on his chest. The next explosion was shockingly near, the floor heaved and the lights flickered, died to an emergency glow. There was a stab of yellow white fire. Richard almost didn’t hear the bark of the shot or the scream as it ricocheted off something in his cell.

  He wasn’t sure if the shot had been intentional or not, if the miss had been happenstance or not. But Richard didn’t wait around to find out; he turned and dived for the protection of his concrete furniture. Apparently Mindow had been trying to kill him because he tried again, several times. In the bloody hued fog of dust the shots went wild, the scream of ricochets a hellish counterpoint to the hammer of the shots.

  The shooting stopped, Richard looked out from behind his chair. Mindow was struggling with the electronic lock panel next to the door. Resigned to his fate Richard watched with rather amused interest. The door lock finally clanked and the little despot yanked the door open and stormed in.

  Richard stood up calmly, expecting oblivion. The floor heaved again, Mindow went sprawling, his arm hit the concrete armrest with a sickening crack and the gun went flying. Richard dived for it and caught it in the air. He came around with the weapon in his hand to find the Admiral General curled up, cradling his arm and moaning.

  Without thinking, Richard strode to the door, tossed the weapon out and slammed the door closed, hearing the satisfying snick of the lock activating. He glanced out and saw that the ceiling of the vestibule had sagged and crushed the barred door to the stair well. He glanced back and saw that the corner of his cell was at least a foot lower than at the start and the walls were bulging noticeably.

  “What have you done Richard?” screamed the little man, struggling to his feet cradling his arm.

  “Our fates have been intertwined for some time, Joseph Mindow; I just wanted to make sure they didn’t part company at the end.”

  “What? What do you mean?” Mindow’s dust whitened face was a grotesque parody of humanity. A fitting reflection of the inner man, Aristide decided.

  The next explosion was rather distant, a bit of a disappointment really. But it was followed after a short silence by a rumble that grew in intensity. The lights went out, but not before Richard Aristide saw the ceiling coming down.

  The spectacular old Governor’s palace that Joseph Mindow had taken over and expanded had been built on a steep sided ridge with a stunning view of the bay, and the city. Over the better part of two centuries the ridge had been hollowed out, rock replaced by concrete and steel. Less than an hour of pounding by modern high explosives had destroyed its integrity. The anchors in the relatively weak volcanic rock had, one by one, given way. The ruins of the surface building shifted then began to fall. In an instant inertia had added its dead hand to gravity and with a worl
d shaking roar the whole edifice collapsed and slid down the steep slope in a howling avalanche almost five hundred feet wide. The avalanche scraped the magnificent formal garden off the side of the ridge and obliterated a large part of the forest on the lower slopes. But no one outside the Palace died. The Forest and Gardens had been off limits to the general population ever since the Admiral General had come to power.

  -Spot Wing-

  Smith and the others had dived into New Port’s valley at near mach 2, now they were stooging around at something more approximating biplane speeds. The enemy seemed to be gone, destroyed or fled. With two Nukes and New Port’s defenses reduced to flaming ruins he wasn’t surprised. The valley was a giving a good impression of hell right now, the smoke and dust trapped in the valley had created a solid cover a thousand feet up and under that sooty cap the world glowed a ruddy, hellish red.

  His tactical display showed his two wingmen and that was all. They had run across two groups of enemy fighters but the contact had been fleeting and no one had gotten in a shot, and in these conditions he wasn’t sure the relatively low powered lasers and simple directors on the fighters would be effective at any range.

  “The ‘Beam’s off to the east of us,” Still shooting, called out Knorr, “optics are picking up her laser fire, only weapon in that frequency we’ve seen tonight.”

  Smith swerved hard as he saw another fighter below him, seemingly weaving between hillocks. As he brought his targeting reticule up he saw a big red letter R in his sight. He blinked.

  “Uh, Smith, that’s Helena’s ship” Alejandro sounded disbelieving.

  The ship ahead swerved hard, and then waggled its wings, as they came even Smith saw Helena grinning at him, her hand to her head indicating her comms were out. He waved rather weakly, relief hitting him like a gut punch.

  “Sir, the ‘Beam’s still out there.” Knorr called him back to business.

  Smith used hand signals to send, “Target ahead, follow me,” to Helena and turned back on track.

  An instant later, they slammed over the airfield, then “There she is, the BEAM!” Alejandro roared happily.

  -New Port-

  People milled around between the largely useless workstations. Maguire felt empty, useless and angry. The General turned away from the mess, and the all but information less displays, “Let’s get out of here Major, we can see more from outside now.”

  Maguire nodded and followed as the tall Englishman strode past him, down the steps and out the door. They trotted up the four floors worth of steps to come out in the concrete slit trench next to the airstrip.

  The view was vastly different from what it had been when Maguire had come in this way, only a few minutes before. It would have been a good representation of hell. Most of the airport buildings looked almost untouched, but in an arc around them the valley was filled with columns of fire.

  The General went up on one of the sentry steps and looked around, resting his arms on the sod. Maguire stepped up beside him. The general looked at him, “Never thought I’d be on the losing end of what is going to become a very famous battle, Terry.”

  Maguire looked around, “I suppose there is some consolation in losing large, one’s very own Waterloo.”

  There was a roar and a tight four ship formation streaked low over the field and was gone, the sound seemed to get sucked into the glowing red sky in an instant and they were left wondering. Neither officer flinched; Maguire looked after them and shook his head, “Jesus Mary…they’re in a hurry to finish someone.”

  “Micah I would guess…he was probably too stubborn to hoof it.”

  There was no sign of what was happening, in fact the night’s normal quiet was trying to return, the explosions and sirens were distant, muffled. Maguire turned to Conrad, “What do you plan on doing General?” he asked.

  A shrug, “Wait for the US Marines and then fight it out in court, and in the media, I doubt I’ll do too badly.”

  Maguire nodded, sighed, “I suppose you are right.” He stood upright, stretched. “I’m not so sure I’m ready for that yet.”

  The General looked at him nodded, held out his hand. “Go with God Terry.”

  The Irishman grimaced faintly, saying sadly, “I doubt it,” as he shook the Generals hand. He stepped off into the trench and the General turned back to the view. Maguire drew his pistol and shot Howard Conrad through the back of his head, blowing the top of his skull off. The corpse crumpled into an oddly inconspicuous pile in the corner. Maguire spoke to it softly, “Sorry General, you know far too much, and too many of us in the Crimson Staff have too much to hide, for you to turn state’s evidence.”

  He put his pistol away and walked out of the trench, never looking back. He had made plans long ago in case things went sour. He never left himself without a path of retreat.

  - Implacable (ex-MoonBeam)-

  Colonel Micah Tassinara swore at his tactical display. No more missiles, no more bombs, no more fighters. The Beam was hovering a couple of hundred feet off the ground near the harbor. Fires burnt on every side and the sky was a hellish orange red. He knew that the Alexis Aurora was gone, and maybe all the Luna Republic fighters as well.

  They had won, maybe, “Sensors, any sign of US landing forces? readings from the Star Hawk?”

  Stefan seemed to jerk out of a daze, he’d been focusing on the hard to track stealthy cruise missiles for too long, “Ahh…uh…oh…no, no sir.” A pause, “Uh, sir, I think there may be fighters in the valley.”

  Micah hit a comm. button, “Damnit, Eva, you on high watch? Do you see any LR fighters on this side of the mountains?”

  “Screw you Micah,” Eva Bucheld swore back at him, “It’s over, I have targets on my horizon, pretty slow, looks like a US landing force and we don’t have any missiles left or any other support. Me, Katrina and Jakob are heading west, you should get out while you can too.” She cut the link and he knew she was gone...”

  “BRAAAAAA” the master warning screamed, jerking his attention off what to do with the fighters. Four brilliant red diamonds had sprung into existence, their velocity vector stabbed through his Implacable’s green icon.

  Micah’s pilot Lucky Quiller, screamed, “What the hell?...Fighter sweep!”

  “Guns, get the laser on them now!”

  The Implacable surged under him and he was flung around as Lucky spun the ship to orient one of the big laser directors on the fighters.

  “Fire…Fire…Fire God damn it to hell, fire...!” Micah’s throat was raw with his scream of mingled rage and fear.

  In the screen green white fire burnt, the telescope, the wing of one fighter came off and it flipped savagely over and down. Something stabbed out from another fighter, a bolt of fire, knifing towards him, the telescopic view fooled you into thinking it was so terribly close. He looked down at the tactical display and his mouth opened to say words he never spoke.

  The two interceptors had almost no time to accelerate but were still moving at over mach three when they hit the ex MoonBeam’s hull. The thin armor was worse than useless against the kinetic kill vehicle, breaking them up so their fiery wreckage ripped through the upper deck of the ship with energy of ten inch cannon shells.

  The upper decks of the Implacable erupted, the pressure cylinders of the crew deck blown apart, reducing Micah and his crew to shreds. Shrapnel and splinters ripped from one side of the hull to the other, many rebounding off the outer hull to continue their destruction inside. The Stacks were ripped to pieces, blown out of their gimbals.

  For a brief instant the Implacable, once the MoonBeam, looked like a volcano whose top had just blown off. The three surviving fighters snapped past, guns pouring light caliber shells into the corpse, but by that time, three seconds after the first missiles had hit, a dead ship with a dead crew was beginning to fall out of the sky.

  -New Port, ‘Protective Village’-

  Cliff Samson lifted his head up, for the first time in
what seemed like a very long time there were no explosions, gunfire or rockets launching. He’d heard the scream of several low flying jets a few moments before, so low and near he was pretty sure they had been cruise missiles but even those were gone.

  He had come out for a walk around the low wall of the techs ‘apartment block’ just before whatever it was had started. He looked over the low wall, through the razor wire topped chain link fence on the other side. Fires burnt all around what he thought of as New Port. Balloons of fire rose from some of those spots as ammo cooked off or fuel stores erupted but the wind was blowing off the sea and the destruction was far enough away that he couldn’t hear it.

  He glanced out to sea, couldn’t see anything, what was he expecting he wondered? The US battle fleet, or a wave of Marine landing craft, something like that. He was pretty sure that whoever had attacked had won. Things had reached an incredible crescendo a few minutes before, sound so intense he had thought he might go deaf.

  He looked inland; saw the low humped shapes of what he was sure were bunkers on the first rise above the town proper with its townhouses, apartments, shops, factories and warehouses. They looked abandoned but they hadn’t been hit, yet.

  Cliff found he was shaking, they’d won, his friends had won. The Admiral General and his bastards had lost.

  Then there was a very familiar howl of jet engines and gray darts flashed by overhead. An instant later the bunkers were exploding, he saw the roof of one flipping through the sky. Explosives ripped into the concrete pillboxes, none had a chance to show any fight.

  As the Navy fighters swarmed over the edge of town and the bunkers, other shapes swept in over the sea. Cliff caught sight of one, the oddly insectile angularity of an Osprey vertol its rotors in helo mode, sliding down out of the sky.

  Cliff forgot about safety, about the fact they might take his excited leaping about poorly, he leapt up and down and waved his hands over his head, howling his delight.

  -Alexis Aurora-

  Paul came awake to find himself in freefall again. His body felt even worse than before, the world was a dim red and he couldn’t see clearly. The power systems were off line, and then he realized that his emergency hood had deployed and he cursed his lethal stupidity. Trying to see through the distortion of the emergency hood and get control of his shaking hands, Paul fought to get the ship under control again. The lights came back on and thrust came up and pushed him down, Paul pushed his face close to the display, it and the navigation systems were down. He couldn’t hear the hull screaming anymore but he could feel it, shuddering and lurching. The backup instruments showed him he was accelerating sideways as the ship fell, he rolled the hull upright. Coolant was rapidly reaching boiling temperature. He hung on as long as he dared, then killed thrust and power.

  He paused, pulled his helmet off the rack behind his head. He took a deep breath then started to blow it out, he hit the deflate button on the hood, pulled it off with a jerk and slammed the helmet down over his head. It locked to the neck ring and pressurized with a thump. His ears hurt but not too badly.

  “Julia, Charlie?” Paul flicked his eyes across the control board and decided there wasn’t much left to control. The Alexis was dead, falling to return her material to the Earth she had been smelted from. Most of the Stacks were still capable of thrust, but with the cooling system gone a few seconds of power would fuse them. The batteries were supplying what power was needed right now.

  He realized that no one had replied, Julia had been fading, and Charlie had been doing something to the racks at the last. The cargo deck had been shredded by the missile warheads, they were probably both dead, but he couldn’t give up, he couldn’t, “Julia, Charlie.” Nothing.

  Paul glanced at the instruments; he was puzzled by a couple of readings until he realized he had been trying to read them incorrectly. Velocity was falling not rising, they were still climbing, coasting upwards on the momentum his bursts of acceleration between attacks and his latest goose had built up. They were almost forty miles up now.

  He stared at the instruments for a moment, and then his hands grasped the collective and cyclic sticks again. Eyes fixed on the instruments he brought the ship upright, watching the temperature of the Stacks tick upward even with this minor exercise. As the ship’s nose came vertical he poured power on and he sank down into the cushions of ‘his’ ship for the last time. He held power at the maximum efficient point, producing more than two-g’s, he felt the ship scream and shudder around him, watched the Stack temperatures rocket past the red line.

  Through clenched teeth he muttered, “Come on old girl, hold on a little longer, a little longer, come on!” The Stacks continued to produce power, five seconds, ten seconds, one of the Stacks tripped off, another, fifteen seconds, twenty, all the remaining Stacks went off in a ripple, shaking the hull like dog shaking a stick, but Paul was braced, expecting it.

  An instant later Paul slammed his fist against the release on his harness. He floated out of his seat and kicked for the storage closet at the back of the cabin. Inside he found three items he’d put there a few days ago. He’d adjusted the straps on one earlier, now it was a few seconds work to get it on. Then he headed for the emergency hatch.

  In a few more seconds he was in the narrow aisle between the cabin cylinders. He looked out. It was shocking to see the universe outside through the huge rents in the Alexis’ hull. She had been almost totally stripped of her stealth sheathing. From the outside she must look very much like he had first seen her, a tough framework like a foreshortened oil derrick.

  He pulled his attention back, worked his way along to one of the openings in the expanded metal decking where cables and pipes made their way up from the service trays that ran underneath. There was an access grating here, providing a clear shot at the trays. He swore as he saw the distortion of the metal, he gave it a jerk and then moved on when it didn’t even budge.

  Near the end of the deck was the next access point, he sighed, that access grating was gone, blown out at some point. He dived for the hole and pulled himself through. It was weird to crouch, holding himself down on the ceiling of the freight deck. But he couldn’t see the actual cargo deck at all; pipes and cables, boxes and tanks filled the space ‘above’ him.

  It took Paul several seconds to work his way to a clear spot. Recognizing where he was Paul let go of the grating and stood up, his hands grasped a big cable and he pulled himself up and through the gap. It was a bit astonishing to see that some of the lights were still on. Alexis was a tough ship, he felt a twinge of grief. They’d built for decades, not for less than three years.

  He looked down at the wreckage of the freight deck. The bomb racks had been twisted into unbelievable sculptures by the blasts. The decking gaped in several spots, letting him see the sky and earth spin slowly past. Apparently the uneven failure of the Stacks had left her with a residual spin.

  There, he saw Julia, still strapped into one of the acceleration couches they’d set up down here. She was still, but Paul couldn’t see any damage on his love’s suit; he could still hope she was simply unconscious. He glanced at his timer, amazing, less than thirty seconds! They were at the peak of the parabola; it was all downhill from here.

  Paul lined up carefully and uncoiled in a smooth leap, only to be jerked to somersaulting stop as one of his packages caught on a jagged strut he’d not seen in the gloom. Cursing, twisting, he fought to get a grip and get clear. He struggled and writhed for what seemed like an eon, at last he was free.

  Panting, cursing he lined up again. Leaped, this time he was clear.

  As he floated through space he saw that the fragments of the stealth sheathing were shivering and waving. The dark universe outside still spun by, but it seemed like the shimmying and shaking around him was getting worse. They were accelerating, falling now.

  He realized his target point near Julia’s supine body wasn’t very safe,
shrapnel had blown the end of the rack into a bizarre shape, torn the metal into razor sharp blades, towards which he had leapt.

  Cursing, nearly whimpering under his breath, Paul twisted and rolled to try and clear those lethal edges. With a crunch he came to a rest on the deck next to the blades, staring at the jagged, gutting sculptures.

  Shaking, he twisted to look around, pulled away from his near death experience. Almost by accident he glanced under the wrenched wreckage of one of the bomb racks and saw Charlie, one arm flung out, trapped between the rack and the deck.

  Pulling himself from one hand hold to another he was by Charlie in less than a minute, but a second or an hour, it would have made no difference, his friend and crewmate was very dead. His eyes closed, his face peaceful, but his chest was crushed and a razor sharp edge of deck planking had cut halfway into his torso. There was blood, but not a lot, Charlie had died almost instantly.

  Now Paul felt the ship shivering and shuddering under him. He glanced up to see a section of the hull tear free and vanish behind them. He had to get back to Julia, they were falling now, accelerating under Earths insistent call, they were already falling fast enough for aerodynamic forces to start to take effect. The world was still rolling past but the ship had settled into a nose down attitude, he realized the ship’s hull shape and mass distribution was making her behave like a vast badminton shuttlecock.

  It took him twice as long to get to Julia as it had to get to Charlie’s body. He saw the patch on her leg, a trace of blood, but the ‘emergency’ lights on her chest harness were green and orange no blinking orange or red. She was alive, breathing, just hurt.

  The slipstream was enough to tear at the weakened hull and move the ship, even provide enough drag to put a few ounces of weight on the soles of his feet, but it wasn’t enough to slow the ship appreciably. Paul figured that even with her horrid aerodynamics and the blanket of thick air close to the surface, the Alexis would be several times supersonic when she hit the ground.

  He pulled Julia free, glad of the deceleration induced weight. He dragged her dead weight to the edge of a jagged hole in the decking. He carefully attached her emergency belt to his with the climbers’ clips he had brought for this eventuality.

  He looked around one last time and without letting himself dwell on what he was doing he bent down and pulled himself over the edge of the hole. He and Julia rotated around the edge, as he came vertical he pushed off hard. The dark rectangular shape of the ships base seemed to surround him. He saw more glittering blades of explosively deformed metal, but it was falling away from him.

  His legs passed out of the slipstream shadow of the hull first and with a painfully sudden jerk he was sent spinning up and away from the Alexis. Julia’s dead weight knocked the air out of his lungs, but somehow old habits took over, he spread his arms and legs, the thick material of his armored overalls caught the air and they quickly stopped tumbling.

  Once they were stable Paul prayed and pulled the first ring on the parachute. He felt the jerk as the spring drove the drogue canopy out and an instant later he felt the welcome jerk as the small chute opened.

  Paul let his eyes close, he let his body shiver, felt some of the tension drain away. They weren’t home yet, he could still get them killed, but things were certainly a whole lot better than they had been a few minutes before.

  He opened his eyes and looked around him, felt another stab of loss when he realized he couldn’t find the Alexis. What he could see, far below them, was the broad shape of Palalo Sadong. He could see the glimmering white of the snowcapped central mountain range from here with the dark slash of the high valley forest. He was further east than that; over what he was pretty sure were the so-called volcanic highlands. Julia had told him that was where the resistance had been focused and where the HFF had refugee camps set up.

  Time passed, they were falling fast, but he knew they had to be slowing, as they got deeper into the atmosphere. The altimeter on his harness still didn’t read so they were still over forty thousand feet up.

  It was cold he realized, his suit was doing a good job of keeping him warm but it wasn’t perfect. He pulled on Julia, twisted around so he could check her emergency tell tales, still the same. He prayed they weren’t lying. He looked down; it was odd it almost felt like he was suspended up here. He wanted to giggle, images of some kind of parachutist Flying Dutchman flickered through his mind.

  He resisted checking the altimeter, instead looking out and around, hoping, for some reason, he would see the Alexis’s end. Finally he couldn’t help himself, he checked his altimeter, thirty thousand feet! And falling at around sixty miles an hour.

  Off to the side a bright white flash lit the night. Grief clogged his throat, “Goodbye Charlie, you’ll be remembered, and you too Alexis Aurora, you were a good ship,.”

  Tears started and with the helmet there was nothing he could do. He squeezed his eyes closed and forced a deep breath into his tight chest. Memories flowed past his mind’s eye and Paul let his mind drift as they fell out of the sky, he felt drained, empty. Almost lethargically he checked the altimeter, ten thousand feet? A pulse of fear, quickly faded, the highlands were a couple of thousand feet, no worry, but he’d let things drift longer than he should, it was time. He pulled the second ring, a jerk and then his head sagged as the main canopy deployed, the rectangular parasail took shape, a couple of jerks and Paul had it under control.

  He put the controls on neutral and felt for the emergency radio he’d clipped to the parachute harness. Tapping the big central button he connected the earpiece wire to his suits comm port. If nothing else the radio would attract the attention of one of the low earth orbit search and rescue satellites.

  As it turned out he was still a few minutes from landing when a voice spoke in his ear, “Rescue beacon Alpha Foxtrot India Nine Eight, this is Rescue Blue Six do you read me?”

  He was in luck; it was one of the Marine V-22 Osprey search and rescue aircraft backstopping the New Port raiders. “Rescue Blue Six, this is Alpha, Foxtrot, India Nine Eight I read you.”

  “Alpha Foxtrot please identify yourself?” The voice was suspicious.

  “Rescue Blue Six, this is Paul Richards, and I have Captain Julia Chisholm with me. We’re off the Luna Republic Ship Alexis Aurora.”

  There was a choking sound, “Ah, would that be President Richards, Luna Republic?”

  “Yeah, well I’m not feeling very presidential right now, just grateful to be alive. And my girlfriend is hurt and unconscious. Look I’m going to have to break off this chat, I’m flying a parasail with a wounded lady strapped to me, and the grounds getting real near. Come get us would you?”

  “We are on our way Mr. President, sir…”

  “Thanks.”