Free Stories 2015

by Baen Books

Korsov looked up, feigning surprise. “Shto? Ruin tea with an udder’s worth of milk?” Even from the corner of his eye, Sergei could see that a broad smile had returned to Grigori’s equally broad face. “I have had tea that way in America many times, my friend. I was for two years in Minneapolis.” Korsov passed the milk to his right.

  Aivars shook his head. “No milk for me; I am a purist.”

  Aivars Meri claiming to be a “purist?” Sergei knew what his late father would have said: any real Russian purist would militate for the ways of his own culture—right down to archaic and nearly forgotten tea-drinking customs—over the vacuity of American-backed globalism. Sergei had seen a certain measure of validity in that perspective, but had never embraced it with the same vitriolic zeal that had drawn the world’s attention to his father’s archly “NeoComm” videos and appearances. The consequent disagreements between the two of them had persisted until the day his father died, yet even then, Sergei never had an opportunity to publicly distance himself from his father’s radicalism: where dogged loyalty had once kept Sergei silenced, respect for the dead now permanently sealed his lips. How could it be otherwise? How could the son of cultural-protectionist firebrand Aleksandr Andreyev admit that he thought his father’s nationalism had been excessive? Less damning family disputes had led to the besmirchment of more than one public reputation, and in death, a kind of manic political legitimacy was all that Aleksandr Andreyev had left.

  “Tennnnn-hut.” Sergei blinked, both at the unexpectedness of the new voice and at the explosive force behind it. Around him, the rest of the new arrivals from the Russlavic Federation were scrambling to their feet and yanking the creases out of their coveralls. Sergei snapped to, saw a figure standing arms akimbo in the doorway: a large African-American man, fifty-ish, American space service uniform, chest cluttered with “fruit salad.” Sergei mentally consulted his briefing materials: Lt. Commander Clifford J. Harrison, station exec and senior flight officer.

  “At ease, gentlemen. Since we went to secure-channel discipline four weeks ago, I haven’t been getting personnel rosters. Who’s your CO?”

  Korsov stepped forward. “Major Grigori Korsov reporting as ordered, sir.”

  Harrison started, stared at the Muscovite, and smiled. “Grigori Mikhailovich, what the hell are you doing here?”

  “Repaying a favor, sir. Never got the chance to thank you for your help during the Belt War.”

  “Bullshit, Grigori. You just can’t stay away from a good fight. But it’s good to see you here.”

  “Good to see you, sir.”

  Harrison forced the smile off his face. “Status, Major Korsov?”

  “All transferees from Mare Crisium Lunodrome to Hephaestus station present and accounted for, sir.”

  Harrison’s answering nod was to the whole room. “You may be seated.” The American commander began a slow, deliberate circuit of the room. “Welcome to Hephaestus station. It is my dubious honor to fill you in on the strategic details of our mission here. Worst news first. Tuesday’s report has been confirmed: the Arat Kur have attacked Barnard’s Star and the International Command Staff predicts that they are not going to stop there, but will carry their assault through to Earth. The games-theory people believe that the Arat Kur want to conclude the conflict before we can adapt to their technology and tactics. Since it is clear that we are their technological inferiors, it’s logical for them to try to finish us off with one sharp blow to our head—and heart. Which means that they’re going to hit Earth.

  “Any such invasion will begin with an attempt to secure a refueling site within the solar system. Like us, the Arat Kur need deuterium for their fusion plants. Unlike us, reports indicate that their combat craft are capable of skimming what they need directly from gas giants. Consequently, we’re predicting that their first stop in-system is going to be right here: at Jupiter.

  “However, our job is to gather information, gentlemen, not defeat the Arat Kur. If they come, we’ll give them a fight, but a handful of outdated interceptors isn’t going to stop an invasion fleet.”

  Aivars Meri’s voice was tight with restrained emotion. “Sir, if this is where they are going to arrive, then why not engage them here with everything we have?”

  Harrison stopped. “Because until we learn more about the Arat Kur weaponry, it would be tactical and strategic suicide to meet them in a head-to-head engagement. We apparently made that mistake at Barnard’s Star. We won’t make it again.”

  Harrison started on his second orbit of the mess tables. “The engagement at Barnard’s Star did not end with a `strategic withdrawal.’ It was a rout. Forget the ‘uncertain reports’ that are being `leaked’ to the public: they’re candy-coated trash, intended to manage the level of hysteria that might build otherwise. The real story is that the Arat Kur hit us with a weapon that tore even our biggest hulls to pieces. The few pilots who had the presence of mind to try a close sensor pass are now gas particles. Fact is, if it weren’t for eyewitness accounts from civilians on evacuation craft, we wouldn’t even know what had happened.

  “That’s why some of you are tactical analysts and theoretical physicists, not pilots, mechanics, or weapontechs. When the Arat Kur come—and note that I said `when,’ not `if’—our interceptors will engage, but only in order to occupy the enemy, draw their fire, and allow us to gather more sensor-data. The experts here at the station will be orchestrating our sensor operations and analysis and relaying the results straight back to the think tanks on Earth. And it’s imperative that we get, and transmit, that info quickly, because our only secure data link is via lasercom. Consequently, we’re no longer useful once the station is hit hard enough to change its attitude and break the link. That means our pilots will have to fight hard and our analysts will have to think fast.” Harrison completed his pacing with a crisp swivel into an “at ease” position. “That’s the job. We are, in effect, bait. That’s why this was a volunteer-only mission.”

  Two more officers entered the mess hall; Harrison segued into an introduction: “The station CO will walk you through the near-Jovian `facts of life.’ Captain.” Harrison turned and snapped a precise salute at the more senior of the two recent arrivals.

  Who returned it and smiled at the assembly. “I’m Captain Costa, USSF.” He indicated a round, shiny disk adorning the uniform collar that jutted above the neckline of his regulation unipiece duty suit. “You all received one of these in your briefing packet. Please put it on.”He waited as they complied; if he noticed that Sergei did not deign to touch, much less affix, the pin, he gave no sign of it. “Gentlemen, you are now members of the First International Task Force. The statesmen back home have done their best to hammer out a provisional world government that will see us through this crisis. Given their example, I’m confident that we can lay aside any national differences we might have—at least for the duration of our mission here.

  “Now since almost half of you have not had prior spaceside assignments, a quick overview of our local conditions is in order.” Costa activated a holoprojector; a baseball-sized image of Jupiter blinked into existence. Tiny dots traced long orbits about the equator of the slowly-revolving sphere of white and orange striations. Costa touched the keypad of his handheld relay. A small white ring appeared some distance above and off center from Jupiter’s north pole. “That’s us: Hephaestus station. Mean distance from upper reaches of the Jovian atmosphere is two hundred forty-two thousand kilometers. Contrary to what the news media like to say, we are not in orbit around Jupiter. Unpowered, we’d fall like a stone. Instead, we use heavy plasma thrusters to maintain a vector that parallels Io’s orbit.”

  He brushed a fingertip against the remote control: the innermost orbiting dot—Io—glowed bright gold; the white ring of Hephaestus station escorted it. “As Io orbits Jupiter, Hephaestus rides shotgun. However, Io’s equatorial orbit puts it deep inside the Jovian radiation belts.”

  Another jab: a bloated red doughnut encircled Jupiter, listing to one side. “The
Jovian radiation belts are roughly toroid in shape. Cumulative daily exposure averages about forty thousand rads. Eighty percent of that is electron radiation; most of the balance is from protons and neutrons. Being in an essentially polar position, Hephaestus station briefly traverses the uppermost area of the belts as it maintains its Io stationkeeping. Dosage levels are comparatively light, but still lethal: up to six thousand rads per day. Fortunately, nature provided us with an answer to the local radiation problem.”

  Costa pressed another control stud; a light blue arc reached out from Jupiter’s north pole, enveloped Hephaestus station, impaled Io, and then curved back toward Jupiter. The arc disappeared into the atmosphere just above the south pole. Io continued to orbit Jupiter, dragging the blue arc and Hephaestus with it.

  “That blue arc is a plasma flux tube, gentlemen. And the only reason we’re alive right now is because Hephaestus stays inside of it. Fall outside of the flux tube and the ambient radiation will fry you in a few hours.

  “The `tube’ is a plasma soup of electrons and ions, rated at approximately two trillion watts. This station uses that energy to produce a grid of extremely powerful bipolar electromagnetic repulsion fields. That grid repels the charged particles which comprise the bulk of Jupiter’s radiation, and manages to shallowly deflect a reasonable proportion of the cosmic rays.” A cross-section of the station’s hull replaced the hologram of Jupiter and its moons. “Each station module’s outer layer is made up of carbon composites. Next, a meter of water and gel shielding. Closest to the interior is a hard shell of lead and electrobonded titanium or steel alloys.” The image winked off. “Welcome to your new home. That will be all.”

  Sergei rose quickly and used long strides to make sure that he was the first out the door.

  And the first to escape from the maddeningly affable Americans.

  * * *

  Sergei rubbed his eyes with his palms, spent a moment watching bluegreenyellow spots chase back and forth against the blackness. When the retinal light show faded, he drank in the comforting darkness for one luxurious second. Then he lowered his palms, opened his eyes, and squinted against the glare of the computer display. For the third time that day, he read:

  *CLASSIFIED**CLASSIFIED**CLASSIFIED**CLASSIFIED**CLASSIFIED*

  Required Clearance: A1B

  MESSAGE BEGINS:

  CISLUNINTCOMCEN

  TYCHO2USSF

  191118 0730:27 GMT

  RE: BARNARD’S STAR AFTER-ACTION REPORT

  THEORETICAL UPDATE 2.01

  Primary analysis and correlation of eyewitness accounts re: Barnard’s Star assault continues at Tycho II Military Research Facility. Current International Command hypotheses re: Unidentified Arat Kur weapon are as follow:

  1) employs high energy particle acceleration as destructive agency. Confidence: high.

  2) employs IR laser for atmospheric plasmating and targeting. Confidence: high.

  No viable alternate explanations have been advanced. Analysts are tasked to confirm or propose alternative hypotheses. Relevant observational data follows:

  —Sergei leaned away from the screen: the complete “observational data” archive was a half dozen blurry images and fragmentary sensor recordings, all of which he had memorized. Of course, there was nothing in those results to specifically suggest that the Arat Kur were in fact exciting nucleons to estimated energy levels of well over one hundred gigavolts while keeping them focused over the better part of a light second. It just seemed the most plausible explanation and no rival hypotheses were forthcoming. After all, how can you come up with a revolutionary model when you don’t have enough data? You can build whatever flight of fancy you wish—only to have it come apart for lack of the glue provided by hard, quantifiable evidence. And so Sergei’s colleagues throughout the solar system had been cowed into an acceptance of the standing hypothesis.

  Which, on the surface, seemed reasonable enough. Yet, every day when Sergei blanked his screen and left for evening PT, he always had the same feeling; something was wrong with the total picture. Like a layman looking at a painting with a slightly skewed perspective, he could sense an inaccuracy, but could not identify the flaw. He could accept that the Arat Kur might well have a particle beam weapon possessing energy levels and a rate of fire far beyond anything humanity had achieved. But despite their technological advantage, it was still difficult to imagine how such a weapon could be made to fit inside their hulls. Unless, of course, reduction in mass and volume was another benefit of Arat Kur technology.

  Sergei scowled. Superior technology: did it always come down to that? Could each mystery be solved with the same answer?

  Well, why not? Why run in theoretical circles when the answer seemed so simple and clean, a nice filet of truth left behind by Occam’s razor?

  Sergei frowned; because that’s not the right answer. You’re missing something. He called up the eyewitness accounts again.

  The Arat Kur naval elements had emerged from shift relatively close to the Pearl, the international naval base that had been dug out of the bedrock of the lifeless second moon of the mid-sized gas giant in Barnard’s Star’s first orbit. Even before radar and ladar had picked out the two dozen inbound hulls, deep space sensor platforms registered multiple gravitic distortions and neutrino surges: signs indicating the recent arrival of ships with shift drives and fusion plants. In short, an invasion force.

  The battle out beyond the gas giant’s satellites was exceedingly short-lived, and that was all anybody really knew about it. The lasercom relay buoys were lost within the first few minutes. Radio contacts disintegrated over the next hour. The last few coded messages came from a handful of surviving ships that were preparing to cut engines and initiate radio silence. For them, there would be a slow drift to hidden bases on tiny planetoids in the outer system. Maybe they’d made it, maybe they hadn’t. Either way, by the time their messages reached the Pearl after the fifty-minute radio delay, the battle might as well have been a matter of ancient history.

  The engagements fought along the retrograde approaches to Pearl were hardly any better documented, most of the data coming from eyewitness accounts. Ultimately, human and Arat Kur interceptors and ROVs had tangled at the edge of Pearl’s toxic atmosphere, then within it. A few escapees had witnessed human interceptors attempting to launch ordnance at two Arat Kur hulls, always staying within the (presumed) comparative safety of the atmosphere. And always with the same result: each human interceptor’s attack run—a glimmering parabola that arced toward the Arat Kur heavies—never lasted more than a couple of seconds. As each craft neared the apex of their approach, there was a stabbing streak of actinic red and the interceptor’s parabola ended in a bright white exclamation point, shattered fragments of the hypersonic airframe tumbling back toward the clouds, wings cartwheeling away from secondary explosions.

  Sergei jabbed knuckles into his eyes and rubbed. Every attack had been defeated in exactly the same way: first, the red targeting beam, and then what one American had called the “pinpoint annihilation” of the—

  Wait: “pinpoint?” Sergei called up one of the Russian transcripts, searched it quickly—and there: the eyewitness had described the mystery weapon’s destructive force as being like an invisible nozh, or knife. Another unanticipated flash of memory prompted Sergei to call up a Canadian’s transcript: here the metaphor was of “an unseen drill.” Then there was the statement of a young German woman, who explained that the human interceptor appeared to have been “pierced through its heart.” Sergei had read that transcript once before and dismissed her imagery as a matter of ill-advised poetic license. Now he was not so sure. Perhaps—

  He cleared the documents off the screen, called up the sole videotape that showed a strike by the Arat Kur weapon. He watched as the narrow delta shape of an interceptor, a Canadian model, rose into view from behind a tall cloud bank and arrowed off the left side of the screen. The amateur camera pan wobbled after the atmospace craft, unable to hold it steadily in th
e frame. Sergei stopped the real-time flow of the video, shifted to single frame advance.

  In slices of frozen time, Sergei saw the Canadian war craft successfully evade a spread of the dim red laser beams, but the firing pattern forced the interceptor into a tighter approach vector, bracketing it and narrowing its maneuver options.

  And then the bright red beam. In the first frame, it slipped past the interceptor; in the next, it had locked on target, a red smear across the fuselage. Sergei studied that smear; no sign of hull superheating or structural stressing. He frowned: that was a very low-power laser, possibly too low to even plasmate the atmosphere—in which case, it would not help a particle beam weapon to function more effectively. Sergei tapped the “advance” key again, summoning the next—and fateful—frame.

  A blue-white starburst had erupted from the fuselage just a short distance ahead of the red laser smear. The interceptor’s hull was breaking into a shower of long steely fragments. Sergei leaned back, stopped focusing on the details, tried to see the overall pattern instead.

  The interceptor was coming apart, some pieces flying forward, others blown to the sides or backwards and down. Sergei back-tracked the vectors of each major piece of debris and found that the disrupted area was actually a short, precise line rather than a pinpoint spot. That short line started just ahead of the laser smear and ended a few feet behind it: a column of devastation that suggested a powerful, focused beam. Certainly more focused than a particle weapon should have been able to produce in an atmosphere. It was indeed the thrust of a knife—or a drill or needle—which had undone the interceptor’s structural knot.

  Sergei intertwined his fingers behind his head. Instead of finding new answers, he was generating more questions. And if he raised those questions, his would be only one voice against many, unless someone else already doubted the hypothesis. So Sergei needed an intellectual ally, and the first step to finding one would be to compile a computer list of other individuals who had studied the same information he had. Maybe such a person was also harboring the same doubts.