by Bobby Adair
“Why?” I ask. “We have ours.”
“War,” Spitz answers. “We send our ships out with spares. We thought you should have extras.”
“And helmets?” I’m suspicious. I know what a helmet can do.
Spitz guesses right away. “We can replace all of your helmets if you like. They’re all coded to your commander, right? She can freeze your suit, even kill you if she chooses.”
“You’d rather I give that power to you?”
“We disable those functions in every suit we refurbish.”
I glance to Phil, looking for confirmation on Spitz’s lie.
Phil says, “He’s telling the truth.”
Still, I can’t bring myself to trust him that much. “We’ll stick with what we have for now.”
“Suit yourself.” Spitz giggles.
I roll my eyes.
“One more thing,” he says. “This has been a matter of some debate on our end. We’d like to—”
The office door bursts open and a panting officer rushes inside. “Dr. Spitz, we need you in the operations center!”
Spitz jumps to his feet as he asks, “What’s going on?”
“We found the Trog fleet.”
Not here at Iapetus.
My heart sinks as I rise, ready to muster my crew, board the Rusty Turd, and fight.
Spitz hurries toward the door. “Where?”
“They’re attacking the Free Army’s main base.”
Spitz glances at me.
I ask, “Can I come?”
Spitz waves me along as he turns to Phil. “You stay here with the Gray. It’s not allowed where we’re going.”
Chapter 36
It takes longer than expected, at least a brisk fifteen-minute walk.
When we arrive, I can’t believe the size of the comm room. It reminds me of Blair’s control center back on the Potato, only many times larger, with hundreds of people working at small groups of desks and in front of banks of video screens.
A man in a military uniform, a colonel, steps up to intercept us. “Dr. Spitz.”
“Colonel Hawkins.” Spitz is looking around for something.
So am I. I’d expected to see a frantic hive of activity bordering on chaos. I don’t see that at all. The control room is divided into a handful of sections and a least a dozen more subsections. Some of the computer screens display what appears to be a space battle. Most look nearly static, displaying charts and spreadsheets with row after row of numbers. Most of the operators don’t appear to be agitated.
Hawkins leads us toward a conference room. “The others have already left.”
Spitz is surprised, but doesn’t say anything.
“They were here for the weekly meeting when it started.”
Spitz checks his watch. “Where did they go?”
“The meeting is already over.”
The chairs in the conference room are in disarray. Rings left by coffee cups spot the long table. Crumbs surround them among a few crumpled napkins. I’m guessing these others Hawkins referred to must be some kind of management committee, yet I don’t ask. I’m more curious about the battle.
“They’re getting together again at five,” says Hawkins. “After they’ve each had some time to think over the implications.”
Spitz takes a seat.
So do I.
Hawkins walks to the front of the room and powers up a screen big enough to be watched comfortably from anywhere in the room. He pauses and points at me. “You want him to see this?”
Spitz nods. “It’s been approved.”
“Just now? On the way over here?” Hawkins is skeptical.
“It was decided yesterday that granting Major Kane access to information garnered from our surveillance network would help more than hurt us.”
Hawkins grudgingly turns to a computer and scrolls around for a video, which subsequently pops up on the screen, frozen, waiting for him to hit the play button. He turns and looks at Spitz.
Spitz takes his silent meaning and turns to me. “We have sixty surveillance satellites—”
Hawkins is shaking his head.
“Am I mistaken?” Spitz asks him.
“We lost seven.”
“Seven?” Spitz is knocked off-balance by this. “Malfunctions?”
“Six in the aftermath of the battles around earth,” answers Hawkins. “We have no cause to believe they were discovered. We suspect debris strikes.”
Spitz understands.
I do, too. Hunks of metal, stone, frozen bodies, and everything in-between are filling the space around earth, orbiting in every direction at every speed, colliding, breaking up, and crashing into other things.
“If this war ever ends,” muses Spitz, “it’ll take years to make earth-space safe again.” He focuses back on me. “We developed a class of surveillance and communication satellites that are very small, perhaps the size of a beach ball.” Spitz holds his hands out a few feet apart to demonstrate. “They aren’t particularly durable, nor powerful. Many versions, like the ones we orbit near earth, can intercept broadcast signals, both audio and video. Most models can scan the space or solar bodies nearby using an array of sensors. Some of our satellites operate merely as signal relays for the other satellites. In this way, we keep an eye on earth and its moon so we have a pretty good idea what’s going on in that part of the solar system.”
“But not the rest?” I guess.
Spitz shakes his head. “Earth surveillance requires nearly half our satellites. As for the others, we keep them near points of interest, but we don’t cover nearly enough of the solar system to maintain a comprehensive picture.”
“I suppose you’d build more of the satellites if you could.” It’s an obvious guess.
“Of course,” responds Spitz. “We build them as fast as our resource constraints allow us. However, since the war started, we barely keep up with the mortality rate. We need a more durable design, but more durable means we either increase the overall size of the satellite with more shielding, or maintain the same size and decrease the functionality by decreasing the hardware to make room for additional shielding. The problem is the larger we make them, the more likely they’ll be discovered. That we can’t have, as every discovery might turn into a clue whereby our enemies might discover our base here.”
I have enough background. “What’s this video we’re about to see?”
Hawkins points at the screen. “An attack on the Free Army’s main base.”
“Where is that?” I ask.
Spitz looks at me, surprised.
“Colonel Blair won’t tell me anything.” I feel belittled by admitting it.
“Compartmentalization of classified information is a virtue,” Hawkins tells Spitz.
Spitz dismisses Hawkins’s wisdom with a wave. “We have three satellites tasked with watching the FA’s main base on Callisto.”
“That’s one of Jupiter’s moons?” I ask, because I’m not sure.
Spitz nods.
“Do you maintain surveillance of the Potato?”
Spitz shakes his head. “Resources.”
“Do you know how many rebel bases there are? Do you know the strength of the Free Army?”
Hawkins snorts. Whatever respect he might have for me, it’s evaporating. He starts the video.
It’s a base like the installation on the Potato, only much bigger. Dozens of glass domes glow, scattered in no apparent pattern among other structures. Several of the buildings are hangars as large as the one back on Blair’s asteroid base. Many others structures hide their purpose from the vacuum and the prying eyes of Spitz’s surveillance satellites.
In a relatively flat area, between the base and a giant white pock scar where a meteor struck Callisto some millennia in the past, rows of Arizona-class assault ships are docked on the rough, tan surface. Though ‘docked’ is a generous word. They lay on the ground where their pilots parked them. Trails dis
color the surface where the feet of thousands of soldiers offloaded and marched to airlocks are arrayed along one edge of the aerodrome.
Also contained within the rectangular border of the landing area are rows of Beijing-class assault ships, all in good order. All purposely placed. None crashed. None damaged.
I start counting as I watch the image. Altogether there must be over a hundred ships.
I like what that implies. Despite the number of vessels destroyed in the Arizona Massacre, a significant portion of the American ships made it to the Free Army base. A large number of the Chinese ones found their way too. That doesn’t take into account other bases.
Is it possible as much as half of the SDF will turn traitor given the opportunity?
I don’t know, but my God, the numbers imply the proportion is significant.
Hawkins distracts me from the video by walking to the rear of the room and turning down the lights. “It’s easier on the eyes,” he explains, as he takes a seat in one of the chairs behind us.
“Is this a still photograph?” asks Spitz.
“Video.” Hawkins points at the screen. “If you squint, you can just make out the tiny, dark spots of people moving about. In a few minutes, the angle changes so you can see the view from another satellite just coming up over the horizon. That one’s camera is zoomed in much closer. You’ll see all the detail you want.” He glances at me. “More than you want, I suspect.”
A few pixels in the screen seem to shimmer like heat coming off a summer highway, and a second later, a Trog cruiser pops into view. Before I can gasp, its railguns fire down on the base.
More cruisers pop out of bubble jump, all dangerously close to the planet.
I’m leaning forward in my seat, and my words come in an anxious rush. “We saw the same thing at the Potato. One popped out of bubble a few kilometers up. It caused chaos with the local gravity for a moment.”
At least ten Trog cruisers are firing down on the base now.
More shimmers promise the arrival of others.
“Their grav control is...” Spitz doesn’t finish. “We’ve never seen this before.”
“We can’t do it,” Hawkins tells him, as more cruisers come into view. “Not consistently. Not without losing half our ships to collisions.”
“There must be twenty of them,” I count. All are firing, and more are arriving. “They’re going to be slaughtered.” I don’t mean the Trogs.
More Trog cruisers pop out of bubble jump.
The camera angle abruptly changes.
“The Free Army has some ships in the air.” Hawkins’s tone sounds more ominous than what he’s telling us. “You’ll see them coming to the rescue in a minute.”
From the angle we’re viewing, it looks like Arizona all over again. No, more a nightmare of Arizona. The Trog ships loom large in the sky, too many to count, and the rain of railgun fire is plowing up the surface of Callisto and obliterating every human construct.
Huge geysers of dirt and rock explode into space. Pieces of shattered ships fly in every direction.
A ship emerges from the slaughter on the surface in a sudden burst of acceleration, blazing bright blue grav, it arcs toward one of the cruisers overhead.
Spears of red-hot slugs lance across the sky, creating an impenetrable crisscross that destroys the ship before it’s a kilometer up.
Another ship shoots off the ground, followed by another. Before they meet their fate, I see what looks like hope. A squadron of six assault ships is raging down from above at impossible speed.
Kamikaze speed.
Oh, no.
Grav fields burst bright blue around the Trog cruisers as they try to evade and deflect.
The first attacker is knocked off course, and it flies past its target in a blur. It explodes in a titanic plume of rock and dirt when it hits the ground.
A second Trog cruiser takes a hit right through the reactors, and its midsection disintegrates along with the assault ship that rammed it.
The other incoming ships are blazing hard on their brakes to slow down.
Two more deflect, crashing against Callisto. Another explodes after being struck by railgun fire. Yet another pierces a Trog hull and the cruiser reels from the impact, spinning and surging so close to the ground I think for a moment it might crash.
More assault ships take off and attack the cruisers.
Others skim across the surface, trying to escape.
There’s so much movement, it’s impossible to keep track of everything. The sky is blazing red against black with thousands and thousands of railgun slugs. Grav fields glow blue around white Trog cruisers and streaks of rust mark our ships as they race to their deaths. The surface of Callisto is turning into a sandstorm filled with debris that floats slowly down to the surface in the moon’s light g.
Only one thing is easy to see—the Free Army is being slaughtered.
Chapter 37
I lose track of the minutes as I watch.
The slaughter, initially horrifying and vicious, turns systematic and numbing. No more assault ships shoot out of the cloud cloaking the surface to make a heroic attack run. None streak out over the horizon trying to escape. The remaining Trog cruisers have stopped firing at small targets. Only their largest railgun slugs fall, pummeling the base below. The Trogs are turning it to rubble—rubble infused with the corpses of thousands of humans.
They’re mopping up, and murdering any survivors whose only hope is that the tons of stone above their heads holds longer than the Trogs’ slugs last.
The Trogs don’t want the base. They just don’t want humans to infest it again.
“It goes on like that,” says Hawkins, like he’s talking through a tin can that stripped all the feeling from his words.
“How old is this video?” asks Spitz.
“Taking into account the time for the transmission to reach us—”
“Is it coming direct?”
Hawkins shakes his head. “Nothing comes direct anymore. All of the surveillance drones shoot a tight beam at one of several relay satellites, then it’s bounced to a few more before the signal ends up here. The transit time for signals from Callisto right now is running nearly two hours. By the time we put everything together for display down here, we’re running over four hours behind.”
“Are the Trogs still there?” I ask.
Hawkins nods.
“They’ll stay until there’s nothing left,” Spitz tells me. “Or until they run out of railgun slugs.”
That I know, but I don’t mind the confirmation on the strategy. “How long do you think it will take?”
“To completely slag the base?” asks Hawkins. “That’s what you’re asking, right?”
I nod.
He glances at Spitz as if to ask permission.
Spitz silently grants it.
Hawkins sighs. He’s very unhappy with me knowing any of this. “The base housed nearly six thousand SDF soldiers and—”
“Six thousand?” I’m stunned. With those kinds of numbers, the SDF is both real and significant. However, at the same time, destroyed.
“This is their main base,” he goes on. “It’s not unlike our base here. More crude. Like most of these pseudo-military complexes, it was a converted mining colony.”
“Back on the Potato,” I tell him, “we were nine levels deep. Figure each tunnel is two to four—sometimes six—meters from floor to ceiling, plus several meters of rock between, and the deepest levels are at least fifty meters deep.” My assumptions are running now on a full charge of optimism. “Simple pounding from above can’t reach the deeper layers. The rubble from the first several will collapse and act as a shield for those below. Sure, some of that rock will blast out, but most won’t.” I’m guessing on this part, knowing I’m basing everything on earthbound intuition and extrapolated guesses from dramatized explosions in old Hollywood movies.
When I look up from my thoughts, Hawkins is
glancing at Spitz again. More confirmation.
“Wait.” I’m missing more than I know. “What? Why do you keep looking at Spitz?”
Spitz tells me, “Not only do we have surveillance, we have people there.”
“Spies?” I ask.
“We prefer not to think of them that way,” responds Spitz. “We’re all on the same side.”
I shrug off the differentiation he’s trying to make. “So you know the base in detail. You know if they’re still alive.”
“It’s not that easy,” says Hawkins. “Every directional radio dish on the surface has been destroyed. It’ll be a long time before we hear anything from our people there, even if any survived.”
“But it was a mining colony,” I argue. “Surely the depth—”
Spitz is shaking his head. “Callisto is the largest undifferentiated body in the solar system.”
That throws me for a loop. “At the risk of sounding like the stupid one in the room, not only do I not know what that means, I can’t begin to guess why it’s important.”
“Geologically,” says Spitz, “Callisto never separated into layers. The earth, for instance, has its core, mantle, and crust. In the most simplistic explanation, think of it like the layers of stone you see on the side of a mountain. Elements and like compounds tend to collect in these layers.”
Easy so far. I’m following along.
“In an undifferentiated body,” says Spitz, “that doesn’t happen. It might be that any ten-ton scoop of rock you take from the surface might have the same composition as a similar scoop taken from a few hundred meters down.”
“But the Potato—”
Spitz raises a palm to hush me. “Every geological situation is different. “On Callisto, they never had a need to dig the mines deep. Everything they sought, they found near the surface.”
“How deep did they go?” I ask, feeling the ominous answer.
“Two levels,” answers Hawkins. “Most of the base is less than twenty meters deep.”
Another major defeat. Another slaughter. I shore up my disappointment and ask, “How many ships got away? How many SDF bases are left? What’s their strength?”
