Shirakawa almost smiled. Then he thought about what the ancestral homeworld’s duplicity had brought down on all their heads. The Second Solar War, mere months after the First, had been shorter but twice as vicious and costly—for both sides, but especially for the stubbornly bureaucratic Earth itself.
“Surely they’ve learned their lesson?” he said, knowing the remark a triumph of hope over experience. Shirakawa thought of five randomly selected Erath cities—each previously home to over a million, now little more than radioactive craters.
“Hopefully,” Ginsberg agreed, earning her a sharp look from the Captain.
“Hope isn’t enough,” Huang overrode the Army officer.
As if correcting a painfully naïve student, Shirakawa thought.
“That’s why we’re here, Professor—to hear about your contingency plan.”
“It’s hardly anything so grand as a fully fleshed out ‘plan.’” Shirakawa equivocated. “Exactly how much detail did Crabtree go into?”
“Your fellow professor merely said we needed to hear your idea,” Ginsberg said.
“But,” Huang spoke up again, “he did say it might prove vital to the Confederacy’s long-term security. Said it forcefully enough and in the right ears that our superiors arranged this meeting.”
“I see. Well, first you need to know that Professor Crabtree—he’s in our exobiology department—is a profoundly bitter man. With reason certainly. He lost three close relatives and several friends in our recent wars.”
The two so far, Shirakawa reminded himself.
Captain Huang frowned. Crossed her arms, perhaps unconsciously displaying her biceps. Un like Shirakawa or her colleague, Huang carried the comparatively robust muscle-structure of one who’d grown up on one of the Confederacy’s higher gravity moons—Ganymede, perhaps—and had worked to maintain them since. “Your plan, Professor?”
“Right. Several facility members were discussing the latest news. How Earth-gov had reneged on the first peace treaty came up, of course. A general, vague consensus emerged. We needed something more to hold over their heads—something menacing enough that they wouldn’t dare go back on their old tricks.”
‘True enough. Go on, Professor.”
“As if what happened this time wasn’t enough!” Shirakawa gasped involuntarily.
“Certainly it should be,” Ginsberg agreed.
“True.” Huang smirked. “We retook Luna. Destroyed or damaged over a dozen orbital outposts. Severely degraded their Home Fleet and repelled—at significant loss, I should note—their interstellar units’ diversionary attacks out in the Kuiper Belt—”
“And wiped out five entire cities full of civilians, Captain!”
“Thus forcing them to see reason, Professor.”
Huang and Shirakawa stared at each other.
Ginsberg cleared her throat. “The threat of more brought them back to the table this time. But now, in the comparative calm of the present, the mere idea of nuking more population centers is politically—untenable.”
Huang snorted, but Ginsberg pressed on. “So your associates are right. We need something different, something new to threaten them with. Something that sounds less monstrous on its surface, perhaps—but is just as potentially devastating.”
“If not more so?” Shirakawa suggested, almost against his will.
Both women nodded.
“I was just spit-balling—thinking out loud about a new, somewhat abstract problem. It’s what I do—what I’ve done for decades as a theoretical physicist.”
“Please get to the point, Sir?” The way Huang pronounced that last word, it was anything but honorific.
Shirakawa sighed. “I said, ‘Maybe we could just throw a couple rocks at them?”
><><
“Is this a joke?” Huang muttered then added another derisive snort. “Academics.”
“Not a joke. Or not a very funny one, anyway—particularly if you happened to be, for instance, a dinosaur, some millions of years ago.”
Shirakawa’s drumming finger halted. Now it straightened and lifted with the balance of his left hand to gesture emphatically. “One hunk of rock, no more than ten kilometers wide. Just the one, Captain. But enough to finish them and ninety-percent of all other life then on Earth. Our species probably would never have evolved, Captain—if not for the multiple ecological openings left by that single impact and the mass extinction event that followed.”
“So—you weren’t joking,” Ginsberg said, her face pale with understanding.
“Oh,” the Professor admitted, “that’s how most took it. Crabtree especially and he didn’t see the humor at all. Got abusive. So I told him I was serious. Just to defend myself, you know? Which—oh, hell, it was an off-the-cuff remark. A snide one, even. At the moment I said it, part of me was surely joking. But Crabtree jumped me, rhetorically. I fought back in kind. And the more I developed the idea, the more serious—the more horrifyingly doable, even practical it seemed.”
“Of course.” Ginsberg nodded. “And I think we both know where you’re going. But—continue?”
“Know much about the early space industry?”
Both women frowned. Exchanged blank looks.
But neither interrupted, just then.
“We’re talking the late 21st to early 22nd Century. The first off-planet mining site was Luna, naturally enough. Developed alongside the orbital processing plants. Highest quality mineral output peaked a few decades in, but Earth’s appetite just kept growing. The UNH was determined to end all mining in their biosphere—for perfectly good ecological, social and political reasons. The Apollo Group was the next logical source. More than a thousand mostly small, mostly rocky asteroids whose orbits carried a few at a time to within the range of the comparatively limited spacecraft of the era. Ready sources of iron, magnesium, other high-value items. And while permanent colonies on Luna and next to the space-based processing facilities—the first small ancestors of the orbital cities we have today—made obvious sense, nobody saw those minor rocks as potential colony sites. Most were too small to sustain significant populations anyway.”
“So they began doing what we’re still doing today?” Ginsberg offered when Shirakawa paused for a breath.
“Not exactly. Today they—like us—would set a crew down, position thrusters and guide the whole rock safely to an orbital factory to be disassembled—the high-grade material refined and processed, the leftovers used as radiation shielding and other cheap, miscellaneous building material.”
“Sure.” Ginsberg nodded. “They’re always putting together new cities or expanding existing ones. Population growth, Professor. I’m from Tsioilokoskyville myself. These days I hardly recognize the place—all the add-on modules! With the latest expansion, I hear population there approaches 180,000. But—your point?”
“Back then, they didn’t have engines as powerful or dependable as ours. Hell, most civilian spacecraft still used chemical propellants! Damned slow, Lt. Colonel. Guidance and navigation systems weren’t that great, either. Not precise enough. But they had mass-drivers, from on the moon—a simple, proven technology.”
“They extracted mineral-rich ore on site,” Huang said slowly. “Then the drivers flung it into a low-risk transfer orbit.”
“With ramscoop tugs waiting to snag it all on the other end,” Shirakawa agreed. “Then the tugs would fly it the last few hundred kilometers to the factory stations.”
“Once one asteroid was stripped, they simply moved the mass-driver and other equipment to the next one? Left the mined-out remnant?”
“Precisely, Captain. Meanwhile, Luna continued to supply all the lower quality stuff they could use. Given the technology of the time and the pace at which the orbital infrastructure was being built, it made good economic sense.”
“So today they’re abandoned?”
“And pretty much ignored by all concerned. Shirakawa nodded. “Today’s asteroid-pushers—the ones still working for Earth and its surrounding orbi
tal industry—still have plenty of intact Apollo rocks well within reach. Ones with minerals they get the best prices for, as well as the lesser grade material. Why even bother with the stripped ones—even if they are the ones that fly closest Earth?”
“How many?” Huang demanded.
“Ones big enough to do real harm in an Earth-impact scenario? Forty-five, maybe fifty.”
><><
“You realize what you’re suggesting?” Captain Huang gestured and with the army officer finally took their seats. Suddenly she seemed to almost be enjoying herself. “Quite a nasty business—using a capacity developed in part to prevent deadly impacts to cause one? To cause huge amounts of death and destruction?”
“No!” Shirakawa pushed back so violently he nearly toppled over his chair and himself. For one born on one low-gravity dwarf planet and resident of another for multiple decades, it was an almost inexplicable miscalculation. However, he made it to his feet without overcorrecting and steadied himself.
“No,” he repeated, marginally calmer. “That’s only what we threaten, Captain. What we tell them we will do, if they don’t honor the treaty. It’s a bluff. Has to be! To follow through—” Shirakawa’s head dipped, swung slowly back and forth like an old-style pendulum in Vesta’s minimal gravity. ‘The results are too terrible, too monstrous to seriously consider. You know how many innocent people live down there?”
“I am acutely aware,” Huang said flatly, “of Earth’s population. They outnumber us a hundred to one, Professor. And they sit there, a self-satisfied and arrogant, micromanaging, resource-sucking mass at the very heart of our star system.”
“Their system, too,” Shirakawa reminded.
Huang dismissed that with a wave. "All I’m saying is the Outer Colonies had it easier. When they decided to demand independence, they had lightyears of breathing space from the seat of colonial power. Had to fight anyway, most of them. But they didn’t have the freaking homeworld sitting right in their midst! We do. As such, maybe we need something ‘too terrible, too monstrous’ in our pocket—to keep ‘em honest.”
Another long, uncomfortable silence settled around them as Shirakawa slowly, cautiously returned to his seat.
“As I said,” Ginsberg soothed, “things are calmer now. Cooler head prevail and all that?”
“Fine.” Huang allowed reluctantly. “So all we’re talking about is a tool for the diplomatic corps to threaten with—quietly, but firmly. A little—added insurance?”
‘The people who run the United Nations of Humanity may be the hidebound and self-important bureaucrats we think them to be,” Shirakawa observed. “Like maybe we’re a bit like the wild-eyed, unpredictable children they see us as? I suppose what happened to Tulsa, Mombasa and those other places should actually play in our favor, that way. Make the unthinkable seem more—well, more thinkable? And there surely have to be sensible people among all those billions—ones who’ll point out what it would mean?”
><><
Captain Huang leaned forward. “Let’s talk practicalities. Specifically, overcoming the other side’s technology?”
Shirakawa found her smile grotesque, but could see no grounds to object. “Well, yes. They have the same rock-pushing and impact-prevention capabilities as we do. On a much lesser scale, of course. For one thing, the thickness of Earth’s atmosphere protects against all but the biggest space debris. But in theory—I suppose ships could escort the rock partway. Fight off their ships, so they couldn’t readjust the asteroid’s flight path till it was too late to avoid collision?”
“Or simply throw more than—as you say—‘a couple rocks’ at them?” Huang’s eyes burned with relish. “Overwhelm them with sheer numbers?”
“That would work,” Shirakawa admitted. He turned his head. Saw the thoughtful expression on the other warrior woman’s face. “Another question, Lt. Colonel?”
Ginsberg shrugged. “You know, once it’s explained this seems like such am obvious idea. How come nobody else—?”
“I’m sure it’s not that original idea.” Shirakawa smiled. “The danger of a devastating impact’s pretty obvious, considering Earth’s prehistory. I bet some half-crazy fiction writer suggested somebody, someday might do just this sort of thing intentionally. Maybe several did? But that probably was mostly back in the very early days of spaceflight—say the late 20th or early 21st Centuries?”
Ginsberg blinked. “So why our initial, knee-jerk disbelief?”
“Hmm.” The Professor considered for a moment. “Two reasons, I‘d think. Both related to our society and our everyday realities of life.”
Shirakawa smiled again, back on the safely hypothetical level he was most comfortable with. “One, our technology—military and otherwise. We fight wars with things like SMART missiles, point-defense lasers and pulse rifles. The very notion of using a lowly piece of stone—whether it fits in your hand or is kilometers wide—to bash somebody with seems incongruous to us. Primitive. Honestly, it does sound like some fool’s sick joke—doesn’t it?”
He paused again. Gave his visitors and himself time to absorb his point before continuing.
“And the second?” Ginsberg prompted.
“Second, as just noted, our population centers don’t have any significant atmospheric padding, if you will. We’re a culture of space stations and pressure domes—orbital cities, mostly airless moons, mini-worlds like Vesta and Ceres. Always acutely, even when unconsciously—instinctively, even—aware of the danger of impacts. Such things are to be avoided. Always. It’s so damned ingrained in our psyche that the very thought of consciously bringing such a calamity about feels totally wrong.”
The professor’s eyes shifted Huang’s way for a vaguely vengeful instant.
“Just totally wrong,” he repeated. “Even the hardest, the most brutally ruthless among us would tend to shy from even considering such a thing!”
“Even against a bitter enemy?” Huang responded, apparently unmoved.
“Even then,” Shirakawa insisted.
Then he added silently: Or so I pray . . .
26 OCTOBER---IMPLEMENTATION
The loading and fueling of the highly modified shuttlecraft was complete. And their designated jump-off point would be reached within the hour.
Major Edwina Wu performed a final visual inspection of the outer hull. As usual, the ancient ritual of the preflight walk around revealed no problems. Wu was about to pull her team together for another minor rite—a few brief, encouraging remarks about a mission they all knew by heart already—when one of them stepped forward, concern on his face.
The only surprise was that this time it was Captain Bence.
“A word with you, Skipper?” In private?” Bence gestured in the general direction of the tricked-out shuttle’s port thruster array—as far removed as possible from the other members of their team.
“Now?” Wu asked.
Now, Skip.” He repeated the gesture a bit more intensely.
Wu faced Bence upon achieving the desired modicum of privacy. “You’ve been the only one of us with absolutely no qualms about these missions,” she reminded.
Well, she mentally corrected herself, you and Vineeta.
Lt. Vineeta never complained or expressed discomfort about anything. The Systems Coordination Specialist was the epitome of the take-it-as-it-comes personality. The Major still wasn’t quite sure if that was a good thing or not . . .
Wu shook that kernel of doubt from here head and plowed onward. “Is it what happened last time? We’re not even sure that ship spotted us. Hell, it might not even have been an Earth patrol. Smugglers operate pretty freely down here. Legit civilian craft are considerably rarer, I grant you—but hardly unknown, either. Anyway, with all the stealthy features in this beast, they’d have to have physically sighted our engine plume. With any luck, the new limited-use protocol will address that problem. Unfortunately,” she manufactured a rueful grin, “it’s damned hard to mask a high-performance fusion drive’s flame, huh?”
>
“That’s not it, Skipper.”
“What then?”
“Dubinsky and Inouye.”
Wu groaned. “I thought you were against them hooking up in the first place?”
“Sure. It’s unprofessional. Two members of a team getting involved like that.”
“So I’d think you’d be relieved—that being over now?”
“Which could be worse, Skipper. Expecting them to work together, so soon after the breakup?”
‘I see your point. But Kamilla and Stacie are experienced, dedicated people. More than that, they’re Confederacy Marines. Veterans, too. That has to mean something, right? They won’t allow personal feelings to interfere with getting the job done.”
“I hope you’re right, Skip.”
Me too, Wu thought as she spun smartly around and started back to where the others stood waiting.
><><
Even farther inside the orbit of Mercury than previously, the long-range shuttle cleared the Titan-class sub-light frigate’s launch bay. The sun’s overpowering glare served to mask the intentionally brief burn of the small craft’s over-capable engine.
Impelled by this short eruption of superheated force, the craft flew silently—effectively coasting toward today’s first destination.
Simultaneously, the well-armed mothership turned. The pulsing brilliance of its massive engines further obscured its tiny offspring’s passage.
The frigate was still hours short of its official assignment.
Icarus had only a few hundred inhabitants—scientists and support staff mostly. But it was the only Apollo asteroid with any permanent populations at all. Inspecting the place for forbidden weapon stockpiles was a fool’s errand, all things considered. But it was still Earth-gov property and the ceasefire agreement allowed for it.
9 Tales From Elsewhere 2 Page 10
