by John Lumpkin
That’s every American ship in the system: us, the two transports, and the tanker, the entire token force here to show the Brits, Aussies and Canadians we’re committed to defending their colonies on Entente. And we’re leaving to go to try again to retake Kuan Yin. But liberating Kuan Yin would be huge. I just hope we do better than last time, and I might just see Rand again, if he’s still alive. His old roommate, the guerrilla. Somehow, Neil was sure he was still fighting.
“Why us, sir?” Neil asked Captain Howell.
“The Marines, first and foremost,” Captain Howell said. “That battalion is equipped for space boarding operations, and most of those special units are already tied up going after Saturn. The Seabees will help the colony get back on its feet, and get a navy back out in the oceans on Kuan Yin.”
“Is anyone replacing us here?”
“Negative, Lieutenant,” Howell said. “The Brits and the others will have to make do. Now, I must say, Mercer, that you look like shit. Rest up and start your day after lunch. Forty-eight hours and I’m going to want a briefing for the officers on every system we’re going to pass through, with a particular focus on Commonwealth. I recall you’ve been this way before.”
“Aye, sir,” Neil said. “They started calling it the Alley after we made the run.”
He left the captain’s office and entered the main shaft through the Apache, pushing off to head down to his room. He looked ahead to avoid any collisions, and he saw Jessica, floating toward him, heading up the ship for her shift in the CIC. And suddenly, Neil worried. She looks great. I’ve missed her. Maybe more than I knew. But it’s been nearly four months. We’ve talked, but not about what’s going on with us. She never seems to want to define anything. And she might have … are we still –
Her face broke into a broad, unofficerlike smile, and as she passed him in the shaft, she reached out and ran a hand along him, from his head down to his calf, and, despite his exhaustion and sadness over Das, he felt a deep heat inside him.
We are, still.
Chapter 15
HAGATNA, GUAM – Citing fears that her home would become a bargaining chip in future negotiations with the Chinese, a delegation led by Guam’s governor Lynn Tarkanian took off for Washington with a petition to become the nation’s fifty-third state. The proposed state, Pacifica, would also encompass the Northern Marianas and American Samoa, and Micronesia, the Marshall Islands and Palau would also be given an opportunity to hold a popular referendum on whether to join. The long-neglected Pacific territories have become vital strategic points in the war with China, because they host heavy laser sites that can hit targets in swaths of Earth orbital space that would otherwise be unreachable by American surface weaponry. Rumors have flared on the islands that China has secretly demanded the U.S. abandon these territories as part of any peace settlement, but both Chinese and American officials have denied any negotiations are taking place.
USS Apache, DG Canum Venaticorum
Apache shook off the doldrums and, for the first time in a while, was in a happy mood. The ship had missed out on taking part in any action on Entente’s surface, so the last several months had been one uneventful orbit after another. Now, at last, we can do something useful, even if it is babysitting some transports.
Neil fell back into the rhythms of shipboard life, the steady flow of briefings and reports, the hum of the reactor, and the claustrophobic constancy of one’s accessible world reduced to a 22-meter-wide cylinder. He reacquainted himself with the ten people on his team, most of them in the collection division, the petty officers and astronauts who operated the ship’s sensor suite around the clock. His senior petty officer, who had run the intelligence shop in his absence, kept the team in good order. Wilkins was still having trouble with his ship recognition charts, he reported, but young Allenby had shown herself to be a whiz with the interferometer.
Until they reached their destination of 11 Leonis Minoris, the most dangerous part of the journey was the next system downstream, Beta Canum Venaticorum, which contained a wormhole link to Chinese territory.
The intelligence on the system, however, was weeks out of date; comm buoys rarely held accurate data on ship traffic any more. The Israelis, who managed another wormhole link out of the system, had passed along reports of four Chinese warships orbiting the anarchy that was the habitable world of Commonwealth, but a Brazilian freighter captain passing through a month later said she hadn’t seen any military vessels from any country.
Apache and her charges were at the leading Trojan point of the red dwarf DG Canum Venaticorum and its third planet, Nama, a rock that massed a little more than Mars but had none of its rustic charm. The U.N. keyhole to the Beta Canum Venaticorum system orbited here, ready to whisk them 7.6 light-years away.
At least we won’t be going to Commonwealth, Neil thought. They would emerge in the orbit of one of the planet’s moons, but they had no business near the surface.
Still, a threat existed. The last two years of war between Earth powers had, if anything, made the situation on Commonwealth even more desperate and chaotic, and it was possible that one of the piratical states on the surface might try to go after the remass tanker Aquila. A few Commonwealth states had purchased some small armed corvettes, but none had gone after anything as powerful as an American frigate. The real danger would be if the American ships had to drop to a lower orbit around the planet, which would put them in range of a combined attack from surface weaponry and spacecraft, but Neil emphasized to Captain Howell that the primary concern was Chinese and Korean warships marauding through the system.
So Apache gingerly approached the keyhole, fearful an enemy would attempt to attack them through the forty-meter opening. The sensor techs could see the space immediately beyond the throat, and the collection of stars that were visible suggested someone had rotated it away from its normal view of the planet Commonwealth. Their awareness of what was to either side of the wormhole throat was also limited; the ring that held it open reduced the ship’s peripheral vision through it. And ships could also hide behind the keyhole structure, striking as soon as the Apache crossed over.
But sensor drones that went ahead of the frigate saw nothing in the immediate vicinity; they sniffed above, below and behind the keyhole and located no imminent ambush.
“Take us through,” Captain Howell ordered, his voice resounding through Apache’s CIC. “Tell the rest of the convoy to follow us.”
Neil knew better than to protest publicly, so he launched from his seat and planted himself in front of Howell’s console.
“Sir, I want to caution that there’s still a lot we don’t know about what’s in the system,” he said quietly, so only Howell and the acting XO, Carruth, could hear. “Our view is obscured in a number of places, particularly behind Commonwealth and its big moon.”
“How long would we have to wait?” Carruth asked.
“A full Commonwealth day should give us time to see if any threats are present, sir,” Neil said.
“Twenty-nine hours?” Howell said. “We can’t sit here that long. The orders say all possible speed.”
“Aye, sir.”
Wormholes were not designed to accommodate rapid transit; they expected ships to stop and have their mass measured before passing through. Moreover, the margin for error was slim; a big tanker like Aquila could scrape through with only a few meters of vacuum between it and the edge of the wormhole mouth. And striking the edge would be fatal to the ship.
Nevertheless, the passage of the Apache through a keyhole never failed to elicit obscene jokes among the enlisted personnel in the CIC; the visual metaphor of the conical Apache penetrating the wormhole ring was not lost on anyone with an elementary understanding of human sexual practices. Having gone through more than a score of wormholes already in his military career, what Neil wished for, more than anything, was someone to make an original joke in this regard. Something with a punchline about the Big Bang or birth of the universe, maybe …
Bu
t the astronauts in Apache’s CIC were not up to the task, and the little convoy reformed at the moon Rodrigo’s L-5 point with Commonwealth and thrust toward the next wormhole, more than three weeks travel away.
Near Combat Supply Cache Condor, Sequoia Continent, Kuan Yin
Rand and Aguirre had found the caches at Diver, Eagle, Goshawk and Harrier all destroyed from orbit. Chinese troops had picked over each site, leaving nothing for them to scavenge.
Now they approached Condor, the last one Rand was sure he knew the location of. If it was empty, he would have to talk to Aguirre about surrendering, because they were almost out of food.
The trees are intact. No evidence of fires and no blast debris from kinetic warheads. Maybe they didn’t find this one. It might have food, weapons, power …
“Sir!” Aguirre said in a harsh whisper. “Gunmen in the trees!”
They kneeled down, rifles ready. I can’t see anyone, Rand thought.
“I saw you first, Aguirre!” someone called.
“Bullshit! I had you dead to rights, Ruiz,” Aguirre shouted back.
“Aguirre, if you shoot as badly as you lie, I had nothing to worry about!”
Ruiz and some other soldiers walked into the open. Rand and Aguirre stood up, and the Green Beret embraced them in turn.
“Glad to see you two made it, sir,” Ruiz said. “I’d heard you were topside when it came down, so I thought maybe you’d gotten away. Where’s Lopez?”
“POW. They caught her near CSC Eagle.”
“Sorry to hear that, sir,” Ruiz said, looking closely at Aguirre. “At least she’s alive.”
“Yeah. How did you make it out, Sergeant?” Rand said.
“Out on one of Cruz’s busywork patrols,” he said. “Just lucky, I guess. Do you know what happened to the major, sir?”
“Dead. Laser strike from orbit.”
“Oh.” He looked grim. “DiMarco’s dead, too. A few of the guys who have shown up here are certain he was in Falcon when it went up. We think the Hans captured about four hundred of our people, but I don’t know about Gant, or any other officer, really.”
“No officers? How many made it here?”
“You two put us at one hundred and four effectives, plus six wounded. We’ve been putting together an org chart for a light infantry company, sir. All we needed was a CO, and I’m happy to offer you the keys to the car, Captain Castillo.”
USS Apache, Beta Canum Venaticorum
“New contact, rising over the planet! Range is about half a million klicks,” the sensor tech announced. “Designate Tango-9. She’s close to geosynchronous orbit.”
Neil called up the sensor data on his console. The ship was pushed by a military-grade drive, a Daewoo Ppaleun Ibiseu Mark III. “Captain, that’s a Korean frigate, breaking to intercept us.”
They had been thrusting away from the wormhole for about twelve hours. We should have waited before making the transit.
The countermeasures tech announced that the ship was being hit with lidar and radar.
“Intel, Weaps, Propes, do join me,” Howell said. Neil and the other two officers propelled themselves to Howell’s console for a private conversation. Neil wondered if he would get some kind of acknowledgement for warning Howell that this might occur, but the captain didn’t mention it.
“All right, Intel, tell me about this joker.”
“Sir, that’s a Seoul-class frigate,” Neil said. “They’re built around the kind of ray gun we’d put on a destroyer, with a single gun turret to corral targets. They’re small and fast. Against us, it would be a fair fight.”
“I don’t like fair fights,” Howell said. “Any weaknesses?”
“Most of their armor is in the nose. On three sides, their lateral armor is about as tough as aluminum foil, but they packed a few extra layers on what the computer calls its “ventral” side. I guess when they turn, they try to show that side to the enemy.”
“Noted. Anything else?”
“The Koreans aren’t thrilled with the war,” Neil said. “They were too tight with China to not jump in, but they’ve had a lot of people killed and don’t really see what they can gain.”
The weapons officer, Lieutenant David Ortega, looked annoyed. “Do we really need political intelligence right now, Mercer?”
Neil met his eyes. “If you’d let me finish, sir, I’d tell you that they may not have the commitment to seeing a fight to the finish that a Chinese ship might.” Neil knew he was shading closer to an insubordinate tone, but he didn’t like Ortega, largely because of Jessica’s private complaints about his management style. Don’t push it too far, or he might take it out on her – just don’t let him brush you off and have the captain ignore it.
Howell looked thoughtful. “Propes, how long until intercept?”
Ensign Eve Cohen, Apache’s propulsion officer, said, “Thirty-six, thirty-seven hours.”
“All right, let’s carry on, then, and see if this guy really wants to stretch his legs and catch up with us.”
The ship was still following them nine hours later. It hadn’t gained much ground on Apache, but that would change soon. The CIC fell into a mild torpor; the enemy was out there, but Apache’s crew couldn’t do much about it, not for a while.
A crewman brought in dinner for the CIC staff. Neil, starving, grabbed a chicken burrito.
“New activity near the Donatello keyhole,” announced the piccolo voice of Astronaut Allenby.
Neil did an involuntary doubletake, and his cheek collided with the approaching burrito, smearing mashed beans on his face. Donatello! That’s the keyhole to Chinese space, orbiting the innermost planet in the system. At the moment, the planet was on the same side of Beta Canum Venaticorum as Commonwealth.
“What do you have, Astronaut?” Howell demanded.
“Um, the keyhole was obscured behind the planet until now, sir,” she said. “But it looks like two more Seoul-class frigates, sir, with their candles lit.”
“So it’s a wolfpack,” Ortega said.
Neil nodded. “If they head our way, they should try to envelop us from three different vectors, so we won’t be able to bring our gun or primary lasers to bear on at least one of them.”
“Sounds like the way the Sakis operate,” Howell said. He ran his hand over his head.
“Sir, would you like me to provide you simulation data?” Neil asked.
“No, I think I'd best continue Captain Hernandez's practices on that point. Propes, can we outrun them?” Howell said.
“Probably not, sir,” Cohen said. “They’ve got the angle to reach our destination keyhole before we do. The rest of the convoy is just too slow, and we have to save enough juice to get through the Alley systems.”
“All right, let’s make it a chase anyway. Maybe they aren’t so serious about sticking it to us,” Howell said.
The Koreans were serious.
The two frigates from the keyhole punched their acceleration, burning remass to catch Apache’s little convoy. The first frigate was still hundreds of thousands of kilometers distant, well beyond weapons range, and it had reduced its burn to prevent closing the gap any further. Howell had the Aquila repropellant the Apache, a tricky operation while both ships were under thrust, but it would allow Aquila to move faster and let Apache be ready for the remass-intensive maneuvers of close combat.
It took ten days for the two new frigates to join the old one. Commonwealth receded, but the line of three little lights, so obviously manmade among the chaotic firmament, remained on their tail. The crew grew restless. They worried Apache was only lucky in their first battle against the Gan Ying.
Finally, they had to undergo turnover. They were past the halfway mark but planned to burn extra remass to decelerate toward the keyhole to the next system, the red dwarf GJ 1151. Cohen grew particularly frazzled; even with all the extra remass carried by the Aquila, the convoy would have to dip into emergency reserves before joining the fleet at 11 Leonis Minoris. If the fleet wasn’t there, they
would be adrift.
And still the line of three little lights kept coming, kept accelerating, all the way to thirty milligees, past the point where they should have undergone turnover to intercept the convoy at roughly equal velocities.
Soon, they were traveling about ten kilometers per second faster than Apache and her consorts, and that meant they were coming for a high-speed pass on the convoy. Such combats were quick and violent; most captains avoided them, as the differences in velocities meant kinetic weapons were much harder to dodge, and a single hit from a shell was typically fatal. Tactics and training largely went out the window, and such battles often ended in mutual destruction. Did we do this to ourselves? Neil wondered. The Koreans were acting like they didn’t have enough remass to decelerate, fight a maneuvering engagement, and then do another rapid flip to get back to Commonwealth or the Donatello keyhole. But they did have enough, Neil knew, although they likely wouldn’t be able to use extra propellant to get back to Commonwealth quickly. Do they simply have a suicidal commander? They could close with us at a normal velocity and probably beat us. Instead they are risking all three frigates for a couple of troop carriers.
No … assume rationality. They want to avoid a maneuvering engagement to conserve remass. They need that remass to be somewhere by a deadline. Or they just want to chase us out of the system, rather than kill us.
With the convoy decelerating, the two sets of ships closed rapidly. Apache increased her thrust even more, allowing the rest of the convoy to recede behind her. She was now between the three frigates and the transports, and they would be within weapons range in less than half an hour.
The three little lights kept coming. One little rock, and we’re done, the crew knew.
Ten minutes later, the frigates passed a small sensor drone left behind by the Apache. It read the names of the ships written on the hull: Incheon, Daejeon, and Kaesong.
When they were eight thousand kilometers away, the Korean frigates fired their coilguns, a short burst of rounds in a spiraling pattern. The rounds took nine minutes to arrive, and Apache dodged easily. What was that? Did they think we were asleep at the wheel? Or maybe they wanted to gauge our reaction time?
