The Desert of Stars (The Human Reach)

by John Lumpkin

  When they were fifteen hundred kilometers away, Neil warned, “Sir, they should break for their envelopment maneuver soon.”

  Howell nodded. “Bring in the cooling fins,” he said. Apache’s tanks of liquid lithium began absorbing the heat the ship would usually radiate into space. “Fire Control, Guns, weapons free.”

  Outside, Apache’s new coilgun fired its inaugural shots in anger, emitting a stream of shells spaced a second apart. Along the hull, small hatches opened, revealing the nose cones of the missiles within. The first of the ship’s missiles fell free, and then fired its motor. All forty missiles launched, ripple-fired to maximize potential damage. They were aimed at two of the three frigates – Howell and Ortega agreed that spreading the missiles between all three enemy ships would make it harder to overwhelm any single ship’s defenses.

  During the minutes it took for the missiles to close with their targets, Howell floated over to Neil’s console.

  “You know, Mercer, things really picked up after you came on board,” he said, his eyes remaining locked on the CIC's main holo.

  “Sir?”

  “We started the war at the WX Ursae Majoris blockade, but we had something break in the fusion drive and had to return to Kennedy, so we missed the action when those Han raiders broke through,” he said. “Then we missed the battle at Kennedy because we were shipping some chickenshit Colonial Affairs bigwigs to Independence, who insisted on military transport because of the war. I started to think we wouldn't see any real action at all. I came up in combat systems, and that possibility killed me, Mercer. You train your whole career for something, and it happens, but bad luck makes you useless. That fight with the Gan Ying was the most amazing thing I've ever been a part of. The most amazing thing.”

  “Uh, sir, our missiles are in range of their defenses,” Neil said. If the Koreans had been about to break formation, they cancelled the maneuver, as all three ships pointed their noses toward the cloud of incoming and fired their main lasers. Each shot killed a missile. Apache’s brood dropped to thirty-five, then thirty.

  But some of the missiles died usefully. They were of a new generation, equipped with a crude camera in the skin of their nosecones, built to detect and transmit data about the laser that killed it back to its mothership. The enhancement had cost the missile some of its warhead mass, but here, they served their purpose.

  “Gotcha,” said Jessica Barrett, as one of her counterlasers, made smart with data from the missiles, burned out the optics of the Incheon’s forward laser cannon before its armored shutter could close. The laser would not get fixed until the frigates were well past the convoy, so the ship was reduced to a gun platform.

  “Zombie! Zombie! More coilgun salvoes inbound, from all three targets!” The CIC officer announced. “Four minutes, nine seconds closure.”

  “Evade,” Howell said. Apache turned and thrust at a full gee, then two gees, and everyone was pressed into their chairs. This is the Koreans’ chance to rake us with their big lasers, but if our counterbatteries can nail their optics, we win the battle.

  The Korean commanders knew this, and they didn’t take the chance … yet. More coilgun rounds, sprayed in a wide area, distracting the Apache.

  But Apache’s dodges cut it a little too close, and Jessica’s point defenses were forced to engage two shells that threatened to strike the frigate. The small lasers exploded the first harmlessly, but the second shattered, sending debris into Apache’s hide. While none were larger than a ball bearing, their residual velocity left a section of the hull pockmarked and knocked the ship’s primary forward telescope from its mount.

  “Damage control, please fix that scope,” the XO transmitted.

  “On it, ma’am,” a piccolo voice chirped in the reply. Despite himself, Neil smiled. Only Astronaut Allenby had a voice that pitched that high; her battle station was on one of the damage control teams as the sensor repair tech.

  A thousand kilometers away, Apache’s surviving missiles burst into scores of unguided flechettes, and the Korean frigates’ point-defense lasers and autocannons tried to kill them, and the ships turned to dodge.

  One flechette made it through the Kaesong’s defenses, striking a corner of the frigate’s nose and cutting a long furrow along the side. For a moment, Neil thought the damage was superficial, a cut on the skin, but small streamers of gas emerged from it, followed by a small explosion, followed by a large one. The frigate staggered, and its candle went out.

  Neil’s forefinger beat against his console, one-two. One defanged, one disabled …

  Daejeon‘s captain decided the squadron had suffered enough; the ship’s forward laser unshuttered and fired, burrowing through the thin armor on Apache’s flank in a quarter of a second. Normally, a ship would turn off the laser shortly after a burn-through was achieved to prevent a counterbattery from taking it out. But this was a parting shot, and Daejeon’s weapons’ officer left the laser on until four of Apache’s counterbattery turrets smashed it. Apache unshuttered her own primary lasers and drilled two holes in Daejeon’s forward armor, to no appreciable effect. Daejeon and Incheon turned perpendicular to their original vector, rolling to present their armored bellies to the Apache.

  They were disengaging.

  But Daejeon’s damage was done; the Korean frigate’s beam had struck Apache near the point previously damaged by the coilgun shell debris. A one-meter armored plate broke free, and the Whipple plates underneath shattered, exposing the compartment they protected. In that spot were Astronaut Allenby and two other members of her damage control team, who were working to repair the damaged telescope. While her comrades were tethered to the back wall of the compartment, Allenby had strapped herself to the inside of the inner most Whipple plate, so she could quickly tear away some damaged components.

  Daejeon’s laser blast was close enough that all three astronauts suffered burns on their exposed skin. The rapid decompression of the small compartment blew the shard of the Whipple plate out into space, dragging Allenby along with it. Her body spun wildly away from the Apache on three axes. Her emergency bubble activated, but it malfunctioned, enclosing the empty space next to her. Within fifteen seconds, her blood deoxygenated, and she lost consciousness.

  Her fellows, still tethered to the compartment, activated their emergency bubbles and called the CIC, begging for someone to board the jumper or send a drone to go get her, but the force of the decompression imparted too much velocity on her. Her form vanished from view.

  In the CIC, their message cut through everyone’s elation like a cleaver. Neil ground his teeth. Allenby did her duty. Save your grief. There will be a time for it, later. One hundred and four of us made it. The convoy should make it.

  Apache flipped and accelerated to catch up to the rest of the convoy. Shortly, it would flip again to continue the long deceleration to the keyhole. No one spoke with Neil, and he sat, dumbly, watching the wounded Kaesong relight its candle and retreat into the night.

  Combat Supply Cache Condor, Sequoia Continent, Kuan Yin

  Condor wasn’t a large cache, nor was it based in a natural terrain feature like Falcon had been. It was just an unassuming hole in a hill near a small gypsum mine, one of dozens of exploratory cavities dug by robominers in Sequoia colony’s early days, left unused once the initial burst of construction was finished. Rand had feared it would be reopened to serve the Chinese colonists’ needs, but so far, the occupiers hadn’t come near the site.

  Inside was similar to Falcon, just smaller: several hollowed-out chambers, some with rows of bunks, others with stacks of supplies. Power was limited; what little they used came from a seemingly abandoned solar array at the cluster of shacks that served as the mine’s management offices.

  Rand had the only office and the only desk in the place. It annoyed him no end to sit there; he joined the Army to spend a life outside of offices, but he needed to be somewhere where his troops could find him, where he could keep track of supplies, and where he could meet privately wi
th his sergeants.

  Another hour, and then time to get some rack, he thought. He had been trying to finish squad assignments, struggling with whether to create a squad full of veteran combat specialists for difficult missions, or spread them out so no unit would have to fight without a trained infantry trooper or special operator nearby. It was dawn outside, and Kuan Yin’s sixteen-hour day meant one’s sleep schedule rarely lined up with the planet’s day-night cycle. He realized he hadn’t spoken to anyone for hours. I really need to spend time with the troops, not just the platoon leaders. He went to his door with the intent of leaving it open for a while, just in case anyone who wanted to talk had previously been deterred by it being closed. But when his hand touched the knob, he felt a low, rhythmic thumping that rattled the door.

  Some paranoid part of his brain worried it was far-off weapon fire, but the rest quickly recognized it. It’s a bassline. He walked a little farther from his office, and he could pick out the song, that eight-minute Japanese thunderhowl, Nenotoki Gaiaku, which had been credited with bringing the electric harmonica back in style.

  He followed the music to its source, the storeroom farthest from his office. Inside were about thirty of the troops, nearly everyone who wasn’t asleep or out on patrol. Rand watched them for a moment – a few were dancing; others were flirting, telling stories, shooting the breeze, and, now and forever, heckling one another.

  Barracks culture, even in this mess. The thought warmed him.

  One of the dancers saw him in the doorway, snapped to attention and saluted. Others saw her motion, looked to the door, and did the same. Someone stopped the music.

  Rand, surprised, returned the salute, his hand touched the brim of his cap. Oh, shit. I’m still wearing the damn thing. He had a single moment to make a choice. Do I play the god, or just the guy who has the captain’s bars?

  That’s an easy one. He grinned, apologized, and pulled his hat from his head. Everyone relaxed.

  “Sorry, sir, was the music too loud?” asked a trooper, who looked a year or two older than Rand.

  Rand peered at his shoulder. “No, I don’t think it’s quite loud enough to wake the Hans, Corporal …”

  “Cacho!” someone shouted.

  The corporal smiled briefly. “Carlos Gonzalez, sir, from Vieques, Puerto Rico. Marine Corps, sir, I was assigned to the security guard for the orbitals, but I was groundside when the Hans hit us.”

  “Good to meet you, Gonzalez,” Rand said. “Who’s the loud one?”

  “That’s me, sir. PFC Catalina Gutierrez, from Grand Rapids, Michigan.”

  “They call you Cat?” Rand asked.

  “No, sir!”

  “Goot!” everyone said together.

  Others introduced themselves … Maldonado, Turnage, Pasker, Ramos, Briggs, Johnson, Dellaflora, Jancaterino … Rand met them all, easily finding things to like about every one. He felt an unofficerlike emotion he did his best to hide.

  And as much as he wanted to stay and talk, relax with the troops, he knew he was an intruder.

  “Carry on,” he said, and left as the music began pounding again. These are the kids who go in harm’s way just because goofups like me tell them to, he thought. They’ve already suffered so much since the Hans came. I won’t lose another, not on my watch.

  USS Apache, GJ 1151

  “Why weren’t you at the service for Allenby?” Jessica asked, her voice sharp.

  They were in Neil’s stateroom. “I had the deck when it was scheduled.”

  “You could have swapped with anyone, including me. You were her team leader, Neil.”

  “I’ll mourn in my own way.”

  She shoved him, an act that pushed them in opposite directions. She grabbed a handhold to steady herself, and Neil’s back struck the bulkhead behind him. “How do you think the rest of your people felt, knowing that you wouldn’t deign to attend their own funeral if they were killed in the line? What’s wrong with you?”

  Neil was shocked. “That’s not why … I mean, I talked it over with them before the service.”

  “You’ve been on this ship for nearly nine months now. Why do you keep setting yourself apart? Do you think you’re better than us, is that it?”

  “No! I just … “

  “Or are you just heartless?”

  Neil felt himself sneer, grind his teeth.

  “Maybe you should go now,” he said.

  The hatch slammed behind her.

  Four hours later, Neil’s handheld buzzed, waking him. A check of the clock told him why he was so groggy: The sleeping pill had several hours left before it was exhausted. He grabbed the packet of antidote-stimulant – formulated to nullify the sleeping pill’s effects in five minutes – but didn’t consume it before answering the call.

  “Sir, this is Nuñez at sensor ops. Tango-9 has flipped again. She’s thrusting back in our direction.”

  Tango-9 is Incheon, Neil recalled. That was the frigate that had been orbiting Commonwealth, and she had started the chase with nearly full remass tanks, unlike her sisters. She had also suffered the least damage in the fight.

  “How long until intercept?” Neil asked.

  “That’s the thing, sir. She’s not pushing it, just slowly making up some ground.”

  Back to shadowing us? It’s like they want to make sure we leave more than they want to kill us. Neil double-checked that Nuñez had let the OOD know and fell back asleep.

  The next morning, he took his suspicions to Howell. The ex-XO was indifferent.

  “I’d be happy to oblige them and leave this system sooner, Mercer,” Howell said. “We just don’t have the remass.”

  “But if something is going to happen in Commonwealth the Hans don’t want us to see, maybe we should linger some, sir.”

  Howell chuckled. “Spoken like a true intel officer, putting information ahead of anything else. Look, Mercer, I’ve got more than a thousand people in this convoy to deliver safely to Kuan Yin. I know you don’t know what it’s like to have that many lives in your hands, but try to remember that, all right? Everything else is secondary.”

  I’ve taken more lives than that, Neil thought. Not the issue; time to try another tack. ”Well, I’d like permission to expend some collection assets, so we can keep tabs on the system after we’ve left. We’ve got a few observation drones that survived the fight, but we’ll need to lay some repeaters so their signal can reach us once we leave the system.”

  Howell’s handheld buzzed. He looked at the screen and waved Neil off. “Sure, sure, it would be good to drop some excess mass anyway. Dump them out with the garbage, and maybe the Kims will ignore them.”

  Over the next several days, Jessica studiously avoided speaking to Neil. I guess that’s that, Neil thought. He tried not to let it hurt. He failed.

  “Captain, Incheon’s undergoing turnover! Range five thousand klicks, relative speed two kips.”

  Neil called up the image of the frigate. They had been looking at Incheon’s tail for days; she had flipped to decelerate toward the keyhole, just like the convoy.

  Now, though, the ship was slowly flipping over to point her nose at the Apache and the other ships, now nearly motionless relative to the nearby wormhole.

  I guess seeing us off through the keyhole isn’t enough, Neil thought.

  “Tell the Pontchartrain to move!” Howell commanded. “Send the Erie through as close as is safe.”

  Outside, the ponderous troop transports maneuvered and lined up to transit the keyhole. Aquila, which handled just as poorly, would follow them, with Apache guarding the door.

  The transports will never be as vulnerable, Neil knew. They can’t dodge out of the way of kinetics, and their point defenses are pretty weak. The opening of this keyhole was still in its original position, facing inward to the plane of the star system, so Apache interposed herself directly between Incheon and the fleeing ships. She pointed her tail toward the Incheon, angling slightly upward so her turrets could fire over the girth of her drive. It wo
uld deny her the use of her main laser cannon, but she could at least make a quick escape.

  “Tango-9 at thirty-one hundred klicks. Zombie, zombie! Tango-9 is firing coilgun shells. Time to impact, six minutes, thirty-nine seconds.”

  “Bring in the radiators,” Howell said. “Antikinetic defenses, lasers free.”

  At this range, Jessica’s defenses could handle the inbound shells. But each shot made the engines a little hotter and contributed a little more heat to the heat sinks. The distance at which shells were dying fell from 1,500 kilometers, to 1,400, to 1,200.

  “Pontchartrain reports transiting the keyhole,” the CIC officer said. “Erie will be through in eight minutes.”

  At least the Marines made it, and the Seabees should make it too, Neil thought.

  Incheon accelerated, all the way to a quarter-gee. The gap between ships closed to two thousand kilometers, and the frigate’s gun shells were succumbing less than four hundred klicks from Apache.

  “Antimissiles free, all but the last ten,” Howell said. “Engage every other shell to take the heat off the lasers.”

  Incheon’s own defenses were engaging shells from the Apache’s coilgun turret, and so far, they were not forcing Incheon to maneuver. The Korean frigate unshuttered her main laser cannon and fired. The beam cut Apache’s hull for less than a fifth of a second, striking some empty missile cells. Jessica could only afford to task a single counterbattery laser to destroying Incheon’s cannon, and it could not react quickly enough to the strike, burning uselessly against the cannon’s armored shutter.

  ”Erie is through! Aquila entering guidance rings.”

  Another laser from Incheon, this blasting through the medical compartment. It struck no one, but the flash temporarily blinded the ship’s senior corpsman.

  At nearly the same moment, Incheon’s and Apache’s defenses leaked. On Incheon, an overtaxed laser shut itself down, and the ship was forced to perform an emergency pivot and thrust to avoid an oncoming shell. Meanwhile, a few hundred kilometers from Apache, an antimissile’s vector thruster failed, and it shot straight past the shell it had targeted. Point defenses exploded the shell about fifteen kilometers from the frigate, but the master pattern governing the layers of defenses had been shattered, and more coilgun shells closed.