by Ian Douglas
“Yes…sir.”
“I will leave as soon as the submarine can be made ready. You will give orders to have the vessel readied by the civilian team. I will see to freeing it from the lander and getting it to the water.
“And you will not inform Lieutenant General Lin. I will make contact with the Europan Intelligence. I will convince them to join with us against the Americans. And with the Americans eliminated, I shall return to China in triumph! In glory! Let’s see Lin threaten me once I have accomplished that!”
The pain in Zhao’s head was much worse now.
U.S.S. Thomas Jefferson
200,000 kilometers from Europa
1632 hours Zulu
“There it is,” Captain Steve Marshal said. “Just coming over the limb…there.”
Kaitlin leaned forward, trying to see the actual target. The bridge repeater screen showed the curve of Europa in false-color detail, the moon blue-hued, the linea bright red. Green brackets were moving on the screen, marking the exact location of the lidar/EM contact, but even at this magnification, she couldn’t see the actual ship. A green triangle blinked against the blue background of the moon, marking the location of Cadmus Base.
“Two hundred thousand kilometers,” she said. And we’re still moving at a pretty stiff clip. Can we hit it?”
Steve shrugged. “It’s all a matter of physics and geometry,” he said. “The trick is having the crowbars arrive at the same space as the Star Wind, at the same time. Sir Isaac assures me he can pull it off, if we give control of the ship to him.”
Sir Isaac Newton was Captain Marshal’s secretary, and the AI running the ship systems.
“Sir Isaac?” Steve said. “Project the Star Wind’s course, plus our firing solution and intercept.”
A red line began drawing itself from the brackets, arcing along the curve of Europa, bearing down on the green triangle. Yellow lines reached out from the bottom of the screen, a series of them, in fact, nestled close together, following a slight curve in response to Europa’s gravitational field. The lines intersected in rapid succession with the moving end of the red curve. Words scrolled up the right side of the screen, describing elapsed time, projectile velocity, and ending with the single word, INTERCEPT.”
“The launch/no launch decision must be made within the next two hundred fifty seconds,” Sir Isaac said, “in order to intercept the target before it is within firing range of Cadmus Base. This assumes, incidentally, a ten million-G acceleration to bring the projectiles up to a velocity of 171 kps, which gives a time-to-target of 19.4 minutes.”
“Colonel?” Steve said.
“Definitely,” she replied. “Go! This may be our only opportunity to take these people.”
“I agree. I’d rather not have to fight them coming around the back side. Okay, Sir Isaac. You have the con. At your discretion, take down the hostile.”
“Affirmative. Initiating launch sequence.”
Seconds passed, and Kaitlin felt a series of bumps transmitted through the deck. Sir Isaac fired maneuvering thrusters to precisely align the Jefferson with the distant target.
“All hands, this is the ship’s control system,” Sir Isaac said over the ship intercom. “Stand by for maneuvering, possibly violent, within the next three minutes. I recommend you take seats and strap yourselves down.” An interesting distinction, that, Kaitlin thought. AIs were not permitted to give orders aboard ship, only to make suggestions. “Secure all loose gear and prepare for both zero-G and sudden acceleration.”
Currently, the Jefferson was under thrust, facing away from Jupiter as she decelerated down from her skew-flip point. They’d delayed the skew-flip, the one way they could dramatically shorten the travel time to Europa, cutting over two days off their ETA. The tradeoff was the maneuver they were going to have to pull at Jupiter in order to kill their excess velocity.
“Sixty-seven seconds to firing,” Sir Isaac said. “Cutting thrust in five…four…three…two…one…cutting thrust.”
Gravity vanished. The A-M cruiser dropped tail-first toward Europa, in free fall.
“Initiating roll-pitch maneuver.”
Kaitlin and Steve were strapped down now in adjacent seats on the bridge deck. She glanced across at him, trying to read his expression. She wondered how it felt to have his ship under the command of a computer—how it felt to leave the entire battle in a machine intelligence’s figurative hands.
That was happening more and more in combat systems on Earth, certainly. Robot or teleoperated fighters could maneuver with accelerations that would kill a flesh-and-blood pilot. Some combat situations demanded a computer’s speed and precision. If space combat ever became common, it would almost certainly be left in the hands of artificial intelligences that could draw on far more information much more quickly than humans, to make decisions in fractional seconds, with weapons and targets so fast that no human could react quickly enough to control them.
A semblance of gravity returned, a hard tug against the seat restraints and the feeling that she was hanging upside down in her seat, as the 250-meter length of the Jefferson spun end for end. There followed several more bumps and nudges, and then a long, weightless wait.
“Firing sequence in five seconds,” Sir Isaac said. “Four…three…two…one…Firing sequence initiated.”
The mass driver down the Jefferson’s core began cycling, each launch causing a savage nudge, pushing them against their harnesses. The shots were staggered, with several launches seconds apart, followed by a sudden slam-slam-slam of rapid fire. In all, Sir Isaac launched fifteen ten-kilo slivers of depleted uranium, spaced out across twelve seconds, with several periods of maneuvering along the way. “I have ceased firing,” Sir Isaac announced. “With repeated hyperacceleration, temperature inside the railgun barrel was beginning to exceed safe limits.”
The first of the rounds would reach the vicinity of the Star Wind in just over nineteen minutes.
The question was whether the Star Wind would see them in time and be able to maneuver to avoid them.
PRC Cruiser Xing Feng
In orbit, one hundred kilometers
above Europa
1651 hours Zulu
The Star Wind was approaching firing point, 100 kilometers above the rolling, ice surface of the moon. General Lin had joined Captain Tai Hsing-min on the bridge, determined to see with his own eyes the obliteration of the CWS base.
“I must point out, General,” Tai was saying, “that our orders explicitly require the preservation of key CWS facilities. We are at war with the American government, not with the CWS scientific community.”
“Pah!” Lin replied. “Legalistic nonsense. This base has already cost us far too much in terms of time, life, and materiel. We end this. Now.”
Tai began to reply, then thought better of it. Lin was not known for his reasonable manner. “Yes, sir.”
“The firing will be under the control of the ship intelligence,” Tai said. “Your specific order, however, will be necessary to enable the launch.”
“Very well. I—”
“Captain Tai!” a lieutenant at the sensor suite console shouted. “Incoming projectiles! We are under attack!”
“Ship computer! Analyze attack and maneuver to clear!”
“Affirmative. Analyzing dispersal of incoming projectiles.”
The Star Wind’s main engines fired, slamming Lin and Tai to the deck. They floated again when the thrust died. Then they hit a bulkhead—or, rather, the bulkhead hit them—as a thundering detonation wrenched the ship.
The bridge lights flickered and died, and gravity returned—a pale imitation of gravity, at any rate—as the front third of the Star Wind, severed from the rest of the vessel, began spinning end over end. A ten-kilo mass impacting at over 171 kps liberated a burst of energy of nearly 310 kilotons—as powerful as a fair-sized nuclear device.
A handful of Chinese soldiers walking on the ice below, outside the Cadmus perimeter, saw the flash in the sky and wondered.
28 OCTOBER 2067
The Pit and E-DARES Facility
Ice Station Zebra, Europa
0110 hours Zulu
The Manta surfaced in the Pit, cruising with just enough speed to maintain headway in the narrow pool. Jeff stood on the pedestal immediately behind Hastings, who was piloting the craft in, looking out through the observation bubble as they approached the towering metal and ceramic façade of the E-DARES structure.
It was difficult to make out much of anything. The hot water bubbling up from below seemed to explode into dense, expanding fog on contact with vacuum, and the water around the sub was literally boiling, sending up dense clouds of white, freezing vapor. As they neared the base, however, the fog thinned enough for him to begin to see some details.
There were no Marines out to meet them, and none on guard along the ladder leading up the ice cliff to the surface. He felt a chill sense of unease quite unrelated to infrasonics; the base appeared deserted—worse, overrun. The flag still hung from its makeshift staff atop the E-DARES, but at an angle, as though a blast had nearly knocked it down. A gray and white shape at the base of the flagpole puzzled him, until he used a pair of electronic binoculars to zoom in on the form.
It was a Marine’s body, suited and armored and still clutching a SLAW in gloved fists. Jeff couldn’t tell at this distance who it was, but one thing was starkly clear. There was a serious problem if the other Marines in the garrison hadn’t recovered that body as soon as they were able.
He conferred with the others. Four men would go ashore from the Manta, one with a mooring line, three with weapons to protect him, just in case things weren’t as eerily quiet as they seemed. After a call for volunteers, Carver took mooring line duty, while Nodell went out with him with a SLAW. BJ and Amberly would follow, as soon as they could cycle through the lock after them.
Hastings brought the Manta around in a gentle turn, nudging up against the icy beach. Jeff watched from the observation dome as Carver, clinging to a safety line on the hull, walked out on the port wing and leaped across onto the ice. Nodell tossed him the mooring line, which he dragged up to a winch mounted on the side of the E-DARES. By the time BJ and Amberly had leaped across with Nodell onto the beach, the winch was turning, slowly dragging the Manta ashore.
There was still no sign of activity in the base, at least anywhere near the Pit. As Hastings took a line tossed across from Manta Two, surfacing out in the middle of the steaming, open water, Jeff led four Marines from Manta One—BJ, Nodell, Amberly, and Wojak—up the ladder toward the E-DARES hatch.
First, though, he led the fire team up the ladder to the crater floor. There had definitely been a battle fought here, a serious one. The tractor they’d used to lower the Mantas into the water lay on its side, its bubble canopy torn open. Bodies, Chinese bodies, lay scattered about on the ice, along with abandoned weapons, bits of twisted metal, and holes torn in the surface by explosions and the ice-vaporizing stab of laser beams.
Most of the bodies lay piled up near the walkway leading to the E-DARES facility. It looked like quite a few had died trying to reach the Marine beneath the flag.
The dead Marine turned out to be Dave Coughlin. Several more Marines lay in the prepared weapons positions on the ice nearby.
“Ice Station Zebra, Ice Station Zebra, this is Icebreaker,” Jeff called on the command frequency. “Do you copy?”
There was no response.
Down the ladder again. The circuit box for the airlock controls had been pried open, exposing the wiring inside. He used the manual lever to open the hatch, then entered cautiously.
Four dead Chinese lay piled atop one another inside the airlock like cordwood. More lay inside the Squad Bay, where lockers and furniture had been stacked up to create a makeshift barricade. It was clear enough what had happened here. The question was whether any anyone at all had survived.
“Zebra, this is Icebreaker. Zebra, Icebreaker. Does anyone hear me?”
“Major?” A voice responded on his headset.
“Who is this?”
“Dr. Vasaliev. Is that Major Warhurst?”
“Speaking, Doctor. What the hell’s going on here?”
“Thank God! Ah…one moment, Major. Let me patch you through to Sergeant Pope.”
“Staff Sergeant Pope,” Jeff corrected. He walked toward the hatch leading down. Several Chinese bodies lay scattered about here as well.
A moment later, another voice came through on the command channel. “Major Warhurst?”
“Affirmative. Good to hear your voice, son.”
“Sir! Where are you?”
“In the Squad Bay. Moving to the main corridor hatch.”
“Freeze, Major! Do not open the hatch. We have it wired.”
He’d been reaching for the hatch access. “Roger that.”
“We’re on the way up.”
“What happened to the radio?”
“Main connection to the outside antenna was cut. Chesty is running a mini-Worldnet down here off of a PAD for strictly local communications, but we don’t have any range.” There was a pause, and some confused noises over the channel. “Sir, are there any Charlies up there?”
“Just dead ones. If any of them were alive, I don’t think I’d be having this conversation.”
“Hang on, sir. We’ll be there in a few minutes.”
Jeff remembered his thoughts about Europa paralleling Wake Island. In some ways, it was less like that battle than it was the fight at Camerone on 30 April, 1863. The Third Company of the First Battalion, sixty-two French Foreign Legion troops in the service of the Emperor Maximillian, had engaged Mexican troops near Camerone, Mexico. Fighting against overwhelming odds, cut off from help, surrounded in a farm house and walled courtyard, they’d held out for over eleven hours. Finally, and after repeated demands for their surrender, only six men were left on their feet. When their ammunition had run out, those six had charged the Mexicans with bayonets. In the end, three Legionnaires had stood back to back, bayonets at the ready, as the Mexicans closed in. “Now will you surrender?” one of the Mexican officers said.
“On condition we keep our weapons and you look after our wounded officer,” was the reply.
“To men such as you one refuses nothing.”
“Truly these aren’t men—they’re demons,” Colonel Milan, the Mexican commander, had said, upon hearing of the costly victory over a foe that had very nearly fought to the last man. Over one hundred Mexicans had been killed in the fight, and twice that many wounded, at least.
Camerone…or the Alamo.
Jeff heard some clattering sounds beneath the deck, the hatch to the central corridor airlock opened up, and men and women started coming through. Tom Pope. Sergeant Vince Cukela. Lance Corporal Kelly Owenson. Corporal Christie Dade. Sergeant Lucky Leckie.
Five Marines left.
“It’s damned good to see you, sir,” Pope said. The SC wrapping on his armor was torn, unraveling, and charred.
“Where’s Captain Melendez?”
“Dead, sir. And Lieutenant Graham.” Pope looked at the handful of other men, unshaven, dirty, exhausted, hollow-eyed. “I, uh, sort of had to take command.”
“You did okay, Lieutenant. Good job.”
“We lost so many…so many…” He blinked. “Lieutenant?”
“Field commission. I need officers to help pull what we have left together. And right now I need someone to take a repair party in and get our commo back up.”
“Aye, aye, sir!”
U.S.S. Thomas Jefferson
1 million kilometers from Europa
0201 hours Zulu
“Sorry, Colonel,” LCDR Reynolds said. “Still nothing from Ice Station Zebra. Not even a beacon.”
“Then we were too late,” Kaitlin said. “The base was already overrun.”
Sixteen days of stress and grief came crashing down about her. Robbie, dead. Jeff Warhurst, whom she’d known since he was a kid, dead. Kaminski. All of the men and women of
the Marine expeditionary force to Europa, dead.
Not to mention her own career and, likely, the career of Captain Marshal, dragged down by her damned, hyperromantic long-shot gamble.
The Thomas Jefferson was nearing the vast, sky-filling sweep of Jupiter now. On the repeater screen on the bridge, the awesome complexity of the giant world, with each eddy and turbulent twist of clouds in that banded ocher and salmon and pink-brown and white atmosphere starkly and crisply displayed in a single, titanic display of gas dynamics and Coriolis effect.
“It’s time to strap down, Kaitlin,” Captain Marshal said gently. “It’s going to be getting bumpy pretty quick.”
She let herself be led from the radio shack to one of the bridge acceleration couches. She’d been living here, pretty much, since they’d entered Jupiter space. The familiarity, the closeness…helped.
She and Steve had made a key decision three days ago, to delay the skew-slip and continue accelerating, getting them to Jupiter space two days ahead of sched. They still had to slow down, however, and Jupiter offered them their single opportunity to do so.
Aerobraking had been successfully used on numerous earlier space flights. By looping low above a planet with an atmosphere, even one as tenuous as that surrounding Mars, a ship could skim the upper levels of that atmosphere, using friction to slow down. The Apollo missions to the moon a century before had used a rather brutal version of the maneuver to slow their return velocity of 40,000 kilometers per hour to a gentle fall slowed further by parachute. Later, a penny-pinching NASA had developed sophisticated applications of aerobraking to adjust satellite orbits without expending fuel.
Now, the Jefferson was doing the same thing, decelerating hard at 3 Gs, and stealing a bit of free deceleration from titanic Jupiter as well as she fell close around the curve of the giant planet. The “special packages” installed on the Jefferson’s forward water storage tank had been deployed just before the Jupiter approach. Each was a balyute, essentially a collapsible bag of Kevlar-composite materials shaped like the sections of an orange and fastened to the hemispherical storage tank. As water was pumped into the bags, it mixed with a dry powder to create a rapidly expanding nitrogen gas-charged polymer-ceramic foam that expanded the orange-slice bags to full volume, then hardened upon exposure to vacuum.
