James Wittenbach - Worlds Apart 01

by Meridian

  “I’m changing transmission modes. Hopefully, Jordan can tell us.” He thought of Basil, on the outside of the tower. Whatever had hit, had hit them first. “Redfire to Jordan.”

  “Jordan, here.”

  He paused, relieved in a way he could not express. “Jordan, what the hell just happened out there?”

  “We just witnessed a massive launch of… of some kind of spheres. The whole exterior of the tower has been irradiated.”

  “Casualties?” Redfire and Lear said in unison.

  “All of our people not in the tower made it to Basil. The MedSpec is checking them out now, but we think they made it in time.”

  “What about you?”

  “We in the building have received a major radiation exposure, non-lethal, but we need to evacuate at once… you two as well.”

  Redfire checked his Eye-Spex. “Any word from Prudence. ”

  “Prudence splashed one Nemesis. The other launched warheads before it could be engaged. Desmond is attempting to intercept the warheads inside the atmosphere.” Jordan’s tone did not convey the magnitude of any doubt she may have felt, but Redfire knew that intercepting any of the warheads inside the atmosphere was a long-shot at best.

  Redfire looked at Lear. Lear looked at Redfire. It was she who spoke, but he would have said the same.

  “Flight Captain Jordan, take your company back to Basil. We will attempt to make the ship, but if we don’t…. good luck to you.”

  For a moment, Redfire and Lear stared at each other, perhaps realizing it was the first time they had ever been in complete agreement, probably the last as well.

  “Jordan acknowledges, good luck to you … head’s up!”

  Redfire looked up the shaft again. How they were going to climb out now, he did not know. He couldn’t see the top, except for a murky spot of daylight, but he perceived a falling object, and he moved aside, shielding Lear.

  The object fell with a thud, sending another dustburst into the air. Driver pulled it over and saw that it was Captain Jordan’s landing pack, from the back flap of which, two sturdy, well-anchored rappelling lines reached up to the top level.

  Space — Prudence

  Prudence roared above the surface of Meridian, heading across the planet’s nightside into the dawn, passing over the moonless expanse of a great, evergreen ocean; its course converging with the course of a warhead bearing down on the city where Basil still sat.

  Warheads were closing on targets across the face of Meridian’s continent, and Driver realized he would only be able to stop one. Millions were going to die by fire, but he might be able to save some. He might as well save those he knew. He checked with Prudence, who told him he would be within weapons range in four minutes, thirty-six seconds. There were quite a few things he had time to do.

  “Prudence calls Basil, acknowledge, Basil. ”

  “Basil acknowledges.”

  “Basil, Prudence is tracking a warhead carrying a matter/anti-matter weapon of indeterminate yield. I expect to intercept and destroy this warhead before it detonates over your position.”

  “Basil acknowledges. In the event you are unsuccessful, Basil is standing by to evacuate.”

  “I would suggest you evacuate now, there won’t be a large safety margin if we are unsuccessful to achieve minimum safe distance.”

  “Basil is… we are still awaiting the return of Tyro Commander Redfire and Tyro Commander Lear.” That was the actual piece of information Driver had wanted. “Prudence acknowledges.”

  “Desmond hailiing Prudence, we are also moving to intercept the warhead.”

  “Prudence acknowledges.”

  Roebuck spoke up. “I guess he doesn’t want us to go back to Pegasus any more.” Four minutes passed. Prudence announced that the warhead was within visual range. A targeting reticle appeared on the head’s-up display.

  “I don’t see it,” Roebuck said.

  “The warhead may be running with holoflage shields up. Activate polarity filter.” Where there had been just a turbulent dawn sky a moment before, the warhead appeared, a flying gold delta with strakes along either edge. It had detected Prudence and was maneuvering desperately, veering in and out of target lock. The warhead carried no defensive weapons, only a minimal deflector shield.

  For Driver, the whole rest of the world fell away. There was no Meridian, there was no landing party, there was no Pegasus, no Desmond, no Eliza. It was just he and Prudence and that weaving and dodging triangle, growing slightly larger, spending longer and longer moments inside the targeting reticle until, finally, Prudence whispered to him . “Weapons are locked on target.”

  “Commit!” Driver ordered.

  All four forward pulse cannons on Prudence blazed. The warhead was protected with a small energy-deflecting shield that was quickly overwhelmed by the onslaught. Prudence continued firing until a small explosion burst inside the warhead, and Prudence’s instruments showed it was dead.

  “Whoa, beauty! That was the frag,” Roebuck exclaimed.

  “Never start a fight with the angels,” Driver answered. “Let’s get into the city.” Leaving the warhead in a tumbling, uncontrolled descent behind him, Driver altered Prudence’s course and angled her nose toward the southeastern horizon, passing over the terminator into Meridian’s afterdawn. The enormous city made a bulge on the horizon.

  “Do you think I could ever learn to do that?” Roebuck went on.

  Driver was hung between an honest answer and a polite one, when Prudence drew his attention to the airspace over the city. Three enormous silvery clouds, looking for all the world like enormous flocks of migrating birds, glittering in the sunlight, were heading straight on toward Prudence.

  “What is that?” Roebuck asked.

  Driver did not answer, but increased Longview Magnification. Now, the objects appeared, less atmospheric distortion, to be right on top of them.

  “Are those what I think they are?”

  Driver nodded quickly and armed all his weapons. “Those probes we encountered on our initial descent.”

  Roebuck knew what he meant. “Sinister Buckyballs of Doom.”

  Meridian — Orbital Space

  Over Meridian’s northern pole, one of the two warheads on the second string received data that one of its sister weapons had been destroyed before reaching its target. It promptly launched itself toward the city.

  The other would wait until it had determined that it would not be needed. Then, it would fire its ion engines, and head back toward the missile that would carry it back to Pegasus.

  Desmond

  As Prudence, approached from the west, Desmond bore down from the north. Rockatansky conveyed the news to Eureka. “Prudence reports splashing the targeted aimed at this city.” Flt. Lt. Eureka nodded slightly. As much as he hated that another pilot had to clean up after his mistake, at least Driver would never give him grief about it, unlike a lot of the other pilots. Driver was too much of a good scout to do that.

  Eureka squinted, at the edge of his vision, a shimmering, light-dappling cloud was beginning to appear. Desmond tracked his vision, and magnified the point on which he was focused. “What is that, Specialist Rockatansky?”

  The tactical specialist looked over his displays. “It’s a large mass of the spherical flying objects similar to those that Prudence encountered on her landing cycle.” Rockatansky turned to another set of displays that conveyed information from the orbiting probes.

  “Apparently, those are being launched from every city on the planet… thousands of them.”

  “What is our ETA to intercept?”

  “Eight seconds.”

  “Arm all weapons, all shields.”

  “Shields going up.”

  A moment later, Desmond was in the heart of the cloud. The spheres scarcely paid the ship any attention, battering against it, knocking it back and forth, up and down. Desmond’s weapons flashed, clearing as many from the way as they could. There were just too many, and they were too close together
.

  Every one that battered one of Desmond’s shields weakened the ship just a little bit.

  “Shields are failing. We better get below these things,” Rockatansky said. For Eureka, there was no time for last words.

  A sphere connected in a head-on collision with the Aves, imploding its plasma engine in the process.

  A tear of light and heat opened a large hole in the midst of the swarm as the explosion immolated the sphere, hundreds of its own kind, and the Aves.

  Prudence

  Driver kept his ship on the edge of the cloud, seeking a way to the city without plowing through the center. Stray “Buckyballs of Doom” whirled around Prudence, dancing on the fire of small plasma fusion pulses. The spheres had no defense against Prudence’s pulse-cannons and self-guided missiles. One, two…

  five… sixteen were shattered in the first few seconds of combat.

  “Setting Weapons Systems to full autonomous mode,” Driver announced, reaching over Roebuck’s head to flip a line of switches.

  “I could have done that,” Roebuck told him.

  “Nay, you couldn’t.”

  One buckyball got out ahead of the Aves and aimed itself for a head-on collision. It blew apart against the forward shield of the craft, but weakened the shield in the process.

  “Can we take too many hits like that?” Roebuck said.

  “Evasive maneuvers,” Driver tried to dive below the cloud. The spheres continued to glance off his shields. There were too many. Driver could only think of avalanches, while Roebuck was reminded of an educational program about Borealean salmon, and how the rivers of Sapphire’s northernmost continent turned into churning streams of silvery fish stampeding toward the open sea at the end of their winter hibernation.

  Driver asked Roebuck. “Are the …” he gritted his teeth. “… buckyballs going after the warheads.” Roebuck had to study the readout. The warheads were tracked in blue, the sinister buckyballs of doom in red. Swarms of red were closing in on each streak of blue. “They’re, uh, what’d’y’call? moving in on an intercept course.”

  “What about the city where we left the landing party?”

  Eddie Roebuck tried to make sense of his tactical readout. Red swarms. Blue streaks, green squiggles, and two gold bird-shapes for the Aves. “I am not picking up as many buckyballs over the city.”

  “So, they’re not attempting any kind of point defense?”

  “A what defense?”

  Driver turned his attention to Prudence, and asked her to show him where the sinister buckyballs of doom had converged with one of the warheads. Prudence gave him a view of an area 6,000 km away.

  Several bright flashes appeared, that left great holes in the swarm.

  “Analysis,” Driver asked. He read off. “Hydrogen fusion detonations. 25-40 megaton range.” He wondered if any of the warheads in his swarm were close to detonation, and before he had begun to wonder put Prudence into a power-dive to get as far below the swarm as he could.

  “The warheads just blew through them,” Eddie said.

  “Longview, warhead,” Driver ordered.

  Displayed on the canopy came a live-action shot of one warhead, burning white at it tip, tore through the attacking buckyballs and roared down toward its city.

  Driver addressed Prudence. “ETA to detonation?”

  Prudence answered him. “Detonation in eleven seconds … ten … nine … eight …”

  “Longview, population center.” Driver ordered. The view pulled back to the Meridian city, this one occupied a vast plain astride a major river. Other than that, it was almost undifferentiated from the city they had been in.

  “… four … three … two … one… detonation.”

  They saw, on their screen the detonation of the warhead. An enormous ball of white-blue light, even larger than the city itself, burst over the scene and began tearing across the plain. Before it had reached its full extent, the viewer failed and returned to green sky. The word “Interference” flashed in its place.

  For a moment, no one said anything. Then, an alarm began to sound.

  “Distress call from Desmond,” said Prudence.

  “Longview, Desmond. ” Driver ordered.

  They were shown the swarm of sinister buckyballs of doom they had just passed through, in which there had just been an explosion. Another detonated. Then another, and another. “Prudence to Basil, what are you reading?” Driver called

  “We are reading explosions… airbursts in the 30 megaton range.”

  “By all that’s holy…” Driver said.

  From the fireball emerged the burnt-out black shell of the Aves that had been Desmond. It trailed smoke and black bits of debris that fell like cinders from a fire. Desmond’s flight deck looked the blackened skull of a bird; her blasted canopy destroyed except for the structural supports, conveying the impression of charred and empty eye-sockets. Driver didn’t need a scan to tell him there were no life signs onboard.

  Prudence recorded another airburst over a distant Meridian city.

  “If they aren’t fragging the warheads,” Roebuck asked, “Then what the slag are they doing?” Driver spoke to his ship. “Prudence, track all swarms of hostiles and determine a heading for all.” In order to do so, Prudence had to display the whole planet. The swarms were converging at a common point in the atmosphere, where they regrouped, and headed into space. A few seconds more of calculation showed their intended destination.

  “They’re going to attack Pegasus, ” Driver said.

  Basil

  Flight Captain Jordan spoke urgently into her comlink. “Basil hailing Prudence. We have no more time.

  We are evacuating now.”

  “Prudence, acknowledges, is the whole party on board?”

  “Basil, negative Prudence. Tyro Commander Lear has ordered us to leave. We have radiation casualties and can not delay evacuation any longer.”

  “Prudence acknowledges.”

  Meridian — The Arco-Tower

  Redfire and Lear could see clearly now the daylight coming through the hole in the roof, now just three or four meters overhead.

  Lear’s head hurt. Her muscles ached and she felt weak. She knew it was the radiation, more than the strain. She was finding it hard to concentrate.

  “Tyro Commander Redfire,” she called up, though it made it even harder to breathe, she knew that concentration was more important to getting her out of this death trap.

  “Tyro Commander Lear,” Redfire answered.

  “What do you believe in?”

  “What?”

  She had to rest for a second, but she knew that might be fatal. “I mean what do you believe in? I am Iestan, traditional Iestan.”

  “It shows,” Redfire deadpanned.

  “What about you? What do you believe?”

  “I believe…”

  “Aye…”

  “I… believe I am either going to crawl out of this hole and live … or find out very quickly which belief system is the one true faith.”

  There was the roof, just a meter above him, he lunged for it. His gloves enhanced his grip on the rough surface and he pulled himself up. Lear was just behind him. He reached into the hole, offering his arm, and pulled her beside him.

  “Thank you, Tyro Commander…”

  “Don’t thank me yet… look…”

  He pointed to the side, just in time to see Basil taking off at maximum thrust and fly away until it disappeared over the horizon. Redfire looked around to see if he could spot the warhead. It did not take long. There was a long contrail arcing toward the city. Redfire turned to Lear. “So, this is it, we’re going to die.”

  Lear stared at the approaching missile. “Trajan… Marcus …,” she whispered, by way of a prayer.

  Basil

  “Raise shields to maximum,” Jordan ordered.

  Molto did as ordered, then asked grimly. “Will it be enough?”

  “If the warhead is set for maximum yield, neg. If it isn’t….”

>   “If it isn’t?”

  “I’d say we have a fifty to seventy percent chance of surviving.” Molto looked through the viewport. The city was far below and behind them. An instant later, there was a flash. The flash grew to a huge blue-white storm of light that filled the horizon like the unleashed fury of a thousand suns.

  Meridian — The Arco-Tower

  The view was equally impressive from the ground.

  chapter twenty-two

  Pegasus — Main Bridge/Primary Command

  Pegasus was on approach for the final braking maneuver — a long swoop around the planet using Meridian’s own gravity to slow them down and bring them into orbit. This was the most critical of all the maneuvers, but the only people on the bridge who were following it were Eliza Jane Change and Jesus Powerhouse. Everyone else watched in terrified fascination at the swarm of Meridian Attack spheres just a few million kilometers ahead, poised to engulf Pegasus..

  “Our sensors now show over 12,000 spherical objects approaching on vector zero-eight-two,” Shayne American reported. “We will intercept them in four minutes.”

  “Analysis,” Keeler demanded.

  Specialist American brought up a schematic. “Each sphere is powered by a plasma-fueled kinetic ion fusion engine. No offensive weapons detected. However, the powerplant is set-up for rapid implosion and detonation. Yield would be comparable to one of our Hammerheads at maximum blow-out.”

  “Kamikazes?” Keeler said out loud.

  “Excuse me?” American asked.

  “Ancient battle technique… self-annihilation against the enemy.”

  “Are you sure that’s what they’ll do?” Alkema asked.

  American answered. “Our orbital probes indicate several already have, attempting to destroy our incoming warheads.”

  Keeler stole a glance at the display of Pegasus, bearing down directly into the heart of the swarm.

  “Bring us to a stop,” he ordered.

  “We can’t,” Change told him. “We still have no direct control to…”

  “All right, all right,” Keeler waved her off and turned to Alkema at Tactical. “Status of Defensive Systems.”

  Alkema reported. “Shields at maximum, without the central defense network to coordinate, shields won’t automatically rotate to cover weak spots. We’ll have to do it manually … if we’re fast enough.”