by John Carr
“What’s the story with that tanker, XO?”
“Minor damage to a support strut and one maneuvering package, sir,” the young crewman at the sensors station informed Willoughby; Burgess naval etiquette did not permit direct address to the Captain during battle stations when a senior officer had been addressed first.”They’ve moved on now.”
“What do you make of that, skipper?” Willoughby asked.
Hawksley shook his head slightly, never rising from the cowl. “Might have guessed something; but they didn’t press the attack. I suspect they were either calibrating weapons or hoping to flush any crew that might have been hiding on board. Most likely the latter.” He blinked and sat up.”Could Fomoria have seen that?”
Willoughby looked to the commo officer, who shook his head. “Ah don’t think so, skippuh. Flag is on the fahr side of the gas jahnt, and this eye-ahh-no-sfeah’s been playin’ hob with ah’own display; I wun’t think it’d be much bettuh thayuh.”
“Skipper?” Willoughby brought his acceleration couch across the room to Hawksley’s station, as much for privacy as to escape the commo officer’s wretched lower-class drawl.”Something else?”
Hawksley nodded, leaning back into his viewscreen cowl. “Might be they’re thinking of trying to capture some of these abandoned tankers. Which of course would mean they’d have to bring in one of their big ships for a towing link-up.” He flashed Willoughby a quick grin before returning to his scrutiny of the display before him.
Willoughby grinned. “Oh, that would be just too sweet, Skipper.” He looked back to the display; their high-speed orbit was quickly leaving behind the tankers and the fighters which had used them for target practice, A new contact abruptly appeared in the display, milliseconds after Hawksley had noted it in his own viewscreen.
“Here come their fuel skimmers,” Hawksley’s tone changed from one of reflection to thunder in a clear sky. “Mr. Willoughby, signal all stations to stand by.”
In the display behind him, green dots had formed into eight lines of ten abreast, all bearing down on Ostia’s lower ionosphere. The eight lines of green dots were staggered and no more than fifty kilometers apart; minimum safe distance, but designed to place each trailing skimmer directly on the wake crest of the one ahead. Ostia’s atmosphere would roll up into compressed streams with the passage of the lead skimmers, and each of those streams of light gases and precious hydrogen, three times the density encountered by the forward boats, would flow into the following skimmer’s gaping maw, filling its compressor chambers three times faster. It was a maneuver of desperation - or of a foe eager to renew the offensive and come to grips with the enemy. Either way, Hawksley shook his head in amazement. Diettinger’s guesses had so far been right on the money, down to the smallest detail.
He wondered how long that could last.
“Mister Willoughby, ‘Snowflake’ is a go.”
“Aye aye, skipper.” Willoughby turned to the starboard weapons control officer.”Weapons free, Mister Plunkett.”
“Weapons free, aye.”
“Captain?” Willoughby turned to Hawksley. Another Burgess naval tradition demanded the first shot fired be so ordered by the commanding officer.
“Mister Plunkett,” Hawksley said, never looking up from his screen, “You may indulge yourself.”
Plunkett reached forward and pressed a button nowhere near the weapons control board.
On the Falkenberg’s hull, sixteen microwave signaling turrets whirred about, tracked to find the prerecorded codes of their receiving units, and began pouring excited radio waves into Ostia’s rarefied upper atmosphere. Transponder packages aboard the four tankers closest to Falkenberg acquired the activation signals and immediately downlinked commands to their respective shipboard computers, then relayed them to other orbiting tankers all around the planet. Stupid by any standards but their own, the mechanical brains of the tankers were geniuses at one task; fine axial maneuvering, to allow precise alignment of their refueling ports with thirsty starships.
The crews of the Imperial skimmers would normally have been only too happy to know that hundreds of fuel tankers were in low orbit at Ostia, but for the unfortunate fact that the refueling ports of all those tankers had been heavily modified, and none of them were now carrying fuel.
If a battle in deep space can be called beautiful, a battle in the roiling clouds of a Jovian-class gas giant must be the equivalent of a drunken brawl in a jungle at midnight. With knives. Eight tankers began tumbling end over end, attitude thrusters burning in apparently random bursts, while from each of their thirty refueling ports trailed steady streams of milky white vapor.
Back aboard the Falkenberg, Hawksley had at last turned from his view-screen to regard the immersion display, for the holographic image excelled in one aspect where the viewscreen simply could not do the battle justice; it gave a sense of scale. Each of the tankers displaced just over one million metric tonnes, and the vapor trails they were spreading in their wakes were over six feet in diameter at the source, and already two miles long and growing swiftly as their source tankers accelerated. The trails were beginning to cross one another now, and the “supposedly random” pattern of the tankers’ thrusters was revealed to be a programmed maneuver to prevent their own collision while intersecting one another’s orbital flight paths.
Back at their starting points, the trails were now less white and bluer, the crystalline, ice blue shade of exactly what they appeared to be - water. Or, more precisely, what water created from the infusion of liquid oxygen into a nearly pure hydrogen environment at the edge of atmosphere instantly becomes, which is to say, ice.
Intent on their mission, Intruder Two’s fuel skimmers maneuvered only very slightly to avoid the tankers. Their onboard sensors showed that the tankers themselves seemed to be leaving wakes of denser gases; so much the better. Skimmers gobbled up gases and could even “drink” water, after a fashion.
Slowly.
They had never been designed to fly into a hailstorm at forty times the speed of sound, and the first rank of skimmers to hit the ice-strands might as well have tried to plow through a cloud of buckshot. Most of the crystals were literal snowflakes, but many had coagulated into masses as much as half an inch across. These and hundreds more like them went into the front of the fuel skimmers where, according to design, they were to be compacted by scoops, liquefied by condensers and gathered into compression tanks at the readjust forward of the engines.
Instead, the velocity of the skimmers, on hitting the relatively immobile ice chunks, allowed the artificial hailstones to plow through scoops, condensers, compressors, storage tanks and engines and keep right on not going anywhere.
Also by design, skimmers lack any impressive ability for lateral maneuver, but they maneuvered very impressively indeed in the vertical, and after the first four ranks of skimmers were obliterated in front of them, the next four decided to try climbing out of the trap. Only to find that the tankers had been slowly climbing during their weaving dances, and now the web of ice was above as well as in front. Though more vulnerable through the intakes mounted on their bows, the fuel skimmers fared no better when taking the impact of the ice strands on their upper hulls. The few skimmers, that were sturdy enough to not shatter, ricocheted off the resisting filaments of ice and either tumbled out of control or skipped back downward into the lower, more vertical strands.
Out of the eighty skimmers in the Imperial’s first refueling attempt, only six escaped immediate destruction or the slow death of entrapment in powerless, rapidly decaying orbits. Many of the disabled vessels’ crews could be heard for hours on emergency frequencies, calling for rescues which would never come.
Willoughby checked Plunkett’s telemetry board and informed Hawks-ley: “These eight tankers are about dry, skipper.”
“Take’em out, Mister Willoughby,” Hawksley answered.
Willoughby so ordered, and moments later the eight tankers had ignited the remainder of their internal fuel, addi
ng eight million-plus cubic tonnes of debris to the ice strands that now polluted Ostia’s ionosphere.
Lacking much cohesive mass, the ice would eventually break-up and sublimate into gas or sink deeper into the gas giant’s clouds. But the pieces of tanker were large, dense, and orbiting at extreme velocities. Better still, they were deep enough in the ionosphere to be beyond visual contact, and sensors would fare little better in fixing the positions of such irregular shapes at their speeds.
“We’re getting telemetry from the other tankers, skipper,” Willoughby reported. “Comparable results, mostly, with just over twenty percent of the tankers activated.”
Hawksley nodded, satisfied. Now activated, the tankers all around Ostia would begin to dump their liquid oxygen automatically on sensor contact with any group of skimmers, but they would not self-destruct without direct signals from Falkenberg. To do so might lose the opportunity to further damage enemy vessels; worse, it would reveal to Imperial Sensor teams “holes” in the impromptu minefield created by the tanker’s continued presence. That meant the privateer would have to do a great deal of maneuvering within Ostia’s cloud cover, but it would also keep the Imperial vessels from fixing her exact position. More importantly, it would create doubt as to just how many Sauron ships were hiding out here.
“Very good,” Hawksley addressed Willoughby in a low tone, almost reflective. “Begin evasive maneuvers. Coordinate sensor telemetry on the positions of those other skimmer elements, and keep us in position to intercept the next reasonably close group of enemy craft refueling. When the sheep come to drink again, I want to be the first cougar at the water hole.”
Willoughby grinned. “Aye, captain. You heard the man,” Willoughby nimbly crossed back through that invisible wall of Burgess society which separated acceptable behavior toward aristocrats from that more suited to the lower classes.”Time to go piss in some more wells.”
III
Diettinger reviewed the reports from Falkenberg’s initial contact at Ostia. He was unaware that by the end of the report, he had risen out of his chair. He looked around, abruptly aware that his bridge crew were staring at him. “Splendid,” was all he said.
Now, as they usually did, matters hinged on the Imperials’ reaction to the events at Ostia. Deprived at least temporarily of their in-system fuel source, they were vulnerable to a counterattack by Sauron fleets which could be refueled by the oceans of the still-secure Homeworld.
Will they now pour reinforcements into a sweep of Ostia to eradicate the unknown number of Sauron ships there? Or press their attack on Sauron itself?, Diettinger wondered.
Either decision required the concentration of Imperial forces in areas where they could be attacked by superior numbers of Sauron ships on such forces’ perimeter. Only commitment of the heretofore inactive Intruder Three elements would offset Sauron maneuverability in either battle. And Diettinger was beginning to heartily wish he knew the purpose of those silent, motionless Imperial ships.
“Signals, Dictator.”
“Speak,”
“Task Force Keegan, standing by. Task Force Damaris, standing by. Hourglass North, standing by. Hourglass South, standing by.”
“Status, Barlowe/Freas stations.”
“Full readiness, Dictator.” Whatever that means, Communications Fifth Rank Boyle thought. The Barlowe/Freas stations were under such tight security that it was rumored not even High Command knew their function. As long as it helps to smash the Imperials...
Diettinger looked across the Fomoria’s bridge to the advancing line of Imperial ships that comprised Intruder One. The immersion display readouts showed the Imperials to be ten hours, forty-one minutes from the Homeworld; fifty-two minutes from the section of the asteroid belt to which TF Damaris had fled and was now hiding, waiting for them. Diettinger’s signal from the Fomoria to TF Damaris would take twelve minutes to arrive, that to the Barlowe/Freas stations five and nine, respectively.
He activated the immersion display controls, and a new data display appeared, connecting the outlying planets of Barlowe and Freas. What had been up to now only a navigational referent - the “Barlowe/Freas Line” - was now represented by a pale blue line. That line passed across the asteroid field only a few thousand kilometers from TF Damaris’ position, almost exactly on the forward ships of the advancing Imperial force Intruder One. In seventeen minutes, at their current rate of speed, the line would bisect the Imperial fleet element.
Better to put it just forward of center, Diettinger thought. Their ships’ speed will allow few of them to maneuver out of the way...
“Send Intruder One position, velocity and vector to Barlowe/Freas. Signal Barlowe/Freas to go active for an intercept two minutes forward of Intruder One main body.”
Communications First Rank carried out the order while Diettinger turned to his Second Rank. “Signal Asteroid Defense Rank Pell to stand by for his firing signal. Activate Hourglass North and move it into position at point 134, plus one million seven hundred thousand zed. Signal TF Damaris to commence maneuvers.”
IV
Second Rank turned from viewing the immersion display and began detailing the information in Diettinger’s orders to her own Communications Rankers and staff elsewhere on the Fomoria.
The Dictator’s plan was unfolding. What was about to happen was, she knew, the crux of his design; its masterstroke, so to speak. It also contained the one and only trick he had up his sleeve, the one aspect of his defense of the Homeworld whose value could not be reliably calculated beforehand.
Because it relies on untested technology, she thought, and felt her throat tighten.
Oh Galen! she thought, surprising herself at the intensity of her anxiety. Do not be wrong. I fear more for you than for the Homeworld. And that thought shocked her into temporary immobility, for it was nothing less than high treason.
With her excellent Sauron peripheral vision, Second Rank Althene watched Cyborg Rank Koln seated, immobile, his own gaze fixed on the status screens before him, showing his two thousand, seven hundred and forty EVA commando Cyborgs at their duty stations throughout the fleet.
If it does not work, Koln will surely move against you. The other Cyborgs must have instructed him to do so if your defense of Sauron fails. Whether they can save the Homeworld if you cannot will be irrelevant; the Race will at least die with Cyborgs leading them.
She did not turn, for she could assure herself with utter certainty that Fomoria’s bridge security officers were at their stations. She also knew that such officers would kill anyone who attempted to harm the Dictator.
What she could not be sure of was that any Sauron could overcome the years of societal training which put them in such awe of the Cyborgs, to the point where they could even believe themselves capable of harming one of the Super Soldiers, let alone actually attempt it.
Which was why she had warned the bridge security guards herself to watch Cyborg Rank Koln with special care; he was to be killed the instant he made any threatening move against the Dictator.
Give Saurons a task, she knew, and we think of nothing else. Give us enough time to prepare for that task, all the while thinking of nothing else, and it soon becomes the only thing we are capable of. Societal training is only what we do; being soldiers is what we are.
Even so, she could not be sure they would be fast enough to stop Koln, There were only eight of them. She lifted her knee, brushed it once more against the grip of the pistol she had taped to the underside of her console. But if they only slowed Koln down a little, the Cyborg would be dead immediately after Diettinger.
That much, she could be sure of.
Twenty-Five
Nine minutes and three seconds later, hundreds of millions of kilometers away, eighteen miles beneath the surface of Freas, eighty-four Sauron Technical Rankers set about justifying an investment of twenty-three years of research and expenditures which reached comfortably into the trillions.
Along with their colleagues on Barlowe, they had been en
gaged in the development of particle weapon technology for the Sauron war machine. Their expertise had led to advances in weaponry which made the Sauron ground soldier as superior to his Imperial counterpart in armament as he was in physiognomy.
And that was Sauron society’s military blind spot. Convinced that ultimate victory would be an inevitable by-product of individual genetic supremacy, all the best efforts and intellectual brilliance of these men and women had been funneled into ever-more-powerful systems for the Sauron ground trooper, ultimately leading to personal weapons of such potency that they were feasible only for the Cyborgs. Weapon systems whose development might have resulted in naval superiority languished in favor of those with obvious application to planetside conflicts.
But research on such systems had proceeded nevertheless, and now, the people who had kept them alive hoped to prove that their commitment to them had not been misplaced.
The positional data on Intruder One was downlined into computers on Barlowe and Freas. Power generation systems on both worlds were producing enough energy for ten cities. Time differentials were calculated for the limitations imposed by the speed of light over the distances which would be traversed, and with very little fuss, systems on both Barlowe and Freas were activated. And on both Barlowe and Freas, nothing very much seemed to happen.
Minutes later, in the immersion display of the flagship Fomoria, the pale blue beam representing the Barlowe/Freas line brightened at each end, and that brightness began to extend outward from each of the two worlds, toward a convergence point slightly closer to Freas than to Barlowe. The size of the immersion display and the scale of its representation of events meant that the extending brightness, which was moving at not quite the speed of light, was advancing at about the same rate as the minute hand of an antique watch. Even so, after perhaps thirty seconds everyone could see that the brightening segments would meet at a point just above the plane of the ecliptic, over the asteroid belt, just ahead of dead center of Intruder One.
