by Дэн Симмонс
Space war had brought a return to such mutually agreed upon engagements. The great battles of the Hegemony days—whether the ancient internecine wars with General Horace Glennon-Height and his ilk, or the centuries of warfare between Web worlds and Ouster Swarms—had usually been waged close to a planet or spaceborne farcaster portal. And distances between the combatants were absurdly short—hundreds of thousands of klicks, often tens of thousands, frequently less than that—given the light-years and parsecs traveled by the warring parties. But this closing on the enemy was necessary given the time it took a fusion-powered laser lance, a CPB, or ordinary attack missiles to cross even one AU—SEVEN minutes for light to crawl the distance between would-be killer and target, much longer for even the highest-boost missile, where the hunt, chase, and kill could take days of seek and countermeasure, attack and parry.
Ships with C-plus capability had no incentive to hang around in enemy space waiting for these seeker missiles, and the Church-sponsored restriction on AI’s in warheads made the effectiveness of these weapons problematic at best. So the shape of space battles over the centuries of the Hegemony had been simple—fleets translating into space and finding other translating fleets or more static in-system defenses, a quick closing to more lethal distances, a brief but terrible exchange of energies, and the inevitable retreat of the more savaged forces—or total destruction if the defending forces had nowhere to retreat—followed by consolidation of gains by the winning fleet.
Technically, the slower ships de Soya had served in previously had a powerful tactical advantage over the instantaneous-drive archangel cruisers. Revival from cryogenic fugue state took only hours at worst, minutes at best, so the captain and crew of a Hawking-drive ship could be ready to fight shortly after translating from C-plus. With the archangels, and even with papal dispensation for the accelerated and risky two-day resurrection cycles, it was fifty standard hours or more before the human elements of the ships were ready to do battle.
Theoretically, this gave a great advantage to the defenders. Theoretically, the Pax could have optimized the use of Gideon-drive ships by having uncrewed craft piloted by AI’s flick into enemy space, wreak havoc, and flick out again before the defenders knew that they were under attack.
But such theory did not apply here.
Autonomous intelligences capable of such advanced fuzzy logic would never be allowed by the Church. More importantly, Pax Fleet had designed attack strategies to meet the requirements of resurrection so that no advantage would be surrendered to defenders.
Simply put, no battles were to be fought by mutual agreement. The seven archangels had been designed to descend upon the enemy like the mailed fist of God, and that was precisely what they were doing now.
In the first three Task Force GIDEON incursions into Ouster space, Mother Captain Stone’s ship, the Gabriel, translated first and decelerated hard in-system, drawing all long-range electromagnetic, neutrino, and other sensor probes. The restricted AI’s aboard Gabriel were sufficient to catalogue the position and identity of all defensive positions and population centers in the system, while simultaneously monitoring the sluggish in-system movement of all Ouster attack and merchant vehicles.
Thirty minutes later, the Uriel, Raphael, Remiel, Sariel, Michael, and Raguel would translate in-system. Dropping to only three-quarters light-speed, the task force would be moving like bullets compared to the tortoise velocities of the accelerating Ouster torchships. Receiving Gabriel’s intelligence and targeting data via tight beam burst, the task force would open fire with weaponry that held no respect for the limitations of light-speed. The improved Hawking-drive hyper-k missiles would wink into existence among enemy ships and above population centers, some using velocity and precise aiming to destroy targets, others detonating in carefully shaped but promiscuous plasma or thermonuclear blasts. At the same instant, recoverable Hawking-drive high-velocity probes would jump to target points and translate into real space, radiating conventional lance beams and CPB’s like so many lethal sea urchins, destroying anything and everything within a hundred-thousand-klick radius.
Most terribly, the ship borne deathbeams would slice outward from the task force archangels like invisible scythes, propagating along the Hawking-drive wakes of probes and missiles and translating into real space as surely as the terrible swift sword of God.
Countless trillions of synapses were fried and scrambled in an instant. Tens of thousands of Ousters died without knowing that they were under attack.
And then the GIDEON Task Force would come back in-system on thousand-kilometer tails of flame, closing in for the final kill.
Each of the seven star systems to be attacked had been probed by instantaneous-drive drones, the presence of Ousters confirmed, preliminary targets assigned. Each of the seven star systems had a name—usually just a New Revised General Catalogue alpha-numerical designation—but the command team aboard H.H.S. Uriel had given the seven systems target names coded after the seven archdemons mentioned in the Old Testament.
Father Captain de Soya thought it a bit much, all this cabalistic numerology—seven archangels, seven target systems, seven archdemons, seven deadly sins. But he soon fell into the habit of talking about the targets in this shorthand.
The target systems were—Belphegor (sloth), Leviathan (envy), Beelzebub (gluttony), Satan (anger), Asmodeus (lechery), Mammon (avarice), and Lucifer (pride).
Belphegor had been a red-dwarf system that reminded de Soya of Barnard’s Star system, but instead of the lovely, fully terraformed Barnard’s World floating close to the sun, Belphegor’s only planet was a gas giant resembling Barnard’s Star’s forgotten child, Whirl. There were true military targets around this unnamed gas giant: refueling stations for the Ouster Swarm torchships en route to attack the Pax’s Great Wall, gigantic dipships that shuttled the gases from the world to orbit, repair docks and orbital shipyards by the dozen. De Soya had Raphael attack these without hesitation, slagging them to orbital lava.
GIDEON found most of the true Ouster population centers floating in the Trojan points beyond the gas giant, scores of small orbital forests filled with tens of thousands of space-adapted “angels,” most opening their forcefield wings to the weak, red sunlight in panic at the task force’s approach. The seven archangels laid waste to these delicate ecostructures, destroying all of the forests and shepherd asteroids and watering comets, burning the fleeing space-adapted Ouster angels like putting so many moths to a flame, and all without slowing significantly between entrance and exit translation points.
The second system, Leviathan, despite its impressive name, had been a Sirius B-type white dwarf with only a dozen or so Ouster asteroids huddled close to its pale fire. Here there were none of the obvious military targets that de Soya had attacked so willingly in the Belphegor System: the asteroids were undefended, probably birthing rocks and hollowed-out pressurized environments for Ousters who had not chosen to adapt to vacuum and hard radiation. Task Force GIDEON swept them with deathbeams and passed on.
The third system, Beelzebub, was an Alpha Centauri C-like red dwarf, devoid of worlds or colonies, with only a single Ouster military base swinging in the darkness some thirty AU’s out and fifty-seven Swarm ships caught in the act of refueling or refitting. Thirty-nine of these warships, ranging in size and armament from tiny ramscouts to an Orion-class attack carrier, were fit to fight and flung themselves at Task Force GIDEON. The battle lasted two minutes and eighteen seconds. All fifty-seven Ouster ships and the base complex were turned to gas molecules or lifeless sarcophagi. No archangels were damaged in the exchange. The task force moved on.
The fourth system, Satan, held no ships, only breeding colonies scattered as far out as the Oört cloud. GIDEON spent eleven days in this system, putting Lucifer’s angels to the torch.
The fifth system, Asmodeus, centered by a pleasant little K-type orange dwarf not unlike Epsilon Eridani, sent waves of in-system torchships to the defense of its populated asteroid belt. The waves
were burned and blasted away with an economy born of practice. The Gabriel reported eighty-two inhabited rocks in the belt, harboring a population estimated at a million and a half adapted and unadapted Ousters.
Eighty-one of the asteroids were destroyed or deathbeamed from a great distance. Then Admiral Aldikacti ordered prisoners taken. Task Force GIDEON decelerated in a long, four-day ellipse that brought them back to the belt and its sole remaining inhabited rock—a potato-shaped asteroid less than four klicks long and a klick across at its widest, cratered point. Doppler radar showed that it was orbiting and tumbling in random patterns understood only by the gods of chaos, but that it was turning on its axis in a carefully orchestrated one-tenth-g rotisserie mode. Deep radar showed that it was hollow. Probes told that it was inhabited by as many as ten thousand Ousters.
Analysis suggested that it was a birthing rock.
Six unarmed rock hoppers flung themselves at the task force. Uriel turned them into plasma at a distance of eighty-six thousand klicks. A thousand Ouster angels, some of them armed with low-yield energy weapons or recoilless rifles, opened forcefield wings and flew toward the distant Pax ships in long, tacking ellipses along the crest of the solar wind. Their velocity was so slow that it would have taken days to cover the distance. The Gabriel was given the task of burning them away with a thousand winks of coherent light. Tightbeams flicked on between the archangels.
Raphael and Gabriel acknowledged orders and closed to within a thousand klicks of the silent asteroid. Sally ports opened and twelve tiny figures—six from each ship—caught the light from the orange-dwarf star as Swiss Guard commandos, Marines, and troopers jetted toward the rock.
There was no resistance. The troopers found two shielded air-lock portals. With precise timing, they blasted the outer doors open and entered in teams of three.
“Bless me, Father, for I have sinned. It’s been two standard months since my last confession.”
“Go ahead.”
“Father, today’s action… it bothers me, Father.”
“Yes?”
“It feels… wrong.”
Father Captain de Soya was silent. He had watched Sergeant Gregorius’s attack on the virtual tactical channels. He had debriefed the men after the mission. Now he knew he was going to hear it again in the darkness of the confessional. “Go ahead, Sergeant,” he said softly.
“Aye, sir,” said the sergeant on the other side of the partition. “I mean, aye, Father.”
Father Captain de Soya heard the big man take a breath.
“We came onto the rock with no opposition,” began Sergeant Gregorius. “Me an’ the five young ones, I mean. We were in tightbeam contact with Sergeant Kluge’s squad from the Gabriel. And of course, with Commanders Barnes-Avne and Uchikawa.”
De Soya remained silent in his part of the confessional booth. The booth was sectional, meant to be stored away when the Raphael was under boost or combat stations, which was most of the time, but now it smelled of wood and sweat and velvet and sin, as all real confessionals did. The father-captain had found this half hour during the last stage of their climb toward translation point for the sixth Ouster system, Mammon, and offered the crew time for confession, but only Sergeant Gregorius had come forward.
“So when we landed, sir… Father, I had the laddies in my squad take the south polar air lock, just like in the sims. We blew the doors as easily as you please, Father, and then activated our own fields for the tunnel fighting.” De Soya nodded. Swiss Guard fighting suits had always been the best in the human universe—capable of surviving, moving, and fighting in air, water, hard vacuum, hard radiation, slug assault, energy lance assault, and high explosive environment up to the kiloton-yield range, but the new commando suits carried their own class-four containment fields and were able to piggyback on the ships’ more formidable fields.
“The Ousters hit us in there, Father, fighting in the dark maze of the access tunnels. Some o’ them were space-adapted creatures, sir… angels without their wings extended. But most of them were just low-g adepts in skinsuits… hardly any armor to speak of a’tall, Father. They tried using lance and rifle and ray on us, but they were using basic night goggles to amplify the dim glow from the rocks, sir, and we saw ’em first with our filters. Saw ’em first and shot ’em first.” Sergeant Gregorius took another breath. “It only took us a few minutes to fight our way to the inner locks, Father. All the Ousters who tried to stop us in the tunnels ended up floatin’ there…” Father Captain de Soya waited. “Inside, Father… well…”
Gregorius cleared his throat. “Both squads blew the inner doors at the same instant, sir… north and south poles at once. The repeater globes we left behind in the tunnels relayed the tightbeam transmissions just fine, so we were never out of touch with Kluge’s squad… nor with the ships, as ye know, Father. There were fail-safes on the inner doors, just as we figured, but those we blew as well, and the emergency membranes a second later. The inside of the rock was all hollow, Father… well, we knew that, of course… but I’d never been inside a birthin’ asteroid before, Father. Many a military rock, aye, but never a pregnancy one…”
De Soya waited.
“It was about one klick across with lots o’ their spidery low-g bamboo towers takin’ up much of the center space, Father. The inner shell wasn’t spherical or smooth, but more or less followed the shape of the outside of the rock, you know.”
“Potato,” said Father Captain de Soya.
“Yessir. And all pitted and cratered on the inside, too, Father. Lots of caves and grottoes everywhere… like dens for the pregnant Ousters, I suppose.”
De Soya nodded in the darkness and glanced at his chronometer, wondering if the usually concise sergeant was going to get to the perceived sins in this account before they had to stow the confessional for C-plus translation.
“It mst’ve been pure chaos for the Ousters, Father… what with the cyclone howlin’ as the place depressurized, all the atmosphere flowin’ out o’ the two blasted air locks like water out of a bathtub drain, the air all full of dirt and debris and Ousters blowin’ away like so many leaves in the storm. We had our external suit phones on, Father, and the noise was unbelievable ’til the air got too thin to carry it—wind roarin’, Ousters screamin’, their lances and our lances cracklin’ like so many lightning rods, plasma grenades goin’ off and the sound bouncin’ back at us in that big rock cavern, the echoes goin’ on for minutes—it was loud, Father.”
“Yes,” said Father Captain de Soya in the darkness.
Sergeant Gregorius took another breath.
“Anyway, Father, the orders’d been to bring in two samples of everything… adult males, space-adapted, unadapted; adult females, pregnant and not pregnant; a couple of Ouster kids, pre-puberty, and infants… both sexes. So Kluge’s team and ours got busy, stunning and bagging ’em. There was just enough gravity on the inner surface of the rock… one-tenth-g… to keep the bags in place where we left ’em.”
There was a moment of silence. Father Captain de Soya was just about to speak, to bring this confession to a close, when Sergeant Gregorius whispered through the screen and darkness separating them.
“Sorry, Father, I know you know all this. I just… it’s hard to… anyway, this was the bad part, Father. Most of the Ousters who weren’t modified… space-adapted… were dead or dying at this point. From decompression or lance fire or grenades. We didn’t use the deathbeam wands issued to us. Neither Kluge nor I said anything to the lads… just none of us used the things.
“Now those adapted Ousters went angel, their bodies turnin’ all shiny as they activated their personal forcefields. They couldn’t fully extend their wings in there, of course, and it wouldn’t have done any good if they had… no sunlight to catch, and the one-tenth-g was too much for them to overcome if there had been any solar wind… but they went angel anyway. Some of them tried to use their wings as weapons against us.”
Sergeant Gregorius made a rough sound that might have be
en a parody of a chuckle. “We had class-four fields, Father, and they were batting at us with those gossamer wings… Anyway, we burned them away, sent three from each squad out with the bagged specimens, and Kluge and I each took our remain’ two lads to clear out the caverns as ordered…”
De Soya waited. There was less than a minute before he would have to end confession.
“We knew it was a birthin’ rock, Father. We knew… everybody knows… that the Ousters, even the ones who’ve turned the machines loose in their cells and blood and who don’t look anythin’ like human… they haven’t learned how to have their females carry and bear children in pure zero-g and hard radiation, Father. We knew it was a birthin’ rock when we went in the goddamned asteroid… I’m sorry, Father…”
De Soya stayed silent.
“But even so, Father… those caverns were like homes… beds and cubbies and flatscreen vid sets and kitchens… not things we’re used to thinkin’ Ousters have, Father. But most of those caves were…”
“Nurseries,” said Father Captain de Soya.
“Aye, sir. Nurseries. Wee beds with wee babies in ’em… not Ouster monsters, Father, not those pale, shiny things we fight against, not those damned Lucifer’s angels with wings a hundred klicks across in the starlight… just… babies. By the hundreds, Father. By the thousands. Cavern after cavern. Most o’ the rooms there had depressurized already, killing the little ones where they lay. Some o’ the little bodies had been blown out in the depressurization, but most o’ them were tucked in tight. Some o’ the rooms were still airtight, though, Father. We blew our way in. Mothers… women in robes, pregnant women with wild hair flying in the one-tenth-g… they attacked us with their fingernails and teeth, Father. We ignored them until the windstorms blew them out or they died a-choking, but some of the infants… scores of them, Father… were in those little plastic respirator cases…”
