“I don’t know—yet,” she said. “One thing we have to do is get our ship ready for whatever we do decide. If those five warships survived the computer attack—”
“Do we know they underwent a computer attack?” Jon asked.
“We don’t know, if knowing means one hundred percent certainty,” Gloria said. “It’s seems likely they did, though. I suggest we proceed upon those lines. As I was saying, if those five ships survived the computer attack, it makes sense that others survived as well. We must all join forces and attack the alien ship in concert.”
“Sounds logical,” Jon said.
“Of course,” she said.
“But logic doesn’t always work in a fight,” Jon said. “For now, we need to watch and see what happens.”
“What if those five vessels need our help to destroy the alien ship?” Gloria asked.
“Do you see those ships on the verge of success?” Jon asked.
“The missiles are heading for the alien vessel.”
“That could be changing soon,” Da Vinci said. “Look. Isn’t that a golden color on the enemy vessel?”
Jon focused. There indeed seemed to be a gold speck on the dark alien ship. As he watched, the speck of light grew brighter and brighter.
“Is that a weapon?” Jon asked.
“I think we’re about to find out,” Gloria said.
-6-
The SLN Battleship Leonid Brezhnev continued to drift in the outer Neptune Gravitational System. The vessel was approximately five million kilometers from the blue ice giant.
Neso was the most distant moon in the system, at 48 million kilometers from Neptune. Neso wasn’t behind the battleship, however, but on the other side of the ice giant from the Brezhnev. As moons went, Neso was tiny, a mere 60 kilometers in diameter.
The earlier battle between the SLN task force and the Neptune System Navy had occurred near the much larger irregular moon Nereid. Nereid was presently six million kilometers from Neptune.
The Leonid Brezhnev’s single working teleoptic sensor watched the long-distance conflict between the SLN missiles and the supposed alien vessel. The three missiles continued to accelerate. It seemed likely they were thermonuclear-tipped missiles. As such, they wouldn’t have to hit the one-hundred-kilometer vessel; merely igniting somewhere in the ship’s vicinity would unleash their destructive potential.
“If that’s an alien ship,” Da Vinci said, “what kind of material is its hull made of?” He turned to the mentalist. “Can you tell?”
“Not yet,” Gloria said.
“Do you think you’ll be able to tell after the nuclear blasts?” the Neptunian asked.
“Will nuclear blasts knock out our teleoptic sensor?” Gloria asked Jon.
“Good question,” Jon said. “I don’t know. Can we shield the sensor?” he asked Da Vinci.
“How am I supposed to know that,” the Neptunian cried. “You oughtta be glad I got the thing working.”
“Jon,” Gloria said, tugging on his sleeve. “Look.”
He glanced at her. She pointed at the main screen. He looked up in time to see a thin golden beam. It speared straight and bright from the enemy vessel and hit one of the SLN missiles.
“I’m a fool,” Gloria said.
The missile’s exhaust disappeared from the teleoptic scope.
“The golden beam did not ignite the warhead,” Da Vinci said, “but it destroyed the missile.”
Gloria pulled up her tablet. Her fingers flew over its small screen.
“It’s firing again,” Da Vinci said.
Gloria’s head snapped up. She pressed her tablet as the beam once more speared into the darkness. She tapped the tablet as soon as the second missile’s exhaust winked out.
Jon glanced at her.
The mentalist studied her tablet. “Given that the beam was traveling at the speed of light, the golden ray moved eight hundred thousand kilometers before striking the missile. That isn’t precise, but it gives us some idea of the beam’s destructive range. I’d say eight hundred thousand kilometers might be the alien beam’s outer-range limit.”
“Because the aliens would have fired sooner otherwise?” asked Jon.
“That seems like a rational observation,” Gloria said.
“Unless the aliens wanted to hit the missiles with their beam’s full power,” Jon said. “Maybe eight hundred thousand kilometers is the limit of the full destructive energies the beam can reach.”
“Why would they need to hit the missiles at such strength?” she asked.
“I have no idea. I’m just tossing out possibilities.”
Gloria smiled wanly. “I congratulate you, Captain. You reason like a mentalist.”
“You’re a captain?” Da Vinci asked Jon.
Jon didn’t bother answering the Neptunian. In truth, he wasn’t sure what rank to use. Having the men call him “Cadet” didn’t seem right. Jon shook his head. He could worry about names later.
At that point, the giant vessel beamed the last missile, destroying it as easily as it had the other two.
“Sir,” one of the other techs said. “Someone is broad-beaming a message.”
Jon whirled around. “Someone on our ship?” he demanded.
“No, sir,” the tech said. The man licked his lips as he studied his panel. “The message is coming from one of the warships, the ones that sent the missiles.”
“Do you have a visual to the message?” Jon asked.
“I do, sir. Do you want me to acknowledge them?”
“On no account,” Jon said. “But I do want you to put the message on the screen.”
“Yes, sir,” the tech said.
Once more, Jon looked up at the screen. The image of Neptune, the rings, the alien vessel and the stars vanished. In their place was general fuzziness. That began to dissipate as a harried-looking woman gradually appeared before them.
“She’s a rear admiral,” Gloria whispered.
“I say again,” the gray-haired woman said in a harsh accent. “To whomever can hear me, I am speaking to you from the SLN Battleship Cho En Li.”
The rear admiral was tall and severe-looking. She wore a crisp uniform with white gloves. She had various medals pinned to her chest and spoke aggressively while sitting straight in her command chair.
“She’s on a death ride,” Gloria said.
Jon glanced at the mentalist.
“I recognize what she’s doing,” Gloria explained. “It’s from Solar League history, when Commodore Blake broke the Venus-Mercury Alliance. He was outgunned and cut off from reinforcements. He had his officers wear their dress uniforms as he charged the enemy fleet. Every one of his ships broke apart under the relentless hammering. It fixed the enemy fleet, however, allowing a swarm of stealth drones to maneuver into a killing position. That broke the back of the Inner Planets Alliance against Earth.”
“After a bitter struggle, we have regained control of our vessels,” the rear admiral said. “I do not fully understand what happened. My tech chief says the computers went berserk—no. That’s not correct. They acted—the computers, I mean—against our wishes. On the Cho En Li and elsewhere, the main computer opened hatches, gassed other areas and turned various robots against the crews. It was a nightmare assault. Fortunately, my space marines reacted swiftly, defeating the machines. I was able to give warning to several other vessels, and they also defeated their rogue computers.”
Her narrow shoulders slumped. The rear admiral appeared physically and mentally exhausted.
“I believe we’ve encountered an alien vessel,” she said. “None of us has ever seen a ship like that out there. It is monstrously huge and filled with cunning… I dare to pronounce a judgment on them, although I am not an arbiter. The aliens are evil and possess haunting technology. I realize I speak in superstitious terms. But the alien ship is a demon from space. How could it do what it did to our computers? It was uncanny.”
The rear admiral drew a deep breath, squaring her shoulders.
“I suppose whoever is listening to this believes I’m rambling. You may even suppose that I’m insane. We have attempted to communicate with the aliens. They have refused to respond in any manner. We have attempted to communicate with anyone else living in the Neptune System.”
The rear admiral leaned forward, peering into the camera—peering, it seemed, at Jon or maybe the mentalist.
“Listen carefully,” the rear admiral said. “This is the truth. The alien viruses that caused the computers to become cunning Trojan horses against us have destroyed all human life in the Neptune System. The cloud cities have dived into the ice giant. We saw it happen. The habitats exploded—some of them, at least. Others opened all the hatches, letting out the satellites’ atmospheres. Who knows what kind of gases or robots ran amok on moon bases or habitats? The aliens used sorcery against us.”
The rear admiral paused. “I know my last statement sounds mad. It is not sorcery. I am aware of that. But it is technology on a higher order than we understand.
“This is likely my last transmission. If you live, join us. We are attacking the alien vessel. We must destroy that ship before it can maneuver deeper into the Solar System. I have my doubts that humanity can defeat it. But we must try. If we fail, humanity dies. It is as simple as that.”
The rear admiral turned away from the screen. She lowered her head, appearing to sob for a moment. Using a sleeve, she wiped her eyes. Afterward, she regarded the screen once more.
“We don’t have our main computers. We have smaller tablets, though, having hooked them to the weapons systems. We have recalibrated missiles. We’re going to launch all we have in several minutes. Again, I urge you to listen to me well. Humanity is doomed unless we can stop the alien ship. The extraterrestrials are inhumanly cruel and ruthless. If you can hear me, you are doomed anyway. But perhaps by sacrificing your lives together with us, you can gain our race time to figure out what happened today. I implore you, fight with us.”
Suddenly and completely, the image vanished.
Jon swiveled around to the tech. “Get her back up.”
The tech stared at his panel in bewilderment.
“Tech,” Jon said.
The man’s head whipped up. He had wide, staring eyes.
“What’s wrong?” asked Jon.
“Sir, someone is jamming the communications. It’s complete jamming. It must be the aliens, sir.”
Jon turned to Da Vinci. “Get the stellar image back up.”
The Neptunian’s fingers tapped quickly.
“No,” Gloria whispered.
Jon saw it out of the corner of his eye. On the screen, the alien ship moved among the faint rings as the exhaust lengthened behind it. The massive vessel headed toward the five SLN ships. The alien ship was visibly picking up speed as the five ships crawled toward Neptune.
“What are we going to do?” Gloria asked.
“Have we figured out how to use any of our battleship’s weapon systems?” Jon asked.
“That shouldn’t be hard to do,” Gloria said.
“Begging your pardon, sir,” Da Vinci said, “but are you mad? Those warships don’t stand any chance against the aliens. You heard the woman—the aliens are invincible. Should we die to prove what we already know?”
“What about the rest of humanity?” Jon asked angrily.
A sly look transformed the Neptunian’s features into something even more rat-like than earlier. “We’re human, right?”
“What’s your point?” Jon snapped.
“As long as we remain alive,” Da Vinci said, “the human race lives. Thus, we’re crazy to throw away the human race’s chance of survival by getting ourselves killed.”
“What?”
“He may have a point,” Gloria said somberly.
“Not you too?” asked Jon. “Don’t you see? This is the fight of our lives. If we don’t help the rear admiral—”
“What’s your ultimate goal?” Gloria asked, interrupting him.
“That’s easy,” Jon said. “I want to stop the aliens from murdering humanity.”
“Then you have to figure out how to defeat the alien vessel,” she said. “Throwing away our lives and the battleship on a gesture is illogical.”
“I’m getting tired of that word,” Jon said.
“I’ve heard that before,” Gloria told him. “Whatever you decide to do, remember this: stick to your goal. Anything else is grandstanding.”
Jon looked up at the screen, at the accelerating alien vessel.
“What would your colonel do?” Gloria asked quietly.
Jon stared at her with heat building in his face.
“It’s not an underhanded question,” the mentalist said. “Ask yourself what Colonel Graham would do in this situation. Then do it yourself.”
Jon stared at the screen with haunted eyes. Maybe the mentalist had a point. Just what would the colonel do under these impossible circumstances?
-7-
Jon floated alone in a nearby corridor. He had a decision to make, and he didn’t have much time to make it in any meaningful way.
If he was going to order the Leonid Brezhnev into battle with the rest of the SLN task force, he needed to get started.
It might already be too late.
There were five warships in the task force: three battleships, a mothership and a destroyer against a massive alien vessel. In terms of tonnage, it wasn’t even close.
The battleships were almost a kilometer in length. That made them immense in normal Solar System terms. The mothership had greater volume, although less sheer mass. The mothership would disgorge space-fighters, two and three-men craft. Against the one hundred-kilometer alien vessel, the fighters would be less than mites.
One hundred-kilometers of metal, structure, electronics—the alien vessel likely had more mass than the entire Solar League Navy.
Could three battleships, a mothership and a destroyer have any hope against the rest of the SLN?
Jon shook his head. He knew the answer to that.
That meant the rear admiral had made a hopeless gesture by attacking the alien vessel. There was something else at the edge of Jon’s subconscious—he snapped his fingers.
He remembered the colonel telling him once about the Siege of Masada. Rebellious Jews had holed up on a desert mountain fortress. The Romans had slowly built ramparts up to the citadel. The night before the legions broke into the mountaintop-fortress, the Jewish combatants had slain their wives and children and then taken their own lives. They did not want a life of ignoble slavery or death by crucifixion. The Zealots had fought to the last as free people.
Is that what the rear admiral did? Surely, she must realize the hopelessness of tackling the alien ship that had destroyed an entire planetary system.
Did that mean Da Vinci was right? Should they hide while the alien ship remained in the Neptune Gravitational System?
What would the colonel do?
What had the colonel done in the past? He hadn’t stayed in the Jupiter System when the SLN came in overwhelming force.
That clinched it for Jon. Throwing away his life on a gesture went against the grain. Adding the Leonid Brezhnev to the assault wasn’t going to change the outcome. The rear admiral spoke proudly, but that wasn’t a substitute for figuring out how to win.
Maybe the aliens so outclassed them that there wasn’t any hope for humanity. Yet…if that were so, why had the aliens butchered everyone? Their very ruthlessness implied something. It was more than hunger driving the aliens.
What was there about humanity that caused the aliens to act with such savagery?
Jon shook his head. That was the wrong question now. The only thing that mattered today was defeating the enemy.
In that moment, Jon knew what the colonel would do. He’d played enough Texas Hold ’em with the other officers and the colonel to have a good idea.
The colonel had insisted on poker nights with his officers. It had been more than get-togethers. The colonel had studie
d his officers during the games.
A simple truism of winning at poker was learning patience. Most poker hands were bad. If he was wise, a man folded such hands. A winning strategy involved playing ten to at most thirty percent of the dealt hands. Many of the better players erred on the lesser percentage.
Sure, occasionally one bluffed. But that was a poor strategy over the long term. That was something the colonel had taught Jon. Play the hands for the long term. That meant, play the percentages. Look at your position on the table. That counted too. Look at your hole cards. If they stank, fold. If they were okay, fold. The point was to wait for a good hand. That proved to be one of the hardest things for anyone to do. Patience was not a normal human virtue. One had to work at patience, practice it and then remember to be patient when one wanted something now.
How did that relate to the alien ship?
Jon decided he’d already started the process. He was watching the aliens. He’d defeated their first round—the killer computer. He didn’t know if the regiment could do anything to stop the aliens. The only way to find out was to watch the enemy.
That meant the rear admiral might have given them priceless data at the cost of her life and the ships.
With a greater sense of urgency than before, Jon headed back to the auxiliary station. He needed to find something they could use. Likely, it would not be a normal military thing. He had to find an alien weakness, if it existed. But to do that, he had to stay in the game long enough to make his play.
-8-
The rear admiral of Battleship Cho En Li might have been throwing away their lives, but she followed formal military procedures.
Jon stood with Gloria before the auxiliary station’s main screen. The little Neptunian remained at the teleoptic sensor-panel, making adjustments.
Da Vinci had managed to give them greater magnification. He’d also hooked his tablet into the system. The tablet’s processors gave them some computing power. It crunched raw data, giving them some sense of what they were seeing.
The alien ship was still in Neptune’s rings. In this case, it was the outer Adams ring, approximately 64 thousand kilometers from Neptune. The rear admiral’s truncated task force was two million kilometers from the alien vessel. The five SLN warships had a slight velocity, close to ten thousand kilometers per hour.
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