by B. V. Larson
As I stared at the enemy line-up of ships, I realized Miklos was right. I’d been crazy to attack Earth at all. I felt like a banana-republic dictator sending my miserable collection of foreign-surplus helicopters and pickup-truck personnel carriers out to attack an organized, first rate armada fielded by a superpower. If it hadn’t been for Phobos, this entire operation would have been suicide.
But I didn’t let any of these thoughts escape onto my face or out through my mouth. I was all smiles and bravado.
“Frankly, I’m surprised they don’t have more than this,” I lied. “They had all of Earth’s industrial might and plenty of time to rebuild.”
Captain Sarin had finally looked up and caught sight of the data she’d been busy organizing for us. She seemed mesmerized by the screen. That wasn’t like her.
“In manpower alone,” she said, “they’re a million times more potent than we are.”
“But think of what the Imperials must be saying to themselves!” I urged her. “Imagine waking up to see this monster ship bearing down on you from out of nowhere!”
“We don’t have to imagine that, sir,” Miklos said, “we just experienced that horrible moment ourselves a couple of weeks ago when Phobos first rose up from Eden-12.”
“Yeah, right you are,” I said.
I figured it was time to provide more encouragement. I cleared my throat and went into full-bullshit mode.
“Overall, I take this as a positive sign,” I said loudly.
They glanced at me. Most of them gave me their patented “are you crazy?” look. I’m very familiar with that expression. Then they turned back to the impossibly large armada on their screens.
“Don’t you see? The Imperials aren’t holding anything back. This has to be everything they have. Crow likes to strike that way—all or nothing. He’s taken a good look at us, and decided incorrectly that we look weak. He’s going to try to knock us out right here on his doorstep.”
If anything, my listeners were whiter than before. None of them said anything. No one objected or laughed. They just stared at the screens, then me, then the screens again.
“His strategy will give us a surprise win,” I continued. “They won’t have time to learn about how to fight this ship. They won’t have time to adapt. They’ll come in and make their play—one time. We outrange them and have a hull that’s for all intents and purposes impenetrable. They haven’t got—”
“Colonel Riggs?” Marvin interrupted, speaking up for the first time.
“What is it, Marvin?”
“I believe the enemy armada is firing upon us.”
I leaned forward and examined the screen. There they were: fresh contacts. It took a few seconds before all the updates came in. Marvin had access to the raw feeds and so had known sooner.
I eyed the enemy formation as red slivers separated from their fleet. The first rank had unloaded missiles in our direction—lots of them.
“Get a counter going,” I said.
“Done,” Jasmine answered.
I stared some more. The counter read seven thousand eighty-four ships, and next to that, in yellow, was a flickering number of missiles. The number was already in the triple digits and it was rising fast.
The number stopped at four hundred something. I smiled. “Not that bad. Phobos can take out that barrage with one toot from her gravity-horn.”
A minute or so later I stopped smiling.
“They’ve fired another barrage, sir,” Marvin said in his ever-perky voice. “Exactly one minute behind the first. Colonel, the gravity weapon will not be able to recharge before—”
“I know!” I barked.
I walked away from the screen and got a cup of hot coffee. I poured some bourbon into it and stirred it with my finger. This burned my finger, but I didn’t care.
Jasmine came over to me and stood nearby. I glanced at her, drank my Irish coffee, then heaved a sigh.
“Can I talk to you, Colonel?” she asked.
“Talk.”
“In your chambers, sir?”
I nodded and led her away to the brick we’d recently placed adjacent to the domed bridge area.
I walked inside and she followed me. I watched her as she entered. She was prim and sharply-dressed. Every line of her body was hugged by her fleet suit and I eyed her closely, determined to enjoy the view for a few more hours before we were all annihilated.
Behind her, I saw Marvin’s cameras craning and zooming. Miklos was lingering too, watching. I frowned. Had Miklos signaled her somehow? I often found my staffers sending little love-notes about me via texts. When they wanted to change my mind about something, they would team up and work in coordination. From the look on Miklos’ face and the fact he hadn’t come crying to me yet, I figured this might well be the case now.
I closed the hatch in their faces.
“Okay,” I said, taking another swig of spiked coffee and setting it down. “What’s on your mind, Captain?”
Jasmine leaned forward, passing her nose over my cup. She gave it a sniff, and wrinkled it. She gave me a reproachful look.
“I’m well within my self-prescribed limits,” I said.
She nodded. “Well sir…Kyle, we need to turn back.”
“Turn back?”
“We’re sitting at the Tyche ring. Those missiles will follow us through, but if we play it right, we can destroy them as they come in with PD fire.”
I made a growling noise. “I’m not interested in having come all the way out here just to turn tail and run, Captain.”
“I understand that, sir. But there are seven thousand ships out there! Who knows what else Crow has—”
“He’s got nothing else,” I said. “He doesn’t play it that way. He likes to fight battles like a man with a sledgehammer. He either goes for it or he doesn’t. If we can break this fleet, we’ll have Earth.”
She shook her head, staring at me with wide, pretty eyes. “You can’t be serious! Seven thousand ships! Even if we survive all the missiles—and they are still firing by the way—our support vessels won’t.”
I leaned forward, lowering my voice. “We can’t run, Jasmine.”
“Why not?”
“Because they aren’t going to stop coming. Crow has seen my cards. He knows what we have. If we run, he’ll follow us—all the way back to Eden. And the battle station is on the wrong side of that system. It won’t be able to help.”
She looked stunned. I watched her face as she digested this, then she stood up slowly, as if in shock.
“Here,” I said, offering her my cup. “You want some of this? Takes the sting out.”
She shook her head and didn’t look at me. I felt a pang.
Standing up, I reached out and gently touched her hand. She didn’t move. I walked around the desk and put my hands on her shoulders. A moment later, we were kissing.
I have a way of picking the oddest moments with women. Call me an opportunist. She kissed me harder than usual, but her lips still felt like butterflies teasing my mouth. Sometimes being unnaturally tough wasn’t a good thing.
I released her and I saw she had a single, glistening tear on her cheek.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “I’m just thinking about everyone—all those who are about to die.”
I laughed. A booming sound. I formed a grin and shook my head. She looked at me with big round eyes, confused.
“I didn’t say we were going to die! Unless you’re grieving for Crow’s thugs, you’d better save it. You don’t think I’d come all the way out here without preparing for the worst do you?”
She cocked her head and narrowed her eyes at me. She shook her head slowly.
“That’s right. Now, send Marvin in here. We have some planning to do. This does change the time schedule of course—but that’s all. Crow’s head will be on a pike in two weeks. Mark my words.”
Jasmine nodded. She gave me flickering smile. I think she knew I was bullshitting her, but she appreciated the effort. She even gave me a
nother peck on the cheek as she left. I marveled at how differently Sandra would have handled the same situation. She’d have kicked me or something.
Marvin was in my office a minute later. I poured myself a fresh cup of coffee and laced it again. I was feeling better already.
“All right,” I said. “What have you got for me, robot?”
“Excuse me, Colonel Riggs?”
“I’m asking you what the plan is. How are we going to stop all those missiles?”
“With the outer hull of this vessel, sir.”
I twisted my lips in disapproval. “Do you really think the hull can take all of them? Without being punctured?”
“Oh no, Colonel,” he said. “By my calculations, the fourth barrage will breach the hull and kill everyone aboard. I could be wrong, of course. It could be the third—or even the second, if my calculations concerning the density and integrity are inaccurate.”
“Hmm,” I said, taking another belt. “What if we go into a spin? What if we spread the impacts over the entire surface, thus preventing them from damaging any one point too much?”
“Not a bad suggestion. But still, there are now twenty-six separate barrages.”
“Twenty-six?”
“Yes—that’s how long it’s been since the first wave was fired. Each minute, the enemy fleet launches another barrage.”
That brought both my hands up to my face. I almost dropped my coffee.
“Still, your idea has triggered additional threads of logic,” Marvin said, shuffling his tentacles and cameras. Thoughtfully, he reached out, took my coffee cup with a tentacle and examined it. “Are you aware, Colonel Riggs, that there is a foreign substance in your beverage?”
“Yeah,” I said. “It’s coffee.”
“No, there’s another substance. I’ve detected—”
“Listen, Marvin,” I said. “We have a few hours left, then I have to turn tail and run. When I do that, the Imperial fleet with come after us. They’ll follow us all the way to Eden. Star Force will be destroyed, and Crow will have won.”
“That seems like a large series of logical leaps, sir.”
“Yeah, I’m good at that. Oh, and by the way, you’ll be destroyed along with the rest of us. Let’s not forget about that.”
Several more cameras lofted and panned, eyeing me. He finally stopped fooling with my cup and put it down.
“That would be most unfortunate.”
“Exactly,” I said. “So what were you thinking? You said something about a new logical thread. What did you have in mind?”
“Only the idea of spreading the impacts. If we could spread them over the shield, rather than just a region of the hull, we could destroy them before impact.”
I frowned at him, then I slowly got what he was saying. “You mean we could spin the ship, taking the blasts on different regions of the surface. But that would only work if the ship had more than one gravity weapon, right?”
“Sadly, yes.”
I was up and pacing. I stepped on his tentacles until he pulled them out of the way.
“How about this,” I said. “Could we localize the weapon’s discharge? I mean, it can be focused and manipulated, right?”
“Yes, that’s how the two primary effects are achieved. A broad, diffused charge crushes everything near the surface. A tightly focused narrow area of effect is utilized to destroy distant ships.”
“Right. How about we make a weaker version of the effect? Something localized and diffuse—but only over one portion of the hull? I know the targeting can be adjusted, you’ve done it before.”
Marvin ruminated. “I’m not sure I can do that in the time allotted. Firing a single trigger that catches everything in the ship’s vicinity is vastly easier to manage.”
“You’ll have my entire staff backing you. With any resource you want.”
He perked up considerably.
“Anything?”
“Anything within reason, Marvin,” I said.
He drooped in disappointment.
“Okay, okay,” I said. “I’ll let you have the cyborgs.”
“What?”
“We captured some of them alive. They’re half machine and half biotic.”
“Very intriguing.”
“You can dissect them, eat them—make a few of your own. I don’t care. You can have them. If you come up with a solution to this problem first.”
Marvin looked excited. “It might just be possible. The enemy missiles are organized in fairly tight groupings. It’s obvious they intend to penetrate the ship’s armor with an intense series of blasts over a few square miles.”
“Great. Clustered shots right at our hearts, eh?”
“So to speak. But the significance of that would be the localized nature of the threat. If we can put up a gravity effect in the path of each swarm—and do it once a minute—we might be able to survive the battle.”
I nodded, thinking of my own adjustments to the situation. I patted Marvin on his rear brainbox as I walked out. He followed me and headed to his station where he began tapping at his consoles.
“Captain Sarin,” I said, “I’ve got new orders for the fleet. They are to move in front of Phobos with a wide dispersion pattern. Only the carriers and the transports are going to be allowed to hide behind us. The mission of the forward group is to shoot down every missile they can as they come in.”
“Got it, sir…but I must point out that the incoming weapons will be moving very fast. They won’t get many shots off before the missiles pass them.”
“I’m well aware of that. But every lucky hit we get is one less we have to absorb with Phobos.”
“Also,” she went on, “placing our ships in the front line means they could become targets. The missiles can change targets and take out small ships much more easily than this larger vessel.”
I had to think about that one. After studying the screens for a moment, I had to agree with her.
“I think I have a solution. Don’t move them up yet. Wait until the missiles are a few minutes away. The enemy fleet is about ten light minutes out. They won’t have time to see our maneuver and send new orders to their missiles in time to change their behavior.”
She nodded, and we had a plan.
The effect on the rest of the crew was dramatic. Now that I’d come out with new orders, they had something to chew on—something to think about besides getting blown up.
“One more thing, Colonel,” she said. “Shouldn’t we fire our own missiles?”
“Use them or lose them, eh?”
She nodded.
“No,” I said. “If we fail to stop this barrage, we’re dead anyway. In that case, I’d rather leave the Earth fleet intact to face future threats.”
She went back to her station and went to work. I signaled Miklos, who joined me at the planning table.
“I want you to help Marvin,” I told him. I briefly explained the plan, and he admitted it had potential.
“What, specifically, can I do to help, sir?” he asked.
“I want you to keep an eye on him. Make sure he doesn’t get distracted. Make sure—make sure he doesn’t do anything weird, okay?”
Miklos chuckled. “I’ll do my best, Colonel. But no promises.”
When it came to Marvin, I knew that was the best anyone could offer.
-28-
The hours crawled by. I slept, ate and worried. When you had thousands of missiles coming at you, it was hard to relax.
Marvin did none of these things. He never left his station, working feverishly on the Blue’s interface. He had more hands, eyes and brains than any three of us combined. Plus, he didn’t seem to get tired.
Every ten minutes or so, the ship’s big weapon fired. We’d cleared the surface of nonessential personnel so he could experiment as he liked. We were too far from the enemy fleet to hit them, of course, but he targeted and destroyed various decoys we placed for him, mostly chunks of floating ice from the Oort Cloud.
When he was
ready, we began throwing missiles at Phobos. One at a time, the cruisers that followed in our wake launched salvoes with disabled warheads. When they came, Phobos shuddered as the weapon activated.
That alone was enough to keep people from resting. My people were like rocks, but it was hard to take relentless impacts and funny noises when you knew doom was out there, speeding along at a million or so miles an hour in your direction.
In all that time, we didn’t fire a missile, attempt communication with the enemy, or even budge from the Tyche ring. We looked dead, despite our desperate preparations.
The enemy fleet was sailing toward us during this time as well, but they were taking their time about it. They were cautious. They wanted to see if their missiles could take us out. Under optimal conditions, they could have done it without having to lose a single ship of their own.
I smelled Crow’s influence in every action they took. He was probably running this show from his headquarters back on Earth, safely berating his commanders and sipping sherry in his ice cream white uniform.
The thought made me angry. Too often over the long years I’d been dealing with Crow, he’d tricked me or managed to get the upper hand. He’d ordered assassins to kill me and my girl and I was here to return the favor. But I had to stay alive and reach Earth first.
About eight hours before the missiles were due to hit us, I began to get antsy. I went to Marvin and waved my hands around until he turned a single camera in my direction.
“I’m sorry, Colonel,” he said. “I’m very busy just now.”
I’d found him out working on the Blues’ interface directly. He was attaching secondary and tertiary nanite arms to each of the hexes that controlled the weapons system. There were about forty hexes in the weapons panel, and they puffed and sighed as they moved. I watched them for a few seconds before losing patience.
“Are you going to make it, Marvin?” I asked. “If it’s time to withdraw, I need to know now.”
“I’m going to make it, Colonel Riggs.”
“Are you just saying that in order to keep your hopes alive?”
A second camera glanced at me, then returned to his primary focus. “I’m not sure I understand your meaning, sir.”
