Through Struggle, the Stars

by John Lumpkin

  Even as the beams did their work, a web of pinhole optical cameras wired into Hangzhou’s hull studied them. The cameras fed data to a defensive control computer, which compared the information to its files on ships of Asakaze’s design. The computer deduced the precise origin of the beams, and ordered an array of counterbattery lasers to fire “up the beam” of the attacking cannon. Asakaze let its lasers linger too long on Hangzhou, and Chinese counterbattery beams slashed into the Japanese ship’s unarmored optics, disabling two cannon and damaging a third before its shutter could close. The Chinese counterbattery computer updated its records in hopes of improving its chance for another hit should the Japanese lasers strike again.

  Less than half of a second had passed since the laser officer on Asakaze had fired the weapons.

  In the San Jacinto’s CIC, Neil watched in fascination. Counterbattery response time was prized intelligence. He flagged the data for Space Force analysts before returning to the camera view of the Hangzhou.

  The cruiser pivoted to point her nose at the Japanese vessel and issued a salvo of three dozen missiles. Her main lasers targeted the frigate’s top quarter. In her three gun turrets, shells accelerated through electromagnetic coils and launched. The missiles and gun rounds would take more than a minute to arrive, but the lasers immediately burned several holes in Asakaze. One penetrated and hit a line containing liquid coolant, which sprayed into space. Another damaged a fire control computer, delaying the launch of the frigate’s own missile barrage.

  Asakaze’s own counterbatteries fired, destroying several of the Chinese attack lasers. In seconds, the armament of both ships had been substantially degraded.

  Around the CIC, handhelds buzzed. Thorne put a hand over her ear, to prevent outside noise from interfering with the audio from the tiny communicator speaker inside. She listened for a few seconds and pressed a button on the panel in front of her. Around CIC, screens in front of empty chairs lit up.

  “The port admiral’s worried we’re going to get some debris,” she said. “He wants all ships to put their antikinetic defenses on standby. Quintana, man the AK station, please.”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  Asakaze released her defensive missiles, which angled toward the fast-moving cloud of inbounds. Eight of Hangzhou’s attack missiles survived long enough to explode into a hail of depleted uranium flechettes, all of them pointing toward Asakaze’s hull. The Japanese frigate activated point-defense lasers and picked off the darts one by one, but there were too many, too close, moving too fast.

  More than 50 flechettes struck Asakaze, burrowing through armor, metal and, in a few cases, flesh. Some dug long rents in her side. Clouds of gas and liquid sprayed from breaches into the interior. She yawed slightly, still carried by the momentum of the final thrust. Two shells from Hangzhou’s guns blew gaping holes in her hull.

  Ten seconds. Twenty. Asakaze did nothing.

  Neil called up a camera view of Asakaze. “I think she’s dead, captain,” he said.

  “Any debris headed our way?”

  “None that I can see … wait … yes, radar has some debris from the Saki headed toward the station. It will hit in about two minutes.”

  To Erin, the captain said, “Quintana, weapons free. Splash the inbound.”

  Erin pushed a control switch from “stby” to “alert,” and three of San Jacinto’s laser turrets rotated and fired. Two other warships moored at the station also shot at the hurtling debris. The mass – a piece of Asakaze’s hull – was sliced into harmless remains within 10 seconds.

  “Radar showing no more threats to the station,” Neil said.

  Hangzhou pivoted to her original heading, and her main drive refired, returning her to her long deceleration toward the Chinese geosynchronous base. Within two minutes, she had more than doubled her distance from the station. She didn’t transmit a word to the Americans.

  Neil examined the readouts on the Hangzhou.

  “Captain, Hangzhou probably had the juice to go to mil thrust and stop within a few hours to come back to board the Asakaze. But her burn conforms to her previous flight plan toward the Chinese station above Beijing,” he said.

  After saying it, he wondered if the captain cared. She acknowledged with a nod.

  “I wonder what happens next,” she said, to no one in particular.

  A staff meeting, two hours later, provided a little clarity. San Jacinto’s new ensigns met many of the ship’s officers, who finally were able to come on board after the station went off decompression alert. Most were in a foul mood; they had been trapped for two hours inside a three-meter cube, part of a corridor that had been closed off into small sections during the battle to prevent any errant debris from opening whole areas of the station into space. Captain Thorne introduced Neil, Tom and Erin using as few words as possible, and said the ship’s executive officer, Lieutenant Commander Carla Mendoza, would see to their orientation and assignments.

  Thorne then summoned Lieutenant Frank Stahl, the ship’s intelligence officer, to the little lectern at the head of San Jacinto’s cramped conference room.

  Stahl, a black-haired, sharp-featured, frustrated man, alternated between the obvious and the arcane in his brief. He frequently paused, sometimes mid-sentence, and his eyes darted to Captain Thorne, who had to nod before he would continue. But he got the basics across: A war was underway between Japan and China. On Earth, submarines were fighting in the Sea of Japan, the Pacific and the Arctic trade routes, and cruise missiles had struck several shuttle launch sites and surface-to-orbit laser cannon. In space, Japanese and Chinese warships were engaged in a dozen battles near Earth, fighting for orbital supremacy. While no one was using nukes, a fleet was already sortieing from Japan's wormhole to Barnard's Star, which orbited in Venus' leading Trojan point, and moving toward China's Sirius wormhole, a mere 64 million kilometers distant. Telescopes had also seen warships moving inside the orbit of Mercury, where massive antimatter farms orbited the Sun, and at Saturn, where countries mined the other two parts of the fusion triad – helium-three and deuterium – from its gaseous depths.

  A younger officer, seated in the line of chairs behind the conference table, called out, “What’s our position on the war?”

  Stahl glowered at him. “Not my responsibility. This is an intelligence brief, not policy or operations.”

  His insipid response drew some low, sarcastic chuckles from a few of the collected officers. San Jacinto’s intelligence officer was not popular, Neil realized.

  Captain Thorne stood up. “In terms of warship tonnage lost, this is already the largest conflict between two space powers in history. The United States is officially neutral in this fight. The president has joined the U.N. secretary general and the European prime minister in calling for an immediate ceasefire, and for both nations to respect international treaties, custom and human rights toward each other as well as neutral and commercial vessels. We will render aid to ships in distress as long as we are not threatened. In addition, we are to observe and gather information on the foreign powers’ combat capabilities, doctrines and tactics.”

  “So where did this all come from?” Mendoza asked. The XO was a short, stout woman with a friendly face and easygoing demeanor. “I mean, what’s the war really over?”

  Stahl said, “We really don’t know at this point. NSS hasn’t noted any recent, significant changes in the political leadership on either side, nor have they projected any fundamental changes in the military power-economy balance between them. It may be the ongoing issues between them just reached the boiling point, but that’s just speculation.”

  “Who’s going to win?” Tom asked.

  Stahl nodded. “Both sides think they will, obviously. China has a much larger spacefleet and army, but Japan has technological superiority and a much larger wet navy. We expect attempts to garner allies to be forthcoming.”

  He recapped the battle between Hangzhou and Asakaze. Small vessels from Vandenberg had rescued more than 30 crew members
of the Asakaze, almost all of them low-ranking enlisted personnel.

  Neil wondered at the outcome of the fight. Two ships pound away at each other, with no strategy, no maneuver? Neil’s lessons in space warfare had prepared him for thinking in three dimensions, vectors and available thrust, none of which had played any real role in the recent battle. The training felt a little useless.

  As if reading Neil’s thoughts, Stahl said, “Now, we don’t think this battle or the others we’re seeing will be typical if the conflict does not end soon. Both sides were caught unprepared by the rapid escalation to a shooting war, and essentially everyone had to fight with the position and vectors they were cruising with. As we get past the initial fighting, we expect to see more typical engagement scenarios evolve.”

  Captain Thorne rose. Her officers looked tired and stressed. Neil thought she would say some words of encouragement, maybe make a joke, but she just said, “That’s it. Dismissed.”

  When Neil entered the XO’s office the next morning, he was surprised to find the gray-haired civilian from the jumper sitting beside her. He got his first real look at him: broad-shouldered, almost paunchy, with a passive expression, but very, very alert eyes. Some kind of contractor? Neil wondered.

  Lieutenant Commander Mendoza introduced him as Jim Donovan. She said he had been assigned as a civilian adviser to the ship for its upcoming cruise, and had requested Neil serve as a liaison between him and the ship’s officers.

  Requested? Neil wondered. I don’t know him. A friend of Uncle Jack’s? Someone who knows one of my instructors?

  “Jim works with some specialized material, so we’re going to have to assign you to a position that will up your security clearance,” Mendoza said. “You’ll be assistant intelligence officer for the cruise. It’s not a position a ship this size normally has, but we have some leeway when we’re assigned first-cruisers. You’ll nominally report to Lieutenant Stahl, but you’ll really work for Jim here, particularly when he needs things from the ship. Just keep quiet about the work you’re doing for him.”

  All very strange. Donovan didn’t say anything, so Neil asked the first question that came into his mind. “Where are we going?”

  “Out-system, through the international ring,” Mendoza said. The international ring was a series of stars administered by the U.N. and Red Cross for anyone to colonize. “We’ll have more for you soon.”

  Donovan said, “I need to get back on the station and meet with some folks. Mercer, you’re off the hook for a bit, but I’ll signal when I need your assistance.”

  Neil reported to Lieutenant Stahl, who was overjoyed that the CO had at last consented to his request for a deputy. Stahl’s team of enlisted personnel didn’t have the expertise or clearance to handle delicate matters, like Stahl was sure Neil would. Neil thought that an odd thing to say, given some of his people were within earshot.

  “I assume you had a specialty in intelligence in school, Neil?” Stahl said. It was barely a question.

  “No, sir. We covered intelligence in my command classes, but my primary training was in orbit-to-surface craft.”

  “You’re a pilot?” Stahl’s disappointment was plain. The pang of unhappiness was coming less often to Neil, but it still hurt. And now his boss would hold it against him.

  “Not officially. I was assigned as an auxiliary officer.”

  Stahl sighed loudly and dramatically, the kind of noise that should have turned heads in the small office. But his staffers just stared straight ahead at their computer screens.

  The lieutenant laid out Neil’s duties. Chief among them would be preparing the afternoon update to Stahl’s morning intelligence brief for the captain. His battle station would be in the CIC, working as an aide to Stahl. He also told Neil to sign up for an internal military forum where warship intelligence officers were invited to post anonymous analyses and other thoughts on items of military interest.

  The lieutenant transitioned into a lecture about the importance of intelligence: how no good military decision can be made without good intelligence, and how critical it was that intelligence personnel rapidly digest, analyze and disseminate information to the captain and other decision-makers on board. At the same time, they had to consider important security considerations, for some of the Space Force’s body of knowledge was secret; indeed, some of it was obtained by clandestine means, and to throw it around willy-nilly could endanger vital sources of information. So sometimes intelligence officers had to speak up to protect the ship, and sometimes they had to keep quiet, to protect the larger interests of national security.

  It was all more or less true, all points drilled into Neil’s head during his officer training. Yet Neil had a sinking feeling about the assignment. Information was power, as Stahl said, but the lieutenant seemed to regard himself not as its conduit and custodian, but as lord over it all.

  During a pause, Neil said, “Did the XO mention I am to be working as a liaison with some civilians who will be with us this cruise? She suggested that would be my primary duty.”

  Stahl’s eyes narrowed. “She mentioned you’d have some additional duties of that nature, but you should be clear that I am to be your section chief.”

  That’s not quite the way Mendoza put it, Neil thought, but he said nothing, deciding a protest would mean little. Things would work themselves out, he figured.

  Neil’s afternoon interview went better.

  Donovan and his assistant, Rafe Sato, received him in their cabin, which had been installed only yesterday in San Jacinto’s Multi-Mission Platform. The cabin was big, bigger than the captain’s quarters. And there were several adjoining rooms. Neil wondered what was in them.

  Donovan spoke to him casually: offered him a seat, which he accepted, and a drink, which he declined. Sato fiddled with his handheld computer and seemed to be paying only passing attention to their conversation.

  “Rafe and I will come to you first on all but the most urgent matters regarding the ship’s activities. We might need to borrow a tech from time to time for some assistance, and we will of course clear that through you,” Donovan said.

  “Understood,” Neil said.

  Sato looked up and chuckled. He was a hawk of a man, tall, tan and lean. “You’re being cruel, chief. The curiosity is killing him,” he said.

  Donovan said to Neil, “I suppose you have only been told we’re civilian advisers?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Enough of this ‘sir.’ We certainly aren’t military: Rafe and I are with NSS,” Donovan said.

  Neil felt a wash of realization. “NSS” stood for the National Security Service, heir to the old Central Intelligence Agency, rebranded a century prior as punishment for one-too-many mistakes that made the news. The NSS did the same things, saw similar secret successes and suffered from similar public failures as its predecessor, though now it had a sphere of more than 30 colonized worlds and 300 keyholed star systems to keep track of. Its public relationship with the U.S. military, particularly military intelligence, was as rocky as ever, so it was a surprise to Neil they were being afforded travel on the San Jacinto. He wondered if they were simply hitching a ride or if they were the specific reason for the upcoming cruise.

  “Is there anything in particular you will need me to do?” Neil asked. Donovan didn’t fit Neil’s image of a dashing secret agent, though his big frame and confidence gave him a larger-than-life quality Neil found hard to ignore.

  “I’d appreciate it if you would come down here and brief us in the morning,” Donovan said. “We’re patched in to the ship’s network, but there are a few things, particularly data on nearby ships, we aren’t able to access. Mostly we just need you to remain flexible for us.”

  Neil nodded. Donovan said, “Now, any questions for me?”

  “Several. What’s our mission?”

  Donovan said, “We’re headed out to Entente to pick up some people who have an interest in the war.”

  The data came to Neil’s mind, unbidden.
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  Entente, fourth planet of Beta Comae Berenices, colonized in 2107 under U.N. authority. Seventh or eighth habitable planet found. Population 3.7 million. Diverse; nations were allowed to colonize assigned islands and continental regions, so it’s the most Balkanized planet after Earth. There are several independent countries, and separatist and guerrilla movements in various areas.

  “It’s not the nicest neck of the woods,” Donovan said. “But it’s a good place to hide if you don’t want to be found.”

  “Can you tell me who we are going after?”

  “Some folks who can give us good advice. That’s about all I can say right now; I’ll let you know more once we get underway.”

  Neil relaxed. He was still eager for information, and Donovan seemed willing to share some, despite Neil’s junior rank. “We’re not getting a lot of details on the war. How bad is it?”

  “It’s bad. I don’t think either side is going to back down. It looks like Korea is formally going to declare war on Japan, as well.”

  That wasn’t a surprise. Korea and China were allies, and the two Korean colony worlds were in the Chinese sphere.

  “I’m surprised the war didn’t start two months ago,” Donovan went on. “There was much more than a ‘mishap’ around a new colony world.”

  “So the news report was true,” Neil said.

  “More or less, given our agency leaked it to the press,” Donovan said. “A Chinese colonization fleet passed through a newly opened keyhole to an orange dwarf out in Eridani and found a Japanese fleet already in the system. They had opened a keyhole of their own from another nearby system about two months earlier, despite the U.N.-affirmed Chinese claim to the system. The colonials called for help, and a Chinese battle fleet showed up several weeks later, and the shooting started. The Chinese chased the Japanese fleet out but sustained heavy losses in the process. The two governments clamped down on reports about the fight, and we’ve been waiting for the next shoe to drop.”