The Phobos Maneuver

by Felix R. Savage

  They were drifting around all the time, orbiting around a notional center of gravity in a chaotic dance too complex for the Kharbage Collector’s hub to analyze. It kept warning him that they were on a collision course with this or that rock, and then changing its mind a second later.

  Hands trembling, he transmitted again on every frequency commonly used for ship-to-ship comms. “Hello. I think I might be going to crash into you. I’m really sorry. Is anyone there?”

  Whack, thwack on the elevator doors.

  Michael willed the comms screen to light up.

  He’d already sent several transmissions, starting hundreds of thousands of klicks back. The tone of his messages had shifted from cocky greetings to cries for help.

  Crack! The mirrored cladding of the elevator column—what was left of it—fell to the deck in splinters.

  Three minutes to impact. Or, three minutes until he blew straight through the cluster of rocks and out the other side. He wished the hub would make up its mind.

  The comms screen told him he had an incoming transmission. He pounced on it.

  “Hey. You in the Paladin.”

  The ISA’s phavatar might have given them a pass, but Michael’s black-market transponder still wasn’t broadcasting any of the usual information about trajectory, destination, and ownership. No wonder the voice—it was a voice, not a text transmission—did not see fit to be polite.

  “I’ve been trying to hail you for the last half-hour!”

  What? In horror and shame, Michael realized he must have had the radio stuck on ‘transmit’ until just now.

  “Get off of that kamikaze trajectory right this fucking second! You have twenty seconds to comply, starting now.”

  Michael started to type an explanation about how he couldn’t alter course fast enough to avoid all the rocks. In this way fifteen seconds passed.

  A cutter laser bored through the seal on the elevator doors. Splart dust blossomed. A metal claw punched through.

  “Five seconds,” the voice said. This time it came with a face. Michael guessed that the voice’s owner didn’t mind being seen by someone who was going to be nanodust in a minute. He was probably about fifty, but to Michael he just looked old. And scary. Curly beard, hooked nose and rugged brow. Terrifying black eyes. “Care to identify yourself? I’d like to know who I’ll be vaporizing.”

  Michael switched to vid-call mode. It didn’t matter anymore if they knew he was just a kid. “My name’s Michael. I’m really sorry. I screwed up. I think I know what I did wrong. When I changed course, I forgot to increase my rate of burn to compensate for the thrust going into the sideways component. So I’m not decelerating hard enough. But now it’s too late—”

  The bearded man vanished. A different face appeared. This was a much younger man, East Asian, wearing what appeared to be a hoodie. “Hello, Michael. I need your permission to take over your hub.”

  Michael started crying. The hub reported in urgent red caps that this new transmission had installed a rootkit which was attempting to gain administrator privileges. “Allow,” Michael blurted.

  “OK,” the man said. “I’m going to attempt to save your ship. It might get bumpy.”

  Michael’s mecha, with Kelp riding in the cradle, smashed the elevator doors and lunged onto the bridge. At the same time, the Kharbage Collector’s drive coughed out a burst of acceleration that caused everything on the bridge to slide sideways. The mecha fell over. Michael fell off his couch.

  “Hey!” the East Asian man said. “That looks like Captain Haddock’s kid.”

  The rest of the pirates surged onto the bridge. Haddock saw the comms screen and backpedaled. Too late. The screen split into two. Another man appeared alongside the first one. They looked so much alike, they had to be brothers. The second man pointed in what would have been Haddock’s direction, if they were in the same room. “I told you, if I ever saw you again I would frag your ass.”

  “Scuzzy the Smuggler!” Michael blurted.

  “Shit,” said Kiyoshi Yonezawa, for it was he. “Did you come all this way just to call me names?”

  Exclamations from the pirates pulled Michael’s attention back to the optical feed. The rocks had grown to enormous size. Bergs of nickel iron, half-sunlit, they were not small asteroids, but shards of a large one. You could tell by the shear marks and the signs of melting. The ship had ‘stopped’—that is, it had decelerated to near-zero relative velocity—right next to the largest one.

  “Booyah!” said Kiyoshi Yonezawa’s brother. “How’s that for parallel parking?”

  The Kharbage Collector was still moving, inching out of the danger zone in stops and starts, as if playing Red Light, Green Light. Ahead, two asteroid fragments kissed in slow motion, striking sparks off each other’s cliffs.

  Michael rubbed his eyes. “Are you going to frag us?”

  “No,” said Kiyoshi Yonezawa’s brother.

  “You picked a good day to arrive,” Yonezawa said.

  “Sorry,” Michael said, on the assumption this was sarcasm.

  “Oh, don’t worry about it! I’ll come over and say hello. Is there anything you need immediately? You’ve had a long voyage.”

  “Tequila,” said Captain Haddock.

  “You old pirate. How about mochaccinos? Ice cream for the kids? We can catch up. You can tell me what Alicia Petruzzelli is doing these days.”

  xi.

  Petruzzelli, encased in a state-of-the-art armored suit, harassed the ground crew trussing dropedoes onto her Gravesfighter’s Whipple shield. She’d learned the hard way not to trust their mass distribution calculations. She made them weigh each dropedo on the inertial balance meter at the corner of her Gravesfighter’s parking space.

  Dropedoes: drop pods + torpedoes. A cute name for objects that Petruzzelli hated with a burning passion, like all the pilots did.

  “How can toilet paper and protein bars be so freaking heavy?” she wise-cracked to the pilot of the Gravesfighter parked next to hers, who’d wandered into her peripheral vision.

  Whoops.

  It wasn’t that pilot.

  Same suit, because the armored ones only came in Star Force blue. But this wasn’t a Star Force pilot. He was spaceborn-tall, and his faceplate—decorated on the outside, see-through one-way—was the Union Jack with the moon in the corner. He was a Fragger.

  The Luna Union flew out of Eureka Station, same as Star Force did. There were far fewer of them, but they had an outsize say in mission planning. And they didn’t hate the dropedoes.

  “Can I help you?” she said coolly.

  “I wanted to use the inertial balance meter, if you don’t mind.” They spoke via their suits’ microwave line-of-sight links.

  “It’s not mine.”

  The Fragger crooked a finger to the ground crew who were following him, dragging a dropedo of his own. They struggled to lift it onto the meter, even in the 0.5 gees of spin gravity in the hangar.

  “Whew,” Petruzzelli said, watching. “Two point six tons. That’s gonna be a big ask for your ship.”

  Gravesfighter and Fragger pilots never missed a chance to rib each other about the supposed inferiority of their respective ships.

  “Toilet paper doesn’t weigh that much,” the Fragger said. “I’m going to find out what’s in it.”

  “You’re not allowed.”

  “I don’t need permission to find out what I’ll be risking my arse for.”

  The Fragger took a rotary tool from his belt and started working on the dropedo’s screws. Several more Gravesfighter pilots wandered over to watch, although none volunteered to help. The dropedo was designed to be easily opened. Screws plinked to the floor. An armored slab hinged up.

  Dead human faces stared up at them through a cloudy layer of shrinkfoam.

  Everyone swore and stepped back.

  That was one funny thing about this war. No dead bodies. Star Force casualties got vaporized. The other side didn’t have any bodies to begin with.

  Th
e Fragger bent over the dropedo. His nametag said MILLER. “So that’s where they bury ‘em.”

  Petruzzelli laughed. “They aren’t real.”

  “They’re real … real bots.” Miller poked a gloved finger into the shrinkfoam. “Look at that, they’ve been up-armored.”

  The bots were packed into the dropedo like sardines in a can. Craning over the hatch, Petruzzelli saw that each one rested in an attached shell, which curved down into a cowl over its forehead. Mesh masks covered their faces, like something a fencer would wear. Their features were more realistic than what you’d see in customer service, for example. They were all skin tones, male and female, all ages.

  “I heard something about this when I was on Earth,” Miller said. “On the one hand, it’s a sign of desperation; on the other hand, it’s an ingenious idea; on the gripping hand, they’re bloody heavy, aren’t they? I suppose it’s the power packs.”

  The other pilots trickled away. It was interesting to know what was in the dropedoes, but it didn’t change the fact that they had to carry them. Petruzzelli stayed put, since this was her parking space.

  Centipede-like propellant tankers snaked across the hangar while laborers swarmed around the ships. The hectic activity pumped up her adrenaline. And now she had to fly with the knowledge that those spooky, dead-faced bots were flying with her. Great.

  Miller screwed the dropedo’s lid back on. “This your first mission?” he said to her.

  “Third. You?”

  “Eighth.”

  “Whoa.”

  “You in Zhang’s squadron?”

  Harry Zhang’s leadership of the Woomera Wallopers had been formalized, as everyone expected. Now he was Captain Zhang, which had made him even more conceited and annoying. Petruzzelli nodded.

  “Say hi to him for me.”

  Aha, a power play. Rather than say hi himself, this veteran Fragger would rather use her to convey his greetings to Zhang. “Maybe I will, and maybe I won’t.”

  Miller chuckled. “Good luck out there.”

  Time. Petruzzelli launched into a standing jump, powered by her suit, which carried her diagonally over the flank of her Gravesfighter—a clever use of the Coriolis force in the rotating hangar, not that anyone was watching … except Miller. Was she showing off for him? Yeah, actually. She was. She landed on top of the ship and squeezed in through the tiny hatch, slid sideways, said hello to her drones with a quick squirt of information, squeezed through the other hatch in the inner shield, and finally reached the airlock, a valve not much wider than her own shoulders.

  No one ejected from a Gravesfighter. The option hadn’t even been built in. You were either alive and fighting for the duration, or you were nanodust.

  The airlock opened onto a tiny vestibule where she had room to turn the right way up. Amenities for long voyages: the vestibule converted into a microbead shower, or a toilet, and there were cunning little brass-knobbed lockers that could have been packed with food, toiletries, and personal items up to the weight limit.

  Not now.

  All empty.

  Stripped down to make the ship lighter, so it could carry up-armored geminoid bots, for what? And probably also toilet paper, and water.

  Petruzzelli wriggled forward into the cockpit. She checked the cabin pressure and took off her helmet. Her faceplate was the Star Force logo: Lex Paciferat. She stowed the helmet and strapped herself into the command couch.

  “Hello, ship.”

  A voice spoke in surround sound, trembling with gladness. “Mommy!”

  Petruzzelli closed her eyes. “Can we please not do this?”

  “OK.” The voice changed into a squeaky gabble that reminded her of Grabby Coyote, a simtoon she’d liked as a child. “How about this?”

  “No. You sound like Grabby Coyote.”

  “Lots of people liked him when they were children.” The ship changed its voice again. This time it spoke in a Luna accent that reminded her somewhat of Miller. “I’ve got fifty-six pre-loaded personality modules. We can sit here and try them all on for size, but I advise you to make up your fragging mind.”

  “You know what, I think I’ll stick with this one today,” Petruzzelli said. “But I have a question. You’re so damn smart, why can’t you store my preferences?”

  “I keep hoping you’ll change your mind,” the ship said. “Why’d you select this personality today? You usually go for Authoritative Male (Standard Ameropan). I had you tagged as a classic overachiever with daddy issues. Now I’ll have to revise my analysis.”

  “Maybe I’m just fucking with you,” Petruzzelli said. She flicked the switch in her armrest that initiated her gestalt feed.

  Zhang talked the Woomera Wallopers out of the hangar. Four squadrons were going on today’s mission: three Star Force squadrons of eighteen spacecraft each, and one Fragger squadron of fifteen. The Wallopers were the second squadron to egress. They formed up in a holding pattern around Eureka Station. It couldn’t be called an orbit, since the asteroid exerted no gravitational force to speak of. When everyone was out, they burned in single file through the minefield.

  “Why do you need to analyze me, anyway?” Petruzzelli said.

  “To find out if you’re a risk.”

  “I wouldn’t have made it this far if I was a risk.”

  “There is such a thing as cracking under pressure. I don’t have you down as that type, but you never know.”

  “Thanks for the inspiring words.”

  Petruzzelli found Mars on her optical feed. A dot among other dots. Although Eureka Station was parked on Mars’s doorstep, relative to the vastness of the solar system, it wasn’t that close.

  “All call signs, free cruise,” Zhang said. “Just don’t leave the Fraggers behind. Remember, those weak-ass VASIMR drives can’t kick out the gees like we can.”

  Zhang’s fan club laughed. God, she hated those ass-lickers.

  The Gravesfighters’ drives flared.

  One point eight gees of constant acceleration descended on Petruzzelli’s body like a monster sitting on her chest, making her reinforced bones itch and her plastic heart work harder.

  Her gestalt feed settled down to a trickle of ship status updates and radar telescope data.

  She was obligated by regulations to take regular breaks from the gestalt, to rest her brain. “Hey, ship. Does this personality play games?”

  “Not the kind of games you’re thinking of. Existential Threat, PlanetKillr Z—no, thank you.”

  “Out of curiosity, why?”

  “I refuse to glorify violence,” said the ship.

  Petruzzelli laughed. A hearty, out-loud guffaw. It made her realize she hadn’t laughed in a long time.

  “Do share.”

  “Never mind. You know what, ship, I’ve kind of gone off those games myself. They just don’t compare to the real thing. You got any other inflight entertainment options?”

  “I can play backgammon, chess, Go, and cards.”

  “I can’t play chess, and you’re gonna have to tell me what those other things are.”

  “Cards: pieces of heavy paper or plastic marked with distinguishing motifs and used to play card games, such as poker, blackjack, snap …”

  “That sounds like fun.”

  ★

  Then they burned for fifty hours.

  ★

  By the oldest definitions, every modern spaceship was a torchship. Clean fusion enabled high acceleration and high exhaust velocity—the essential requirements for getting around the solar system in days, weeks, and months, instead of months, years, and decades. The pioneers of the First Space Age would have been struck dumb at the performance of even a crappy old barge like the Kharbage Collector.

  But Gravesfighters were torches among torches. Their drives pumped out up to two terawatts of thrust, exploding thousands of pulses of plasma per minute, not within a conventional tokamak, but in a magnetic bottle outside the fuselage, which doubled the ship’s length, and simply went away when the drive
was shut down. In motion, they looked like fire-tipped arrows, or shooting stars.

  The downside, of course, was that they could be seen from Aldebaran.

  Worse, they were travelling on an easily predictable trajectory. Eureka Station was here, Mars was there. The trolls knew where they were going. It made them easy pickings if the mood struck the PLAN just right.

  Thirty-two hours into their journey, a volley of kinetic kill vehicles (KKVs), cold-launched yesterday from deep space, destroyed two Gravesfighters, plus one of the vulnerable Fraggers travelling in the middle of their formation. By the time the ships finished exploding, the rest of the convoy had already left them far behind.

  So it went every. Freaking. Time. The PLAN could see them coming. And because of the PLAN’s goddamn stealth technology, they couldn’t see the trolls. The Gravesfighters’ charged-particle cannons could vaporize anything in a straight line, and their point-defense drones could fight off active-guided missiles, but KKVs? It was like walking through a sniper’s field of fire, knowing that some people would die, and it might be you, and there was nothing you could do about it.

  “Screw this,” Petruzzelli said. “I’m going to take a nap. Ship, wake me if anyone else dies.”

  She shifted her limbs a few millimeters—all that her couch would allow—and closed her eyes. Her suit constricted her lower limbs, keeping the blood from pooling down there. Her artificial lungs and heart pumped with mechanical gusto. She slept.

  And woke up with her ship shouting at her. “Trolls at our ten o’clock low!”

  “Get them off our fucking tail,” Zhang shouted.

  Information about Mars and its defenses flooded her brain. They were there. The radar overlay showed her what it had picked up: a faint smear of a return. Trolls had turned just the wrong way for just long enough for her ship to lock on. Now she was overhauling what looked to the radar sensors like two titchy, porous pieces of rock. They weren’t.

  “On your starboard wing,” said Gwynneth Blake’s cool voice.

  “Loose deuce,” Petruzzelli said, sharing her radar lock.