The Jovian Sweep (Asteroid Scrabble Book 1)

by Martin Bourne

  Josie soon realised why. Although it was all happening real time, without access to the very detailed analyses on the flagship the view was restricted to the raw information feed. It was tedious and confusing. After action reports were a staple of naval basic training and civilian docudramas. Indeed it would be hard to have grown up anywhere in the Virtue Confederation and not seen lots of them. The real thing was nowhere near as informative.

  The problem was that the docudramas had the benefit of hindsight, and the time to properly explain what was going on. They could also fast forward over the many boring bits. With live feed all that could be seen was a swarm of blue dots chugging across a vidscreen, slowly uncovering a mass of red dots at the other end. Every now and again a tiny flag marked “operationally eliminated” – a polite euphemism for “destroyed” - would pop up when one or other of the dots blinked out. It wasn’t until everyone had gotten bored and left that Josie found a zoom-in option, which at least revealed details of what the friendlies were.

  Josie stood up, annoyed at herself. If she had known that earlier the interest level would have been raised from “very low” to just “low”. She could replay the vid from the start, but the thought of enduring it all again was not appealing. Some link warriors at a neighbouring table, pretending to professionalism, were arguing over what had happened. They made her feel guilty, but the tactical officers would be going over everything, to the nth degree, far more effectively than she could. It was a good rationalisation, so she headed back to hydroponics to get something to eat.

  Lunch was a dismal affair.

  “They reckon we lost nearly four hundred drones,” said Marilyn, forlornly pushing her food around with a spork.

  “That’s old news,” replied Packer. “The last estimate I heard was over five hundred.”

  Lilybeth’s mouth dropped open. “Five hundred? Slag! And how many of theirs did we get?”

  “You can bet it was a lot less than that. And the fifteenth battle squadron is retreating.”

  “I wonder why Fleet command let them engage the Trigs,” Josie asked, almost to herself. “They were obviously outmatched.”

  “That’s defeatist talk Tallion,” said Constance, dangerously.

  “Not if it’s true it isn’t,” retorted Packer. “Come on Constance. You saw the battle. The fifteenth has four big Depot Ships and a few escorts. That’s – what – nine hundred drones, tops?”

  “Probably less, if anything,” added Josie soberly.

  “OK, call it eight fifty then - and how many did the Trigs have?”

  “At least twice that from what I could see,” admitted Marilyn.

  “Right. Come on - we’re good, but we’re not THAT good.”

  There was a pause. Constance glared at them all, but she didn't argue further.

  “I don’t think we even figured out how many Depot ships they had,” said Lilybeth eventually.

  “There must have been at least six big fleet types to carry that many drones,” said Josie, “probably more. And there would be all their support ships…” She twirled a lock of her hair. “I don’t know. It doesn’t make sense to engage a force that much bigger without a very good reason.”

  “Well it can’t have been for intelligence if we didn't even figure out how many there were,” said Lilybeth.

  “More likely to have been lack of intelligence,” said Packer darkly. He sighed heavily. “So the third and largest engagement of this campaign has just taken place, and it’s another big fat zero in the win column for our side. Just great.” He flung his spork down in frustration. The utensil bounced off the table and retaliated for its abuse by spraying his shirt with brown gruel. “Oh slag!”

  “Things will pick up,” said Marilyn, brightly.

  Packer snorted as he ruefully took his shirt off. “Doesn’t seem like that to me. Josie is right. Our admirals got suckered into a fight they couldn’t win.”

  “Hey I never said that,” protested Josie, sensing Constance’s eyes on her.

  “They know what they’re doing,” opined Marilyn.

  “What do you mean they know what they’re doing?” said Packer in mock severity as he tossed his crumpled shirt into a laundry bin. “How long you been in the navy?”

  “All my life. And my parents and grandparents too.”

  “Oh.”

  It was Ben, who had been strangely quiet, who broke the uncomfortable pause.

  “I don’t understand this,” he said, his mouth wrinkling.

  “You don’t understand a lot of things,” smirked Packer. He pulled on the fresh top Lilybeth had handed him. “Which one of your many ignorances is plaguing you now?”

  Ben ploughed on. “Everyone always says the Virtue Confederation has the largest and most powerful navy in the solar system, right?”

  “True. We do,” affirmed Packer.

  Ben leaned forward to emphasise his point. “Then how come in every battle I’ve ever heard of we always seem to be outnumbered and outgunned?”

  “We got the largest navy alright," explained Marilyn, leaning forward, "but we also got the most real estate to defend. Our ships have to be spread all over the system to protect it all, while the Triangle League is all solid and concentrated and right in the middle of us.”

  “So why don’t we just get all of our stuff together in one big mass, and then go and stomp all over the money-grubbing little claim-jumpers?”

  “Beats me,” said Packer. “Maybe we can ask the admiral when he calls round for coffee and soyachips tonight.”

  “Maybe we should do that,” affirmed Ben. Everyone stared at him. “Hey, he’s a citizen, same as us. We can invite anyone we like.”

  Marilyn gave both of them an exasperated glance. “Because it’d take too long to assemble the entire fleet. And while we were doing that, they’d rip all our outposts and bases up.”

  “And our dependencies,” said Josie, quietly.

  “Or, even more importantly to the elites, our convoys. Let’s not forget who really runs the Confederation,” said Constance darkly.

  Packer stood up and walked to a drinks machine. “Ah…. you’re paranoid about the big merchant lines.”

  “And you’re in denial! You think your votes count for anything? Look what happens when the trade links to the Jovian System are threatened. Fleet instantly formed and despatched! You can bet that wouldn’t have happened if ‘Deepspace Transit’ didn’t have a near monopoly out here!”

  “Oh come on, I haven’t even heard of ‘Deepspace’ doing anything.”

  “You can bet your last credit they're working things behind the scenes!” Constance spread her hands wide. “You all need to wise up, while there’s still time.”

  “Time before what?” asked Lilybeth.

  Constance looked darkly at her former ally. “Before Unity proves all the corruption and lies beyond doubt, and puts all the traitors behind bars.”

  Naturally this started a long and uninformed argument as to whether Fleet command were treacherous or just incompetent, which was eventually settled with the classic compromise that they were probably too stupid to be either.

  Over the next few days life on Belofte had an odd anticipatory normality, but as time passed and there were no further engagements reaction began to set in. The only link warriors who were busy were those assigned to the scout drones. They arrived back after each shift tired and frustrated. They had no compunction about telling everyone they had seen nothing. Contact had been lost. The Trigs had given them the slip.

  There was little else to do but stare at the plants. So they lollygagged about, talking about home, family, the war. The members of Josie’s old dorm stuck together in hydroponics, and Packer seemed to spend a lot of time with them now.

  They were all chatting one rest shift when Ben rushed in, his bland features unnaturally animated.

  “Hey, get yourselves over to the main rec room now!”

  “What’s the matter?” began Packer. “It’s not the old trouble again i
s it?”

  “Quit it,” replied Ben, so loudly everyone stared. Ben noticed the reaction and visibly subsided. “Sorry, but this…the Trigs are bombing Ganymede!”

  “What?”

  “It’s on Solar News now!”

  “Slag!”

  There was a collective rush for the door. In the corridors outside link warriors, techs and crew were scurrying everywhere, their faces shaded with shock By the time they arrived at the nearest rec room it was already crowded, and ever more people were squeezing in. Those already there were so preoccupied they swayed to one side without making any comment as newcomers slithered in between them. There was no distinction of rank. Senior officers and junior ratings alike gawked at the fuzzy images on the huge rec room vidscreen. There was no underlying buzz of conversation. The occasional groan or curse echoed very loudly.

  It wasn’t easy to work out what they were seeing. It took Josie a while to realise it was a blurred image of Ganymede’s surface. In the left middle of the landscape was an irregular black hole with odd wisps of grey issuing from it. To the right background were a series of blocky dome shapes, typical of Jovian satellite architecture. The odd light here and there winked on and off. In the far distance she could make out a small mountain range. Over the image an excited journalist was blurting out impressions and facts, statements and conjecture, assertions and projections, mixing them all together like they were the contents of a giant auditory washing machine.

  “Once again, ladies and gentlemen, this is a live broadcast from the surface. We have a team out there to bring you this exclusive footage. I must repeat this is not a projection. It is not a computer simulation. This is for real. Ganymede is definitely under attack. There was a rumour going round earlier that there had been a series of accidental explosions, possibly relating to mining operations. Then later there was a story that a drone from the base had crashed. I can confirm to you now that those reports are false. Ganymede Ultima spaceport has definitely been attacked.”

  There was a pause in the commentary. A whining noise started and then suddenly cut off. The picture seemed to be lightening. “What is that?” asked Packer. “I can’t make out anything.”

  Josie recognised several people from the tech sheds. She looked over them and eventually found Dinjer. She worked her way over to him. “What’s happening?” she asked. “I just came in.”

  The old man leaned in closer. “We were watching some dumb holodrama when it cut out for a ‘special announcement’. They said Ganymede Ultima base was being attacked. Then they got a link to the surface overlooking the base, and that’s what you’re looking at now.”

  “I can’t see much at all.”

  He paused slightly. “That’s cos there ain’t much left.”

  She stared at the vidscreen, her gorge rising. Celene was at Ganymede Ultima. The voice-over suddenly kicked in again.

  “We have been informed that there is - I’m sorry that there will be - a statement from Government House imminently. The President’s press agent has stressed there is no immediate danger or cause for alarm and that the President’s statement would fully clarify the situation. But from here right now it really does look as if Ganymede Ultima base has been bombed. There is no report of fighting above Ganymede, but several eyewitnesses claim to have seen drones lifting off in some numbers less than an hour ago. Ganymede Ultima of course the home of the Ganymede defence force…”

  Parts of the picture got clearer, but the foreground seemed to fade at the same time. It was an incredibly poor picture. What kind of cameras were they using? It took time for the answer to percolate into Josie's stunned mind. It wasn’t a bad vidcam or a bad link. What was making the image blurred was a muffling white mist, swirling randomly around. Even though very few present would have ever seen such a thing before Josie could tell, with a kind of collective Belter empathy, when others came to the same sickening conclusion she had.

  “That’s vented atmosphere,” someone whispered, putting thought into voice.

  “Slag. It is as well,” said someone else.

  Escaping atmosphere. The ultimate horror for people who spent their entire lives in artificial caverns, shielded from the monsters of hard vacuum, absolute cold and infinitesimal pressure. A groan escaped from a hundred throats. Shocked faces stared bloodlessly at the awful images. Someone somewhere was weeping.

  A hand jabbed up high on the vidscreen. “That’s a body there!”

  “Where?”

  “There!”

  “No it isn’t.”

  “It slagging well looks like one!”

  There was a pause while everyone strained to try and make out the distant object.

  “Nah, it’s not.”

  “It is you know.”

  “I don’t think it is. There must be some bodies out there though.”

  “Why would anyone do something so horrible?”

  “Don’t be stupid! They’re after the base!”

  “They didn’t have to bomb it like that though, without warning.”

  “Slagging Trigs!”

  The news anchor was still chattering, talking but not communicating. Then there was a sudden streak of light, impossibly brief and yet bright, burning deep into the retina. The vidscreen was completely white for a split-second. Then it went black, and finally a whirling dull grey. The commentator’s voice-over cut out abruptly. When it came back on, his voice high-pitched and screaming.

  “That was a bomb! That was a strike! We felt the shock waves even here in our shelter, and we are on the other side of the city!”

  There was a collective groan. The commentator babbled on. "We are trying to find out if our camera crew are safe..."

  The vidscreen blanked. There was a collective groan, cut short by a sharp handclapping. Donal Courage clambered onto a table.

  "Right that's it! Gold shift starts in ten minutes. Everybody clear the room!"

  There was a chorus of protests.

  Donal raised his voice. "There's nothing more to see. All we know for certain is that Ganymede Ultima has been bombed. Anything else is speculation. We still have jobs to do, so everyone out! That's an order."

  There was a buzz of conversation and no little grumbling, but everyone shuffled out. Josie was swept along with them. Dinjer mouthed an invitation to the tech sheds and she gave him a thumbs up. Donal clambered down from the table, ushering and arguing with a few dissenters.

  It was a chastened group that reassembled in hydroponics.

  “I thought bombing pressurised areas was against the Tolver accords?” said Constance, her voice wobbling slightly.

  “Looks like the Trigs have torn the rulebook up,” replied Ben.

  Marilyn was shaking her head in disbelief. “Bombing hard ground - they must be out of their slagging minds.”

  “What?”

  “Use your brain! They got away with it here, but the boot will be on the other foot one day, and our people aren’t going to show their civvies any mercy then, will they?”

  Most people looked bewildered.

  Josie helped them move on to 'shocked'. “And then they'll escalate, and we will too, and before we know it, it’ll be total war, just like what happened on old Earth. Death and destruction across the whole middle solar system.”

  Lilybeth wrapped her arms around her body. “I read somewhere that a meter diameter rock travelling at a fifth of the speed of light would shatter Courage asteroid into a hundred million pieces.”

  Packer placed an arm around her. It was very natural, just an instant of human comfort, but an interesting dynamic nonetheless.

  “Celene was posted to Ganymede Ultima,” said Josie slowly.

  “Slag,” exclaimed Lilybeth. “I forgot that! She was too!”

  Marilyn reached over and squeezed Josie’s shoulder. “She’ll be alright,” she said slowly. “They all will be. They had plenty of time to get out.”

  “Yes and they have the deep shelters,” said Josie. “All the Jovian satellites do, in
case of meteor strikes.” She looked around. “Not everyone has the luxury of a micrometeor scanning net.”

  “We’re pretty lucky when you think about it,” admitted Marilyn.

  There was a pause, everyone lost in their own thoughts.

  “I guess that makes it four losses in a row for our side,” mused Ben.

  Constance got up and stamped off. Everyone else slowly drifted away. Josie slipped away to the observation dome. She needed to think.

  She'd wanted time to herself, but Donal Courage was already at the dome. He was staring into space as she lifted the access hatch. He soundlessly helped her up. They sat quietly, letting the glory of space soothe their minds.

  “Not a good day,” Donal offered at last.

  “No,” replied Josie.

  “You come from Callisto don’t you? Do you have family and friends there?”

  “One sister. A few acquaintances.”

  Donal shifted. “I’m sure they’ll be safe. Callisto is on the other side of Jupiter right now, well away from all this. It only has a small military base anyway, and that’s located far from the inhabited areas.”

  He was trying to help, but in truth she hadn’t given Callisto a single thought.

  “Do you think there would have been time to evacuate the base?

  Donal pursed his lips. “Their picket drones should have spotted an attack force while it was still well off. Even if the Trigs somehow evaded their scouts they have ground sensors that are far more powerful than anything a drone can carry. There’s no report that either of Ganymede’s satellite bases were hit, so hopefully our people would have had time to set up in one of those.”

  “Perhaps they’ll hit the satellite bases next.”

  “They’re very new. They were only set up recently to take all the extra drones that were brought in. The Trigs might not even know they exist.”

  “Let’s hope so.”

  Donal cocked his head. “The glamorous life of a link warrior suddenly got very serious didn’t it?”

  She looked him straight in the eye. “Yes, it did.”