“Gone, sir. Either they lost their transponder, or…”
“Or they did what we tried to do. See if we can get some good delayed video of the Destroyer from off the net.” Deke drummed his fingers in impatience. A moment later a shaky image appeared, showing an enormous impact on the Destroyer. The picture clicked forward in ultra-slow motion like a slideshow, showing an expansion of the bright burst, then it cleared.
Right in the nose of the enemy was a new crater fully five hundred meters deep, a grand divot that appeared like a huge circular mouth. “Wow…that took a pretty good chunk out of it. Blackhorse…”
“A cruiser-sized chunk. Nothing left of them, sir. No way, no how.” Chuks shook his head to emphasize the point.
“Can we get back?” Deke asked, knowing the answer already. “Can we hit them again?”
“No, sir. The squadron is swinging around but it will take hours to reverse course, even if we use Mars to slingshot like they did. By that time the Destroyer will have made its run at Earth.”
“Do it anyway. You never know.” Deke slumped down in his chair. “All right. Fine work, everyone. If anyone needs relief, call your counterparts. Someone yell if you need me. I might nod off.” He closed his eyes and put his head back, suddenly so tired he could hardly hold it up.
Once the captain had drifted into a light sleep, Macduff turned around to look at him with her own eyes, instead of through the bridge cameras she usually used. She stared at him for some time, thinking about the future.
Chapter 82
Second Fusor trium lost any sense of boredom as the Human cruiser group lunged their direction, accompanied by a spattering of missiles, suicidal small craft, and millions of kinetic projectiles. The enemy magnetic mass drivers worked overtime, peppering Destroyer 6223 with shot that ground away at their armor like sand in a sonic storm.
“Increase our fire frequency,” One snapped. “Anticipate!” He demonstrated by deftly picking a burst of metal projectiles out of space by firing a fusor burst into its path. “The kinetic spheres cannot dodge, so simply throw plasma into their way. When they strike it they will fuse themselves, and strike us as hard gas.”
Two and Three held their communications, too busy to reply, and they had tasted these imprecations many times already. Still, One’s berating tone actually seemed to soothe and steady them, as it was familiar. For some time they simply fired and fired again, destroying some bursts, letting others pass, missing others.
“Their attacks are insufficient,” Three declared confidently.
Two replied, “Their ships approach. The small craft have rammed us on more than one occasion. Do you think the cruisers will as well?”
“Absurd.” One thought about this a moment longer, and then realized that no matter how absurd such a thing seemed to him, reporting its possibility could only make him seem wise…if he structured his missive correctly.
“However, no matter how absurd, I shall suggest the possibility be taken into account.”
“I am always happy to contribute to your reports,” Two said.
“Of course, I will credit your contribution,” One replied.
“I had no doubt,” Two said in a doubting tone indeed.
Once he had sent off the communication package to shoot through the speedy nerve pathways of the Destroyer, One asked casually, “Do you really think they will try to ram us? There must be dozens, if not hundreds of Humans aboard each ship.”
“Thousands of them killed themselves individually in the small craft,” Two offered.
“I suppose they did. Then we must prepare for this possibility.”
Three turned his eyeball toward One. “Prepare how?”
“Watch your sector,” One snapped. After Three put his eye back on his screen, One replied, “I have some ideas, but I thought to give you two the chance to come up with effective solutions as well. Just as an exercise.” In reality, One had absolutely no idea what fusors could do against ramming ships approaching at the enormous velocities involved.
Silence filled the control compartment for some time, until Two finally said, “I have absolutely no idea.”
Three bobbed his eyeball in place as well. “Nor I.”
One vibrated with feigned exasperation. “When the time comes, perhaps I will reveal my brilliance. For now, just perform your duties.”
“The time is soon,” Two said. “They are getting very close.”
One, for once, had nothing to say before the Human ships flashed past. The control room shuddered and shook with a tremendous shock, and all of their screens and sensor feeds went dead.
“One of them rammed us after all, full on,” Two said. “It would have been more efficient had you explained your insights before the impact.”
“I…I am not certain they would have helped. After all, I can’t think of everything. But no matter. Return to your duties. We live, and Destroyer 6223 lives.” One accessed the damage control reports on the network as soon as they became available. “You see? The impact was severe, but the doubled nose armor of the skin of our old 6223-2 provided us enough protection, and the gravitic dampeners did not fail. The Empire reigns supreme.”
“The Empire reigns supreme,” the other two echoed.
“Have confidence, faithful comrades. It will all be over soon.”
***
“What is this anomaly?” One asked. “Another ship of the Empire?” He highlighted the distant sensory tag as it approached on an almost-converging course with Destroyer 6223.
“So it appears,” Two said, refining the image. “It looks to be a Survey craft much like the one that the Humans drove us from.”
“Perhaps it is the same one?” Three spoke up.
“Do not be absurd,” said One. “Even if they captured and exploited some of the technologies aboard, our faithful ship would not have been controllable by mere Humans. Without those of the Pure Race, or at a minimum a Blend to guide it, it would have gone rogue. They would have had to kill it. They simply do not have the knowledge to fly Meme craft.”
“Undoubtedly you are correct,” Two said. “This one is larger. Though it is using our old encryption codes…which are still valid.”
“Still valid?” One radiated astonishment.
“Yes. You will remember that, because we left Sentry craft hidden within the Human solar system, the codes remained valid for their use. We have received important intelligence from them.”
“Ah. Of course. I was wise to do so.”
“Yes, but…” Three stopped nervously as the others looked his direction, then went on. “Why would this ship use our old codes?”
“And why is it continuing to accelerate toward us?” Two echoed.
“Is it fleeing the Human forces?”
Two checked his console. “Not apparently. Nothing they have can catch it. Should we raise our concerns with Command?”
One made a gesture of negation. “No. They must be aware of it.”
Chapter 83
Skull saw the Destroyer had almost reached Earth. It had destroyed everything EarthFleet had sent against it, and though the incoming rocks had all been broken, diverted or destroyed, as he had feared there was nothing left. Earth lay bare like a captured wench.
They’d almost done it.
The Meme ship retained its velocity, but looked like a deflated football, an old pigskin that had been relegated to a chew toy for a particularly large and vicious junkyard dog. But Skull knew it had a lot of capability left, enough to devastate the planet just with a few large hypers. Hell, they didn’t even need the whole missiles. At the speed the Destroyer was going, it could just toss a few penetrators toward Earth and they would strike like Thor’s hammers, like the biggest nuclear weapon or volcanic eruption ever, at a fifth the speed of light.
Unlike the broken chunks of asteroids that would hit Earth’s atmosphere and create a dazzling light show but little else, ferrocrystal penetrators would not entirely burn up before reaching the ground. Skull est
imated that a hundred-ton rod would only be half consumed by the impact fusion before it struck bedrock, and it would release enough energy to wipe out a country the size of the United States outright, in one horrible blast.
The rest of the world would just die more slowly as the air filled with dust and ash, blocking the sunlight for decades, the nuclear winter of doomsday scenarios.
That was if only one struck.
Skull believed Rae; she had told him that the Destroyer would not crash itself against the planet. Meme were too narcissistic to be self-sacrificing, especially as this was not by any stretch of the imagination a matter of their Empire’s survival. To them, humanity was just a particularly stubborn infestation of a desirable piece of territory.
But if all it would take was a few accurately-aimed ferrocrystal columns, dumb missiles dropped as the battered Destroyer swept by, Skull had to stop it. And even if by some chance the Meme couldn’t or didn’t use that tactic, he had long since resolved to wipe this thing from space, if it was the last thing he ever did.
Long ago, Skull had read Moby Dick. Now he saw the massive ship before him as the White Whale, and himself as Captain Ahab preparing to “shoot his heart as if from a cannon.” Melville’s imagery had been metaphorical, but Skull’s actions would make this literal.
He aimed himself slightly to one side of the enemy and waited for what must come. His fusion drives burned as hot as he could run them, though that lit him up like a beacon in the night of space. The Destroyer could not possibly miss seeing him already coming on so fast and accelerating furiously.
Now came the critical question.
He hoped he had the correct answer.
It pinged against his nose, his hull, a bioradio inquiry from the Destroyer, coded on current Meme bands and using unbreakable encryption. Simply put: who are you?
They could undoubtedly see that the Denham was a Meme Survey craft, a friendly ship, but acting oddly. Standard protocol would be to query the equivalent of an IFF, an Identify-Friend-or-Foe transponder. Without the correct encryption and codes, the Destroyer would know something was wrong, and might even fire on Skull before he got close enough. He could not afford to run head-on into a flight of hypers right now, not at this velocity.
Skull waited as long as he thought he could. Every second’s delay allowed him to close with his hated enemy, but eventually he had to transmit the response, red-shifted in spectrum as far as he could bend it so that at this excessive closing velocity it would be understandable.
So off it went, encrypted with keys and coded with numbers so obligingly provided by the tame Sentry that Zeke had captured. His son had thought he had brought home a puppy, but perhaps he had obtained the key to Earth’s salvation.
I am so proud of him.
For a moment, just a brief second, his resolve faltered as he thought of his firstborn and how he would never see him again, but Skull could find no other way. No other way to be certain, that was.
I’m still a sniper. One shot, one kill.
One agonizing minute later the answer came, bathing him in relief: Accepted. Undoubtedly some kind of orders, some instructions for the Meme “ally” would be forthcoming, but if Skull had his way, they would arrive far too late.
Closer now, closer, just a minute more, half a light minute’s distance, ten million miles and counting down fast. Skull could see with perfect clarity as every remaining weapon on every EarthFleet orbital fortress fired at the Destroyer, throwing shot, missiles and beams into the ship’s path.
Had the Meme ship come head on, this barrage might have achieved its end, might have finally destroyed EarthFleet’s nemesis.
Unfortunately, the great vessel had aimed itself at least a hundred thousand kilometers to one side of the planet, and so most of that barrage – nearly all of it – would miss. It was simply not within the capabilities of human technology to hit something so far away, going so fast, at such an angle of deflection, as if a mass of ancient archers had tried to bring down a jet plane flying across their field of fire.
Far behind it Skull could see the mass of Aardvarks vainly trying to catch up, even firing their masers from impossible distances. The surviving cruisers added their fire as well, but the Destroyer was going faster than their railgun bullets, and there weren’t enough lasers to kill it.
Skull flew past Earth and slowed his own time sense by a factor of a hundred. Even in ultra-slow motion, he flashed by the tiny blue marble so fast it seemed just a streak. He took one last look at the planet of his birth before focusing on the task before him.
At the last moment possible he turned from the path that would shoot past the Destroyer and set himself one that would intersect it. Even this slight alteration necessitated a full burn of his main engines, his whole body rotating briefly sideways.
Now the few seconds remaining stretched out to minutes in his sped-up mind, allowing him to examine the situation carefully, like a sniper watching his target. Right now his projected path led straight through the center of the Destroyer, but he began to refine his point of aim, looking for the right spot. Though all his calculations said it would not matter where he struck, he wanted no chance, no possibility that somehow the Meme ship would survive the bullet that was Skull Denham.
He picked out a spot on its nose, a deep crater where some lucky missile or brave kamikaze had gouged out a chunk of armor in an instant of sun-like heat.
That would be his bull’s-eye.
That would be his homecoming.
That would be his sweet oblivion.
In the last instants the crew of the Destroyer must have finally recognized the danger, despite his friendly codes, for Skull saw the ship’s fusors, which doubled as attitude jets, suddenly explode into life, attempting to twist the ship out of the way even as they blasted directly at him. A slight twitch of his own thrusters ensured that no such maneuver could possibly succeed, and the kiss of Meme plasma flame could not stop him.
Within his cockpit, Skull downloaded his engram, his mind, into his avatar one final time. He ripped his feet lose from the floor to sever himself from the Denham, suddenly reducing his perceptions and his world to only that body. In this last moment he wanted to be a mere man.
Where another might have roared or yelled or screamed, he just let out his breath to stillness, like the sniper he was, and then he smiled.
Finally, he saw only through the eyes of a man.
Finally, he felt fully human once more.
Finally he, the bullet, went home.
Chapter 84
Admiral Absen stared at the main screen while the rest of the crew of the operations center went mad with joy and relief. The expanding inferno of plasma and debris caused his Sensors officer to pull the view back, then pull back again, the scale of the devastation enormous even at this distance.
“It’s gone,” he said wonderingly into the confused hubbub of the operations center.
It was all Absen could do to remain in his chair, and for the first time since he had sat in his stateroom aboard the Tucson staring into the muzzle of a loaded .45, he felt absolutely spent, crushed, wrung out. A small child could have knocked him over with a stuffed toy. Trying to lift one hand seemed an impossible task.
Is this what victory feels like?
Nothing except a battle lost can be half so melancholy as a battle won, Wellington had said. Absen had never understood what that meant until now, as he stared upward at the screen at the spreading cloud and few remaining pieces of the Destroyer tumbling in toward the sun. They wouldn’t fall into the star, not at their current speed, but no one would be catching them either.
“What in hell was that thing?” Absen managed to ask, dragging himself forward in his chair to rest his hands on the console in front of him. His vision seemed tunneled, and his breathing came at great effort. Raising his voice, he rasped, “What in the Sam Hill just happened?”
As usual Lieutenant Commander Johnstone answered first, one jump ahead of anyone else. “
The video shows some kind of enormous missile striking the Destroyer at almost half the speed of light. I can’t even get a good image capture – it’s just a streak that I have to process to infer its characteristics. Whatever it was, sir, it was big enough to kill it in one blow. At least, after it had been battered so badly.”
“It wasn’t ours.” Absen almost made it a question, because he was almost certain of the answer.
“Not that I know of, sir.” Johnstone looked around as if to solicit input from others. No one said anything. Then he held up a hand to his ear, an unconscious gesture having nothing actually to do with the chips in his head. “I have an anomalous transmission.”
How Johnstone could pick out one “anomalous transmission” from the thousands that must be streaking around the solar system, Absen had no idea, but the man had a positively spooky talent for his CyberComm duties, so the Admiral nodded encouragement.
“The net picked it up just before the thing hit the Destroyer. A voice transmission in the clear.” Johnstone played it.
This message is for all the people of Earth, Warrant Officer Alan C. Denham, USMC speaking. I didn’t die in the battle ten years ago, but I bet I have now. I piloted the captured Meme ship that must have just slammed into the Destroyer. I hope it’s dead, or if it’s not, I hope you can now finish it off. I wish all of humanity well, and reserve my hatred for our real enemies. I ask that you do the same, and remember that it’s not biology that decides if we are human. It’s the choices we make.
“Greater love hath no man than this: that he lay down his life for his friends.” Zeke Johnstone used to quote that at me, and then, when the chips were down, he put his money where his mouth was, dying to protect his family. If I can do the same, I think I’ll finally be happy. Maybe in a minute or two I’ll be seeing him on the other side, if there is such a thing.
Plague Wars 06: Comes the Destroyer Page 38
