by Nick Webb
“Just don’t blow it. Those smart-steel modulating algorithm codes can be easily changed. They only get one shot at this before IDF resets the codes, and then the smart-steel armor will be impenetrable again.”
“I assure you, Eamon, by this time next week, you’ll be sitting at home in the White House, toasting my good health.”
Isaacson poured himself another drink, raised it to Volodin’s, and smiled. “Good. A toast to our new world. More secure and prosperous than ever.”
Chapter Eleven
Veracruz Sector, Leon System
IDF Intelligence Ship ISS Tirian
“Arrived at Nueva Leon, sir. We’re in high orbit forty-one thousand kilometers above the surface,” said the nav officer.
Commander LaPlace nodded. “Sensor sweep. What have we got, tactical?”
The tactical officer frowned at his screen. “Lots of debris in orbit, sir. I’m picking up metallic and radioactive signatures, and organic too.” The man looked up. “Bodies. Pieces of ships. There was a battle here recently, sir.”
LaPlace leaped to his feet. “Full spectrum scan of the surrounding space, and the surface. I want to know if the aggressors are still here. Any sign of them?”
“Negative, sir. No active ships in orbit.”
“Swarm?” LaPlace glanced at the tactical officer.
“No sign of them, sir. At least, nothing like their ships from the war.”
The Commander stroked his chin and considered his choices. They needed information. At this point it could still be the Russians. A surprise attack, most likely, and then a raid on the surface to destroy key industry targets. Set the colony back a few years. Give them the chance to get a leg up in the sector before more colonists showed up.
“Insert into a lower orbit. We need to see what’s going on down there. Three-thousand kilometer orbit.”
“Aye, sir,” said the nav officer, and LaPlace felt the changing inertia as the ship accelerated towards the surface and increased its speed to attain the lower altitude.
“Still no sign of the aggressors?”
“None, sir. But from the looks of these readings the battle couldn’t have happened more than a day ago—the reactor cores are still pretty hot. At least the ones that are still intact.”
Very odd.
“Give me an ID on the destroyed ships.”
The tactical officer studied his data readout. “Mostly a handful of merchant freighters and colonist ships. Several Mexican Fleet Zafano class cruisers....” The officer looked up, his face whiter than it was. “And one IDF Nebula class cruiser, sir. The Nimitz. Completely destroyed.”
Dammit.
“Captain Smith ...” said Commander LaPlace. That was her first command. They’d entered the academy together, fifteen years ago. “Do you have a visual?” His stomach churned a little as the inertia cancellation struggled to keep up with their acceleration. The hull vibrated slightly with the strain.
“Aye, sir. Coming up on your console now.”
The data stream on the screen in front of him disappeared, replaced by a graveyard of ships.
“Good Lord.”
There she was. The ISS Nimitz. Broken completely in two, electrical arcing still glittering at the exposed seams. Wicked looking carbon-scored holes peppered the hull, indicating heavy weapons fire, and several sections of the ship were completely blown away. Most of the section containing the reactor core and q-jump drive was merely a skeleton of steel-titanium girders and warped, blackened deckplates.
“No life signs?” he said, hopefully.
“None, sir. Life support is gone. The whole ship is at vacuum.”
“There could be survivors. In space suits....”
The tactical officer shook his head. “No thermal signs either. It’s all cold.”
The Nimitz rotated slowly, and soon the blackened nameplate passed into view, a gaping hole appearing where the ‘z’ should have been.
LaPlace took a deep breath. “Fine. Move us closer to the surface and get some visual scans.”
A few minutes later, they were close enough for visuals. The tactical officer passed the scans directly to Commander LaPlace’s screen for him to see.
Utter devastation. Several blackened, smoking pits where he supposed cities might have stood.
“How many people were down there?”
The first officer, who’d been studying the sensor images, finally spoke up. “Fifty million. Five cities and about a hundred smaller towns around them. All gone.”
With a start, LaPlace remembered his first officer, Lieutenant Lopez, had family out in the Veracruz Sector. It hadn’t dawned on him until then which planet they actually lived on.
“Lopez? You ok?”
The first officer sat stock still, gazing at the images passing on his screen. As the camera zoomed in they could make out the details. The city on the screen looked as if several high-yield thermonuclear bombs had hit it. A few scattered buildings still stood around the edges of the city, but it was mostly a barren, ash-stricken wasteland.
“My grandparents are down there. And cousins. And my ... my sister.”
LaPlace snapped his attention back to the tactical officer. “Confirm—are those nuclear blasts?”
“Unknown. Maybe, but they’re ... off, somehow. I’m reading some isotopic signatures similar to those of a thermonuclear explosion, but the blast characteristics are wrong. It’s like....” He looked up at LaPlace. “It’s like the blasts came from under the surface, and exploded upward.”
Chapter Twelve
L-2 Lagrange point, Earth
Long-range Comm Center, ISS Constitution
Lieutenant Jessica Miller had only been aboard the Constitution for less than two months, but somehow it felt like an eternity. Especially on days she called home.
“Are you being good for Grandma and Grandpa?”
Her son, whose small face filled up the entire left half of the split screen and whose eyes continually darted offscreen, only said, “You fly today?”
“Yes, baby, I fly every day. Momma’s a pilot! Momma flies spaceships!”
“You go fast?”
She smiled and nodded. “Super fast!” Winking at the right hand side of the screen, she added, “But Dad flies faster! He flies a big spaceship.” She held her hands out in front of her and apart by a meter.
The big blue eyes grew as round as cookies, and her husband’s voice cut in—he was orbiting the Earth, though usually the ISS Clyburne was on patrol duty out in the Paredes Sector. When he came in from deep space on occasions like this, they always tried to set up a three-way call between them and Jessica’s parents in Sacramento.
“Zack, Momma asked you a question. Are you good for Grandma and Grandpa?”
“Yes,” came the small reply, and Zack’s big eyes darted momentarily offscreen.
“Do you do what they say?”
“Yes.”
“Do you—” Her husband cut off as Zack ran offscreen, and they could hear his voice hollering at the dog. Jessica’s mother’s face appeared on the screen.
“Oh, sorry, I’ll go get him.”
Jessica waved a hand dismissively. “Oh, don’t worry, Mom. Let him play.”
“Well, all the same, you two talk while I go sort things out—” The older woman glanced offscreen, and winced. “Oh, he’s into the dog food again. ZACK! No, no!”
She disappeared, leaving Jessica to talk to her husband, who she’d not seen in over a month. “So, how long is the Clyburne here for?”
“A few days. Then we’re off to Lunar Base as escort for some diplomatic shindig—”
Jessica could hardly believe her ears. “You’re going to Lunar Base? But that’s for us! I was going to tell you in a few minutes—”
He furrowed his brow. “Tell me what....”
“They’re decommissioning the Constitution! There. At Lunar Base. I’m sure we can get shore leave at the same time. At least for an evening.”
His furrowed brow
had given way to a smile. “Yeah, I’m sure Commander Ashworth will let me coordinate our schedules.”
“Did you talk to him? You know, about what we discussed?” she asked, expectantly.
His smile broadened. “I did.”
“And?” She both loved and hated it when he played coy with her. He hadn’t changed a bit in their four years of marriage. Not that she’d know—they’d both been on nearly constant duty for the last two years, ever since her maternity leave ended.
“He said ... probably.”
She squealed. She hadn’t squealed since she was a little girl, but even with the looks the other officers and pilots threw her way in the Comm Center, she let the giggles fly. “Perfect! Tom, don’t you realize? With the Constitution being decommissioned and all, they’ll have to rotate me into another ship. And if Commander Ashworth is for it, then now is the perfect time. Just think of it: finally serving on the same ship....”
“Yeah. That’ll at least cut down on my Comm Center use. I had to barter away my weight room time for today’s session, right on top of yesterday’s session.”
“Oh, Tom, the sacrifices you make for your family.” She feigned a tear. “It really touches me. Right here.” She touched her chest.
His eyes flicked lower. “Wait, do that again, but move in closer to the cam,” he murmured. “And pull your uniform down a little....”
“Tom!” She held a finger to her lips. “My mom’s right there. She can probably still hear us!”
“No, I can’t,” came the disembodied voice of her mother from offscreen.
She put her face into her hands as her husband started to laugh. Men.
“Hey, Miller! You done yet? My girlfriend’s waiting!” She glanced up at the man waiting near the door. Lieutenant Volz—one of the fighter jocks. Young, cocky, and eminently impatient.
“Yeah, hold on, Volz. Don’t get your panties in a bunch,” she said, waving him off.
“You’re ten minutes over your time.” He pointed to the clock on the wall.
She rolled her eyes. “Look, honey, gotta go....”
Yet somehow, with the good news about the Constitution’s decommissioning, her husband’s imminent arrival at Lunar Base, and the distinct possibility they would soon be on the same ship, the rest of the day became more bearable.
With the Old Bird’s current assignment at L2 Station, she had the duty to pilot one of the crew transfer vehicles to shuttle officers and enlisted back and forth between the ship and the station. Normally, it was just a routine part of the job that made her want to gouge her eyes out from boredom, but today she punched the engine and pushed the g-forces.
“Whoa, easy there, cowgirl,” said Commander Pierce from behind her. As CAG, he ran a weekly training exercise with the fighter wing based on L2 Station, and he was just returning to the ship with his pilots.
“Sir, you’re from Britannia—”
“York, actually,” he interrupted. His patrician accent was oddly soothing to her ears. “But close enough—they’re both in the Britannia Sector.”
“Sir, you’re from York,” she corrected herself, “and I’m pretty sure no one from York is allowed to call me cowgirl. Have you ever even seen a horse? A cowboy? Corral? Tumbleweed? A six-shooter?” She glanced back at him, seated in the midst of a few dozen of his fighter jocks returning from their training exercise.
“I’ll have you know, I own two horses. And my father has an original Ruger 22.”
She gave him a skeptical look.
“Well, the gun is in an airtight display case. And the horses—well, I’m told they’re quite well cared for....”
“Exactly,” she replied with a smirk, and pulled the controls to angle the ship around one of L2 Station’s nacelles.
“Why are you so happy, anyway? Haven’t you heard we’re being decommissioned?”
Exactly, she repeated in her head, but didn’t want to give the impression she was eager to leave. “Yeah. But I just heard I might get to be reassigned to my husband’s ship.”
“So you’re taking it out on us? Seriously, slow down a bit.” He clutched onto his armrest as she put the transport ship into the final tight curve that would take them back into the Old Bird’s fighter bay.
Glancing at her speed indicator, she saw that he was right—she hadn’t been paying attention and they were coming in way too fast. Seeing that she only had a few seconds to correct their speed and approach vector, she shoved the thrusters into reverse, which had the added effect of throwing them all forward into their restraint harnesses.
But she’d overcompensated, and now, just as the landing gear extended, the back of the shuttle spun to the right, and with a flick of the thrusters she halted the spin and fishtailed left.
“Miller!” shouted Commander Pierce.
In the struggle to keep the craft flying straight, she still hadn’t reduced the speed to something normal for landing, and as a result the landing gear hit the ground with a screech and showered the deck with sparks as the shuttle scraped across the landing zone, still fishtailing slightly as it finally came to rest.
“Oops,” she said, after a momentary silence. Some of the fighter jocks in the back heckled her and Commander Pierce gave her a stern warning eye.
Lieutenant Volz, who she recognized as the fighter jock from earlier, laughed. “Well, she’s no fighter pilot, but I think she deserves her own callsign. What do you say, Fishtail?” The pilots stood up to disembark, still laughing and joking at her expense.
She glanced down at the gouge she’d torn out of the deck and winced. “Sorry, sir.”
Pierce eyed the damage, and shook his head. “Well, good thing she’s being decommissioned next week or Commander Haws would have your ass mopping floors for a month. But what with that new Commander setting this place up as a museum, he’ll probably give you a commendation for making her job difficult.”
The other pilots were exiting the craft, and she ran the shuttle through its post-landing procedures. “Are you going to write me up, sir?”
“I suppose not. Just get your head out of the clouds, all right?”
“Yes, sir.”
He ducked out, leaving her to park the shuttle back in its alcove off to the side of the landing runway.
Dammit, she thought. Way to leave the Constitution on a bad note, Miller.
Chapter Thirteen
L-2 Lagrange point, Earth
Captain’s Ready Room, ISS Constitution
The Old Bird floated in nearly empty space, accompanied only by a few surveillance arrays, data-com satellites, astrometric telescopes and dishes, as well as L2 Station, a squat-looking, rotating starbase crewed by a few dozen officers who, like most of the crew aboard the Constitution herself, found themselves on the blunt end of a long, punitive assignment.
L2 Station may have had some strategic importance in the distant past, during and before the Swarm War, but these days it was a dead end post for dead end careers. Keeping watch over one of Earth’s Lagrange points—where its gravity exactly cancelled that of the Sun, creating a stable point ideal for space stations and ships to float without any fuel consumption—was the worst assignment an IDF officer or enlisted could draw.
Out of his ready room window, Captain Granger watched the station rotate slowly against the steady backdrop of stars and data-com arrays, wondering if his next assignment would be there. Or worse: chained to a desk deep within the IDF Command Center outside Omaha, destined to push papers every day for the rest of his career.
The door opened behind him. “Captain, you wanted to see me?” Shelby Proctor’s voice grated on his nerves. He already hated it, and it had only been less than a week.
“I hear you want to strip apart my engines.”
He turned around and stared her in the eyes, not inviting her to sit or even to stand at ease. It appeared she sensed he meant business, and so maintained a stiff composure, staring at a point just above his shoulder, and yet he could just barely detect the slightest tug at
her lips, indicating she was relishing the occasion.
“Strip? No, sir. We need that shielding around the reactor core to—”
“I know your reasoning, Commander!” He spoke more loudly than he meant to, and he could see the corner of her mouth tug higher.
“Sir, need I remind you that this ship is due to stand down in less than a week? Your engines are useless. They simply won’t be needed during her next mission.”
“That may be.” He swiveled his chair around and sat, still staring at her. “But we still need to make the trip to Lunar Base, and for that we need our engines.”
“Correction, sir. We need one of our engines. Not all six. The thrust of one of them will be more than sufficient to get us to—”
“You’re betraying your ignorance of the capabilities of my ship, Commander. On paper, one of those engines can produce just enough thrust to get us to Lunar Base within the week. But she’s old, Proctor. She hasn’t operated above sixty percent thrust for well over twenty years.” He glanced down and picked up a datapad, handing it to her. “I’ve temporarily denied your request for the lead shielding. It’ll have to wait.”
“But sir! I’m under a tight schedule here! I can’t have you interfering—”
“I’LL INTERFERE WITH WHATEVER I DAMN WELL PLEASE ON MY SHIP, COMMANDER!”
His fist was clenched, and he felt his face grow hot. He knew he shouldn’t have lost control. And that was confirmed as Proctor’s face broadened into a full smile. From her pocket she produced her own datapad and tossed it on the desk towards him.
“There. Have a look. You’ll find Admiral Yarbrough has given me the authority to do just about whatever I want, up to and including going over your wishes, Captain.” She said that last word with a wink.
