by Moshe Ben-Or
“Group Three, ready!”
“Group Four, ready!”
“Supporting Effort, execute!”
On the battle command display, Isabella could see the three icons of Group Four spit cruise missiles as they began their run.
Four was the decoy group, positioned closest to the coast. The entire attack was deliberately staggered, designed to look at first glance like some kind of poorly-coordinated effort to protect Gungnir and Mjöllnir.
Above the icons that represented the other three groups, countdown clocks ticked off the minutes.
The Zin were taking the bait. As Group Four rained clouds of nanites interspersed with hailstorms of cluster bomblets on the enemy’s flak batteries and loosed antiaircraft missile after antiaircraft missile at the three dozen enemy fighters that were gingerly chasing after the two Golden Age meme dispensers, it seemed like every Zin warship agile enough to dart down into orbit decided to start spitting kinetics and laser fire at the three wildly dodging missile boats. The volleys of sea-to-space missiles and laser beams Group Four unleashed in return, along with the covering fire from the mobile anti-space batteries south of New Amsterdam, only seemed to redouble the enemy’s fury.
This couldn’t possibly go on for long. But it didn’t have to. Now that the enemy had developed tunnel vision focused on Group Four, it was time for the main event.
On the situation display, one of the three boats in Group Four suddenly winked out of existence. Above, two enemy corvettes plunged uncontrollably into the atmosphere, dissolving into fiery balls of molten metal and ablating shards of ceramic.
“Main effort, execute!” barked the detachment commander.
Around Isabella, the bridge erupted into controlled chaos.
“Comms, down antenna!”
“Down antenna, aye!”
The battle command display froze, icons growing fuzzy cones of projected movement, as the millimeter-thick chain of nanites that had linked the boat to the surface retracted into the body of the craft.
“Weapons, arm Bay Two! Release pattern alpha!”
“Arm Bay Two, aye! Release pattern alpha!”
“Weapons, launch Bay Two!”
“Launch Bay Two, aye!”
The boat shuddered as missiles erupted from their silos.
“Helm, set heading two-seven-seven, seventy-five upward plane!”
“Heading two-seven-seven, seventy-five upward plane, aye!”
“All ahead flank!”
“All ahead flank, aye!”
“Chief, blow main ballast!”
“Blow main ballast, aye!”
A giant hand slammed Isabella back into her chair as the deck tilted sharply upward.
These were real accelerations. Her body felt them inside the control pod, and incorporated them seamlessly into the electronically-generated dream.
Isabella’s eyes focused on the accelerometer above the helmsman’s console. Twenty meters per second squared. A bit over two gee.
“Chief, release polymer!”
“Release polymer, aye!”
The numbers on the accelerometer crept upward as the tiny bits of plastic flowing from their holding tanks smoothed the flow of water over the part of the hull forward of the intakes, where it was still liquid.
Twenty-two meters per second squared…
Twenty-three…
Twenty-five…
The boat shuddered again, as more cruise missiles left Payload Bay Two.
The cruise missiles, aimed at stationary or relatively slow-moving targets on land, were just as readily launched from beneath the waves. But the antiaircraft and sea-to-space missiles were better aimed from the surface, where the boat’s own sensors could see into orbit and up-to-date targeting data from other friendly elements were readily available via the integrated battle command network.
At any rate, Brunhilde and her sisters were never designed to be launched from underwater.
Now that the boat was making flank speed and firing missiles, the Zin would see them from orbit regardless. Between the launch signatures and the boat’s own wake, there was no hiding their position. Speed was their best defense now. Speed and surprise and the favor of whatever deities watched over the sole surviving offspring of the House of Rijn.
The boat’s nose breached the surface in a fountain of frothing seawater and superheated steam. The walls and ceiling of the virtual bridge grew transparent, and the floor turned into a see-through grid as the vessel launched itself upward.
There was a cough and a roar as the expanding engine intakes took their first gasp of air. A high-pitched shudder as the body of the missile boat flowed liquidly in flight, morphing smoothly from the slim, needle-nosed, stub-winged teardrop of a high-performance supercavitating submarine into the sleek, wide-based triangle of a supersonic surface effect craft.
Their sonic boom raised gouts of spray as fusion-powered plasma jets churned the water behind the boat. A renewed hammer of acceleration slammed the Baroness of Miranda back into her chair. They were already pushing six hundred meters per second before the boat had surfaced. Almost Mach Two in air.
The numbers on the accelerometer crept steadily upward.
Three gee…
Four…
Six…
A little over six.
Isabella took a careful breath. If the crew could take it, then so could she. No lowborn lout would see the heir of Pieter van der Rijn blanch in discomfort at mere acceleration. She’d had worse. It was only extra weight, after all.
“Helm, come to heading two-seven-zero,” called out the boat’s captain as the acceleration eased off.
The airspeed indicator above the helmsman’s station read Mach 10.32.
“Heading two-seven-zero, aye,” answered the helmsman smartly.
It was a beautiful morning out here at sea. The rising sun painted a blood-red trail on the wind-whipped whitecaps. Off on the horizon, the navy blue of the ocean merged into the navy blue of the sky, the firmament only a fraction lighter than the water. In the swiftly brightening darkness due west, the cone-shaped volcanic peaks of the Raucherfjellen were just emerging in outline, shadow on shadow, black mountaintops merging into black clouds. Off in the distance behind Isabella’s vessel, a few kilometers to port and starboard, rose the roostertails of the other two missile boats in Group One. Isabella could just make out the tiny black dot at the tip of each one, a smidgen ahead of the fiery speck of plasma.
Just for a fleeting moment she could imagine that there was no war, that it was all just a fancy exercise, a maneuver to show off her shiny new warships. And then the brilliant blue fireball of an accelerating ground-to-space missile streaked overhead. In the inky deepness of the sky the eye could not see the contrails, until the computer enhanced them.
The blue fireballs came in bunches now, in their dozens and hundreds. The clouds pulsed with lightning as countless laser beams slashed through them, so many that they ionized the sky.
Halmstadt, Ingermanland, Krondstadt, Gotterburg, Sassnitz… Even the mobile batteries hidden among the coffee plantations of Helligoland, though they were so far to the south that they could barely help. Every surface-to-space laser and missile launcher on Miranda was firing to give them cover, or at least to draw the enemy’s attention to itself.
They could not know which missile boat bore their Baroness. That information was too valuable, too sensitive to ever enter the tactical net. But all three of the newly-surfaced boat groups were now marked openly, unmistakably, with the quartered crimson-and-white royal standard of the combined houses of Zundell and Rijn. The personal banner that could only mean one thing.
With a jolt, Isabella flashed back to the moment nine years ago, in the blood-spattered hallway reeking of smoke and freshly-made corpses, when the first marine had knelt before her.
Just a simple boy from the country. A buck private. Scarcely eighteen, going on twelve. His folded hands had trembled as she took them between her own.
“M
y Baroness,” he had half-whispered, hoarse voice as shaky as his hands, “My blood for yours.”
The shock of it as she’d realized that he meant it. That they all meant it. So sudden that she’d had to swallow hard to keep from choking and sobbing as she replied regally: “To you Our bread and justice.”
Their blood for hers, if she just didn’t lose them. If she didn’t become her father.
In that instant, overwhelmingly, like a bolt of lightning from a clear blue sky, she had seen her path to greatness.
The loyalty of the bejeweled, glittering snakes of the Court had all the permanence of a wisp of fog, and all the firmness of a pile of quicksand. The obsequiousness of their royalist protestations was directly proportional to the level of their conspiratorial perfidy. The sweetness of their sibilant flattery was matched only by the depth of their hypocrisy and the insatiability of their boundless greed. She had known these things always, going as far back as she could remember, perhaps even from before the day when her childhood had been forever ripped away, and all had known, and not one had as much as batted an eyelash.
But she had never seen any substitute ground upon which the edifice of the Barony could realistically rest. She had not believed that there existed any genuine alternative to the way the House of Rijn had done business for six centuries. Until that moment.
The moment when she’d realized that the one man whom she had ever truly loved had been right, and she’d been wrong. That there were still, even on Miranda, simple country boys and girls who believed, despite all evidence to the contrary, that there had to be something greater than themselves in the world; some good worth fighting and dying for. That somehow, in some strange, mystical way, she embodied that magical good. And that, upon the bedrock of that simple faith, upon the eager energy of Low Junker hungry for advancement, and upon the bovine loyalty of stolid, reliable burghers who knew which end their bread was buttered on and had the sense to stay bought, she could erect the greatest Barony Miranda had ever seen.
The missile crews, the sailors around her, the soldiers and the Volunteers and the royal men-at-arms on the shore that loomed darkly in the distance, they would all die for her at the drop of a pfennig, and count themselves lucky for having had the privilege. Because she was not her father. Because she was Isabella the Good. Because she was their Baroness.
Renewed acceleration slammed Isabella back and forth as the boat buffeted about in evasive action. A row of huge, steam-crowned gouts rose suddenly off to port. Droplets of saltwater spray beat a furious staccato on the hull.
An enemy destroyer had them bracketed from orbit with its gigawatt laser. The photons might move at the speed of light, but the aiming mirror didn’t. Nor did the enemy’s targeting process.
With the destroyer dancing in and out of reality within razor’s edge of the Jump Barrier, the missile boat maneuvering unpredictably and the laser cycling only so fast for so long before the buildup of waste heat overwhelmed the heatsinks, the game was far less simple than it would seem at first glance.
Nor was the missile boat defenseless, or without friends.
“Groups, engage assigned targets!” barked the detachment commander.
The boat shuddered again and again as sea-to-space missiles surged upward. Behind, to port and starboard, the other two boats in the formation spat streaking blue fireballs at the enemy.
Reality blinked and flickered for a moment as the boat’s own three-gigawatt main battery stabbed upward. A lesser flicker for the twin single-gigawatt secondaries.
“I have a whole planet for a heatsink, you bastard,” thought the Baroness of Miranda as the wounded destroyer broke off the attack, “Mine is bigger than yours.”
She could shoot longer, too.
“Air warning! Threat vector one-seven-seven, altitude one five-three. Range four-four and closing. Velocity Mach one-seven. Eight bogies.”
Eight bots coming hard from starboard. They’d just popped up over the horizon to fire.
The water around the boat erupted into steam-laced fountains as the bots’ lasers stabbed outward. There was a shocking series of clangs. The boat shuddered so hard that Isabella’s teeth rattled. The chief engineer’s board lit up with damage reports.
The rating at the commo console was suddenly gone. The first casualty. Another instantly replaced him.
More flickers as the boat returned fire. A distant flare of blue lightning as a bot exploded in midair.
“But where there are bots…” thought Isabella…
And the aft point defense cannon began to chatter, as if on cue.
The bot attack had been executed solely in order to herd her boats into position for the kill, realized the mistress of Miranda. While the robots had played cat and mouse with her gunners, the manned fighters had swung around the boat group, hugging the wavetops to avoid detection, and had fired anti-ship missiles on four different approach vectors.
Now the missiles could see the flare of the boats’ plasma jets. And their targeting radars were painting the hulls.
“Countermeasures!” ordered the boat commander.
“Countermeasures away!” came the call from the point defense console.
Billows of chaff-laced smoke enveloped the boat group for a moment, and then the cloud was behind them, and the boats were dodging, and a dozen flare-tipped roostertails raced in random directions, trying to confuse the missiles.
Unfortunately, the manned fighters’ weapons officers were no fools.
Laser fire flickered back and forth as the fighters and their bots popped up over the horizon time and time again, trying to re-target wayward missiles.
The trick, thought Isabella, was to keep the manned fighters and their bots down below the horizon long enough for the missiles to be dealt with.
But the trick wasn’t working out. The bastards had help from orbit. One quick pass by a corvette was all it took. And she couldn’t jam the laser relay.
“Flyswatter! Helm, stall to starboard on my mark!”
The lieutenant commanding the boat tried to sound confident, but to Isabella’s trained ear there was a note of desperation in his voice. Well-justified desperation, given the circumstances.
“Stall to starboard, aye!”
The helmsman wasn’t even trying to hide his terror. If the missile hit… When it hit…
“Mark!”
Isabella nearly blacked out as the helmsman swung the boat around in a hairpin stall turn that almost upended the vessel. Just for a split second, the accelerometer nosed over two hundred meters per second squared.
“Fire lasers!”
The primary and secondary laser batteries stabbed out into the ocean, raising a curtain of water in front of the incoming missile, swatting it out of the air like a mosquito. The missile exploded in a harmless spray of distant foam.
And now the rating at the missile board had a solution.
The manned fighters had come too close, and lingered for too long on a set course. Bad mistake. Popping back down below the horizon wasn’t going to help them now.
“AA missiles locked!” came the call from the weapons console.
“Fire!” replied the boat commander.
Antiaircraft missiles erupted from Payload Bay Three.
“Manned bogie one down! Manned bogie two possibly damaged. Remaining bogies turning away!” called out the rating at Sensor Fusion as he processed the feedback data from the missiles and the expendable observation dronelet that had launched with them.
“They’ve had enough,” thought the mistress of Miranda with a touch of pride.
The Zin airstrike was apparently a wash, and a bloody-nosed wash at that. And her boats were almost in the dispenser release zone. Just a little longer…
There was more acceleration as the boat turned back to the west. A roostertail of spray rose to the port rear quarter, but of their other wingman there was no trace. Maybe the Zin airstrike wasn’t a complete wash after all.
A quick glance at the battle c
ommand display confirmed the worst. Nor was their wingman the only casualty.
Boat Group Four was down in its entirety, the last battered survivor trying to limp out to sea. Before he’d submerged, the boat’s commander had broadcast an intention to try for Helligoland. If his boat didn’t fall apart, first. Isabella wished him luck. All his ordnance was expended anyway.
Group Three was down a boat also. But both Kara and Rota were flying.
“Weapons, arm Payload Bay One,” commanded the lieutenant.
The icons representing Boat Group One on the battle command display were almost at the edge of the holographic box that marked Brunhilde’s release zone.
More cruise missiles erupted from Bay Two and raced off into the distance.
It was only a matter of moments now.
Only a matter of moments…
There was a sudden flash, and then star-spotted darkness and a sensation of being slammed about and tumbled end-over-end, as if she was trapped in a giant rock crusher.
The virtual reality reappeared in a flicker.
Off the stern rose an enormous column of steam and seawater, still climbing up into the sky. The top was already flattening out into a mushroom.
Somewhere up in the stratosphere, the spreading mushroom cap blotted out the sun.
In the sudden gloom, the boat bobbed around hard on residual waves. It was already beginning to rain.
They were listing to port. Taking on water, probably. Getting worse by the moment.
A quick glance at the radiation counter.
Normal background. No unusual spikes, either now or before impact.
“A kinetic from orbit, then,” thought Isabella.
“Not the small stuff they’d been throwing so far, though. A real hammer. In the tactical nuke range somewhere.”
No wonder the aerial bogies had broken off and run for cover. The blast wave would have slapped them right out of the sky, otherwise.
There was a warm trickle running down her face.
Blood.
She was bleeding from the nose.
Here, and therefore in real life, also.
Her right arm hung at an odd angle. A broken shoulder, perhaps.
The pain was a dull bell somewhere in the back of her mind. The pod’s automedic was on the job already.
