The Jupiter War

by Gregory Benford

  ONE of the most important features in the Jupiter War was the immense expense involved in supplying virtually everything necessary to fight such a distant war. The men who fought this war were themselves a very costly commodity. The Jupiter War was fought by the most highly trained personnel of both navies. These were men who, if peace had prevailed, would have been the leaders and scientists of their society. Nor were the weapons they used any less expensive. One of the space fighters required several hundred thousand man-hours to produce. A cruiser or carrier took over a million man-hours of labor to produce.

  The cost of supplying anything but military necessities from Earth was almost prohibitive. To transport a single hundred-kilogram missile had the same dollar cost as was needed to construct ten similar missiles back on the Earth. A partial solution to the supply problem had been the explosive growth of manufacturing in the asteroid belt. Another was the establishment and expansion of similar facilities on the Jovian moons. Even so, throughout the Jupiter War most of the armaments and supplies still had to make the several-month journey from Earth. One effect of this was that at their maximum number, neither side was able to field more than a few hundred warships of all classes at anyone time.

  The off-Earth manufacturing facilities were incapable of producing anything as sophisticated as a combat ship in substantial numbers. Nor in the near-Earth orbital factories was either side -able to rapidly construct any of the ships used in the war. As a general rule a fighter took ten weeks to produce, a carrier almost a year.

  Another irony of supply during the Jupiter War was that munitions that had taken months to arrive were fired off in a few seconds of frenzied combat. Ships as well rarely survived for as long as they took to build, much less transport, in the high-speed battles in the Jovian system. The rapid lethality of modern space warfare meant that in this war attrition soon became the determining factor for victory. Each side dealt with this problem in many ways. One solution tried by the U.N. was to levy commercial ships from civilian sources and convert them into combat vessels. Generally the results were spectacularly unsuccessful. Most converted merchants had neither the structural stability nor the agility to survive in modern space combat. But a few of these converted merchants did have other advantages, some of which came as an unpleasant surprise to those who met them.

  THE CONFERENCE room, like everything else on the Altar Corporation’s near-earth orbit space station, was heavily used, and in need of refurbishment.

  The friction caused by countless arms, printouts, and coffee cups had worn away large sections of the table’s phony wood grain and revealed the white plastic underneath, The two men eyed each other over this empty surface like boxers in a ring, The oldest spoke first.

  “I don’t like it.”

  Rawlings ran fingers through thinning hair and did his best to look sympathetic.

  “Frankly, Willie, neither do I, but we have no choice. When the front office says ‘Jump,’ my boss asks ‘How high?’ “

  Willie Lawson scowled. His hair was cut so short that it looked like a cap of solid white fuzz. It made a dramatic contrast to his dark brown skin. His face was lean, with squint lines around the eyes, and a good solid chin. “Your boss is full of shit.”

  Rawlings sighed. Why him? Why did he have to deal with the crotchety old bastard? Because his boss was afraid too, that’s why.

  “Look Willie, I know how you feel about the Alice B., but try to look at it from the company’s point of view. The Alice is sixty years old—”

  “Sixty-one years old,” Willie put in, “the same age as I am.”

  “Right,” Rawlings said patiently, “the Alice B. is sixty-one years old, and therefore the most expendable ship in our fleet. The U.N. is short of ships, they’re going to take one of ours, and it would be stupid to give them a newer hull.”

  “It isn’t right,” Willie said stubbornly. “The Alice wasn’t designed for war. She’s a freighter, for God’s sake. She won’t stand a chance against the Feds.”

  Rawlings took off his old-fashioned wire-rimmed glasses and held them up to the light. He saw a smear and rubbed at it with his tie. It was a trick he used to buy time. Willie was right of course, the Alice wouldn’t last very long, but he couldn’t say that. He couldn’t say that the ship, like Willie himself, had lost its usefulness. Rawlings replaced his glasses and cleared his throat. “I think you’re overstating the negatives, Willie. I admit the Alice wasn’t designed as a war ship but she’s a tough old bird, and a Q ship isn’t a destroyer. All the Alice has to do is look vulnerable, lure ’em in close, and whammo! Fried Feds.”

  “So the decision is final?”

  “I’m afraid so.”

  “Then I’m going with her.”

  Rawlings shook his head. “Willie, that’s impossible. The navy’s going to gut her, install weapons systems, and provide their own crew.”

  Willie stood. He was tall and whipcord thin. His dark blue shipsuit was old but clean. “Bullshit. The company’s got pull, so use it. Remind ’em that I’ve got a commission in the naval reserve, twenty-one percent of their common stock, and a bad attitude. Which would they rather have? A happy camper? Or a nasty fight at the next shareowners’ meeting?”

  Rawlings didn’t have to ask. He knew the answer. Willie Lawson was going to war.

  * * *

  Lieutenant Peter Perko kept his face absolutely blank as he strode down the corridors of the U.N. battle station Winston Churchill. His uniform fit as if it had been tailored just for him, which it had. He anticipated each salute before it came, returned it with the same perfection that characterized everything else he did, and marched down the hall as if on parade.

  The fax, complete with the admiralty seal and the words ORDERS-CLASSIFIED, EYES ONLY, rested safely inside a zipped inner pocket. He could feel it there, heavy with potential, waiting to be opened.

  What would it be? A position of considerable responsibility certainly, something appropriate for an officer ranked number two in his class at the Academy, and number one in the Advanced Tactics School he had just completed.

  Yes, the number-three position on a cruiser wasn’t too much to hope for, or even number two on a tin can, or—his heart skipped a beat at the very thought—his own command. Something small but dashing, like one of the new S-class Assault Boats, or a Tac Ship.

  But whatever fate awaited him, Perko would enjoy or suffer it alone. By now his peers had already ripped their orders open and headed for the O Club to celebrate their good fortune or share their despair.

  Perko hated such occasions and avoided them whenever possible. Much better to celebrate one’s victories alone, hugging them close to be enjoyed over and over, than to throw them out like pearls before swine.

  And defeats . . . well, those were certainly to be endured in isolation, suffered through until the pain was little more than a dull throb. Then with back straight, and face blank, you ventured out to try again.

  Perko arrived in front of his compartment, punched in his access code, and waited for the hatch to hiss open, The room was tiny, barely large enough for a bunk, storage underneath, and a small desk with built-in computer.

  Perko stepped inside, heard the hatch close behind him, and sat on the folding chair. He undid two brass buttons, reached inside his jacket, and withdrew his orders. For a moment he let them rest in the palm of his hand, savoring the suspense, looking forward to what he would find.

  Then he ripped them open, scanned for the appropriate line, and read his fate: “To travel with all possible speed to Asteroid P-5678, there to join an undesignated ship-type freighter, accepting the duties of executive officer, and discharging the same in accordance with the rules, regulations, and traditions known to you.”

  For a moment Lieutenant Peter Perko stared at the orders in complete and utter shock. A freighter! A goddamned freighter! Surely there was some sort of mistake, a glitch in t
he BuPers computer, a screw-up by some incompetent clerk.

  He spent the next hour making com calls, one of which was relayed all the way to Earth and would cost him a full month’s pay. All to no avail. Everyone agreed. There was no mistake, no glitch, no screw-up. Peter Perko was about to become the XO on some clapped-out freighter.

  Shame rolled over Perko in a warm wave. Tears ran down his cheeks. How would he explain this to his father?

  * * *

  Lieutenant Junior Grade Julie Christoferson held on as her Skipper, Lieutenant Tom Bowers, put the ship into a tight right-hand turn. Suddenly there were holes over her head where none had been before. Bowers jerked inside his harness and a gout of red mush rode the ship’s atmosphere out into the coldness of space.

  Momentarily safe inside her space armor, Christoferson swore as red lights came to life all across her control board. Her one remaining computer assessed the damage and delivered the news. It wasn’t good.

  Christoferson rolled the Tac Ship left, hoping to throw the Feds oft Europa appeared and disappeared under her. A dirty white slush ball, covered with a crust of frozen water, and cross-hatched with ridges of ice.

  At least the tankers were clear, their hulls full of precious water, already headed in towards the U.N. space stations that orbited earth.

  Now Christoferson’s job, and the job of the other Tac Ships, was to buy the freighters some time. Even if it meant dying to do it.

  The hull shook as the ship took a hit from a mini-missile. More red lights came on. Christoferson chinned the intercom. “Perez? Tembo? Do you read me?”

  Silence.

  Christoferson gritted her teeth. Dead. Both dead. Time to punch out. Sometimes the S & R people got you home in time for dinner . . . and sometimes they never showed up. It was up to the luck of the draw and your own personal karma.

  In order to reduce the chances of an accidental separation there were two separate operations for her to perform. Christoferson lifted a protective cover, armed the system, and pushed a button.

  Bolts exploded, vapor out-gassed, and the command module tumbled away from the rest of the ship, its radios bleating for help.

  Suddenly there was silence. Complete and utter silence, as another piece of debris fell into orbit around Europa. The delta-shaped command module tumbled end-over-end and had already started the long but inexorable fall towards the moons surface.

  It was then that Christoferson glanced toward Bowers and saw that his helmet, head included, was floating a foot over his body.

  She screamed and screamed and screamed, before the insistent bonging of the intercom brought her up and sweating from tangled sheets. A glimmer of sunlight outlined the fully drawn shade.

  The voice belonged to Porter, one of the Trauma Center’s orderlies, and more than a little smitten with Christoferson’s good looks.

  “Sorry to bother you, Lieutenant . . . but you said to call if your orders came in. Well, guess what, I peeked, and you’re second on some freighter! Neat deal, huh? Should be a piece of cake after what you’ve been through.”

  Christoferson thanked Porter and killed the intercom. Reaching over to her nightstand she grabbed a pack of illegal stim sticks and lit one. They were sending her back into combat again. She tried to feel something, anything, but couldn’t.

  * * *

  Ironically it was a crisp, cold day, full of sun, and brisk with the promise of winter. The kind of day best used for raking leaves or tossing a football.

  But there were no leaves in the military cemetery, or trees to shed them, only endless rows of stark white crosses that marched away to top a low rise.

  As the last notes of taps died away, Chief Warrant Officer “Guns” Naisbit stood at rigid attention. A squad of marines fired the traditional salute while some civilians lowered his only son into the ground.

  Under normal circumstances marines would’ve done that, but it was wartime and marines were in short supply.

  Not bodies, though. No, there were lots of those, and more on the way. They kept ’em frozen until they had enough to justify a run. Then they brought ’em home stacked like cord wood in the hold of some ship. So many, buried so often, that the media didn’t come anymore.

  By the virtue of some good or bad luck, Naisbit wasn’t sure which, he’d been dirtside when Tony was killed. The official records called it “a major ship-to-ship action in defense of critical supply vectors,” but Naisbit had been in the navy for a long time and had sources of his own. Sources who informed him that Tony’s squadron had been jumped by a superior force, had called for help and been ignored by an admiral who didn’t want any part of an action he might lose. So Tony, along with five hundred and sixty-three other men and women, had died.

  Naisbit remembered his son’s graduation from OCS, how proud he’d been, how much Tony looked like his mother.

  She’d looked good too, standing there by her second husband, clapping with delight when her son’s name was read and he accepted the insignia of his new rank.

  Second Lieutenant Tony Naisbit, USMC. It had a ring to it, a meaning, a significance.

  But that was gone now, nothing more than a series of on and off impulses in some giant computer, a debit in the game of war.

  The strange part was that Tony had died defending something that earth had so much of, water, the same substance he’d loved to sail on.

  But there had been no sailing off Callisto, no joyful rush of wind and wave, only the giving and taking of death. A process as old as man himself.

  Naisbit bit back tears as the black staff sergeant handed him the flag that had draped Tony’s coffin and give him a salute. Naisbit returned it, handed the flag to his ex-wife, and made himself a promise.

  The Feds were going to pay. Nothing comes free. Not even blood.

  * * *

  The orders had been sitting in Lieutenant Commander Nathan Shimmura’s electronic in-box for more than a week before he got around to reading them. Paperwork, reports, and the other fine points of administration were not Shimmura’s strong suit.

  Shimmura was a technoid pure and simple, a being who lived on a plane where all things were expressed in terms of stress ratings, algorithms, gear ratios, atomic structures, and power loads. Things he could depend on, manipulate, and control.

  For the last two weeks Shimmura had been totally consumed by the job of fitting new drives into the battle cruiser Lincoln. A touchy job even in a fully equipped dockyard and almost unheard of anywhere else, especially in the asteroids, at a Level III maintenance facility.

  The Lincoln’s commanding officer, a woman named McIntyre, was well aware of Shimmura’s orders and, being no fool, did nothing to bring them to his attention. Shimmura was her only hope, and she’d be damned if they’d get him till the drives were in.

  But McIntyre was fair if nothing else, and once the drives were installed she arranged to have the orders brought to the engineer’s attention and ordered a scout to get Shimmura to his next duty station on time.

  Although why an officer of Shimmura’s rank and abilities had been assigned to some rust-bucket of a freighter McIntyre couldn’t fathom. But so what? Everyone knew admirals were crazy and this proved it.

  As for Shimmura himself, or just plain “Shim” as he preferred to be called, once aboard the two-person scout he found any number of problems that required his attention and began to fix them.

  Shimmura hummed as he worked, hands caressing tools, mind probing ahead. It made little difference where he was headed or what waited at the other end. He had problems to solve and the means to solve them. What more could he ask?

  * * *

  Willie Lawson fired the sled’s braking jets, checked to make sure the locator beacons were on, and examined his ship. There was a scratch across the front of his faceplate and it caused things to ripple when he turned his head.

  The Ali
ce B. was the only one of many ships being refitted for wartime duty. She hung there like a desperately ill patient, countless tubes and cables running in and out of her durasteel body, dependent on others for her every need.

  Her already powerful drives had been taken apart and completely rebuilt. The holds that had once hauled tons of supplies from earth to the roids had been subdivided, filled with weapons systems, and reinforced. A new tac comp lived deep in her hull; its fiber-optic circulatory system pumped information out to every part of the ship, and brought more back as sensors came on-line.

  Yes, in a few days, a week at most, the Alice B. would be ready for war. Or as ready as she’d ever be.

  The funny part was that she’d look exactly the same, the big, vaguely delta-shaped hull, with none of the aerodynamic grace common to atmospheric craft. Not a warship, not a liner, just a beat-up old freighter.

  And that was the idea behind Q ships. Hoping to capture the freighter intact, Federal raiders would come in close, weapons suddenly would be revealed, and presto—victim becomes predator.

  That was the plan anyway, and Willie hoped it would work.

  Willie took a moment to look around.

  This was the U.N.’s only base in the asteroids. It was protected by a number of heavily fortified rocks and ran round the clock. The heart of the complex was a large planetoid some four hundred miles in diameter called “Big Red,” after the reddish color of its outer surface.

  Heavily mined years before, Big Red was nearly hollow and crammed full of factories, offices, living quarters, storage facilities and more.