“Report! What did we hit?” Alexander said.
“Give me a second to reacquire, sir…” Frost replied. After just a moment, he let out a frustrated sigh. “All twenty-one blips are still headed for Earth.”
“What the hell happened?” Alexander demanded.
“I did my best to account for the sensor and firing delays, sir,” Cardinal replied, “but it looks like we missed by anywhere from fifty to a hundred klicks.”
“The drones’ closest shot went wide by twenty,” Stone reported. “Sorry, sir.”
“Twenty klicks? A hundred klicks? What’s the cross-section on one of those missiles from our perspective?”
“The target is twenty meters long by two meters in diameter. That gives us a maximum of forty square meters to shoot at, sir,” Cardinal replied. “Our targeting systems simply aren’t precise enough to hit something that small moving that fast.”
Alexander grimaced. “Well, you both did your best. Now it’s up to Earth.”
“Aye, sir,” Cardinal said. “They have twenty minutes to intercept, but by now they should have been able to put themselves ahead of the targets and reduce the angle of deflection. They won’t have the same problem that we did.”
Alexander sighed. “I hope you’re right.”
“Admiral—” McAdams began in a whisper. “What if those missiles go evasive?”
Good question. Relativistic missiles were hard enough to hit without adding randomly varying angles of deflection. It wouldn’t take much maneuvering to throw off intercepting fire. “Let’s hope they’re not programmed for evasion, Commander. Maybe they’ll need all of their available thrust to guide them to their targets, like what happened with the Moon attack. We shot down seven out of ten missiles. If there’d been another ship there with us, we’d have got them all.”
McAdams looked ready to object, her lips frozen halfway to forming words. “Maybe,” she conceded.
Alexander knew what she’d left unsaid. Those missiles didn’t need to hit a very precise target like a city in order to do damage on Earth. Just about anywhere they hit would be devastating.
Chapter 7
Captain Grekov watched the bracketed red target box glowing dead center of the N.W.A.S. Washington’s main holo display. Each ship in the fleet had its own target to focus on. Countless drones and fighters raced out in a diffuse cloud ahead of the fleet, aiming their weapons at the incoming ordnance from slightly larger angles of deflection. Grekov glanced up at the clock at the top of the display. Five minutes and five seconds to intercept. That time was based on when the destroyer’s trajectory would line up exactly with that of the missile they were targeting rather than on any kind of specific weapons range.
“Five minutes to target, sir,” Lieutenant Carver announced from the gunnery station.
“This is the worst game of chicken I’ve ever played,” Grekov’s XO, Commander Clark commented. “If we miss, that missile is on a collision course with us.”
Grekov turned to his XO with one eyebrow raised. “The collision course you should be worried about is with Earth, not our ship. We have less than one hundred crew, but if that missile gets by us, it will take out many millions on Earth.”
“Obviously that would be worse, sir. I meant that it would be nice if no one were in the line of fire.”
Grekov frowned. Westerners were always looking out for number one. People from old Confederate states like him were better citizens. The Alliance might span the entire globe now, but all the idealogical and genetic differences that had divided the East and West still remained. Parents still chose what traits to engineer into their children, and the old Confederate states still chose all of the same community-minded ones as before. Likewise, western states were still choosing to make their children more individualistic and independent. Of course, now with the ubiquity of the Mindscape, it almost didn’t matter. It was rare for anyone to actually have children anymore, so the status quo was likely to remain, leaving Grekov to feel like a stranger in a strange land for the rest of his immortal life—good book, he thought, smirking at his unintentional use of the title.
Now that he’d been promoted to captain and given his own ship, it seemed that attitudes were changing. But rather than become more united, Earth had simply re-drawn the line that divided people. Instead of dividing the East from the West, that line ran between Human League districts and Utopian ones. The world was poised to split into a thousand political pieces. If they were lucky, maybe these attacks would delay the inevitable and unite people against their common enemy—whoever that might be.
“One minute to firing, sir,” the gunnery officer announced.
“Drones and fighters opening fire!” Lieutenant White reported from the fighter control station.
Grekov nodded. “Good…” Hopefully the Washington wouldn’t even need to open fire.
“Target is maneuvering! Shots are going wide, sir,” Lieutenant Carver said from gunnery.
Grekov scowled and glanced at the clock. Thirty seconds. “Maneuvering how? Adjusting trajectory or evasive?” he asked.
“Evasive, sir.”
That was bad news. “Do your best to anticipate and track our target. Lay down as much covering fire as you can.”
“Aye, Captain.”
Twenty seconds.
“The missiles just shot past our fighter screen,” sensors called out. “Nineteen out of twenty-one targets remaining.”
Definitely bad news.
“Incoming transmission from the Liberty!” the comms officer announced.
“Patch it through,” Grekov said.
“All ships open fire! Targets are maneuvering. Repeat, targets are maneuvering, do not wait for them to get any closer.”
“Carver! Open fire!” Grekov bellowed.
“Aye, sir!”
The deck trembled with recoil from the destroyer’s hypervelocity cannons. Projectiles streaked out into the void in simulated golden streams. Missiles jetted along behind them on bright blue contrails. It would take a while for any of those weapons to reach their target, but at least they were on their way. Hopefully they’d have enough time to intercept.
Wheels started spinning in Grekov’s brain, reminding him that math was one of the things his parents had engineered him for. There was an easy way to calculate the odds of interception.
“How long before our target gets by us?” he asked.
“Four minutes and seven seconds, sir,” the sensor officer reported.
That wasn’t much time.
Grekov used his neural connection to the ship to make some calculations. The result was that each shot they took had a 1 in 31,411 chance to hit. Doing a few more calculations he found the probability that they would intercept their target. It came out to less than 10%. Making a quick decision, Grekov said, “Helm, come about and present our port side to the target.”
“Sir, most of our guns are forward facing, and adding maneuvers at this point will only make it harder for us to intercept the target.”
“Just do it, Lieutenant.”
“Aye, sir.”
Commander Clark shot him a curious look. “What are you doing, sir?”
“Do the math, Commander. We have less than a 10% chance to intercept our target. Once it enters effective laser range, our window of attack will be less than a twentieth of a second on approach, and another twentieth of a second as the missile flies past us. Even in the best case scenario, mechanical firing latencies will use up most of that time. Our laser-armed missiles will have the same problem. The ones carrying payloads may increase the odds by detonating in the targets’ path and creating a cloud of debris, but with the precise timing required for such a detonation, that is also unlikely to succeed. All of this means that we have at least a 50% chance to miss our target.
“We are, however, conveniently situated directly in front of our target. The Washington has a cross-section of 120 meters by 60 meters with its broadside facing the target. That means we can position our
selves between the target and Earth like a shield, and we will have a 100% chance to intercept.”
Clark looked horrified. “There won’t be time to evacuate the ship.”
“No, Commander, there won’t. But take heart, there is still a chance to intercept the target before it reaches us.”
“You Russians and your roulette!” Clark said, shaking his head. “How are we going to repel future attacks if we throw away the fleet? Imagine if all the other captains are thinking like you.”
“Our enemy may not need to make any future attacks if we don’t repel this one, Commander.”
“We are in position, Captain,” the helm reported.
“Hold position there, Lieutenant, but keep us dead center of the target.”
“Aye, Captain,” the officer at the helm reported.
Silence fell on deck as the crew went about their jobs. Grekov listened to the thud thud thud of cannon-fire and watched the ship’s combat computer paint converging golden lines of tracer fire between them and the glowing red box of their target. Grekov took a deep breath. “Update the clock with the time for the target to reach us, Lieutenant.”
“Aye, sir.”
The clock started counting down from two minutes and twenty seconds. Grekov opened an outer pocket in his combat suit and pulled out a cigar. He held it out to his XO. Clark eyed the contraband for a second before accepting the cigar. Grekov withdrew another one for himself, and then a lighter.
“You are full of surprises, Captain,” Clark said. “I didn’t even know you smoked. How very degenerate of you.”
Grekov smiled. “Even Geners have defects, Commander. Not all human imperfection is written into our DNA,” he said as he lit first Clark’s cigar and then his own. He took a drag and savored the spicy flavor of the smoke before puffing it out again. “Some of it is learned.”
Clark puffed out his own cloud of cigar smoke. A smoke alarm went off with a shrill noise, but he quickly silenced the alarm. Several of the crew looked around and noticed both the Captain and the XO grinning and smoking. Reactions ranged from shock to grim amusement, but no one thought to object.
The clock hit one minute.
“I’m glad you had some extra imperfection to go around, Captain,” Clark said, puffing out more smoke.
Grekov turned to Clark with his cigar pinched between smoke-stained teeth. “It is a pity I left the vodka in my quarters.”
Clark barked a laugh at that. “I’m going to miss you, Captain.”
“Nyet, I’ll look you up in the next life. I’ll be damned if they don’t open the pearly gates for us after this.”
“Aye,” Clark said. “You’ll be damned indeed,” he said, smiling at the joke.
Grekov nodded soberly and blew out another cloud of smoke. “To the damned,” he said, watching as the clock hit ten seconds. Cannon fire still streaked out impotently into space.
One second—
Lasers lanced out in dazzling blue and red beams.
Zero seconds—
The world exploded in a white hot flash of fury.
* * *
“Did we get them all?” Admiral Anderson demanded as he loomed over the sensor operator’s shoulders. Myriad control stations ran around the circumference of the room, their glowing holo displays spilling cold blue light into the Combat Information Center (CIC) located fifty floors below the presidential palace.
“One of the missiles got through, sir,” the sensor operator reported in a quiet voice.
“Damn it! Where did it hit?”
“Based on it’s last known trajectory… somewhere in the Gulf of Mexico. A few hundred klicks South of New Houston I’d say.”
“Issue a tsunami warning for all coastal cities along the Gulf. What kind of damage are we looking at?”
“Without knowing the weight of the impactor, there’s no way to be sure.”
Anderson scowled. “Do you know the size of the impactor?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Then estimate the weight based on a maximum and minimum density for an object of that size.”
“Aye, sir.”
Anderson turned from the sensor operator’s station to find the president standing right behind him.
“Mr. President—I didn’t realize you were there.”
“How did that missile get through, Admiral?” President Wallace asked. “We had just one ship at the Moon and we stopped seven out of ten missiles with almost no warning, so how did we fail here with almost an hour of advance notice?”
Anderson pressed his lips into a grim line. “The missiles went evasive this time, sir. The ones that hit the Moon were maneuvering in straight lines. It also didn’t help that half of our available ships were on the other side of Earth when we detected the missiles. We didn’t have enough time to reposition them all.”
Wallace blew out a breath and shook his head. “The media is going to make us look incompetent! They’re going to ask why we spread out our defenses if we knew the attacks were coming from the wormhole.”
Anderson frowned and nodded. He’d argued for positioning the fleet along the hemisphere facing the wormhole from the start, but the president and the rest of Fleet Command had opted for a more comprehensive defense. Now his arguments had been vindicated, but at what cost? This wasn’t exactly an I-told-you-so moment. “One of our captains sacrificed his ship to intercept his target. It went down with all hands. Give the media that story to run with. Everyone loves a hero.”
Wallace nodded gravely. “I heard. The N.W.A.S Washington—Captain Grekov. The media will certainly run with that story whether I give it to them or not, but I don’t need to tell you how bad it looks for us that the only captain willing to put himself in the line of fire to protect Earth was an ex-confederate. That’s only going to cast more doubt on our administration and create even more divisions. Citizens from ex-confederate states might even try to form their own party for the next election, and if they get elected, we’re in for a whole lot of trouble.”
Anderson frowned. “Sir, I think we have bigger problems right now than the election.”
Wallace clamped his lips together and nodded. “You’re right. Of course we do.”
“Sir,” the sensor operator interrupted, “I’ve finished my calculations.”
“Go on,” Anderson said.
“The missile likely had around ten metric tons of throw weight assuming it used up all its fuel on approach.”
Anderson considered that. “And what kind of energy would be released by a ten ton object moving at a third of the speed of light?”
“Approximately fifty-four point six exajoules, sir.”
President Wallace’s brow furrowed. “What the hell is an exajoule?”
“Ten to the power of eighteen joules,” the sensor operator replied.
Anderson shook his head. “Give us a meaningful reference for that, Lieutenant.”
“Yes, sir. That’s approximately equivalent to a nuclear weapon with a yield of 13,000 megatons. Our biggest nukes are in the 250 megaton range, so imagine more than fifty of those all going off in one spot in the Gulf of Mexico.”
Anderson paled, and he and President Wallace traded worried looks.
The sensor operator noticed the looks on their faces and hurried to add, “That’s still relatively small when compared with some other events in Earth’s history. The Chicxulub impact, for example, was thousands of times stronger.”
Anderson felt as though a crushing weight had just been lifted from his shoulders. The Chicxulub impact was what had made the dinosaurs extinct. If this was thousands of times weaker than that, then maybe the effects wouldn’t be so deadly. “So this isn’t an extinction level event?” Anderson asked.
“No, sir.”
“Thank God.”
“What will the tsunami be like when it hits the Gulf Coast?” President Wallace asked.
“That’s tough to say until buoy data comes in, but according to standard computer models and the ocean depth in the
area of impact…” the sensor operator trailed off while he ran some more calculations. “Wave height at the nearest coastline could be as high as sixty meters.”
Anderson blinked in shock. “That’s going to level everything it hits!”
“Yes, sir.”
“How long do we have?” President Wallace asked.
“About half an hour for the closest areas.”
“Hopefully that’s enough time for people to get to higher ground. Anything else we need to worry about?” Wallace asked.
“An Earthquake. My bet is that’s already registered… it has.”
“How bad?”
“Seven point one on the Richter scale. As for the other effects we can probably expect to see firestorms. We’re lucky that the shock wave is too far from the coast to light fires, but ejecta from the crater is going to come raining back down and burst into flames as it re-enters the atmosphere. The bigger chunks will make it to the ground and light fires.”
A look of confusion crossed the president’s face. “Debris from the crater? I thought the missile hit water.”
“It did, but at the speed it was traveling, it still punched a big hole in the sea floor.”
“What about impact winter?” Anderson asked.
“Not likely, sir. The impact wasn’t big enough for that to be a concern.”
“Good. We’ve already got enough to worry about with everything else. Tsunamis, earthquakes, firestorms…” Anderson said, shaking his head.
“God help us,” President Wallace added.
Chapter 8
Senator Catalina de Leon stood in the waiting room on the fifteenth floor of the United Farmers Tower in Galveston. She was waiting for her meeting with a prominent League Party supporter, Bill Watson. He was a rich landowner with over a hundred farms scattered around Texas—all of them human-run. The Human League district of Texas was particularly large. Here, people had yet to succumb to the madness of the Mindscape. It was illegal to even have a mindscape connection in League districts.
Mindscape: Book 2 of the New Frontiers Series Page 7
