Stardust

by Edward W. Robertson

  "Kansas is right," Rada said. "We no longer have the possibility of winning. All that's left for us is to die our best death."

  She closed the connection. Before opening a line to Kansas, she quickly called up an image of Earth without any zoom. From the Belt, it wasn't much brighter than all of the other stars, but its blue-green twinkle was unmistakable. Every human who looked on it knew at once what it was. There were those who argued that beauty was subjective, or that there was no beauty at all, but they were wrong: Earth was beautiful, and it was beautiful to everyone.

  The knowledge that it would become home to hostile aliens made her wish that she had died before she had come to that understanding.

  The comm slammed shut, deader than Pluto. Rada's device switched automatically to photon messages. She opened her mouth to signal to Kansas, but her display lit up with incoming messages from across the fleet.

  "Contact," her computer declared nonchalantly. Followed by the photon-signal equivalent of screaming.

  Seven new, large orange triangles materialized on the tactical display, racing toward the front of the human fleet. Somehow, they were already entering combat range. Hundreds of missiles sprayed from their hulls, filling the tactical display with horror.

  22

  Water raged through the exit of the massive submarine like a door-sized firehose, nearly filling the cramped room even as it flowed down the stairs. Spray pounded MacAdams' mask, all but blinding him. The surge pushed against him like a falling wall, straining the cord that was the only thing stopping him from being swept down the stairs.

  MacAdams searched through the bubbles until he found Webber's hand. The direct contact opened an unblocked line of communication.

  "The door's open below!" MacAdams yelled. "The flood won't stop before my suit fills up!"

  He caught a glance of Webber's wide eyes. Webber said, "Stay here!"

  Webber fiddled with something in his pouches; too much water was hitting MacAdams' mask to say what. Webber untied himself from the handle, waded forward, and disappeared.

  Cold water was seeping in through the holes in MacAdams' suit. Felt soothing against the burn on his chest, but the suit's bailers couldn't flush it back out fast enough.

  A cord flew in through the doorway, flapping crazily. MacAdams reached for it, missing twice before he snagged it. The water tried to rip it from his hands. He weaved it into his belt, tied it tight, and gave it two hard tugs.

  Webber pulled the rope forward. MacAdams untethered himself from the wall and leaned into the storm of water. His left foot slipped. If he went, he'd pull Webber with him. Only question then was whether they'd drown before they were blown up. He groped forward, finding something solid—couldn't even tell what—and pulled himself another step ahead. The next time he reached out, he felt the edge of the doorway.

  They were inside the tiny entrance. Hatch above them. Webber grabbed his arm and headed up a ladder built into the wall. As he climbed, MacAdams had to slip his arms through the rungs to avoid getting flushed back down. Webber exited the round hole in the ceiling and pulled MacAdams after him.

  Freed of the overpowering suction, MacAdams floated in the dark. Water was still pouring into his suit, sloshing around his chin. He couldn't tell how far away the surface was or even which direction it was in. His fingers flew over the device on his wrist. He released his reserve air into his suit, ballooning it to twice its size. He shot upward, dragging Webber along with him.

  The water climbed to MacAdams' mouth. He tipped back his head, breathing through his nose. Bubbles streamed past his mask. He broke the surface.

  Gentle waves lifted and lowered them. Stars flickered in the cloudless sky. After the calamity of the last few minutes, the calm warm night felt like waking from a dream.

  Sapphire blue light flashed from the depths a few hundred feet ahead. For an instant MacAdams could see the shapes of creatures large and small illuminated from below. The light vanished, leaving him floating. The shockwave was muted, just a small kick to the water and his organs. The ocean ahead of them boiled over, belching up bubbles and gases and steam.

  Dead fish floated to the surface, shining silver in the moonlight. Pieces of plastic debris began to bob up from below.

  "We did it." Webber sounded in disbelief. He thrust up his hands. "We did—!" The last word was cut off as the lifting of his arms sent his mouth below the surface. He spat salt water. "What say? Time to call up DS and ask for a ride?"

  "Can't. My device is dead."

  Webber checked his wrist. "Look at that. Mine too. What the hell do we do now?"

  "Round up some debris and start paddling."

  "What, back to Tandana?"

  "Unless you know of another island."

  Webber tipped back his head. "We just can't get away from that place, can we?"

  He sighed and swam toward the bobbing flotsam. There were plenty of pieces of it and they didn't have to search long to find surfboard-sized chunks and smaller ones that could be used as paddles. They mounted up.

  "Right," Webber said. "Which direction?"

  "South."

  "And which way is south?"

  "Dunno. This is your world, not mine."

  "Right, let me just harken back to the days when I lived in the middle of the Pacific Ocean." Webber checked his device, then scowled up at the night again. His expression grew thoughtful. "Our ancestors were doing this for thousands of years without devices, weren't they? They used the stars to navigate." He paddled himself in a circle. His hand shot into the air. "There! That's the Big Dipper. And if you go up from the front of the bowl, that's the North Star. Which means south must be that way."

  He flipped around, putting the star to his back, and began to paddle. MacAdams followed in his wake. There were no lights besides the stars and the moon and no noise besides the tilt of the waves and the swish of their paddles in the water. The peace was so perfect it made him wonder why they had ever left it behind.

  ~

  The seven alien ships raced toward the tatters of the human fleet like knights on horseback trampling a field of fleeing serfs. Yet on the comm, the translations of the flashes of light sent by Rada's wingmates shifted from screams to confused babble. According to tactical, the great school of missiles the incoming ships had fired weren't heading for the humans.

  They were heading for the Lurkers.

  Rada pulled up enhanced visuals. Rather than the spikes and saucers of the Lurker ships, the seven vessels were cylinders, blunted at the ends and segmented, almost like squat caterpillars.

  Rada had seen such images before. In movies. In history books. In Toman's files. One time, she had seen them in person.

  They were Swimmers.

  "They're Swimmers!" she yelled, her comm translating it into light flashes, the only signals that could currently be sent. "They heard our call for aid. They're here to help us!"

  The Swimmers were already changing course. Their new path suggested they would eventually turn their tails to the Lurkers.

  "Match course!" Kansas flashed. "They're our new rearguard on our way out of here!"

  Rada signaled her portion of the combined fleet to dovetail with the Swimmers, who made another adjustment to shorten the time to the rendezvous. The Lurkers corrected course to continue pursuit, sending a ripple through the Swimmers' missile flock as it adjusted in turn.

  The Lurkers rattled off an enormous volley of rockets. The two swarms of missiles collided, the bursts so plentiful they drew a solid line of fire across the sky. The Swimmers launched a second volley, backed up by defensive shots from the human fleet. The status color of Rada's missiles turned hyperviolet as her stocks dipped below five percent.

  Driven half mad by the sudden appearance of their ancient enemy—or frustrated by the unexpected delay in their total victory—the Lurkers shot off an immense fusillade of missiles even larger than the one before. For every missile that headed toward the Swimmers, one also made for a human ship.

&nb
sp; "Phalanx," Rada signaled. Her people tightened formation, shrinking the amount of space they'd need to defend.

  The Tine dropped missiles behind it, but it also began to spew flares, chaff, and fizz. Emergency measures. The kind you never wanted to see outside of a sim. If you were resorting to them in real life, you were about one minute away from having nothing left at all.

  One of the cylindrical ships disappeared from tactical. So did two of Rada's people and three from Kansas' fleet. Once the wave broke against their defenses and the last of the missiles were chasing each other down, the Swimmers fired a counter-volley.

  "Give them what you got!" Kansas ordered. "We have to shake loose!"

  Human rockets chased to join the Swimmers' attack. The Lurkers scrambled to muster a response, firing a moderate initial burst and following it seconds later with a larger one, as if the original defense scheme had been countermanded in favor of something more aggressive.

  Another pall of explosions choked the sky. These died down, revealing that a fraction of the Swimmer missiles had penetrated the defensive screen and were plowing toward the Lurker vanguard, which scattered, dispersing another cloud of rockets like squid ink. As the missiles neared, a series of tiny explosions went off around the Lurkers like glitter. Five ships died before the last missile met its end.

  Full communications snapped back on. Without a moment's hesitation, the Belter pilots were yammering at each other. Rada knew she should tell them to shut their gobs, but her eyes were locked on the battle. The Swimmers and Lurkers were still tossing missiles back and forth, but there was something lackluster about it, as if they'd burned off all their rage toward each other in the initial encounter.

  The Swimmers lost a few drones. The Lurkers lost a few more ships, with more and more of the glitter sparkling around their front lines. Then, with no obvious cause, the Lurkers broke course, heading away from the Swimmers and humans at a slight angle.

  "The hell?" Kansas said, fleet-wide. "All ships, adjust course. Let's see if they follow."

  She sent the change in vector. The fleet widened the angle between themselves and the Lurkers. The Swimmers swung about to match them. The Lurkers did not.

  A cheer went up across the comm. Rada stayed silent.

  "We've fought them to a standstill," Kansas said. "Let's get the hell out of here."

  She ordered them to regroup and disengage at full burn. The Lurkers continued to angle away, but they wouldn't be out of range of the six remaining Swimmers for close to two minutes. In the meantime, they kept up a slow but steady patter of missiles. The human ships neared the edge of combat range.

  "On my mark, break hard on Course C," Kansas said. "And don't ease off your engines until Jupiter's in your rearview mirror."

  "Wait," Rada said to her over a private channel. "Why aren't the Lurkers hitting the Swimmers harder? They hate each other."

  "How the hell should I know? Maybe the surprise rattled them, sent them into their conservative mode. Or maybe the clock just turned over to a Lurker holy day and they're off to join the fiesta."

  "I think they're running out of missiles, too. That's why they're not going after the Swimmers anymore. I think that glittery stuff we've been seeing is an anti-missile countermeasure."

  Kansas frowned, eyes darkening as if in the shadow of a cloud. "Could be. But even if you're right, so what?"

  "So I think we should go after them."

  Kansas' jaw dropped. She uttered something that was probably but not definitively laughter. "You want to fight them? Did you forget that we've got even less missiles than they do? You were just arguing that it was time to run away!"

  "That was before I suspected their racks were almost empty. Their ships carry two primary weapons: missiles and lasers. Their kinetics are an afterthought. If we both run out of missiles, we'd have them outgunned."

  "But they'd still have us outnumbered. You don't even know for sure that their missiles are that low."

  "No, but they're acting like it."

  "Yeah, and if we took the bait every time they've acted like something was wrong, we would have died a hundred times over by now."

  "I've been fighting them from the very start," Rada said. "This doesn't feel like a trap to me."

  "You're willing to gamble everything on that? Your feeling? A feeling that this one single time out of all the other times they've tried to trick us, they're finally not bluffing?"

  "If I'm right, we can end this now. But if we run off, the Lurkers will start bombarding stations again, or go seed a new secret factory somewhere, or pick up new weapons we don't even know about. I can feel it, Kansas. I know the enemy, and I'm telling you we have to attack."

  "The Lurkers are still moving too fast for us to catch up." Kansas' eyes never left hers. "Better tell your Swimmer buddies to cut them off for us."

  It was a moment before Rada understood the full meaning of the words. Kansas closed the line and sent new orders across the fleet.

  Heart thumping, Rada opened up a line to the Swimmer ships. "This is Rada Pence—Admiral Rada Pence. I've spoken to one of you before. We're low on missiles, but we think the Lurkers are, too. We're going in for the attack. We need you to cut them off and corral them back toward us."

  The six cylindrical ships held course. Then, without so much as a flash of lights as a sign they'd heard her, they swerved toward the Lurkers.

  "We're going back in," Rada told her people. "We believe the Lurkers are as low on missiles as we are. If we run them dry, we might be able to win a dogfight."

  "And if you're wrong?" Mat-Nalin was the only one who dared to ask the question.

  "Then we die."

  He snorted and nodded. The human fleet heaved about to tail after the Lurkers. The Swimmers ran parallel to the enemy, overtaking them and preparing to cut them off. The Lurkers bent away from them, hurling missiles, but the Swimmers swatted them down, pressing on.

  The Lurkers turned hard. But not to evade. Instead, they flew straight toward the human fleet. Rada knew at once what they were doing. They knew the humans were low on weapons. They were going to try to smash their way through.

  The Lurkers disgorged a new wave of missiles. The humans fired defensive rockets. It didn't look like it would be enough to save them. Kansas ordered the fleet into a turn, giving them more space to deploy the simple measures of chaff and fizz. Missiles popped in front of them, dashing down their defenses, trampling closer and closer. A fighter at the edge of the formation crumbled into flames, followed by a second.

  Kansas laughed lowly. "Rada, if you just got us all killed, I'm going to spend the next thousand years stabbing you with a pitchfork."

  Swimmer missiles darted in from the side, knocking Lurker rockets down by the dozens. There was a last great gout, like the finale of the fireworks of Alone Day, the celebration of when the Swimmer invaders had left Earth, and then the void went dark.

  "All clear," Kansas said. "Kill at will."

  "Stick to your wingmate," Rada told her pilots. "It's time."

  As they closed, there was another exchange of missiles, but even the Swimmers seemed to be down to the dregs. Most of the missiles chased harmlessly after countermeasures on both sides.

  The fleets closed. Deep into missile range. This time, bullets streaked across the darkness.

  In the millennium since the Panhandler, there had been two periods of genuine dogfighting. The first had come before they'd even reinvented proper cars: remembering that flight was possible, eccentrics rushed to build biplanes, plunking at each other with early machine guns. It had taken nearly forty years for "classical" monoplane fighters to take over, and it was another twenty years after that before jet propulsion appeared. Until then, the skies weren't ruled by computers and missiles, but by pilots and their guns. Most fliers still thought of it as a golden age.

  The second had come shortly into the Second Space Age during the freewheeling period when corporations and cooperatives were founding colonies and establishing trade
. The early tussles over territory and goods were fought by ships armed with a handful of missiles, which would generally be stymied by countermeasures, at which point the opposing pilots would have to gun each other down up close and personal. This period had barely lasted a decade before corporations, trying to cut down on their massive expenses, shrunk down missiles to allow dozens and then hundreds per flight, following this up with the invention of drones. These innovations had led to ships that fought more like little carriers than proper fighters, a system of warfare that dominated to the present day.

  The third age of dogfighting began in a nondescript patch of space in a sector of the Asteroid Belt that hadn't seen a skirmish of any kind in 150 years.

  Humans and Lurkers hurtled at each other like cavalry in a field. Bullets seared across the darkness. The Lurker vanguard broke first, Kansas' pirates chasing after them, hectoring them with a storm of kinetics. A Lurker interceptor vented flames and tumbled apart.

  "First blood!" the man who'd shot it yelled. "But not the last!"

  Both formations scattered like dandelion seeds. Rada turned hard, Winters mirroring her. She swung across the flank of a Lurker heavy fighter, her first shots going wide. A rear-mounted gun swiveled and pelted her with rounds. She corkscrewed violently, then straightened out and fired again. Small bursts tracked up the fighter's dorsal side. A fiery sphere consumed it whole.

  Rada juked around the expanding wreckage, coming in behind another fighter. She raked it with bullets before it knew what was happening. The ship crumbled to pieces.

  "At the rate you're going," Winters said, "you're going to run out of space on your nose to paint your kills."

  "Then start pulling your weight, will you?"

  A trio of Lurkers came in behind them, hosing them down with kinetic fire that forced Rada into zigzags and swoops that would have ripped the Tine apart if not for its MA. They were fighting at incredibly close range and every maneuver changed her whole field of view of the battlefield.