A12 Who Can Own the Stars?

by Mackey Chandler

“Then why would they go there?” Otis insisted.

  “Nobody has been there,” Jeff said. “It’s close, which means more to them than us. They may see it being close safer than a clean target further away. And being North America, their destination was probably picked by politicians. They might have even been influenced by astronomers who want a closer look at it.”

  “What about the guys with their butts on the line?” Deloris asked from Hringhorni.

  “I sincerely doubt if they get a vote, other than to turn it down,” April said.

  “I’m taking us to a theoretical point between Earth and Epsilon Eridani. We’ll be behind the Constitution and it will be easing into that line. Then we’ll wait until they are past the L1 radius before moving on them,” Jeff said.

  “They won’t see us?” Otis asked.

  “We’ll be hidden behind them in the noise from their drive. Some systems might see us from Earth or Earth orbit. They can’t send or receive a message from the Constitution for the same reason. I don’t care if somebody is watching with radar. We’ll be accelerating to match with them. They’d see our drive as soon as we light it up too. Jump in fifteen seconds,” Jeff warned.

  “Still slaved, expecting it,” Deloris acknowledged.

  They turned gently after the jump.

  “See the bright blue star about five degrees off our heading? That’s the Constitution,” Jeff told them. “It will creep over to nearly the center of our view, but we’ll close on them and challenge them before it gets there. It will be about twenty minutes before they are past the L1 radius. We’ll have matched velocities by then. Ramping up now.”

  “Another chapter,” Otis said and went back to his pad as the acceleration eased on.

  April imagined if they had a missile homing on them Otis would want to read a couple more paragraphs before the potential intercept.

  “That’s it. They’ve breached L1 and sufficient margin there will be no uncertainty making the claim later,” Jeff announced. “Heads up everybody, I’m ready to initiate the program and we’ll be bracketing them before we know it. Report in, please.

  “Ready in Hringhorni,” Deloris said calmly.

  “Ready in the hold. Cannon loaded and Otis put his pad away,” Mackay said.

  “I’m awake over here,” April confirmed.”

  “Intercept program starts in twenty seconds,” Jeff said.

  Suddenly, there was a long slim ship closer alongside at the port where the Hringhorni had been visible. They moved forward beside it a little as the ship picked up a small difference in velocity and adjusted.

  “Constitution, this is Jeffrey Singh in command of the armed merchant Dionysus’ Chariot, acting as a cutter for the Kingdom of Central,” Jeff declared on the emergency and ship frequencies. “You are in violation of the L1 limit imposed on armed ships. You are ordered to cut your drive and stand to immediately.”

  The ship plunged ahead with no change in acceleration or acknowledgment.

  “Visibility is poor,” Mackay complained. “Permission to use a floodlight?”

  “Go ahead,” Jeff allowed.

  “Try a couple of different frequencies?” April asked.

  Jeff did so without acknowledging the suggestion.

  “The damned Earthies have made passive-aggressive an art form,” April said, “but I never thought I’d see it used as a military strategy.”

  “Yep, they think it will paint us the aggressors,” Jeff said. “Too bad I don’t care.

  “Deloris, bugout to give me a clear field,” Jeff said.

  “Safe,” Deloris said as the Hringhorni came into view in their overhead ports from behind the Constitution. She was maintaining acceleration but moved on side thrusters.

  Jeff double-checked to see he wasn’t transmitting now.

  “Mackay, go ahead and put one round through their drive spaces.” Jeff poised with his fingers over his control board, ready to push them away from the Constitution if it yawed violently from the impact.

  The Chariot was shoved sideways from the shot hard enough for them to be pushed against their seat harnesses and their helmets tapped the restraints. Jeff cut the drive on both his ships at the lurch, but they were not visibly pushed away from the target.

  “Hit. Hole visible about two meters from the drive end of the vessel,” Mackay said. “We see some debris spreading on the far side.”

  “There was an immediate thruster firing after the impact that straightened out the wobble,” April said. “I suspect they have it on autopilot and it maintained attitude.”

  “Constitution, I’m demanding your surrender,” Jeff sent on several frequencies.

  “This a USNA Space Force vessel, I am Commander Danial Yot, and I will not yield it to you. We do not recognize your authority and declare you pirates.”

  “Commander, if you do not open your lock and accept a boarding party, I will have to disable your ship further, with hazard to everyone. If you force me to do that, I hope your crew is buttoned up because you can expect to be depressurized,” Jeff said.

  Rather than answer, the nose of the Constitution started a slow swing toward them.

  Jeff moved aside. He didn’t think the Constitution had any forward pointing weapons, but he didn’t want to allow its primary axis to sweep them.

  “April, review our videos of the Constitution maneuvering and leaving orbit, to see if the location of its thrusters is apparent in them,” Jeff requested.

  The vessel made a full slow turn while April was researching that, then they fired the opposite set of thrusters on the nose to impart a spin at right angles to the first one. The ship was now tumbling in two planes.

  “That has to be fun,” Otis said. “I’d probably throw up in my suit.”

  “I can see the vapor in the videos and can identify the same ports fore and aft on the ship from here,” April reported.

  “Deloris, standoff another couple of hundred meters to give April room to work. April, go ahead and cut with the laser sufficiently to disable their maneuvering thrusters. I’m releasing my board to let you use our thrusters to position us for shooting.”

  It took time with the tumbling motion, but eventually, the rear thrusters were ragged holes. Then April started on the four front vents. She was burning out the second when the beam breached the propellant vessel for the nose thrusters and the explosion blew a huge notch in the side of the ship and bent what remained of the attached nose crooked.

  “Oops,” April said.

  “It could have been worse,” Jeff said.

  “You boys can’t maneuver now. Are you ready to listen to reason and surrender?” Jeff broadcast. There was no reply, but with their drive disabled, they were screaming back to Earth on the radio about being attacked.

  “Do you want me to burn their antennas off so we don’t have to listen to that crap?” April offered.

  “Then they could say they tried to surrender and we wouldn’t let them,” Jeff said.

  “There is that, but how are we going to stop their rotation?” April worried.

  “I don’t know. How about if we have lunch and think it over?” Jeff said. “Deloris, if you want to stand down for a little, we’re taking a break and having a bite.”

  “What about the Constitution? Are you just going to just leave it spinning there?”

  “What am I supposed to do? That’s mostly what I want to think about, and I’m hungry and irritated. I need a sandwich and time to think. They put themselves in that position. Let them spin and I’ll think about it. People pay good money to go on a carnival ride like that. I’m not going to let Mackay or Otis risk themselves trying to board them in that condition. If you can think of anything, I’ll consider it. If we don’t come up with anything else. I may just break it up into small enough pieces for us to get control of, and salvage the parts we want.” He reached up and tapped his board.

  April blinked and looked at him strangely. “You sent that out in the clear.”

  “Did I? How c
areless. Even if they don’t want to talk, I presume they are still listening,” Jeff said.

  “Is that psychological warfare?” April asked.

  “Psychological warfare, the way they are tumbling, would be to describe my lunch as I enjoy it. I imagine right about now they are having second thoughts about putting themselves in that motion. I don’t think helping them regret it would matter. I doubt they have any way to stop it now, it’s all on us.”

  April waited until Jeff finished his sandwich to try to talk business again.

  “What are you thinking about?” was perhaps too general a question.

  “I like egg salad a lot better with those pointy little striped seeds in it,” Jeff said.

  “Caraway seeds. I like celery seeds myself, but they are all importado. I was thinking more about the Constitution,” April clarified.

  “Well, we could shoot with our explosive shells at the end of the ship as it rotates towards us, hoping the explosion would neutralize some of the motion. It wouldn’t be a very precise way of doing it. We’d have to back off as far as we could and still have our guys not miss. It still would make the entire neighborhood very dangerous from the shrapnel flying every which way,” Jeff said.

  “I was hoping we might recover the crew too,” April said.

  “Another possibility would be to turn the rear of the ship to them and try to time some short burps from the drive to hit the ends as they come around,” Jeff said. “I fear that wouldn’t be much less destructive than artillery rounds. We might run out of ship to push against before we neutralize all the motion.”

  “In exactly how big of a hurry are you?” Deloris asked from the other ship.

  “Me?” Jeff considered that gravely, probably trying to imagine why she’d ask. “The Earthies have nothing to launch that could get out here in any reasonable time frame. If you can picture some sort of harpoon and reel or something, we can take a week to go build it and come back without worrying they will interfere. But those guys strapped in the Constitution won’t be alive in a day much less a week. I can tell already that April will be put out with me if I don’t come up with an impossible rescue for these guys. She’s very big on rescues.”

  “I’m pretty sure I have a solution, but it will take me three or four hours to run and get some materials and return to use them. Is that satisfactory?” Deloris asked.

  “Better than anything I’m coming up with, Jeff admitted. “Do tell us how.”

  “I’ll run out to Jupiter to get a small snowball, a soft one if I can tell the difference. When we come back, I’ll approach and ease it into contact with them just like we brought the rock into contact with Heather’s Martian satellite, nice and slow. The ship will beat itself against the ice, each impact slowing its rotation. With a little luck, it won’t walk itself off the edge as it keeps advancing.”

  “That’s brilliant,” Jeff praised her. “You have my support to try that. We’ll wait right here for you. If they have a lick of sense and decide to surrender and jump out of the airlock, we’ll pick them up. If not, we’ll try it your way when you return.”

  “By now, they’ve been spinning so long I doubt they could unstrap and make it to the lock,” Deloris said. “I’ll hurry.”

  Chapter 26

  “Do you want to see if we can get any Earth news this far out?” April asked. “Since the Constitution stopped transmitting, I wonder how they are taking it?”

  “Can you imagine they are doing anything but frothing at the mouth?” Jeff said. “I don’t care to upset myself but if you want to listen to it go ahead and deploy a high gain antenna. I’m sure you’ll get decent enough reception that way.”

  April searched sources and listened for a long time.

  “There’s not that much broadcast that radiates off into space,” April complained. “Most of it seems to be through satellites and in ground-based relays and fiber.”

  “That makes sense,” Jeff said. “Normally, nobody is here where we are to listen. Any signal here is pure loss.”

  After he thought about it for a time he added. “That’s to the good too. If any aliens hanging around listening, the less they hear our crazy neighbors the better.”

  April sighed a few times and cut the feed when she’d had enough. Jeff expected her to share some of it, but she respected his wish to skip it.

  Deloris mentioned three or four hours, but it was almost six hours before they heard from her. Nobody wanted to be the first to worry about it openly.

  “Coming in from behind,” Deloris suddenly called on the radio. “You might give me a little more room,” she suggested.

  “Moving laterally a kilometer,” Jeff said right away and used the thrusters.

  “One more micro-jump and we’ll separate,” Deloris said. “I’m aiming for a three-kilometer closing.”

  Jeff turned them a little and suddenly the snowball was visible.

  “Sorry it took so long. We tried dragging one that broke up on us right away. The next we weren’t happy with how much we could get in the field. This one we carved a hole to back into with our drive and just left enough to sticking out to see where we are going and turn it with the nose thrusters. It’s awfully slow to turn too. We’re getting out of our ice cave before we get too close. My radar says we’ve just under a meter a second closing. That’s more than I wanted but it will have to do.

  As she spoke the Hringhorni immerged from the ice and quickly moved to the side before it started braking. The snowball was more than half a sphere with the section from which the ship emerged darker and rougher. The absence of the vessel left a substantial pit on the front surface.

  A meter a second might be too fast in Deloris’ estimate, but it was like watching honey drip waiting for contact. The Hringhorni braked to a stop on the opposite side of the spinning Constitution from them, safely positioned to watch with them.

  For a moment it looked like the nose of the ship would swing into the pit, but it hit beside it. The bent section April almost detached did break off now, bouncing off into space. The snowball kept coming with no visible change in motion from the impact. The rear section pivoted down from the point of contact with the nose and impacted on the other side of the pit.

  The whole vessel rebounded from the surface briefly but the snowball caught up with it and they struck again. This time the Constitution spun against the surface on its side, throwing off chunks of ice.

  The spin took it over the pit and one end tipped in briefly but it rotated across and struck the other side. There was still enough energy there for it to lever over the far edge of the pit and bounce end to end, each one with less energy to rebound, until it briefly came to a rest against the ice. It didn’t bounce away because each impact deformed the ship and absorbed energy. In the end, it looked pretty beat up.

  The snowball had acquired a tiny rotation from the impacts, and the pit slowly turned toward Dionysus’ Chariot, the Constitution slowly separating and drifting away at an angle. Deloris’ mission was successful. The ship had almost no rotation relative to them after beating itself against the ice.

  “What do you guys think?” Jeff asked Mackay and Otis. “Can you board that successfully now without endangering yourselves?”

  I have no doubt we can,” Mackay answered readily, “but the question in my mind is can we do so without endangering the crew?

  “You think they’d deactivate the lock?” April asked.

  “On a military ship? I’d be shocked if it doesn’t automatically deny entry after every cycle unless you have a security device or a code. We can force it, but after tumbling so violently the crew may have opened their visors to vomit,” Mackay said.

  “Don’t risk it,” April told Jeff.

  “If they have a standard lock ours will cross-connect at right angles,” Deloris said. “They aren’t rolling fast enough now to damage us even if we bumped. It would be fussy getting the locks close enough to engage, but if I have Johnson take a camera down in the lock and talk me i
n, I can do it.”

  “Hard connect to a damaged vessel with unknown internal conditions and military personnel who already refused orders to stand to? No. No way will I do that,” Jeff said. “There could be a toxic atmosphere or radioactives. The crew everybody is so sure are disabled may be waiting inside the lock with weapons.”

  “I know you want the missiles,” April said. “What else? Did you intend to take the whole ship apart to examine the drives? Did you want to rip out their computers?”

  “If they aren’t complete idiots the computers were purged once they lost their drive. I don’t care about their drive. I’d have gotten it to trade to Joel as a favor but I know ours is better and theirs will never catch up. I do want the warheads. If they can be removed fine. If not Hringhorni should be able to fit the missiles in its hold whole.”

  “You gave us an image of where the missiles are,” Mackay reminded him. “Let us go over and rip them out and you can drag this back and leave it at their orbital yard from which they launched. Let their people remove the crew themselves. Taking them prisoner would be more trouble than it’s worth anyhow.”

  “You can get the missiles out without forcing the lock?” Jeff asked him.

  “Two of us in power armor? Give us ten minutes and we can rip that ship in half by hand without even using an ax or Halligan.”

  “I’ll buy that plan,” Jeff agreed. “Rip out the missiles and load them on Hringhorni. Then we’ll drag the wreck of the Constitution back and leave it at their facility.”

  * * *

  Mackay and Otis attached EV modules at hips and shoulders before going across to the Constitution. They had limited range but it was plenty since Jeff brought Dionysus’ Chariot back in close.

  Mackay reached over and plugged an audio cord into Otis’ armor and muted his mic. “Don’t get carried away putting on a show for the bosses to record. I don’t want you hacking away and grabbing stuff trying to look scary and cut your suit or get snagged on a ragged piece. It’s still vacuum work, which means slow and thoughtful.”

  “Not a problem,” Otis promised him. “This is so easy they could have sent one of us over and left the other to cover him with the cannon.”