Stone dogs, p.38
Stone Dogs, page 38
She called up a map of orbital positions. "An' notice, just right fo' a quick stopover at Phobos to fill up? So unless the damnyanks is willin' to get here empty, leavin' them between us and the outer fleet, with nothin' to maneuver with—in which case we'd wipe them, then proceed to mop up the Belt piece by piece—they just naturally have to keep their iron floatin' out there by Ceres and Pallas."
"Ahhh," the exec mused. "Nice. That still leaves them with three Hero-class here in the inner system, though."
"Update?"
"Ethan Allen still boostin' fo' the Pathfinder like there was no tomorrow." He frowned. "Faster than we could, unless they're burnin' out their thrust plates."
"Well, the Heros have the legs on a Great Khan, but we've got mo' firepower. Anyways, that'll put her out of the picture fo' a whiles. The two in Earth orbit, we may have to see off. Note we're floatin' next to a fuel depot, though. Also, I've got a few ideas bout' usin' some of our industrial equipment. Reminds me, staff conference fo' 1200 tomorrow, we'll go ovah it. Three weeks to encounter, minimum. Wants yo' there, too, Professor."
"Service to the State," he said formally.
"Glory to the Race," the two officers answered.
Yolande yawned. "Time to turn in, Number Two," she said, rising from the crashcouch.
"Just one thing, ma'am," he murmured as she passed his station; the offwatch was handling the bridge, minimum staff.
"Yes?"
"Back there… when yo' saw those bodies come out the airlock, I was set up for a minimal-burn boost back to the flotilla. Yo' took us on a max speed trajectory, got us here dry. That was like hangin' up a big sign ovah the whole system pointin' to the Pathfinder. Why do it that way, ma'am?"
Yolande glanced at her fingernails. "Oh, better tactics. Impo'tant not to leave the Object unguarded." She thought again of the sleeping faces of the two children.Yankee children, she reminded herself again, but… "Or call it as close as I could get to changing my mind."
The commander's quarters of a Great Khan were luxurious, by Aerospace Command standards. Two cubicles, a tiny one for sleeping, a slightly larger one to serve as an office. A few pictures, the ones she took everywhere: her parents, siblings, three shots of Gwen, and her favorite of Myfwany. That showed them on the beach at Baiae, mugging and smooching for the camera… She sighed and finished stuffing her uniform into the cleaner slot; the black coveralls never got quite as ripe as the skinsuits, thank Baldur. Somebody keyed the door for admittance.
"Come in," she said.
The hatch swung out into the companionway. "As ordered, ma'am." It was a rating, with one of the prisoners.
"Oh. Oh, yes; just leave her here, thank yo'." The rating pushed the slight figure in through the hatch and dogged it.
"Alishia Merkowitz, aren't yo?" Yolande asked.
"Yyyes, Mistis." A tiny whisper. About fifteen, Yolande estimated. Thinner, after a week spent comatose, but looking rather better for it; olive skin, curved nose, full lips. Still slightly damp from the hosing. "Please, don't hurt me!"
"Relax, I'm not gain to hurt yo'." The captive huddled in the far corner of the office-space, twice arm's reach away, and stared at her huge-eyed, flicking an occasional glance about in an unconscious search for escape. "Or do anythin' else to yo', either." Which puts me in a decided minority, wench.
Yolande sighed. Let's see… Oh, she'd probably be more comfortable wearing something. "That's a locker behind yo," she said. "Open it, hand me one of the overalls. Yo' can wear one of the spare shirts until I requisition some Auxiliary stuff fo' yo'."
The girl obeyed; she stepped into the clothing and Yolande pressed the seam closed. Actually quite pretty, but far too frightened, she thought, watching her struggle into the shirt and tie off the bottom. "Right. Now, that's sternward." She pointed to the padded floor of the cubicle. "Those black things are covers fo' the restraints. Iff'n yo' hear the acceleration warnin', get there fast, understand? Don't go near the terminal, or anythin' else with the circled-cross symbol on them, because they'll activate yo' controller cuff if you touch them," The prisoner cringed; they had already had the pain-device demonstrated along with the initial obey-all-orders-call-everyone-master lecture. "The nearest head is out that door with the red stripe uppermost, turn left, two hatches down. Now, stay out of my way."
Yolande hooked her feet under the terminal and activated, calling up the schematics for the Alliance Hero class; heavy cruisers in enemy terminology, although they massed slightly less than the Great Khans. Risky design philosophy, in her opinion. Not enough separate weapons systems, and too many interdependent elements in the beam-weapon guidance routines; fine when everything went perfectly, but dangerous and hard on damage control in action. She began to whistle silently through her teeth as she worked. The prisoner sank into the background of her consciousness; a Draka was used to being observed. A homelike sensation, since she had never been so much alone as on these deep-space voyages. It was several hours later when a bell chimed.
She yawned and stretched. "Time fo' bed," she said. The American girl flinched again. Yolande grinned. "I said I wasn't goin' to," she chuckled, as she leaned head and shoulders through the hatchway and rigged her sleeping net. Any flat surface would do in zero-C, but you needed something to keep you from drifting around when you moved in your sleep. "Yo' use the office floor. Draw the acceleration restraints out to max and lock them over yo', crisscross. Here. Like this."
She pulled herself through the hatch and swung around to fasten the net over herself; the bedroom cubicle was more or less useless during acceleration, but even a pulsedrive ship spent the vast majority of its time coasting. As she dimmed the lights, she could hear a hiccoughing sound from the other cubicle; crying, mostly in relief, she thought. Oh, Freya, she thought. I hope she doesn't keep that up.
"Mistis?"
"Yes?" Yolande sighed.
"What's… what's going to happen to us?"
"Depends. We'll put y'all to work until we head back insystem. Most probably trade y'all back, fo' somethin' or other." More sniffles in darkness. "To yo', nothin' bad, so long's yo' stays close to this cabin. Lot of bored, horny Draka out there, wench, so be careful."
"Can, um, can I ask a question?" Silence. "Why… why are you… doing this for me?"
Yolande smiled wryly into her private night. That is complicated, and I'm not interested in explaining it. To you, or myself. "Call it an offerin' to the gods of mercy," she said softly. "Lola knows, they get few enough. Go to sleep, girl."
"Status," Yolande said.
"Unchanged," the Sensor Officer said. "No relative motion."
"Good." An odd situation to describe as static, she thought ironically. Bass-ackwards to the end of beyond.
Not too untypical of a space-warship action, though. She looked at the screens again. An exterior view would have shown nothing but bright dots moving against the fixed stars, if that… The battle-schematic was much more accurate. A fixed dot, the asteroid; the regular five-minute pulses of its monstrous drive flaring back towards Earth. The flame was only partly shaped by the magnetic fields of the thrust plate; those forces were still too vast and wild for Earth's children, and it hid a good deal behind it from most sensors. An excellent place for her to conceal the vulnerable transports.
Yolande grinned like a shark in the darkness of the command center. Subotai and Batu were falling back toward the flotilla, with the two Alliance cruisers in pursuit; all on free-fall trajectories, with their thrust plates presented to the enemy. That was the most heavily armored portion of a pulsedrive ship, built to withstand near-miss nuclear explosions. And the drive was the most dangerous weapon in itself; chasing a deepspace warship was a chancy proposition, since getting too close would mean self-incineration. Once you got within a certain distance, in a one-on-one there was virtually no choice but to flip end for end and coast until something changed the situation. You could disengage, of course, but that meant backing off and freeing your opponent from the menace of the nuclear sword.
Perfect, she thought. The Draka warships had drawn the Alliance craft on just enough; the enemy vessels were slightly faster than hers, and more nimble, but they were farther from base and so obliged to be sparing with their burns. A perfect matching-velocity flip, which meant they must pursue or quit, and pursue precisely in line with the Draka ships for fear of presenting a vulnerable flank. The asteroid was coming up rapidly; the fog of energetic particles around it negated her enemy's superior sensors, too; she did not need to detect much, here.
"Distance," she said.
"Two hundred twenty klicks. Transit of asteroid in seventy-one seconds, ten klicks clearage." Just enough to avoid the worst of the fusion-bomb explosions.
Nothing for it but to wait; all the orders were given, the personnel ready. Sweat soaked into the permeable fabric of her skinsuit, under the armpits and down the flanks, chill in the moving air the ventilators sent across her body. Sixty seconds. Life or death decided in one minute; victory and glory, or eternal shame. Genius, or a goat. Which I wouldn't be there to see. Bones of the White Christ, this sort of thing sounds better in retrospect. Adventure is somebody else in deep shit far, far away.
Fifty seconds. Snappdove had thought she was insane, for a while. Maybe I was. Dammit, they are pressing home their pursuit. The Alliance wanted to damage her; the only way to do it was to chase her cruisers off far enough that they could do a firing pass at the asteroid and its workforce as they turned and fled themselves. A two-body problem with only one solution.
Ten. Five. The pursuers maintaining position with beautiful precision; those were good ships and well-trained crews. Three. Two. Past.
"Now!" she shouted, superflously.
"DECELERATION," the speakers sounded. It wrenched at her, throwing her to forward against the combat cocoon. Reaction mass was being vented from the forward ports, run through the heat dumpers to vaporize. Not nearly so powerful as the drive, but enough to check their headlong flight. The main drives of the Alliance craft lit in a brief blossom of flame, just enough to match.
And the asteroid was turning. A mass of billions of tons is very difficult indeed to move out of its accustomed orbit; it had taken dozens of fusion weapons to spend that much energy. It is much easier to pivot such a mass about its center of gravity; while the hydrogen-bomb flare had hidden them, the cargo vessels had nestled their bows into holes excavated in the rock and ice of the asteroid's crust. A cruiser could not have done it without self-destruction, but the haulers had been modified to act as pusher-tugs at need. Now four drives flared, and the lumpy dark potato-shape pivoted with elephantine delicacy. Toward Subotai's pursuer, blinded by its own drive for the crucial seconds. Fusion blossomed behind the rock's assigned stern, and the products of it washed out tens of kilometers; charged particles, gamma radiation striking metal and sleeting through as secondary radiation and heat. Through shielding, through the reaction-mass baffles around the command center; tripping relays, overloading circuits, ripping the nervous systems of the human crew as well.
"MANEUVER." Subotai flipped end-for-end. "DECELERATION" The main drive roared, a deeper thrumming note as it poured reaction-mass onto the plate and spat out fission pellets at twice the normal rate. The cruiser slowed with a violence that stressed the frame to its limits, as if the ship were sinking into some yielding but elastic substance. Crippled, the Alliance vessel overshot. Weapons lashed out, at ranges so short that response-time was minimal. From both directions, for the wounded ship was not yet dead.
"Overheat, disperser three."
"Gatling six not reporting."
"Penetration! Pressure loss in reaction baffle nine."
"Wotan, get that missile, get it,get it." Rising tension, until the close-in Gatlings sprayed the homing rocket's path with high-velocity metal. It exploded in a flower of nuclear flame, and the radiation alarms shrilled.
Yolande felt the cruiser shake and tone around her, like a vast mechanical beast crying out in pain. Sectors flicked from green to amber to red on the screens; but the Alliance ship was suffering worse, its defenses shattered.
"Hit!" Railgun slugs sleeted into the Washington's heat dispersers. "Hit!" Parasite bombs dropped away from the Suhotai's stern, into the neutron flux of the drive; their own small bomblets detonated, and the long metal bundles converted energy into X-ray laser spikes.
"She's losing air," the Sensor Officer reported. "Overheat in her reaction mass tanks—pressure burst—losing longitudinal stability—she's tumbling!"
Lasers raked across the enemy; armor sublimed into vapor, and the computers held the beams on, chewing deeper. The particle guns snapped; sparks flickered along the cartwheeling form of the Alliance cruiser. Then the exterior screens darkened.
"Something got through," the Weapons Officer said softly, and consulted his screens. "Secondary effects… her fuel pellets just went."
A cheer went through the Suhotai, a moment's savage howl of triumph.
"Stow that!" Yolande snapped. "Sensors, report."
"The Bolivar's breaking and runnin' fo' it, ma'am." Only sensible; with two ships to her one, the Draka could bracket and overwhelm her.
"Damage Control?"
"Ship fully functional. Missin' one Gatling turret. Three dead, seven injured." Yolande winced inwardly. Shit. "Slow leaks in two sectors of the reaction mass tank. Seventy-one percent nominal, Drive full, remainder weapons systems full."
"Number Two, shape fo' pursuit." There was a momentary pause in the drive, and it resumed at normal high-burn rates. Stars crawled across the screens as the attitude jets adjusted their bearing. "If Bolivar gets back within the orbit of Luna, they'll do it with dry tanks an' scratches on that shiny new thrust plate." A pulsedrive ship could move on fuel pellets alone; the first generation had, using vaporized graphite from the lining of the plate as reaction mass. It was neither recommended, good for the frame, nor safe.
"Oh, and all hands," she said, switching to the command push. "Well done."
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
DATE: 12/11/82
FROM: Arch-Strategos Stephen Welber Assignments Board Supreme QHQ Castle Tarleton, Archona
TO: Cohortarch Yolande Ingolfsson Commandant Task Force Telmark IV Trans-Lunar Zone
RE: Further Orders:
You are instructed, upon the arrival of the relief force hereinafter specified, to return with DASCS Subotai to Qeosynch Platform Padishah-One. You will there select a roster for skeletal watch-standing while the cruiser Subotai undergoes necessary repairs and consider yourself at liberty until 01/10/83, when you will report to this office for further assignment.
Please convey to all officers and crew of your command the warmest congratulations of the Supreme General Staff.
Postscript under personal code:
Dear Cohortarch: I, the Staff, and—I might add —your uncle, are extremely pleased with your performance. Not least the visible rage and frustration it has caused the Alliance; let certain parties accuse us of being soft on the enemy now! Still, it would be better if things were allowed to simmer for a while. Your request for a permanent deep-space command Is accordingly denied, and in line with what the High Command has in mind for you, following debriefing you will be assigned for the next year or two to the Astronautical War College here in Archona. Then—perhaps—a Staff appointment in the Mars-Jupiter sector.
Oh, you're getting a medal and a promotion; do try to act surprised.
SPIN HABITAT SEVEN
CENTRAL BELT
BETWEEN THE ORBITS OF MARS AND JUPITER
JANUARY 4, 1983
Habitat Seven was the latest and largest of the Project's constructs, half a kilometer across and two long; nickel-iron was cheap, and easy to work with big-enough mirrors. Now the former lump of metal-rich rock was a spinning tube, closed at either end, with a glowing cylinder of woven glass filament running down its center. There was atmosphere inside, and part of the inner surface had already been transformed; gravity was .5 C, as much as was practical or necessary. Grass grew in squares of nutrient-rich dust, and hopeful flowers. Individual houses were going up, foamed rock poured into molds; there were dozens of different floor-plans.
"Goddamn circus," Frederick Lefarge said. "We're running this like the bloody Los Alamos bomb project, back in the '40's. Everything and the kitchen sink."
"Not really," the man beside him on the polished-slag bench said. "In the long run, the actual construction will go faster if we spend the time to get the infrastructure in place." A sigh. "And even the… fourth Project will require a good deal of preliminary groundwork. We are going to miss Dr. Takashi very badly, as the years go by. I am more for the crystals and wafers and wires, me; he was the instruction set genius."
"Yes." He looked aside at Professor Pedro de Ribeiro: a vigorous-looking forty-five, with the usual Imperial Brazilian goatee in pepper-and-salt and an impeccable white linen suit; the cane and gloves were, the American thought, a little much. Very competent man, but… "I'd have thought that was less so for the final Project than for the rest of the New America enterprises. It's basically a set of compinstructions, isn't it?"
"Nao." De Ribeiro's English was impeccable, but it slipped now and then. "I have been thinking much on this matter, since I was contacted… and have concluded that we must almost reinvent the art of information systems here, if we are to accomplish what we wish." He rested his hands on the silver head of his cane and leaned forward. "Abandon our assumption that because we have always done things one way, that is the inevitable path. Another legacy of the struggle with the Domination… Tell me, Senhor Lieutenant Colonel, what would you say to the idea of writing compinstruction procedures on a perscomp?"
