“Affirmative,” Colonel Campbell says after a brief pause. “Have Murphy lead the way. Indy out.”
The colonel motions for the comms officer to cut the channel. Then he folds his arms in front of his chest and looks around in the CIC.
“You heard the man. Lay in the course and bring up the reactor.”
He turns to me and lowers his voice.
“Mr. Grayson, go check in with our SI detachment. Make sure they’re not too far from their armor or weapons when we dock wherever it is they’re going to have us dock. In fact, tell Lieutenant Gregory I want the whole SI squad in battle rattle before we arrive.”
“Aye, sir.” I turn on my heel and head for the CIC’s exit hatch.
Meeting up with other surviving fleet units and finding out that Earth is still human real estate should have been a joyous occasion, but the distant dread I’ve been feeling since that first terse radio contact with Aegis has only gotten stronger.
CHAPTER 9
When Indy and her chaperone destroyer are close enough to Earth for the optical gear to pick up our home planet, there are quite a few more people in the CIC than usual. It seems like anyone with even a weak excuse to be in Indy’s nerve center right now has chosen this time to do so. Even Dmitry is up here with me, standing by the side of the CIC pit and leaning against the waist-high safety railing.
“There she spins,” Major Renner says when the camera feed from Indy’s front sensor array shows the familiar blue-and-white sphere, or at least the half of it currently illuminated by the sun. As always, Earth is mostly cloud covered, but there are patches of clear skies. I can spot a chunk of what looks like the eastern coast of Australia and the sunlight reflecting off the South Pacific beyond. We’re still too far to spot spaceship traffic, but I can see the space stations in their orbits, each the size of a small city: Independence, Gateway, the SRA’s Unity, and the half dozen stations from the Europeans, Africans, and Australians I can’t ever tell apart without consulting a recognition manual. I see Luna in the distance as well, and the knowledge that I may be within radio range of Halley again is almost making me forget the anxiety of the strange reception.
“Indianapolis, contact Independence control for approach handoff,” Murphy’s CIC sends. Our comms officer sends back his acknowledgment to Murphy, which hasn’t exchanged ten words with us other than navigational instructions since we teamed up for the run back to Earth.
“And good riddance,” Major Renner says. “Comms, hail Independence and put them on speaker.”
“Aye. You’re on for Independence.”
“Independence Control, this is NACS Indianapolis on Earthbound approach. Request vectors and permission to dock.”
“Indianapolis, Independence Control. Decelerate to seven kilometers per second and enter approach pattern three-one-three Alpha. Stand by for terminal docking guidance.”
“Independence, decelerate to seven K per sec and enter three-one-three Alpha,” Major Renner confirms. Then she picks up the handset for the 1MC.
“Attention all hands, this is the XO. All departments, prepare the ship for docking. We are in the pattern. Arrival in nine-zero minutes.”
To our starboard, NACS Murphy keeps pace with us, as if they want to make sure we’re not going to skip the prescribed course at the last moment and go romping around unsupervised in our home space. Whatever the reason for the front-door escort, it’s pretty clear that our unexpected appearance in the solar system hasn’t exactly overjoyed whoever is left in charge here.
I step to the back of the CIC, away from the holotable everyone in here is watching intently, and take out my borrowed PDP. We have line of sight to the big comms relay above Luna that serves as the hub for most military data traffic from and to Earth, and I am anxious to let the system synchronize my device and maybe catch up on three months’ worth of backlogged messages from Halley and my mother. But as I get onto MilNet, the connection just hangs. My PDP can see the network, but the update operation goes at the speed of a pedestrian stroll in the middle of a New Svalbard winter. I’ve never seen the data synchronization take more than a minute, not even from the far side of the asteroid belt, but after several minutes of furtive checking, the progress bar on my PDP screen has barely moved. Finally, after what seems like the tenth time I’ve pulled the PDP out of the pocket to look at the display, it reads “TIMEOUT ERROR—CONSULT NN ADMIN.” I suppress the urge to throw the useless little device against the armored bulkhead with great force.
No network, I think. I’ve never been in this part of the solar system—in visual range of Earth—without a good and solid MilNet link. It’s the communications lifeline of everyone in uniform. If MilNet doesn’t even work in Earth orbit, our comms infrastructure is profoundly screwed up.
The holotable plot updates with every minute we get closer to Independence. There are ships in orbit, but not nearly as many as usual. Several NAC and SRA fleet units are patrolling the space between Luna and Earth, but they’re tiny little task groups—pairs of frigates, lone destroyers, a gaggle of orbital-patrol craft. I don’t see any capital ships at all—no cruisers, no carriers, nothing bigger than the Blue-class destroyer that’s still shadowing us to our starboard. If this is what’s left to defend Earth, we’re not just scraping the bottom of the barrel. We’ve turned the barrel over and shaken out all the old crap inside.
Luna isn’t quite close enough for me to see the structures on the nearly airless surface, but I could shine the laser designator of my M-66C carbine and bounce the beam off the retroreflectors they planted on the surface when the old United States first stepped onto the surface a hundred and fifty years ago.
So close, I think. So damn close.
“All those empty docking berths,” Major Renner says. We’re in the approach pattern to our assigned berth, coasting parallel with Independence Station. “I’ve never seen it this bare.”
“Wonder if it’s the same over at Gateway,” I say. “There’s not much military traffic in orbit.”
“Not much, but some,” Colonel Campbell says. “But go ahead and find me any civilian traffic at all on the plot right now.”
I check the plot again and realize that Colonel Campbell is absolutely correct. Every ship in our scanner range right now is broadcasting a military ID. Most of the ships are NAC or SRA fleet units, but I also see a few EU ships, two or three African Commonwealth units, and a corvette from the SAU. I don’t see any civilian traffic at all—no corporate transports or refinery ships shuttling ore and personnel back and forth between Earth and the colonies, no research ships heading out for deep-space exploration, not even low-orbit passenger flights.