I turned as Will popped back in. “How’s it going in the Bellerophon?”
He gave me a sickly smile. “You wouldn’t want to be in the cargo bays with the humans. Neil and Herschel are taking care of it as best they can. Imagine roamers running around with vacuum cleaners in their claws…”
The unexpected image made me smile, but the levity only lasted a moment. Constant updates from the battle brought me back to reality.
“We’re being slowly pushed back, Will. And I think they’ve detected the Bellerophon. It looks like they’re trying to maneuver some Death Asteroids to get a clear shot at Earth.”
“At Earth, or at the Bellerophon?”
“Good question. I guess I don’t actually know. Although I can’t see them figuring out what we’re doing, from this distance.”
“Well, either way, let’s see if we can keep them busy.” Matching actions to words, Will marched over to the status displays. He pointed to the deployment graphic. “They don’t care about zapping us, of course, but they need to have a clear shot with none of their own forces in the way. That means no Others’ defenders between the Death Asteroid and Earth. How can we exploit that?”
“Kill them a lot?”
Will smirked at me. “Can you be more specific?”
“Hmm…” I thought for a moment. “We haven’t been making any use of inert rail gun ammo. Let’s unload a continuous salvo at the Death Stars that are exposed.”
“That will have zero effect, Bill. They’re too big.”
“And they’ll know that, and they’ll dismiss the attack. And about five seconds in, we start interspersing ballistic nukes with the cannonballs. That will have an effect.”
Will grinned, and turned to issue orders.
For a wonder, it worked. Six Death Stars went up in nuclear fireballs before the Others decided to take the attack seriously. They split their attention between irradiating the Earth and irradiating our forces. Kind of a good news, bad news thing.
“They just got off a zap at Earth or the Bellerophon,” one of the monitoring Bobs announced. Thor, I think, although I was having trouble keeping track by this point.
“Can you get a good estimate of the target coordinates?”
Silence for a moment, then, “Yes.”
“Inform the Bellerophon of any outgoing zaps in their direction. They might be able to react.”
“Ten four. Whups! Two more zaps. This is heating up.”
I turned to Will. “We’re not keeping them busy enough. If they zap the Bellerophon, this is all for nothing.”
Will thought for a moment, then gave orders. “Turn all our lasers, particle weapons, and spikes—every last one—on this group of Death Asteroids. Aim for the grids, to the extent that you can. And keep up with the cannonballs and nukes.”
“That’s going to weaken our overall defense, Will.”
“I know, Bill.” He shrugged. “But if we lose the Bellerophon, like you said, none of the rest of it really matters.”
Bobs shifted their focus immediately. The area around the Death Asteroids began to look like a Star Wars battle scene, at least on the displays. At the distances we were working with, and in vacuum, the reality was less visually dramatic.
We weren’t able to completely stop the Death Asteroids. They got off several more zaps, and Thor faithfully reported the coordinates to the Bellerophon. But we were definitely bothering them, and a couple of the zaps went extremely wide, to the point that we considered scanning for something we might have missed.
Then, success. Two nukes managed to float in close enough at almost the same time. Twin explosions saturated the cameras for several seconds. When the view cleared, the last of the Death Asteroids attempting to zap the Earth were gone. A cheer went up from all the Bobs present.
Will grinned at me. “It’s not victory yet, of course, but at least we can turn our resources back to the main push. How’s that going, by the way?”
“We’re still being pushed back, Will.” I shook my head. “And we’re running out of options.”
Will came over to look at the status monitors.
“Crap. Well, maybe we can get back on top of it, now. I’ll go check with the other groups, if you’re good here for now.”
I nodded, but I wasn’t hopeful. We might, once again, be depending on a Hail Mary play. Which, by the way, hadn’t worked out, last time, in Delta Pavonis.
Running
Herschel
April 2257
Sol
We watched on the monitor as the last three transports flew past the main cargo doors into the corridor. The pilots were pushing it, and would probably have some turbulence to deal with inside. Neil started closing the doors before the transports had even cleared the entrance. I waited until they were sealed, then punched it as hard as I dared.
The Bellerophon rose majestically through the atmosphere. Air turbulence was barely detectable, and dropped off quickly. As soon as we were above atmosphere, I maneuvered to put the Earth between us and the battle. Then I gave it every ounce of juice available. We shot up into a powered orbit at almost 3 G.
Zap coming your way. One of the death asteroids unloaded. Thirty seconds. Coordinates follow.
I examined the incoming data and did a right-angle turn. At this range, the zap would be fairly narrow, and I should be able to get outside its cone of effect with little effort. I was more concerned with the number of death asteroids that might still be able to send zaps our way. If they bracketed me, we’d be done.
Two more zaps.
This set comprised a coordinated attack. The first was easy to dodge, as it was slightly behind me, but the obvious move would place me right square in the middle of the second one. Not a bad strategy at all, I admitted to myself. Except that with SCUT comms, I knew what was coming.
I dodged in a random direction, and smiled to myself as I imagined the Others’ gunnery crew grinding their teeth-equivalents in frustration. Then I lost the smile as I realized that I’d just confirmed for the Others that we had FTL communications. I fired off a quick text to Bill, pointing that out. I didn’t know if the Others might be able to come up with a strategy based on that datum, but best to have it out in the open.
Another zap. I think this one will graze the Earth.
“Oh, not good. Neil—”
“On it.” Neil frantically ran calculations. Then he turned to me, fear written all over his face.
“Hersch, this one’s going to hit.”
“The Earth?”
“Cuba.”
“Cuba? But they’re—”
Neil nodded. “Still there. We aren’t scheduled to pick them up for another hour.”
“How long?”
“Twenty-eight seconds, now.”
I stared at Neil for a couple of milliseconds. A hundred and fifty thousand people currently made Cuba their home. There was no chance to do anything at all, not in that amount of time. “So they’re…”
“As good as dead.”