I’d spent a fascinating seven months, examining and cataloguing the biologies of Romulus and Vulcan. All my observations, every report, every image, had been uploaded to the space station and forwarded to Bill and onward to Sol. Drones had quartered the system and identified every pocket of ore worth bothering with. I’d left an autofactory and drones, which would continue to refine raw resources, pending the arrival of colonists. Or aliens, or maybe another probe. With that thought in mind, I’d also supplied a squad of busters. The station AMI had a profile of Medeiros and orders to ram on sight.
I decided I didn’t want to build a batch of Bobs here. Any colonists would need the resources more than me, and anyway I wasn’t sure if I wanted to be bothered. Hadn’t really worked out all that well for Bob-1.
I took my time, examined all the local stars, and decided on 82 Eridani. It was a good prospect, and not too long of a trip.
I squirted off a final report, indicating my intentions, and took a final look at the system representation in the holotank. Then I put on On the Road Again, full blast, and fired up the SURGE drive. In the village below my airship, French peasants cursed at me.
Riker – April 2157 – Sol
Speed is the essence of war. Take advantage of the enemy’s unpreparedness; travel by unexpected routes and strike him where he has taken no precautions.
… Sun Tzu, Art of War
We came into the solar system at 5% of C, decelerating at a steady 2.5 g. We had carefully calculated our trajectory and approach speed so that we appeared to be arriving from Epsilon Eridani. A projection forward would have us pass very close to the sun, still moving at about 0.1 C.
We had chosen our approach vector after much deliberation. We needed something that posed a threat to the Brazilians, but that would allow them to intercept us. A course that performed a slingshot around the sun would allow the incoming Heaven vessels to emerge on the far side with a huge advantage in velocity and an unpredictable vector. The Brazilian vessels would not be able to simply sit and wait for us to come around.
Well, that was the theory.
We hoped that we could draw all six Brazilian probes into the pursuit.
I sat in my ready room, nervously watching the telemetry. We had just passed the point where the Brazilians would have detected our fusion signatures, allowing for light-speed lag. In another six hours, it would be impossible for them to intercept us. If the Brazilians decided to stand and fight instead of pursuing, we would have to consider withdrawing. A straight-up toe-to-toe duke-em-up was not to our advantage.
An hour passed before we saw movement. I had briefly experimented with having my VR self actually sweat, but had given it up as a human experience I really didn’t need to relive. We let out whoops when four of the fusion signatures began to pull away from the asteroid line.
“Four isn’t six,” I said, “but we have a lot better chance against two in a face-off.”
“Assuming we can knock off the first four,” Homer added.
“Mmm. Nothing’s ever a sure thing, I guess.”
It would take ten days to reach perihelion in our race around the sun.
***
“It’s time.”
I looked up at Homer’s announcement. He looked back at me expectantly.
“Okay, let’s do it. Guppy, launch the busters.”
[Aye]
The floating display depicted the Heaven-2 launching busters, spaced a few seconds apart, directly aft. The rail gun had been designed into the version-2 Heaven ships so that items could be launched fore or aft, with an impetus of hundreds of g’s. Each launch left the ship in momentary free-fall while the SURGE drive powered the rail gun, but we hoped that, at this distance, the Medeiri wouldn’t be able to detect the momentary blip in deceleration.
The busters would fall far enough back to be behind the Brazilian ships when their trajectory brought them in behind us. With their reactors off, running on stored power, the busters would be undetectable unless the enemy deliberately did a focused SUDDAR sweep in that direction.
***
The Brazilian ships had just pulled in behind us, as their trajectory merged with ours. I examined the diagram floating in the middle of my VR. The interactions were complex. We were decelerating at 2.5 g while we tried to make a slingshot maneuver around the sun; the Brazilian ships were accelerating at 2 g while trying to get close enough to us to lock and launch missiles, without going so fast that they were forced into a higher orbit. Meanwhile, the busters floated silently behind the Brazilian ships in free fall but with a greater velocity and no deceleration, therefore gradually closing in. The busters had to get as close as possible before they turned on their reactors, and we wanted all the action to happen on the opposite side of the sun, invisible to the two Brazilians who were still shepherding asteroids.
Finally, the Brazilians acted. Each ship launched a missile. The missiles, as feared, were SURGE-equipped and shot toward us with monstrous acceleration.
[Contact in 45 seconds]
“Order the trailing busters to attack.”
[Aye]
A tooltip went up on the hologram indicating that the order had been sent. Within seconds, eight data points lit up as the busters’ fusion reactors came online. The Brazilians reacted immediately, launching a wave of missiles to aft.
“Well, here’s where things get real,” Homer said.
I sensed the millisecond blips as my rail gun launched busters aft to intercept the incoming missiles. Homer and I launched four each. As they had been programmed to do, the busters paired up, one behind another, with each pair homing in on one incoming missile.
As the second wave of Brazilian missiles separated from the ships on the display, I could see that they had launched eight at the pursuing busters. According to our estimates, they should still have a total of four in reserve.
The pursuing busters went into a complex corkscrew pattern, designed to make it as difficult as possible for the defensive missiles to lock on.
Meanwhile, the Brazilian ships had split, forcing the attacking busters to select a target.
I had a few seconds of relative inaction, so I aimed a highly focused SUDDAR ping at one of the Brazilian ships. The return carried a gratifying amount of detail. Among other things, I saw that the ship was indeed out of missiles. Empty missile bays indicated that it had room for four. I sent an aside to Homer: “Sixteen missiles total, as expected.”
I turned my attention back to the approaching ordnance. Three of the Brazilian missiles each collided with a buster, annihilating both. The fourth missile managed to avoid the lead buster. However, in doing so, it left itself open to a broadside from the trailing unit of the pair. There was an explosion, and the fourth missile ceased to exist.
The multiple explosions saturated the video view and created a chaotic soup for radar and SUDDAR. During that brief interval of relative blindness, Homer and I fired eight cannonballs at full power.
When the image cleared, I could see that we’d destroyed all four missiles and still had four busters left. At the other end of the field, the eight Brazilian missiles had destroyed all eight pursuing busters.