-23-
The following few days were relatively uneventful. Marvin’s control over the ship improved every hour. By the third day after the cyborg attack, he could hit moving targets with the gravity-weapon and we were gliding on course toward the ring.
It was the last ring. The ring that led to Sol.
Just thinking about that gave me a little thrill inside. Really, no one who hasn’t left Earth behind for years can appreciate how homesick space can make you. It’s worse than solitary confinement, in a way. Out in space, everything is slightly wrong. There are plenty of odors, but they all stink—and even the stink has a undefinable wrongness to it. There are no fresh breezes as good as a mountain pine scent, or a beach wind. The skies, even if they are blue, aren’t the right shade of blue. And no planet seems to tug with a gravity that matches what you know in your bones to be right.
I met with my officers and planned the final assault as best we could. The core members included were Captain Sarin and Commodore Miklos, who had recovered completely from cyborg venom. Gaines was there too, representing the marines. Marvin was too busy flying the ship, and I knew Kwon would be out of his depth, so I left them at their stations.
“So,” I said, smiling at each of them in turn, “before we begin, are there any updates you’d like to give me? What reports do we have of Imperial activity?”
“Very little since the cyborgs made their move, sir,” Miklos said. “Actually, they are being rather quiet. It surprises me. I’d expected them to challenge us by now. I’d imagined Crow or one of his lackeys would transmit a dire warning, telling us we were moving into their space and that proceeding would amount to a declaration of war.
I chuckled. “That does sound like Crow’s style. Why hasn’t he done it?”
“Maybe they don’t even realize we’re here,” Jasmine said.
“No, I don’t believe that. We’re being watched. The Imperials laid these cyborg eggs out here to stop invaders. They must have probes beaming back reports. But still, they haven’t challenged us. They haven’t flown a single ship out here to do so much as flip us the bird.”
“Maybe he’s hoping we’ll go away,” Major Gaines suggested. “This is technically neutral territory.”
I pointed a finger at him, and shushed the others.
“That’s it,” I said. “Gaines nailed it. They’re hoping we’re fighting with this big ship and that we’re self-absorbed. Why mess with us if we aren’t messing with them? They’re weak, and rebuilding as fast as they can. They got a good look at our fleet strength and decided to take a pass. Alpha Centauri is no-man’s land. At this point, we could turn around and fly home and no one would say a word about it.”
I looked at the group, taking their measure. A few, in particular Miklos, seemed to think that retreating might be a pretty good idea.
I shook my head slowly. “That’s not going to happen. We’re here, and we have the best relative advantage we’re ever going to get. We’re pressing the attack.”
After that announcement, the planning began in earnest. Not even Miklos mentioned calling the whole thing off. As much as he didn’t like the thought of losing ships, I believe he’d been traumatized by the cyborgs. They made it clear Earth was not helpless, that they were still gearing up for war. Who else could they fight, other than Star Force? On the chain of star systems, we were between them and the rest of the universe.
“Let’s do this by the book, sir,” Miklos said. I thought there might be a hint of pleading in his voice, but I wasn’t sure.
“Lay out your plans, Commodore.”
The table lit up under our elbows.
“As you can see, we are here, about sixty hours out from the last ring. We can’t increase our velocity because this monstrous ship only goes so fast. If the ring was closer to the central star—well anyway, we have sixty hours to go. I recommend the standard missile barrage be fired through the ring right before we arrive. Then, we can at least be certain there will be no mines to encounter when we first break our way into the Solar System.”
Everyone glanced at me, checking my reaction. I nodded and said nothing.
“I think we want Phobos to go through the ring first, followed by the rest of the fleet.”
I watched expectantly, but Miklos shrugged.
“That’s about it,” he said. “Really, we can’t plan a battle with an enemy force we have yet to lay eyes on. We could place a thousand ships there and do a pretend battle with them, but in reality I have no idea as to their numbers or fleet configuration.”
“So you just want to wing it?” I asked.
“I thought that might please you, Colonel.”
It didn’t please me, and it wasn’t like Miklos. I wondered if something was up. He always had elaborate plans. I frowned at the screens and slowly nodded. I thought I had his angle: he had a plan, but he wasn’t going to show it to me yet. If he showed me his plan now and asked for approval, I could say no. But in the heat of battle, he could present it, and I might well go forward with it without editing.
“All right,” I said, “I’m not giving you an A for effort, but I’m in agreement with what you’ve presented so far. Now, let’s go over our ship strength for the battle—presuming there is one. How do we defend Phobos?”
They all looked at me in surprise.
“Defend Phobos?” asked Miklos as if he had perhaps not heard me correctly. “I was not under the impression this ship needed a special defensive arrangement. We already have a battalion strength marine unit stationed here, and about a hundred laser turrets on the hull. Not to mention miles of rock for a hull.”
The others chuckled, but I didn’t.
“Let’s assume they have more cyborgs—lots more. They got down to the surface before, and they will do it again. When they come here in strength, they’ll take the delicate machinery on the nose area apart, disabling the gravity weapon again. A few thousand of them could overwhelm my marine contingent and disable the entire ship.”
“Sir,” Miklos said, squirming. “I don’t know what you want us to do. We can’t bring our own ships in close to provide cover. If we do, they will be damaged by the defensive gravity-field if it was fired, which renders it useless. If they stay out of range, they can’t shoot down incoming invaders.”
“I’m not suggesting we encircle Phobos with ships. I’m suggesting we place more marines here. And more turrets.”
There was some grumbling at that. Gaines finally spoke up.
“My forces are in space for a reason, sir,” he said. “A major element of our offensive force has been the ship-assaulting marine. Every transport has specialists aboard for this purpose. We can—”
“How many?” I asked.
“Excuse me, Colonel?”
“How many of your marines are trained for attacking ships?”
“Well…all of them, actually. But about two thousand of them specialize in such tactics.”
“Centaurs, mostly?”
“Yes sir. With human officers leading the units in most cases. We’ve found the Centaurs tend to get excited and charge enemy ships if they are led by Centaur officers.”
“Right,” I said, thinking of several suicidal charges I’d witnessed in the past. “Okay. We’ll leave forty percent of our ground forces in space, spread out among the carriers, transports and cruisers. That way they can launch a spaceborne attack from many platforms if they’re needed. But I want most of your ground-pounders on Phobos. I don’t want to chance losing the ship.”
There was quite a bit of complaining after that. I didn’t really listen. I signaled Jasmine, and she deftly rearranged the positioning of the ground forces on the map. They were mostly inside Phobos’ belly before she was done.
“I’m not sure why you want to commit so much of our ground forces to Phobos, Colonel,” Miklos complained.
His fingers worked, and he kept frowning at Captain Sarin. I could tell he wanted to move the ground forces back onto his ships.
“Because it’s the key to our attack. If Earth has serious defenses—and we would be fools to assume otherwise—Phobos is the one weapon they can’t handle. The ship outranges them with a weapon they probably don’t understand. Even more importantly, it’s terrifying to behold.”
They looked at me with eyebrows riding high. No one seemed to get the significance of what I’d said.
“Look,” I said, “we’re talking about invading and conquering a world. We have to look scary to do that. If we want Earth to surrender, if we want the local national governments to pull their support from the Imperials, they have to be afraid of us. They have to fear us more than they fear Crow.”
“Why can’t they like us more than they like Crow?” asked Jasmine. “Aren’t we here to liberate them? To free Earth?”
Major Gaines jumped in before I could answer. “The Colonel is right,” he said. “I’ve dealt with people in such situations. They will be shocked, and fear will be their first response. That’s just where we want them. We want them uncertain. We want them to hesitate, to hold back.”
“Just one more question, Colonel,” Miklos said.
I waved for him to talk and get it over with.
“If this ship, Phobos, is so key to our victory, what were you planning to do at this point before the Blues built it?”
He had me there. I looked around, and they all knew it. I shrugged.
“I would have thought of something,” I assured them.
There was some further argument, but not much. Jasmine’s redistribution of the ground forces stuck. Within hours, troops began flowing down onto Phobos in great numbers.
The huge ship’s outer hull now bristled with weapons and equipment. We were dependent on the Blue’s gravity drive to fly it, but even without their primary weapon it was a powerful addition to the fleet.
We had loads of ideas on how to improve it as well. One obvious one was to drill another, broader shaft all the way to the central chamber from the surface. This shaft would function as a launch tube. Miklos’ eyes lit up at the idea of storing thousands of fighters and dozens of landing craft within the protective shell of the ship.
But we didn’t have time for that much drilling.
“The enemy has already seen this ship and scouted it with cyborgs,” I told them on the last day, the final twenty hours before we hit the ring to Sol. “We have to assume they have a good idea of what’s inside the ship, and how it operates. The time to strike is now, before they can adapt their defenses to the new threat.”
On this point, I had agreement. Not everyone liked it, because they all had their pet ideas on building up for the battle, but they could not argue with the idea that the enemy was out there, building up just as furiously as we were.
I now operated out of Phobos myself. We had constructed an excellent command center near the original control systems, and we had gained at least partial control over the weapons. We could fire the big area-effect weapon to knock out missiles and the like without a problem. The long-range weapon, however, hadn’t been perfected yet. We’d imploded a number of dummy targets and passing asteroids to experiment. At ranges over a million miles, we usually missed. I suspected that our control system wasn’t as perfectly sensitive as the analog one that Tolerance used. That dead cloud’s dexterity had been amazingly precise.
The more we learned about the interface, the more I was impressed by it. Most of the push buttons were in fact sensory-feedback. By nudging themselves slightly in various patterns, the hundreds of buttons formed a collective image of the universe outside. They gave anyone touching all of them and sensing their fractional shifts a view of the surrounding space, displaying for a creature like Tolerance information concerning targets and ranges. Fortunately, we didn’t have to work with that part of their technology. Just aiming the ship and the primary cannon around was enough, using our own sensor technology.
“Have we got a full charge, Marvin?” I asked, coming on duty after a full set of tests were completed.
“Yes, but my control is still lacking in refinement for long range targets. I can’t hit a ship the size of a fighter—and missiles are still out of the question.”
“That’s all right,” I said. “We’ll reserve your hammer for the biggest targets. In fact, that’s what I think we’ll call it—the hammer.”
“Dramatic, sir.”
“Thanks, I like it too.”
I stood on the open deck of Phobos beneath a tangle of tentacle-like nanite arms that interacted with the original control boards. We’d move equipment from the fleet to set up the new command center here. I would have liked to have compartmentalized the interior of the huge ship into smaller zones and maybe even pressurize them with bulkheads, but there simply wasn’t enough time.
Miklos came to me about seven hours before we hit Sol with a new idea shining in his eyes.
“What have you got, Nicolai? Have the Imperials said anything yet?”
“Still silent, sir. But I do have a possible solution for our decompression problems.”
“Let’s hear it.”
What we’d been worried most about was the possible catastrophic depressurization of the central chamber. It was so large that a big enough hole into space would suck out our crewmen and possibly even our control systems.
“We’ll put up smart metal bubbles, sir. Here, and over the encampment that encircles the exit.”
We’d set up a shanty town of bricks from the troop ships all around the single shaft to the outer hull. Much of my marine ground force was stationed there, ready to sally out and do battle on the surface or in space itself.
“Hmm,” I said, looking around. “We won’t be able to see much of the interior if we do that. The bubble will be opaque.”
We’d managed by this time to pump all of the noxious, corrosive mists out of the central chamber and fill it with breathable air. But it was thin air, and not recommended for human consumption yet. We only had so many gas production units.
“I have a solution for that, too,” Miklos said proudly.
I followed him to where he’d begun work on his smart metal dome. In the middle of it was a command table. Marvin followed us out of curiosity.
The table was exposed to the interior of the big ship. It was strange, being in an open space this big. It was like being on a planet—but you could tell you were enclosed. I felt like a mouse on the concrete floor of an empty warehouse.
Miklos had surrounded the command table with what looked like a slurry of melted solder mixed in with hexagonal panes of ballistic glass. As I watched, he tapped a sensitive part on the writhing mess of nanites. They instantly reacted, popping up like one of those dome tents that always gave me fiberglass splinters on camping trips. As they wriggled and unmelted upward, forming walls around us, I was reminded of watching a metal candle melt in reverse. It was impressive.
“Not bad,” I said, walking around the structure and looking in through the foot-wide windows.
“This is a small mock-up, of course. We’d have to build larger panes. A full control room would require a hundred barrels or so of nanites.”
I made a pained sound. “That’s a lot of production, Commodore.”
“Come on inside, Colonel.”
I looked, and there was a hatch-like door. It wasn’t too sturdy. Once we were in there, it felt like you could pop the whole thing with a sharp stick.
“I assume you’ve done the math on this?” I asked. “It will hold up under depressurization?”
“I helped in that area,” Marvin said suddenly, appearing at the entrance. He squeezed inside, making it uncomfortably close.
“Ah-ha,” I said. “So, you are in on this too, Marvin? I should have known. Let me guess: you became bored with figuring out how to fine tune the weapons and drive systems.”
“The essentials of the alien interface are all documented, Colonel. We already have brainboxes that are as good at operating them as I could be.”
“Uh-huh. I don’t believe that for a moment. You got bored. But, I’m still liking this. If you’re telling me we can use it to enclose a bridge area, I’m willing to go with it. There is a makeshift feel to it all, but I didn’t give you much time to come with something solid. Hell, I didn’t authorize this project at all.”
Miklos cleared his throat and Marvin floated cameras around both of us.
“Sir? Do we have your approval to go forward with this project?”
“You were planning on doing something similar for the brick village near the shaft to the surface, right?”
“Yes, but that would take more time and nanites.”
I nodded. “Forget it then. Just build this one small dome for a bridge. Can you get the dome up and safe before we hit the ring?”
“Yes,” Marvin said, answering for him. “Absolutely.”
“Then you two are on a mission. Do it.”
You would have thought I’d given two kids the keys to the candy store. They were both out of there and trotting toward the nanite supplies less than a minute after I gave them the okay.
I walked out of the dome, touched it in a sensitive spot, and watched as it collapsed. I thought to myself that I’d have to make sure the thing could identify Star Force personnel when it took commands. It wouldn’t do to have an invading enemy drop our tent on our heads.