The Catalyst

-Chapter 27-


“How long until impact?” I asked.
“Less than an hour, sir,” Gorski said. He was working the numbers on his tablet. “I’ll dump the projections to the main screen now.”
A mass of curved lines appeared on the screen. The lines representing the past were blue, and those predicting the future were yellow. Each line had a red sliver in the middle representing the missile, which crept a pixel closer every once in a while. The yellow lines were like the curved spines of an umbrella, and they arced in on my ship at the end of their paths from a wide variety of angles. I figured they’d been fired on such trajectories purposefully. They were not clustered up, but spread as widely apart as possible. By being spread out, we could not take out more than one at a time with any counterstrike. They would all converge at once in the final minutes, hoping to overwhelm our defenses. I nodded as I looked at the situation.
“It’s time,” I said. “Launch the drones.”
From racks we’d set up on the cruiser’s hull, sixteen counter-missiles were fired in rapid succession. An almost imperceptible shiver went through the ship with each salvo. Sixteen for sixteen. I didn’t like the odds. We had to have a hit in every single case. There was no room for error.
“Suggestions?” I asked my crew.
“We could start dodging,” Gorski said.
I shook my head. “No point,” I said. “We would only lose forward velocity and they would overtake us faster, leaving less time for our point defense cannons to pick any of them off.”
“But they might not hit us all at once if we changed course,” Gorski argued. “We could stagger the incoming attacks and have a better chance at shooting them down.”
I still shook my head. “I don’t think so. The Macros know what they’re doing. The missiles will home in and adjust their speed. Look at the pattern, they are interacting. There is some kind of AI in those things, coordinating them. What else have you got?”
“We could throw out more mines,” Major Sarin suggested.
I looked at her. “The enemy ship isn’t in our wake.”
“No,” she said. “I mean at the incoming missiles.”
I thought about it. “Could work,” I said thoughtfully. “They are moving too fast to allow the magnetics to home in, but they should still trigger and detonate if the targets get close enough. Even a near-miss should knock out a missile. Let’s try it. We’ll have the upper arms throw a dozen or so at every missile, into the probable cone of approach.”
I knew it was another long shot, but I figured it gave us something to do. We laid the mines over the next twenty minutes and were back at the board again in no time. When counting down the minutes to your likely destruction, I found that time didn’t crawl; it seemed to move very quickly indeed.
“The Macro cruiser is firing now, sir,” Major Sarin said.
I jerked my head back to the screen. Four new red objects appeared. Their trajectories were quickly assessed and plotted by the computers. I was not surprised to see the yellow streak projecting their course reached out ahead of us. They were aiming for where we would be if we continued on our present course.
“Gorski, give me some idea if evasive action will help, here,” I asked.
“I doubt it,” he said. “Those new missiles are too close. Since the cruiser is shadowing us, these projectiles started off matching our speed and course. Every ounce of thrust adds on top of that, bringing them closer. They have plenty of time and fuel to change course and outmaneuver us if we try to evade now.”
“So, we have to shoot them down,” I said.
“That, or take the hit.”
“New information sir, these missiles are different than the others,” Major Sarin said in her typically officious tone.
I looked at her flatly. I had to give her high marks for professionalism. We had twenty alien missiles chasing us at this point, and she still maintained a phone operator’s demeanor. I turned my eyes back to the screen. The new missiles seemed to have grown somewhat larger. The red contacts were probably two pixels wide now, and at least four pixels long.
“Let me guess, they are big missiles,” I said.
“Yes sir. The data indicates these four are different. They are at least five times the size of the other missiles. They are also moving more slowly.”
I stared at the board, thinking to myself I’d been outmaneuvered. The first sixteen missiles had been countered by my drones—hopefully effectively. But the cruiser had waited to see what I would do about them, and then countered my drones with four more super-missiles of their own. Did nuclear warheads really need to be that much larger? I began to wonder what the payload could be on these new weapon systems.
“Run a check against all past weapons logged on cruisers. What could these things be? Have we seen them before?”
Major Sarin paused, frowning. She didn’t seem to have an answer for me.
“I don’t think so, sir,” Gorski responded after glance toward Sarin.
I rubbed my chin. “It doesn’t make sense,” I said. “They should have at least eight nukes aboard, just as the other cruisers did.”
“We’ve never seen their cruisers in a ship-to-ship fight before,” Gorski said. “We’ve only seen them in action when they were pounding the Worms and the Chinese.”
“Why would this ship be different?”
“Maybe the situation is different,” Gorski said.
I looked at him and nodded. “You are bucking for Major, aren’t you, Gorski? That’s got to be it. These bigger missiles are special somehow. Maybe they take some prep-time to fire. The other ships weren’t ready to launch them when we surprised them with the minefield. They just launched whatever they could and died. That’s a hint, at least.”
Gorski looked pleased with himself.
“Have we got time to build more drones to take out these monstrous new missiles?” I asked.
He tapped and calculated. His smile vanished as he concentrated. “If they maintain their speed and course, we could possibly get off one more shot. But we have to switch over production on both the factories immediately.”
“Better than nothing,” I said. “Major Sarin, take us on an evasive course. Turn away from the incoming missiles.”
“At our current velocity sir,” she said, “it will take a full day of acceleration to change our course sixty degrees.”
“How long do we have?”
“Less than two hours until the big ones reach us.”
I turned back to Gorski. “Well Captain, get to the factories and switch them back to drone production. I’ll give you all the time I can. If we can change course and get them all coming in directly behind us, I might be able to stop them in another way.”
I felt the ship shudder as it began pulling Gs in a new direction. The ship was attempting to turn, but like a race car going at top speed, mostly what we did was keep sliding forward. In a way, space made it harder to steer. With no friction or gravity to grab onto only the power of our engines could change our direction.
“Sir,” Major Sarin said. “I must point out that if we change course it will take us longer to get to our target ring and get out of this system. Getting out of here might be our only chance of survival against the cruiser.”
I thought about it, knowing she was right. The problem was we still had a full day’s ride to the next ring. I knew the ring represented at least temporary safety and getting to it first was also our best opportunity to nail the enemy cruiser by tossing out a load of mines into its face again. The enemy had to come through a tight region of space. Knowing that, we could dump mines out in a cloud right in its path on either side of the tunnel—or both.
“You’re right,” I told her finally, “but that won’t help us if we’re already dead. My orders stand.”
Major Sarin turned back to the screen without a complaint. I eyed her. Sometimes, the quiet, effective people around you were easy to overlook. I thought I should pay more attention to Sarin if we ever got back to Earth. She was a fine officer, and probably deserved a command of her own if we made it home.
A few minutes later, our drones reached the array of missiles trailing us. They had to make direct hits at incredible velocities to knock them out. We were all tense. No one spoke as the two lines met on the board.
“Three hits,” Sarin said, “one—no, two more.”
I dared to take a breath as paths blinked and vanished from the board. At least the drones were working.
“Seven hits,” she said.
Was that a hint of excitement I heard in her voice? I glanced up and saw the birth of a smile there. Yes, she was feeling it. Gorski was grinning. Others were pressing in around us now. I saw Kwon, and wondered how he had gotten the word. After all these hours spent waiting, the fight was on.
“It’s working,” Gorski said.
I waved his words away. “Don’t jinx it.”
“Sorry.”
“Eleven hits now,” Major Sarin said. Some of the tension had gone out of her voice.
Lines died away on the boards. We still had five missiles coming, however, not to mention the four big ones the cruiser had added to the party.
The countdown reached fourteen, and halted. “Two misses confirmed,” Sarin said.
“What happened?” I asked.
Gorski shrugged. “Maybe they realized the others were getting hit and dodged. There was very little time to adjust at those speeds for either party. There was some luck involved.”
I grunted unhappily. I had to wonder if he’d just written our epitaph. I thought it would fit well on my own tombstone: There was some luck involved.
I turned to Kwon. “It’s time you made yourself useful,” I told him. “Take all our little automated turrets we set up against the Worms and affix them to our tail section. Set the brainboxes to ‘paranoid’ and maybe they will get a lucky hit when these missiles come in. They should be useful against the big bastards coming in from the cruiser, too.”
“Sir?” asked Gorski, “can I make a suggestion?”
“Do it.”
“Maybe we should put all the armament up front, and turn and face the incoming barrage. We’ve got a lot more armor up there, and we don’t want these missiles to knock out our engines.”
I thought about it. I didn’t like it, as it would slow us down and give up on the evasion idea. I watched as the enemy weapons clicked closer. Space combat seemed different to me now, it was slower and more deliberate. I missed the days of massing with a fleet of Nano ships on a surprised enemy. The pixels advanced again, and I came to a decision. “Here’s what we are going to do: we’ll keep running as long as we can. We’ll fire newly built drones as we run at the last two light missiles. You hear that? I want them launched the moment after we build them.”
“That will be tight, sir,” Gorski said.
“I know, Captain. Go babysit the factories. Get those drones out if you have to perform a cesarean on them.”
“Yes sir,” he said, getting up and heading for the exit.
“Kwon,” I said, turning to the hulking man. He frowned worriedly. I looked around, seeing his expression mirrored on a dozen faces. They had been celebrating when the first missiles were knocked out, but anyone who could count knew there were six more we hadn’t touched.
“We’ll turn around at the last minute,” I said. “That will give us maximum time to build counter measures, and we’ll still have a shot at the missiles that get through our drones.”
“Where do I put the turrets then?” Kwon asked.
“Forward. Cluster them around the nose of the cruiser. We’ll turn when the missiles get close enough to hit and whatever gets by we’ll have to ride out.”
After he had left, Major Sarin spoke up: “Those payloads are going to be a lot bigger than the mines we dumped on them. I’m not sure how many hits we can take.”
“I know,” I said, “but it’s the best we can do.”
I stared at the four big, red bastards that were bearing down on us from the cruiser. They were moving much slower than the smaller missiles had been. “We’ll use the drones on the lighter, faster missiles. These monsters we’ll have to take out with our laser turrets up front. Any analysis on this new weapon system? Why are they bigger and slower?”
“Nothing, Colonel,” Major Sarin said. “They are metallic, with more weight and less thrust. The only new data I have is they have jets on their nosecones, too.”
“Like a ship?”
“I guess.”
“How long do we have?” I asked.
Sarin hesitated, tapping. “Twenty-nine minutes,” she said. Then she turned her head toward the hatchway and gave an odd little squeak of alarm.
I’d never heard such a sound out of her. I followed her eyes and saw Marvin walking toward us. His four wiry legs churned. His camera panned and zoomed in on Sarin.
“What is that?” Sarin asked.
“That’s my dog, Marvin,” I said, “I built him, sort of…actually, he pretty much built himself.”