Mech 2 Page 24

  Droad reviewed the target priority list. Each sighted asteroid was listed, along with its time until impact and kinetic force. The list was alarming. There were thousands of megatons of explosive damage sailing toward the planet.

  Droad walked over to the station of the ship’s chief gunnery officer. “I see the largest rocks are listed first, but have the shortest planned firing times. Could you explain that to me?”

  “Sir,” said the gunnery officer, glancing over at Beauchamp, who frowned at the big overhead screen ignoring them both. “The big ones we are going to try to nudge. If we can push them off course, we’ll waste less time and energy on them. The smaller ones we can completely blast down to marbles. The atmosphere will take care of the rest after that.”

  Droad nodded. “I see. I’m sorry if I seem overbearing. I’m not a micromanager by nature. But we are talking about whole cities here.”

  “I understand, sir.”

  “Proceed with the firing schedule. Asteroids first.”

  “Yes sir.”

  At a range of approximately one million klicks, the firing began. It took a few more minutes, but they finally got the optics right. A few smaller, targeting lasers fired jolts at the target, lighting it up. About seven seconds later, the beams the targeting lasers had fired bounced back. Three seconds out, three back. They had hit the target.

  The great gas tanks filled with hydrogen-fluoride. The deck crew had been issued black-out goggles, in case there was a light leak. Command didn’t want their men blinded by accident.

  The crewmen began to shout their orders to one another now, following their procedures.

  “Optical tracking.”

  “Check.”

  “Main tanks register optimal pressure.”

  “Check.”

  A siren went off. An electronic feminine voice which sounded overly calm told everyone near the bridge or any observation port to don their black-out goggles and stop walking, lest they bump into something.

  Droad already had his goggles on. He tugged at them until satisfied.

  “Capacitors fully charged. Release charge.”

  “Relays locked.”

  “Fire!”

  Unexpectedly, Droad felt a mild jolt of recoil. He pursed his lips and nodded, impressed. These were indeed powerful lasers. Their transference of energy was so intense that it caused a mild vibration through the steel hull. The light hit him as well. A greenish flare gushed up, then dimmed to a steady glow for several long seconds. The bridge crew continued their dialog.

  “Maintaining beam.”

  “Heat level 70%.”

  “Maintain.”

  “Heat level 90%.”

  “Reduce emission. Initiate shutdown and venting.”

  More noticeable than the recoil or the light was the resulting sound, which was a very high-pitched, singing noise. Droad wished they’d passed out earplugs to go with the blinding goggles, but he supposed making your crew deaf and blind for comfort wasn’t a great policy.

  Due to the distance out to the incoming rocks, it took a while to get reports back concerning the effectiveness of the strike.

  “Target hit.”

  A ragged cheer went up from the crew. Droad lifted his goggles. Everyone was smiling. He realized this was the first time the Zürich had actually blasted anything.

  “Target obscured due to dust burn-off. No report from optics, other than it was a hit.”

  “Radar shows course fractionally changed. Retargeting.”

  About two minutes after the first shot, the lasers flared again. After nine firings, the asteroid broke up and after analysis, one of the larger chunks had to be burned down further.

  Another cheer went up. There would be many that day, but they had hours of long work ahead.

  Droad was almost ready to retire after three hours. Fully thirty percent of the asteroids had been destroyed or diverted. Most of the major cities of Neu Schweitz no longer had death spinning down from the heavens toward them. Droad felt with each rock they eliminated that he could breathe more deeply, that his chest would allow in more air. He tried to force himself to relax, and it worked—partly.

  His com beeped then, and he activated it. Rem-9 was calling him.

  “Report, Captain.”

  “Sir, we have a problem.”

  “What? Where?”

  “Cargo deck J, sir. The new squad of mechs. They have been destroyed.”

  Droad blinked in thought. His tension returned with a jolt. All over his body, muscles that had been slowly relaxing tightened up painfully. “All of them?”

  “Yes sir.”

  “What the hell is—”

  “Sir, I sent the activation code to the squad members, none responded. None began to unpack themselves. I requested information from several dockworkers, they checked and said the packaging is destroyed, and the mechs inside them.”

  “Sabotage.”

  “It appears so, sir. I’m heading up to investigate. I’m taking my squad with me.”

  “No. I want you to order your squad to the armory. Tell them to fully arm and equip themselves. Every mech is to proceed from now on with an armed partner. All eight of them. Then post them at the critical systems locations we discussed earlier. The reactor, the main turrets, bridge and crew quarters. I’m not going to have this ship disabled by saboteurs or whatever they are.”

  “Yes sir. Relaying orders. Where should I post myself?”

  “Investigate the scene, then head up here to the bridge. You are my bodyguard again.”

  “Thank you, sir.”

  Droad smiled. Rem-9 had never been happy with any other duty.

  “There’s one more thing, sir.”

  “Talk.”

  “Zuna is missing.”

  “Zuna? Then someone is out to destroy all the mechs aboard? All right, execute your orders. Report anything significant.”

  Droad broke the connection.

  “Trouble?” asked Beauchamp, coming near.

  Droad filled him in.

  “Who is aboard my ship doing this?”

  “I really don’t know. Not yet.”

  “I was sure you were going to blame aliens,” said Beauchamp, sneering. “But I’ll tell you who it was. We’ve got a few Vlax aboard, as contractors. We never planned for them to launch with us, but you insisted we go immediately. I’ll take care of this.”

  Droad opened his mouth to stop him, but the words froze in his throat. He didn’t want Beauchamp indulging himself with a witch-hunt. But he couldn’t bring himself to stop the Commodore. The man could be right. Who knew? Maybe some Vlax had heard of the big wave of incoming rooks. Maybe they were the saboteurs. He couldn’t take chances with this ship. Millions of lives were at stake.

  Droad shut his mouth and nodded to the Commodore. Beauchamp went about his task with gusto. His teeth were clenched and a fanatical light played in his eyes. Droad watched with distaste. Quite possibly, innocent people were about to be abused. But he couldn’t think of any way around it. He wasn’t going to risk the Zürich.

  A klaxon warned him it was time to put his goggles on again. The ship quivered. Another bolt of light stabbed out into the ether and burned a cold stone that whirled toward them, toward the planet. Droad thought, what if they kept throwing stones? How long could they stand out here and play goalie?

  #

  Zuna was too big to hide in any normal sense of the word. She could, however, do some things that humans could not. She did not show up as living flesh on sensors, and she had no heartbeat. She did not breathe. Only a tiny, gurgling pump churned in her brain case, keeping nutrients flowing and oxygenating her cells. When she froze in place, she was nearly silent. In a ship full of thick steel modules, she was almost undetectable.

  She had found an open container compartment near cargo bay J. She hid inside, putting her sensory array against the metal walls of the compartment. Listening carefully, she could hear anyone entering the cargo bay. But unless the crew searched all of t
he containers, she could not be detected in her motionless, silent state.

  Outside the container was a scene of wanton destruction. She’d dug down into the packing of eight dormant mechs, chopping their brains to death before they could activate and defend themselves. Two dock workers unfortunate enough to discover her crimes had lost their lives as well. The hunting had been good. Each human who came to see what had befallen the last was easy prey.

  Like a spider in a hole, Zuna waited. Her bio-chemistry was very pleased. She should have thought of this before. She had been overly cautious. Why hunt humans when it was so much easier and more fruitful to lay a trap for them?

  #

  Droad was summoned back to the bridge. Beauchamp said they had something else incoming, ghostly traces on their long-range sensors.

  “What do we have, Commodore?” asked Droad.

  Beauchamp gave Droad a sour look. “Bogies. Unknown contacts about half a million klicks out.”

  “Well within range then. What do they look like?”

  “I’m not completely sure. They have a signature like—like blocks of wood. Or chunks of ice.”

  “Organic materials, then?”

  Beauchamp made a snorting noise. “Don’t get too excited. I doubt very much these are your aliens. Most likely, they are chunks of something from the Oort cloud. Ice, I’d bet. They have a considerable water content.”

  “And on the spectrometer? How dark are they?”

  Beauchamp shrugged. “They are indeed dark, pretty much black. But ice gets dirty out here, you know.”

  “And they have tails, I presume? You have satellites to get a good side-view. I’m sure mini-comets, this close to the Kale star, would have large plumes of melting vapor streaming out...”’

  “No, they don’t have any tails. Look, Droad, I don’t know what you are trying to say—”

  “Nothing at all, Commodore. But I want to see one of these things. Get me a visual up on the big screen, would you?”

  There wasn’t much to see. Black objects, noticeable mostly because they blocked out the star canopy behind them, hung like advancing shadows.

  Droad addressed the officer in charge of the sensory equipment. “How fast are they coming in?”

  “These things are coming in at about 100,000 klicks an hour, sir.”

  “Relative dimensions?”

  “What sir?”

  “Are they all the same size, Ensign?”

  “Ah, yes sir. About the same size.”

  “And how many are there?”

  “Over a hundred, sir.”

  Droad nodded, rubbing his face and eyeing Beauchamp, who glowered.

  “Oh, all right,” said Beauchamp. “They look like ships of some kind. Maybe the Vlax built something new.”

  “Possibly.”

  “Sir,” said the sensory Ensign. “The contacts are—they are changing course. They have fired jets.”

  “New heading?”

  “They are coming directly at us now, sir. At least most of them are.”

  “What?” squawked Commodore Beauchamp. “Plot firing solutions.”

  He turned to Droad and marched up to him. “Okay. You were right. I’m a big enough man to admit it. They are ships of some kind. They are some kind of stealth effort. I just didn’t believe the Vlax were capable of constructing such a fleet, you have to understand. I’ve greatly underestimated them, a terrible flaw in a commander, I know.”

  “Recriminations are hardly necessary, Commodore.”

  “No, no,” interrupted Beauchamp. “I don’t know how you knew, but maybe a fresh perspective is helpful. I still say they are crazy, these Vlax, but I’ve begun to comprehend their plan. If they have improved their rooks and built a new design of stealth vessel, they figured they would take out our fleet and make their killing move now. In fact, their actions against the asteroid belt make more sense now. They were probing our defenses, and found them weak.”

  “The question is, what are we going to do now?”

  “Hmm? We are going to blast them back into space, that’s what.”

  “There are over a hundred of them, Commodore.”

  “So what?”

  “At two minutes minimum cycling time on the primary lasers—that’s assuming no malfunctions—it will take several hours to destroy them all even if we do it in a single shot. Once we start firing at them they will begin evasive action.”

  In space battles at long range, small ships had one great advantage over large vessels—they could dodge out of the way. Radar took several seconds to reach out, locate an enemy and bounce back with the targeting information. Simply using passive optical sighting was faster, exactly twice as fast, but less accurate. Once the lasers fired, the beam took several seconds to travel the distance to the enemy vessels at this range. All together, small ships had about ten seconds to get out of the way. If a small ship used thrusters to dance about, they could easily cause enemy fire to miss.

  “What are you suggesting, Droad?” demanded Beauchamp. “This ship must survive the battle. We are all that stands in the way of the enemy fleet.”

  “A fleet that I’ve suspected all along.”

  “Self-aggrandizement is not becoming of you, Droad.”

  “I only wish to point out, that I now suspect we will lose this battle, somehow. I suspect this ship may well be lost in the fight. If that’s the case, we have to give the people of Neu Schweitz as much time as possible to evacuate the cities, to get to high ground.”

  “And your proposal is?”

  “Keep firing at the asteroids. We must destroy them first. When the unknown ships get close, perhaps we can take them out with our point-defense systems.”

  Beauchamp stared at him as if he had gone mad. His eyes bulged unpleasantly.

  “You suggest we don’t defend ourselves? You suggest we endanger this vessel, this last hope for the Nexus? Well, I won’t have it, Droad. I refuse to follow your advice in this instance. Now, kindly leave the bridge and leave the battle to professionals.”

  Droad stared at him for a heartbeat. Every ear on the bridge listened closely.

  “You have your orders, Commodore. Continue firing at the incoming asteroids. Do not deviate from the prioritized firing order.”

  Beauchamp sputtered, but Droad cut him off.

  “Further, I want you to ready every crewman for a possible ship-boarding attempt. If I know this enemy, they will attempt to take the Zürich, engaging us in close combat.”

  Breathing hard, Beauchamp marched off the bridge. Droad suspected he would be communicating loudly with Nexus Command. Let him, thought Droad. For now, he was in command and he wasn’t going to lose half the population of another world today.

  The big lasers sang again. Another blinding bolt of power streaked out, drawing a line through space to an incoming asteroid. The surface of the rock heated fantastically in each fraction of a second, causing it to fracture, vaporize and blast apart.

  The weaponeers reported a direct hit. They had blown the killer rock to rubble. A cheer went up from the crewmen. Droad allowed himself a small, tight smile.

  Internally, he wondered how Rem-9 was coming along with his investigation.

  Twenty-Five

  Loiza watched the battle between the Imperium and the Nexus with interest. Using passive sensors from her team of rooks, she had spent a long time decelerating behind a flock of asteroids. They were coming in on a base in the Alpha Belt, an area lightly defended. She had no doubt that if there had been even a single patrol ship in the area, it must have been called off to help with the battle back home. Her optical sensory officers saw flares from all over the Kale system, as the Nexus called for every ship to reinforce the homeworld.

  She watched the battle with moments of grim pleasure, but also with growing unease. The Imperium had clearly been winning at first. The Nexus patrol craft had all been destroyed by the altered rooks—that alone was amazing. But then the battleship appeared. Everyone on her com system gasped when
they saw it. There was no way all the Vlax put together could ever have stopped such a monstrosity. If the Nexus won, she knew they would turn the vessel on her outposts. The conclusion was forgone. The Vlax were to be subjugated no matter who triumphed.

  Worse, she now came to doubt her assumptions. She had been wrong. The Nexus hadn’t sent these monsters to Minerva or Garm. These were a greater enemy than that. They were true aliens, and they were clearly out to destroy her species.

  She put her faceplate against a bulkhead and closed her eyes. Hard plastic cut into her forehead, but she stayed that way. Individuals questioned her, she ignored them. Inside her spacer suit, she sweated and thought hard for minutes.

  Finally, she ordered her people to connect her with the battleship, with the Nexus. She had to do what she could.

  “This is Loiza, leader of the Vlax Romani of Minerva,” she said officially when the connection was open. They had managed to get through to the bridge of the ugly battleship. “Who speaks for the Nexus?”

  “I do,” said Droad, coming into view on their screens. “I’m Lucas Droad, operational commander of the Nexus space defenses.”

  He was not in military dress, but Loiza shrugged. The Nexus chose their own leaders. “I wish to tell you what you face.”

  She heard Droad order his com officers to record her transmission and relay it to Nexus Command. She did not care. The Vlax could only hope diplomacy would save them. She proceeded to inform Droad of the enemy, their position in Minerva and everything else they knew of the aliens.

  “I thank you for the intel,” said Droad sincerely. “Can we call a truce of sorts—for the good of our species?”

  Loiza smiled, for the first time. This was exactly what she had been hoping for. She had given him no details concerning her own strength, only the position of the enemy. The Nexus was hurting now, and they would be interested in alliances from any source.

  “Granted,” she said. “I’ll send you our data files now—everything we’ve got on these aliens. This new enemy trumps any misunderstandings between us.”

  “I agree,” said Droad.

  Loiza proceeded to request permission to land and resupply at the asteroid base she had planned to take for her own. Droad gave her the permission without hesitation. She was surprised, just how far up did this man’s authority go?