CHAPTER NINE
“Sublight in five minutes,” the astrogator warned, and Murphy nodded.
The admiral sat in his command chair on Ishtar’s flag bridge, watching Captain Lowe and his bridge crew on the main display as they went about the transition from wormhole space back into normal space. Faster than light carriers like Ishtar had plenty of internal volume, and some of that space was used to provide both a well-appointed combat information center and a comfortable flag bridge. Captain Lowe had invited Murphy to watch the current maneuver from Ishtar’s command deck, instead, and Murphy had appreciated the courtesy. Lowe was under no obligation to issue the invitation—he was Ishtar’s commanding officer, not Terrence Murphy—but Murphy had no desire to step on his flag captain’s toes, and so he had declined the offer.
In some ways, the flag bridge was an even better vantage point, anyway, because its displays were configured in tactical mode, watching a three hundred sixty-degree sphere around the ship. Not that there was an enormous amount to see at the moment.
Ishtar and her sisters had flipped and begun decelerating just over fifteen minutes ago. At the moment, their velocity—or, rather, their apparent velocity, by the standards of the rest of the universe—was a tad under six hundred times the speed of light and dropping rapidly as they decelerated at approximately twelve hundred gravities, but no one would have guessed it from the quiet efficiency of the FTLC’s bridge.
It was one of the ironies of naval service that the sublight parasites which did all the fighting were fuel-limited, had a maximum sustainable acceleration of only twenty gravities—0.19 KPS2—and that anything over a couple of gees was punished by the crushing grip of acceleration, whereas the enormous FTL carriers, accelerating or decelerating at eight hundred times that rate, required no reaction mass and actually needed spin sections to provide their personnel with a sense of gravity.
The Fasset drive, the key to interstellar travel, functioned by creating a modest-sized black hole…and falling into it. The exact mechanism was just a tad more complicated than that, but the analogy worked for a practical spacer. What actually happened was that the black hole was generated at the far end of a rigid but immaterial line of force—known as a Zadroga conduit after Lena Zadroga, Cesar Fasset’s research partner—projected from the drive fan at the very front of the ship’s hull. As long as that was all it did, nothing much happened. But if the Zadroga conduit collapsed, the ship was suddenly subject to the enormous gravitational field of its own black hole. It fell into it, accelerating at a very high rate, until it hit the second, permanent, and much shorter Zadroga conduit, which halted its fall. At which point the primary conduit reestablished itself, distancing the ship from the black hole once again, and the entire process repeated.
It all happened very, very quickly, and no one liked to think about what might happen if the second conduit failed. Fortunately, that never happened. Or, at least, no one it had happened to had come back to report on it.
A starship’s maximum acceleration rate was dependent upon both the mass of its black hole, which governed the maximum possible acceleration, and the repetition rate and length of its Zadroga conduits, which governed the time it actually spent accelerating. But the entire time that it was under acceleration, it was effectively in a state of freefall into the Fasset drive’s massive gravity well and its hull—and any parasites riding its racks—were in zero-gravity. Thus the need for crew quarters’ spin sections far larger than an FTLC’s organic crew might require. Most parasite personnel preferred to bunk aboard their own ships in the comfort of free fall, but they spent as much time as they could aboard their FTL motherships where they could function under the comfortable 9.8 meters-per-second gravity in which they had evolved.
It was fortunate that a Marduk-class FTLC’s 4.3-kilometer length and 286-meter beam provided ample length and diameter for very large spin sections.
As the ancient scientist Einstein had postulated, it was impossible for any object in normal space to exceed the speed of light. What Einstein hadn’t allowed for was a ship which could accelerate to ninety-nine percent of the speed of light very, very quickly with the equivalent of a small star stuck onto its nose to distort the space ahead of it.
The approach to the light barrier was spectacular as aberration and the Doppler effect took charge. The ever-contracting starbow drew farther and farther ahead, vanishing into the blind spot created by the Fasset drive, while a ship sped onward through the abyss. Until the transition to superlight chopped off even that like an ax. Then there was only wormhole space—no longer black, neither light nor dark, no stars, no moons, but simply nothing at all. An absence which no one cared to look at, and which actually sent some unfortunates into uncontrollable hysteria if they gazed upon it too long. And once it crossed that crucial threshold, a ship broke through into a subcontinuum where the rules of physics acquired some very strange subclauses.
For starters, the effective speed of light in wormhole space was far greater than in normal space, yet the maximum attainable velocity was limited by the balance between the relativistic mass of the starship and the rest—not the relativistic—mass of its Fasset drive’s black hole. The astrophysicists still hadn’t figured out precisely why that was, but they’d provided the math to describe it and the engineers had built the hardware to make it possible.
One consequence of the relationship between the starship’s and its black hole’s mass was that continuous acceleration eventually stopped increasing velocity and simply held it constant. Another was that reducing acceleration was the equivalent of decelerating on an ever steeper gradient. It was impossible to break back out of wormhole space and into normal space without actually decelerating; at some point, reduced acceleration simply equalized at a lower apparent supralight velocity. But if a ship actively decelerated, its velocity eventually dropped below the critical threshold once more and it erupted back into normal space at just under 0.99 c.
Wormholing was like crawling into a hole and pulling the hole in after you. Almost, at least.
For all intents and purposes a starship which had entered wormhole space was in its own private, vest-pocket universe. No one not in phase with it could interact with it in any way. But that didn’t mean someone else couldn’t crawl into the hole with it, because wormhole space was less a dimension than a frequency. If another ship could match relativistic velocity within fifteen or twenty percent, its wormhole space and yours were in phase. If the other fellow was a friend, that was fine. If he was an enemy, he could go right on trying to kill you. Fortunately, matching velocities that closely was extremely difficult unless the ships involved—like Ishtar and her consorts—actively cooperated.
Wormhole space was a handy way to cross the light-years, but it had a few military shortcomings. For one thing, any ship traveling faster than light ran blind. Gravitic detectors in normal space could detect the mammoth gravitational anomaly of a supralight ship at varying ranges—up to four or five light-months, for a really fast mover—but no one could see out of wormhole space into normal space. That was why it was advisable to make damned sure of course and turnover time before you went in, because you couldn’t make any astrogation sightings for course corrections in transit.
Of course, a starship didn’t have to accelerate into wormhole space. The Fasset drive operated just fine in normal space, too, and Terrence Murphy, like every professional naval officer, longed for the ability to incorporate it into a genuine warship. Unfortunately, it was entirely too big and the engineering constraints of the Zadroga conduits required too much hull length. Which meant they cost too much and represented too big a chunk of industrial output and military infrastructure to be wasted as warships. That same length was what allowed them to mount parasite racks, however, and each of Ishtar’s was capable of carrying a single ship up to thirteen hundred meters in length. No one actually built sublight warships that large, however, so the racks were normally configured to carry multiple, smaller ships.
In addition to their parasites, ships like Ishtar generally carried hefty missile armaments, but the majority of their magazine space was filled with counter-missiles. They were also well-equipped with point defense, while their drone racks carried heavy loads of missile-defense platforms. And if they found themselves under fire with parasites on the racks and weren’t able to deploy them—because they were withdrawing under fire, for instance—at least some of the parasites’ weapons could be brought to bear, as well, although that could be an iffy proposition under the wrong circumstances.
Although, now that Murphy thought about it, it was hard to imagine an instance in which letting the parasites engage from the rack could happen under the right circumstances.
“And sublight…now,” the astrogator announced, and the FTLCs blinked abruptly into existence 2.3 billion kilometers from the Jalal System’s primary.
Their astrogation had been spot on, Murphy noted with a certain satisfaction. They were precisely where they were supposed to be on exactly the right heading. At a shade under 297,000 KPS, it would take them over four and a half hours to decelerate to rest relative to Jalal Station, their destination in orbit around the system’s sole more or less habitable planet. At the moment, thanks to relativity, Ishtar’s onboard time was moving eighty-six percent slower than that of the universe around them. That was another of the interesting little quirks of interstellar travel. By the clocks of the universe in general, TF 1705 had spent eight weeks travelling the 138 LY to Jalal; by Ishtar’s clock, the trip had taken only a bit over one. But in another twenty-five minutes the FTLC would be down to 120,000 KPS, a mere forty percent of light-speed, and the time differential would have dropped to a negligible eight percent.
He touched the comm key.
“Bridge,” Lowe’s voice responded.
“My compliments to Commander Creuzburg, Captain. That was a well-executed piece of astrogation.”
“Thank you, Admiral,” Lowe said. “I’ll pass that on to him.”
“Murphy, clear,” Murphy said. He released the key and sat back, gazing at the distant pinprick of the system primary. They were almost as far from it as Neptune was from Sol, so there wasn’t very much to see. But the rest of his task force was waiting for him in orbit around that tiny speck of a star, and he felt his mind reaching out toward the challenge.
* * *
O’Hanraghty frowned and tapped a query into one of the touchscreens.
Ishtar was still 17.3 LM—and more than ninety minutes—short of Jalal Station, with her velocity down to “only” 98,850 KPS. That was still much too far for any convenient two-way conversation, but the station’s nav beacons and general “notice to spacers” messages were on auto-repeat, and the flagship’s comm section had been relaying them to the flag bridge for several minutes now.
O’Hanraghty’s frown deepened, and Murphy raised an eyebrow at the chief of staff.
“A problem, Harry?”
“Just…an anomaly, Sir.”
O’Hanraghty tapped the screen again and a schematic of Jalal Station’s central spindle and triple surrounding rings appeared on the main display, surrounded by a spangle of ship icons. As he swiped a cursor over the icons, each of them obediently displayed its transponder code.
“We’ve got the rest of our assigned parasites right here,” O’Hanraghty said, highlighting the icons of three battleships, two strikecarriers, three heavy cruisers, and one lowly destroyer.
Added to the ships already on the FTLCs’ racks, it made an impressive force, Murphy thought. Certainly adequate to garrison New Dublin. But then O’Hanraghty flipped the cursor across another small group on the display sidebar and the admiral’s eyes narrowed.
“Burgoyne?” he said. “Isn’t Burgoyne assigned to BatRon Seven-Oh-Two out at Scotia?”
“Yes, Sir,” Commander Mirwani replied. As Murphy’s ops officer, he’d been checking the same lists. “As a matter of fact, there are a couple of other ships from the Seven-Oh-Two.”
Murphy exchanged a glance with O’Hanraghty, then looked at Tanaka.
“I hope they’re not going to slow us down in the logistics queue,” he said. “The station’s only got so much capacity, and we have a timetable to keep.”
“I’m sure we’ll be okay, Sir,” Tanaka replied.
“You’re probably right, but go ahead and check now,” Murphy said. “Best foot forward and all that, yes?”
“Aye, aye, Sir,” Tanaka said with a slightly annoyed expression and turned to her comm.
“Something wrong, Admiral?” Callum asked quietly.
“Nothing,” Murphy said, tapping his fingertips against his armrest. “I’m sure it’s nothing.”
* * *
The door alarm woke him.
It wasn’t the normal melodious chime. It was the raucous “wake-you-from-the-dead” override alarm, and someone was obviously leaning on it hard.
Captain Yance Drebin sat up, his head swimming from what was either the beginning of a hangover or the tail end of his night bar-hopping on Jalal Station.
“What the hell?” he mumbled.
The ear-splitting racket continued, and he dragged himself off the couch and threw on a uniform jacket. He crossed his small suite’s vestibule and pressed the panel beside the door. It slid open, and white light from the passageway outside his quarters stung his eyes.
“What the—” he began to repeat in an irate tone, then stopped.
A very tall man he’d never seen before took his thumb from the door alarm button. He wore a dress uniform, and the twin stars of a rear admiral glittered in the light. A pair of bruisers and a mousy-looking commander stood behind him.
“Good evening!”
The admiral’s tone was entirely too cheerful, and he stepped forward. Drebin found himself involuntarily stepping back from the bigger man’s presence. Somehow, the admiral and his escort were inside his quarters, and the door closed behind them. One of his uninvited visitors hit the light switch, and Drebin blinked. At least it wasn’t as bright as the light in the passage.
“Captain Drebin?” the admiral continued. “From Scotia? Do hope I have the right quarters.”
“Who are you? And what’re you doing in my quarters…Sir? Rank and all, but there’s still protocol.”
Drebin turned around to reach for the glass he’d left on the counter with a half finger of gin, but the admiral poked it and sent it skidding out of his reach.
“You weren’t answering your comms,” the intruder said. He picked up an earpiece from beside the glass and wiggled it. “I didn’t want to ask the station master to do an emergency override on your doorlock, though. Seemed a bit unnecessary.”
“For what, exactly? And I already asked who you are. Sir.” Drebin smacked his lips over fuzzy teeth, not caring what his breath smelled like to the interloper.
“Murphy,” the admiral said. “Terrence Murphy. And I read your initial report on the League attack on Inverness. I have a few questions about it.”
“Now just a goddamn minute.” Drebin raised a finger. “Who the hell do you think you are that you can—”
One of the bruisers, a hulking sergeant major with a crooked nose who was a centimeter or so taller than even the admiral, put one hand on Drebin’s shoulder and forced him into a chair.
“A force of warships entered the system you were assigned to as governor general,” Admiral Murphy continued, as if Drebin had never spoken. “You ordered a strategic withdrawal, and then—”
“The Leaguies were too strong,” Drebin interrupted with what might have been an edge of fear. “Scotia is a Level E system. If faced with an overwhelming force, then the Fokaides Directive applies. Give ground and retain combat power.”
“Give ground? Give…ground.” Murphy said the words as if they stung his tongue, the corner of his mouth twitched. “But of course. Level E. So then you and your ships—”
“We pulled back and monitored the League’s attack. Waited until they wormholed out on a vector to their territory,” Drebin said. “Then withdrew here for further instructions. It’s not like I had any kind of choice. If we’d stayed and fought, the League would’ve destroyed my entire command and still fragged the colony. This way, the Seven-Oh-Two lives to fight another day. I did what I had to do. What my orders required me to do.”
“Destroyed your entire command. With four battle cruisers and three heavy cruisers.” Murphy gazed at him for a moment, then shrugged. “You are adept at following your orders, Drebin. No question of that. But what about survivors?”
“Survivors?”
Murphy held out a hand, and the mousy commander, whose name plate said “ORTIZ,” handed him a sheet of paper. It was a printed, computer-generated map of both hemispheres of Inverness, Drebin realized. The locations of K-strikes and population centers had been mapped out with bright icons. Now where the hell had they gotten—?
Carson. His exec’s—his good old, reliable, dependable exec’s—name flashed through his brain. She was the one who’d deployed the recon drones before Ophion pulled them out. Who else had she given—?
“The main city took a beating, but the outlying towns were spared direct hits,” Murphy interrupted that thought. “The League did scratch every power station, bridge, port, and other major infrastructure target. Including the orbital refineries.” He grimaced. “Doubt there were any survivors from that. But there had to be others, Captain. So, what about them?”
“We…we couldn’t go back,” Drebin said. “The Leaguies have been known to leave mines after a raid. And I had Ophion to worry about. Had to get her out of there before they figured out they’d missed her and came back to clean up. Besides, I had to get here and warn—”
“It’s winter for most of the survivors, isn’t it?” Murphy asked. “I imagine they’re waiting for help.”
“I’m sure they are,” Drebin said, watching Murphy warily. “But Ophion was under priority orders to pick up a parasite group in Trevor. She’d already been delayed by what happened in Scotia, so the station expedited her departure. And with her gone, there’s not a Fasset drive-capable ship that could get a rescue effort there in time to do any good. It’s pointless.”
“Ah, that’s where you’re wrong,” Murphy said. “The Ishtar’s here, along with Ereshkigal and Gilgamesh. We can make it back to Scotia just as quickly as you—I mean Ophion—made the run here. And Calcutta’s repairs will be completed very shortly, so she’ll be available in the next few days, as well.”
“Don’t let me keep you waiting.” Drebin shrugged.
“Well, there’s the thing,” Murphy said. “With your extensive knowledge of the system, we’ll need you to come with us. You and your squadron.”
“What? No way. The Seven-Oh-Two falls under Third Fleet out of—”
“Actually, Captain,” Commander Ortiz interrupted and tossed a small packet into Drebin’s lap. “As a flag grade officer, Admiral Murphy can requisition functional and ready naval vessels to respond to humanitarian crises as he sees fit. Now that you’ve confirmed that Scotia is indeed in a state of crisis…”
It was Ortiz’s turn to shrug, and Drebin stared at him in shock until Murphy’s crisp voice jerked his eyes back to the admiral.
“Recall your crews from shore leave and be prepared to dock with my transport group in the next six hours.”
“But—” Drebin paged through the orders. “But we just arrived, and—”
“Have I introduced Sergeant Major Logan?” Murphy gave the massively muscled man a pat on the arm. “He’s part of my Hoplon detachment. Should I leave him here to make sure you’re locked into a carrier rack within the next six hours?”
Logan leaned over slightly and spat tobacco juice at a wastebasket. Most of it missed.
“I only ask because you have your lawful orders in hand and you’ve received instructions,” Murphy continued. “No risk of your missing movement, correct? Out here in this declared conflict system.”
That sobered Drebin up immediately. Missing movement orders in a declared conflict system—in the face of the enemy—was a capital offense.
“My squadron will be ready. Sir,” he said.
“Wonderful.” Murphy smiled. “We’ll get this all settled as soon as we can. Welcome aboard!”
* * *
The Sanctuary Saloon on Jalal Station pulsed with music and noise as Callum Murphy stepped inside. A large circular bar with robot tenders on rails served spacers and Marines, mostly male and mostly out of uniform regulations with their collars open and one corner of their tunic fronts unsealed.
Holo projections of a band dressed up as Old Earth prospectors and playing instruments with colored lights for strings and rainbow hues rising from the notes gave the place an almost psychedelic air. Several levels of rooms formed a cylinder over the bar, and laughter and shouts from the upper levels promised more entertainment.
The place smelled of body odor and spilled alcohol, and Callum hesitated before moving up to the bar. He wondered if there was another establishment nearby more to his liking, but a robo-tender mixing a drink for an already drunk spacer convinced him he might as well not be parched while he went looking for another spot.
“A starlight,” he said, rapping his knuckles on an order pad. He got a sad-faced symbol in return.
“No genever,” a robot squawked as it rolled past him. “We have gin.”
“I’d be insulted, but you aren’t to blame for your programming,” Callum muttered. He frowned and tapped in another drink…and got the same error message.
“Don’t waste your money,” a woman said into his ear from behind him. She smelled of cheap perfume with a hint of antiseptic. “It’s all watered down, and the only thing you’ll get is a mean hangover.”
She wore a dermal layer that gave her a look of all gold with blue highlights. Sea green hair hung almost to her shoulder on one side of her head; on the other side, a patch of tattoos depicting intimate acts stretched around her shaved scalp from her temple to behind her ear.
“Better spent on an experience, anyway.” She smiled. “And the memory. You just arrived?”
Callum glanced down at her skimpy attire, counterintelligence warnings from the pre-shore leave briefing fresh in his mind.
“Off the Ishtar group, is my guess.” She waggled her fingertips at the uniform patch on his left shoulder. “All the boys from the Seven-Oh-Two and the Orcas have been here for a bit, and you look positively fresh.”
“Whiskey sour?” Callum asked as a robot came back around. It froze, then spun around to the bottle rack and prepared the drink.
“I’m Cherry,” she said, “and I’m thirsty, too.”
“Beat it.” Corporal Faeran materialized out of the crowd like a tattooed genie and wedged herself between the two of them. “He’s just about to leave.”
“He’s got more rank than you,” Cherry sneered, “and you don’t look like his type.”
“A broken nose will cut into your night’s take,” Faeran said. “Now piss off before I stop asking you nicely.”
“Bitch.” Cherry snatched her clutch from the bar and made for the stairs.
“Corporal, I wasn’t going to—” Callum took a quick sip from his drink.
“No, things like that are too base for a highborn like you,” the Hoplon said. “Recall’s in effect, though. Captain O’Hanraghty sent me to get you.”
“Recall?” Callum glanced at the smart screen built into his sleeve. “I don’t see an alert.”
“Verbal condition. Admiral’s order.” She shrugged and swiped a hand at an abandoned glass. It went over the edge of the bar, but a robo-tender zipped over and caught it before it could break.
“A standard, tin can!” she snapped.
The robot placed a can with an off-white label in front of her. She cracked it open with one hand, watching the crowded saloon with alert yet disinterested eyes.
“Is this some sort of a joke?” Callum rolled his eyes. “Shore leave for all of…thirty-seven minutes? The Admiral worried his crews will get into trouble that fast?”
“Don’t know.” Faeran put the can to her lips, tilted her head back, and chugged the entire drink before slamming the empty back down. “Don’t care.”
“And you’re not leaving without me.” Callum took a longer slip, then held the drink up to a light over the bar. “She was right—it is watered down. Shame.”
“Come on.” Faeran jerked a thumb toward the door. “It’s about to get rough in here.”
Callum paid for both their drinks with a swipe of his palm and they made for the door. Cherry blew him a kiss as they left.
Ding ding.
Callum heard the alert chime from inside the saloon and glanced down at his forearm screen. Still nothing, but a roar of anger and expletives rose behind them and there was a sudden rush to the bar as patrons shouted last-minute orders at the robo-tenders.
“Guess they are recalling everyone,” he said. “We under attack?”
“Leaguies would need most of their fleet to take Jalal,” Faeran said. “Nah. But the boss got a burr in his boot about something. So now we get to jump through our ass. Same as it ever was.”
“Not going to be a popular decision, is it?”
“Which is why I had to get you out of there before some drunk decided to take out his frustration on a zero like you.” She shrugged. “Least I got a beer out of it.”
“Much appreciated.” Callum climbed a metal staircase to the tube station that would deliver them back to Ishtar. “Can’t say I get why this is happening. The Admiral’s always been a bit more…happy-go-lucky, shall we say. In my experience.”
“Probably the chief of staff,” the medic said. “O’Hanraghty’s a right bastard. Got us drilling aboard ship when we could be sleeping. At least my team’ll be sharp after this tour.”
Glass shattered as a stool went through one of the saloon’s windows.
“Damn, shore leave is a bit more serious than I’d imagined,” Callum said, looking down from the platform as they waited for a tube to slow down for them. Faeran leaned back against the railing, elbows propped up beside her, and shrugged.
“You spend a tour in the red zone,” she said, “and make it out alive and uninjured. Then you come to a pleasure stop like Jalal with a full bank account and zero alcohol tolerance. Steam needs to get blown off. Now we get to carry all that with us to New Dublin…or wherever.”
“Thank you,” Callum said.
She raised an eyebrow at him, and he shook his head as a table sailed through another window to join the stool in the street in front of the saloon.
“For getting me out of there,” he amplified, and she grimaced.
“Easier to do it before the news hits than drag your bloody carcass out after.” She shrugged again.
A tube slowed to a stop and the doors slid open.
“Where’s the shore patrol?” Callum asked, pausing half in and half out, still looking back at the brewing riot.
“They don’t care.” Faeran pushed him into a seat. “Property damage gets docked against pay. So long as no one assaults anybody, or starts a fire, it don’t matter.”