CHAPTER 2
Price was running through the possibilities that awaited him and the other ships in the fleet as they entered the star system and made way for the Nikko settlement. For him it was a bittersweet return, having had to depart without being able to do a damn thing to help them just over a week ago. He and the seven accompanying ships were a significant fraction of Earth’s space-worthy defense fleet that hitherto was fighting only bureaucrats for its continued existence.
The fleet, a conglomeration of ships from multiple countries, had been hastily assembled after the ships arrived from Nikko telling of the attack upon it. No one knew who the attackers were, their motivations, or their capabilities other than that they had entered the Nikko system and destroyed both the system’s cargo hub and, from what they could tell from the long-range imagery provided by one of the ships that escaped, the settlement on the planet. Fortunately, when Price had returned to Earth, it was at peace and there were no signs of invasion.
News of the attack on Nikko had spread rapidly, in governments and among the general population on Earth, and across the many habitats and mining ventures scattered throughout the solar system.
Though there had been no signs of the attackers in the solar system, the situation could have quite easily become dire if the interlopers at Nikko were to suddenly appear there. The Indefatigable and every other warship in the system had been on high alert. Price joined two of the other Commonwealth ships and took up station near Vesta in the asteroid belt. Fortunately, the nations of Earth, after quickly determining that the attackers were not some sort of sneak attack by a terrestrial country, had agreed to coordinate the defense of Earth with each sending their warships to different regions of the solar system, in and out of the ecliptic, so that they could respond quickly should the attackers materialize anywhere within five to fifteen astronomical units of Earth. The United States’ vessels were split between Mars and the Moon, China took its ships and split them evenly at roughly two AU distance from Earth above and below the ecliptic plane. The remaining countries had divided ships among various positions on the other side of the solar system from Earth to allow nearly 360-degree spherical protection. Operating on so little information, no one had known if this would be enough.
Finally, Price received new orders. A task force consisting of ships from each major space power on Earth would assemble near the orbit of Jupiter, but on the other side of the sun from the gas giant, for a jump to the Nikko system.
Of course, the Americans were in charge, as they seemed to always think they should be. Some traditions were just expected, and this was one. The flagship, the USSS South Dakota, was commanded by Admiral Li Wei. Price knew Wei and found him to be smart, capable, and typically American—Wei was a first-generation American, born of Chinese-immigrant parents. With Americans, you never knew what ethnicity you would be encountering. There were two American ships in the hastily assembled fleet, the South Dakota and the Maryland. The Commonwealth provided the Indefatigable. China sent two ships, the Bengbu and the Linyi. The remaining ships, one each, were sent by Japan and the United Arab Emirates, the Fuji and the Mubarraz. The remaining ships were held in reserve to protect Earth.
All the warships were built and fielded to protect each nation’s space assets from other Earth nations. Though some thought encountering extraterrestrial civilizations was a possibility and reason enough to build a defensive fleet, most did not. The failure of anyone to detect any signs of intelligent life beyond Earth, after over 250 years of looking, made policy makers, and those that controlled the purse strings, believe that the risk of hostile aliens was so small as to be infinitesimal. Lately, most nations were questioning the expense of maintaining even the few warships in their respective fleets. There had not been anything close to a global war on Earth since World War II—two and half centuries in the past. If humanity had outgrown war, why continue to build tools of war? Thankfully, the zeal for realizing a peace dividend had not quite taken hold. Every ship was now needed.
It took some time for the participating countries to agree how the fleet would coordinate command, control, and communications, or C3. In space naval operations, like any coordinated military operation, good C3 was essential. Without it, each ship would be operating independently, perhaps unknowingly firing upon a friendly ship, and mostly in the blind. Operating together, any fleet of ships had an effectiveness much greater than the sum of the capabilities of each individual ship. Price suspected that the technical problems, the control and communications part of C3, were overcome quickly. Engineers, when given a task, were good at working things out. It was the command part that probably took the most time to negotiate, with America and China wrangling over who would be in charge. The good news was that the C3 problems had been resolved and they were now underway.
Price, a student of military history, could not help but muse about how difficult such a multinational coordination would have been if carried out in an earlier era before real-time language-translation software became universal. It was still true that most people at least spoke English as a second language, a fact that remained a sore spot for the French and an annoyance to the Chinese.
The fleet jumped together to the Nikko system and took up station about 1.4 light-hours from the central star—at about Saturn’s distance from Sol. Far enough to not violate the Oppenheimer Limit and to give them a good chance of arriving undetected. From here, they would assess what was going on in the system and determine their next moves. They desperately needed to know what they were headed into.
Each ship checked in via secure optical laser comm which could only be intercepted if you were in a direct line of sight and had your optical detectors set to look for a laser signal at the correct wavelength. There was not a more secure communication system available. The fleet was intact, in communication, and sharing data from their radar and optical sensors. Despite the differences in technologies and resulting capabilities, Price and the other captains in the fleet were getting a good sense of the tactical situation in and around Nikko.
There was no sign of ongoing conflict. Since they arrived, there had been no detection of the X-ray, neutron, or gamma-ray emissions characteristic of a nuclear explosion. They knew that several such explosions happened when Nikko was attacked, but the attack had apparently long-ago ceased.
Furthermore, there was no indication that the hostiles were nearby. Nikko’s only quasi-warship, the Katori, had recorded the drive signatures of the incoming ships and found them to be surprisingly similar to their own fusion drives. None of the Earth ships currently detected operating fusion drives anywhere within their lines of sight. Of course, they were almost one and a half light-hours from Nikko’s star and that meant they were seeing events that happened within the last one and a half hours as they looked inward. Looking outward, to avoid being surprised by anything or anyone waiting further out system, they were seeing what happened in the last several minutes, hours, and days—depending upon how far out they were able to gaze. There was no such thing as “real time” data when operating across such large distances and that made military planning even more complicated.
Price and his crew were at General Quarters and had been since entering the system. Based on the tactical situation, Price could now relax—a little.
“Secure from General Quarters,” Price announced as he unbuckled from his chair. The ship’s artificial gravity did a good job approximating one Earth gravity when the ship was stationary or under thrust to about three gees, but at higher thrust levels, the crew would notice inertia’s inevitable effects. The artificial gravity also did not work during a Hawking Drive jump, causing momentary weightlessness every time the drive was used. For these reasons, it was standard practice for crew to be strapped in whenever possible.
“Sir, we have a message from the South Dakota and Admiral Wei,” said Price’s XO, Lieutenant Oliver Green. Green and Price had never served together before this deployment, but from what Price could tell, Green was professional, proficient, and not terribly social. When they had conversed over dinner in the wardroom, Green never allowed himself to be at ease. Price gave him the benefit of the doubt, being their first time to serve together, but he was also concerned. Officers that were strung that tight often snapped.
“Let’s hear it,” said Price.
“Yes, sir,” replied Green, keying the video to the main bridge screen, temporarily turning off the tactical display. Wei’s image appeared, the 3-D visualizer making it appear that he was on the bridge speaking to Price directly.
“Captain Price, the Indefatigable and the Linyi will accompany the South Dakota inward to survey Nikko and search for survivors. I want the fleet to remain on high alert, but I see no need to maintain General Quarters. There do not appear to be any imminent threats, but we cannot take for granted that the hostiles have gone. They might just be sitting out there somewhere watching, like we are now. Once we light up our fusion drives, we will be announcing our arrival to anyone in the system. I am ordering all remaining ships to maintain their position with drives powered down, and they are to use only passive sensors. The only ships that will go active will be those of us inbound. I see no need to give away the actual size of our deployment. Trajectory information is being sent to your AI. Let me know if you have any questions,” said Wei as his imaged winked out and was replaced by the tactical map of the system. The three ships that were to go inbound were now highlighted in yellow on the display.
“Nelson, I assume you have what you need to take us in?” asked Price.
“Yes, Captain. The formation and trajectory data are uploaded and plotted, awaiting the command to execute from Admiral Wei,” replied Nelson. Nelson, unlike most AIs that Price had worked with, was often reticent to speak unless asked. Price was not yet sure if that was a good thing or a bad thing. Time would tell. Each AI had its own limited, preprogrammed personality and each took some time to get used to. Calling Nelson an AI was really a misnomer. So far as Price knew, no one had succeeded in creating a truly self-aware artificial intelligence. Nelson, and other AIs like him, came close but they were still nothing more than complex computer algorithms with a preprogrammed personality matrix overlaid to make them easier for humans to interact with. Of course, if one did become truly self-aware, how would anyone know?
Like three dancers converging on the stage, the Indefatigable, South Dakota, and Linyi fired their fusion thrusters and began their looping, minimum energy trajectory toward Nikko and whatever awaited them there. Admiral Wei was apparently not in a huge hurry; the ships were limiting their acceleration to fifty percent of maximum, about two Earth gravities. Fast enough to get to Nikko within a few days, but not so fast as to be reckless. If only we could use the Hawking Drive within a gravity well, thought Price, not for the first time. The remaining ships held their relative position, minimizing emissions to reduce their likelihood of being detected.
Price used the time they spent traveling into the system to run combat simulations, pitting his tactical officers against various adversaries created by Nelson. With nearly instant access to the ship’s enormous digital library of military history, Nelson was able to come up with many modernized variations of historical battles to throw at Price’s crew. In some, it was Indefatigable fighting alone; in others, as part of a larger fleet with Nelson playing both the adversary and simulating the movements of the other human ships as they took commands from Price. In one that Price recognized afterward as a recreation of the Battle of Gaugamela, with the fleet defending Earth substituting for the Persians and the alien ships assuming the role and tactics of Alexander the Great, the Earth fleet lost rather spectacularly—just like the Persians. Price and his crew were able to win about half the simulated battles, and he suspected that Nelson might have allowed them to win some of those to not totally demoralize him and his crew. The experience was humbling and incredibly useful. In the three hundred years of space travel, mankind had never fought a war in space.
In the early days of interstellar travel, after the discovery of the Hawking Drive, there had been a few skirmishes over mining rights to some particularly attractive asteroids that were providing supplies to the burgeoning industries springing up in near-Earth space. It was impractical to bring all of the raw materials needed at the lunar and Mars shipyards out of the planetary gravity wells, so entrepreneurs did what entrepreneurs do—they innovated new business models and found that mining asteroids for the same raw materials was less expensive and could form the backbone of an entirely new supply chain. Along the way, there were disputes as to who “owned” what and in a few cases that led to the dispute being resolved the old-fashioned way—by force.
The dispute that almost triggered a real shooting war was over Oliver’s Asteroid, a near-Earth asteroid rich in platinum, tantalum, vanadium, and other elements that were commanding a high price at the shipyards. Price did not remember the names of the companies involved, only that one was registered in the United States and the other in Brazil. Both filed claims to the asteroid within hours of each other, not an easy thing to do considering the paperwork and processes involved, and both rushed to emplace their mining equipment on the asteroid accompanied by “protection” provided by ships from their respective countries. Tensions rose as the claimants’ voices grew louder and more belligerent and eventually someone on the US ship fired on the Brazilian ship, putting a railgun-launched depleted-uranium spike through their hull which then, unfortunately, caused a containment failure of their fusion power plant. There was not much left of the Brazilian ship. Failure to contain a sustained fusion reaction makes for a bad day on a ship.
Back on Earth, Brazil put its planes in the air flying toward the southern US border. Fortunately, the US president at the time got on the hotline to his Brazilian counterpart and they agreed to cease hostilities and allow an international court to settle the dispute. The US ended up paying reparations to the families of the dead Brazilians and forced its mining company to share mineral rights at the asteroid with the other claimant. Though it successfully averted a war, Price seemed to remember that this particular president lost his reelection bid largely based on his handling of the conflict.
The bottom line was that that no one from Earth had experience fighting a real shooting war in space. The closest they had come was when the Indefatigable intercepted the missiles meant for the Hudson Cavalier; fortunately, the weapons systems and the people performed as they were supposed to. They had the ships, but their crews were completely green. And they were soon to be going against someone, or something, that might have a lot more experience at such things than they did. Price found the thought unsettling, and he was sure his concerns were shared by Admiral Wei.
Price was all too aware that his crew knew the same history and they were all too aware of their inexperience. Running the simulations kept them on their toes and hopefully helped prepare them for what would undoubtedly be unpredictable tactics by their unknown adversaries.
Indefatigable, Linyi, and South Dakota were on final approach to Nikko, at a distance of about two light-seconds, when the alarms sounded.
“Nelson, what have we got?” asked Price.
“Eight fusion-drive signatures, likely missiles, originating approximately 0.02 light-seconds out. Accelerating rapidly. Three are targeting Indefatigable, three on Linyi, and two on South Dakota. Radar emissions detected, likely for targeting. Estimated time to impact is two minutes. Initiating evasive maneuvers, activating radar jammers, and deploying chaff.”
Price knew the drill. Nelson could respond much faster than a human in a defensive situation, so the AI was given near-complete flexibility for defending the ship. Price could override, of course, but in most cases that would be the complete wrong thing to do. Humans were still rather good at strategy and offensive tactics, but defense required too much to happen too quickly for their limited response time. If jammers, maneuvers, and chaff did not stop the missiles, then the only thing left was the point-defense Gatling guns. Of course, no one wanted a missile carrying a nuclear warhead to get that close . . .
“Were they launched by ships? What’s their origin?” asked Price.
“Unknown. There are no signs of any ships near where the missiles originated, so they could be sleepers activated by our approach,” replied Nelson.
Drones, Price thought. Set to take out whoever came to help the colonists on the world they attacked. He shifted in his chair as the time seemed to pass in slow motion.
“Estimated time to first impact, one minute. Activating Gatling guns,” said Nelson.
Price could feel the ship thrum as the fifteen Gatling guns on the starboard side of the ship began throwing hundreds of thousands of tiny pellets toward the incoming missiles at eight kilometers per second, roughly the orbital velocity of a spacecraft circling the Earth. At that speed, any missiles not fooled by the chaff would impact the wall of uranium in a few seconds and uncomfortably close to the ship. Close, but far enough away to mitigate the worst of a nuclear explosion.
Price was still in his chair, but he could feel the beads of perspiration growing on his brow and on his back. He felt helpless in the face of an impending storm.
“One missile has locked onto chaff and is now veering away. Make that two,” said Nelson.
“Two down, one to go,” said Price as he looked at the tactical display. He could see the tiny red missiles converging on his ship and the others on the 3-D display. The ships were close enough together that the speed-of-light delay would be small, and he could be sure he was seeing everything in almost real time.
“Thirty seconds,” said Nelson just as the tactical display showed the remaining missile converging on Indefatigable wink out. He continued, “The final missile targeting us was destroyed without detonation. The Linyi successful spoofed all the missiles that targeted her. She is also undamaged.”
Price looked at the tactical display and saw that one of the missiles previously converging on the South Dakota was now moving away, likely following some piece of chaff or decoy. The other was getting closer and closer to the flagship when it, too, winked out. However, the display showed that it, unlike the missile that got near Indefatigable, detonated in what the sensor indicated was a nuclear explosion.
“Did she suffer any damage?” asked Price, wiping his brow.
“The South Dakota’s AI indicates that the ship suffered no damage,” replied Nelson.
“Do we have any updates from the admiral?” asked Price.
“None. We are still on course to Nikko and decelerating. We should enter orbit in roughly 1.5 hours,” replied Nelson.
“Take us to GQ2 until we’re safely in orbit and know the composition of every rock, pebble, and piece of debris within two light-seconds of our position,” said Price as he unbuckled from his chair and rose to his feet. It was time to pace. He did his best thinking when he was on his feet moving and not tethered to a chair—sometimes rank hath its privileges.
After a few moments, Price turned to Lieutenant Gold and stared thoughtfully at her before he began to speak.
“Lieutenant Gold, I want you to work with Nelson and see what else you can figure out about the attackers. We learned a lot from our first engagement, and this is an opportunity to learn more.
“Look at the spectral analysis of the drive signatures. I want to know how they were propelled, how they were targeted, and since one of them detonated close to the South Dakota we should be able to get a yield curve. It would also be good to know how the data we collect compares with the data collected by the ships that escaped from Nikko. They were further away, but we should be able to use their observations to help fill in the gaps from our sensors. Based on what we have seen, our attackers appear to be at about the same technological capability as us. But I need that confirmed.”
“Yes, sir. I’m on it,” replied Gold as she turned toward the console in front of her.
“After we achieve orbit, I want to know everything you can tell me that you’ve learned about the attackers and the status on Nikko,” said Price as he resumed his pacing.