Back | Next
Contents

t38t

Garver was just beginning to repressurize the crew decks when alarms blared and an angry buzzing sound stirred the hull. The PDCs had burst to life and he flew up into the cupola to see. Sure enough, two clouds of gas expanded into space perhaps a kilometer away as both missiles’ remains clattered against the hull.

He slapped the nearby intercom switch, though with so few people left aboard he could’ve just as easily called Rosie directly. “General quarters, general quarters! Incoming fire! Secure your compartments!” Fragments from a defeated weapon were still moving fast and could do almost as much damage as the weapon itself, so he hastily closed the petals that shielded the cupola’s ring of large windows. Hopefully one of the spacers could be spared from their emergency surgery on Poole to seal off the other modules.

The defensive guns had fired automatically, still on standby despite the PRC infantry’s best efforts. The grunt he’d shot had been putzing around with the weapons console, and it was a good thing the controls hadn’t been made too idiot-proof or they would’ve surely been sitting ducks. No doubt that had been the intent. And the skipper of that PRC ship had been smart enough to translate up as soon as it released weapons, getting out of the way before the inevitable defensive rounds came back downrange.

Offensive weapons required a little more of a personal touch. Garver activated the one missile they had left and targeted Peng Fei’s big cement-drum propulsion section—take out their power source and not only could they not shoot, they couldn’t maneuver. It would even the odds.

The fire-control radar locked on quickly but was just as quickly jammed. They’d come ready to play, but Garver had marked their relative position and slaved the missile’s guidance to that. One bearing was better than nothing. He pressed the firing switch and felt a mechanical thud as the missile was ejected from its magazine. “Missile away!” he announced on the intercom. “Brace for evasive action!”

He pushed off for the pilot’s console and really wished they’d had an actual pilot left aboard.


Marshall watched the plumes of fire and clouds of gas erupt between the two ships, still many kilometers apart.

“Is that weapons fire?” Max asked, looking up through the rendezvous windows with him.

“Afraid so,” Marshall said. He watched as Peng Fei began moving aggressively while the Borman seemed to lag. He motioned for Max to bring his focus back to the instrument panel. “Get ready. They’re really not going to like this part.”

“Neither am I,” Jasmine said, gripping her seat.

Marshall made one last check of their position relative to the H-K and nodded to Max. “Cycle the gear.”

Max pulled on the landing gear handle and slammed it down. There was a sickening groan of rending metal as the landing skids punched through the satellite’s radiator wings. Ammonia coolant escaped in a continuous, fine mist into space. “Gear up,” Max reported as he shoved the handle back into its detent. “One green, two amber.”

As expected, Marshall thought. The nose gear was fine but the main skids were trashed.

Max suddenly pointed at a cloud of gas that had burped up from the Peng Fei, coming from the side of the ship facing them. “Did they just fire on us?”

“They sure did,” Marshall said as he goosed the main thrusters. “Hang on!”

It looked like PDC fire; they didn’t want to waste a missile on him while the Borman was still out there. He moved them swiftly away from the H-K satellite, which now sat dying as its own vital fluids escaped into space. With no coolant flowing between its powerplant and radiators, it would soon overheat and shut down.

Within seconds, a cloud of steel slugs meant for Specter instead shredded the killsat.

“We did it!” Max exulted, but Marshall wasn’t convinced. They’d taken out one threat; a larger one remained and he had no weapons to bring to the fight. He angrily bit down on his lip: That wasn’t even the mission, genius. He turned to study the Jiangs once more—if his mission was to keep them safe, had he just failed? What options did he have left?


The crew’s delight at their defensive guns easily defeating Borman’s remaining missile was tempered by the loss of their hunter-killer. “Laser platform is—neutralized,” Wu said solemnly. “Reactor is overheating and going into SCRAM mode, sir.”

Liu clenched his fist and cursed silently. He would be held to account for the loss of a strategic asset, enemy action or not.

It was time to end this game. He could continue toying with the Borman and overwhelm them with missile fire. They would eventually exhaust their point-defense magazines, but it would be a messy affair that exposed his ship to more risk. If the Borman was to be destroyed, there were much cleaner ways to do it.

“Bring us about. Minus eighty degrees yaw, plus five degrees pitch,” he ordered. “Energize the gauss cannon.”


Marshall called frantically over the secure channel and was surprised when Garver answered. What he had to say was even more surprising.

“He’s out? Right now?”

“Couldn’t be avoided,” Garver said. “They had to amputate. Rosie’s with him but he’s still under heavy sedation.”

“Are you running the command deck solo, then?”

“Doing my best, sir. But you understand what this means.”

Garver could be both subtle and painfully direct. “Affirmative, Chief.” Marshall was now the ranking officer, whether or not he was physically aboard.

“What are your orders, sir?”

Before Marshall could wrap his mind around the enormity of what had just been put upon him, the unicom frequency barked to life.

* * *

“Attention, all American spacecraft. This is Colonel Liu Wang Shu. You have violated protected territory and attacked military assets of the People’s Republic of China. You are hereby directed to stand down, surrender your vessel along with the fugitives from justice you harbor.”

Before the Americans could demand to know what would happen if they didn’t, Liu finished his message: “We have targeted the Borman with a one-hundred-fifty-millimeter, fifty-megajoule electromagnetic cannon.” He then turned to his first officer. “Major Wu?”

“Gauss cannon is loaded and energized, targeted at RQ39’s center of mass, sir.”

Liu nodded with satisfaction, held up a finger and keyed the microphone. “Regardless of your intentions here, you have demonstrated yourselves to be opponents worthy of respect. I believe in offering my adversaries a choice, whenever possible, between life and death. An informed choice. In case you doubt our intentions, I shall provide you a demonstration.”

He closed his fist.

“Firing,” Wu said.


Being closest to the asteroid, Marshall and his passengers had a front-row seat to the devastation. There was no muzzle flash, no firebolt across space, no cloud of superheated gas and certainly no thunderous report; only a burst from Peng Fei’s aft thrusters to counteract the recoil. It was enough to show how much of a kick the magnetic gun had.

Within seconds there was a brilliant flash from the face of RQ39, almost dead center at what approximated the misshapen asteroid’s equator. Fountains of ejecta, pulverized rock, exploded into space as if a volcano had suddenly erupted.

“Good lord,” Max breathed. “Did they just fire a nuclear warhead?”

“No,” Marshall said distractedly, doing the math. One hundred fifty millimeters was the size of a field artillery shell, and if propelled at enough velocity it wouldn’t even need to be explosive. It only needed to be heavy and fast, and that round had just covered over twenty kilometers in about four seconds. “It’s called a Gauss gun,” he sighed. “It’s a mass driver. It can hurl heavy projectiles extremely fast, over and over.”

“And your—what—PDCs?” Jasmine asked. “They can’t defeat it?”

“It’s nothing like a missile,” Marshall explained. “This would be like trying to shoot down an artillery round with a machine gun.” He had no idea if she appreciated the absurd impossibility of that, but it was all he could think of.

In the distance, sunlight glinted off the Chinese ship. “They’re firing again!” Max exclaimed.

“No,” Marshall said, holding out a hand to steady him. “They’re turning.”

The unicom frequency squealed to life again. “This concludes our demonstration,” Liu said with uncommon playfulness. He knew he had the upper hand; hell, he was holding all the cards. “Do not bother yourselves wondering what our regeneration time is, I assure you it is less than you would like. Particularly when it is operating at less than full capacity, which it was. If you do not stand down, we will be forced to fire at full charge against your vessel.”

“Forced,” Marshall scoffed. Sure they would.

Garver’s voice came over the secure channel. “That thing’s pointed right at us now, sir. What are your orders?”

Marshall screwed his eyes shut in frustration, forcing back a mounting headache as he racked his brain for a plan.

“We surrender, Chief.”


Back | Next
Framed