A Sword Into Darkness

11: “TRIALS AND TRIBULATIONS”

March 6, 2045; USS Sword of Liberty (DA-1), aboard RLV Cauldron; Pacific Ocean, 400 nautical miles off the California coast

Miles and miles from any shipping lane, and barren of any unauthorized traffic, a very unusual naval exercise was underway. The carriers, cruisers, and destroyers of the US Pacific Fleet had scoured the waves for days, working in concert with satellites, aircraft, towed-array sonar surveillance ships, and submarines to ensure not one person was within weapons or sensory range of that particular spot in the ocean.

Having cleared the seas, the naval assets withdrew to a safe distance of 100 nautical miles and formed a defensive ring, allowing no man, boat, sub, plane, or leviathan to cross their barrier.

At the center of this ring, a very unusual ship sat alone, doing a very unusual thing.

The Reconfigurable Launch Vessel Cauldron had served as the womb of mankind’s first true spaceship. Within this strange, boxy vessel, the ship that would change the world had been assembled, in pieces, under the shadowy oversight of the US government at the innocuous Ingmar Rammstahl Shipbuilding Company in Santa Clara, California.

For the last two and a half years, the Cauldron had floated high in the water, with her vast, enclosed bay’s floor well above the ocean’s surface. But as the child of the future grew in her belly, her draft had slowly grown deeper. This mothership was more of floating drydock than a ship in her own right, but she could do things that no respectable drydock would ever be caught doing.

Now, alone at the center of the US Navy’s costly ring of solitude, the Cauldron appeared to be sinking. Over the span of hours, her bow lifted into the air while her stern dipped below the waves. Yet, she was not the victim of some random, tragic casualty. This was by design, through the careful pumping of ballast from one tank to another.

The angle of her hull increased steadily as her bow lifted up and up into the salt-laden sea air. Eventually, the drydock vessel became less of a ship and more of a tower—a tall, stable, enclosed gantry, floating isolated in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. And once the tower was finally erected, the bow blossomed open to reveal another, very different bow hidden inside.

For a brief moment, the wind and the sea gave pause, becoming calm and glassy, as if the sight of this strange ship/tower about to give birth to another ship were enough to shock nature itself into stillness. Then, silence and calm vanished as the Cauldron exploded in light and sound. Here, a new force of nature was unleashed upon the planet.

Blue-white energy stabbed down into the ocean, instantly boiling tons of seawater, producing superheated clouds of steam that pushed outward with the force and the speed of a nuclear detonation. The hollow bulkheads and frame of the Cauldron came apart like kindling and the Sword of Liberty was revealed for the first time, balanced upon her hexagonal stern, riding atop a lance of pure energy in the center of an expanding crater in the ocean.

The enormous, wedge-topped tower of the spacecraft fell slightly as her thrust built—but then the fall reversed itself and she began to rise, faster and faster, driven by a force equivalent to firecracker strings of nuke, after nuke, after nuke. The ship rocketed upwards at ever climbing Mach values, wind tearing at the thin aeroshells that protected her bow, antennas, and radiator panels.

The drive effect pulled away from the surface of the ocean and floods of seawater rushed in to fill the steamy, conical depression carved out in the ocean by the launch. Water geysered up hundreds of feet into the air, a final, petulant slap at the ship from Mother Earth, for having stricken her so deeply.

The attending ships, their crews gawking in awe at the spectacular launch, were unfortunately forced to turn away from the show by the simple need to survive. Atmospheric shockwaves from the continuous torch of energy were bad enough, throwing out hurricane-level gust fronts to set the ships heeling over, but the tidal wave was worse.

The transition of that much water to steam, and the accompanying inrushing flood and geyser were enough to set the whole ocean ringing like a bell. Solid bands of physical force expanded out from the launch point at the speed of sound through water, many times that of sound through air. The height of the ring fell steadily, but the energy remained, undissipated. The surface shockwave crossed the safety buffer of 100 kilometers in a few short moments and struck the warships with the abruptness of a hammer-fall.

Smaller ships were nearly tossed out of the water, lifted up high by the front of the wave and then left hanging as its sharp tail receded in a flash. Steel frames warped and cracked to such a degree that it would be years before all the ships would have a chance to go to drydock for repairs. Then the tidal wave vanished over the horizon to spread its influence around the globe, leaving the dazed sailors behind.

It would strike the California coast with the greatest ferocity, crunching a few seaside homes which had long staved off the creep of the Pacific, “safe” upon stilts. Wrecked too were several ocean-view roads, and an older pier or two, but no one died, having been mysteriously pre-warned by NOAA and the USGS who had uncannily predicted the likelihood of a small tidal wave in the immediate future. Elsewhere, the wave would strike limply, causing no real damage. It simply spread out, distributing its energy uniformly, bouncing and rebounding off of coastlines and seamounts, passing back through the ocean over and over, becoming less and less pronounced, until its presence was indistinguishable from the normal ebb and flow of the seas.

High above, and becoming higher still, the Sword of Liberty pierced the atmosphere and left the confines of the Earth. The blue skies of the western hemisphere faded to black, and the roar of air molecules rushing by the hull faded away, leaving the ship to pass on in silence. The drive effect made no real sound when it was not burning air or water to plasma. However, if it could have been possible, an observer pressed against the hull might still have heard one thing—a singular voice crying out into the darkness.

“Yeeeeeeeee Haaaaaaaaaaa!!!”

Lying on his acceleration couch in the bridge/control room of the Sword of Liberty, Colonel Calvin Henson, USAF, NASA, winced and keyed his microphone. “Ms. Muñoz, can you please refrain from doing that?”

Her emphatic cry cut off in mid-Haaaaa and she cleared her throat. Kris smiled despite the two gravities of acceleration pushing her down in her own couch in Engineering and answered in her most demure and respectful tone. “I’m sorry, Colonel, I really don’t think I can. If I only get one ride on this tub, I plan to make the most of it. Now then, Wooooooooo Hooo—”

Her voice vanished as the new Commanding Officer of the United States’ first space destroyer cut off the intercom circuit to Engineering. He muttered to himself and tried to keep up with the massive streams of data inundating him from his displays and automated status boards. Nathan risked turning his head to look at the frustrated veteran astronaut seated next to him and tried not to smile too broadly.

Henson made some adjustments to the data he frantically monitored on his personal screen, and mirrored on the main screen. He keyed into the now silent command circuit again. “Pilot—I mean XO, standby to cut thrust. Stable orbit in five, four, three, two, one, and shutdown.”

Before the Executive Officer, Commander Daniel Torrance, USN, could touch the control to cut off the drive, the computer did it for him, having completed its programmed launch flawlessly. All sense of weight disappeared and the XO jumped slightly as he began to feel like he was falling. The former submariner stayed his hand from the superfluous shutoff command and keyed into the command circuit instead. “Captain,” he said, feeling unnatural addressing a non-Navy officer as such, “shutdown completed on schedule, stable orbit … achieved.” As he finished, another unnatural feeling began to overwhelm him.

Henson recognized the XO’s hesitation for what it was and keyed into the general announcing circuit, overriding all of the other comms circuits. “All personnel, this is your CO. We have reached orbit and are en route to rendezvous with the International Space Station. We’re finished with the scary, exciting part, so all we have to look forward to at the moment is the hard part, the actual work of space. There’s a lot to be tested and verified before we move on to the tactical phase, so I urge you to focus on your task list and try not to spend all your time doing somersaults and bouncing off the bulkheads.

“Now, for many of you, this is your first time in microgravity, so this sensation of weightlessness might be new to you. I caution you: don’t try to tough it out! If you feel the need, use the osmotic meds you’re carrying. It happens to a lot of us and it’s no reflection upon you if you need them. You can’t do your job if you’re getting sick everywhere. All right, all stations report in and commence space-worthiness checks per your checklists.”

Nathan released his harness and gave himself a short push, floating off the couch and into thin air. Despite the changes that had occurred, the setbacks they had all endured, and despite Gordon not being there, they had made it.

He looked around at the semicircle of acceleration couches and maneuvering coffins mounted to the deck, one for each bridge watchstander. The couches were each coupled with a set of flat touch screens and a communications panel, from which most operations of the ship could be controlled. Larger displays covered the padded, cable-strewn bulkheads, lighting up the bright white and navy blue bridge with information, while speakers and ducting crowded the overhead, setting up a background buzz of voices and noise that defined a ship underway.

Nathan grinned wide and foolishly as he tried to take it all in at once, unable and unwilling to put up a stoic front. He was here, in space, weightless, aboard his own ship. It almost made up for not being in command any longer. His was a jumble of emotions: excitement, anger, joy, nervousness, and even a touch of guilt.

The new commanding officer looked at him, bemused. “And how do you find it, Mr. Kelley?”

He turned to Henson. “Captain, Superfluous Civilian Consultant reporting in with nothing to do, sir!”

Colonel Henson frowned for a moment, considering, then pushed off of his own couch, directly at Nathan. He touched, grabbed hold of Nathan, and carried them over to a corner of the bridge, stopping them both much more adroitly than Nathan would have ever managed alone. Nathan briefly envied his experience, but Henson cut off his thoughts with a sharp whisper.

“Mr. Kelley, I need to know now if the two of you are going to continue to be willfully difficult for the rest of these space trials. If you are, I may be forced to have you confined to quarters until we can use the SSTOS to take you back down. Is that what you want?”

Nathan stared at the officer’s eyes, trying to gauge whether he was serious or not. What he saw failed to comfort him. “No, it’s not what I want.”

“Good. I don’t want that either, but I will do whatever is necessary to make these trials a success. Our launch is going to cause enough problems down on Earth, that I don’t need another set up here. Understand?”

“Yes, sir.”

Henson smiled tightly, forcing himself to be somewhat more pleasant. “I really thought we had gotten past our … circumstances, Nathan. You and Kris have been nothing but helpful this past week, giving us a crash course on the Sword of Liberty.”

Nathan nodded. “We both want you guys to be successful. It’s in everyone’s best interests. I guess it’s just a little different being up here and knowing we’re not going all the way. But, that’s not your fault and we shouldn’t be taking it out on you.”

He blew out a long, slow breath. “All right, we’ll be good. I’ll have a word with Kris and we’ll stop pushing your buttons.”

“Thank you. Because while your instruction on the ground was excellent, I’ll admit that most of us are still too new to not be nervous pushing this bird’s buttons. We’re glad to have you along.”

The military skeleton crew and their two civilian consultants went to work, verifying the Sword of Liberty was safe and ready to continue with her trials. Coverall adorned crew flitted about the ship through bright white passageways festooned with handholds, cables, ducts and padding. The decks of the ship were all aligned perpendicular to the centerline running from bow to stern, set up for either weightless operations or for the pseudogravity that existed when the ship was under a standard one g of thrust, turning “forward” to “up” and aft to “down”.

Kris darted around the corridors and access trunks like a fairy on too much caffeine, excitedly checking every internal seam and pressure boundary, each accessible valve and indicator, ensuring her ship was safe and ready for the stars. A trail of Navy and Air Force engineers, both astronauts and non, struggled to keep up, taking notes on everything she touched. After verifying no air was leaking out and that everything had survived the launch intact, they proceeded to reconfigure the ship for actual operation.

The aeroshells were jettisoned, revealing nests of antennas, cameras, and sensors which would connect the destroyer with the universe around her. Larger shells came free from the amidships third of the 800 foot long spacecraft, exposing her immense, fragile, chevron radiators and their support struts, lying between the mission hull and the reactor/drive section.

The Sword of Liberty shortly matched orbits with the International Space Station, coming to rest 100 meters from the nearly forty year old, cobbled-together monstrosity. They were a study in contrasts.

Where the ISS was a spindly, boxy structure of scaffolding and connectors, mismatched tubes and capsules, discarded experiments and obsolete solar panels, the destroyer was defined by its solidity and functional lethality. Her forward third was a stealthy collection of oblique angles, clean lines, and sharp boundaries: a plated, irregular, hexagonal wedge bristling with antennas and laser emplacements. Lines of missile hatches covered the wide faces of the long wedge, while a pair of active phased array radar domes stood out from the two narrow faces.

On one narrow side, designated the “dorsal” side even though such things were completely arbitrary in absence of a consistent gravity, an armored, retractable panel covered the ship’s Single Stage To Orbit Shuttle, or SSTOS. Essentially a miniature version of the ship itself, it could carry the entire crew complement to and from the surface without worrying about stages, boosters, or refueling. Opposite it on the ventral side, a similar set of roll away panels covered a pair of pods for use in space, as either lifeboats, repair vessels, or inter-orbit transports.

Amidships was dominated by the radiating panels, large, reddish, reflective squares arranged in a series of chevrons along the long axis of the ship, each set of panels perpendicular to the next set. These panels all glowed dully, giving away to space whatever waste heat the pebble bed reactor, environmental systems, and weapons produced.

Since there was potentially a lot of heat to dump, heat that could and would give away the vessel’s presence, the panels had been vastly overbuilt. A pair of the sets was sufficient to handle most normal heat loads while the others could be shut down. Was the crew to only use the ones facing away from the threat axis, they would be able to approach much closer before their residual infrared signature gave them away. In cold, empty space, thermal stealth was nearly impossible to achieve, but this design would make the best of a bad situation, reducing their detection range from interplanetary scales to merely planetary ones.

The aft section consisted of the pebble bed reactor and the photonic reaction drive—a gigantic reflective “nozzle” capable of emitting and focusing the thrust of their enhanced photon drive, as well as a number of smaller nozzles for station-keeping and maneuvering. Though more refined and many times the size of the experimental setup Kristene had developed at the University of Texas at Arlington, it was nonetheless almost identical in operation. Of course, this one, they all hoped, would not explode like her original had.

Aiding in the maneuvering of the destroyer, the main drive was duplicated in miniature upon four triangular pylons on the forward hull, aft of the banks of missile cells. These pylons each supported a trio of photonic emitter nozzles facing in opposing directions, a reaction control thruster system with each emitter more powerful than a shuttle’s main engine. Used in concert with the main drive emitter and the similarly-sized aft nozzles, these photonic thrusters could maneuver the ship at high g-levels more nimbly than an air-bound fighter jet. They could, in fact, maneuver the destroyer at rates far in excess of what its soft tissue crew could physically withstand.

The crew of the ISS took all this in over the next couple of hours, gawking unceasingly through the habitat windows while the destroyer crew completed their readiness checks. The Sword of Liberty had made this stop-off in case the destroyer should prove unsafe to continue on with its tests. In that case, the ISS would have acted as a last ditch refuge of sorts. However, with his new ship performing flawlessly, Colonel Henson had another duty to perform.

With the bridge cameras rolling and transmitting, Henson and the others floated back to their seats around the ship, strapping in for maneuvers. The colonel sat up and addressed the camera directly, “Crew of the ISS, peoples of Earth, this is the United States Ship Sword of Liberty, designated DA-1, the first step in our journey to the stars, ready to face whatever may come with honor and courage, in defense and support of our planet, but against no man or terrestrial power.

“This ship represents a promise to all nations that we will go forward together, in unity and fellowship, to a new age, a golden age where we are no longer fighting over the limited bounty of Earth, but are instead working in harmony to discover the universe for the benefit of all mankind. We stand atop the achievements of those who have come before us: the trailblazers, the pioneers, the voyagers, those who have given their lives for the advancement of all. And in the spirit of their past accomplishments, we go … forward.”

At his last word, the destroyer’s main drive fired and the ship accelerated effortlessly away from the ISS at a single gravity of continuous thrust. The new guard had saluted the old. The torch had been passed.

Commander Torrance, the XO, jumped up again and fell solidly back down to the deck. He smiled at Henson and Nathan. “This beats the shit out of that freefall stuff, sir. You astro-nuts might like it, but I’ll take the pull of terra firma any day, thank you very much.”

The destroyer had been underway for hours now, toward its planned tactical operating area, and the trials had gone flawlessly. They had gone so well, in fact, that they were all waiting for some setback, for Murphy to make his presence known. But the other shoe had thus far refused to drop. Both in orbit and underway, they had tested every system, cycled each valve and every switch, with nothing but a few minor faults that had no real effect.

Henson shrugged at his XO’s teasing, but said nothing. Nathan smiled and clapped the XO on the shoulder, saying, “I’m with you, but don’t forget, there’s no terra firma here to pull you down. We have pseudo-gravity only while the drive is firing at a continuous one g. It cuts out or we maneuver, and you may find yourself in an uncomfortable position.”

Henson clicked off his display and stood, stretching loudly. He enjoyed the comfort of gravity himself, not that he would ever admit it to his non-astronaut Exec. “That’s right, Dan. Stow for space, just like you stowed for battle. Move around and secure things as if gravity could turn upside down or at right angles without notice. It’s a pain in the ass … but you lonely squids should be used to pains back there.”

“Ha-ha. Homophobia, the last bastion of insults for the intellectually disarmed. Don’t make me pull out my bag of Air Farce-isms, sir. Between me and my former Navy compatriot here, we could reduce your mother-service to shreds within seconds.”

Henson held up his hands. “Ach! Truce, truce. Besides, we’re part of a whole new service now—the Aerospace Force. The terrestrial forces will have to come up with all new insults for us, and I expect you to have my back, XO.”

Torrance looked as if he was considering it. “Call it the Aerospace Navy and you’ve got yourself a deal.”

Nathan figured that was a good trade-off, but he said nothing. There was so much different about their new ship, it would take a lot of getting used to. Neither the astronauts nor the regular officers had any particular advantage, either. And of all things, simply getting around took perhaps the most getting used to.

With the thrust on standard, forward and aft were tricky concepts. On a wet-Navy ship, those terms meant “toward the bow” and “toward the stern” respectively, but here the planet-side definitions were at odds with common sense. Instead, toward the bow was “up” and the stern was “down”, essentially turning the angular wedge of the destroyer into a tall, regal tower, thrusting upwards through the heavens.

For ease of reference in varying thrust conditions, forward and aft kept their naval designations, even though they also meant up and down with the main drive running. Continuing with that convention then, the other ship coordinates worked themselves out: ventral was to the narrow side with the work pods, which had faced down when the ship was constructed laying over on Earth. Dorsal lay opposite this, along the narrow side with the STOSS hangar, which had faced up during construction. Port was to the left when facing ventral or forward, and starboard was to the right. These designations were firm as well, no matter if they were in microgravity or accelerating along some non-standard vector. Re-orienting their coordinate system to apparent gravity would not only have been maddening, it would have made meaningful communication impossible.

Nathan sat and checked their progress on his screens. Earth had been left behind, becoming just a small circle no larger than a dime held at arm’s length. But they were not alone in all that vast emptiness. Grown into visible range before them was another body—a small, seemingly insignificant mountain of iron compounds and silicates, which had the unfortunate distinction of being their target.

To prevent a sudden, limited pass-by past their rocky objective, the Sword of Liberty had flipped around to thrust into the opposite direction once they were halfway to the Near Earth Asteroid, 2006 UA22. And aside from a slight wobble in their apparent gravity at turnaround, thrust and acceleration as well as the direction of up and down remained constant. They quickly matched orbits with the target, the pair of them pretty much alone in space.

Nathan split his attention between the bright marble of Earth and the gray-brown pitted ovoid of the asteroid. He shook his head to no one in particular, and wondered which of the two bodies were going to be hit harder by what they were about to do.

Kristene popped through the doorway, excitement and anticipation evident on her face. “Are we there yet? I’m anxious to blow something up.”

The CO and XO both laughed and Nathan grinned and stood. She sidled up to him and he kissed her, with only a twinge of self-consciousness at the critical looks Henson and Torrance gave him. Nathan responded, “Patience, patience. We’re farther out than anyone has ever been, in just a couple of hours no less, and it’s still not fast enough for you.”

Torrance checked his display and nodded. “The young’uns these days. As a matter of fact, we are approaching range of the target, and have reached the planned crossing velocity. Recommend cutting thrust and proceeding with the tactical trial.”

“Very well. Cut thrust and line us up on the asteroid. All personnel to Battle Stations Alpha,” Henson commanded.

Nathan sat and made the necessary selections. From speakers all around the ship, a cool feminine voice announced, “General Quarters, General Quarters. Now set General Quarters, Alpha Stations. The ship may engage in high g maneuvers without warning. All personnel will move in an orderly fashion to their General Quarters stations. All personnel will secure for maneuvers and minimize all internal transit unless specifically authorized by the Commanding Officer.”

Suddenly, all trace of weight vanished as the drive cut off and they were again in microgravity. Most of the skeleton crew of fifteen officers aboard were in position, but more than a couple overcompensated for the return to freefall and launched themselves into the overhead with painful results. Those few winced and proceeded to their designated acceleration couches, to monitor and control the weapons tests from there.

Alpha Stations allowed them to work from their usual consoles and seats without suiting up, while Bravo Stations forced them to work from within protective vacuum suits, just in case the ship took damage and lost air integrity. The final condition, Charlie Stations, required them to don vacuum gear as well as relocate to the “pods” or “coffins”, special one-person chambers capable of being pressurized with a force-dampening gel which would enable them to withstand higher g-loads than they normally could endure.

Nathan glanced over to Kris, where she had strapped into a spare couch between the XO and the Weapons Officer. He locked gazes with her and gave her a significant look. “We all ready, Kris?”

She smiled. “Born ready, Mr. Kelley, sir! Let’s launch us some nukes and shoot us some guns.”

Henson glanced from one of them to the other. “Ms. Muñoz, if you would, please monitor the Weapons Officer and assist LCDR Gutierrez with the launch. This will be the first time any of us have fired these missiles and we would prefer not to have a set of six fusion warheads go astray. XO, please monitor Mr. Kelley in the use of the railgun and the laser emplacements. Computer, main screen, enhanced targeting view, go.”

The large flat screen that took up half of the ventral portion of the bridge switched from an overview of environmental, ship, crew, and sensor data to a false-color display showing the highlighted asteroid on a field of black. Vectors and outlines shifted continuously over the rock’s surface as radar and lidar picked out surface features and the computers made automated threat evaluations.

This particular nameless asteroid had been chosen for one reason only, and a cynical, informed observer could not help but notice that the planetoid’s shape and size bore a striking similarity to that of the Deltan control ship. Nathan had suggested the target and Henson and Torrance had been happy to agree with it. None of them would admit to having pre-conceived notions of the aliens’ intentions, but neither would they object to being prudent.

LCDR Rudy Gutierrez made some selections on his screen to which Kris nodded. Elsewhere on the ship, in CIC just dorsal of them and in the missile deck monitoring station several levels above, his selections were taken as commands to the officers working there, who carried them out and acknowledged them almost automatically. Gutierrez turned to the CO. “Captain, all weapons stations report ready. Track 0017 targeted at range 674.3 km, bearing 340 by 075 relative off the port dorsal bow, bearing and closure rates negligible. Asteroid target and ownship at zero thrust. One missile, portside dorsal cell 12, selected for launch. Weapon, drive, and tube capacitors are charged, and ripple warhead pattern selected. Ready for nuclear weapons release on your authority, sir.”

Colonel Henson looked over at Nathan. “Mr. Kelley, assure me there’s no chance I’m going to end up raining meteors down on Earth should this test be successful.”

Nathan frowned and double-checked the missile vector and their relative positions of the Earth and 2006 UA22. Eventually he shrugged. “There’s no way I can give you a hundred percent certainty, but the missile is detonating on a line between the asteroid and the planet. Any debris we get should be aimed away from that vector. I can’t say nothing will ever change orbits and fall to Earth, but the chances against it are … astronomical, I guess you could say.”

Henson narrowed his eyes and turned to the Weapons Officer. “Batteries released. Shoot one.”

Gutierrez stabbed down harder than necessary on his touchscreen and was rewarded with a quick thump-THUMP and a slight shake of the whole ship. Outside, on the forward port dorsal face of the hull’s wedge, one of the square missile hatches flipped open. Powerful coils surrounding the missile tube then flexed with magnetic force, expelling the missile from the tube with sudden, violent efficiency. It shot out from the ship at a constant speed and the hatch closed behind it softly.

Fifty meters from the ship, the missile’s sacrificial capacitor bank began to break down, converting its blend of electrolytes, activated carbon cells, and dielectrics into a froth of free electrons. This explosive cascade of electric charge funneled down through platinum waveguides into Kris’ photonic drive and the small missile erupted into brilliant life.

Gutierrez nodded as a new track appeared on their screens. “Missile ignition. Accelerating to target at 300 meters per second squared. Fifty seconds to warhead separation, 67 seconds to contact.”

The missile flew out, quickly closing with its quarry. For twenty seconds, it flew straight as an arrow, but then it began to jerk erratically about, tracing an uneven corkscrew through space. Strobes of light and flares of invisible radiance exploded from it for seemingly no reason.

“Electronic countermeasures and terminal defensive maneuvering engaged—no faults.”

Henson nodded at Gutierrez, his eyes remaining riveted upon the screen. “Good. Of course, there’s no proof they’ll be effective in the least.”

Nathan shrugged, but kept looking at the main screen as well. “Can’t hurt to be prepared. It’s impossible to hide the drive effect on something that small, so we had to give it some sort of defense or it might never reach the target. Besides, Promise’s telemetry showed its maneuvers were somewhat effective at avoiding that alien disintegration beam, and it was both bigger and slower than our missiles. Have faith.”

At fifty seconds, several large lobes of the missile broke free, their own smaller drives igniting in turn. The corkscrew blossomed second after second into a small squadron of six arcing points of light.

Gutierrez’s voice was almost a whisper in anticipation. “Warhead separation. Ripple fire in three, two, one . . . .” They all held their breaths.

With the warheads now widely spaced from one another, the first detonated, 100 kilometers from the asteroid. A secondary bank of sacrificial capacitors dissolved into plasma, driving a spherical, inward-looking photonic mesh and an outer coil of superconducting wire. The resulting implosion compressed a solid core of lithium deuteride into a plasma as dense as the core of a star, forcing it to fuse. This plasma rebounded and exploded outward with nearly a megaton’s worth of pure energy, but was largely wasted, detonating much too far out from the target.

Yet it was not a complete waste. Even as the components of the missile were vaporized, they were put to work. A small pinch of electromagnetic energy from the secondary coil forced the protons and electrons of the newly generated helium plasma into a brief, rigid order. Photons clumped and streamed down these channels of subatomic particles and the fusion blast became something more. Nearly ten percent of its explosive energy was suddenly converted to coherent x-ray laser light, orders of magnitude stronger than the ship’s primary lasers.

The beam speared invisibly past the other five warheads and stabbed into the asteroid, blasting and vaporizing a chasm into its surface. Seconds later, at fifty kilometers out, a second warhead exploded in laser mode, sending another lance of heat and light piercing into the same spot. Then a third warhead lased, burning their target shaft still deeper.

On the bridge, the crew sat in slack-jawed awe, staring at the strobes of light puncturing the enormous mountain of nickel, iron, and silicates.

The fourth warhead detonated in proximity mode, eschewing the lasing coil for the brute heat of a close-by thermonuclear explosion. Though there was little concussive force to the blast outside of an atmosphere, its radiance a mere kilometer out was powerful enough to vaporize and melt away a significant portion of the narrow laser wound’s entrance. This wider shaft allowed the next two warheads to fly deep into the rock itself.

The fifth and sixth warheads crashed through the softened minerals of the twenty kilometer diameter asteroid’s interior and detonated in rapid succession, the first on contact with the inner surface of the wound, the second moments after burying itself into a few tens of meters of lava. These blasts were largely hidden from the crew, blocked and absorbed by the bulk of the rock itself, but their effect was immediately apparent.

2006 UA22 shattered, exploding outward in an oblate shockwave of fire and pulverized, glowing debris. Five pairs of hands shot up in the air on the Sword of Liberty’s bridge, the two civilians and the military crew all shouting in triumph together. They laughed and yelled, matched over the intercom by the twelve other officers and enlisted crew, all of whom had been watching the weapon test.

Torrance gripped Nathan’s arm, shaking him and grinning. “Good lord, Kelley! You all certainly can kill some rocks!”

Henson shook his head in dismay. “We just vaporized Mt. Everest.”

Gutierrez turned away from the main screen and looked at Kristene, his sense of astonishment shifting from the vanished asteroid to the designer of the Hell-weapon he had just fired. “Ma’am, may I tell you something? I’m sorry if I offend, but you are one scary person.”

Kris did not look offended. If anything, she preened. “Why thank you, Rudy. That’s very sweet.”

Henson and Nathan both shook their heads at that, then Nathan zoomed the display out from former site of the asteroid. Chunks of debris, from the size of office blocks and houses down to pebbles and sand crowded the screen with individual tracks and vectors, each streaming away from the annihilation. Nathan pointed and motioned for the CO’s attention. “Sir, please note there are no debris tracks on a direct course for Earth.”

“Thank you, Nathan. Now, how about debris on a direct course for us?”

Nathan smiled and made several selections on his touch screen. “Of those we have an abundance. Standing by for phase two of our tactical trial.”

Henson nodded. “Very well. Batteries release. The helm is yours.”

“Aye aye, sir.” Nathan made a few final selections on his screen under the watchful eye of CDR Torrance. Graphics crowded in on his tactical display, showing power and temperature states for all six laser emplacements, as well as power, temp, and ammunition magazine states for the forward railgun. Everything showed up in the green.

Nathan gestured to the main screen before them all, drawing the attention of the CO, XO, and Weps. Kris stayed focused on her own panel, working at a furious pace, sweat glistening upon her upper lip and brow. Nathan highlighted several hurtling meteors. “We’ll focus on the largest rocks on a direct collision course first, then we’ll work our way out. I’ll be firing a number of different munitions from the railgun, from explosive, to unitary kinetic, to flechette, and we’ll just see which ones work best where. Now, since the gun is too big for a stable turret, it only has an aim swing from its cradle of 10 degrees to centerline. Anything outside of that arc will require maneuvering of the ship, but we can slave the helm to the gun target line with just the push of a button. Like this.”

Nathan reached out and made another selection. The ship’s bland feminine voice then sounded from every speaker. “All hands, brace for maneuvers. Acceleration may change without further warning while engaged in gunfire evolutions.”

“From this point, aiming and fire is automatic,” Nathan said. “There’s no way an operator could ever effectively aim these shots over the ranges we’re talking, so whoever you assign to gunnery will only have to manually select targets and monitor performance, or else he can program in his own target selection doctrine and let the computer do everything.

Torrance grunted. “If it works anything like Navy weapons doctrine, we’ll be shooting at every Gemini urine bag and discarded Russian satellite the radar can track.”

Nathan grinned and nodded. “Well, I never said it was perfect. I’m still a big believer in man-in-the-loop, myself. So, now that I’ve manually designated all my targets, I back it up with auto laser handoff. Any chunks or secondary debris that makes it past the gunfire will then get targeted by the lasers to be burned away.”

Kris looked up from her preps. “And that’s it. Easy, squeezee: your basic cone of impenetrable destruction. These rocks won’t know what hit ‘em, and neither will the Deltans. We’re ready on my end, babe.”

“Thanks, Kris. Firing … now.” Nathan caught Colonel Henson’s gaze and firmly pressed the blinking icon on his own panel. The screen chimed and the ship immediately shook. Then again, and again, and again, once every two seconds, as the railgun fired its way through the target list. A distant thumping ring sounded with every bump, transmitted through the hull by the violent electromagnetic pressures building and releasing up in the bow.

Outside the ship, white light flashed with every round, a soundless bolt of lightning and plasma jetting forth on the heels of each shot. Over time, the plasma boiling away from the twin rails of the railgun would begin to degrade their surface treatments, preventing the shell armatures from firing effectively, but that moment was thousands of shots away. For now, the system worked flawlessly, sending blinding shot after blinding shot straight out into the void, directly down the gun line.

Having serviced the targets inside its firing cutouts already, the railgun began to guide the ship to new targets. The Sword of Liberty started to jerk erratically, dodging from vector to vector to bring its massive gun to bear, her pylon thrusters firing at seemingly random intervals.

Kris started to feel queasy.

Downrange, the massive tons of meteors met the irresistible forces of the railgun rounds. Unitary rounds—slender sabots of hardened tungsten alloy—struck the largest boulders, converting their enormous kinetic energy into heat, light, and shattering force. The meteors cracked up into hundreds of smaller pieces, and each one was tracked in turn and added to the firing queue.

Flechette rounds deposited their momentum and kinetic energy in a different way, breaking up into a cloud of diamond hard slivers before striking their medium size targets. The dozens of smaller sabots worked in concert to pulverize these rocks into dust and pebbles, sizes which could be more reasonably handled by the ship’s point defense and armor.

The smallest targets—man-sized chunks of rock and tight formations of rock and debris—received the attention of the explosive rounds. These larger railgun shots were directional blast fragmentary rounds, cylinders of scored steel plate sandwiched with sheets of octaazacubane (N8) explosive. Striking and detonating with the combined kinetic energy and explosive force of thousand pound bombs, their targets were obliterated and dispersed into relatively harmless detritus.

Aboard the ship, the crew watched as the darkened storm of incoming meteors blossomed into clouds of light and gas, coloring the infinite black with violently hued destruction. Henson shook his head. It was impressive, even graceful, but he shuddered to think about what would happen if such a weapon was turned upon something more significant than asteroidal debris. From its high perch in orbit, the Sword of Liberty could potentially devastate any city with impunity.

In its own way, it was even more terrifying than the sudden apocalypse of the nuclear warheads. That mind-boggling terror had been over in a literal flash. This was enduring, relentless, chewing away at chunks of solar history like some voracious colony of insects.

He looked over at Nathan. The former sailor was a decorated veteran, a hero and a patriot, but Secretary Sykes had warned him that he was also driven by an almost religious need for the ship to be a success. Such an intimately profound sense of motivation could easily turn and twist into something darker. Nathan Kelley had been nothing but helpful to the new crew, but he was also bitterly disappointed in the current state of affairs. Henson suddenly realized how glad he was that this would be the first and last time Nathan would be handling the ship.

He cleared his throat and said to Nathan, “Well it certainly looks impressive. How is it working?”

Nathan shrugged. “It’s working pretty much as planned, breaking up and dispersing all the incoming, but the debris front is still moving toward us. We’ll have to see how we weather the storm.”

Kelley spoke up. “Targets reaching point defense boundary at 150 km. Lasers are cycling to auto.”

Henson nodded. “Very well.”

While the ship continued to jerk and swing, and the railgun continued to thump and fire away, the diode laser banks on each of the six emplacements began to track and fire. There was little sound from these weapons, only the repeated snap and hum of continuously charging and discharging capacitors. The railgun power supply made similar sounds, but that was lost next to the awesome crack of a shot ablating down the rails.

Invisible beams sought out chunks of rock, starting with the nearest and the largest inbound threats and working out from there. Though the beams were not apparent, their effect was unmistakable, as hurtling meteors flared bright, turned to vapor and slag by the energy of the beams. Where a meteor was too large to be burned away completely, the section of it that was burning would outgas, pushing the chunk onto a new vector away from the ship.

It was a success. All the weapons worked. What had begun as a mountain floating in space, an ancient leftover from the birth of the solar system billions of years before, was now a continuously expanding sphere of rocks and meteors—and one side of that expansion had been further reduced, pummeled and vaporized into harmless pebbles and dust. Nathan sat back and smiled, letting the system wrap things up for him.

Flawless, he thought.

Kris’s voice cried out suddenly, strident and fearful. “Leaker! I’ve got a track on a collision course, no weapons pairing!”

They all looked at her and then at the main screen. Highlighted on it was a single track: a two meter wide, irregular mass of iron streaked through the gunnery sector without an engagement and broached the self-defense line without a laser reacting to it. It stayed on a constant bearing, its range ticking quickly down on a collision course with the ship.

The system failed to react and there was no time to engage it manually. Nathan’s eyes widened and he shot out a hand, striking a control on the emergency panel between his and the XO’s seats.

The strident beep of a collision alarm sounded. At the same time, the ship’s voice cried out, “Brace for shock!”

The destroyer lurched to one side, jerking them badly in their seats. The lights flickered, then died, returning a moment later on half-lit battery backups. Static washed over their control screens and the gun and laser emplacements were silent.

They all set dazed for a moment, until Colonel Henson shook his head and looked at the four others. “What the hell was that? All right, SITREP. Find out what’s up, what’s down, and where we are in terms of that blast front. XO, get comms re-established and get us a head count.”

Nathan, Torrance, and Gutierrez each responded simultaneously with, “Aye aye, sir.” Kris answered numbly with a slow nod of her head.

The static cleared from their screens as the system reset itself. A few moments and keystrokes later, they had Henson’s answers. Weps spoke up first. “Sir, the railgun shows 136 rounds expended, bore clear, no apparent casualties. All lasers have green boards. I have charged capacitor banks on all weapons, but the detection and tracking systems are down due to loss of power. Radar and lidar are down for the same reason. The system is dead reckoning all tracks in from their last good radar sweep and we should be okay. All major, potentially damaging rocks were destroyed, and the blast front is approximately two minutes out. We may get peppered, but unless there’s another pop-up leaker, we should be all right.”

Henson nodded. “Very well. Engineering?”

Nathan answered. “Power is down, obviously. Engines are down and the reactor is scrammed. Helium coolant pressure is zero. Reactor room air pressure is zero. I’ve got hull damage alarms and radiation hazard alarms for the whole of Engineering, and all the safety airlocks for that section are in lockdown. My guess is the leaker penetrated us right over the portside radiator, and breached the reactor vessel. I’ll have to suit up to confirm it, but it’s probably a hard vacuum back there, with clad plutonium pebbles spilled out all over the place.”

Henson nodded and looked at the XO. Torrance responded, “We got lucky. If we had a full complement, we would have lost at least two or three people, but no one was in the locked down area. I’ve got reports of some bruises and a whiplash or two, but everyone’s still alive and functional, Colonel.”

The CO relaxed slightly and rubbed his own aching neck. “Lucky. And astronomically unlucky as well. Mr. Kelley, this is an inauspicious beginning for your space fleet, don’t you think?”

“It’s disconcerting, sir, but I don’t think it invalidates what we’re trying to do.”

Henson’s lip turned up on the threshold of a grim smile. “It doesn’t? We were just taken out of the game by an inanimate hunk of iron. Our hull is open to space and we’re practically in the dark here. We could have lost men’s lives. How do you think we’ll fare against your technologically advanced aliens?”

Nathan held up his hands in protest. He was about to speak, but a sudden patter of dinks and bangs sounding from the hull gave him pause. They all listened to the meteor storm front sweep by them, worried and almost convinced that there would be another collision and another breach.

Their earlier weapons fire had been effective, however. All that struck them was sand and pebbles, moving at a slow enough relative speed that the destroyer’s chromatic armor plate could successfully shrug it off.

The noise faded after a few moments. Nathan lowered his hands and sighed in relief. “Colonel, this is a glitch, a bug, Murphy’s Law. Nothing more. I don’t know why that meteor was able to sneak through our defenses, but it does not invalidate what the rest of the trial showed. We investigate this, we make repairs, and we try it again. And then you fine gentlemen go make the Deltans wish they had never heard of Earth.”

Henson and Torrance exchanged a look and a nod. Henson turned back to Nathan. “Fine. Now, what about repairs? Can we get the power and engines back online?”

Nathan and Kris looked at one another, and she shook her head. He motioned for her to go ahead. She flushed and stammered slightly. “C—Commander, Colonel, we, uh, we can’t fix this here. Assuming the only thing that was damaged was the reactor itself, and that’s a big, bad assumption, we can go EVA and slap a patch on the hull and the reactor vessel. We can clear away the rad hazard and maybe re-pressurize with helium, but there’s no way to tell if the reactor safeties will even allow us to bring it back online, and we’re going to soak up a lot of REMs while we’re making the attempt. Also, if we can’t get it done in six hours, which we can’t, the air is gonna get awfully stale.”

Nathan nodded. “Our only real option is to abandon the ship in the SSTOS and come back with a proper engineering team. It’ll take about three cramped, uncomfortable days to make the trip home. Then a few days to gather personnel and materials, another three to return, a week or two for repairs, and then … ? Figure on the better part of a month before we can get the Sword underway again and back to Earth orbit.”

Henson punched his seat’s armrest in frustration. “Shit. There’s no other way?”

Nathan shook his head. “Not with the resources we have out with us at the moment. I’m sorry, sir. This trial is over. You have to focus on getting your crew home now.”

“I know that.” His tone was sharp, but he relented a second later. “It’s just … I had a lot riding on this mission as well, you know? Fine. Mr. Kelley, you’re sure the shuttle has the range to get us all home safely?”

“Absolutely, sir. That was one of the safety constraints for the mission. It won’t be that pleasant, but the SSTOS has the delta-v and the resources to get us all back to Earth safely.”

“Very well.” Henson slumped slightly in his seat, in so much as one could slump in microgravity. “Issue the order, XO. Abandon ship.”

Torrance nodded and reached down to the comm panel. As he began to speak to the rest of the ship, relaying what has happened and what they had to do now, Nathan and Gutierrez worked in concert to shut down and safely power off all the charged weapons systems, using what computer control they still had while the various battery backups were still active.

Kris unstrapped from her seat and floated up, her face stricken. “I’ll go pre-flight the SSTOS,” she said softly. The CO simply nodded, staring at the bulkhead. As she passed by Nathan, she reached out a hand and squeezed his shoulder.

He reached up to catch her fingers and drew them to his lips. He kissed the back of her hand without any of his earlier self-consciousness. “It’ll be all right, babe. This is just a setback, but we’ll work our way past it. Okay?”

She attempted a smile, but failed to pull it off. Kris nodded, her eyes limned with tears that could not fall, and then turned in mid-air and dove out of the room. Nathan went back to his work, refusing to notice the other three men watching him.

Around the darkened, quiet ship, personnel began to make their way from their stations toward the dorsal interior of the destroyer and the large shuttle hangar there. They pushed their luggage before them or dragged it haltingly behind, struggling with their massive packs now that inertia had been divorced from the aid of either gravity or pseudogravity.

Inside the hangar, the line of Navy and Air Force officers and crewmen drifted into the sleek, gray, single-stage-to-orbit-shuttle. A slender, lifting-body design, it had been adapted from NASA’s somewhat successful sub-orbital spaceplane. All that differed was the power plant, replacing the turbo scramjet/chemical rocket hybrids with a small thermoelectric fission reactor and a photonic reaction drive.

While the skeleton crew stowed their gear and went back for several days’ worth of rations, the adapted shuttle came to life, its ventilation fans, pumps, and motors providing welcome white noise to the crew. It was not acknowledged among the uninitiated, but sailors of all stripes secretly feared the silence.

At sea, at sail, silence meant a dead calm, awaiting a slow death while lingering in the doldrums. In later generations, silence meant the end of engines and power, forcing the tin cans and iron men of 20th and 21st century navies to negotiate with the capricious elements, at the mercy of forces they had long since conquered.

Aboard the Sword of Liberty, the silencing of technology’s pervasive noise meant they were stranded on the furthest, most isolated, most inhospitable reef man had ever ventured toward. Out here, there was nothing that would not kill them, from the implacable vacuum to the impenetrable cold of space. Seeing the SSTOS come to life let many of them release bated breaths they had not even realized they had held.

The last to go aboard, Colonel Henson allowed Commander Torrance to precede him into the shuttle. Nathan placed himself just inside the shuttle’s hatch, ready to close it and conduct his door check. Henson stood at the threshold, halfway in the destroyer, halfway aboard their forlorn lifeboat. He looked wistfully at the ship. “One month. I’ll see you in a month … I promise,” he said, his voice a whisper.

He turned and pulled himself into the SSTOS. “XO, is everyone aboard?”

“Yes, sir. LCDR Oneida and Major Keller are in the cockpit, and Ms. Muñoz is back aft, completing the reactor and engine checks.” Torrance began putting on his five-point harness, settling in.

Henson pulled himself forward, drifting to his own seat next to the XO. “Very well. Mr. Kelley, if you would get the hatch, plea—”

The hatch, firmly shutting on his request, gave him pause. He turned around, just as everyone else began to crane around in their seats to get a look. Nathan Kelley had indeed shut the hatch to the shuttle.

Except that he was on the outside of it.

A horrible possibility suddenly dawned on the colonel, and he jumped off and flew to the hatch. He tried the auto release, but it would not work. Fumbling with the manual release cover, he opened it to find that the operating mechanism had been removed. The colonel growled in betrayal.

Henson spun around to glare at Torrance. “You said Muñoz was aboard? She’s back aft?”

“Yes, sir! I saw her go back there myself.”

“Is there another hatch back aft?”

He had his answer when the XO went pale and began fumbling to release his harness. Henson cursed and jetted himself into the cabin and then flew up onto the flight deck. He jerked open the door and stared at the pilot and co-pilot in the cockpit, going over their checklists. “Oneida! Do you have controls? Is your board up?”

The pilot looked confused and turned to his panel. He flipped a few switches, and tapped a few keys, but nothing seemed to happen. “That’s funny. It was working a minute ago . . . .”

“Damn it! Get it back online! Do whatever you have to.” Henson turned and flew back into the main cabin, just as the XO emerged from his trip into the shuttle’s small engineering space.

Torrance looked as if he did not know whether to be sick or to throw a fit. “She’s gone and the aft emergency hatch has been disabled.”

Henson growled and sought out his Chief Engineer among the assembled, strapped-down crew. “Commander Marcus, did you actually see any of the meteor damage? Any at all?”

The Navy astronaut looked around at his men and then shrugged, embarrassed. “Well, no, sir. The cameras were offline and the doors to that section were sealed for a vacuum and rad hazard. I thought we would at least do an EVA and survey, but the Muñoz woman said there wasn’t enough time. We had orders to spend the time shutting down and evacuating.”

“Good god, I’m an idiot.” Henson ran a hand over his face. Everyone else in the cabin stared at him, unsure of what to do, of what to say.

Pilot Oneida’s voice called out from the cockpit. “Colonel! You’re going to want to get up here.”

Henson re-entered the cockpit and saw Keller manipulating his controls to absolutely no effect. It was easy to see his fruitless efforts because the lighting in the hangar was fully on, no longer on battery backup. A red flashing light strobed over their heads. The two immense, armored hatches that separated them from the vacuum had each begun pulling away, revealing the stark black of empty space. Ship’s power was restored and the hangar had already been fully evacuated. In a few moments, he felt sure they would be left stranded in space.

Oneida held out a communications headset to his CO. Henson grabbed it and put it over his head, positioning the microphone in front of his mouth. He keyed the mike. “Kelley, this ship was never hit, was it?”

Nathan’s voice came back instantly. “I’m truly sorry, Colonel. Did I neglect to tell you about the rather robust damage control training simulation program the ship has? I really should put that in the next familiarization course.”

“I saw that meteor. I felt it strike the ship.”

“No, you saw a meteor test track overlaid on the actual tactical feed. You felt the engines pulse to provide the tactile simulation of a hit. And then the system closed off the appropriate locks and gave the expected alarms for this type of casualty. If we had gotten partial power restored, I could have even shown you video of the damage. But, no, we were never hit.”

The SSTOS lurched slightly, and Henson saw them float slowly up, out of the hangar and into the infinite void. “Kelley! What the hell do you think you’re doing?”

“I’m doing what I have to do. I’m fulfilling a promise I made to a man who endured the doubts of an entire planet to prepare mankind to defend itself.” The SSTOS cleared the hangar doors, revealing the trapezoidal armor plates of the destroyer’s forward dorsal hull. It looked stark and unreal out there, all alone, without the enveloping protection of the hangar in which it had been born, without the comforting proximity of the Earth’s broad horizon below it.

Nathan’s voice came over the headphones again. “Oh, look, Colonel. You seem to have abandoned your perfectly good ship for no reason at all. I’m afraid I’ll have to claim her as salvage before some ne’er-do-well absconds with her.”

Henson growled in frustration. “You can’t steal back your ship, Kelley. It’s not only petty, it’s treason!”

“I suppose I’ll have to rely on the vindication of history.”

“You have no crew, no shuttle. And what about the ammo and reactor power you expended thus far? I can guarantee you that you won’t be visiting any filling stations between here and the Deltans.”

Nathan’s voice was vaguely disappointed in response. “Let’s try to proceed on the assumption that I’m not a complete idiot, okay? This ship is fully stocked and has enough reactor power and delta-v for four years of continuous operation. As for the ammo and crew, trust me. I won’t be going off half-cocked or ill-prepared.”

Colonel Calvin Henson screamed with rage. Oneida and Keller stared at him, joined by Commander Torrance who appeared behind the CO to stare agog at the blackness of space surrounding them. Henson gripped the mike, as if to force his words into the instrument and through the ether. “What gives you the right, Nathan? What makes you think you’re entitled to first contact? What makes you believe you can do it better than we can?”

There was a long pause. Then, “I suppose it’s faith, faith in someone who had faith in me, faith that I’ve been tried in the crucible once already, and I’m tempered for whatever comes next.”

Below them, the Sword of Liberty began to pull away, acceleration building quickly to a full g. The wedge of the forward hull moved forward, followed by the dully glowing radiator panels laid out in front of the reactor vessel, and then the brilliant blue thrust of the photonic drive, boiling away with corpuscles of light so intense they seemed to be physical objects in and of themselves.

Nathan’s voice called back over the increasingly widening gulf. “Your controls should unfreeze in the next thirty minutes. Then, just follow the recorded flight plan to Earth and reentry. You should be there in about three days. Farewell, Colonel. Don’t take this personally, please. I hope to see you in command of the next Sword when we get back from our mission. You deserve one of these.

“But this one is mine.”