A Sword Into Darkness

15: “DEATH FROM ABOVE

August 16, 2046; USS Sword of Liberty (DA-1), 0.48 light-years from Earth, 0.033 light-seconds (10,000 km) from alien formation; Mission Day 529

“Attention all hands! The ship is at General Quarters, Bravo Stations. Now shift to General Quarters, Charlie Stations. Now shift to General Quarters, Charlie Stations for battle. The ship anticipates imminent combat maneuvering and damage. All personnel will move to Charlie Station pods immediately. All personnel unable to do so will report to the Commanding Officer on the bridge. Now shift to General Quarters, Charlie Stations.”

The ship’s voice—that of a stern, but caring matron who had only the crew’s best interests at heart, whether they wanted to do as she said or not—issued her commands all over the ship and then repeated herself. The Sword of Liberty’s second pronouncement of the call to Charlie Stations was spoiled, however, by the roar of moving air as each section’s atmosphere was pumped out, leaving behind a near vacuum to minimize the progressive damage a hull breach or blowout might cause.

The crew had no need of the air, suited as they were, but it was missed nonetheless. Its removal made reality of a situation that had been only a simulated potential outcome before this. And not only did the dwindling rush of atmosphere isolate each crewmember from one another, it also isolated a future of limitless possibilities from a present along a single, dreaded course.

Nathan felt the confining skin of his suit swell and stiffen slightly in reaction to the drop in pressure, but he had little time to savor the sensation. There was simply too much to do, and after months of preparations and idle time spent wondering how things would go, suddenly there just did not seem to be enough time to do what must be done.

Under his watchful eye, the bridge crew shifted to Charlie Stations. Their consoles and screens went dark and hatches slid open beneath each of their acceleration couches. The couches fell back and the hatches slid shut over their occupants, entombing them within the armored allocarbium structure of the ship itself. The four watches went first, then Edwards and the XO.

Nathan checked a series of telltales on his one remaining active screen. When it showed twenty-eight green lights and only seven amber, his crew safely ensconced within their pods with only himself, the absent diplomatic team, and poor Diane Rutherford missing, he initiated his own descent.

His couch stretched out and fell backward into its recessed alcove in the deck and then confined him to darkness as the hatch closed over him. As soon as the hatch clicked shut, the interior of the pod closed in, its inner membrane swelling to squeeze him tightly. The space between the walls of the pod and himself and his couch were now filled with a force-dampening gel, an all-encompassing cushion which, it was hoped, would allow himself and the rest of the crew to withstand a greater g-load and the violent shocks of combat.

A specially shaped screen settled over his helmet’s faceplate and Nathan was suddenly awash in information, visual data similar to what he could see on his regular screens, but now presented in a three dimensional, comprehensive format. The Deltan drive-star was an immense, false color sphere, almost filling the area in front of them. Along one polar axis, arbitrarily designated “south”, a lance of pure energy flowed outward—their thrust corona, instant death if approached too closely. And orbiting blithely around the drive’s equator was the constellation of four ships, the Deltans themselves.

Nathan goggled at the imposing whole, of the cosmic forces they were about to challenge and his resolve shrank for a moment. Feeling himself begin to shirk from the task at hand, he gritted his teeth and forced his doubts to the back of his mind. Nathan blinked, re-orienting himself to the combat virtual reality, seeing it not as an implacable whole, but as a series of tasks. Take on one, complete it, then move on to the next. Then repeat. And so on.

His nerves calmed and he flexed his hands, finding his chair’s familiar armrest controls even through the confining sluggishness of the force gel. They were comforting in their assured lethality, a system he could have faith in, even when his faith in himself began to falter.

He keyed his mike. “XO, comm check and sitrep.”

Wright’s voice came through his helmet speakers loud and clear. “Lima Charlie, Captain. I have sat comms with all intermediate control stations as well. Railgun power is at 85% and rising, combat rounds to the autoloader. Laser power supplies are at 60% and tuned. Missile launch coils are charged and holding, and missiles 01-86 are warmed, spun up, and internal warhead and drive capacitor banks are fully charged. Radiator loading is at 38% and reactor power is at 45%. Ready to answer all bells.”

Nathan smiled. “Bells” on an engine order telegraph were how steamships ordered up speed changes. It warmed him to hear Wright invoke such an archaic way of describing their readiness. Hopefully some of the spirit of those old steam-powered cruisers and their “Tin-Can Sailors” would be with them today as they initiated the first space battle in man’s history.

“Very well,” Nathan answered back. “TAO, Captain, I hold us in visual of all four alien vessels. I’m feeling a little exposed. Launch pattern Oscar Four and then get ready to hit the deck. We’ll be maneuvering closer to the drive star and heading for the Junkyard to head off any direct fire from the other three ships.”

LT Simmons, in CIC as the Tactical Action Officer, responded promptly. “Aye aye, sir. Oscar Four initiated. Be advised: tactical reaction time is estimated at a tenth of a second now. If we close the Junkyard, we’ll be increasing our exposure to their direct fire.”

Tactical reaction time was a term they had created to account for the peculiarities of long range space combat. In space, there was no horizon. Every target was within visual range of every other target, thus as long as they could see the enemy, the enemy could see—and fire—at them. The only defense they had was distance and maneuverability.

They saw the enemy and the enemy saw them by either the light and radiation they emitted or the light and radiation reflected off their respective hulls. To strike with a direct fire weapon like a laser or a railgun, you just had to point the weapon at the target and fire. If the objective moved enough in the time between emitting its targeting radiation, aiming your weapon, and the weapon beam or shot crossing the intervening distance, the weapon would miss.

At short ranges, lasers could see, point, fire, and hit virtually instantly. At longer ranges though, lightspeed lag and bearing resolution began to play a part. At their range to the Deltan ships, light took 33 thousandths of a second to cross the distance. Double that time and add in any processing time or physical aiming time and one arrived at a tactical reaction time of at least a tenth of a second. Thus they had a tenth of a second to accelerate the ship out of the way if they were going to avoid being hit. And since either they or the Deltans could easily account for continuous accelerations by leading their targets, that meant the Sword of Liberty would have to continuously change its instantaneous acceleration every tenth of a second.

This basically amounted to a very bumpy ride, and as a defensive strategy, it would only work if they remained well outside their current range. Closing the Junkyard or any of the Deltan ships would render that lag even less effective.

Nathan considered all of that in an instant and answered Simmons. “Roger that, Mike, but we haven’t got much choice. If we stay where we are, we’re going to get targeted by all four. Once the star blocks the other three, we can pull out away from the Junkyard and increase the time lag, but we’re going to have to get our hull dirty at some point. At least they’re a lot bigger than we are and can’t maneuver as fast.”

“That we know of,” Simmons said, with a dubious tone.

“Understood. Execute launch.”

In answer, twenty status symbols went from green to red. Between the evacuated hull and the dampening of the pod’s force gel, Nathan could not hear or feel the opening of the missile hatches, or the launch of them on their inaugural and terminal journeys, but he focused on them just the same.

Twenty friendly missile tracks appeared around the Sword’s own track symbol. Simmons called back. “Initial salvo away. Five missiles designated for each target, ripple warhead pattern. Missile AIs are in autonomous mode.”

“Very well, TAO. Break, Helm, dive for the star’s horizon and make for a 1,000 km high-v CPA to the Junkyard. Flank acceleration.”

“Helm, aye, sir.” Nathan could hear the glee in Andrew Weston’s voice. Their destroyer was many times more massive than any fighter Weston had ever flown, but it also was stronger and more powerful as well.

Immense maneuvering thrusters flared out in cerulean brilliance, kicking the nose of the destroyer down toward the roiling, angry surface of the Deltan drive-star. Then—checking that swing—the main drive erupted in light, thrusting the magnificent ship just to one side of their enemy, for a closest-point-of-approach of a mere 1000 km.

Nathan grunted and tried to breathe as the air was forced from his lungs. He felt the gel pump to a higher pressure around him, focused on his extremities, much as a fighter pilot’s g-suit would do. Unfelt in the discomfort of the sudden fifteen-g acceleration, a cocktail of osmotic stimulants and anti-nausea drugs were injected into him. His vision cleared as his heart and diaphragm pumped harder, forcing the blood and oxygen back into his brain.

Trained pilots and astronauts could withstand up to nine gravities of acceleration in a sitting position, and almost twice that lying down and augmented by modern bio-engineered support systems. Nathan and his crew were not trained to as great a degree, but they would make do. They had no other choice.

Of course, though 15 g’s was quite high, it was nowhere near what the ship’s composite frame could handle. The hull groaned and popped as its structure was put to the test, but it was only the cracking of prize-fighter’s knuckles as he entered the fray. The Sword of Liberty welcomed the torturous thrust and begged for more, though more would surely render her crew unconscious or dead.

The twenty missiles, left far behind her, were under no such restrictions. They had no crew to black out, only a mission to complete. After a moment’s dormancy to allow the ship to clear, each missile’s sacrificial capacitor bank broke down into a storm of free electrons, channeled into their enhanced photon drives. The missiles streaked away from one another at 450 meters per second squared, five heading for the Junkyard in front of them at five wildly divergent angles of attack, and the other fifteen headed in the opposite direction for the three ships clustered on the opposite side of the drive.

The missiles directed at the Junkyard passed the destroyer which had borne them and closed rapidly with their quarry. The jumbled, misshapen alien vessel—reacting to this new activity—fired a pair of beams: one, the silvery beam used by the Control ship to “dust” the Promise and their sub-probes; the other, the laser utilized before with such devastating effect.

It would not be enough.

The laser struck missile simply vanished, shredded into plasma and glowing, high velocity shrapnel. The silvery beam, slowly eating away at the targeted missile’s body, forced the weapon’s AI to react. It transmitted a warning to its fellow missiles and the Sword of Liberty, then deployed its warheads early while it was still intact.

The other three missiles boosted their forward acceleration to a hundred gravities, and began maneuvering wildly across the firmament even as they closed more rapidly. Their motion was lost a fraction of a second later, though, as the six warheads from the harried missile exploded, silhouetting its brethren for a brief instant before dazzling its attacker with multiple beams of coherent x-rays.

The lasing warheads were much too far away to do any real damage, but they did succeed in momentarily blinding the alien ship to what approached. Or, at least, that was the effect as the other three missiles finished closing, unperturbed.

The three unseen shapes suddenly blossomed into eighteen smaller objects, each twisting down in rapidly shifting corkscrews. In a coordinated dance of fire, light, and motion, the individual warheads exploded in sequence. Beams of invisible radiance stabbed into the Junkyard, vaporizing sections of hull and structure. Geysers of plasma erupted from the ship, blowing out chasms of destruction, deep into the vessel. For all its immensity, the alien vessel seemed relatively weak in construction.

The laser warheads fired like the steps of spiral staircase, each one closer than the last. After twelve such successively closer and harsher beams, the remaining six warheads were near enough to switch modes. Two warheads exploded in maximal fusion fire immediately above the mangled surface of the Junkyard, eating deeper in and joining the canyons of carnage together into a glowing, bowl-like depression. The remaining four warheads, driving in at hypervelocity and max acceleration, pierced this softened, half-melted surface, each attempting to drive further and further into the 45 km bulk of the alien ship.

Straining under the oppressive weight of flank acceleration, Nathan could not cheer as the Junkyard flashed into fire and light, but he desperately wanted to. The last four warheads of the salvo exploded almost simultaneously, and every bit of their energy was expended into the structure of the alien vessel. The ship ballooned up with light and broke apart into kilometers long chunks and smaller, skyscraper-sized pieces of burning, out-gassing debris. If it had appeared unformed and purposeless before to their human eyes, its form had been highly functional art compared to what it was now.

Nathan, unable to really move or speak under this level of acceleration, twitched his fingers in the appropriate brevity pattern, sending a text command to Weston on the Helm. Responding to the order, Weston cut the acceleration and slewed the ship bow-on toward the Junkyard’s expanding debris field.

Nathan surged upward in response to the sudden freefall, restrained by his seat’s straps and the confining gel. His heart raced wildly and his eyes felt as if they were about to pop from his head. It took a conscious effort to slow and shallow out his rapid, gulping breaths. Counter-meds pumped into his bloodstream, slowing his heart to a calmer rate and bringing his blood pressure back to a normal range. He tried moving tentatively, fighting the confinement of the gel.

His movements were sluggish, and every muscle and joint ached in protest, but nothing more adverse seemed to have occurred. He keyed his mike. “XO, Captain, SITREP.”

There was a pause, and then Wright responded, his voice hoarse. “Captain, XO, the Junkyard appears to be demolished, sir. The energy sources we registered with our recon probe before are either gone or they’re lost in the haze from the warhead explosions. We aren’t picking up any purposeful signals or activity among the major pieces of debris, and we are un-attacked at the moment.”

“That’s always nice,” Edwards said, breaking into the net.

“I’m rather fond of that myself, COB,” Nathan answered back, smiling. “How’s the crew, XO?”

“Strong vitals on all, sir, but it looks like Sarmiento up in Railgun control and Blake back in Main Propulsion may have been rendered unconscious. WEPS and CHENG are both trying to wake them verbally. The general net is a litany of groans and complaints, if you want to listen in.”

Nathan frowned. “No thanks. I’m sure they’re just expressing what I feel. On Blake and Sarmiento, let me know if they can’t be woken and I’ll authorize you to shock them or give them an extra dose of ‘happy-wakey’. I don’t want anybody out of their pod, though, unless it’s a last resort.”

“Roger that, Captain.”

Nathan shifted his attention back to the debris field. The globe of demolished ruins began to flatten out into an irregular, concave ellipsoid, giving some measure of shape and definition to the unknown fields holding the Deltan ships in position around the drive’s equator. Some pieces of the Junkyard had achieved escape velocity and now sailed out into the infinite night. Others had been thrown down below the ship’s orbit and burned away in the upper reaches of the drive-star’s roiling plasma.

“TAO, Captain,” Nathan said into his mike, “How are we for collision avoidance? Do we need to haul out to the north or south of the orbital band, or can we stay in this plane? We’re going to need to be close in to the drive at the equator if we’re going to only engage one ship at a time.”

“Looking, sir. Wait one,” Simmons said. It was a quiet minute until Simmons responded. “Sir, if we close to within 300 km of the drive and stay in this plane, we’ll avoid most of the debris. The helm may need to dodge a few big chunks, and I may need to shoot some away, but we can get through from this orbit. In approximately 10 minutes, I can have us in position to engage the Cathedral.”

Nathan nodded to himself. “Very well, pass your recommended course to the helm and execute.”

The ship accelerated again, this time at a more reasonable two g’s. After experiencing seven and a half times as much, it felt almost pleasurable—just a subtle sensation of weight on their chests.

Edwards keyed in on a private chat channel, his voice only slightly strained. “Hey, Skipper. What are the odds we’re going to find three expanding debris clouds like this one when we cross that fake horizon?”

Nathan shook his head. “I’m not laying any. The Junkyard was the first target reached. The salvoes for the other three ships wouldn’t have hit until after this strike was complete, so chances are if they have any sort of command and control channel to the other side of the drive-star, they weren’t that surprised by what our missiles could do. And I’ll be amazed if the Control Ship proves as easy to take down as the Junkyard was.”

“Well, I’m going to do a little positive thinking along those lines. Maybe I can skew fate our way if I wish for it hard enough.”

Nathan smiled. “That ever work for you?”

“Not since I was eight years old.” Edwards chuckled roughly.

The private channel closed, and Nathan turned his attention back to his three-dimensional battlespace VR. The Junkyard’s debris tracks all had false color velocity and acceleration leaders overlaid upon them, with ghostly traces showing where the pieces would be at their closest point of approach. It was a mess, but the layout of the display clearly pointed out the hard spots. The helm’s path input showed the course Weston threaded through the swarm of debris, and it appeared as if his maneuvers would neatly avoid any damaging collisions. Nathan grunted his approval and moved on from that immediate problem to the tactical one that still lay before him.

Three ships to go, and to take them one at a time, the Sword of Liberty would have to stay as close to the “deck” as possible, that deck in this case being the fiery surface of the drive. That would create a horizon they could peek around, and which they could interpose should they need to beat a hasty retreat. However, it would also further expose them to the heat and radiation pouring out from the miniature sun, cripple their radiator efficiency, not to mention cutting the tactical reaction time even more, and, unfortunately, closing off an entire direction to free maneuver.

In this case, the goods slightly edged out the bads, but too narrowly for Nathan’s liking. If he could distract the Cathedral when they made their emergence, though, the odds might improve a great deal.

He keyed his mike. “TAO, Captain, I want to flush another 10 missiles. We know the general location of the Cathedral, right?”

Simmons sounded uncertain. “Yes sir, assuming they haven’t shifted their orbit.”

“We’ll have to chance it. I don’t want them watching for us at the equator. Send two flights of five Excaliburs each to the north. Have them cut in along two different longitudinal paths to intercept the Cathedral, and along a higher arc than the one we’re making.”

“Captain, there’s a hell of a strong magnetic field at the north pole, opposite the thrust axis. I can’t get the birds too close to it without frying their electronics.”

“Understood. Do the best you can. I just don’t want them looking to the east when we pop up. Time the intercept so the warheads are lasing when we come into visual range.”

“Aye aye, sir. And what if we’ve lucked out and the Cathedral’s already gone?”

Nathan smiled to himself. “Then, by all means, program our bloodthirsty little birds to go for the Control Ship. It’s the next one on my target list anyway.”

“Yes, sir!” Simmons dropped out of the connection to pass Nathan’s orders on to his watchstanders in CIC.

Nathan, in turn, looked at his overall status. Blake and Sarmiento appeared to be awake, and the railgun and lasers fired intermittently, clearing the way in front of them from pieces too small for Weston to maneuver around. It seemed to be working. Their small, impossible endeavor might actually have a chance.

Nathan allowed hope to rise in his heart. Scrolling through the crew status icons, he lingered over Kris’s, burning brightly green. For a moment, he nearly keyed her icon to open a private channel, to exchange a small measure of the optimism and pride he felt with the woman he loved, but he pulled back at the last. There was still too much to be done for now. Besides she knew how he felt.

And there would always be time to tell her afterward.

“Launching polar salvoes, Captain,” Simmons said, breaking into his reverie.

“Very well,” Nathan responded. Again, unheard and unfelt, ten missiles launched from out of the port and starboard cells. In a pair of phalanxes, the missiles streaked away to disappear past the arcing, flaring horizon, each group going at diverging angles to the north.

A private comm channel blinked in the corner of his vision. Nathan keyed it and Wright spoke in his ear. “Captain, radiator loading is at 87% and climbing, but we’re operating at a lower capacity than before. We just aren’t shedding the heat.”

Nathan took a look at the radiator’s status bar, confirming the XO’s warning. “Roger that, Christopher. This was to be expected for this phase of the attack. Once we get a visual on the Cathedral, we can break for a higher orbit and get away from the drive’s heat.”

“Yes, sir, but when that happens, we’ll be producing a lot more of our own heat as well. We won’t be back to a balanced discharge rate until we get out in the black and shut down some of the hotter systems. We have to cool.”

Nathan grimaced. “We can’t, not yet. Listen, your warning is duly noted, but we do have additional radiator capacity, and if worse comes to worse, we can use the internal heat sinks.”

“That’s going to cut things pretty tight, Nathan.”

“Hey, we’re out here beyond the ass end of the solar system, by ourselves, in a still-technically-stolen ship, fighting implacable, mysterious aliens nobody even really believed in till a month or so before we left. Things have been cut tight for a long damn time.”

Wright paused, then answered, “Yes, sir. Roger that. I’ll keep an eye on it.”

“Thanks, Christopher.” The private channel icon closed and Wright was gone. Nathan focused again upon the slowly rolling sphere of plasma that filled the lower half of his view. It would be any moment now … .

There.

Explosions began to ripple across the horizon to the north of the equator. Whatever the beams they spawned were aimed at was still hidden by the fiery limn of the drive. Nathan keyed his mike back into the tactical net. “Heads up, people. Our distractions are underway. The Cathedral should be rolling into view any moment. Let’s go ahead and launch a few more while we’re still hidden. TAO, designate four more salvoes, two north, two south, five missiles each, targeting the Control Ship and the Polyp. Let’s keep them involved in their own affairs while we’re finishing off the Cathedral.”

“Aye aye, Captain,” Simmons said.

“All right. Helm, as soon as we come into view, I want to start evasive maneuvers. They aren’t going to be as effective this close in, but every little bit will help. And be prepared to roll the hull if we get targeted by lasers. We’ll do better if we don’t allow them to concentrate energy in any one spot.”

“Aye aye, sir,” Weston answered. As he did so, 20 missile icons sprang forth from their ship and disappeared around the drive to the north and the south.

Explosions continued to light up the horizon, each one higher up and closer in, as the warheads maneuvered closer to their objective. Now that the detonations were well above the blazing horizon, though, Nathan could see that not all of them were the brilliant white eruptions of lasing fusion. Some of them exploded more dimly and haphazardly, ignited by counterfire from the alien ships.

He frowned. “Shit.”

Magnified by the Sword of Liberty’s sensors, the Cathedral rose into view. Her gothic arches and ornately carved, stone-like halls were gouged and broken, venting fluids and bright gasses into the vacuum. It was not demolished as they had hoped, but it had not escaped unscathed either. As he watched, another set of warheads flashed into fusion brilliance, and their unseen x-ray lasers lanced deeply into the distant alien vessel.

The Cathedral responded in kind, casting out beams of red light made visible from the gasses and vapors pouring from her hull. Nathan glanced over to see if they intended to take out any warheads, but he lost them as Weston began the maneuvers he had ordered.

Fifteen gravities of acceleration again squeezed him down, but this time they were accompanied by violent jerks from side to side, back and forth. Anti-nausea meds and stimulants flooded his system, allowing Nathan to push the sheer physical torture to the back of his mind, and to still concentrate on the battle.

His fingers jerked as much as they were able under the crushing thrust, sending coded texts to his crew. Four more missiles blasted out from the sides of the destroyer. Nathan did the count in his head. He only had 32 more, but it had been a worthwhile expense, both to cause the damage they had thus far achieved and to test their effectiveness against the Deltan ships’ defenses. Should they fail here, that data would be of paramount importance to the ships being built back home.

Determined to give the missiles the best chance he could, but reluctant to expend any more of his dwindling supply, Nathan’s fingers twitched again, sending new commands out. Simmons and Weston received the order and took action. The violent jerks the hull underwent smoothed out somewhat and the Cathedral steadied up, directly ahead of them. The railgun locked on and went into continuous fire, sending shot after shot screaming through the narrowing void. The damage imparted by their kinetic and chemical energy might be no more than a nuisance to be endured by the immense ship, but he hoped it would be enough of a distraction that the missiles would have a greater effect.

Now aware of the new threat just risen over the drive’s horizon, the Cathedral turned its wounded attention toward the Sword of Liberty. Twin beams of laser light flashed out from the ornate arches of the spherical alien ship. Slag erupted from the destroyer’s bow, her first wounds in the battle.

High energy photons flayed at the crystalline armor covering the Sword. The armor performed as designed, channeling the heat and energy outward from the point of incidence, spreading it over a wider area in an attempt to let it dissipate harmlessly into space, but the power poured in much too fast. Plates swelled and buckled, and finally melted through as the beams continued to fire on the same section of armor.

Alarms sprang up on Nathan’s screen as the hull was breached. A wisp of gas erupted from the mostly evacuated space below the breach. Then a crew icon went red—Emil Harmon, the weapons tech monitoring the dorsal radar array, fell off the grid. Nathan winced. He keyed an urgent command to the Helm, but before he could pass along the order, Weston responded.

The Sword of Liberty began to spin along her long axis, denying the enemy weapons a single point on which to concentrate their fury. The still-firing beams went from burning holes through the armor to tracing glowing circles and arcs of semi-melted armor all around the mission hull. Hull plates swelled, but now stayed intact, dissipating the energy through the surrounding plates as originally intended. And all the while, the railgun continued to fire.

The spin—coupled with the high acceleration, and a renewed, if lesser, jerking from evasive maneuvers—threatened to overcome even Nathan’s anti-nausea doping. He spared a glance at the crew status, and saw that several people showed amber, unconscious or otherwise unresponsive as they all tried to endure Weston’s efforts to keep them alive. Nathan’s lips were peeled back in an acceleration induced rictus, but he felt his attempt to smile as he saw that Kris’s icon was still a strong, vibrant green.

Back on the tactical view, the four missiles launched at the Cathedral reached terminal and separated into 24 maneuvering warheads. The lasers inundating the Sword were joined by additional beams seeking out these smaller targets, but before they could take any of them out, small explosions peppered the hull of the alien ship. Railgun rounds rained down upon the Cathedral, unseen and unopposed as they lacked the brilliance of the destroyer’s or the missiles’ active drives, and since the Deltans did not seem to use any form of radar.

It would take more rounds than the Sword of Liberty could carry to destroy the Cathedral with the small projectiles, but the ploy worked. The much-deadlier warheads closed a great deal further than previous salvoes had, and they began to lase at their optimal range.

Flaring out in white light, the fusion blasts cast tightly collimated beams of energy into the Cathedral. Slag and incandescent gas boiled away from the ship’s hull. It was a more rugged construction than the Junkyard, but it was by no means rugged enough. Lasers abandoned the destroyer and again shifted their focus onto the encroaching warheads, but they were now too close and too numerous to take out completely.

A pair of warheads came near enough to switch modes. Fusion fire blossomed close aboard and engulfed whole sections of the Cathedral, blasting arches flat and setting its stones ablaze. More importantly, its lasers abruptly stopped as something critical within broke. The ship appeared defenseless, and Nathan cheered inside his head.

Before the last few warheads could administer the coup de gras, though, the Cathedral suddenly swung out of position. The warheads flew harmlessly through the space she had just occupied, their explosions wasted upon an empty void. Nathan jerked in shock and expanded his tactical view.

The Control Ship swept up over the drive’s horizon, pulling the Cathedral and the Polyp around it until they were arrayed to its north and south rather than along the equatorial plane. The Cathedral was burned and pummeled, and the Polyp was little better, its organic curves and intricate, tattooed designs marred by x-ray laser gouges and blackened sections of hull. The Control Ship’s overlapping, lobster-like metallic plates were also gouged and burned, but to a lesser degree. She looked battle hardened rather than battle bled.

Nathan tapped in an order and the Sword broke northward and made for a higher orbit, seeking salvation through distance and greater maneuvering room. The Control Ship would have none of that, however. A dozen lasers blazed from its hull, each striking the destroyer and burning glowing paths along her hull. Now, not only the forward mission hull was at risk, but the radiators and the propulsion module were attacked as well.

The propulsion module, built of the same materials as the mission hull, fared as well as it had under the onslaught from the Cathedral. The radiator spine, however, was unarmored and relatively fragile by necessity. Radiator plates shattered and slagged, spinning away from the rapidly maneuvering ship. Torrents of coolant evaporated from broken lines and heat loads rose threateningly on all the ship’s systems.

The radiator had always been their Achilles Heel. Vital to the thermodynamic heat engines throughout the ship, it was their chief vulnerability, and they could not fight or survive without it.

Nathan winced at the options available to him. They were much closer to the Control Ship than he ever intended. He could either turn the Sword completely away from the their enemy, and hope they could gain sufficient maneuvering distance before the drive was irreparably damaged—or he could point directly at their enemy and close to knife-fighting range. Either way, he had to interpose the armored portions of the hull between the incoming fire and the radiator, or they were doomed.

Nathan tapped his order in and groaned as the ship swung around. The nose of the destroyer pointed straight at the incoming fire. All four thrust pylons lit up with nearly random jets of light as the ship leapt back and forth along a suicidal closing vector, dodging away from the enemy lasers as much as possible, even as their range fell away to make the beams steadily more effective.

At his order, missiles shot outward from the port and starboard cells, one after another. The railgun fired continuously, targeting each individual laser battery aboard the Control Ship. The Sword of Liberty’s laser batteries fired as well, still too far out to cause any damage, but hopefully enough to blind any targeting sensors coming after them.

Damaged beyond capacity, the radiators were no longer able to discard the ever rising heat produced by all the systems running on the ship. Coolant diverted instead to internal heat sinks, blocks of ice nearby every major system on the ship. The blocks absorbed the waste heat, melting, and then boiling away to relieve the crippling temps each system produced. Steam erupted from vents all around the Sword of Liberty.

Seen from the distant re-trans pod, the destroyer was a valkyrie afire, a shooting star pouring the most devastating forces the Earth could muster at an enemy that still remained unexplained, mysterious. It was awesome to behold.

And ultimately futile.

Responding to the 32 missiles and then 192 warheads released from the Sword, the Control Ship shifted its depressingly effective laser fire away from the destroyer to the individually targeted weapons. Too many flared out into the flames of failure, rather than the brilliant flashes of lasing fusion. Too few closed enough to do real damage with their beams. And the destroyer was still not spared. Now the Control Ship’s silvery beam reached out.

The beam of particles struck the spinning, maneuvering destroyer on the dorsal surface first, and then inscribed a tight spiral around the mission hull. Unlike the lasers, though, the damage here was not lessened by the spin. Wherever the strange beam struck, the hull wavered, becoming indistinct and collapsing into dust. If anything, their defensive spin spread the damage around more than if they had remained steady.

Nathan cursed to himself, even as he praised the increasingly accurate fire from the railgun and the lasers. The warheads were mostly expended now, and though the damage they had dealt was impressive, it did not seem to be having nearly enough effect on the Control Ship. The better aimed railgun and laser fire, on the other hand, at least made a few “mission kills”—several laser emplacements aboard the alien ship had gone dark. But soon, those that remained would again turn on the Sword.

That assumed they would still be a viable target, though. Whatever the silvery beam did, it appeared frightening in its effectiveness. Silvery dust streamed away from the hull as plates were eaten away. And the damage lingered, growing outward from the stricken areas of the hull even after the beam had passed by. If the rate his hull was eaten continued, it would be through the armor plates and into the pressure hull within a couple of minutes.

A text popped up in his vision. It was from Kris. “NANOTECH. PARTICLE BEAM IS ASSEMBLOR CARRIER. HAVE IDEA. DROP TO LOW ACCEL. MUST EXIT POD TO TRY.” Nathan was confused, barely registering what she was trying to say, but he did as she asked, texting the order to Weston at the Helm.

The ship went into near freefall, still aimed at the Control Ship and still firing away. Recognizing the threat, as well as their greater vulnerability while no longer maneuvering, Simmons had his watchstanders concentrate on the source of the silvery beam. While waiting for the shots to reach their target, Nathan focused on Kris’s icon. It and that of her Electrical Officer had gone red as soon as they left their pods, and he felt helpless and adrift as he waited for her to come back online.

Explosions flared upon the Control Ship, blanketing the area where the “assemblor” beam fired from. The beam cut out intermittently and then faded away to nothing, shut off at the source. Nathan almost cheered, but the nano-scale eating machines that Kris believed them to be had already been deposited on the hull and continued their destructive work. Whether the beam kept re-depositing them or not, they would eventually turn the ship into dust if Kris was unable to stop them.

Her voice cut in to the tactical net, causing an intense surge of relief in Nathan. “Okay! Since we’re fresh outta missiles, I decoupled their power cables from the main bus and grounded it to the outer hull. I’m gonna close the breaker and charge the exterior of the ship. Hopefully those suckers are small and fragile enough to kill with a little excessive voltage.”

Nathan shook his head, exasperated. “Stop talking about it and just do it, CHENG!”

“Fine! Just don’t be mad if I pop every other breaker on the ship in the process. Here goes.”

The speakers in his helmet squealed and popped, and his VR display flickered and went black for a moment, but it came back almost immediately. Red status icons blinked for all of the crew and for a number of systems. Railgun and laser fire had stopped. Panicked, Nathan called out, “Kris! XO! COB! Report.”

“Captain, XO, I think we’re okay. It’s just the monitoring systems and weapons that have gone offline. COB, get verbals from every station on the general net, and I’ll work with the department heads on system status and recovery.”

“Roger, XO,” Edwards agreed.

Nathan took a deep breath. “Okay. CHENG, report. Did it work?”

He looked at the hull cameras even as she spoke. The spirals of damage were no longer growing and no more dust streamed away from the ship. Kris spoke up, her voice filled with static. “Yep. I think so. No more critters eating the hull anyway. I’ve got a lot of smoke and electrical damage back here, but we’re still in the fight.”

Nathan took a look at the battlespace, considering that. The Control Ship was gouged and blackened, quiescent for the moment as it apparently contemplated its own damage. Their warheads were all gone, either expended in the attack or blasted by the Deltan defenses. The nanotech beam was also gone, as well as several of its laser emplacements. For the moment, the battle was paused, both ships wounded, warily watching their foe.

“Nope,” he said into the net. “We’re done. There’s no way we can stop them with what we have left, and we’ve given them pause with what we’re able to do. It’s time for retreat. They don’t know that we’re dry at the moment, and I want to get away from here before they can repair their systems enough to try to take us. Everybody back into your pods. Helm, give me flank acceleration for the horizon and let’s see if we can make it home before they do.”

“Roger that, sir,” Weston answered. “Fifteen g’s in ten seconds, everybody!”

“We’re buttoned up down in Engineering,” Kris yelled. “Let ‘er rip.”

Weston fired the thrusters, turning perpendicular to the Control Ship, and the propulsion hull lit up with flank thrust. The drive star began to roll by beneath them, putting distance and the burning horizon between themselves and the Deltans.

But the Control Ship—dormant while they had cruised by at a constant velocity—awoke now to full destructive fury, unwilling to accept a draw.

Six lasers shot out, all aimed for the same point at the weakest area of their hull, along the damaged radiator spine. Radiator panels burned straight through and came apart. Allocarbium bracing, made up of hardened alloys and nearly indestructible carbon nanotubes, vaporized under the thermal onslaught. Gantries, pipes, and shafts parted, and the spine of the ship cracked right down the middle.

Fluids and vapor shot out from the damage and the destroyer snapped in two.

The propulsion hull barreled past the mission hull at flank thrust, sending both halves tumbling away from one another before the drive shut down. Cut off from all power, the mission hull went dark, the data stream it had continually sent toward the re-trans pod now silent. The propulsion hull, never equipped with communication antennas, was robbed of a final voice as well.

The Sword of Liberty was no more.

February 8, 2047; White House Oval Office; Washington DC

Lydia Russ watched the destroyer’s final moments in real time, six months after the fact. No one in the room said a word, every one of them shocked into silence as the transmission from the Sword of Liberty cut away and the retransmission pod unemotionally kept up its broadcast, unaware that it sent forth its masters’ epitaph.

White faced and barely able to breathe, Lydia could not turn aside as the two halves of the destroyer spun uncontrolled around the Control Ship. Constructs emerged from the implacable vessel, each one forming up around the two halves of the Sword of Liberty. Bracketed by these alien devices, the destroyer sections were steadied up and then pulled into the interior of the Control Ship. The warped and damaged plates of the alien vessel, which had slid open to reveal a dark interior volume, slid shut once more, entombing her friends, denying them even the solace of a burial in space.

The re-trans pod dutifully recorded the Deltan formation as it once again began revolving about its drive sphere, but whatever was to be done about the destroyed Junkyard and the heavily damaged other vessels went unanswered. As soon as the Control Ship and the Deltan formation passed within close proximity of the pod, a flash of light lashed out and all transmissions ceased. The stream from half a light-year away fell to static.

Lydia slowly turned away from the wall-mounted screen and glared at Carl Sykes and President Tomlinson. Tomlinson looked as wan and in shock as Lydia had. Sykes seemed perturbed, but not dismayed.

Lydia pointed a finger at the screen. “They’re gone, Carl. We just saw them give up their lives to stop those damned Deltans. They made a sacrifice, assured that it wouldn’t be in vain. But when I go to sleep tonight, and they’re there in my dreams, what the hell do I tell them? Do I lie and say that the information they died to give us will help us alter the defense we’re building, that their example will help all the allied space navies be even more effective when the Deltans finally get here?

“Or do I tell them the truth, that there is no space navy, that the three ships we’ve been building still aren’t finished yet, that all the backdoor politicking and contract disputes haven’t allowed us to lay down any more hulls, that not one piece of the design has yet to be shared with our allies, even though we promised it to them right after the Sword launched? Huh, Carl? Which is it?”

Sykes flashed a brief look of shame, but squelched it in favor of indignation. “Lydia, none of that is my fault. These things take time, and delaying the completion of construction until after first contact was a strategic decision and the right one in my opinion. I’m sorry your team was killed, but this has shown us where the design flaws lie. When we complete the cruiser specs, we can build a truly effective warship. Now we don’t have to waste production time on these flawed destroyers.”

“Bullshit!” Lydia screamed. “The destroyer design isn’t fundamentally flawed. They damn near took out the whole Deltan fleet with one ship! If we quit on this design in favor of another version that isn’t even drafted yet, we’re going to be left with nothing. It’s too late for this DC Beltway crap! The Deltans are coming and their intentions are no longer academic. They are the enemy and it’s up to us to build our defense as promised and planned.”

Sykes’ anger appeared in full force. Whatever shame he had felt at seeing the Sword of Liberty destroyed was now buried. “That’s not your decision to make! We may indeed go on with the Sword class destroyers, or we might decide to proceed with the Trenton cruiser. Maybe we’ll do both, with or without releasing the designs to foreign powers, but that’s something that will have to follow the full analysis of this data by my office. And while you may be convinced of the implacable intent of these aliens, I’m not. I don’t fully endorse the way Kelley handled things. I think he was way too hot-headed and trigger happy. He fired the first shot on these Deltans and he was the first one to destroy a ship. For all we know, he took out a ship full of refugees!”

“Damn you, Carl! Open up your eyes. We’ve dragged our feet too long.” Lydia turned to face the President, seated behind her desk. “Madame President, it pains me to have to say this, but if this nation doesn’t do what’s necessary to defend this planet, I’m going to take Windward’s designs and Windward’s technologies to another world power who will listen and do what’s needed, nationalized US property or not. I’m sure I can convince the EU or the Chinese to react.”

Sykes smiled. “That’s it. Go ahead and try, Lydia. It will be my personal pleasure to throw your ass into Leavenworth.”

Tomlinson looked at Lydia’s stern expression and then turned to the Defense Secretary. “Carl?”

Sykes faced her. “Yes, Madame President?”

“Shut the hell up and get out of my office. Your services are no longer required by my administration.”

Sykes’ features turned darker in outrage. “What?”

Tomlinson stood, glaring at him. “You said that ‘her team’ was killed. What you’re forgetting is that every single one of them was a sworn volunteer of the United States Armed Forces. They were our soldiers, my soldiers. It wasn’t her team on that ship, it was the US Aerospace Navy and the United States of America in proxy. We have been attacked by an alien threat, a threat which encompasses this entire planet, and as President I’m going to see their sacrifice made worthwhile.”

Sykes held up his hands. “Madame President, they were drafted as a ploy. Surely—”

“No. You’re done. If you value the bureaucracy you’ve built up more than the lives of the people in our military, then you’re not the soldier you used to be.” Tomlinson turned to Lydia. “Ms. Russ, you have my deepest apologies for the failure of my administration to keep up our end of the bargain, but you have my pledge that that all ends today.

“Our nation is from this moment on a war footing. We will immediately contact our allies and fulfill our agreements for technology transfer, as we should have done long ago. We will indeed analyze the battle and ensure that any necessary design changes are implemented in both the destroyer plans as well as the astrodynamic cruiser version. Also, tomorrow, we will begin completion of the Swords of Justice, Independence, and Freedom. Their crews will be fast-tracked to full readiness, and we will launch all three by year’s end. I guarantee it.

“And in light of what has occurred, it is my intention before the week is out to lay down the hull of our next destroyer … DA-5, the Sword of Vengeance.”