Storming Heaven

Chapter Twenty-One

“Captain Andrew Ramage reporting, sir.”

“Ah, Andrew,” Admiral Brent Roeder said. “Take a seat.”

Andrew sat down carefully. A direct summons from the Admiral was unusual, yet he’d had two such summonses within a fortnight. It normally meant either a dangerous mission or a chewing out for some misdemeanour, yet he couldn’t think of anything he might have committed to earn a chewing out, unless it was not challenging the Killer starship at New Hope. It would have gained nothing and cost the Defence Force his starship, but if the Admiral decided not to see it that way…

“I read your report on what happened at New Hope,” Brent said, without preamble. “I can’t disagree with your decision not to engage; the planet was lost and there was no way to evacuate the settlement, even if they would have gone. The Elders would have fought and argued until it was too late. You did the right thing.”

“Thank you, sir,” Andrew said. He hadn’t expected a charge of Cowardliness in the Face of the Enemy, but with the war going badly, it was possible that the Defence Force would start looking for scapegoats. He would sooner have died than give up the Lightning and retire. “Why did we even allow them to set up that damned colony anyway?”

“We couldn’t prevent them, legally, if they believed that they were safe,” Brent admitted. “If they had settled within a hundred light years of a Killer star system, we might have been able to deter them, but there were no known settlements within a thousand light years of New Hope. It means nothing with wormholes and the Anderson Drive, but the Elders believed that they were safe on a barely-habitable world. They were wrong.”

He shook his head, dismissing the issue. “In any case, I have a more… interesting task for you,” he continued. “Watch carefully.”

An image of a star system appeared in front of Andrew and he studied it. It was a fairly typical star system with seven planets, four of them gas giants and therefore possible Killer colonies. The remainder of the system was nothing particularly special; there were asteroids, comets and various pieces of space junk. The largest gas giant was surrounded by beautiful rings, but Andrew had seen thousands of gas giants with comparable natural features and wasn’t impressed. Now, knowing that the gas giants might house billions of Killers, the beauty became a deadly trap. Saturn was still a major tourist attraction, back in the Solar System, but were they attracting the Killers? There was no way to know.

“This is CAS-3473746,” Brent said. Andrew frowned; the CAS — Community Astrograph Survey — designation meant that no one had even bothered to give it a proper name. “The system was surveyed five hundred years ago and considered as a possible location for a settlement, but — thankfully — we never actually established anything there beyond a handful of fuel deports. The Observer fled to this system and…”

The display changed, focusing in on the large gas giant… and the Killer starship emerging from the mists, rising up to confront the human intruder. Andrew stared; humanity could accomplish wonders — and would accomplish more wonders when the Killers were finally defeated — but nothing the Community had could lift so much mass out of a gas giant’s gravity well. The Killer starship might not even have noticed the human starship racing towards it, or perhaps it was playing games with its comrade, pushing the Observer into a trap it couldn’t escape. Andrew remembered the starship’s commander, who had picketed a Killer starship until it had been captured, and scowled. There would be revenge for that day.

“This,” Brent continued, “is CAS-3473746-6; the sixth planet in the system… and a known Killer colony. I don’t think I need to spell out some of the possible implications to you.”

Andrew nodded. Humanity had always assumed that the Killers had started life as humanoids, born on an Earth-like world, and they had believed that locating the Killer homeworld was only a matter of time and patience. If the Killers lived on gas giants instead, the Community might have its own settlements right next door, in the asteroid fields. The two societies might be living side by side, neither one truly aware of the other. Back in the early days, mining the gas giants had been a vital part of survival; it made him wonder if the Killers had simply ignored them, or if they had been lucky enough never to stumble across a Killer homeworld.

But humanity would have colonised as many worlds as it could. There were literally millions of Earth-like worlds in the galaxy, or worlds that could be terraformed into becoming habitable by humanity. The human race would have expanded rapidly even without the Killers, settling on those worlds and turning them into new human settlements. The Community had only a handful of planetary settlements — including places like New Hope, which didn’t even pay lip service to the Community — but without the Killers, there would be a rapid expansion. The Killers might have settled every gas giant in the galaxy. God knew; they’d been around long enough.

Andrew recalled, not for the first time, the old Fermi Paradox. Fermi had asked where the aliens were — and concluded, because no alien race had arrived at Earth, that there were no other races in the galaxy. Fermi might have been right, had he anticipated the Killers, wiping out all humanoid forms of life and settling gas giants. Races that might have been humanity’s friends and allies, or deadly enemies, had been exterminated a long time before humanity had learned to rub two sticks together to make fire. If there was anything left of the Ghosts, or countless others, they were hiding very well.

And Fermi had concluded that even without FTL, it would only take a million years or so to settle the entire galaxy…

“The important thing about the system is that it is hundreds of light years from anything above a minor settlement,” Brent explained. “It makes it a perfect target.”

Andrew frowned. “A target, sir?” He asked. The massed power of the Defence Force would break like an egg against any Killer star system. “Do we have a way to break their hulls yet?”

“Maybe,” Brent said. “However, your mission is to destroy two things; the planet itself and the star.”

He pushed on before Andrew could say anything. “We have developed two new weapons that are ready for deployment,” he said, shortly. Andrew had the odd impression that he didn’t quite believe his own words. “The first weapon is configured to wreck vast damage on a gas giant, perhaps even ignite it like a sun and exterminate any Killer settlements floating down in the mists. The second will send a star supernova and blast the entire system. You will deploy the first weapon against CAS-3473746-6 and the second against its star.”

Andrew nodded, concealing his surprise. “And… what effect will it have on them?”

“We don’t know,” Brent said. “There was a lot of debate about the first targets for the weapons, but CAS-3473746 has one advantage; they don’t have any major structures surrounding the star, ones that might be able to prevent the supernova. We’re in uncertain territory here, Andrew; we may fail to destroy the planet, but the expanding supernova blast will cook it regardless.”

“I see,” Andrew said. “How exactly do the weapons work?”

”Classified,” Brent said. “And I mean classified. You won’t know how they work, nor will anyone else onboard your vessel, or anyone — for that matter — outside the development centre. If the Killers capture your ship intact and figure out how we do it…”

“They’ve never taken prisoners before,” Andrew pointed out. The Lightning would probably be destroyed, as ruthlessly as the Killers had wiped out entire fleets. “Could they understand what they’d captured even if they did take us prisoner?”

“We’re not taking chances,” Brent said. “There are… ah, political considerations as well. Let’s just say that we don’t want to cause an arms race or a panic inside the Community as well. There’s also the issue of how the Killers will react when they realise that we can take out entire stars. They may attempt to capture your ship just to find out how it was done. If they do…”

His voice hardened. “If they do, Captain, you are ordered to trigger the ultimate destruct,” he ordered. “They are not to recover anything from the Lightning, understand?”

“Yes, sir,” Andrew said. There was nothing else to say. “When will the weapons be loaded onboard my ship?”

“Now,” Brent said. He stood up and held out a hand. “Good luck, Andrew.”

An hour later, Andrew examined the weapons pods thoughtfully, but there was no difference between the new weapons and standard warp missiles, at least on the surface. Inwardly, there were considerable differences, but he’d already issued strict orders that his crew were to refrain from examining the missiles in any way. Andrew doubted that the Killers would be interested in capturing them, but the Admiral had been right; the Community couldn’t take the risk. They had to nip in, launch the missiles and vanish again before the star and planet exploded.

He turned and walked back towards the bridge, sealing the weapons compartment begin him. The AI’s automated servitors could handle the missiles from now on, allowing him to bar all humans from the weapons bays entirely. Merely looking at the missiles had sent shivers down his spine, even though he knew that they couldn’t detonate onboard the Lightning, and he wouldn’t really be happy until he had fired them both and fled. He’d given the rest of the crew a briefing — and transferred five officers off the ship, to cut down on the number of possible casualties — but they didn’t have to worry about anything, apart from their duties. He had to worry about the risks of losing the ship.

The Admiral hadn’t provided him with much information on what the missiles did, but there was considerable hard data on supernovas, including studies of two that had detonated in the Milky Way while under Community observation. Andrew had wondered, briefly, if the supernovas had been nothing more than tests of the new weapon, but the Admiral had admitted that the weapons had never been tested before. Worse, from what the Admiral said, the Killers had taken an interest in the natural supernovas; testing the human-designed weapons would certainly have attracted their attention. It suggested a way to lure the Killers into a trap, but their sheer firepower would allow them to cut their way out of any human trap, if they recognised its existence. They might not even notice…

But no one was quite sure what would happen when the weapon was used. They didn’t know how much of the star’s mass would explode, or how far the destruction would spread, or even how badly the gas giant would be cooked. The gas giant was large enough to survive the supernova, even though it would definitely be hurt, and if the weapon deployed against the first target failed, or was intercepted, it would all be for nothing. He pushed the thoughts out of his mind as he stepped onto the bridge and took the command chair. They had no choice, but to try. Who knew? Maybe the Killers would agree to make peace, or the horse would learn to sing.

“Helm, take us out,” he ordered. “I want low power until we clear Sparta’s defence perimeter and then bring up the Anderson Drive.”

“Aye, sir,” the helmsman said. Lieutenant David Dunagin looked as tense as Andrew felt; he’d been one of those who’d wondered if the weapons would explode if the ship shook violently. The technical data said that they couldn’t be detonated without the proper firing sequence, but the techs had been wrong before and there was no data to help gage it for themselves. “We’re on our way.”

Andrew watched as the Lightning slipped past countless other starships, mainly small destroyers and patrol boats. There were no less than ten attack wings of destroyers at Sparta at all times — seven hundred and twenty starships — but he cherished no illusions about what would happen if the Killers came calling. The Community Defence Force could — and had — build thousands of starships every week, but unless they improved their weapons, the results would be the same. The Killers would smash the defences and then Sparta. The nerve centre of the Defence Force would be destroyed. If they knew what he was carrying…

He wasn’t blind to some of the other implications. The human race depended upon stars almost as much as the Killers, perhaps more. Destroying a star would send shivers down the spines of everyone in the Community, fearing the results if the Killers retaliated in kind. Or, perhaps, if humans and the Killers were sharing the same star system… they might fear being destroyed as collateral damage. And then there were the religious implications… Andrew had read, long ago, that humans had been terrified of nuclear bombs, pitiful as they were on an interstellar scale, and the supernova bombs were worse. No human settlement would survive a supernova. The only defence was not to be there when the weapon was used.

There’s no choice, he reminded himself. If the weapon worked, there were hundreds of other possible targets that had no human presence within a hundred light years, apart from spies and scouting parties. The Killers would have to cope with a whole new threat, somehow; perhaps they could be worn down, or convinced to seek a peace. Or perhaps that was just wishful thinking. The human race still knew almost nothing of how the Killers actually thought.

“We’re past the perimeter, sir,” David said, suddenly. “The Anderson Drive is powering up and we can jump on your mark.”

Andrew tapped his chair’s console. “Engineering, report,” he ordered. “What is out current status?”

“We’re ready and hot, sir,” the Engineer said. “All systems are good to go.”

Andrew smiled. “Take us to the first waypoint,” he ordered. “Jump!”

He felt his stomach clench as the starship jumped, a seemingly-endless rushing sensation that ended when the starship fell back into normal space at the edge of the target system. The display filled up rapidly with new icons, but there were no traces of Killer starships, or other possible threats. The Observer had fought and died bare light years from their location, yet there was no sign that anything had happened in the system, ever. It was as dark and silent as the grave.

“Tactical report,” Andrew snapped. “Are we in the clear?”

“I am picking up no trace of Killer starships on long-range sensors,” Lieutenant Gary Young confirmed. “The gravimetric sensors report no large masses within engagement range.”

“Good,” Andrew said, looking ahead into the Killer star system. He hadn’t realised, until now, just how easy it was for the Killers to hide in gas giants, if they were hiding at all. They could have an entire civilisation down there below the clouds and humanity wouldn’t be able to detect them, even with the most advanced sensors they had developed. It suggested a possible cause of the first war, as well; what if some race had mined a gas giant and accidentally killed Killers in the process? Had that been what had started the war? “Helm, take us in, slowly.”

He’d considered simply popping out of Anderson Drive above the gas giant, firing off the missile and then jumping over to the star, but that would have certainly have attracted attention from the Killers. If the Lightning came in slowly, the starship would look more like a piece of space junk than anything else, even on gravimetric sensors. The Killers could see through cloaking devices — that had been established at new Singapore — but they might not recognise the Lightning if she came in on a ballistic course. They ignored pieces of space junk completely. It wasn’t as if it could threaten their magnificent starships.

“Aye, sir,” David said. The starship started to fall inwards towards the gas giant. At such a distance, the gravity pull was almost nothing, but their trajectory would look reasonable. A human defence unit would have fired in any asteroid that came that close to an inhabited world, but what would the Killers do? “We’re on our way.”

Hours passed slowly as Andrew waited on the bridge, watching the sensor records and examining the data on supernovas. There would be a massive pulse of radiation that would be dangerous to any starship or settlement without proper shielding, enough to damage all of the planets within a hundred light years, perhaps more. The mass destruction of stars would leave thousands of dead or damaged worlds surrounding the dead stars, but there would still be millions more for humanity to settle, if the Killers were defeated. Andrew himself hadn’t dared to think about what he would do without the Killers, yet if he could chose, it wouldn’t be living on a planet. The asteroids were much safer for humanity.

“Contact,” Gary said, suddenly. “I have one Killer starship, Iceberg-class, rising out of the planet and heading away from us.”

“Show me,” Andrew ordered. “Put it on the main screen.”

He felt a shiver running down his spine as the Killer starship slowly rose out of the atmosphere, showing no visible trace of struggle, or any difficulties at all. Andrew could have taken the Lightning down into the planet’s atmosphere, but the Lightning was tiny, compared to the Killer starship. He wondered, absently, where the Killer starship was going, and then he found himself hoping that it would remain in the system long enough to get caught by the blast. Would their hulls stand up to a supernova?

“We are now entering weapons range,” Gary said. “We can fire on your command.”

Andrew took a breath. They were about to kill an entire planet. The irony wasn’t lost on him.

“Fire.”