The Domination

Chapter Fourteen

BETWEEN THE ORBITS OF EARTH AND MARS

ABOARD DASCS SUBOTAI

JUNE 30, 1982

“Makin’ remarkable progress, Merarch-Professor,” Yolande said. They were teleconferencing, and the astroengineer was suited up; she could see segments of construction material behind him.

He waved a dismissive hand. “These are the heat dispersers,” he said. Composite honeycomb sandwich, laced with superconductor on the interior, the same system that pulsedrive ships used; superconductors had the additional useful property of maintaining a uniform temperature throughout. Of course, this was a pulsedrive, it just used fusion bombs instead of ten-gram pellets. “We should start assembling the thrust plate soon.”

Yolande linked through a view of Hangar B; the near-motionless forms of the prisoners were arranged in neat rows around the shrouded equipment. Skinsuited Auxiliaries were hosing the area down and hauling off the inert bodies; it had gotten quite noisome, with sixty drugged humans and a week’s worth of high-G boost.

“We got you some additional labor,” she said. “I know they don’t look like much, but most of them have trainin’ in zero-G construction an’ so forth. We’ll have to give a few to the headhunter to disassemble, of course.”

“Good, perhaps it will keep him away from me,” the scientist said, with an obscene gesture for any possible monitors.

“We’ll put controller cuffs on them, maybe minimal-dosage dociline,” Yolande continued. “You’ll have to supervise them closely, but it ought to come out positive.”

“Certainly. Hmmm, what to do with them when the project is completed?”

“Oh . . . take them back to Luna, I suppose. Maybe the political people can trade them off fo’ somethin’, or we can just sell them.” Alliance-born serfs had a substantial curiosity value, for their rarity. “Hand them out as souvenirs, whatevah.”

“Not to mention hostage value,” her executive officer said. “Too much Yankee heavy iron in the Belt, fo’ my taste.”

Yolande chuckled. “Well, there are enough of our units further out,” she said.

“Long ways off.”

“Not so far as you might think,” she said, and laid a finger along her nose. “Between you, me an’ the Strategic Planning Board, there are a few surprises fo’ the damnyanks in this. Fo’ one, we’ve got high-impulse orbital boost lasers in the Jovian system, which we’re pretty sure they don’t know ’bout. Multiple strap-ons, hey? If’n the damnyanks move, our cruisers can leave station around Himalia, boost on strap-ons with low mass.” A pulsedrive ship could make much better acceleration with less reaction mass in her tanks—while the fuel lasted. “Do a quick-and-dirty burn to Mars orbit, arrivin’ with dry tanks.”

She called up a map of orbital positions. “An’ notice, just right fo’ a quick stopover at Phobos to fill up? So unless the damnyanks is willin’ to get here empty, leavin’ them between us and the outer fleet, with nothin’ to maneuver with—in which case we’d wipe them, then proceed to mop up the Belt piece by piece—they just naturally have to keep their iron floatin’ out there by Ceres and Pallas.”

“Ah,” the exec mused. “Nice. That still leaves them with three Hero-class here in the inner system, though.”

“Update?”

“Ethan Allen still boostin’ fo’ the Pathfinder like there was no tomorrow.” He frowned. “Faster than we could, unless they’re burnin’ out their thrust plates.”

“Well, the Heros have the legs on a Great Khan, but we’ve got mo’ firepower. Anyways, that’ll put her out of the picture fo’ a whiles. The two in Earth orbit, we may have to see off. Note we’re floatin’ next to a fuel depot, though. Also, I’ve got a few ideas ’bout usin’ some of our industrial equipment. Reminds me, staff conference fo’ 1200 tomorrow, we’ll go ovah it. Three weeks to encounter, minimum. Wants you there, too, Professor.”

“Service to the State,” he said formally.

“Glory to the Race,” the two officers answered.

Yolande yawned. “Time to turn in, Number Two,” she said rising from the crashcouch.

“Just one thing, ma’am,” he murmured as she passed his station; the offwatch was handling the bridge, minimum staff.

“Yes?”

“Back there . . . when you saw those bodies come out the airlock, I was set up for a minimal-burn boost back to the flotilla. You took us on a max speed trajectory, got us here dry. That was like hangin’ up a big sign ovah the whole system pointin’ to the Pathfinder. Why do it that way, ma’am?”

Yolande glanced at her fingernails. “Oh, better tactics. Impo’tant not to leave the object unguarded.” She thought again of the sleeping faces of the two children. Yankee children, she reminded herself again, but . . . “Or call it as close as I could get to changin’ my mind.”

* * *

“Status,” Yolande said.

“Unchanged,” the Sensor Officer said. “No relative motion.”

“Good.” An odd situation to describe as static, she thought ironically. Bass-ackwards to the end of beyond.

Not too untypical of a space-warship action, though. She looked at the screens again. An exterior view would have shown nothing but bright dots moving against the fixed stars, if that . . . The battle schematic was much more accurate. A fixed dot, the asteroid; the regular five-minute pulses of its monstrous drive flaring back toward Earth. The flame was only partly shaped by the magnetic fields of the thrust plate; those forces were still too vast and wild for Earth’s children, and it hid a good deal behind it from most sensors. An excellent place for her to conceal the vulnerable transports.

Yolande grinned like a shark in the darkness of the command center. Subotai and Batu were falling back toward the flotilla, with the two Alliance cruisers in pursuit; all on free-fall trajectories, with their thrust plates presented to the enemy. That was the most heavily armored portion of a pulsedrive ship, built to withstand near-miss nuclear explosions. And the drive was the most dangerous weapon in itself; chasing a deep-space warship was a chancy proposition, since getting too close would mean self-incineration. Once you got within a certain distance, in a one-on-one there was virtually no choice but to flip end for end and coast until something changed the situation. You could disengage, of course, but that meant backing off and freeing your opponent from the menace of the nuclear sword.

Perfect, she thought. The Draka warships had drawn the Alliance craft on just enough; the enemy vessels were slightly faster than hers, and more nimble, but they were farther from base and so obliged to be sparing with their burns. A perfect matching-velocity flip, which meant they must pursue or quit, and pursue precisely in line with the Draka ships for fear of presenting a vulnerable flank. The asteroid was coming up rapidly; the fog of energetic particles around it negated her enemy’s superior sensors, too; she did not need to detect much, here.

“Distance,” she said.

“Two-hundred-twenty klicks. Transit of asteroid in seventy-one seconds, ten klicks clearage.” Just enough to avoid the worst of the fusion-bomb explosions.

Nothing for it but to wait; all the orders were given, the personnel ready. Sweat soaked into the permeable fabric of her skinsuit, under the armpits and down the flanks, chill in the moving air the ventilators sent across her body. Sixty seconds. Life or death decided in one minute; victory and glory, or eternal shame. Genius, or a goat. Which I wouldn’t be there to see. Bones of the White Christ, this sort of thing sounds better in retrospect. Adventure is somebody else in deep shit far, far away.

Fifty seconds. Snappdove had thought she was insane, for a while. Maybe I was. Dammit, they are pressing home their pursuit. The Alliance wanted to damage her; the only way to do it was to chase her cruisers off far enough that they could do a firing pass at the asteroid and its work force as they turned and fled themselves. A two-body problem with only one solution.

Ten. Five. The pursuers maintaining position with beautiful precision; those were good ships and well-trained crews. Three. Two. Past.

“Now!” she shouted, superfluously.

“DECELERATION,” the speakers sounded. It wrenched at her, throwing her forward against the combat cocoon. Reaction mass was being vented from the forward ports, run through the heat dumpers to vaporize. Not nearly so powerful as the drive, but enough to check their headlong flight. The main drives of the Alliance craft lit in a brief blossom of flame, just enough to match.

And the asteroid was turning. A mass of billions of tonnes is very difficult indeed to move out of its accustomed orbit; it had taken dozens of fusion weapons to spend that much energy. It is much easier to pivot such a mass about its center of gravity; while the hydrogen-bomb flare had hidden them, the cargo vessels had nestled their bows into holes excavated in the rock and ice of the asteroid’s crust. A cruiser could not have done it without self-destruction, but the haulers had been modified to act as pusher tugs at need. Now four drives flared, and the lumpy dark potato shape pivoted with elephantine delicacy. Toward Subotai’s pursuer, blinded by its own drive for the crucial seconds. Fusion blossomed behind the rock’s assigned stern, and the products of it washed out tens of kilometers; charged particles, gamma radiation striking metal and sleeting through as secondary radiation and heat. Through shielding, through the reaction-mass baffles around the command center; tripping relays, overloading circuits, ripping the nervous systems of the human crew as well.

“MANEUVER.” Subotai flipped end over end. “DECELERATION.” The main drive roared, a deeper thrumming note as it poured reaction mass onto the plate and spat out fission pellets at twice the normal rate. The cruiser slowed with a violence that stressed the frame to its limits, as if the ship were sinking into some yielding but elastic substance. Crippled, the Alliance vessel overshot. Weapons flashed out at ranges so short that response time was minimal, from both directions, for the wounded ship was not yet dead.

“Overheat, disperser three.”

“Gatling six not reporting.”

“Penetration! Pressure loss in reaction baffle nine.”

“Wotan, get that missile, get it, get it.” Rising tension, until the close-in gatlings sprayed the homing rocket’s path with high-velocity metal. It exploded in a flower of nuclear flame, and the radiation alarms shrilled.

Yolande felt the cruiser shake and tone around her, like a vast mechanical beast crying out in pain. Sectors flicked from green to amber to red on the screens; but the Alliance ship was suffering worse, its defenses shattered.

“Hit!” Railgun slugs sleeted into the Washington’s heat dispersers. “Hit!” Parasite bombs dropped away from the Subotai’s stern, into the neutron flux of the drive; their own small bomblets detonated, and the long metal bundles converted energy into X-ray laser spikes.

“She’s losing air,” the Sensor Officer reported. “Overheat in her reaction mass tanks—pressure burst—losing longitudinal stability—she’s tumbling!”

Lasers raked across the enemy; armor sublimed into vapor and the computers held the beams on, chewing deeper. The particle guns snapped; sparks flickered along the cartwheeling form of the Alliance cruiser. Then the exterior screens darkened.

“Something got through,” the Weapons Officer said softly, and consulted his screens. “Secondary effects . . . her fuel pellets just went.”

A cheer went through the Subotai, a moment’s savage howl of triumph.

“Stow that!” Yolande snapped. “Sensors, report.”

“The Bolivar’s breaking and runnin’ fo’ it, ma’am.” Only sensible; with two ships to her one, the Draka could bracket and overwhelm her.

“Damage Control?”

“Ship fully functional. Missin’ one gatling turret. Three dead, seven injured.” Yolande winced inwardly. Shit. “Slow leaks in two sectors of the reaction mass tank. Seventy-one percent nominal. Drive full, remainder weapons systems full.”

“Number Two, shape fo’ pursuit.” There was a momentary pause in the drive, and it resumed at normal high-burn rates. Stars crawled across the screens as the attitude jets adjusted their bearing. “If Bolivar gets back within the orbit of Luna, they’ll do it with dry tanks an’ scratches on that shiny new thrust plate.” A pulsedrive ship could move on fuel pellets alone; the first generation had, using vaporized graphite from the lining of the plate as reaction mass. It was neither recommended, good for the frame, nor safe.

“Oh, and all hands,” she said, switching to the command push, “well done.”