Bio-Weapon

“Then it gets hard,” admitted Marten.

“But not impossible, right?”

Marten checked his chronometer. “Time to head back.”

Omi glanced at the hissing spot in the Plexiglas bubble, and then he turned with Marten for the barracks.

3.

On the experimental Social Unity Beamship Bangladesh, Admiral Rica Sioux sank into her acceleration couch. She wore a silver vacc suit, the faceplate dark and the conditioner-unit humming. Around her and suited as well languished the officers of the armored command capsule.

Despite the Bangladesh’s heavy shielding, months in near-Sun orbit had leaked enough radiation so Admiral Sioux had ordered the command crew together with the Security detail into the vacc suits. There had barely been enough suits for higher command and security, a grim oversight from requisitioning. The rest of ship’s company had bitterly complained about the lack of vacc suits for them. After the first cases of radiation sickness, Security had overheard talk of mutiny. Finally, in order to regain a sort of normalcy, the Admiral had ordered drumhead executions of the ringleaders—in this instance, randomly selected personnel.

The experimental spacecraft, the only one of its kind, had already set two hazardous duty records: one for its nearness to the Sun, two for the duration of its stay. Their greatest danger was a wild solar flare. One flare, over 60,000 kilometers long, had already shot out of the Sun’s photosphere and looped over the Bangladesh, only to fall back into the cauldron of nuclear fire. The ship’s heavy magnetic shielding, the same as in Earth’s deep-core mines, kept the x-rays, ultra-violet and visible radiation and high-speed protons and electrons from penetrating the ship and zapping everyone aboard. Not even the vacc suits would have protected them from that. Unfortunately, the rare occurrence of a giant solar flare had signaled the commencement of Admiral Sioux’s troubles. Somehow, the image of their beamship sailing under the flare’s magnetic loop of hot gas had horrified the crew. If a flare should ever hit them—even with the beamship’s magnetic shields at full power— there would be instant annihilation.

They had been in near-Sun orbit since the start of hostilities. Their ship was probably the only one in the Solar System that could have done it. The magnetic shields that protected them this near the nuclear furnace took fantastic amounts of energy to maintain—too much to make the M-shields useful in combat. The gaining of power here was simple but deadly for the personnel aboard. Special solar panels soaked up the incredible wattage poured out of the Sun. Unfortunately, they couldn’t collect when the magnetic shields were up. So they switched off the M-shield and used the heavy particle shields—millions of tons of matter—to keep the worst radiation at bay while the solar collectors collected. Then and none too soon went up the magnetic shields. Most of the radiation leakage, naturally, occurred between these switches.

The reason Admiral Sioux had chosen the near-Sun orbit to hide was basic strategy. Social Unity Military Command well knew the combat capabilities of the enemy Doom Stars. No combination of the Social Unity Fleet could face one, and at the rebellion’s commencement, the Highborn had captured all five. So to save the Fleet, SUMC had ordered an immediate dispersion of ships into the nether regions of space. The scattering kept the Fleet in being, and just as importantly, it forced the enemy to split his Doom Stars, if he wanted to picket each of the four inner planets.

This near the Sun was the perfect hiding spot, at least since the destruction of the robot radar probes that had long ago been set at far-Sun orbit. Neither radar nor optics could spot the Bangladesh if the viewer looked directly at the Sun. The Sun’s harsh radio signals blanketed the beamship, while the Star’s light—seeing the Bangladesh in near-Sun orbit would be like trying to pinpoint a candle’s flame with a forest fire a few millimeters behind it. The trick, of course, would be to look “down” and get a side view, with space as the background and not the nuclear ball of fire. It was the military reason for at least three, robot radar probes at three, equidistant locations around the Sun, and why the Admiral had destroyed the probes.

Admiral Sioux shifted on her couch, trying to relax her left shoulder. The horrible acceleration threatened to cramp her muscles. Nor could she lift her arm and massage her shoulder. Simply breathing, forcing her chest up in order to drag down another breath, was becoming hard.

She took short, small gasps and her thigh cramped. Despite that, she grinned hideously. The acceleration made it so.

They were finally going to hit back. After long months of inactivity, she would be allowed to hurt the enemy.

A week ago, they had picked up General James Hawthorne’s scratchy orders. It had taken computer enhancement to make sense of the Supreme Military Commander’s words. Because of the orders, she now used the Sun as a pivoting post, building up speed.

The Sun’s diameter was roughly 1.4 million kilometers, or 109 times the size of the Earth. The Bangladesh thus orbited or circled a greater distance than the Moon did in its orbit around the Earth. The diameter of the Moon’s orbit was approximately 770,000 kilometers.

The beamship’s huge engines increased power and changed the direction of their thrust, and the experimental Bangladesh broke free from its near-Sun orbit. It sped toward Mercury. In three weeks, the ship would fly past the planet by 30 million kilometers.

A second later, the awful acceleration snapped off. The G-forces shoving Admiral Sioux into the couch quit. She expelled air, and then she clamped her teeth together, forcing herself not to vomit. The sudden weightlessness always did that to her, a weakness she despised in herself.

She unbuckled her harness and sat up. So did the others.

The Bangladesh still hid in the Sun’s glare from anyone looking from Mercury. They coasted now and thus gave away no gravity-wave signatures. Just as importantly, they knew exactly where their target would be during the coming window of opportunity. Everything depended upon surprise, complete, utter and total surprise.

Behind her darkened visor, the Admiral flashed a wicked smile.

The Bangladesh had been built for just such an attack. In this one particular, it broke the “rules” of modern space warfare.

She pushed off the couch and floated to the First Gunner. Together and with ship’s AI, they would work out several attack patterns.

Admiral Sioux chinned on her suit’s outer speakers, and said to the Command Crew, “We must not fail.”

Several dark visors turned toward her.

Finally, they were going to hit back at the Highborn. No more hiding, no more cowering from the enemy. Her chest swelled with pride. “For Social Unity,” she said, thrusting her arm in the Party salute.

Only the First Gunner raised his hand in return. Two others turned away, another was coughing.

Admiral Sioux squinted thoughtfully. If they lived through the attack, she would mark this into their profile, this lack of zeal in face of the enemy. But there was no sense bringing it up now and ruining morale even more. Better if she didn’t have to bring Security onto the command capsule.

Rica Sioux reached the First Gunner, grabbed his shoulder and settled herself into the module beside him. She logged onto the targeting computer and rubbed her gloved hands in glee. Soon everyone would see the power of the Bangladesh. Then, yes, then her name would blaze as the visionary who had saved Social Unity.

4.

The Sun Works Factory rotated around the dead planet. A million lights glittered from this greatest of space