Earth Strike: Star Carrier: Book One

minutes-the duration of one Martian rotation-for a satellite to circle the planet once, so that it appeared to remain in the same spot in the sky. One hundred twenty years earlier, the former inner moon of Mars, Phobos, orbiting at just under ten thousand kilometers from the surface, had been nanotechnically disassembled, its billions of tons of carbon woven into a buckytube-weave tether connecting the summit of Pavonis Mons on the Martian equator with the outer moon, Deimos, which served now as a counterweight to keep the elevator cable pulled taut. There were three Martian space elevators now, spaced at roughly equidistant intervals around the planet’s equator-at Pavonis Mons, at the northwestern rim of Schiaparelli Crater, and in the rugged highlands once known to the earthbound astronomers of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries as Aethiopis.

The three space elevators were now the heart of the ongoing Martian terraforming project, serving as conduits for the millions of tons of nanoformer microbots being shipped down to the surface to break oxygen out of the rusty rocks and nitrogen from regolithic nitrates, and for trillions of tons of nitrogen scooped from the murky atmosphere of Titan, or mined on cold and distant Triton, out at the solar system’s rim. As the atmosphere thickened, the temperature slowly rose. One day-in perhaps another century or so-men would walk the surface of Mars beside liquid water seas, without e-suits.

But the original elevator, the one rising above an extinct shield volcano known as Pavonis Mons, was also the location of the extensive orbital facilities known, in honor of the vanished moon, as Phobos Station. The base, most of it, was located at the areosynchronous orbital point. It included the headquarters for the Martian terraforming effort, a large research station with extensive xenobiological facilities, numerous orbital manufactories, and the Earth Confederation military base properly known as Mars Synchorbital…and informally, humorously, and inevitably known as Phobia.

The docking facilities were independent of the elevator-tethered portion of the base, trailing along in synchronous orbit a few kilometers behind. The Kinkaid, the Symmons, the Puller, and a half dozen other ships of the carrier battle group were already snugged into the docks. America was so large that she had an orbital dock facility all to herself, a mass of girders, struts, and braces extending out from two counter-rotating hab modules as bulky as small O’Neil cylinders.

A second dock facility, just as large and as massive, just as complex, waited empty a kilometer off. The Spirit of the Confederation would not be returning to her home port.

Koenig glanced at the Spirit’s berth, then looked away. If the politicians had their way, this would be his last time in command of anything larger than an orbital shuttle, but he was past caring at this point. Well…almost past.

In point of fact, he was certain that he’d made all the right calls, given all the right orders, made all of the best decisions in the scrap at Eta Bootis, and he was as certain as he could be that the other officers in the Board of Inquiry would agree with him. The problems started when you brought civilian politicians into the mix…men and women with their own agendas, their own prejudices, and more interest in how they appeared to their voters than in the realities of military command.

God alone knew what the politicians would do.

America was closer now to the docking facility, which was slowly growing larger alongside, backlit by the brilliance of the sunlight gleaming off of the ocher Martian deserts. This close to the orbiting structures, ships could not use their grav drives without the danger of warping support struts or damaging delicate structures designed for microgravity environments. The ship had to rely on water thrusters to adjust attitude and gently nudge the behemoth into the dock’s gantry, assisted by a flotilla of dockyard tugs.

He could hear the ship’s captain giving orders over the com net. Just a bit too much velocity now would ruin Buchanan’s whole day.

ECN, the Confederation news service, was showing a live report on the battlegroup’s arrival. One display in CIC had been tuned to the broadcast, which now showed America herself broadside and slowly approaching the camera’s position-presumably somewhere on board the docking facility ahead.

A banner across the bottom proclaimed “Disaster at Eta Bootis: the battlegroup returns.”

So they were calling the battle a disaster, were they?

Koenig was a student of military history; in his job, you had to be. What, he wondered, would the media’s response have been to the evacuation of Dunkirk on the French coast of the English Channel, a little over four and a half centuries ago? A fleet of 900 British naval vessels, transports, fishing boats, freighters, and anything else that would float, practically, had managed to pull almost 340,000 British and French troops off the beach and carry them to safety after they’d been cut off and pinned against the sea by the advancing German Blitzkrieg. Those troops had lost most of their weapons and heavy equipment, but they’d lived, to form the nucleus of an army that would return one day to liberate a conquered Europe.

Had Dunkirk been a defeat or an incredible victory?

It depended on your point of view, of course. History was rarely as clean, neat, and orderly as the historical downloads suggested, especially in light of the ancient dictum that the victors wrote the histories. Politicians rarely could afford to take the long view. What they and their constituents were interested in was now…especially when blame needed to be assigned, and scapegoats found.

Koenig had already reviewed the events at Eta Bootis and his orders with the AI that would be representing him at the Inquiry. The likeliest outcome, he’d been told, was public censure and a private promotion sideways within the Navy-assignment to a desk job, possibly here at Phobia, possibly with the Joint Chiefs or the Military Directorate…unless, of course, he opted to retire.

Sacrificing his career had much the same flavor, for Koenig, as it might for a disgraced Roman general throwing himself on his own sword. He wasn’t going to go quietly and conveniently; he wasn’t about to “fade away,” as an American general named MacArthur, broken in a political battle of wills with his commander-in-chief, had once so eloquently phrased it.

One step at a time. First he would face the Board of Inquiry. Then it would be time to face the political fallout of his decisions.

The problem, which he was trying hard not to look at just now, was that he would be running afoul of political considerations at the Board as well. In the Navy, every promotion above the rank of commander required patronage, well-placed friends, and politics, and the politics became thicker the higher up the totem pole you went. Admirals owed favors, had favorites lower in the chain of command they wished to help, or had their eyes on political positions or a seat on a corporate board once they retired from the military. That was how the game was played, how it had been played for centuries.

Koenig would rather have played with a Turusch battle-fleet any day.

Sick Bay Psych Department

TC/USNA CVS America

Mars Synchorbit, Sol System

0910 hours, TFT

The carrier’s passageways were crowded with refugees…even more so now than during the past three weeks of the journey in from Eta Bootis. Mufrids who’d been camping in rec areas, mess halls, cargo bays, and storage compartments were emerging now to strand in narrow passageways, their meager belongings in small suitcases, bags, and parcels, waiting for the order to debark. Gray wondered if the refugees were as eager to get off the carrier as America’s crew was to be rid of them.

Gray squeezed past a seemingly endless line of bearded men in turbans and kufiyyat, past women veiled in khimar or jilbab. It was slow going, and his passage provoked angry mutters and dark glances from the men.

God, the ship stank…three claustrophobic weeks of the accumulating smells of cooking, vomit, urine, feces, and unwashed bodies, the stench of too many people in too small a space, with limited toilet facilities and showerheads.

Gray finally reached sick bay, ducking past the line of civilians waiting to get in and provoking more angry looks. The psych department was just down another passageway to the left.

A reception bot accepted his ID off his palm implant and sent him straight through to Dr. Fifer.