Earth Strike: Star Carrier: Book One

the two-frozen nitrogen, water ice, and frozen carbon dioxide-was nearly identical. Its surface temperature hovered at just 38 degrees Celsius above absolute zero, a few degrees colder even than the mean temperature on Pluto.

“We’re coming up on the final course correction, Skipper,” the Nav Officer told him, his voice edged with excitement. Lieutenant Raymond Seborg was a washout from Oceana, a would-be fighter-jock who’d ended up in the High Guard on the fast track to line command. The bridge crew still teased him about his predilection for handling a 220-meter-long destroyer like a Starhawk fighter.

“Very well, Mr. Seborg.” He opened his intercom link. “All hands, this is the captain. We’re about to drop into MGF. So far, there’s no sign that the enemy has seen us…or even that the enemy is here at all. Stay alert, and record everything that happens. When things start happening, they’re going to happen fast.”

MGF was the acronym for microgravitic flight…a fancy way of saying that the drive singularities would be shut down and the Gallagher would be falling solely under the influences of nearby planetary bodies, and its current velocity.

“Mr. Carlyle,” he added. “Shields to ninety percent, please.”

“Shields at nine-zero percent, aye, aye, sir.”

That would provide a reasonable level of protection, while allowing Gallagher’s sensors to continue to probe nearby space.

Astern, the other ships fell into the agreed-upon formation, a rough wedge with Gallagher at the leading point.

Getting the other four High Guard captains to follow his lead had been a real treat in and of itself. Balakrishnan on the Godavari was senior to Lederer by two years, and Zeng, of the Jianghua, had argued that the flotilla’s strategic decisions should be put to a vote. The High Guard, rather than maintaining a strict hierarchy of command, had been established as a free participation among the space-faring nations of Earth, under the direction of a multinational board of command. It worked well enough for organizing and sending out routine patrols, but was somewhat lacking when faced with a distinct military threat.

Lederer had bulled through by saying the others could follow his lead or get the hell out and return to the Inner System.

He’d broken all the rules of diplomacy, protocol, and international propriety, but they’d followed.

On the forward display, Neptune was rapidly growing larger, swelling from a blue dot lost among the stars to a half-phase, faintly banded giant. The small flotilla was falling toward Neptune’s south polar region; the planet was circled by fragmentary rings or ring arcs, which would make a high-velocity pass over the equatorial areas deadly.

The blue planet continued growing larger, and the distant red speck that was Triton dropped behind the horizon.

“Captain Lederer,” the ship’s AI said, “sensors are picking up numerous IR and radio wavelength anomalies within several million kilometers of Triton. The data are consistent with the presence of numerous large starships similar in configuration to those operated by the Turusch.”

“Thank you, Galley,” Lederer replied. The news was at once reassuring and frightening. It suggested that his guess had been right, that the alien fleet had closed in on Triton, then settled down to wait.

“Comm!” He added. “Are we transmitting?”

“Yes, sir. We’re sending it off as soon as we get it. Time lag to Earth, two hundred thirty-eight minutes. Time lag to Mars two hundred forty-five minutes.”

“Roger that.”

One minute to go. Neptune filled the forward screen, rushing out to block out half of the entire surrounding sky. Seborg’s last maneuver had nudged the Gallagher just enough to send the High Guard ship skimming within a thousand kilometers of Neptune’s cloud deck, close enough that they’d be burning through the tenuous outer layers of the huge planet’s atmosphere.

At a quarter of the speed of light, their passage through that tenuous atmosphere would be spectacular, but extremely brief.

It would also announce their arrival in rather definite terms, but the chances were good that the enemy had spotted them already. Even with their shields up, remote drones and sensors scattered throughout the area would be watching everything entering local space.

He wished there were a way for the little squadron to somehow strike at the enemy, but that was impossible. With no hard data on any targets near Triton, aiming would have been problematic. It was a moot point in any case. High Guard ships carried fusion bombs to nudge asteroids into new and non-Earth-threatening trajectories, but no ranged weapons. The destroyer’s missile launchers and particle-beam projectors all had been stripped out long ago to make more room for consumables on extended deep-space patrols.

There was a flash, then darkness as Gallagher’s shields went up full, together with a savage shock as the spacecraft tunneled through several thousand kilometers of hydrogen gas in a fraction of a second. They emerged on the far side, their trajectory slightly reshaped by Neptune’s gravity well.

They were now 350,000 kilometers from Triton-less than the distance from Earth to Earth’s moon. At their current velocity, they would cross that distance in slightly less than five seconds.

“Enemy ships!” Alys Newton, his scanner officer shouted. “I’ve got-”

Something struck the Gallagher amidships, a hammer-blow jolting the ship hard enough to snap internal struts and braces. Shields collapsed as power feeds were broken, and a large chunk of the ship’s aft section ripped free, sending the rest of the destroyer into an out-of-control tumble.

In the tactical display, bright white, expanding spheres of light marked the deaths of the Jianghua and the Hatakaze. The icons representing both the John Paul Johns and the Godavari were flashing on and off rapidly, indicating serious damage. There wasn’t even time to determine just what had hit them. Things were happening far too fast.

The scanners stayed on-line long enough for Lederer, pinned to his couch by sudden centripetal acceleration, to glimpse the odd mixed blue and pink hues of Triton as the moon flashed past less than five thousand kilometers away. Seborg’s calculations had been uncannily precise.

Then the scanners went down, as did the last of the shields.

Lederer heard the roar of escaping atmosphere as the tumbling ship continued to come apart. “Comm! Are we still transmitting?”

“Yes, sir!” Her reply seemed muted in the fast-dropping pressure of the bridge.

“All hands, this is the captain! Abandon ship! Repeat, abandon ship!”

He already knew that most of them would never make it to the life pods. Even if they did, the chances of being picked up this far out, moving this fast, were next to nill.

But if their automated scanners had picked up the enemy’s positions and orbits, and if that data had been transmitted to Earth, then Gallagher and her sister High Guard ships had successfully accomplished their mission.

It was, Lederer thought, a fitting epitaph for ships and crews alike.

CIC, TC/USNA CVS America

Mars Synchorbit, Sol System

0258 hours, TFT

Koenig had made it on board the America just in time. The ship was already casting off its magnetic grapples, and only a single passenger tube remained connecting the vessel’s spine with the dock facility. Koenig had boarded a gravtube for the ten-minute trip to the dock, then elbowed his way on board along with hundreds of other personnel returning from liberty. An enlisted rating had volunteered to serve as his personal shoehorn, pulling his way along the microgravity passageway bellowing “Gangway! Make a hole! Admiral coming through!”