Greenies

and speeds calculated. They were all moving on the same course, towards Mars, at the same seventy kilometers per second. Ship number five was a California class, lagging behind the main escorts but unmistakable due to its size and the amount of heat it generated, even with engines off.

'They're running dumb,' Brett said in amazement as he stared at the data coming in. 'They're probing forward with nothing more than radar beams for anti-meteor defense and a few active systems. They don't seem to have any attack craft up at all.'

'Then that means we've achieved surprise?' Sugi asked.

'Either through blind luck or their own stupidity, it would seem so. Let's start setting up an intercept course here. Helm, bring us to 340 mark 0 and decrease the burn to point zero six G.'

'Copy, Brett,' she said, making the adjustments. This course and speed put them facing directly towards where he hoped their targets — the large Panamas — would begin to emerge in another thirty minutes or so. Mermaid was off to the side of the formation and moving relatively slowly at an angle of about forty degrees towards it. Brett's plan was to slip in behind the front escorts and in front of the middle escorts to take advantage of the gap in coverage.

A few more escorts became visible and were identified over the next twenty minutes, Sugi's skills with the computer becoming such that he was able to get signatures from them and assign actual ship names. And then, the moment that they had been waiting for, the first of the Panamas appeared. It, like the California, was unmistakable on their screen once enough data was collected. The Panamas were huge and they absorbed a lot of heat from the sun on their hulls.

'Here come the targets,' Brett said happily, though with a little trepidation as well.

Two more came into view over the next fifteen minutes and Sugiyoto calculated their courses and speeds out. Brett then made his decision. 'Let's go after number three to start with,' he said. 'The angle of attack is about right and the front escorts will be well beyond our firing position by the time we get there.'

'Sounds good, Brett,' Sugi said, staring at that particular ship on his holographic display.

'Helm,' Brett ordered next, 'calculate a course to target twelve please, the third Panama in the line. Let's go for a 400,000 kilometer release.'

Mandall hesitated. 'Uh, Brett,' she said nervously, 'don't you think that maybe you should do that. I mean...'

'It's your job Mandall,' he told her. 'You've done it on the simulation many times. Just do the same thing here.'

'But...'

'You'll be fine, Mandall,' he said. 'Now get it done while our window is still open please.'

She nodded and bent to her computer screen, inputting several pieces of data and letting it know which target she wanted to prosecute. The idea was to put the ship on a direct intercept course, a collision course in fact, and then, when 400,000 kilometers out, to release a torpedo and set it drifting on that course. The ship could then turn away and move to another position while the torpedo drifted on. By the time the torpedo was detected Mermaid would be long gone.

'I've got the course,' she said after a minute had gone by and after she'd double-checked her data. 'It's on your screen right now.'

Brett took a glance down at it but didn't bother to check it himself. 'Very good, Mandall,' he told her. 'Get us on that course please. And I think it's about time that we go to GQ.' He pushed the red button on his panel that sounded the general quarters alarm. He then turned the intercom back on. 'All personnel, we are now prosecuting a Panama class transport ship that is presumably filled with WestHem marines and their equipment. Let's get to general quarters now and button this ship up. The fun has begun.'

While the ship turned and began to head towards its target, the crew went into the general quarters drill. By now they were well practiced at this all-important aspect of combat operations and they had their emergency pressure suits on and their stations manned in just under two minutes. Brett, hearing the reports of manned and ready from each station, beamed with pride at this accomplishment. He had taken a bunch of civilians, undermanned a warship with them, and despite the madness of it they were behaving like a veteran crew.

Things became very tense as Mermaid closed in. The first group of escorts moved beyond her position, their holographs drifting rapidly across the display and off the far edge of it. Though they could still send attack craft after Mermaid, there was no longer much danger of being detected by the Seattle's. Then the Panamas began to get closer and closer. The minutes ticked by and the range closed to half a million kilometers.

'Twenty minutes to firing point,' Mandall reported. 'Still on target.'

'Thanks, Mandall,' Brett told her. He then raised Chad Hamilton in the torpedo room on the intercom system.

'I'm here, Brett,' Hamilton answered up within two seconds of the hail.

'We're less than a hundred thousand kilometers out,' he told him. 'Coming up on the firing point. Load torpedo tubes one and two and set the weapons for semi-controlled flight.'

'Copy,' Hamilton replied. 'What's the burst range?'

'Set it for fifty kilometers. I won't those things to burst as close as possible. I don't just want those Panamas wounded, I want them dead.'

'You've got it, Brett,' he answered.

The next thirty minutes went by slowly, with everyone on the bridge watching the display in front of Sugi's terminal, staring fascinated as the symbol that represented their target came closer and closer to the center.

'Twelve thousand kilometers to release point,' Mandall reported at last. 'That's just over two minutes, Brett.'

'Two minutes,' he repeated, chewing his lip a little. He called Hamilton again. 'Torpedo room, open tube number one and prepare for launch.'

'Opening tube one,' was the reply.

On the front of the ship a circular hatch irised slowly open, revealing the blunt nose of the torpedo. On the bridge, Mandall began to count down every ten seconds as the launch point approached. When she reached zero Brett gave a simple order.

'Launch tube one,' he said.

In the torpedo room, Hamilton took a deep breath, tried not to think about what he was doing, and flipped up the protective cover on a large red switch. Across the room from him, at the same time, one of his enlisted men flipped up a cover of his own. With a nod towards each other they pushed down on their switches, thus fulfilling the requirements of the launch system. Nothing terribly dramatic happened at that point. There was no sound, no gout of flame, no shuddering of the ship. A simple hydraulic arm connected to a plate of steel extended, pushing the five-meter long weapon out of the tube. When the arm reached the end of its stroke the mounting bracket released from the rear of the torpedo and it slowly drifted out in front of the ship, its powerful rocket engine idle.

'We have good separation,' Hamilton reported to Brett. 'The weapon is drifting free.'

'I copy good separation,' Brett said. 'Let me know as soon as you have a laser lock on it.'

The torpedo, which was nothing more than a two hundred megaton thermonuclear missile, was encased in radar and heat resistant material to keep it from being detected as it moved in on its target. On the top of it a three-meter laser receiver dish unfolded from its case and stuck up into space. When the weapon, which was moving at about a half a kilometer per hour faster than Mermaid — was six hundred meters from the ship, a tracking laser shot out from a mast located atop Mermaid's sensor array. Similar to the communications laser system, this beam would keep a lock on the torpedo as long as a line of sight was maintained. With this link established, Mermaid's computers, acting under orders from Brett, could control the torpedo. It's course could be corrected by the tiny maneuvering thrusters and a short burn from the main rocket engine, or the engine could be throttled up to full power for the terminal dive to target, or the weapon could be detonated in the event it was detected and the target began to fire on it. In case the line of sight was lost or some other problem caused the disconnection of the beam with the ship, the torpedo had an active seeker head as well and was programmed to continue seeking its target and correcting it's own course. The optimum detonation range — the range that was considered universally lethal to a ship — was inside seventy kilometers, although heavy damage would be inflicted anywhere up to one hundred and fifty kilometers away.