Greenies

sounded on the surface, there really was no other explanation that made sense.

'We need to sweep the area and see if there's an Owl out there,' Jules said. 'It's possible the greenies may have somehow managed to get one of the captured ships operational.'

'I've already ordered the attack craft launched,' Brannigan told him. 'They'll be going along the path of the weapon, probing with their active sensors to try and locate the vessel, if there is one. I've also had all ships activate their active search systems. If there's an Owl out there, we'll find it.'

'Very good, Brannigan,' he said, nodding in satisfaction. 'Let's find that ship and capture or destroy it. I want this done within the hour. Within the hour, do you hear me?'

'I understand, sir.'

'And in the meantime, we need to start figuring out what we're going to tell the media about this. Let's start thinking of a cover story right away.'

From the launch bays of the Californias, A-22 attack craft emerged, their powerful rocket engines lighting up and sending them streaking off into the surrounding space to search for the ship that had attacked Camel. The saucer shaped craft joined up into teams of two and began a grid search along the bearing that the torpedo had come from. They moved back and forth over their grids, their radars and other active systems probing in all directions, their passive sensors sniffing for the slightest sign of heat.

At the same time, the destroyers and the anti-stealth ships of the armada joined in the search as well, their unmanned probes shooting off in multiple directions along the torpedo bearing and off to the sides of it. Radar and search lasers filled the empty vacuum while technicians kept their eyes glued to their screens, reading the telemetry that was coming back in.

The WestHem forces however, held a distinct disadvantage in the search. Though they had the bearing that the weapon had launched from, they had no idea from what range its flight had begun. It could have been launched anywhere from 600,000 kilometers out to inside of 60,000 kilometers. And the further out that it had been launched from, the more time that the ship would have had to alter course and clear the area. They were in effect stuck with an area to search that the Earth itself would have fit inside of with room to spare for its moon to orbit. And in addition to the huge search area they had to work with, they only had a limited amount of time in which to do it in. The entire armada was still traveling at maximum speed away from the area while the ship they were searching for was undoubtedly standing relatively still. The attack craft were not capable of decelerating to this speed and lingering behind. And even if they could, they would never be able to catch back up to their mother ships when they were done.

Meanwhile, while all of the searching was going on and while Mermaid herself drifted silently and invisibly, her bridge crew nervously following the courses of the various ships on the lookout, the second torpedo that she had launched continued to close with Mule. None of the sensors on the search ships got a sniff of it since they were probing outward of the formation, not along its inner flank. It closed to within 12,000 kilometers before the search radar on Mule itself was able to get a hint of a return.

By that point, all of the commanding officers on all of the Panama ships had been alerted to what had happened to Camel. Every last one of the remaining transports were at general quarters now, their active systems all on line, their defensive weapons systems charged and on standby. Even still, it took a horridly long time for the bridge crew to react to the threat closing in on them. The commanding officer of Mule initially dismissed the intermittent returns as an anomaly, thinking that the fear and hysteria of the detection crew was causing an imaginary sighting. Precious seconds ticked by before he even thought to report this finding. It was only when the returns began to get steadier and when the infrared flickers began to accompany them that he started to wonder if maybe there really was a second weapon out there and maybe it really was heading for his ship.

He ordered the targeting radars lit up and directed down the bearing from which the sightings were coming. As with Camel, this gave a momentary solid return that was able to identify range, course, speed, and a weapon signature. He paled as he saw that he was dealing with a Mark 38 thermonuclear torpedo and that it was less than five thousand kilometers out. Before he could open fire on it with the anti-missile lasers, the jammer on the weapon went active, cluttering the display.

'This is Mule,' he reported to the commander of the armada on the emergency frequency. 'We have a torpedo closing in on us from five thousand kilometers! Jamming systems are active. Attempting to engage now!'

The entire command staff followed the brief drama on their screens as the telemetry from Mule was downlinked to them. They watched as her array of lasers began to fire into space one by one, trying to hit the now hidden object that was closing with them.

On Mermaid, Brett and his bridge crew watched the same thing. Since they were still linked via laser to the weapon, and since the weapon had clearly been detected, Brett ordered that the rocket engine be fired to help close the range a little faster. A command was given and a second later the powerful chemical rocket lit up, accelerating the torpedo towards Mule at nearly 12Gs.

When the torpedo was eighty kilometers out, less than a second away, one of the laser beams nicked it, just barely burning through the outer casing. Had the shot been just five centimeters more to the center, it would have destroyed the weapon, rendering it incapable of detonation and turning it into nothing more than a projectile. Instead a sensor in the weapon, detecting the damage, immediately set the detonation sequence into action. It took less than three hundredths of a second for the nuclear material to be compressed and explode in the distinctive double-flash.

Since the range of the detonation was considerably further out than had been the case with Camel, the ship was not completely obliterated from existence. The energy burned into the hull, causing huge rips along the entire port side, basically tearing the ship in half lengthwise. All of the landing ships on the port side were ripped open as well, instantly killing all within as they were opened to space in explosive decompressions. The worst damage occurred when two of the fuel tanks of the landing ships exploded, sending shrapnel ripping through the rest of the ship. The delicate fusion engines were put out of commission by the opening of the rear of the ship and then destroyed completely by the secondary explosion. The propellant tanks were ruptured, their contents blasting out into space as a tremendous cloud of vapor, but they did not explode this time due to the lack of sufficient oxidation. Nevertheless, more than three quarters of the men aboard Mule were killed outright by the impact or the secondary explosion. Of the remainder, most of whom were located on the bridge or the starboard side of the vessel, well over half were trapped forever in compartments that had been fused shut by the heat and the buckling. Their fate would be to drift forever into space, entombed in a dead, twisted hulk. Of those that were able to abandon ship, they had only fifty minutes of air in their emergency pressure suits and would have to hope for rescue from the other ships of the armada. And if they did manage to be rescued in time, all would have to be treated for severe radiation sickness.

Mermaid's engines had long since been shut down and she drifted silently through space, her passive sensors keeping an eye on the frantic search that was being undertaken on their behalf. The crew had been at general quarters for nearly five hours now, all of them anxious, scared, but also proud that they had just helped take forty thousand marines out of commission.

Brett and the rest of the bridge crew watched their screens as the Panamas continued to pass far above them and as the anti-stealth frigates and the attack ships that came from the middle portion of the security screen circled back and forth and probed into space. They picked up many radar signals and infrared sweeps bathing their ship in energy but so far they had not been detected. And as the minutes ticked by the ships in pursuit of them moved further and further away, carried along by their own momentum.

'They're well outside of potential detection range now,' Sugi said as he watched the circling of a pair of A- 22s about 40,000 kilometers away. They had been as close as 12,000 kilometers at one point, close enough that any sort of heat dump or engine usage would have meant instant discovery.

'Good,' Brett said, puffing nervously on a cigarette, 'but they won't be the only ones. We still have the rear screen to worry about. They'll be out in force as well. And all it takes is for one to get a little sniff of us.'

Sugi said nothing, didn't even nod. He simply went back to studying the display, remembering how he had once begged for something to appear on it. Now there were more symbols on it than he thought he could handle. And more would be gracing his view at any time.

'Have you found them yet?' General Wrath demanded of Jules. They were sitting in Jules' quarters, both