Greenies

days, gently pushing it faster and faster. Even a California class warship, which sported the most powerful engines of anything spaceborne, could accelerate at no more than one half of standard gravity. For an Owl, which had to cloak and cool the plasma exhaust to keep from being counter detected, the maximum acceleration was one quarter of a G. At one tenth of a G, there was just enough gravity produced for the personnel on board to feel the slightest downward push against their chairs. Slowly, ever so slowly, the stealth ship moved higher in its orbit and began to ease closer to the contact they were prosecuting; hopefully without giving away their own location.

For more than an hour they built up velocity. Ingram continued to track the elusive flickers of blue and occasional white in the infrared spectrum, comparing different bearings from different locations, the contact gradually firming up into a solid reading. 'I'm starting to get enough for a range estimate, sir,' he announced.

'Give it to me,' the captain replied.

'This is tentative, but we're looking at six to eight thousand kilometers in a standard Ganymede semi-polar orbit. Also I've got enough readings from the various spectrums to confirm that it's a spacecraft and not a random piece of metal.'

'Sounds good, Ingram,' he said. 'Weapons control, start working on a solution.'

Of course they would not really fire at the ship even if it were identified as being an EastHem Henry. Though there was a cold war going on it had not been hot since the Jupiter War armistice was signed. And though the Henry — if that's what it was — was violating WestHem space by being within one hundred thousand kilometers of Ganymede, this was actually a fairly common violation, something that both sides did with frequency. If they were able to catch them there the report would be forwarded to Rear Admiral Cirby, the commander in chief of far space command, or CINCFARSPCOM, back on Earth. A formal protest would be lodged at the EastHem embassy and the EastHem government would be embarrassed and forced to apologize. It was something that had happened on both side many times before.

It took another hour before Mermaid had moved close enough to get a firm lock on their target. By then the fusion drives had been shut down, allowing the ship to drift once again and therefore reduce the possibility of counter detection. Once Ingram had multiple spectrum analysis of the target, he was able to positively identify it. The blue of the spectrum near the plasma outlets, the white of the thrusters when they fired, the darker blue of the occasional waste heat dump, and the very low end readings everywhere else all added up to one thing.

'I'm gonna call a positive ID on this, captain,' Ingram announced. 'It's definitely a Henry class stealth attack ship. Range is solid at eight hundred kilometers, velocity is standard orbital for Ganymede.'

'Are you sure it's not the Dolphin playing games with us?' Braxton asked snootily. 'An Owl and a Henry can be remarkably similar on the displays you know. And we are expecting Dolphin to show up at any time.'

'It's not Dolphin,' Ingram said tonelessly. 'It's not one of ours. I've detected more than a few Owls during exercises. Our heat vents and our exhaust ports are both in a different spectrum.'

'Mark it on the display,' the captain said. 'Fire control, do you have a solution?'

'On the mark, sir,' the fire control technician said. 'We're too close for torpedoes but we could really pound the shit out of them with the lasers if we wanted to.'

'Good enough,' he said. 'Keep them locked up. I'm gonna make a little call to SCNB and report our discovery.' He turned to Ingram. 'God help you if you're wrong about this, greenie.'

'Yes sir,' Ingram said.

He wasn't wrong. The captain sent an encrypted message to Standard City Naval Base by means of a pulsed laser burst aimed directly at their receiver. Ten minutes later a flight of six A-12 attack ships, each armed with high intensity, rapid charging lasers and two thermonuclear torpedoes, roared out of the base and up into the high orbit. Ingram and the rest of the bridge crew were able to see them as bright white plumes on the display. The tracking crew of the Henry was undoubtedly able to see them as well and had to know that they meant the jig was up. Within minutes the A-12s went active with their sensors, probing the area with radar beams and infrared energy, searching for the hidden intruder. It didn't take them long to find it once they knew where to look. Ingram, who was scanning all of the emissions in the area, was able to pick up the guard frequency transmission from the control room of SCNB. With the captain's permission, he put it on the screen.

'Attention EastHem vessel in orbit around Ganymede,' said Admiral John Cates, commander of the base, his weathered face stern and unforgiving. 'You are illegally in WestHem space. Identify yourself immediately and state your intentions or you will be fired upon.'

The captain of the Henry, knowing he was caught, did as he was told. A moment later a young, German featured face appeared on the screen. When he spoke his words were thick with an EastHem accent. 'This is Commander Mark Beil of the ESS Granite,' he said. 'It would seem that we've made a minor navigational error and strayed into your space. We offer our sincere apologies. We will of course vacate the area at best speed immediately.'

'And we will of course escort you back to international space,' Cates said. 'You have five minutes to start heading that direction.'

'My apologies again, Admiral,' Beil said, offering a small salute. With that he signed off.

Of course everyone knew that Beil and the Granite had not simply strayed into WestHem space. They had been spying, something that stealth attack ships were uniquely suited for. But diplomacy was delicate between the two superpowers and the game was played this way. Granite lit up its engines four minutes later and began to accelerate to escape velocity. The A-12s, their active sensors still pounding the invader with energy, turned and matched velocities to follow. Ingram and the rest of the Mermaid bridge crew watched the departure on the tactical display, Ingram recording every second of energy being radiated from Granite's engines for later intelligence reports.

'Secure from general quarters,' the captain told Braxton, unzipping his pressure suit.

'Right,' Braxton responded. He repeated the order over the ship's intercom system.

'Sir,' said the communications technician from his console. 'I have a hail from SCNB.'

'Put it on the screen,' the captain told him.

'Aye sir.'

A moment later the face of Admiral Cates was back on the screen, his features much friendlier now. 'Commander Hoffman,' he greeted the captain warmly. 'I just wanted to tell you that you did an excellent job locating that Henry. Thanks to you our EastHem friends will have a lot of explaining to do at the next summit conference.'

'It was nothing, sir,' the captain replied modestly. 'I was just doing my job.'

'Well, let me assure you that you did you job very well,' he said. 'I'm going to recommend you for an official accommodation. How does that sound?'

'That sounds just fine,' the captain shot back at him. 'Thank you very much, sir.'

They signed off a minute later. The captain never once mentioned his bridge crew or his greenie detection technician as being deserving of praise. After all, a captain was responsible for everything that happened on the ship, wasn't he?

Two hours later Ingram was lying on his rack in one of the berthing rooms. It was a small room, one of four crammed onto that particular deck, and there were five other racks, stacked three high on each wall, in the room with his. Since they were just above the starboard engine room the noise and vibration from the fusion drive hummed loudly and imparted an unpleasant thrumming to the walls. There were only six Martians on Mermaid's crew and strangely enough, all six of them were housed in this room, although four were currently at duty stations and absent at the moment. Steve Sugiyoto, a cooks assistant (which meant that he washed the dishes and cut the food into portions) was lying in his underwear on his own rack directly underneath Ingram. Since Dolphin had arrived and relieved them, Mermaid was currently under maximum acceleration, just starting the long trip back to Triad Naval Base. As such neither man needed the Velcro straps to hold them onto their racks. The acceleration of the ship imparted them with one tenth of their natural weight. In Ingram's case this was a whopping eight kilograms, just enough to keep him firmly on the floor or whatever ever surface he put himself upon.

'That's total bullshit, Brett,' said Sugiyoto from beneath him, his voice low, almost a whisper. 'I heard what went down up on that bridge. You were the one that found that fuckin Henry and you were the one that had to beg the old man to prosecute it. Where the hell does he get off takin all the credit for it?'