Now for the hard part.
Normally, we’d just dock like a normal ship, as we both stop thrust and come to a stop relative to each other. But we’re in a hurry, so we’re going to do this another way. Because we’re both under thrust, we’ll have to cut our torch drive and dock flawlessly with the other ship. That means accelerating ahead of the larger ship before cutting our torch drive, so we fall into it as it continues to accelerate. Then we use our maneuvering thrusters to make sure we’re properly lined up with the signal beam from the carrier, the “meatball,” which looks like a red dot on a display when it’s properly lined up. Finally, we’ll fall into the hanger bay at three times earth’s gravity, to be caught by the carrier’s arresting net.
It’s not much different than what I do regularly when performing a high-speed carrier landing in my exo-frame.
Accidents are actually quite rare.
Really.
The torch drive cuts out, and for a moment, we’re weightless. There’s a faint push I can just barely feel as maneuvering thrusters make a final adjustment. Then the hanger of the Weston rushes at us, and we’re slammed into the acceleration padding hard enough to force the breath out of everyone’s lungs. That’s why we always strap in.
Outside, the doors are already closing on this hanger, and the smart material of the arresting web is tightening around our CAST and bringing us over to the vehicle elevator.
Another flawless landing.
We get the all-clear and begin to unstrap. Everyone on my team is in good condition, and we get the signal to assemble in the briefing room in two hours. That gives me some time to check over our exo-frames, make sure they’ve been properly repaired, and didn’t get dinged up on the way up here.
I also check our current position and vector. Now that we’ve been under thrust for a while, I can hazard a guess at our destination. After breaking away from Jupiter’s gravity well, the Weston used her main drive to cancel her orbital momentum around the Sun. So we’re not going straight for Saturn after all. We’ll be falling toward the Sun and the inner planets.
* * * * *
Chapter 2 Sunfall
We’re in trouble, and so are the inner planets.
All the explanations of the current political crises on Saturn, or the description of the diplomatic procedures, or even the details of the interplanetary treaties and laws can’t hide what I see right in front of my eyes. The paths of all the Jovian and Saturnine ships mean one thing—trouble.
Physics never lies. Diplomats lie, politicians lie, and the media all lie. The bureaucrats and officers we get our orders from lie. We lie to each other, and we often lie to ourselves. But there’s an absolute truth behind it all. Truth is revealed to us by action, and action always conforms to physics. When you apply so many newtons to so much mass over so much time along a certain vector—a specific thing is going to happen.
It’s looking a lot like that thing will be war.
The Briefing Room is a physical place as well as a cyber space, and I can see the tracks of the different ships with my eyes and with my cyber-sensorium. There’s a hologram of current and projected vectors floating over us all in the briefing room—Jupiter’s ships are in blue, Saturn’s in red. Even when I close my eyes, I can see the paths of ships slowly moving through the intricate clockwork paths of the solar system. Once you get enough momentum, you’re committed to a path—and it’s now becoming clear what those paths are.
The Sun.
Saturn has rushed out most of its fleet. Swarms of small craft and lumbering dreadnoughts launched from docking stations and moons orbiting Saturn or came roaring up from the mysterious depths of the gas giant. They’re boosting hard—harder than we can. Sure, we Jovians are a genetically- and cybernetically-enhanced, high-gravity people—we can take a lot of Gs. Saturnine ships can take more, a whole lot more. They’re more machine than man now, alien monsters on their own twisted path of self-evolution. The path their ships are on is straight down the gravity well of the Sun toward the fires at the heart of our solar system. Their ships can handle the heat and radiation, and it’ll be hard to see what they’re doing down there. If they launch missiles or fighters, we’ll never see it. Worse, after a slingshot around the Sun, those ships could be going anywhere, and so fast we’d never catch up.
On top of all that bad news, there was a whole bunch of encrypted communications Saturn sent out to their forces around the solar system. As soon as they got it, everything went on high alert, bringing active sensors online and sending out patrols.
I’m sure it’s all just an exercise…sure it is.
The only good news is the interplanetary strategic missiles aren’t launching…yet. That would be the end. Once they accelerate up to relativistic velocities, there’s no reliable way to stop them…and you’d have to stop all of them. Inside each one are scores of antimatter warheads, each powerful enough to break apart a small moon. Everyone back home is under the gun.
I try to tell myself that it won’t come to that. I tell myself this is just more posturing, or maybe a shoving match to see who’s on top. I don’t believe it for a minute.
God help us all.
Wing Commander C. Rackham (never call him “Clarence”) is giving us the briefing. He kept the scar over his eye that he got from the Titan Conflict, and he might well be the toughest warrior in a frame, even
