Bio-Weapon

Hansen seemed to consider it.

“Piloting is much trickier than that,” Nadia said. “I’d have to actually be at the controls.”

“She double-crossed you once already, boss. I don’t trust her.”

“We’ll watch her closely,” Hansen said.

“Take turns, huh?” said Ervil.

“Now, now, none of that,” Hansen said. “Don’t needlessly frighten her.”

“We can’t leave right away,” Nadia said, who was terrified of these two. Why had she ever gotten involved with drugs in the first place?

“Why can’t we leave?” asked Hansen.

“Things are too quiet,” she said. “We have to wait until the pods come back online.”

Hansen pursed his lips. “I destroyed my files, so we have a little time. The sooner we can leave the better.”

“Dalt and Methlen might be angry that you left them behind,” said Ervil. “They might talk too much once the Highborn catch them.”

“We’ll have to count on their staying out of sight for awhile,” said Hansen. He turned to Nadia. “Do we have a deal?”

She had no choice and she knew it. But she didn’t like the look in Hansen’s eyes, nor in Ervil’s. What would six months be like cooped up with these two? “It’s a deal,” she said.

“Good,” said Hansen, taking the bottle off Ervil’s belt. He sprayed her tangle strands and they wilted and fell to the floor. “Let’s get ready to leave.”

8.

Admiral Rica Sioux wore a spotless tan uniform, with a glittering row of medals. A snug, tan military cap hid her hair. She swiveled in the command chair, with a comlink embedded in her right ear and a VR-monocle over her left eye.

Everyone else on the command capsule wore a stiff, tan uniform of the Social Unity Space Fleet. Most were webbed into their modules, with VR-goggles and twitch-gloves. A clean odor filled the capsule, while brisk movement and sharply spoken words added to the military bearing. The transformation in the past eleven days had taken hold throughout the entire ship.

Admiral Sioux shifted anxiously. Short, swift, gratifying days with command briefings, inspections and practice drills had changed a sluggish, orbital-sick crew into eager warriors. Not even the flock of blips picked up by tracking had been able to check this impulse.

It was too bad about the early radar probe and the subsequent missile launches. Enemy jamming kept them in the dark about the exact nature of the incoming missiles. To warm up their own ECM pods to try to defeat the enemy sensors would give away their exact position. No. Long-distance beam shots out of the dark were the Bangladesh’s MO. The spread of enemy missiles proved the Highborn hadn’t spotted them again… unless they had done so optically. In any case, it would take over a week for the missiles to get close enough to fire any missile-borne lasers—if they even packed lasers.

Unless—she tapped her armrest—unless the very spread of missiles was a bluff! Admiral Sioux frowned, creasing her face full of wrinkles. Maybe the Highborn had spread the missiles to try to fool me. Maybe they track us with a hidden, secret ship of their own.

Admiral Sioux sipped from a sealed cup. It was a special medicated drink that smelled like coffee. This way only the medical officer knew that she was taking drugs to help calm her nerves.

Why did she have to worry so much? She hated it.

The First Gunner broke into her reverie, saying, “Entering firing range… now.”

Admiral Sioux savored the moment. Now! The Bangladesh was intact. Despite her fears, the Highborn could surely have no idea about what was to commence. 30 million kilometers was a short distance in space terms, but in terms of Solar System warfare, it was a revolution.

“Rotate the particle shield aft thirty degrees,” she said.

“Aft thirty degrees,” said the Shield Tech.

Outside the massive beamship, the huge 600-meter thick shield of rock and metal lifted as if a man lifted a visor on a helmet.

“Focus the projectors,” said Admiral Sioux.

“Projectors focused. Projectors in firing position,” said the First Gunner, his supple fingers flying over his control board.

A vast section slid open on the inner armored skin of the Bangladesh. A squat nozzle poked out, a green light winking in its orifice.

“Engage power,” Admiral Sioux said.

“Proton Beam power on,” the Power Chief said.

“Target acquired,” the First Gunner said.

Admiral Rica Sioux smiled thinly. She and ship’s AI had already chosen the targets ten days ago. They would follow a strict procedure aboard the Bangladesh. If the Highborn did something unforeseen, only then would they change procedure.

“Admiral?” the First Gunner asked.

She sighed. A good officer, the Pakistani First Gunner, but he was a little too anxious. Why couldn’t he allow her to enjoy the moment? After one hundred and twenty-one years of life, she had learned that savoring a moment was often more enjoyable than the actual moment itself.

“This day,” she said to the command crew, “we teach the Imperialist warmongers that you can contain the People momentarily, but you can’t keep them down forever.”

One fool actually started clapping, although he quickly looked around, saw that no one else clapped and sheepishly turned back to his screen.

“Hear, hear,” said the Second-in-Command.

There, much better, and with an actual touch of the antiquated navy. The Admiral liked that. She closed her eyes and refrained from fiddling with her cap, as much as she wanted to adjust it because her head itched abominably. That would seem like a nervous gesture, though. She opened her eyes, trying to memorize every detail.

“Fire,” she said.

The First Gunner pressed the button.

Ship’s AI took over. Within the Bangladesh, power flooded from the storage cells and the ship’s Fusion Drive pumped in more. Said power charged through the proton generators. Needles and gages jumped and quivered, and then out of the single cannon poured the incredibly powerful proton beam.

It almost sped 300,000 kilometers per second for Mercury, for the Sun Works Factory that churned armaments for the Supremacists. For 1.7034 minutes, the tip of the beam flew through the vacuum of space. Meanwhile, Mercury traveled along its orbital path around the Sun, and around the pitted planet rotated the vast ring habitat, its exact tilt known even to the lone scientists far out on Charon. The proton beam almost charged as fast as anything could possibly travel in the galaxy. It was a little less than the speed of light, amazingly fast to terrestrials, but when set against the vast distances of space, a mere crawl.

On the Sun Works Factory technicians and secretaries, Highborn officers and premen underlings, repairmen, computer specialists, welders, deck crew, cooks and maintenance all went about their normal activities. None knew what sped toward them. Nothing could have given them warning. If radar could have bounced off the proton beam, the return radar blip would have traveled only a little faster than the attacking protons. Like a literal bolt out of the blue, the proton beam flew onward.

Approximately 1.7 minutes after leaving the proton cannon, the beam lanced past the solar collectors that girded the outer shell of the Sun Works Factory. For all the precision of the Bangladesh’s