Singularity Sky (16 page)

‘Target still accelerating slowly,“ said Radar One. ”Looks like a missile boat.“

“One-zero seconds. Launch rails energized.”

“You have permission to fire at will, Commander,” said the Captain.

“Yes, sir. Eight seconds. Navigation updated. Inertial platforms locked.

Birds charged, warheads … green. Five seconds. Launch commencing, bird one. Gone.” The deck shuddered briefly: ten tons of missile hurtled the length of the ship in the grip of a coilgun, ejected ahead of the starship at better than a kilometer per second. “Lidar lock. Drive energized. Bird one main engine ignition confirmed. Bird two loaded and green … launch. Gone.

Drive energized.”

“Bingo,” Ilya said quietly.

Red arrows indicating the progress of the missiles appeared on the forward screen. They weren’t self-powered; nobody in his right mind would dare load a quantum black hole and its drive support mechanism into a robot suicide machine. Rather, the ship’s phased-array lasers bathed them in a sea of energy, boiling and then superheating the reaction mass they carried until they surged forward far faster than the starship. Strictly a close-range low-delta-vee weapon, missiles were mostly obsolescent; their sole job was to get a nuclear device onto the right interception vector, like the “bus” on an ancient twentieth-century MIRV. They’d burn out after only thirty seconds, but by then the warheads would be closing the gap between the Lord Vanek’s projected course and the enemy ship itself. Shortly after the starship ran the gauntlet, its missiles would arrive—and deliver the killing blow.

“Radar One. Where are they?” Mirsky asked softly.

‘Tracking as before,“ called the officer. ”Still maintaining course and vector.

And emitting loads of spam.“

“Bird one MECO in one-zero seconds,” said Helsingus. “They’re trying to jam, sir. Nothing doing.” He said it with heavy satisfaction, as if the knowledge that the anonymous victims of the attack were offering some token resistance reassured him that he was not, in fact, about to butcher them without justification. Even committed officers found the applied methods of three centuries of nuclear warfare hard to stomach at times.

Comms Two, voice ragged with tension: “Jamming stopped, sir! I’m receiving a distress beacon. Two—no, three! I say again, three distress beacons. It’s like they’re bailing out before we hit them.”

“Too late,” said Helsingus. ”We’ll have ’em in three-two seconds. They’ll be inside the burst radius.”

Rachel shuddered. Suddenly a horrible possibility began to rise to the surface of her mind.

Mirsky cracked his knuckles again, kneading his hands together. “Guns. I want a last-ditch evasion program loaded, activate at closest approach minus one-zero seconds if we’re still here.”

“Yes, sir,” Helsingus said heavily. “Laser grid support?”

“Anything you like.” Mirsky waved a hand magnanimously. “If we’re still here to enjoy the light show.”

Helsingus began flipping switches like a man possessed. On the screen, the outgoing birds passed their main engine cutout points and went ballistic; more enemy missiles began hatching like sinister blue fingers reaching out from the target point.

“Captain,” Rachel said slowly.

“—One-zero seconds. They’re jamming hard, sir, but the birds are still holding.”

“What if Kamchatka is wrong? What if those are civilian mining ships?”

Captain Mirsky ignored her.

“Five seconds! Bird one ready to go—range down to one-zero K. Three.

EMP lockdown is go. Sensor stepdown mag six is go. Optics shielded—bang. Sir, I confirm that bird one has detonated. Bang. Bird two is gone.”

“Radar. What do you see?” asked Mirsky.

“Waiting on the fog to clear—ah, got sensors back sir. Incoming missiles still closing. Fireball remnants hashing up radar, lidar is better. Uh, the impact spectroscope has tripped, sir, we have a confirmed impact on the target alpha. Oxygen, nitrogen, carbonitrile emissions from the hull. I think we holed him, sir.”

“We holed him—” Mirsky stopped. Turned to glance at Rachel. “What did you say?” he demanded.

“What if they’re civilians? We have only Kamchatka’s word that they’re under attack; no direct evidence other than bombs going off—which could be hers.“

“Nonsense.” Mirsky snorted. “None of our ships could make a mistake like that!”

“Nobody is actually shooting live missiles at us. The pre-jump briefing warned everyone to look out for enemy missile boats. How likely is it that the Kamchatka ran down a civilian mining ship by mistake and got a bit trigger-happy? And what you’re seeing as an attack is actually just the cruiser screen shooting in the dark at anything that moves?”

Dead silence. Enlisted men and officers alike stared at Rachel disapprovingly: nobody spoke to the captain like that! Then from behind her:

“Spallation debris on radar, sir. Target is breaking up. Uh, humbly reporting, Captain, we have distress beacons. Civilian ones …”

The Lord Vanek was going far too fast to slow down, and as flagship and lead element of the squadron, had a duty not to do so. Nevertheless, they signaled the squadron astern; and behind them, one of the elderly battleships peeled off to pick up any survivors from the disastrous attack.

The big picture, when it finally gelled some eight hours later, was very bad indeed. The “missile carriers” were actually refinery tugs, tending the migratory robot factories that slowly trawled the Kuiper-belt bodies, extracting helium 3 from the snowballs. Their sudden burst of speed had a simple explanation; seeing alien warships, they had panicked, dumping their cargo pods so that they could clear the area under maximum acceleration. One of the distant explosions had been the Kamchatka, landing a near miss on one of the “enemy battleships”—the cruiser India.

(Minor hull damage and a couple of evacuated compartments had resulted; unfortunately, the cruiser’s chaplain had been in one of the compartments at the time, and had gone to meet his maker.)

“Ser-erves ’em right for being in the way, dammit,” quavered Admiral Kurtz when Commodore Bauer delivered the news in person. “Wha-what do they think this is?” He half rose to his feet, momentarily forgetting about his glass legs: “Simply appalling stupidity!”

“Ah, I believe we still have a problem, sir,” Bauer pointed out as Robard tried to get his master settled down again. “This system is claimed by Septagon, and, ah, we have received signals as of half an hour ago indicating that they have a warship in the area, and it’s engaging us on an intercept trajectory.” The Admiral snorted. “What can one warship d-do?”

Rachel, who had inveigled her way into the staff meeting on the grounds that, as a neutral observer, it was her duty to act as an intermediary in situations such as this one, watched Bauer spluttering with mordant interest.

Can he really be that stupid? she wondered, glancing at the admiral, who hunched in his chair like a bald parrot, eyes gleaming with an expression of fixed mania.

“Sir, the warship that is signaling us is, ah, according to our most recent updates, one of their Apollo-class fleet attack carriers. Radar says they’ve got additional traces indicative of a full battle group. We outnumber them, but—”

Rachel cleared her throat. “They’ll eat you for breakfast.” Bauer’s head whipped around. “What did you say?” She tapped her PA, where it lay on the table before her. “UN defense intelligence estimates suggest that Septagon’s policy of building carriers, rather than the standard laser/missile platform that your navy has adopted, gives them a considerable advantage in the ability to cover an entire system. Simply put, while they lack short-range firepower, they’re able to launch a swarm of interceptors that can pound on you from well outside your own engagement envelope. More to the point, they’re frighteningly good, and unless I’m very much mistaken, that carrier, on its own, outmasses your entire fleet. I wouldn’t want you to get the idea that I don’t rate you against the Septagon Navy, but if you’re planning on fighting them, do you think you could let me know in advance?

I’d like a chance to grab a survival pod first.”

“Well, we can’t argue with the government of Earth’s defense estimates, can we, Commander?” Bauer nodded pointedly at his executive officer.

“Ah, no, sir. The Colonel is quite correct.” The young and somewhat flustered Lieutenant avoided looking at Rachel; it was a minor slight she was getting plenty of practice at ignoring.

“Damned newfangled inventions,” mumbled Kurtz under his breath.

“Blasted many-angled ones don’t want us to succeed, anyway—per-per-perfidious technophiles!” Louder: “We must press on!”

“Absolutely.” Commodore Bauer nodded sagely. “If we press on to Point Two on schedule, leaving the diplomatic niceties to the embassy—speaking of which—Lieutenant Kossov. What of the update? Where do we stand with respect to further information about this Festival, its order of battle and motives? What have we learned?”

“Ah.” Lieutenant Kossov, removed and polished his pince-nez nervously.

“Well, there’s something of a problem. The deposition from the Admiralty doesn’t seem to have arrived. We were supposed to be seeing an ordnance beacon, but although we quartered the designated orbital path, there’s nothing there. Either they’re late—or they never planted it.”

‘This orbital beacon.“ Rachel leaned forward. ”A standard target buoy, right?

With a diplomatic package containing anything the Republic’s intelligence services have learned about the Festival in the five years since our jump?“

Kossov glanced warily at the Commodore, who nodded. “Yes, Colonel.

What of it?”

“Well, if it isn’t there, that can imply three things, can’t it? Either it was there, but somebody else stole or disabled it. Or—”

“Perfidious Septagonians!” Robard hastily leaned over his charge, then looked up and shrugged, eloquently.

“Indeed, Admiral. Or, as I was saying, the second option is that it hasn’t been put there yet—some miscalculation, or they couldn’t determine any useful information about the enemy, or they forgot about us, or something.”

The noise of Kurtz’s snoring cut into her exposition. All eyes turned to the admiral; Robard straightened up. “I’m afraid the Admiral’s legs have been paining him considerably of late, and the dosage of his medication is not conducive to lucidity. He may sleep for some hours.”

“Well, then.” Bauer looked around the conference table. “I believe if you would be so good as to return His Excellency to his cabin, I will continue as his proxy and prepare a minuted report of this meeting for him to review later, when he’s feeling better. Unless anyone has any comments that specifically require the Admiral’s ear?” Nobody demurred. “Very well then.

Recess for five minutes.”

Robard and an enlisted man gingerly rolled the Admiral’s chair away from the table; then, using the lift just outside the room, disappeared with him in the direction of his quarters. Everybody stood, and saluted, while the snoring officer was wheeled out of the meeting. Rachel held her face expressionless, trying to conceal the disgust and pity the sight pulled from her. He’s young enough to be my grandson. How can they do this to themselves?

Eventually, Bauer, assuming the admiral’s position at the head of the table, rapped his hand on the brass bell. “Meeting will resume. The Terran attache has the floor. You were saying?”

“The third possibility is that the New Republic no longer exists,” Rachel said bluntly. She continued, ignoring the outraged gasps around the table. “You are facing an enemy about whose capabilities you are largely ignorant. I’m afraid to say, the UN knows little more about them than you do. As I noted, there are three reasons for the New Republic not to have contacted you, and their total defeat in the intervening time is only one of them, but not one it’s safe to ignore. We’re now in the outbound leg of a closed, timelike loop, which will eventually clip itself out of the world line of this universe if you succeed in looping back into our relative past—but the New Republic’s absolute immediate future—and taking the intruders by surprise. This has some odd implications. History reaching us inside this loop may not bear any relationship to the eventual outcome we seek, for one thing. For another—” She shrugged. “If I’d been consulted prior to this expedition, I would have strongly counseled against it. While it is not technically a breach of the letter of Clause Nineteen, it is dangerously close to the sort of activity that has brought down intervention by the Eschaton in the past. The Eschaton really doesn’t like time travel in the slightest, presumably because, if things go too far, someone might edit it out of existence. So there’s the possibility that what you’re up against isn’t just the Festival, but a higher power.”

“Thank you, Colonel.” Bauer nodded politely, but his face was set in a mask of disapproval. “I believe that, for now, we shall disregard that possibility. If the Eschaton chooses to involve itself, there is nothing we can do in any case, so we must work on the assumption that it will not. And in that case, all we are up against is the Festival. Kossov. What did we know about it before we left?”

“Ah, um, well, that is to say—” Kossov looked around wildly, shuffled the papers on his blotter, and sighed. “Ah, good. Yes. The Festival—”

“I know what it’s called, Lieutenant,” the Commodore said reprovingly.

“What is it and what does it want?”

“Nobody knows.” Kossov looked at his supreme commander’s deputy like a rabbit caught in the blinding headlights of an oncoming express train.

“So, Commissioner.” Bauer cocked his head on one side and stared at Rachel, with the single-minded analytical purpose of a raptor. “And what can the esteemed government-coordinating body of Earth tell me about the Festival?” he asked, almost tauntingly.

“Uh.” Rachel shook her head. Of course the poor kid had done his best—none of these people could know anything much about the Festival. Even she didn’t. It was a big yawning blank.

“Well?” Bauer prodded.

Rachel sighed. “This is very provisional; nobody from Earth has had any direct contact with the agency known as Festival until now, and our information is, therefore, secondhand and unverifiable. And, frankly, unbelievable. The Festival does not appear to be a government or agency thereof, as we understand the term. In fact, it may not even be human. All we know is that something of that name turns up in distant settled systems—never closer than a thousand light-years, before now—and it, well, the term we keep hearing used to describe what happens next is