To Crush the Moon (16 page)

chapter fourteen

in which consequences are
weighed and chosen

The error-correction virus turned out to be merely
the first salvo in a battle that would later be known as Eridge Kuipera. The damaging effects on travelers turned out to be incidental to the bug's real purpose, which was to prop open a small vulnerability in the Nescog, paving the way for further attacks.

The second and third viruses rebounded from a growing thicket of Queendom defenses, but the fourth one—named by different authorities as Heater, Snaps, and Variant Delta—managed to pick its way through the obstacles and squeeze itself into some twenty percent of the Nescog's scattered nodes. Its effects were rather more serious, being fifty percent lethal to traveling humans and, ominously, to their buffer images and unsecured backups as well.

As a precaution, citizens were advised to back themselves up at their earliest convenience, at any of the Queendom's thousands of secure, off-network repositories. But with tens of billions of customers flooding in all at once, the Vaults were overwhelmed, and waiting lists quickly grew from weeks to months to well over a decade.

Meanwhile,
Perdition
continued downsystem on a course that could only be described as belligerent, for its exhaust of coherent gamma rays cut straight through the heart of the Queendom, sweeping dangerously close to the Saturnian system and in fact bathing several asteroid-belt settlements with sublethal but highly obnoxious radiation. Shipping lanes were disrupted; ring collapsiter segments flickered and flashed with secondary Cerenkov emissions.

And unless the starship's course was altered, that beam would eventually—if briefly—play right across the Earth at much closer range, sickening tens of billions of people on the ground and, in all probability, vaporizing anyone in orbit, where the shelter of a planetary atmosphere was moot. Plant life would not be much affected, but the animal toll on the worst-hit continent of South America would be steep.

Too, the atmosphere itself would heat up in a hurricane-sized bullseye pattern—elevated by ten or twenty degrees Kelvin at the center—and the oceans beneath would warm slightly as well. This would be enough to play havoc with the weather for months, or perhaps longer. And then
Perdition
itself would ease into a high orbit, from which further assaults on the Earth would be trivially easy.

These Eridanians meant business.

So did the crew of
Malu'i
, though, and the queen to whom they answered. Tamra had never asked to rule this system, but she'd never shirked from the responsibility, either, and
damn
if she'd let some gang of colonial hooligans tear the place up, no matter how sad their story might be.

“If we're forced to target your engines,” Tamra tried explaining to the invaders, “there may be considerable hazard to your passengers and crew. And even if you escape without injury, you'll be moving through the Inner System at several hundred kps. You'll fly right through, and back out to interstellar space before we can arrange to decelerate you. A rescue operation could then take weeks to mount, and
years
to bring you to the park orbit we've already assigned.”

“Prick yer five holes, y'all shite-bathed daughter of pigs,” replied the image of Doxar.

Given the length of the Queendom's history and the size of its population, we can assume that fouler curses than this had been directed, from time to time, at Tamra-Tamatra Lutui. If so, however, no record of them has survived. Certainly, the immediate shock and indignation of the men and women on the bridge of
Malu'i
suggests that such outbursts were rare indeed.

Nevertheless, Tamra's response was well measured. “Such language may be commonplace in the caverns of Aetna, Captain, but here in the cradle of humanity we've found that mutual respect yields better results. And surely you understand that with the security of our citizens and biospheres at risk, we're quite prepared to fire on your vessel.”

“And we'm prepared to crash your Nescog, missus. Completely and utterly, I kid you not. Y'all think we can't?”

“I suspect you can,” she conceded. “Or your agents here in the Queendom can. You'll find them dangerous allies, I daresay, but they've certainly inconvenienced us before.”

“Then give. Because I will not.”

“No one surrenders so easily,” said Tamra coolly. “We're not inflexible, Captain, but neither are we stupid, nor craven, nor weak. You will alter your course, and divert your drive beam away from populated areas.
Then
we'll negotiate. From receipt of this message, you have five minutes to comply. Or rather, the true Captain Doxar does. You, his pale shadow, may fly back to him now with my regards.”

She blanked the hollie, ending any further communication with Doxar's image. It could hang around if it wanted to, but the real Doxar's reply would overwrite it in any case. Of course,
Perdition
and
Malu'i
were five light-minutes apart, so with round-trip signal time it would be
fifteen
minutes before anything actually came of this exchange.

“Well played, Majesty,” said Brett Brown.

“Thank you,” she acknowledged, mindful of his pride, his authority before the bridge crew, and indeed before the whole of the navy itself. “I'd like to discuss the matter with you later, if you have time.”

In fact, Brown had nothing but time, and while his strategic and diplomatic skills were not in question, this was unarguably a tactical situation. Still, appearances mattered, for he had been this vessel's captain for nearly six hundred years, and his sudden replacement by Governor Li Weng—a comparative greenhorn—was bound to raise eyebrows, even if Tamra
had
promoted Brown to admiral in the process.

Fortunately, the past two weeks had proven Tamra right, for Xmary was a cunning fighter who'd steered
Malu'i
onto a vector that took maximum advantage of her maneuverability, and minimized the options of the faster but much heavier
Perdition
. Brown had fought in thousands of simulated engagements, and won the vast majority of them, but bloodlessly. He had never once witnessed an actual permanent death, whereas Xmary had seen hundreds, and
personally caused
at least twenty. More, if Fatalist ghouls were to be counted. So if it came to blows—and it might!—Tamra figured the safe money was on known killers.

“I'll check my schedule,” Brown answered carefully. “Meanwhile, with your permission, I'll recheck the status of fleet maneuvers.”

“Later,” Tamra suggested. “I prefer your attention to be more tightly focused.” Which was true, for she
did
value Brown's tactical opinion. He was without doubt her second or perhaps third choice for the job. And anyway the “fleet” right now consisted of just
Malu'i
and a pair of lightly armed and largely inconsequential grappleships. There were other assets en route, but the closest of them was still six light-minutes downsystem of here. A really high-powered nasen beam could of course strike from that range, but not with precision. Not without absurdly high risk to the two hundred million human beings onboard
Perdition
. So for the moment,
Malu'i
was effectively alone in the conflict, and must act carefully indeed, or else wait two days for backup.

To Xmary the queen said, “Have you formulated a plan of attack, Captain?”

Xmary looked up from the console in her armrest. “Working on it, Majesty.” Then, to Brown's Information officer, “Where's that blueprint, Lieutenant? I need to know exactly how much antimatter is in there, and exactly where.”

“That's difficult, ma'am. I can show you mass concentrations and annihilation signatures, but anything else is guesswork.”

“Deductive guesswork,” said Xmary. “But if you lack the necessary skills, then forward me your data.”

“Aye, Captain,” Information replied, suitably chastened. “My preliminary analysis is also appended.”

“Thank you. Ah. This is good. Your Highness, I propose a three-pronged attack. We can litter the space in front of
Perdition
with radar-bright proximity mines. We'll dial them to minimum yield—they shouldn't even penetrate the aft nav armor—but Doxar won't know that. He'll have to assume the worst, and that will tie up his propulsion. He's flying backwards, right? Decelerating toward the planet he covets. He'll be juking laterally, and holding the gamma-drive exhaust out in front of him to clear the path. And even so, he's likely to suffer a near miss or two. Give him something to worry about.”

“Hmm,” Tamra said, considering that. “And meanwhile?”

“Meanwhile, we launch a salvo of ertially shielded grapplets, minus the warheads. At maximum acceleration, they should reach
Perdition
in under thirty minutes. Targeting the drive section, one hit could slice the magnetic choke clean off, with almost no collateral damage.”

A grapplet was a munition whose only propulsion was a gravity laser. It
fell
to the target under its own artificial pull, and if the grapplet was ertially shielded then it fell very quickly indeed.
Malu'i
only had five such weapons in its inventory, though, and could produce no more, for their shields were of collapsium and could not be faxed.

“Those are unstealthed munitions,” protested Admiral Brown. “Their release will give away our position.”

“Briefly,” Xmary conceded. “But we'll maintain evasive maneuvers throughout the deployment, under full invisibility. The last time I did this I was inside the chromosphere of a star, where heat dissipation and signature management were nearly impossible. This'll be a lot easier, for
Perdition
, on her pillar of flame, cannot hide from us at all.”

“Hmm.”

“The third prong is right out of the navy textbook: a nasen beam to the external engine assemblies. We have to be
very
careful not to destabilize the aye-ma'am plumbing, or the whole ship will go up. But again, it should be possible to take a scalpel to their magnetic choke, after which the failsafes will simply shut down the drive. Uncontrolled reactions should be limited to a few kilotons—hardly noticeable.”

This all sounded plausible enough to Tamra, but just to be safe she turned to Brown and said, “Opinion?”

“Standard doctrine calls for a breaching of the enemy's hull, Majesty,” Brown replied at once. “However, given the refugee status of this opponent,
Perdition
's crew is unlikely to be backed up on any sort of durable medium. Any deaths we inflict will therefore be permanent. Under these assumptions, then, Captain Li Weng's plan strikes me as both humane and effective.”

Xmary added, “We'd need to launch the first two waves
now
, Majesty. There isn't time for debate—not unless you're willing to erode our positional advantage.”

“Hmm.” If there was one thing in the universe Tamra hated, it was snap decisions. Still, sometimes they were necessary, and delaying them was itself a snap decision. “Very well. You may proceed, Captain.”

The appropriate orders were given, and within the minute both salvos were away.

“There is one additional danger,” Xmary noted. “There could be spies aboard
Malu'i
who are capable of revealing our position. This information is of limited value to Doxar, given ten minutes of round-trip signal lag”—She checked a reading, and then amended—“sorry,
nine
minutes' lag. But it would give him a fighting chance. With all that aye-ma'am onboard, he's got a
lot
of energy to throw around.”

Admiral Brown coughed out a chuckle at that. He was a good man, and a kindly one, but Tamra had the distinct impression he enjoyed catching out his replacement in a statement like that. “You hardly need worry, madam. This crew—this exact crew, save for yourself—has served together for centuries. We're as much a family as we are a military unit. If there were criminals or Fatalists, turncoats or sympathizers among us, we should know it before now.”

“Of course, sir,” Xmary said.

More was said and done after that, but there was an air of busywork about it, until finally the fifteen-minute mark drew near.

“Do you suppose they'll go quietly?” Tamra asked Brett Brown.

“They're overmatched,” Brown said, as though that answered the question.

“They're desperate,” Xmary countered. “They're prepared to die, to kill, to cripple our networks. You can't imagine the conditions they're leaving behind.”

And as if in agreement, Doxar's face reappeared in the hollie. “Y'all seem not to comprehend. Possibly we'm explained it badly. You're thinking, ‘We can survive without Nescog.' Maybe so. But we can
break
it and send the pieces tumbling.
Very
dangerous.”

“Just divert your course,” Tamra said to him, firmly and reasonably.

But was there time for that message to travel back and forth? She'd given a deadline, and could not now retract it. She killed the hollie and asked Xmary, “Time to nasen beam firing?”

“Ten minutes, Highness. That's all the grace period they get.”

There was no point wishing it otherwise; the great-grandchildren of Sol had returned, broken and furious, blaming Tamra for all that had befallen them. And shouldn't they? Who, if not she, had crafted their fate? Who else could possibly have changed it? And now here she was, preparing to punish them—perhaps to
kill
them—for her own failures.

Her anger vanished in a sudden wash of guilt. Her sense of duty remained as strong as ever, but her sense of
what
her duty
was
had come unglued. How did it come to this? What was she to do?

Of Brown and Li Weng she asked, “What are the odds we'll blow up that ship?”

“Unknown,” Brown said without delay. “The number of variables—”

“Make an estimate,” Tamra instructed. Then wondered: did her people even know how?

“Thirty percent,” said the governor-captain, who was herself a refugee from the stars. A victim of Tamra's failed policies, of imperfect data and shortsighted advisors. Of simple hubris.