Lieutenant Victor Cheng tugged nervously at a spot-weld on the bracing of his fire control console, unsure it would hold. Earth’s orbital fortresses were old and had not been well maintained throughout the fifty years of the occupation. Indifferent techs and officers had manned the planet’s defenses for five decades against a threat that never materialized – until it did. The most conscientious ones like him had been sent to Jupiter.
Now he was back, commanding a bank of lasers on this enormous but deteriorating station. At least he had gotten a three-day leave to visit Brenda and her gorgeous legs. Even better, she had received his advances with unabashed enthusiasm, and after a whirlwind courtship, they had gotten married. There was no Council on Mating and Breeding to give approval anymore. It had been that moment when he decided he really liked his newfound freedom of choice.
He’d realized he also had the freedom of choice to desert EarthFleet, to run away with Brenda and hide somewhere, but he discovered his freedom’s reverse side: responsibility. After many tears, Cheng had left his new wife there in the tiny York apartment, trying to explain why he had to do his best to defend her and everyone else on Earth.
He and the other skilled cadre brought back from Jupiter system had worked like dogs to get their laser bank back in shape, but things still tended to fall apart at any moment, requiring frantic searches for the problem. Then, even if the glitch was identified, getting spare parts was a crap shoot.
Cheng sighed and pushed a comm button. “Hassan, have you got the COP working yet?” Sergeant Hassan was supposed to recon a cabled conversion module to get their Common Operating Picture display functioning, otherwise they wouldn’t get feeds of the overall battle.
“Got something better, sir.” A moment later Hassan entered the control center dragging a beat-up hunk of machinery the size of a dinner table while the weapons controllers watched from their seats.
“What the hell is that?” Cheng asked, waving at his people to help out.
“Holotank, sir. An old Mark 1 from before the Empire came. It was just sitting in a pile of junk in the salvage room.”
Cheng and two techs grabbed it and helped Hassan set it upright in the middle of the floor. “What makes you think you can fix it?”
Hassan grinned. “I grew up fixing pre-Empire stuff, boss. Trust me.”
“What about our COP cable?”
Hassan shook his head. “No luck. Everyone’s keeping a close eye on their spares. Now please, sir, let me work.”
As Cheng paced, frustrated that he could see nothing of the battle beyond his targeting sensors, Hassan dumped a bag of parts out on the deck and began to fiddle with the thing. In just a few minutes he had assembled the device and spliced the fiber optics into the COP’s intel feed. Wiping his hands on a rag, he ran the holotank’s power cable to the nearest outlet. “Cross your fingers and Alhamdulillah.” He pressed the power button.
Amazingly, the holotank lit up and immediately ran through its boot sequence. “They knew how to build to last back then,” Hassan boasted, smiling. “Not like the dreck today.”
“We’ll make things better now that we’re free again,” Cheng declared.
Hassan shrugged. “A poor man is never truly free. I’m just glad EarthFleet pays well.”
You might not be so glad in a few hours, Cheng thought. “Will it work?”
“Of course it will,” Hassan said confidently. His quick fingers flew over the controls and keyboard, and in moments a view of the Earth-Luna system appeared, showing the moon laser called simply “The Weapon,” the four superdreadnought-sized orbital fortresses – one of which held him and his bank of lasers – and the several hundred hastily fortified asteroids circling the planet.
It also showed the tiny mobile fleet consisting of a dozen old frigates collected from around the solar system. These were the largest naval vessels the Empire had allowed their underlings. Now, along with six wings of brand-new StormCrow fighters, they waited on the far side of Earth, a wholly inadequate force to challenge three million Scourge vessels.
The fact that “only” about half a million of those were aerospace control fighters or gunships was not heartening. It still left the human defenders at a hundreds-to-one disadvantage.
Based on combat performance statistics only recently available from the intelligence teams, one Crow, with its cyber-enhanced pilot and multiple point defense systems, was worth at least ten of the enemy’s fighters. That was good news, but the quality edge only made the ratio fifty to one. Cheng wondered who was going to get screwed the worst – the fortress defenders or the hopelessly outnumbered aerospace jocks.
Hassan fiddled with the display, getting the hang of controlling it. “There’s no voice recognition module, sir, so I’ll have to change the view manually.”
“I guess that’s your new job,” Cheng replied. “Now show us the enemy.”
Hassan shifted the view, moving it toward the sun until it approached the cloud of Scourge ships. The closer it zoomed in, the more enemy craft seemed to appear. Several laser controllers got up from their seats to crowd around the holotank. Cheng did not forbid them. The range was long yet.
“Oh, hell,” the lieutenant breathed. “There must be millions of them.”
“More than three million,” Hassan said, peering at a stack of numbers within the holotank. “The Jericho Line must have polished off a couple hundred thousand. See here? Wreckage.”
“Time to engagement?”
“Twenty-two hours until the Weapon ranges. About twenty-three until we can fire.”
Cheng pursed his lips. “All right. We go to half manning right now. Four-hour watches, and back to full manning in twenty-two hours. Get some rest, some food, or go get laid, but if you’re not back on time, I’m sending the Skulls.”
Several of his people shuddered. The fanatical Skulls had become Lord Spectre’s political police, rooting out Empire loyalists, and they were only too happy to hunt down deserters. Not that there was anywhere to run on an orbital fortress. They were sitting ducks. Cheng wondered if the orbitals’ mobility was so limited precisely in order to stiffen the resolve of the defenders. Fight or die.
Or both, in that order.
Cheng threw himself into his seat and fixed his eyes on the holotank, trying not to think of Brenda.