The pilot was blank faced as she nodded her head at the comms terminal. We’d burned clear of Earth orbit a few minutes back, slipping through an electro-magnetic haze of military scanners without a blip. A pair of cold blue eyes stared up at me from the holo with the laser-like focus I remembered. “Actually, it’s General these days,” he said in response to my terse greeting. “Central Command was very impressed by our last op.”
“Congratulations.”
“I seem to recall you promising to kill me if you saw me again.”
“Which I guess is why you sent the ship and didn’t feel the need to come along.”
“I have responsibilities, Captain. Covert Ops is now on stand-by to execute its war-plan. Something I’m keen to avoid, if possible.”
I glanced around at the ship’s interior, all curves and no hard edges or sharp angles. It made for an aesthetically pleasing but not necessarily comfortable environment. I wasn’t relishing the three hour journey to Cerberus. “You got any more of these?”
“Sadly no. She’s a prototype, still undergoing evaluation.”
“She got a name?”
“Covert Insertion and Extraction Vehicle Mark One.”
“Imaginative. I’m afraid she’ll get a few dings in the paintwork before this is over.”
“Understood. You have some form of plan, I assume?”
“Yeah. Stop Vargold’s ship by all means necessary. Any intel that might help would be appreciated.”
“We know Vargold left the Slab five hours before the assassination attempt on Arnaud, his shuttle’s flight-plan indicates a routine visit to Hephaestus. I had an agent on station there but they went dark shortly after his arrival. The last package I received confirmed the Jason Alpha was being prepped for an early maiden voyage.”
“So you’ve been watching him for a while now?”
“We watch everybody, you know that. Especially someone with his access and influence.”
“And yet you managed to miss his fiendish planet-destroying master plan.”
The General blinked and punched an icon on his own display. “All the intel we’ve gathered on the Jason Alpha and its capabilities,” he said as a package uploaded to my terminal. “Includes hacks for the on-board security systems, atmospheric controls and the main engines. You’ll need a hard-interface to upload it and Vargold’s security software is dynamic and partially AI-driven, so expect it to adapt quickly.”
“To come up with this contingency, you must’ve had your suspicions for a while.”
“Basic military strategy, Captain. Always have a contingency. Besides, it may have become necessary for CAOS Defence to co-opt the Jason Alpha in the event of another Fed Sec attack.” The display shifted to a tactical graphic showing the Jason Alpha on approach to Earth orbit. “I had our tactical people run some attack sims. It doesn’t look good.” He paused and when he spoke again I heard something I’d never expected to hear in his voice; uncertainty. “This is all I can do. CAOS Military will be unable to assist, they’re expecting a UN armada to come streaking out of Earth’s atmo any second. I’ve tried to persuade Central Command otherwise, but after Ceres they’re not in a trusting mood.”
“Then it’s lucky I’ve got my own army,” I said and killed the comms feed.
“Scheisse,” Kruger said, eyeing the tactical display with understandable trepidation. “More heavily defended than anything we faced in the war. Wouldn’t you say, Herr Oberst?”
I’d convened a council of war aboard the Aguila shortly after docking with Cerberus. Kruger had been elected to speak on behalf of those veterans with an interest in lending a hand, most having volunteered in response to Riviera’s request. He considered the display for a second, eyes tracking over the thick net of bots and the four Seraphim-class corvettes in close escort around the rectangular bulk of the Jason Alpha. “Vargold’s people,” Riviera said to me. “All mercenaries?”
“According to my intel,” I said. “Though we can bet there’s a few true believers amongst them. Lotta people with unresolved grudges out there.”
“Armament on the Jason Alpha itself?”
“Minimal. Long range optical scans indicate some ad hoc additions to the outer hull, cannon turrets for the most part, some chaff dispensers too.”
“Which raises the question,” Janet put in, “How exactly does Vargold intend to wipe out a planet with a lightly armed ship?”
“Perhaps he intends to crash it,” Kruger suggested. “A big beast like that would create an impressive crater and expel a large amount of matter into the atmosphere. Nuclear winter scenario.”
“It doesn’t have enough mass,” Lucy said. “No, he’s going to fry the place.”
She squirmed a little as all eyes turned to her. “How?” I asked.
Lucy laughed, as if the answer were obvious, then stopped when she realised it wasn’t, to us anyway. “The whole purpose of the Ad Astra project,” she began, “was to produce a propulsion system capable of traversing an interstellar distance within a typical human lifespan. The ship is basically a contained singularity event; a shit-load of mass condensed into a super-dense form in order to produce a miniature astrophysical jet. It’s the jet that provides the thrust. The great technological feat here is that Astravista found a way to contain and direct the jet. All down to magnetic fields apparently.”
“Contain and direct,” Riviera said. “Like a huge rocket nozzle.”
“Or the ultimate flamethrower,” I said. “Point the rear end at Earth and blast off. Destruction and ascension in one glorious moment.”
“He’d need to be within lunar orbit to do it,” Lucy said. “And have the ship pointed at Proxima, if he’s really interested in getting there.”
“Run the numbers. Find us a likely destination point based on its current velocity.”
Her fingers danced over the icons for a few minutes before the result flashed up on the holo. The Jason Alpha hovered over northern Europe, the most densely populated sector of the globe. Happy accident or by design? I decided it didn’t really matter.
“Just under eight hours from now,” Kruger said. “Not much time to prep an assault.”
“It’ll have to do,” I said. “Do you have any ordnance capable of stopping that thing?”
Mr Mac cut in before Kruger could reply, voice soft but intent, “Can we discuss the rather large invisible elephant standing in the corner?”
I met his gaze, for once finding no sign of humour. “Which is?”
He nodded at the planet on the holo. “Why exactly are they our responsibility?”
“If not ours, then whose?” Janet enquired, her dislike of Mr Mac now palpable in the narrow stare she fixed on him. “Or are you worried there’s no profit in stopping it?”
“I’m worried we’re all going to die trying to save a world that doesn’t give two shits about us, and never has. And what exactly did happen at Ceres, Alex? I think we have a right to know.”
“It’s not relevant…”
“Fuck that!” I’d never seen him actually angry before, face red, eyes wild and lips trembling. A near psychopathic rage was usually a pre-requisite for people in his line of work, but somehow I’d always thought him above such things. Just another scumbag gangster after all.
“What were they building there?” he demanded, rage subsiding but not by much. “Tell us why we need to risk our lives for a planet that wants us all dead?”
“What is he talking about?” Riviera asked.
“The ship that brought us here,” Mr Mac said. “It’s not an original design, is it, Alex? Want to tell them where it came from? What it was built for?”
My gaze tracked across all of them as I fumbled for the right words, but it was Lucy who spoke. “A fleet,” she said. “Fed Sec was building a fleet of stealth ships. They were gonna destroy CAOS and take back Earth-space. We stopped them.”
“Thank you for your honesty, my dear,” Mr Mac said. “Which brings me back to my original question.”
“They were gonna kill a shit-load of people,” Lucy said. “Not politicians or generals or rich bastards who own big corporations. Just people. That’s why we stopped them. That’s why I’m up for stopping Vargold.”
The silence stretched as I scanned their faces, seeing more sombre contemplation than reluctance. “I’m not conscripting anyone,” I said. “But I’m doing this. We didn’t win a war to become what we fought against.” I levelled my gaze at Mr Mac. “You want out, fine. Bribe yourself a place on a shuttle and go rebuild your empire. When this is done, I’ll start chasing you again and we can do our pointless dance until we’re both old or dead.”
His anger disappeared as he looked again at the holo, grinned and shrugged. “I’ll be expecting a full pardon when this is over.”
“Not in a million years.” I turned back to Kruger. “Ordnance?”
“We have a stockpile of fifty plasma shrikes,” he said. “They’re old and the targeting systems will need to be re-calibrated, but they’re in full working order. If we score hits with the whole load…” He shrugged. “Maybe.”
“Not enough,” Lucy said, running some more numbers. “Best-case scenario, you render the Jason Alpha sixty percent inoperable, and that leaves the propulsion system undamaged. You’ll need a nuke to stop her.”
“We don’t have a nuke,” Kruger said. “Given enough time we could convert one of our old fission reactors…”
“There is a nuke,” I said, meeting Lucy’s gaze. “Her engine, right?”
“Sure. Fuck up the magnetic containment fields and she’ll come apart like an egg the instant she powers up. The engine’s in the heart of the ship, though, so it can’t be done from outside.”
I turned to Riviera. “Boarding party.”
He shook his head. “The escort will take out any ship we have before it gets in range.”
“Any ship but one.”
“Even a stealth ship would be spotted, their defensive net is too tight. We would need to punch a hole.” I watched him study the display in silence for a long time, gaze losing focus as he ran multiple attack scenarios through the tactical computer that formed his brain. We’d had our differences over the years but I’d never discounted his abilities. When it came to micro-grav combat tactics he had no equal. “Can it be done?” I asked after a full minute had ticked by.
“Si,” he replied softly, fully focused gazed now fixed on the display. “But it will be messy.”
“Was it ever anything else?”