Doomsday.
Aboard the Marco Polo, Ixbeth and Lania sat at opposite ends of a metal work table in the ship’s Engineering section, facing each other with their hands flat on the tabletop. Lania was wearing some sort of helmet made of interlaced wires. She hadn’t moved a muscle in more than an hour. Amazingly, she looked completely relaxed. Townsend was impressed. And envious. He’d been standing just inside the entrance to the workshop for just over half that time, and his back was already aching with tension.
According to Gorse Pirrit, the Kularian shields were formed from psi energy, directed by a strong sender to the mind of a being who could focus and shape it. The helmet was an amplifier, increasing Lania’s output by at least two orders of magnitude. Ixbeth had served as a focusing lens twice before — once to create shields around the Marco Polo and once to operate an alien psi-powered ship — and she was prepared to do so again. When the shields were in place and at full strength, neither female would be able to break concentration. They would have to sit as they were, unmoving, until the danger was past.
Gael Dedrick slipped through the doorway and took up a position beside Townsend.
“I want to thank you, Captain, for giving your permission for this,” Drew said.
The other man showed him a faint smile. “Permission? Alien talents aside, she’s seventeen, Mr. Townsend. At that age, how often did you ask permission?”
Actually, Drew recalled, at seventeen he had been a soldier in a street gang, taking orders or asking permission to do just about everything.
“But if you opposed her plan, how did she convince Captain Takamura—?”
“She went over his head to make her case.”
Drew frowned. According to Takamura, Lania’s powers were being kept secret from Earth’s government. “She spoke to Fleet Control?”
“Higher. To Yorell Enne.”
Of course. No one could stand for long against a force of nature.
Pirrit had been circling the table, assessing the situation. Now he walked over to join them. “She’s a lot stronger than she was a year ago,” he remarked. “It’s a good thing. We could never even attempt such a tactic otherwise.”
An eddy was forming in Townsend’s midsection. If this was an experiment, he didn’t want to know.
“Many lives are depending on it,” he pointed out. “I just hope it works, Captain.”
As the air above the table began to luminesce and sparkle, Dedrick replied softly, “As do we all, Mr. Townsend. As do we all.”
—— «» ——
They were one hour away from all hell breaking loose, and Lydia had called an all-hands meeting in the Daisy Hub caf to issue final instructions to the crew.
She did a quick head count. Drew, Ruby, Ajda, and O’Malley were aboard the Marco Polo with Yoko, Akiko, and the living staff. Gavin Holchuk was reportedly serving aboard a Nandrian warship. Singh was on Zulu with one of the Rangers. Including Rodrigues and the rest of his men, there were 57 beings present.
Lydia cleared her throat before speaking. “In less than an hour, we’re all going to be very busy — capital ‘V’, capital ‘B’ — so I just want to make sure everyone knows what their job is and what the timing will be.
“Anyone who hasn’t received a specific assignment is on damage control. We’ve all practiced this before, numerous times, although the Rangers may need a refresher.” Amidst a flurry of nervous laughter, she went on, “Hagman and Racine have assembled the gear and are in charge of deploying the teams for quickest response to any hull breaches. You’ll be taking your directions from one of them.
“Now, the timing is important. Remember, we have to wait for all the non-Corvou ships in the vicinity to withdraw. Then we throw everything we’ve got at the enemy, all at once, dispersing it in order to make as many Corvou angry as we can, as quickly as possible,” she told them. “That means all the decoy mines have to go off at the same time, or close to it. If there’s a long enough delay, the Corvou will twig to what the pods really are and start disposing of them themselves. Captain Rodrigues, have you assigned two men to the Corvou craft on the landing deck?”
Rodrigues pointed and two Rangers sprang to their feet. Addressing them, Lydia said, “You’ll have one minute to discharge your ordnance. From the moment we begin our attack, that’s how long it will take for the Kularian shields to expand and firm up around us. It’s important that you stop firing before the shields cover the landing deck doors, because this alien technology creates a wall that bounces energy back to its source.”
“Even if the source is inside the shield?” asked one of the Rangers.
“We don’t know for sure, and I would rather not find out the hard way,” she told him.
Rodrigues made an impatient sound. “Just assume that you can’t fire through the shield, Baker, and that if you try, you’ll be blowing up the deck and killing everyone on it,” he cut in, scowling. “Understood?”
“Yes, sir. But if the shield is transparent, how will we know it’s in place?”
Rodrigues turned and stared the question at Lydia. She replied, “Because the Hak’kor will be signaling me the moment the Marco Polo begins to generate it, and I’ll be on the comms, counting down from sixty-four. When I tell you to stop, you stop.”
“Rangers assigned to the Bonaventure and Tripoli will join the Hub in attacking the enemy,” said Rodrigues. “Once Daisy Hub is shielded, they will retreat to Zulu and implement the rest of the plan.”
“All right,” said Lydia. “Any questions?” Silence. “Well, if anything occurs to you, you know where I’ll be. We’re an hour away from daylight. Stay sharp and keep your comms open. And good luck, everyone!”
—— «» ——
Daylight was a relative term, as it turned out. As the station rounded Helena to confront the main part of the battle, Daisy Hub’s field of view was almost entirely obscured by dust and drifting debris. Hunched over her console, Lydia struggled at first to separate the blips on her screen that were ships under power from the ones that were ship fragments demonstrating Newton’s first law of motion. Identifying the moment when the allied vessels had withdrawn was going to be a challenge.
“You’d better give me a signal, Hak’kor,” she told him. “It’s pretty cluttered out there.”
“Ready…” said Townsend.
Meanwhile, Walt was on a different channel with the Rangers.
“Lydia, Singh says he’s taken down their special effect. For now.”
She waved him silent.
“Steady…” said Townsend.
“We have seven shuttles in position and ready to fire,” Walt told her.
Startled, she glanced up at him. “Seven? We should have two.”
“Go! Now, Lydia, now!” Townsend bellowed at the other end of the link.
She got on the comms. “Sixty-four seconds and counting! Let’s go, people!”
Within a heartbeat, the space around Daisy Hub erupted in flashes of light as the shuttles opened fire on the nearest Corvou vessels, their energy bolts splashing blue against the fighters’ shields.
The landing deck doors to space slid open.
“Fifty-eight seconds!”
All twenty-four escape pods burst from their moorings and drove deep into various parts of the swarm, remotely steered by Smith on one of the lower decks.
“Forty-eight seconds! Remember, they’ve got EM grenades too. Timing is everything!”
A ripple went through the swarm as all the pods exploded, releasing shock waves in every direction.
“Forty-two seconds! Where are those EM grenades?” Lydia demanded.
“We packed one into each of the escape pods,” came Jason Smith’s cheerful voice. “Wait for it….”
Sound wasn’t supposed to travel through a vacuum, but she could almost hear the crackling as technology fried in every ship within a thirty meter radius of each detonation. As if to provide visible proof that shields were collapsing, threads of energy appeared like spider-web cracks all over the hull of each affected ship. The other Corvou fighters hastened to retreat, recognizing their own ordnance. Still, a chain reaction had begun. Shorted-out triggering mechanisms were setting off the EM grenades inside many of the Corvou craft, sending waves of electromagnetic energy another thirty meters out, and then another. Shields came down, the spider’s web entangling hull after hull in what appeared to be a rapidly expanding sphere.
For a moment, Lydia watched, enthralled by the effect. Then, abruptly, she realized what was about to happen.
“Thrusters!” she yelled. “Hawk, get us away from here! Now!”
“Thirty-five seconds!” said Walt, who had taken up the count.
“Firing up main thrusters,” Soaring Hawk replied. “It will take a moment before we can burn.”
It was an unfortunate turn of phrase in their current circumstances, she thought grimly. Aloud, she said, “Find a shortcut. We’re running out of time.”
The EM pulse had done more than collapse the shields of the Corvou fighters. It had fried their communications, navigation, and targeting systems, and probably a few more besides. Since the ordnance was Corvou in origin, it was a safe bet that every Corvou ship was equipped with EMP-shielded backup systems. However, in the time it took to switch over to them, the vessel was unable to protect itself from the disintegration bombs now streaming through the landing deck doors. Or from the weapons fire of the Rangers’ shuttles and the five mystery fighters that had apparently joined them.
Another round of fireworks lit up the battlefield, highlighting the two Corvou heavy ships. These vessels remained intact, their weapons now pointed directly at Daisy Hub.
“Twenty-five seconds!” Walt called out.
“Almost there,” Hawk announced.
Corvou ships were moving inside the Hub’s orbit, putting the station between themselves and the energy web while they regrouped for an attack run.
“Fifteen seconds!” said Lydia. “Hawk, we need to go now! Shuttles, get ready to cover us!”
On every deck, people felt the Hub shiver as its main thrusters kicked in.
Lydia checked her screen. “Here they come. Hagman and Racine, get ready! We’re about to take some damage!”
“Weissman, the battle is upon us. Zulu may be fifty klicks away, but it’s still a sitting target,” Rodrigues said tautly into the mic. “Don’t wait for the shuttles. Get Dr. Singh out of there immediately.”
“Easier said than done, Captain. He’s reprogramming the field generator. Says he has a better idea.”
The Ranger rolled his eyes. “Not if it gets you both killed, it isn’t,” he snapped. “We have a plan. Stick to it.”
Lydia felt a vibration under her feet. Instantly, the comms filled with frantic voices.
“Eve! Oh, my god, she’s gone…”
“Quick! Grab my hand!”
“Mossman, where the hell are you?!”
“Someone help! I can’t hold it!”
“Racine, get down there! We need to—”
“Too late! Seal off the deck! Seal it off!”
There was another vibration, and another. More shouting. A scream of pain.
Lydia stiffened in her chair, forcing herself to breathe, to swallow, to keep from imagining what was happening on the lower decks. She reminded herself over and over, They know what to do. They practiced this. During the next ten seconds it became her mantra.
Singh’s voice came through the comm. “Spiro, are you there? I’m implementing Plan D. Plan D, Spiro!” After that, there were sounds of a scuffle, as though Singh and Weissman were struggling for possession of the mic.
Rodrigues said something in old Espagnol that had to be a curse.
Disregarding him, Lydia reached for her own mic. However, before she could say a word, Walt called out, “Zero seconds! Stop firing, everyone! Hak’kor, have we got shields?”
“Stand by, Daisy Hub, while I confirm,” Townsend replied.
In the silence that now fell, Lydia spun in her chair and inquired urgently, “Spiro, what is Plan D?”
“The metal-fatiguing weapon we talked about earlier,” he responded. “Now that we’re able to expand the range of the paintbrush, it’s feasible.”
“And Singh can make it work from Zulu?”
“I don’t know, but he seems to think so.”
“They’re up, Walt,” came Townsend’s voice over the commlink.
The Hub shuddered again. This time, the comms flooded with whoops of elation.
“Hot damn!” crowed a voice Lydia didn’t recognize. “That’s one down, and only a thousand to go!”
“Let’s hope they’re mad enough to fire at us all at once,” said Walt.
As if on cue, the swarm closed in on all sides. At least fifty fighters discharged their weapons in a frenzied hit and run attack. A second later, every part of their target seemed to shoot back at them. The vessels nearest the shield went first, popping like heated corn kernels as their own weapons fire rebounded. The rest took evasive action, but not all managed to avoid being hit.
The resulting shock waves battered the Hub’s hull. They disrupted the feed to Lydia’s screen, sporadically blinding it.
“Hak’kor, I can’t tell — is one of the heavy ships coming this way?” she demanded.
“Yes. It’s locked on and is powering up its main weapon,” came the reply, delivered by a voice she didn’t recognize. “Brace yourselves to be hit twice, once by the heat ray and again by the shock wave. It’s gonna be a doozie.”
The voice wasn’t lying. The heavy ship had been perpendicular to the shield. When the shot rebounded, it melted the front half of the Corvou vessel and detonated the contents of its fuel reservoir, destroying the other half in a huge explosion.
The shock wave tossed a good portion of the swarm into weapons range of the allied fleets, who were more than happy to finish them off before wading back into the battle.
Although under power, the Hub was unable to compensate for the sudden shove sideways. The comms filled with shouts of pain and surprise as people were thrown off their feet. On AdComm, Lydia and Walt had grabbed onto the edges of their respective consoles and managed to remain in their chairs. Gouryas and Rodrigues, however, had been in Townsend’s office space, where nothing was fastened down. A metal filing cabinet had toppled, knocking Gouryas over and landing scant centimeters from where he lay. And the Ranger had slammed up painfully against the bulkhead beside the tube car door.
Lydia heard the crash and called out, “Do you need help?”
“We’re a little banged up, but we’ll live,” Rodrigues replied, grunting as he helped Gouryas to his feet and began to cross the deck. Then he saw the static on her screen. “What’s the situation on Zulu?” he demanded.
They still had a commlink with the Ranger platform. “Dr. Singh?” said Walt. “Is everyone all right over there?”
No answer.
“Try the shuttles,” urged Rodrigues.
Still no answer.
“Marco Polo, this is Daisy Hub Control,” said Walt. “We’ve lost contact with our people on Zulu. Can you see the installation on your scanner?”
“We’ve been tracking it, Daisy Hub,” came a different voice Lydia didn’t recognize. “Zulu left orbit about a minute ago, escorted by two SIS shuttles, to carry your secret weapon closer to the second Corvou heavy ship.”
“Oh, no,” moaned Gouryas. “This is bad. This is very bad.”
“That damn fool,” spat Rodrigues. “He’s on a suicide mission, and he’s taking my men with him. Can he be stopped?”
“He doesn’t want to be,” said Gouryas sadly. “He’s doing this for Uma.”
Three pairs of eyes stared a question at him.
“Uma was his daughter, his only living relative after the plague. She was a teacher on Shakespeare Hub.”
Of course, Lydia thought ruefully. It was a wonder more of the crew weren’t throwing themselves into harm’s way out of grief.
A heartbeat later, she’d made her decision. “Tell the warmaster that this secret weapon doesn’t destroy a ship all by itself. It just makes it more vulnerable to enemy weapons fire. Zulu is going to paint a target on the Corvou heavy cruiser. That’s where the allied fighters need to concentrate their attack.”
“Copy that, Daisy Hub. I’ll relay the message.”
Feeling Rodrigues’s reproachful gaze boring into the side of her head, she said, “If they’re in the thick of the battle, they’re not likely to survive, Captain. I think that every sacrifice should count for something. Don’t you?”
“You’re right.” The Ranger’s voice was weighted down with resignation. “For just a moment, I forgot that this is a war.”
—— «» ——
Against all the odds, Zulu’s invisibility field got it close enough to the heavy cruiser to emit three rapid beams before a Corvou fighter realized what was happening and moved in. By then, Singh had shut down all systems and Zulu was pretending to be debris, drifting at the mercy of every wave and eddy as the battle raged around it.
Instructed by the warmaster, allied ships had gathered in the vicinity as well. They found the cherry-red splash of color on the heavy ship’s flank and began shooting. The Corvou shields held, but the concussions of repeated fire peeled away the hull inside them like layers of papier mâché. Explosive decompression did the rest.
Reduced to fewer than four hundred compact fighters, the once-mighty Corvou armada was eventually forced a thousand kilometers away from Daisy Hub, into a roughly spherical area the size of a small planet, surrounded on every side by allied ships. It was a killing field, with the survivors of each fleet taking exquisite revenge for the lives that had been lost in this war.
Aboard the Marco Polo, the Kularian shields could finally be collapsed. Eight standard hours had passed, and Ixbeth and Lania were both taken to Med Services, exhausted. At Doctor Deneuve’s insistence, the Hak’kor’s ship docked with the station so that the remaining crew of Daisy Hub could be taken aboard for medical and psychological assessment.
Several days later, the enemy fighters who’d gone Human-hunting in Sectors One through Four had all been reported destroyed. In Sector Five, the path from Helena to Purgatory was paved with the evidence of a battle. Search teams found the blasted remains of two Ranger shuttles drifting among the debris. They also found Observation Platform Zulu, intact except for a hole in its hull. The third shuttle still sat on the landing deck, fueled and operational, but there was no sign of either Constable Weissman or Devanan Singh.
The war had been costly, as the warmaster had foretold. Millions of Humans were dead all over Earth space. Captain Paul Rodrigues was mourning five in particular. No doubt there would be others once a detailed casualty list was posted, but for the moment his thoughts were of SIS Constables Daniel Weissman, William Diaz, Jimmy Phan, John Grover Pitts, and Samir Gabel.
Daisy Hub had lost eleven, including Singh. Five had been sucked into space when the Hub had come under attack in the seconds before the shields formed: Eve Bosse, Raymond Oolalong, Marty Fehr, Will DeVries, and Eli Gross. Four had succumbed to injuries sustained when the shock wave hit the Hub: Doug Mossman, Ronnie Kowalski, Ella Verplanck, and Carla Phillips. And Gavin Holchuk had perished in battle when the Trokerk warship Esselmass had been lost with all hands while taking down the final Corvou heavy ship.
Townsend’s mood was still dangerously close to hartoon. The war was over, and the allied fleets had won, as the warmaster had promised. But it didn’t feel like a victory, not when so many people he cared about were dead. Not when the frustration of knowing that the Corvou home world was permanently beyond his reach made him ache to put his fist through a bulkhead.
As Drew sat across from him in the Marco Polo’s mess hall, the warmaster understood.
“Your people fought valiantly and died well, Hak’kor,” said Vixor ban Jorisam. “Inscribe their names on your wall of heroes. Celebrate their courage. Remember it always. I said earlier that the Shields of House Daisy Hub were not warriors. I say now that they are. This war was their tekl’hananni. They have earned the respect of every House on Nandor.
“You want justice for your fallen, but justice is never found in a war. All that comes from war is victory or defeat. Together, we defeated the Corvou … this time. In the past, others have not fared as well. So, you will heal your wounds and grieve your losses, and then you will rebuild your House and your forces, as we did then and will do again. You may decide to forgive, once this generation of Corvou die out, but you mustn’t forget. This enemy will rise again.”
Of course, they would, Drew thought morosely. With luck, though, it wouldn’t be for another thousand years. Then he remembered — he didn’t have that kind of luck.
—— «» ——
Doomsday plus 17 Earth days.
Kendra Nelligan sat down on the bench facing Townsend’s in the Marco Polo’s mess hall and said, “Communication with Earth has finally been restored. Now there’s talk of bringing you and your crew back home. The Admiralty want to award you all medals.”
Drew looked up from his bowl of chocolate-flavored yogurt — made with dairy product this time and tasting much better — and remarked ironically, “Really! I wonder what put that idea into their heads.”
“Come on, Mr. Townsend,” she coaxed him, “you’ve earned them. Besides, Earth is a shambles. We’ve lost fourteen colonies and a dozen hubs. It’s going to take what’s left of our Fleet several years just to do a census and figure out who’s still alive. We’ve paid a steep price. Humanity is in desperate need of something or someone to celebrate right now. Why shouldn’t it be you?”
“We’re not heroes, Vice-Admiral.”
“Call me Kendra, please. And I beg to disagree with you. You saved Humanity. That’s worth some recognition. And although you may not see any value in it right now, you’d be surprised how important it could be to you in the future.”
“We didn’t save Humanity, Kendra. The aliens did that. They’ve been doing it all along. So if anyone deserves a medal, it’s Vixor ban Jorisam, the Nandrian warmaster. Or…” Struck by a sudden thought, he said, “There may not be any heroes among the living, but I can think of some among the dead.”
Intrigued, she said, “Go on.”
“Devanan Singh and five Rangers attacked one of the Corvou heavy ships with no thought to their own safety, saving many lives in the process. And Gavin Holchuk volunteered to serve aboard a Nandrian warship and died with his shipmates when it blew up. How about it? How about awarding posthumous honors to people who showed actual bravery instead of just doing what needed to be done to save their home?”
“Was that what you were doing?” she asked softly. “Really? You had no higher purpose?”
Higher purpose? He nearly laughed. Then he wanted to cry. Consciously recomposing himself, he thrust his bowl across the table toward her and said, “You see this yogurt? I hate yogurt, but I have to eat it. The stress of the past standard year has given me a peptic ulcer. No one should get a medal for that.”
“Okay,” she said, raising both hands in a gesture of surrender. “Do they have any family that you know of, these people you’ve mentioned?”
“I don’t know about the others, but Holchuk’s daughter Madeline is aboard this ship. She’d been looking for him for a long time and never got a chance to know him. I think it would mean a great deal to her to be able to remember him with pride.”
“I see.” Nelligan got to her feet. “I think you’re wrong, Drew. There are heroes among the living.”
Then she left.