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21 December 2404

High-G Orbital Shuttle Burt Rutan

Approaching SupraQuito Fleet Base

Earth Synchorbit, Sol System

1532 hours, TFT

Captain Randolph Buchanan and several of his aides had gone down the Quito space elevator that afternoon to reach the eudaimonium. Normally, he would have taken the captain’s gig down to Giuliani, but an engineering downgrudge report had taken his gig off of flight-ready status, and he’d relied on civilian transport instead.

That had left him at something of a disadvantage when the fleet recall had come through. He could have gone back to the ship with Admiral Koenig, but there’d not been time to find him or the admiral’s barge in the chaos down there.

Instead, the Burt Rutan had been summarily commandeered by no less a luminary than Admiral of the Fleet John C. Carruthers, and Buchanan and several other high-ranking officers and aides had climbed aboard a mobile passenger module at the eudaimonium docking area for the short flight north to the spaceport.

The Rutan was a cargo transport, designed to boost heavy loads up to synchorbit for the ongoing construction of the bases and facilities tethered high above Quito, and she was not designed with passenger comfort in mind. The passenger module slipped into the big shuttle’s cargo deck and locked home. It was claustrophobic on board, with few amenities, but with a boost of five hundred gravities, it would take less time to reach synchorbit than it had for the flight from the eudaimonium to Giuliani.

Buchanan leaned back in the embrace of the hab seat as the vast, light-dusted blackness of Earth’s night side, aglow with cities, dropped away aft. He was linked through his implant to Commander Sam Jones, America’s executive officer. Admiral Koenig was riding the link from the Admiral’s barge, which was trailing by a hundred kilometers, following the Rutan in to the docking facility. Koenig was listening in, but not interfering. Captain Barry Wizewski, America’s brand-new CAG, was also on board the civilian shuttle, linked in with the communications net connecting the Rutan with the carrier’s CIC.

“Damn it, Sam, I want full readiness for space five minutes after I step onto the quarterdeck,” Buchanan growled.

“We’re working on it, sir,” Jones replied, “but things are kind of chaotic on board right now. We have civilians on board …”

He spoke the word with evident distaste. In fact, there would be several hundred civilian contractors on the ship, part of the small army of inspection teams and drive magicians who came aboard each time the carrier entered its berth.

“They can come along with us, Number One. We won’t be going far.”

“We also have about a thousand ship’s personnel coming in from liberty. A lot of them won’t make it for an hour or two.”

“Then we’ll boost without them,” Buchanan said. He glanced at the comm icon representing Koenig. “What’s the status on the fighter wings?”

“VFA–44 is coming on board now, sir. We’re ten for twelve there. VFA–31 is on deep patrol but has been recalled. They should get the recall order in another two hours. VFA–49 is on Ready Five. The others are scrambling. We went to GQ about seven minutes ago.”

America carried six fighter and fighter-attack squadrons in all.

“Whiz?” Buchanan said, addressing America’s CAG. “I’d like to get the Peaks out there, too. What do you think?”

“I’m giving the orders now, Captain.”

VQ–7, the Sneaky Peaks, was America’s reconnaissance squadron, flying under the flamboyant Commander James Henry Peak. Flying CP–240 Shadowstars, they would have the best chance of getting close to the intruder spacecraft without being noticed.

“How long before the Dragonfires are rearmed and set for launch?”

“Twenty minutes, sir.”

Buchanan nodded. Twenty minutes was damned fast. The ready crews would be busting ass to turn those fighters around.

“Do you have anything to add, Admiral?” he asked.

“I suggest that we get all squadrons spaceborne ASAP, and keep them out there,” Koenig said from his barge. “Priority to the fighters, of course, but get the EW and SAR squadrons off the carrier as quickly as you can. America will be a target, especially while she’s in dock.”

“Aye, aye, sir.” That made sense. If America was crippled or destroyed while still in dock, at least her fighters would be spaceborne and on an attack vector.

“Number One,” Buchanan continued, “get my ship out of dock if you have to cut the lines with a pocket knife and haul her out on your shoulder.” He glanced at the Rutan’s bulkhead display. The shuttle was approaching the carrier now, approaching over the curve of her shield cap. He could see a fighter coming in from astern, heading for a trap on the hangar deck. The Rutan wouldn’t be going in that way. They would dock in zero-G, the quarterdeck docking bay, just forward of the rotating hab modules. “We’re about five minutes from docking, so stop gabbing with me and get on it!”

“Aye, aye, Captain.”

When it came to wielding a star carrier, three men, in a sense, shared the command responsibilities. Buchanan himself commanded the America. Captain Wizewski, as CAG, was responsible for the 102 spacecraft of CVW–14, the Carrier Air Wing, currently deployed aboard. And Admiral Koenig was in overall command of America’s Carrier Battlegroup, CBG–18, which included not only the carrier herself, but the nine other ships currently attached to the CBG. His orders, and his strategic and tactical thinking, had to take in all ten vessels and the deployment of America’s fighters.

He was grateful that Koenig hadn’t interfered as he’d given orders to Jones. Too many group COs did that … and it undercut a captain’s authority on his own bridge. Koenig, he knew, was probably champing at the bit to get the America under way more than was Buchanan, but he’d spoken only when directly asked if he had any recommendations.

The admiral was one of the good ones, the sort of CO for whom the entire CBG would go to hell and back. He checked the update on the intruder. It was accelerating now … possibly maneuvering to head out-system, though it was too soon to tell. Taking on that puppy would be akin to a stroll in hell, yeah.

Impatiently, Buchanan remained still and silent as the Rutan maneuvered toward the quarterdeck docking bay. The bulkheads of the Rutan’s passenger hab were projecting an all-around view of the exterior now, creating the illusion that they had gone translucent. Directly to port, the underside of the carrier’s shield cap rose like an immense, gray-black cliff; to starboard, the vessel’s hab modules continued their steady and stately rotation, making one complete swing around America’s central spine 2.11 times each minute, or once in twenty-eight seconds.

Ahead, a rectangular hatchway had opened in the side of the carrier’s spine, illuminated by bright white lights set into the deck. From this angle, the quarterdeck accessway connecting the ship with the base docking facility seemed to drop in from directly overhead and slightly aft of the open bay.

And then the Rutan, on AI pilot, glided silently through the opening and into the Star Carrier America.

H’rulka Warship 434

Cis-Lunar Space, Sol System

1534 hours, TFT

“We are not going to strike the vermin?” Swift Pouncer asked over the ship’s internal communications network. Speaking only in radio, without the added color and modifying overtones of its sonic speech, the words were empty of all emotion.

But Ordered Ascent knew what the others must be feeling.

“We have the technological advantage,” Ordered Ascent replied, knowing that all of the other All of Us were listening closely. “But that advantage is not great enough to allow us to fight an entire star system. Too many of us would fall into the Abyss. It is far more important that the Masters know of these aliens, and that they have been sending probes through System 783,451, than it is for us to destroy their ships. The destruction will happen later, be sure of that.”

“A number of vermin ships are closing with us,” High Drifting reported. “We estimate that they will launch weapons within fifteen vu.”

“The vermin defend their nest,” Swift Pouncer added.

Ordered Ascent watched the unfolding tactical situation through its electronic feed from Warship 434’s tactical mind. No fewer than fourteen enemy ships were currently with range of 434’s weapons. It was tempting to destroy those fourteen before dropping into the emptiness between the stars.

The All of Us had served the Masters for some twelves of thousands of gnyii now, ever since the Starborn had first shown the H’rulka how to extract metals from the winds of their world, how to bend gravity to their will, and how, at last, to build ships that would take them to the treasure troves of metals and other elements in orbit beyond the homeworld’s atmosphere. The H’rulka had gone from being essentially atechnic to a star-faring species themselves within the space of twelve-cubed gnyii, the twitch of a minor tentacle, so far as the Masters were concerned.

Ordered Ascent wondered, and not for the first time, why the Masters insisted on suppressing technological advancement throughout the entourage of species they’d brought into the embrace of their feeder nets. The H’rulka had come so far; their combat advantage over these vermin would have been that of the windstorm to the foodfloater, had they been permitted to keep developing their technology.

No matter. The advantage was sufficient.

Ordered Ascent checked other data feeds. Ship 434 was ready to diverge, if necessary, and would be ready to enter metaspace within mere vu.

Any damage done to the enemy was to the good. So long as combat didn’t weaken Warship 434 or threaten her mission, there was no reason not to swat the vermin before they were even close enough to engage.

“Swift Pouncer,” Ordered Ascent said, “destroy those that we can reach.”

“With the pleasure of gentle winds, Ordered Ascent.”

And Warship 434 reached out into the darkness. …

TC/USNA DD Symmons

Cis-Lunar Space, Sol System

1536 hours, TFT

Captain Harry Vanderkamp, commanding the Symmons, watched the tactical display unfolding around him as the ship plunged toward the interloper. The alien ship was accelerating fast, pulling at least seven hundred gravities, and would slip beyond range soon.

Symmons was a member of CBG–18, a fleet destroyer 576 meters long, massing just under thirty thousand tons, and armed with a variety of weapons, including thirty-six launch tubes for VG–24 Mamba smart missiles, variable-yield ship killers ranging between twenty and forty-five kilotons apiece. The H’rulka vessel was 327,000 kilometers ahead now, out of range for most guided weapons, but still within reach of the Mambas.

The problem, though, was that Symmons did not yet have clearance to fire. The ship ahead had clearly been identified as H’rulka, an enemy combatant … but it had been twelve years since the single known encounter between them and Confederation vessels, and Vanderkamp knew he would need clearance from Fleet HQ. There might be diplomatic issues of which he was unaware, or an attempt under way to communicate with the alien.

Symmons had burned repeated laser and radio messages to Fleet Base, only a few light seconds away, but so far with no response.

His gut instinct was to fire. That H’rulka monster might be a recon probe in advance of a larger force.

The enemy ship was accelerating harder now. In seconds, it would be out of range completely. Hell, it might already be too late. …

“Sir!” Vanderkamp’s tactical officer cried over the bridge link. “Kaufman has been hit!”

“Show me!”

The tactical display switched to a view from one of the other destroyer’s external cameras, looking forward up the spine toward the underside of the ship’s massive shield cap. The shield, backlit by a hard blue glare, was deforming, crumpling with shocking suddenness, as though it were collapsing into …

“Milton is hit!” A second battlegroup destroyer was folding around her own shield cap. “Target is now breaking up.”

“Breaking up? Breaking up how?”

“It’s just … just dividing sir. Twelve sections, moving apart from—”

“Incoming mass!” his exec shouted. “Singularity effect! Impact in seven … in six …”

Vanderkamp saw it, a pinpoint source of X-rays and hard gamma on the forward scanner display, a tiny, brilliant star sweeping directly toward Symmons’ prow.

There was no time for thought or measured decision, no time for anything but immediate reaction.

“VG–24 weapon system, all tubes, fire!” he yelled, overriding the exec’s countdown. They were under attack, and that decisively ended any need for weapons-free orders from base. “Maneuvering, hard right! Shields up full! Brace for—”

And the H’rulka weapon struck the Symmons.

It hit slightly off center on the destroyer’s bullet-shaped forward shield cap, causing the starboard side to pucker and collapse in a fiercely radiating instant. Water stored inside the tank burst through the rupture, freezing instantly in a cloud of frozen mist that burst into space like a miniature galaxy. The port side of the cap twisted around, collapsing into the oncoming gravitic weapon effect. Vanderkamp felt a single hard, brain-numbing jolt … and then the five-hundred meter spine of the ship whipped around the object, orbiting it with savage velocity as the entire 29,000-ton-plus mass of the Symmons tried to cram itself into a fast-moving volume of twisted space half a centimeter across. Pieces of the ship flew off in all directions as the spine continued to snap around the tiny volume of warped space; the strain severed the ship’s spine one hundred meters from her aft venturis, and the broken segment tumbled wildly away into darkness. Abruptly, the remaining hull shattered, the complex plastic-ceralum composite fragmenting into a cloud of sparkling shards, continuing to circle the fierce-glowing core of the weapon until it formed a broad, flattened pinwheel spiraling in toward that tiny but voracious central maw.

The disk of sparkling fragments and ice crystals collapsed inward, dwindling … dwindling … dwindling …

And then the Symmons was gone.

Seven of her Mamba missiles had cleared their launch tubes before the weapon struck.

TC/USNA CVS America

SupraQuito Fleet Base

Earth Synchorbit, Sol System

1540 hours, TFT

Last on, first off was the custom for boarding and debarking by seniority. Buchanan swam out of the Rutan’s cargo deck hab module and into the boarding tube, followed by other, lower-ranking officers. Rather than wait for America’s forward boat-deck docking bay to repressurize, it was simpler to hand-over-hand along the translucent plastic tube and emerge moments later on the carrier’s quarterdeck.

By age-old tradition, a vessel’s quarterdeck was her point of entry, often reserved for officers, guests, and passengers … though on a carrier like America it served as an entryway for the ship’s enlisted personnel as well. The boat deck offered stowage for a number of the ship’s service and utility boats, including the captain’s gig—the sleek, delta-winged AC–23 Sparrow that by rights should have taken him planetside and back. The quarterdeck was directly aft.

“America, arriving,” the voice of the AIOD called from overhead as he pulled himself headfirst into the large quarterdeck space, announcing to all personnel that the ship’s commanding officer had just come on board. Following ancient seafaring tradition, Buchanan rotated in space to face a large USNA flag painted on the quarterdeck’s aft bulkhead and saluted it, then turned to receive the salute of the OOD.

“Welcome aboard, Captain,” Commander Benton Sinclair said, saluting. Sinclair was the ship’s senior TO, her tactical officer, but was stationed at the quarterdeck for this watch as officer of the deck.

“Thank you, Commander,” Buchanan replied. “You are relieved as OOD. I want you in CIC now.”

“I am relieved of the deck. Aye, aye, Captain.”

The ship’s bridge, along with the adjacent combat information center, were both aft from the quarterdeck, just past the moving down-and-out deck scoops leading to the elevators connecting with the various rotating hab modules. Both the bridge and the CIC were housed inside a heavily armored, fin-shaped sponson abaft of the hab module access, and were in zero gravity.

“Captain on the bridge!” the exec announced as Buchanan swam in through the hatchway. Using the handholds anchored to the deck, he pulled himself to the doughnut, the captain’s station overlooking the various bridge stations around the deck’s perimeter, and swung himself in. The station embraced him, drawing him in, making critical electronic contacts.

He sensed the ship around him. In a way, he became the ship, over a kilometer long, humming with power, with communication, with life. He sensed the admiral’s barge slipping into its boarding sheath forward, sensed the gossamer structure of the base docking facility alongside and ahead.

And he sensed the battle unfolding just half a million kilometers away. God in heaven, how had they gotten so close?

Long-range battlespace scans showed four Confederation vessels … no, five, now, five ships destroyed, three of them members of CBG–18. The enemy ship was accelerating now at seven hundred gravities … and, as he watched, it appeared to be breaking up.

“Tactical,” Buchanan said. He felt Commander Sinclair slipping into his console and linking in. “Is it … is the enemy ship destroyed?”

“Negative, Captain,” Sinclair replied a moment later. “It appears to have separated into twelve distinct sections. Courses are diverging … and accelerating.”

Missile trails pursued several of the alien ship sections. It appeared that Symmons had managed to get off a partial volley before slamming into the alien’s gravitic weaponry.

“CBG–18, arriving,” the AI of the deck announced.

Good, Koenig was aboard. Buchanan allowed America’s status updates to wash through his awareness. Her quantum tap generators were coming on-line, power levels rising. The last of VFA–44’s Starhawks were on board and on the hangar deck being rearmed. Dockyard tugs were already taking up their positions along America’s hull, ready to push her clear of the facility. Weapons coming on-line… .

“Seal off docking tubes,” he ordered. “Prepare to get under way.”

“Docking tubes sealed off, Captain.” That was the voice of Master Chief Carter, the boatswain of the deck, in charge of the gangways and boarding tubes connecting the ship with the dock. A number of ship’s personnel were still inside the main tube, or at the debarkation bay at the dock, as the tube began retracting. The last men and women to make it on board were scrambling for their stations.

“Ship’s power on-line, at eighty percent,” the engineering AI reported.

“Very well. Cast off umbilicals.”

Connectors for power, water, and raw materials separated from America’s hull receptors, reeling back into the dock.

“Dockyard umbilicals clear, Captain,” Carter reported.

By this time, it was obvious that the H’rulka ship was intent on fleeing solar space, that America and the synchorbital naval base were not in immediate danger. Buchanan did not understand the alien’s tactical reasoning; the bastard could have approached the base closely enough to utterly destroy the base and perhaps a hundred warships docked there. That they had not done so suggested other mission imperatives—a strategic withdrawal, perhaps, to get reconnaissance data back home, but it ran counter to Buchanan’s own instincts.

It suggested a certain conservative approach to their tactical thinking, which might be useful.

“The ship is ready in all respects for space, Captain,” Commander Jones reported.

“Very well. Cast off all mooring lines.”

“Mooring lines retracting, Captain,” Carter reported.

“Ship clear and free to maneuver,” the helm officer added.

“Take us out, Helm. Best safe vector.”

“Aye, aye, sir. Tugs engaged. Stand by for lateral acceleration.”

“Attention, all hands,” the voice of the ship’s AI called over both link and audio comms. “Brace for real acceleration.”

Buchanan felt a slight bump through the embrace of the doughnut as the tugs nudged America sideways and away from the dock. For several seconds, he felt weight, a distinct feeling of down in that direction, to his right. For the sake of clear communications, the navy took care to distinguish acceleration—meaning gravitational acceleration—from real acceleration, which was imposed by maneuvering thrusters or dockyard tugs. The former might involve accelerations of hundreds of gravities, but were free-fall and therefore unfelt. The tugs were shoving America’s ponderous mass clear of the docking facility with an acceleration of only a couple of meters per second per second, but that translated as two-tenths of a gravity, and a perceived weight, for Buchanan, of nearly eighteen kilograms—disorienting, and potentially dangerous for members of the ship’s crew who still weren’t strapped in. Out in the rotating hab modules, where spin gravity created the illusion of a constant half G, it was worse, as “down” began to shift unpleasantly back and forth with the hab modules’ rotation.

He drummed his fingers restlessly on a contact plate. Best safe vector meant slow, and without benefit of gravitics. A mistake here could wreck a substantial portion of Fleet Base. By the time the carrier warped clear of the dock, the enemy ship—no, ships, he corrected himself—would be long gone.

He’d half expected Koenig to reverse the orders to take America out of dock. If the enemy left the solar system, there was no need to continue. On the other hand, Koenig might be preparing for a further enemy incursion … or for a sudden change in course by the fleeing H’rulka vessels. The safe bet was to get all warships clear and maneuvering freely and to keep them there until it was certain the enemy threat had passed.

There’d been no additional orders from the Admiral in CIC, and so Buchanan had continued to follow the last set of orders he’d received. Take her out.

On the tactical display, some of the missiles fired by the Symmons an instant before her immolation were slowly closing on one of the H’rulka ship sections. …

H’rulka Warship 434

Sol System

1544 hours, TFT

With divergence, the situation had become considerably more desperate.

Ordered Ascent drifted in the center of a claustrophobically enclosed space less than three times the diameter of its own gas bag, with scarcely enough room for its own manipulators and feeder nets to drift without scraping the compartment’s interior walls. Images projected by the ship across the ship-pod’s interior surfaces created the comforting illusion of vast, panoramic vistas of cloud canyons, vertical cloudwalls, and atmospheric abysses, but the touch of a tentacle against the invisible solid wall shattered the comforting sense of openness, and could bring on the sharp madness of claustrophobia.

Each of the other vessels—434 had retained its number, but the others, upon divergence, had received new identifiers—was accelerating now on a slightly different heading, somewhat more vulnerable now to enemy weapons, and certainly more dangerous for the crew emotionally.

The tactic essentially reproduced a natural response among H’rulka colonies that had evolved half a million gnyii among the cloudscapes of the homeworld. Certain pack hunters that had shared those skies with the All of Us preyed on adult colonies by attaching themselves to under-bodies and slicing at them with razor-edged whip-tentacle limbs evolved to surgically sharp efficiency for the task. H’rulka survived by jettisoning their immense gas bags as the predators approached, allowing themselves to plummet into the Abyss; each colony-group separated naturally into twelve sub-colonies—divergence.

Each sub-colony unfolded a new, much smaller gas bag, heating hydrogen through furiously pumping metabolic bellows to arrest the fall before the group dropped into the lethal temperatures and pressures of the Abyssal Deep, a descent of only a couple of thousand kilometers, and often less. In essence, the adult colony had reverted to a juvenile form, and much of the original colony’s intelligence and memory were lost. H’rulka civilization, in fact, had begun perhaps 12⁵ gnyii ago with the collection of communal records maintained as a kind of living, constantly recited encyclopedia broadcast endlessly over certain radio frequencies. Those records were a direct response to the effects of the predators on the cloud communities at large, and had led, ultimately, to the discoveries of science, of polylogue mathematics, and, eventually, technology.

But divergence was still exceptionally traumatic for All of Us colonies, and some of the terror associated with the breakup and the precipitous fall continued to haunt them even when the divergence was strictly technological, a means of ensuring that one, at least, of the H’rulka colonies would make it back to base.

Enemy weapons were pursuing several of the retreating pods. None were in close proximity to Warship 434, but Rapid Cloud in 440 and Swift Pouncer in 442 both were being closely pursued by what appeared to be intelligent, self-steering missiles. The devices were primitive technologically, compared with All of Us singularity projectors, but would possess nuclear warheads that might seriously damage even an intact H’rulka warship.

Only a few vu more, and they would be able to slip into the safety of bent space.

A trio of dazzlingly white flashes ignited close alongside Swift Pouncer, and another just behind Rapid Cloud. Ordered Ascent felt the electromagnetic pulse, felt the telemetry warning of systems failure …

But then critical velocity was reached, and the retreating colony-pods began dropping into bent space.