The Fleet Book Three: Break Through Read online

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  NO ONE ITEM is more ubiquitous than the omnivision. From tiny portable units less than two centimeters square to the massive units used at sports stadiums, it is estimated that there are 1.3 omni broadcast receivers for every resident of the Alliance. Of those shows appearing on the omni, few are more popular than the adventures of Captain Hawk Talon of the Fleet. . .

  Millions watch as the 4,032nd episode of “Hawk Talon of the Fleet” begins. Our hero is poised over the port, staring down at the Khalian admiral. Behind him you can see the hull of the barbarously painted mile-long Khalian superdreadnought.

  “You’ve slaughtered your last innocent victim, Admiral Grrrh,” Talon declares, smashing through the ship’s view port. Shards of glass are everywhere. He lands on the bridge less than a meter from the hissing, growling Khalian officer. The Fleet emblem glitters on Hawk’s chest as the hero rips off his helmet and . . .

  Suddenly the entire three-dimensional grid that projects over the top of the omni goes black. Just as abruptly, the actual Fleet emblem floats in the center of this new darkness. While less ostentatious than that worn by Captain Talon, it is somehow just as impressive. Martial music rises and then fades as a schooled voice explains, “We now interrupt this program for a special announcement.”

  EVEN WITH HALF a square kilometer of light-sail deployed, the Khalian projectile was an insignificant blip compared to the four-kilometer diameter of the comet’s core. The entire unit weighed just under ten kilograms. There was a terminal-guidance system which incorporated a proximity fuse, a small bursting charge, a reflective shell, and tiny servomotors coupled to the spars of the light-sail.

  The sail blazed with a terrible intensity, a tiny, peculiar star, brilliant green. It was traveling at almost 25,000 kilometers per second—8 percent of light speed—when the payload detonated. The cloud of shrapnel grew but continued with the same course and velocity as the missile had before exploding.

  Its target was black with age, invisible against the sky.

  The projectile had become a cloud over four kilometers across when it splashed across the ancient ice ball. Traveling at a significant fraction of light speed, the shrapnel’s effect was that of a blast of gamma rays. Half of the comet’s surface absorbed the impact and vaporized instantly. Stresses transmitted by flash heating shattered the remnant of the loosely compacted ball of snow and slag.

  The comet exploded. Thirty-meter chunks of rock and finger-sized shards of ice drifted apart in millions of separate orbits.

  * * *

  The Admiral Wilhelm Canaris hadn’t moved in nearly a decade. The huge spiky cylinder rested in unstable equilibrium in the L3 point of the Earth-Moon system, at the fringes of Earth’s gravity field. Escape craft were positioned to serve as attitude jets. Their main motors fired now and then to adjust the big vessel’s orbit.

  The heart of the Willy C. wasn’t the vessel’s bridge, but rather the office deep in its interior where sat Sector Commander Lars Eriksen, the Fleet’s highest ranking officer for thirty light years in any direction. The bridge only controlled the vessel’s rare course adjustments: trivial matters to a sector commander.

  A sector commander’s business was politics.

  The spymaster-class command and control ship circled Earth itself, where the Alliance Senate met and deliberated on the Fleet’s budget. In an hour Eriksen would be meeting the Senate’s Trade and Industry Committee. Deep inside several concentric metal shells within what could still be described as a tremendous warship, Eriksen sat within a ring of heads. He was choosing among the alternative hairstyles that his coiffeur had downloaded into his hologram projector.

  Two of the three doors into his office burst open simultaneously. Eriksen looked up. So did six bodiless heads, each slightly different yet each his own, all rotating, all annoyed.

  “Our telemetry links—” blurted Captain Crocker, head of the sector’s Bureau of Military Affairs.

  “On the omni—” said Captain Krasnowski, head of the sector’s Bureau of Civil Affairs as he pointed to the omni unit beside the desk.

  The captains were too agitated to notice one another’s presence. The admiral gestured with his little finger; his desk’s artificial intelligence shut off the omni hologram projector. The other heads faded.

  “—on Halley’s comet—,” continued Crocker.

  “—Noel Li says—,” continued Krasnowski.

  “—report that the comet has exploded!”

  “—that the Khalians have blown up Halley’s comet! Oh, sorry, Grig.”

  Eriksen pointed to the omni and said, “On.”

  The AI responded, instantly to Eriksen’s command. The omni’s surface clothed itself in a three-dimensional image that appeared to squarely face every human in the room. Noel Li, Earth’s top newsreader, was saying, “However, Fleet sources have refused to comment—”

  Somebody from Technical Affairs chimed for admittance at the third door to Eriksen’s office.

  “Come!” the admiral snarled, his eyes on Noel Li.

  “—on whether the comet’s destruction was the first action of a Khalian armada headed for Earth.”

  Halley’s had been visible when Eriksen’s eldest son Mark was born; so his wife had told him. Thirty-four years ago. The comet must be almost at aphelion, near Neptune’s orbit, Eriksen thought; better check when he had the chance.

  Li’s face was replaced by an image of what Eriksen took to be Halley’s comet. The holocast showed it as a cold gray ball, dimly lit, lumpy. Steam feathered out from some surface crack. Above the image glowed the word, SIMULATION—in English, because the men in the office had been speaking English.

  Simulation. The real Halley’s was black with comet tar, carbon and polymers and other solids left on the surface by evaporating ice. The astronauts had to wear Teflon boots. Water volcanoes peaked all around them, and tiny Jupiter rose every seven hours twenty-four minutes. Thirty-five years ago, when Mark was conceived, they’d left the omni on for the whole four days, with the Halley’s expedition as background.

  One side of the dark sphere suddenly glared flame-green. A moment later a bright cap of vapor exploded away from almost a third of the original surface. The dark side shattered, a snowball striking a wall. Ice fragments spewed one way, steam the other.

  I’m watching computer-programmed guesswork. The map is not the territory. Simulation. ... but Halley’s comet is dead.

  “Ah, that’s what it was,” said Commander Mown, who’d entered the third door when the AI opened it. Unlike Crocker and Krasnowski, the head of Technical Affairs didn’t have even the option of barging in on the sector commander unannounced. “Just a drive laser—so of course the modulation was random.”

  “What?” said Admiral Eriksen, twisting to look squarely at the ferally slender Mown.

  “Whatwhat?” gabbled Crocker and Krasnowski.

  “Do you mean you—” Eriksen began.

  “Is this something—,” said Crocker.

  “How do you mean—,” said Krasnowski.

  Eriksen turned again and stared at his Civil and Military Affairs chiefs. They were not too flustered by the situation to read danger in the admiral’s look.

  In the silence, Commander Mown said, “Three days ago, a courier on the Earth-Titan run, the Sabot, I believe, with three crew named—”

  “Mown.”

  “Yes, of course, sir. The Sabot encountered what appeared to be a powerful laser signal directed inward, across the solar ecliptic. They recorded the data—as a matt
er of course—and passed them on to us for analysis.”

  As Mown. talked, he tapped the side of the multifunction helmet he wore even here in his superior’s office. His eyes focused on the holographic display it projected—visible to the others in the room only as occasional flickers—and his fingers tapped a rapid pattern of keystrokes in the air. The nerve impulses rather than the ‘touch’ of Mown’s fingertips controlled the data flow.

  “We assumed it was a message. It was modulated. We found coded patches in Old French and English and Japanese. We wondered if the code was changing second by second. Truth was, there was nothing to analyze,” Mown’s voice continued while his eyes tracked information the others couldn’t see. “We think the modulations are partly randomized and partly bits of old messages in obsolete codes, stuff the Khalians must have been picking up for a century. The beam is only a drive laser, of considerable—

  “Here we are. Yes, quite correct. The vector indicates that it was driving a projectile toward Halley’s comet.”

  Mown’s fingers danced as though he were executing half of a secret handshake for entry to a lodge. The data terminal opposite, the omni obliged: it switched itself on to project visions.

  Admiral Eriksen watched a schematic of the solar system from behind the omni. Here was black space where reality held only his office wall. Planetary orbits showed in primary colors, each a ring with a cluster of lumps on it, wound tight around the white dot of the sun. Thousands of spacecraft showed as little vector arrows. Clusters of comets showed as clouds. A bright green path indicated the computed track of the laser beam.

  Fury closed Eriksen’s throat. Halley’s comet! Without the capacity for berserk rage, he never would have survived his two decades as a warrior. He’d learned how to swallow rage. But: A thousand years ago, Halley’s comet showed us that we can predict. There is more than caprice in the world; there is law. The Weasels have murdered law.

  “—listeners fully informed about the crisis,” Noel Li’s image closed primly.

  “Off!” snapped Eriksen, pointing a finger toward the omni and wishing he had a pistol. He pointed at Mown and said, “Commander, stand in front of me where I can see you without pretending to be a contortionist!”

  The admiral’s tone cut through the hazy reality that surrounded the Technical Affairs chief. He hopped quickly around Eriksen’s desk to stand between Crocker and Krasnowski.

  Eriksen pointed to the green track of the enemy laser beam. It wasn’t a line, it was a narrow fan of probable paths. “Why the blurring? Where’s the uncertainty?”

  Mown answered, “We don’t know very much about the projectile, after all. We can guess how hard it hit, that is, how much kinetic energy it was carrying. We’ve seen the beam, so we know how much energy was in that. But we don’t know the mass of the bullet, or the size of the light-sail, or how long the beam was on—”

  A pair of panicked lieutenant commanders, the seconds in command of both Military and Civil Affairs, burst into Eriksen’s office behind their chiefs.

  “Sir!” blurted the officer from Military Affairs. It was unclear—perhaps even to her—whether she was speaking to her direct superior or to Eriksen himself, “The secretary of the Senate Liaison office just called. He’s demanding we sound Red Alert and recall at least three battle squadrons soonest!”

  “Sir!” said the junior from Civil Affairs to Krasnowski. “The president of the Senate’s on the line for—” his eyes flicked toward the admiral—“Admiral Eriksen. The president herself is on the line!”

  Eriksen’s handsome features were a requisite for his position, but there was nothing wrong with his mind, or his ability to act with decision. He pointed toward Krasnowski. “All, right,” he said. “I’ll take President Ssrounish’s call.”

  His finger twitched toward Crocker. He said, “Red Alert. Do it.”

  “And the recall!” piped Crocker’s aide.

  “I said alert! If I meant something else—” Keep it simple, especially when giving important orders. Keep it explicit, keep it simple. “Do not send a recall. I have not authorized a recall.”

  Nodding—both lieutenant commanders white-faced—all the intruders started to leave Eriksen’s office. “Wait,” the admiral ordered crisply.

  He pointed toward Mown. “You,” he said. “Can you locate the source of that drive laser?”

  Commander Mown’s lips pursed. “Very probably, yes,” he said. “Yes, I suppose so.”

  “Make the attempt,” Eriksen said. “And you—” Crocker snapped to attention at the business end of the admiral’s finger—“take his plot, and if it is Weasels, I want their ears! Dismissed!”

  The office cleared. Crocker followed Mown. As they disappeared into the corridor leading to Technical Affairs, Mown was saying, “Actually, Khalians have very small external ears. It’s my understanding that the field units take the tails as . . .”

  * * *

  “Why was I not informed of thisss ... ?” demanded President Ssrounish. Her accent was normally flawless; she drew out the terminal ess of her question now to have an excuse to curl her lip above her fangs. “Why was no member of the Ssenate informed?”

  The Alliance of Planets was denounced often enough—and with enough truth—as the Alliance of Human Planets. It may be worth noting that such denunciations came generally from humans and Hrrubans. Other species did not find it worthy of comment that a powerful race should favor its own.

  But when a thoroughly acceptable nonhuman candidate presented herself for the post of president of the Alliance Senate, her colleagues had voted her in by an overwhelming margin. The duties of president were largely those of a figurehead—

  And the head of Madame Ssrounish, the Hrruban senator, was fearfully impressive.

  Ssrounish was intelligent by any standards, much less those of politicians. Her grace and beauty were remarkable, and in her social dealings she had invariably proved herself to be as gentle as a butterfly. Nevertheless, as Admiral Eriksen faced the holographic image of the catlike Hrruban, his insides twisted the way those of his remote ancestors had done when a saber-tooth stalked through the entrance of their cave.

  “Madame President,” Eriksen said with the dignity of absolute truth, “I believe you learned as fast as I did. I’ve just watched it on the omni. That is all I or my chief aides know about the event.”

  “What?” Ssrounish’s jaws twitched as though she were trying to swallow a bolus too large for her throat. It was simply a gesture, but Eriksen’s instincts told him to hurl himself through the doorway behind him.

  “Halley’s comet has exploded,” he said calmly. “We know that much. We’ll know more shortly.”

  Eriksen had commanded the Tegetthoff when plasma bolts killed fifty-eight of the seventy men with him on the cruiser’s bridge. This wasn’t the first time he’d had to function when he was scared green.

  Ssrounish blinked but remained silent for a moment. “I don’t—” she began. Then her eyes clicked into focus again, and she continued decisively, “What additional measures, are you taking to safeguard Earth, Admiral?”

  Superimposed over Ssrounish’s image in the holovision tank were red letters reading SENATOR PENRYTH—another priority call that Eriksen’s aides knew their chief would have to deal with personally. Hugh David Penryth’s votes were so closely identified with policies emanating from Fleet headquarters on Tau Ceti that he was known—not to his face—as the Senator From Tau Ceti.

  Penryth would be asking the same questions as Ssrounish, but his priorities would differ. Eriksen thought vaguely of merging the calls, but this was going to be unpleasant enough one on one.

  “Earth’s defenses—the Home System defenses—” Eriksen said, “are already sufficient to meet any potential threat, Madame President. Until—”

  “You say that, wrapped in a Fleet dreadnought!” Ssrounish roared. She reared up on her hind
legs; the sending unit in her holotank panned back automatically to show the august president of the Alliance Senate clawing strips from the three-meter ceiling of her office. “The Meeting Hall has nothing above it but clouds—and they are sparse enough in this damned bright atmosphere!”

  Must I step outside to speak further? These days Eriksen rarely exercised his talent for sarcasm. “Madame President, the Home System is more heavily defended—”

  “I am old and perhaps ready to die!” Ssrounish continued, belying her words with the supple fury of her limbs. “But my colleagues—the senators who vote the Fleet’s appropriations—they are perhaps not all so philosophical!”

  But enough was enough. “One may hope they are less timid, also,” Eriksen said. “Sol system is more heavily defended than Port Tau Ceti. Any monkey with a spacecraft can blow a snowball apart, but a real Khalian attack would require greater force than they’ve ever demonstrated ... if the Khalians are even involved. We have only the news broadcasts to suggest even that.”

  “You said ‘timid,’” President Ssrounish said.

  “Have you remembered your dignity, Madame President?”

  President Ssrounish settled back into her normal posture, bonelessly, like a house cat. “Admiral, you must be very sure of yourself.”

  “Why not? This is my skill.”

  “You say that we have only the omni newscasts to thank for any information about the attack. How is it that Noel Li knew about it before you did ... or the Senate either!”

  “Madame President,” said Eriksen grimly, “I hope to find you an answer very soon.”

  * * *

  When Lieutenant Scarlatti’s console began making busy chuckling sounds, Scarlatti stood, stretched, then leaned over the divider to see how Lieutenant Stich was doing.

  Stich was rising also, sweeping her fingers across her scalp as if to straighten the hair that she’d had stylishly removed. Almost no one really looked good as a baldie, but Jenna Stich was the ‘almost.’