April 5: A Depth of Understanding (25 page)

"I can handle that, totally. My friends there," he waved at the print. "Have honesty down to a science that puts
brutal
at the mild end of the spectrum."

"OK," she agreed, settling back like this wouldn't be a short discussion, "there are six of us on this ship. The Captain and XO were already an item before they started building her. They had a very limited number of people apply to be crew. They picked for skills and willingness to go and didn't of necessity try for great psychological matches."

"I'm sure you are sane, in good physical health and have sufficient intelligence to be safe doing outside work in a suit. You are a bit younger than me and yeah, you aren't a polished operator socially. Now the hard truth. The only other male is the engineer/ back up astrogator, Harold Hanson. He
thinks
he is smooth, which totally ruins it and has already hit on me hard, more or less intimating he will gift me with his glorious attention since there isn't much of an alternative."

"He apparently doesn't favor the environmental and science officer, Alice. So I'd like to make an association with you, as you put it, before you latch onto Alice. A social contract if you want to so regard it. Limited engagement, no ties implied after we get back unless it is mutually agreeable. If we are visibly paired, Mr. Hanson will likely get off my case. With a little bit of luck he will bow to the inevitable and direct his attentions to Alice, who if she isn't made of stone will accept that as better than nothing. He doesn't smell and is reasonably fit. He must pass for what the shrinks consider sane, but I don't
like
him. I'm picky enough I
will
take nothing as an alternative. Brutally honest enough?"

"I didn't assume we'd all pair up like this. I have to admit, I tend to think of that a little bit as Earth Think. Why do you say there weren't many applicants?  I thought there would be
lots
."

"They really aren't paying much. It may seem like a lot to you, but not to a licensed pilot capable of deep trans-lunar work. And it's more or less an experimental craft, not terribly comfortable, with too small a crew to sort out the social dynamics I'm showing you. I think they are simply counting on us being too sane to kill each other in a year and a half, even if we all come back hating each other's guts."

"I'm looking at it as being a gem on my resume later, more than for the money right now."

"Me too," she admitted. "When somebody finally makes a starship, I'm betting successfully completing a long slow voyage in cramped stressful conditions will be a great recommendation to be on the crew. As to the other. Most people still think in terms of being couples. If your friends don't and make it work successfully, they are still a minority, even off Earth. I'll give you this much, if Alice can't stomach Hanson and comes to you for relief I won't get all possessive with you. Understand, I'm not volunteering for a ménage à trois , but you better think carefully on it. That just
might
drive Hanson to murder in a year and a half, if he figures it out."

"If they hadn't moved the launch date up so abruptly we'd have met each other a couple times face to face. Maybe that would have been better. I was certainly surprised how tiny you are. That didn't come across on video."

"Or I might have dropped out if I met Harold face to face and thought too much about spending a year and a half with him. Then you'd have launched with my back-up. I don't even know who that would have been."

I don't know why Harold would reject Alice," Barak said scrunching his eyebrows up. "But of course I don't really know her either. She certainly isn't ugly in any way."

"I suspect she is too smart to be charmed by a glib presentation," Deloris suggested.

"Smart is
very
attractive," Barak protested. "Who wants to spend a long time struggling to be polite with a stupid person? Maybe this is silly of me to ask, but I take it, as little as you know about me, you've already decided you like me OK? At least more than Hanson?"

"Oh yeah, he irritated me within the first
minute
I saw him and it didn't get any better. You don't stare at me with a creepy expression. You stare, but it's happy, not creepy. You talk about friends, not just about yourself. You aren't bragging on how much money and influence your friends have and I've seen them speak in the Assembly and know those are some high-powered friends you have. That you find smart attractive is just charming and you talk about writing poetry, not  some inane Earthie sports team as an interest. And if you don't own a mirror, I'll have to be the one to tell you, you're as cute as a damn puppy too."

It was a long time before he could stop laughing. She looked perplexed. But he promised, in the spirit of brutal honesty, he'd tell her the story, sometime in the next year and a half...

Chapter 17

"Heather, Tim Houston in the
Flash Gordon
reporting. We just had four vessels cross our position almost directly overhead, but about three degrees inclination to the equator. So they will cross you nearly overhead too in about twenty minutes. We waited until they were below our horizon to relay to you through the lunar sats. I'm attaching their orbital elements as closely as we could read them. We did not illuminate them, they were running their own radar so it was easy to get a fix on them."

"Thank you, Tim. We'll hail them when they come around. If we still have any antennas left above ground I'll tell you how that went."

"You really think they'll fire on you?"

"You better believe it. And if I fire on them, don't be a hero. I might not get them all and you only have two missiles. I suggest you keep them to defend yourself."

"If we can't contact you, we'll return to Home. We shall be cautious," he promised.

The clock runs slower when you are waiting Heather noticed. Even more so when you are the one who will have to take action or stand down. The Chinese ships, well almost certainly, to nine nines, would be coming over the horizon in three minutes now.

She was well below the surface, a kilometer and a half down, offset from the center of their properties by almost fifty kilometers. Their shelter was divided into small niches carved out of solid rock and designed to pass a shock wave around it without collapsing or material spalling from it's surface. A metal liner added to security from that possibility. She was in a seat anchored to the ground, wearing a helmet and strapped in just like she was in a ship.

There was a radar set sitting exactly at the middle of Central, not emitting at the moment. It was removed from the rover that didn't carry the cannon and several antennas and one actual radio transmitter, were beside it. The radar and radio feed were all fed to her down two optic fibers. They didn't have separate tunnels to run them in, but  they put them in a slot at the bottom corners, on opposite sides of the same tunnel. It was as good as they could do under the circumstances.

Heather refrained from using the radar still, but called on the emergency frequency. Trusting they hadn't maneuvered since the report from the
Flash Gordon and
were in her sky.

"Hail the Chinese ships in orbit. This is Heather Anderson at Central on the moon. Unless you inform me otherwise, I am going to assume you are armed and here to enforce the United Nations decree. If you are armed in our sky you are in violation of the resolution of the Assembly of Home and my decree."

"Ships of the People's Republic go where they wish and your Assembly and your decree are less than nothing to us."

"Then a state of war exists between us. Which will mean your nation on Earth, not just beyond L1," she told him.

"A child's tantrum. If you can make war, do so, don't talk about it."

"May I have your name?" Heather inquired. "Your next of kin deserve to be notified."

"I wouldn't share my name with a foreign devil and I'm done talking." The carrier cut off.

Heather cut the mic feed too. "So be it," she muttered to herself.

The Bofors gun mounted on one of their rovers was old and used. But it was very accurate and had to be throttled back with a waste gate to shoot at orbital velocity or below. One magazine held a hundred and ten rounds and the gun mounted two magazines. But one was strictly ballistic and loaded for ground targets.

The other had a variation of the projectiles Bofors sold for Earth use with little winglets. Since they flew in vacuum the winglets were replaced with tiny maneuvering jets, that could nudge them sideways to intercept a target. The solid state energy accumulators Jeff made under license from his lunar friend gave them a four kiloton yield when shorted out.

To shoot at a space ship in orbit she faced two problems. The trajectory of a cannon shell  fired from the ground could
intersect
an orbit, but even with the slight change in velocity the jets gave them, there was no way to make them assume a circular orbit.

She could however fire them at a shallow enough angle that they'd intersect an orbit at a very small angle from behind. The tiny jets couldn't change their motion fast enough to do a head on intercept. But again, from the rear catching up to them, the closing velocity would be low enough to allow the jets to set up a drift that would carry them to the Chinese boats. They needed the intercept to be in sunlight too, because it relied on an optical sensor.

The cannon would take a full half minute to empty a magazine, so it would elevate as it fired tracking the intersection point as it fired. Therefore they'd come under fire by a stream of projectiles for that long. The waste gate couldn't be set that finely or rapidly to make them all arrive time on target. And the minute variations in aim and velocity meant there was no point in trying to track the front or back of the line of ships. The shot spread would cover that.

Heather figured they would overfly her once, release a weapon on the back orbit and then make a last pass to assess their bombardment. If they broke off early her shots would be wasted.

"Johnson,  go to the preposition pad. I have a fire mission for you. I'm sending it to your ballistic computer now. Drive slow and steady. You will not fire until they are past us. I doubt they have rear looking infrared and you have lots of time to get back in the hole. But if you mess up and wreck, that gun tube and action is still going to be glowing bright in the infrared when they come back around. You'll be an obvious target."

"Won't their millimeter targeting radar be able to see your shells?" Johnson asked.

"Very likely yes. But they probably won't turn to look to the rear and they have to turn it on. Which they probably won't do unless they see a threat such as another ship on their navigational radar. The radar only shows what the computer tells it is of interest and they may not have programmed it for  anything as small as these cannon shells."

"Sounds reasonable to me," he agreed. There were a couple minutes while they drove to the parking pad. "We are parking on our prepositioned spot within the meter. Putting jacks down and locking the suspension. Magazine checks as 'A' selected. I'm setting it to assume the first aim point and auto fire per your program.  Anything else I'm forgetting?"

"No. If they hit us I believe you may be in a more survivable position than us. We are only doing low powered local relay. So if I don't make it tell Jeff and April I love them. The same for my mom. And I thank you for your service. Dakota, thank you too," she directed at his silent co-driver.

"You're welcome my liege," she said.

"Funny, I felt just the opposite. If
we
buy it tell my bookie on New Las Vegas, Tony Kaminski, I'm sorry I missed my last payment," Johnson requested.

"Indeed. It would be my honor."

"Fire mission in twenty seconds. Johnson off here."

Thirty seconds is a long time with a cannon rattling your brains firing almost four times a second. The first few empty cases rattled across the railed in deck on the roof. When the magazine was half empty they didn't hear them hit anymore. They were layered and the entire railed in area filled like a bin with empty hot brass.

"Slow and steady," Dakota reminded him driving back to their shelter.

"How did I get this bad reputation?" Johnson asked. "I've never wrecked."

* * *

"There it is," the Chinese  tactical officer called out. "Kind of obvious. They have radar reflectors all over the place and it's smack on the prime meridian and equator both."

"Then let's
mark
it for them," the Captain smiled. "Program a ground capable missile with a megaton warhead to retro burn and drop behind us. Set to detonate at fifty meters. Then the pass after we'll assess the accuracy and damage."

"Central, this pass those ships were observed to release a weapon that is deorbiting. I'm afraid you were right. We could see its engine fire, but don't have an accurate track for it. It should impact after the ships pass you again, around thirty to forty minutes from now I'm guessing."

"Thank you, Tim. We are firing on them. Please be aware some of the debris from any hits may persist along this orbital path for an unknown time. Some may actually rise. Most of our actual projectiles should miss and impact to the west of your position if you wish to sit it out. If not we suggest a southern tilt and course for your lift off."

"Thank you, Central. We will probably shape a low energy return to Home after they pass our horizon three times without leaving orbit."

"The third pass there may be some debris.
All
debris if we're lucky. I still wouldn't fire up the radar," she counseled.

"Four passes then, just to make sure. I especially don't want to get ahead of them. Thank you Central,
Flash Gordon
going to radio silence here."

* * *

"I might be able to put in a word and get you on an early track for a starship berth if you are interested," Barak told Deloris. "You'd have to be able to make yourself useful and have the depth to give some input on design. You'll have the practical experience of this voyage. If you can get some hands on cross training from Alice on environmental systems, that would serve you well too."