April 5: A Depth of Understanding (26 page)

Deloris was sprawled with her head tucked under his chin. She propped herself up on her elbows and looked down at him sternly. "Don't you dare toy with me about starships. That's why I got my master's ticket. That's why I'm taking engineering courses and lots of practical studies on controls and instrumentation. This is my Big Thing. So you better mean it, if you start talking starships."

Her elbows were digging in his chest, so he reached down and adjusted the Singh compensators beneath his bunk to the half G he was used to at home.

"Jeff is working on design details already. Nothing final, but subsystems that can be integrated later. He has a lock on high density miniature fusion design and I know he is experimenting with a power cycle that produces  tritium as a side product. He specifically
said
he wants that for outer system work and star ships, because a tritium – deuterium reaction produces about four times as much power as his current system. I really don't expect anyone else to beat him to a working starship unless somebody makes a huge unanticipated quantum leap in technology."

"What's in it for you?" she asked skeptically.

"I help my friend Jeff get somebody qualified, who is already obsessed with the idea. That's pretty hard to evaluate when you start looking for crew, but I think it's a plus. It should certainly please you. And there is the possibility I might be interested in a berth myself."

"Ah and are you thinking we might have a similar 'association' on a star ship?" she asked.

"I don't know. You
said
not to presume on any ties after this trip, so that will take some more evaluation," he hedged. Her lunge caught him completely off guard.

"Ow, oww. Let go my ear! Biting does not help your cause!"

* * *

The third Chinese ship of their fleet strung along the same orbit was the
Ruyi
, or scepter. It was officially
The People's Scepter
, but everybody abbreviated it for everyday use. The Captain was Samuel Bia. He was sitting in the command chair, his XO and tactical/com officer looking down at their boards. He was staring out the forward view port, contemplating the effect this mission would have both politically and on his career. They were oriented belly up to the moon which was a bright arch intruding 'down' into his personal orientation. There was a sudden hard spark of light ahead and slightly above where he was looking, but well away from the lunar horizon. It formed a small hot sphere before it quickly winked out. Then two smaller ones flashed, the same general direction, but definitely higher.

"Radar showing a cloud of debris expanding ahead of us," the tactical officer reported from his right. The command seat on a Chinese ship was in the second tier behind the others, where he could watch his crew. The man looked over his shoulder when he didn't respond.

"I was looking up," Bia told him. "There was a flash, then two smaller ones, with a very brief fireball of plasma. See if you can raise the
Straight Path
. If they don't respond check the
Guan
. I had no sense of distance so it could be either if it was from one of our ships." The Guan in front was the command ship. They would demand a reason for his interrogation.

"Straight Path does not answer," Permission to use targeting radar to examine the debris in some detail," The officer requested. "I just double checked the archive," he added, "there was no missile track on normal radar.
Guan
does not respond."

"Permission granted to scan the debris with millimeter radar. Send to Guan again:
The Straight Path of Righteousness
does not reply and we observed flashes of light which may be misfortune or attack. Add that we shall forward our radar scan when analyzed."

"Also inquire status of the
Anchun
behind us,"

"No answer
Anchun
either," There was stress in the tech's voice.

"Targeting radar shows a group of very small targets pulling away from us forward and at a small inclination toward the moon. At the very edge of detection now. They must be well under a hundred millimeters radar cross section, on the edge of detectable size at this range."

"How many?" Bia asked.

"My screen is saying about eighty. But it keeps picking up and dropping a few numbers. I'm losing some steadily now, passing out of range. This radar is also showing some large pieces of debris, as well as a large number of objects in the less than a meter size range."

"Do we need to maneuver to avoid collision with them?"

"No sir. Quite a few have acquired vectors away from us and we are as likely to duck into the small pieces scattered our direction as to dodge them."

"Hold course then," he ordered. Now what the hell was he supposed to do?

* * *

Johnson drove very safely back to the tunnel shelter and backed in with even more caution. He sent Dakota out to drop the shutters over the forward view ports. You couldn't see anything but the back of the big rock sitting outside the entry anyway, but it was still a bit claustrophobic staring at the inside of the shutters.

She dogged the shutters down, something they didn't usually do, but the Russians had welded a bracket and a pin with a spring retainer to lock it down, hanging on a chain. Like everything on the rovers it was brutally functional instead of decorative. She also plugged in the cable to a laser/receiver on the far side of the rock blocking their entry. It was pointed line of sight with no relay at another on a mast at Central. They could trade very low powered signals with no worries about being detected from orbit.

"Central, This is Johnson in the 'A' rover. We have completed our fire mission and are back safe and locked down. Any orders?"

"I suggest you stay in your seats with your restraints on. We have confirmation we have a weapons release in orbit. No hard data on impact time though."

"Thank you Heather," we'll do that.

"Dakota," he called back to the woman entering from the lock. "Boss lady suggests we strap in because we likely have an attack inbound."

"If it's going to be bad enough to strap in shouldn't you have your pot on?"

"You're right," he agreed and put his helmet on locking it down. "Look straight with a tight seam?" he asked.

"Looks sweet to me."

"If we get any motion or signs of an attack drop your face plate," he ordered.

"Roger."

It didn't take Johnson long to get bored. He was thinking about putting some music on or bringing a game up on the screen. His mind was far enough away the glare of light that blasted under the edges of the port shutters shocked him. That didn't mean he forgot to slap his face plate closed. He looked at Dakota. His vision was still a little grayed out from the flash, but he could see her visor was closed.

"That had to be one hell of a..."   >>>WHAM<<<<

The ground wave kicked him in the butt. There was a deep thud and rocking motion and then a lesser vertical impact again. It would take him awhile to figure out they'd been tossed in the air by the primary ground shock, bounced off the side wall and landed on the floor of the tunnel again, but not landing flat on both tracks.

They landed on one corner and rattled around corner to corner before settling. The noise from debris hitting the face of the cliff was like hail on a roof and some pieces managed the two or three cushion bounce to get inside and impact the front of the rover.

"They really did it," Dakota said in a small voice. She reached up to unbuckle.

"Stay put! Johnson ordered rather sharply. She looked surprised.

"Tactics dearie. They may drop one on us and then follow up with another when everybody stands down and starts digging out or we pop out to assess the damage."

"How long do you want to wait?"

"Give it two hours, no, two and a half. If they don't pop us a second time by then it probably won't happen. Some small local bombings at street level on Earth they'd space them out only four or five minutes apart. It would be different there of course. They'd catch the people fleeing the first bomb, or wait until ten minutes or so to target the first cops and fire fighters on the scene."

"The orbital mechanics of it would make it difficult to do," Dakota pointed out. "More likely they would wait a full orbit or two to repeat."

"But they could have one ship maneuver,  or release a weapon to loiter before it does a burn, couldn't they?" he asked. Dakota just nodded that was so.

"Ah, we're getting a little higher radiation readings than usual. Some of the crap thrown against our cliff is probably a bit hot. We'll want to scrape the approach ramp clean and walk around and check for hot pieces bounced inside by hand."

* * *

"The Armed Merchant
Flash Gordon
, calling Central. We only saw one ship passing this time. If the others have assumed a new orbit it's over the horizon from us. Or maybe Heather blew them all to hell. I'll repeat twice in case you can hear but not reply and inform Home also. We'll go to radio silence before he comes back around. I'm not going to try to engage this one at this point, though it is tempting. Will repeat in ten minutes."

* * *

Heather didn't see any flashes of light. She just had her video feed fail, the camera vaporized too fast to transmit a bright image. She never heard Tim's message about a ship surviving. About four seconds later there was a tremendous white noise and an earth quake. The regular power in the shelter went out and the emergency lighting came on. There was dust and some things stacked too high fell over, but the pressure held.

"When you have local injury or damages under control report in," Heather spoke in com. It was a matter of faith to think anybody heard her and the local net wasn't damaged, but then reports started trickling in.

"Everything is secure in the tunneling machine garage," Mo reported. "We are suited  up and exploring up tunnel to see how far we have pressure and determine if any sections are collapsed or damaged."

"Thank you Mo. Be cautious."

"Oh yes, we'll seal the curtains behind us as we go and if we see debris on the floor we won't proceed until we see if the overhead needs any shoring. There's a port on the fiber by every pressure curtain, so we'll keep you appraised of our progress," he promised.

"That's excellent. Do you have radiation detection?"

"Clipped on my suit and a redundant unit on my assistant. I doubt it's hot anywhere but right on the surface where any fireball touched. And that will decay very quickly."

"OK, I'm checking other teams, but ping me as you go."

* * *

"How big?" Jeff asked.

"In the megaton range," Jon admitted. "There is apparently one surviving Chinese ship in lunar orbit."

"Do you intend to kill him, or should I arrange it?"

"You scare me when you get that face and flat voice. I've already ordered the bombardment of the UN. The lead strike happens in about six hours. Then the rest follow over the next day. Can you wait to see what sort of response we get before killing the entire Chinese nation and ruining the climate in the northern hemisphere for a couple years?"

"On Earth? Yes I can hold off doing anything to them, but not this ship in lunar orbit. It needs to be stopped right now."

"I've asked if anybody is in a position to intercept. So far nobody can guarantee it. We have two armed ships scheduled to dock at Home today and both are going to remain here for defense rather than turn around. But neither wants to go to the moon to actively hunt and intercept this ship. We'll use your mom's projectors on him of he tries to leave orbit towards us."

"You have his orbital elements?"

"You want them?
Flash Gordon
is still on the backside feeding us data. They wait until the Chinese have dropped below their horizon and squirt it to us. They haven't deviated for three orbits."

"Yeah. If I can't do anything in the next couple hours you better find more  backup."

"Do you have a ship free?" Jon asked.

"No, but I have some weapons in lunar orbit. Inclined to pass over both Central and Armstrong. If the Chinese pass over Central they are in range of each other. They are stealthed and have countermeasures and decoys to penetrate a well guarded Earth target. I can't imagine one ship can carry better ballistic protection than an Earth base or city."

"You can't use kinetic weapons to soften them up though."

"But not making a burning reentry their stealth capabilities remain intact. I intend to come at them from both sides if possible. I have them orbiting counter to each other. And I'm going to ask if the
Flash Gordon
can help."

"Ah, I can picture it," Jon said.

"I hope the Chinese can't."

Chapter 18

"I have two interceptor missiles," Tim told Jeff. "They carry conventional explosives and they have limited burn time on the engines, but they are restartable and programmable. We got them for self defense and they were expensive enough at that."

"If you expend them I'll cover the cost or replace them. I'm looking at destroying them in two more orbits if they stay that long. Can you distract them by firing at them at the last instant, just before they pass the point you can do an intercept? By the time they react they should be beyond the point they can fire back on you from that orbit. If you agree I'm going to maneuver my warheads to be in position to strike within seconds of your shot. They will be aimed by their initial burn and not be showing an exhaust or radiating from hot engines as the approach. Since they are stealthed they shouldn't be detected until quite close."

"I don't know what you are shooting, but my missiles have to get within a hundred meters to do damage reliably. Coasting in from half an orbit away there is going to be some inaccuracy. How close can you get shooting that way?"

"I'm pretty sure we can get within ten kilometers and they can do a six G terminal sprint that will leave the Chinese scant seconds to react or they will be even closer. They will be coming from opposite directions. If they are busy with your missiles and mine from the front I doubt they will ever see the one from the back. Nobody carries a serious rear-looking sensor suite. They are both fail fused and even if they don't get closer than ten kilometers, they are big enough I doubt they will be unscathed."