Center of Gravity (11 page)

“
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 underbodies 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 12
5
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.