Center of Gravity (9 page)

Ordered Ascent called up Warship 434’s encounter records, and swiftly found a match there with some of the alien ship energy patterns ahead. The H’rulka had drifted into this species just once before, some ten-twelfths of a
gnyii
, one rotation of the homeworld about its sun, ago. Evidently, they called themselves
humanity
, a burst of low-frequency sound without meaning. The Sh’daar masters called them
Nah-voh-grah-nu-greh Trafhyedrefschladreh
, a complex collection of sonic phonemes that meant something like “20,415-carbon-oxygen-water.” Humanity was very nearly the twelve to the fourth intelligent species encountered so far by the Masters that was carbon-based, breathed oxygen, and used liquid dihydrogen oxide as a solvent and transport medium.

Repulsive vermin. No floater sac, no feeder nets or filter sieves, no manipulators—unless the two jointed appendages sprouting from near the top of the creature were used for that purpose. Only two tiny photoreceptors, instead of broad photoreceptor patches of integument. Surface crawlers. Poison breathers. The images in the H’rulka records had been made of creatures captured in that one encounter, but none of the specimens had survived long enough for their captors to learn how or what they metabolized, how they got around, how they reproduced, or how they managed to
viiidyig
without having a colony component designed for it.

And somehow the disgusting creatures had managed to build starships and enter the Great Void. Ordered Ascent never ceased to be amazed at the inventiveness of the natural order.

“Some of the vermin ships have taken notice of us,” High Drifting reported. “They are accelerating away from the larger of the two sub-planets ahead. We will soon be under attack.”

Ordered Ascent considered this. They’d pursued the probe they’d detected in System 783,451 in order to determine where it had come from. When the fleeing probe had divided into four independent sections, the H’rulka ship had split as well.

It was imperative that Warship 434 return to an Imperial base and report. The vermin occupying Star System 784,857 were not as technologically advanced as the H’rulka, obviously, but they
were
close enough in terms of ship and weapons technology to be of concern. The Sh’daar needed to be informed.

“Set navigational coordinates for System 644,998,” Ordered Ascent directed. It hesitated, then added, “and prepare for Divergence.”

This last was an uncomfortable order to give, and more uncomfortable to obey. The H’rulka, long ago in their pre-technological Eden, had evolved as herd-dwellers, drifting in vast islands in the skies of their homeworld. Just as they felt claustrophobic when they were enclosed, they felt a terrifying isolation when separate colonies were cut off from one another.

But the H’rulka of Warship 434 were well trained and disciplined. Across the cavernous interior of the control area, each of twelve massive gas bags drifted outward toward a wall, where a section of the curved surface flowed and ran suddenly like liquid dihydrogen oxide, then dilated open. Ordered Ascent moved through the nearest of these openings, entering a far smaller, more claustrophobic space forming around it.

“Weapons ready for combat,” Swift Pouncer reported.

“Warship 434 ready for Divergence,” Wide Net, the navigation officer, added.

“Accelerate now… .”

And the H’rulka ship began twisting space.

VFA–44 Dragonfire Squadron

Giuliani Spaceport

New York State, Earth

2018 hours, EST

Trevor Gray jumped out of the pubtran and onto the spaceport’s tarmac. The Starhawks of VFA–44 were lined up ahead beneath the field lighting, sleek and mirrored jet-black, each, at the moment, a rounded ovoid of light-drinking nanosurface perhaps seven meters long and three tall and wide. As the squadron pilots approached, the central section of ten of the ships yawned open to receive them.

“Where the hell are Collins and Kirkpatrick?” Commander Allyn demanded as she stepped off the ’tran.

The other pilots, already starting to jog toward their waiting spacecraft, pulled up short. “They were with Prim at the party,” Lieutenant Walsh said, using Gray’s hated squadron handle.

“Gray?”

“I don’t know, sir,” Gray replied. “I did see them earlier, but…” He ended with a shrug.

“Shit.” She looked around, as if searching for another transport from the eudaimonium. “They’ll just have to make it when they make it, then. Let’s strap ’em on, ladies!”

Gray reached his waiting Starhawk, grabbed the upper lip of the opening, which shaped and hardened itself to his grasp, and dove into the black interior feetfirst. His skinsuit was already reshaping itself for flight ops; his helmet was waiting for him inside.

He wondered if he should tell Allyn what he’d seen at the party. Kirkpatrick had definitely gotten into something he shouldn’t have, and had been flying-impaired. There was no way he was going to be able to operate a fighter; though if Collins could get his deet engaged, he had a chance. Missing an emergency recall, though, was serious.

He found himself grinning as he pulled the helmet over his head and let it seal itself to the unfolding collar of his skinsuit.

His palms came down on the fighter’s control contact plates, one to his left, one to the right. At a thought, the body of the fighter faded to invisibility, and he could see the tarmac, the other fighters, the sky-glow of the eudaimonium a few kilometers to the south as clearly as if he’d been standing out in the open. Another thought switched on the fighter’s power plant and engaged the diamagnetic outer hull fields. The opening flowed shut like water, sealing him in. The Starhawk’s hull began growing longer and thinner.

Starhawks and other military fighters utilized what was known in the trade as VEG, variable external geometry. The various elemental components of the hull—carbon, iron, iridium, and dozens of others—were arranged within a nanotechnic engineering matrix that allowed them to reshape themselves within the ship’s informational morphic field. Standard flight configuration was a needle-slim shard twenty meters long, with a swelling amidships large enough to accommodate—just barely—the pilot and the primary ship systems: power, drives, life support, and weapons. As he brought the ship to flight-ready status, it lifted itself above the tarmac in a silent hover, almost as though straining against the gravitational bonds tethering it to the planet.

“Dragon Three, ready for boost,” Donovan’s voice reported.

“Seven, flight ready,” Lieutenant Walsh said.

The others began chiming in, one after another. “Dragon Nine, ready to lift,” Gray said, as around him the other fighters drifted up from the ground, levitating a few meters into the night sky. Only two, Dragonfires Five and Eleven, remained lifeless on the tarmac.

Perhaps, Gray thought, he
should
say something to the skipper. But one societal quirk of the Navy was identical to one found in the squatters living in the Manhat Ruins. You didn’t carry tales about others, even if you hated them. Being marked as an informer, a
tattler
, could be as socially crippling as being a Prim.

So long as withholding the information didn’t compromise the squadron or a mission, he would keep what he knew about Kirkpatrick to himself.

“Situational update is coming on-line,” Allyn told them.

Gray saw the data coming through… a ship of alien design, almost certainly one belonging to a Sh’daar subject race, was approaching cis-lunar space. He looked at the stats and gave a low whistle. The thing was
huge
.

“VFA–44,” a voice came in over the com link, “this is New York Met ATC. You are cleared for emergency launch, vector one-zero-eight plus four-one degrees at ten gravities, over.”

“New York Met ATC,” Allyn replied. “We copy clear for emergency launch, vector one-zero-eight plus four-one degrees at ten gravities. Thank you.”

“Roger and Godspeed, VFA–44.”

“Stand by to boost, close formation,” Allyn said. “Nav on auto.”

Together, the ten fighters swung their needle prows up to a forty-one-degree angle off the tarmac, then swung to face the southern horizon. Gray could see the string of faint stars marking the SupraQuito strand up in synchorbit almost directly ahead.

“Ten gravities, in four,” Allyn continued, “. . . three… two… one…
boost
!”

As one, the ten fighters hurtled skyward at one thousand meters per second per second. Gray had a brief, blurred impression of the massed lights of the eudaimonium falling away below and behind as the fighters shrieked through fast-thinning atmosphere. He thought of Angela… and decided it was good knowing she was alive.

He wondered if he would ever see her again… wondered if he
wanted
to.

The Starhawks had been in their atmospheric configuration for their flight in over the ocean earlier that evening, their manta-wings stretched wide to assist with banks, turns, and lift. There was no need for such finesse on the way up, however. To reach space they required only raw, savage power and high Gs. The needle configuration gave the greatest streamlining and, as the fighters climbed above the forty-thousand-meter line, they were able to feed more and more power to the flickering singularities off their bows, increasing their accelerations to just over five hundred Gs, increasing their velocities by half a million meters per second per second.

As they rose above the tenuous, uppermost wisps of Earth’s atmosphere and the stars became colder, harder, and more brilliant, flight control transferred from New York Metropolitan to SupraQuito. At the halfway point, eighteen thousand kilometers out and just two minutes later, they switched their singularities around to aft and began slowing.

“So why are we going back to the barn, Skipper?” Lieutenant Terrance Jacosta asked. “This download says the enemy is just half a million kilometers out!”

“Because we’re flying just a little light on snakes right now, numb-nuts,” Allyn replied. “Get your head out of party mode and get with the program!”

“Oh, yeah. Right.”

They’d not needed missile or impactor round load-outs for a fly-by above a friendly city, so the only weapons capability the squadron had at the moment were their StellarDyne Blue Lightning PBP–2 particle beam projectors, since those weapons pulled charged particles directly from the zero-point field. The weapons of choice for long-range work, however, were VG–10 Krait smart missiles. Starhawks generally carried a warload of thirty-two Kraits, or snakes, plus fifty thousand rounds apiece for their kinetic-kill Gatling cannons.

Gray looked at the schematic of the intruder. Sending a squadron up against
that
thing with nothing but beam weapons would be suicide the easy way. At least with Kraits, usually carried in load-outs with variable-yield warheads of five to fifteen kilotons, you could stand off at long range and pound the bastard until something gave. With the PBP, you had to be close, and you had to be surgically precise. With something
that
big, you might get better results giving the alien the finger.

In close formation, then, the ten fighters neared the SupraQuito dock facility. Gray could see
America
in her berth, connected to the main base structure by a transit tube and a web-work of mooring lines. Still slowing, now, to a few tens of meters per second, they passed the carrier and the dock beneath their keels—though concepts such as
up
and
down
, of course, had no meaning in microgravity. Clearing the structure by seven hundred meters, they continued decelerating, balancing their drive singularities to bring them to a dead halt relative to the
America
, just half a kilometer off her stern.

“VFA–44,” a voice said, “you are cleared for trap in Landing Bay Two.”

“Dragon One,” Allyn’s voice replied. “Copy. Okay, people. Switch to AI approach. Land by reverse numbers.”

Cutting their drives and flipping end-for-end, they opened aft venturis and fired their plasma-maneuvering thrusters, using jets of super-heated water as reaction mass. Unlike uniform gravitational acceleration, the thrusters had a kick. Gray was plastered against the embrace of his seat at three Gs as he began gaining speed once more, this time directly toward the aft end of the
America
.

In normal space operations, they would be using their gravitic drives and coming in from much farther out, at much higher speeds. Trapping on board a carrier snugged up to the dock was child’s play by comparison, or it would have been if a missed cue or a lapse in concentration hadn’t risked punching through the gossamer strands and struts of the synchorbital base.

The hab modules on board the carrier were turning, providing spin gravity for the crew. Each approach had to be precisely on the money; Dragonfire Twelve—Lieutenant Jacosta—made the first approach, accelerating slightly as he slid into the deep shadow beneath the carrier’s belly, then at the last moment fired his lateral thrusters to give him a side vector of seven meters per second, matching the movement of the landing bay as it swung in ahead and from the right. Dragonfire Eleven—Kirkpatrick—was missing from the formation. Tucker was next, in Dragon Ten.