The Desert of Stars (The Human Reach) (28 page)

WASHINGTON – In a 5-4 decision, the Supreme Court ruled
that a cloned child was not entitled to the inheritance his parents’ will
designated for their deceased child of the same name and genetic origin. The
case, Meyer v. Meyer, involved a multibillion-dollar fortune left in limbo
after the deaths of Matthew and Patricia Meyer in a skycar accident in 2134.
Their first and only natural child, Joshua Andrew, had died of Wykham’s Disease
in 2132, and they had cloned him shortly after his death, but they left their
will unchanged. Lawyers for the estate and the cloned boy maintained the parents
still intended for their cloned child to inherit, but members of the Meyers’
extended family, who were listed as secondary heirs in the will, successfully
persuaded the court that laws specifying a cloned person did not automatically
assume the legal status of their templator applied here. The living Joshua
Meyer, now eight years old, will be turned over to state care, as none of his
relatives want to adopt him or provide for his upbringing, citing a deep
opposition to legal cloning. One of his attorneys had said she will look into
raising him herself.

USS Apache, 11 Leonis Minoris

“Run, you bastards, run!” Lieutenant
Ortega, the weapons officer, said to general laughter in the CIC.

About twelve thousand kilometers ahead of
Apache
and
the rest of the fleet’s outer screen were the two Chinese beam cruisers and
their escorts, fleeing toward the safety of Kuan Yin. The new defenses had
worked:
Diaz
and
Gettysburg
had been the cruisers’ first targets,
and their forward laser cannon had responded quickly, functioning as
counterlasers and burning out the optics on the two enemy cannon at extreme
range.
Gettysburg
had suffered a burn-through in her nose armor, but no
one had been hurt; she would patch a hole and be ready to fight by the time
they reached Kuan Yin.

Trap sprung,
Neil thought, allowing himself a
measure of satisfaction at seeing his project come to fruition.
We’ve
defanged their primary advantage. Of course, now they know we can do that, and
they’ll use those lasers only when they can get a flank shot. I wonder what other
countermeasures they’ll come up with.
As Kuan Yin grew brighter in their
telescopes, he came up with some guesses.

A week later, the great herd of transports settled into
an orbit around Shan Tsai, Kuan Yin’s outer moon, a barren and cratered
satellite that orbited more than half a million kilometers from the planet. Admiral
Cooper left the heavy frigates
Sprague
and
Ramage
as escorts and
ordered the rest of her warships to descend toward the planet. Within a day, they
passed through the orbit of the inner moon, Long Nu. The frigates
Kiowa
and
Comanche
broke off to scout the Chinese keyhole orbiting the moon, but
they found no ambush waiting beyond.

As the frigates rejoined the main fleet, the Chinese fleet
thrust, rising from a highly-inclined bombardment orbit of three hundred kilometers
above Kuan Yin to a prograde equatorial orbit at roughly four thousand klicks,
at the extreme edge of the powerful ground-based lasers dotting Kuan Yin’s
surface. Only the five prize ships remained in low orbit, along with the host
of European and Islamic Federation transports.

The allied fleet, meanwhile, parked in a retrograde orbit at
twenty thousand kilometers, out of range of any Chinese weapons.
They have
to know our strategy, but I guess they are going to insist we execute it,
Neil
thought.
Maybe they think they can beat it, although I don’t know how.

At Admiral Cooper’s command, every ship in the fleet wheeled
to face nearly opposite its direction of travel. The Russian ships, five of
which mounted spinal cannon, could now prove their worth, although Neil
couldn’t help but look askance at the destroyers
Delfin
and
Karakatitsa
,
both half-sisters of the Chinese spy ship
San Jacinto
had battled over
Commonwealth two years prior.

The smaller American ships fired first, their turrets
emitting a salvo of 23-kilogram shells into the darkness. The spinal mounts on
the
Diaz
,
Texas,
and
Maryland
opened up next, followed by
those on the Russian ships, and their shells descended to the enemy fleet’s
altitude.

Rocks down a well,
Neil thought.
This isn’t a
battle so much as a bombardment.

The Chinese ships launched hundreds of missiles in reply,
but they had a long climb ahead of them.
Waste of resources
.
They
won’t have any maneuver fuel once they get close, and we can dodge any we can’t
pick off.

‘Round the planet the cloud of American and Russian shells
went, all growing closer together and approaching the Chinese fleet, which had
bunched together to allow its members to defend one another. Now China’s
reasons for increasing the fleet’s altitude over Kuan Yin became clear: They
could see much further over the planet’s horizon, and could thus engage the
inbound shells at greater distance.

Defensive lasers reached out for the shells, exploding the
first hundreds of kilometers away. Antimissiles targeted any leakers, but it
was largely a battle of whether the American and Russian mass drivers could
overcome the Chinese fleet’s laser engines and capacitors …

… and the advantage was with the allies. Chinese defenses were
destroying shells at ever-decreasing ranges …

… and then a frigate captain snapped. Her computers told her
she had to move or take a hit, and she thrust at a full gee to dodge an
incoming shell. The maneuver worked, but the fleet’s interlaced defenses had a
sudden hole, and more shells were going to get through.

“Every ship in the fleet has lit its torch,” said
Apache
‘s
sensor operator, his voice excited. “Got a few dodging, but it looks like they’re
breaking orbit, heading for their keyhole.”

Cheers resounded around
Apache
’s CIC. The enemy was
fleeing without putting up much of a fight! Now they just had to take care of
those incoming missiles …

“Wait, one, sir – ” Neil said, but he was cut off by the
collision warning sounding. He was thrown painfully against his chair straps,
and a petty officer fell and struck the floor, hard. She cursed and picked herself
up.

“What the hell, Propes?” Captain Howell shouted.

“Sir, the computer took control from me and executed an
emergency turn and thrust,” Ensign Cohen, the propulsion officer, said. “I
don’t know why! Says we almost hit another ship, but the
Maryland
is
almost thirty klicks away.”

Neil raced through sensor reports on his console. “Confirm,
there’s nothing outside. All the other American ships in the fleet are
maneuvering, sir – it looks random!”

“Get me the flag!” Howell shouted.

“External comms are down, sir,” an astronaut responded.

Cohen added, “The computer’s not giving me back control, sir.
I don’t understand it.”

“Some of my point defense batteries just went offline, and
I’ve got a yellow on two of the counterbattery turrets,” Jessica said. “Did our
warranty just expire?”

Howell grimaced. “People, explain this.”

Neil chased a flashing light on his console. “Just before
the thrust, we picked up a hefty EM pulse from the direction of the planet.”

That sent Cohen scanning through her logs. “That’s it! The
collision warning … it was the
Eagle!
She
told us it was about to
crash into us. The computer ignored the sensor data and reacted.”

“And it looks like they got a virus into our systems,” the
systems officer said. “I’m after it.”

We update the handshake codes constantly, so the Hans
can’t get anything through our receivers during normal communications,
Neil
thought.
But the anti-collision systems are a safety system and run
separately in case the main network goes down, and we make it easy for our
ships to warn each other off. I guess they figured out how to trip that system
from
Eagle.
And they bollixed every American ship in the fleet.

The incoming missiles were eight minutes away.

USS Javier Benavidez y Diaz

Komarov had managed to obtain Donovan a seat in the
battlecruiser’s large CIC, arguing he was more helpful with the ship’s systems
than the enlisted shepherds Captain Matthews had provided.

The command center was now in a quiet sort of chaos, with
officers and enlisted personnel exchanging information and orders in harsh,
frustrated whispers. Admiral Cooper floated behind a 22-year-old systems tech third
class, who was working desperately to figure out how the virus kept
re-infecting the point-defense laser energy management software the moment she
reinstalled it.

“A front-row seat at the circus, eh, Mister Calvin?” Komarov
said to him cheerfully. “Don’t worry. Your Space Force may not build ships that
work, but I assure you that the Russian fleet will defend this ship to the
last.”

“Why is that, Sergei?”

“Because I’m on board, and while no one ever seems to
acknowledge it, I’m far too important and attractive to die!”

Outside, the Russian ships maneuvered to interpose
themselves between the American vessels and the incoming missiles. On various
external camera views, Donovan saw antimissiles arcing away from some of the destroyers
and light frigates; apparently, they had not been as badly affected by the
computer attack as the rest of the fleet. Along with the
Diaz,
it appeared
the old cruisers
Texas
and
Maryland
had been hit worst of all;
they were adrift, not even able to participate in the rapid-fire exchange of communication
via running lights that the rest of the ships had started up.

Admiral Cooper slammed her fist into the table beside the
systems tech, startling him. “Send a runner down to the flight deck and tell
them to start prepping the jumpers. If we can’t get comms back, I’ll send my
orders by hand.”

USS Valley Forge

A distant spark, and
Valley Forge’s
fire control
officer shouted, “Got one!” Her antimissile had blasted one of the nearest Chinese
inbounds.

Other antimissiles struck their targets, and the Chinese
barrage withered. More than two-thirds of them burst into unguided flechettes –
well before they normally would, but they had several immobile targets in their
sights.

Nukes. There are nukes within the rest,
Erin Quintana
knew.
They’ll be concealed within the cloud of regular missiles, which are
decoys for our defenses.

She drummed her fingers on her console. The autoloaders in
Valley
Forge
’s main guns were in the clutches of the virus, but she still had
control of the secondary batteries, which were little more than machine guns –
and usually about as useful in fights that ranged over thousands of kilometers.
But with the lasers offline, they were the destroyer’s last line of defense.

All this technology, and we’re reduced to throwing our rocks
at their rocks,
she thought.

The Russian ships, blissfully unaffected by the
electronic attack, threw everything they had at the incoming weapons. Lasers
melted flechettes; antimissiles slammed into missiles.

But it wasn’t enough. The first flechettes speared into
silent
Maryland
and
Texas
, and a fifty-kiloton nuke went off less
than twenty meters from the
destroyer
Concord,
incinerating her
and all 145 people on board. The blast also wrecked the main laser on the
nearby
Shenandoah
, putting her out of action.
Chicago
took a dozen
flechettes in her fusion candle, just as more darts struck
Diaz,
cutting
into the flight deck and killing the assembled jumper crews.
New Orleans
lost
a heat sink, and
Lansing
had two remass tanks vented to space.
San
Francisco, Olympic
and several Russian ships suffered minor damage, and the
Chinese attack was spent.

We’d all be dead if it had been a close engagement
, Erin
thought. The missiles had been programmed to target the bigger ships, so
Valley
Forge
and most of the other smaller craft came through unscathed.

Slowly, systems officers in the
fleet began beating back the disease within their computers. When a particular
solution was found, systems techs rode jumpers to other ships to install the
fixes there, although they steered clear of wounded
Chicago,
whose
candle was emitting nasty bursts of radiation that jumper shielding could not
deflect. And for the
Diaz,
whose mangled flight deck could not accept a
jumper, astronauts were forced to board by EVAing into an airlock, datachips in
hand.

Twelve hours later, the Chinese
fleet had climbed to the halfway mark to their wormhole, an altitude well above
the wounded allies. It hadn’t altered course to attack – perhaps, Erin thought,
the enemy was unsure how badly damaged the American fleet was.
But if they
do know …

USS Apache

The announcement that propulsion was working drew ragged
applause from the CIC. Neil did not participate; he was focused on the distant Chinese
ships on his screen, hoping to see the telltale signs of turnover. Their final
threat had been briefed as low probability, given the assumption that the
allies could quickly counter it with a superior force, but now …

That’s it. They aren’t flipping to decelerate to the
keyhole, and they aren’t coming after us. That leaves one other worthwhile
target.

“Captain Howell, we’ve got a major problem, sir,” he said.

Howell flipped himself on a handhold and pushed himself
toward Neil’s console.