A Sword Into Darkness (29 page)

Pilot Oneida’s voice called out from the cockpit.  “Colonel!  You’re going to want to get up here.”

Henson re-entered the cockpit and saw Keller manipulating his controls to absolutely no effect.  It was easy to see his fruitless efforts because the lighting in the hangar was fully on, no longer on battery backup.  A red flashing light strobed over their heads.  The two immense, armored hatches that separated them from the vacuum had each begun pulling away, revealing the stark black of empty space.  Ship’s power was restored and the hangar had already been fully evacuated.  In a few moments, he felt sure they would be left stranded in space.

Oneida held out a communications headset to his CO.  Henson grabbed it and put it over his head, positioning the microphone in front of his mouth.  He keyed the mike.  “Kelley, this ship was never hit, was it?”

Nathan’s voice came back instantly.  “I’m truly sorry, Colonel.  Did I neglect to tell you about the rather robust damage control training simulation program the ship has?  I really should put that in the next familiarization course.”

“I saw that meteor.  I felt it strike the ship.”

“No, you saw a meteor test track overlaid on the actual tactical feed.  You felt the engines pulse to provide the tactile simulation of a hit.  And then the system closed off the appropriate locks and gave the expected alarms for this type of casualty.  If we had gotten partial power restored, I could have even shown you video of the damage.  But, no, we were never hit.”

The SSTOS lurched slightly, and Henson saw them float slowly up, out of the hangar and into the infinite void.  “Kelley!  What the hell do you think you’re doing?”

“I’m doing what I have to do.  I’m fulfilling a promise I made to a man who endured the doubts of an entire planet to prepare mankind to defend itself.”  The SSTOS cleared the hangar doors, revealing the trapezoidal armor plates of the destroyer’s forward dorsal hull.  It looked stark and unreal out there, all alone, without the enveloping protection of the hangar in which it had been born, without the comforting proximity of the Earth’s broad horizon below it.

Nathan’s voice came over the headphones again.  “Oh, look, Colonel.  You seem to have abandoned your perfectly good ship for no reason at all.  I’m afraid I’ll have to claim her as salvage before some ne’er-do-well absconds with her.”

Henson growled in frustration.  “You can’t steal back your ship, Kelley.  It’s not only petty, it’s treason!”

“I suppose I’ll have to rely on the vindication of history.”

“You have no crew, no shuttle.  And what about the ammo and reactor power you expended thus far?  I can guarantee you that you won’t be visiting any filling stations between here and the Deltans.”

Nathan’s voice was vaguely disappointed in response.  “Let’s try to proceed on the assumption that I’m not a complete idiot, okay?  This ship is fully stocked and has enough reactor power and delta-v for four years of continuous operation.  As for the ammo and crew, trust me.  I won’t be going off half-cocked or ill-prepared.”

Colonel Calvin Henson screamed with rage.  Oneida and Keller stared at him, joined by Commander Torrance who appeared behind the CO to stare agog at the blackness of space surrounding them.  Henson gripped the mike, as if to force his words into the instrument and through the ether.  “What gives you the right, Nathan?  What makes you think you’re entitled to first contact?  What makes you believe you can do it better than we can?”

There was a long pause.  Then, “I suppose it’s faith, faith in someone who had faith in me, faith that I’ve been tried in the crucible once already, and I’m tempered for whatever comes next.”

Below them, the
Sword of Liberty
began to pull away, acceleration building quickly to a full g.  The wedge of the forward hull moved forward, followed by the dully glowing radiator panels laid out in front of the reactor vessel, and then the brilliant blue thrust of the photonic drive, boiling away with corpuscles of light so intense they seemed to be physical objects in and of themselves.

Nathan’s voice called back over the increasingly widening gulf.  “Your controls should unfreeze in the next thirty minutes.  Then, just follow the recorded flight plan to Earth and reentry.  You should be there in about three days.  Farewell, Colonel.  Don’t take this personally, please.  I hope to see you in command of the next
Sword
when we get back from our mission.  You deserve one of these.

“But this one is mine.”

BOOK TWO:  “TEMPERED”

12:  “ECCENTRIC ORBITS”

“
And
we’re back!”

“Hey, all of you out there on the drive to work, welcome back to Pat—”

“And Terry—”

“
In the Morning!!
”

“If you missed the first hour—”

“Ya lazy bums.”

“Terry!  Anyway, if you missed the first hour, we’re talking about what everyone seems to be talking about—namely, the unprecedented surprise launch of the
Sword of Liberty
off the coast of California yesterday.  Now, I don’t care if you’re an old-timer and you remember the hey-day of the space shuttle, or maybe Apollo and the moon landing, or hell, perhaps you’re ancient and you remember Sputnik, Gagarin, and Shepard, but this is seriously the coolest thing to happen to space in maybe
ever
.  I’m totally geekin’ out.”

“Yes, you are a total geek.”

“Terry!  Well,
I
think our devoted listener-ship is with me on this one.  This thing is
big
.  This thing is fast, powerful, and
sexy
.  It’s the answering call to all the dashed dreams of generations of enthusiasts and starry-eyed hopefuls.  This is sci-fi made real!  Forget multi-month missions to Mars to pick up rocks.  Forget robot probes and halting, tentative steps into space.  This is Space with a capital ‘S’.”

“Yeah, yeah.  It’s cool, Pat.  It makes those fragile little NASA rockets look like bush-league amateurs.  But while you’re having a geekgasm, think about what this really is:  they didn’t call it a space-explorer.  They don’t call it a solar system surveyor.  They called it a destroyer.  Think about that!”

“What are you trying to say, Terry?  Who cares what they call it?”

“I care!  And you can bet your sweet wife’s fanny that the Chinese and the EU care.  Our government, who only has our best interests at heart of course, has just weaponized space to a degree unheard of before now.  Hell, I couldn’t even count the number of international treaties violated if I used both my fingers
and
toes.  Why?  C’mon, there’s gotta be a reason for all those missiles and lasers.  And what’s with that little speech Colonel Henson gave?  ‘—ready to face whatever may come … in defense and support of our planet, but against no man or terrestrial power.’  If it ain’t against no man or earthly power, who the hell is it against?!  Is there some non-earthly enemy they haven’t let out of the bag yet?”

“Ha!  Terry, I’m the Trekkie, but you’re the first one to jump on the ‘aliens from space’ land mine?  Listen, there are no little green men on Mars.  The balloon people of Jupiter aren’t coming to steal your cable or drink your beer.  And the grays are just a bunch of society-influenced collective hallucinations by some sad little lonely-heart crazies.  The
Sword of Liberty
is up there for the same reason we put up any new combat system—to defend the red, white, and blue against all enemies, foreign and domestic.  We put up the first one, and I’m sure we’ll find out within the year that it was in response to something the Chinese or the Algerians intended to put up.”

“Yeah, Mister The-Flag’s-Never-Dirty?  What about the Deltans?”

“Conspiracy theories, Terry?  Please!  That’s worse than a simple garden-variety belief in UFOs.”

“Hear me out, Pat!  Who’s the major contractor on the
Sword
?  Windward Technologies Inc.  And who was the founder and former CEO?  Gordon Elliot Lee.  And who was the guy that first claimed the Pavonis comet wasn’t a comet at all?  Gordon F-ing Lee.  You’re trying to tell me there’s no connection between the company that built the first interplanetary star destroyer and the conspiracy whack-job that’s been warning us about an alien invasion for the last twenty years?  Come on!!”

“You folks out there in radio-land can’t see it, but Terry just put on a tinfoil beanie, propeller and all.”

“That’s it, Pat, laugh at the crazy man wearing his underwear on the outside, but mark my words—there’s aspects to this whole space-based destroyer thing that the administration hasn’t told us about yet.  The other shoe?  It has yet to drop, my friend!”

“I am happy to concede the point that our beloved military-industrial complex has not been completely forthcoming—not that I would truly want them to be, but that’s the difference between us.  Now, are you willing to put away the conspiracies for a minute and just agree with me that this is cool and that if anybody has to have such a thing, at least it’s our own dedicated, honorable military?”

“Okay, I’ll grant you that, Pat.  It is indeed cool and I’m really damn glad that it’s USA-cool rather than Somebody-Else-cool.  I’d shudder to think what this thing would be like in the hands of another nation or some private group, rather than our boys in the Navy and Air Force.”

“You and me both, brother.  You and me both.”

March 7, 2045; Windward Technologies, Inc. Test and Evaluation Airfield; Vallejo, CA

“I don’t know, sir.  I think I need to call the watch commander.”

Dave Edwards, retired Senior Chief, fellow
USS Rivero
survivor, and current co-conspirator, looked up from the wheelchair he hardly ever used and gave the young Air Force guard his most withering glare.  The look from his thick, leathery face included a mixture of contempt for the Air Force Technical Sergeant’s youth, rank, and service, as well as a special disdain for the non-com’s temerity to delay one such as he.

Edwards rolled forward until the pants-covered stumps of his legs touched the soldier’s camo trousers.  “Boy, do you have any goddamn clue about who the hell I am, or about the clusterfuck you’re attempting to insert yourself in?”

The Tech SGT took a quick, wide-eyed look at the crowd of civilians facing him and then looked down at Edwards’ challenging glare.  “Um, yes, sir—I mean no, sir—I mean yes, sir, I know who you are.  I know who all of you are, but that doesn’t make this any less irregular.  More, truth be told.”

Edwards gave him a feral smile, causing the SGT to back up a step.  “Well, Airman, let me make it more clear for you.  There’s this big fuckin’ spaceship up there and everybody’s all abuzz about it.”

The SGT bristled at the purposeful misstatement of his rank by the retired Navy non-com.  He growled out, “I’m aware of that, sir.  This facility is at a heightened security posture for that very reason.  Which is why—”

“No, no, screw that,” Edwards interrupted.  “You’re talking about security postures and I’m talking about pissing off the President of these United States.  Here’s the way it is—that big ass ship up there is too damn large to ever land again, and now that it’s on its way back to Earth, the President has pretty much got jack and shit to show off to the people of the world during her big welcome home for the asteroid-conquering heroes.

“Now, when the crew returns and lands at Andrews Air Force Base, she sure as hell would like to show the world more than one dinky spaceplane.  And since she can’t present the big, impressive destroyer, it sure would be nice if she could at least show off a light squadron of spaceplanes!”  Edwards pointed behind the SGT to the two Single Stage To Orbit Shuttles sitting side by side within the Windward Tech hangar.  The two SSTOS were identical to the one the
Sword of Liberty
carried in her dorsal hangar.

The SGT glanced back at the two sleek, lifting body aerospace craft in the cavernous hangar behind him and shook his head.  “I don’t know, sir.  Nothing was mentioned about this at watch turnover.”