April (59 page)

Either way they were done with this trip. None of them saw any point to going to another station and the moon was long ago unreachable from their use of fuel. They decided there was no point in calling ahead and telling anyone they were coming. It would just increase their chances of being intercepted. They'd dock at the repair shop if nothing bad was happening, or at the Lewis family cubic if there was any problem. The burn was going to be brutal for safety and efficiency, but they were going home and it sounded wonderful at this point.

* * *

The
Moment of Contemplation
lifted from the Chinese desert, like a textbook launch into a calm clear sky. On the other side of the world the Heavy Shuttle
Cincinnati
had already lifted like the
Moment,
in a vertical launch from the Cape. The
Moment
was configured like the ill-fated
Jade,
with a two man outfit in space armor, ready to do a boarding. Their mission was the same, to take two of the pirate's crew if possible and destroy the ship in any case. The station was not their concern, except to keep their target from reaching it. Things had not yet gotten to the point China would casually consider invading a USNA space station.

After seeing the BBC video the crew had their own thoughts about how likely they were to extract any of the crew. It looked more likely they would be in a straight up fight for their lives. In contrast, the
Cincinnati
carried twenty four soldiers in two squads, with a mixed bag of weapons and equipment and it had entirely too much assigned to attempt. They were to secure the station, but arrest the crew of the incoming
Happy Lewis,
even if they managed to arrive first and enter the station, as well as a long list of other people for whom they had pictures and biometric data.

The
Happy Lewis
was supposed to be captured rather than destroyed, although they were allowed to damage it in certain limited ways, carefully detailed. If they found and arrested everyone on the list, it meant the shuttle would be going home full of prisoners and they would be stuck behind indefinitely. The idea they were going to be on station indefinitely did not thrill any of them. Somehow they doubted they would get much cooperation from the locals and any operation which had this many objectives was almost guaranteed to be a screw-up.

* * *

"Hello Jon. Can you tell me if your man Eddie is still doing Ok?"

Jon looked in surprise at the face in his com. He hadn't ever expected to speak directly to him. Jan was in his office and had his usual relaxed look. But Jon suspected he would look just as calm while a hangman adjusted a noose around his neck. "Last I heard he was OK, but it has been some time. Between us," which Jon knew it wasn't on an open vid phone channel, "I haven't talked directly to him since he left your station, although he has left messages for me. Still, he has left nothing since they started taking out all the Chinese and USNA assets in geostationary orbit. Did you have a particular interest?"

"I found I liked Eddie," Jan admitted. "He had a refreshingly straight forward manner. I even got to meet his uncle Justine and some business associates. I sort of put my colors on his campaign, by putting them on the shuttle. It would go better for me at home if it doesn't look like a futile gesture. I wanted to invite you to keep me informed if you could. For example the heavy shuttle
Cincinnati,
which has lifted to rendezvous with M3. I was hoping you might know if Eddie will beat it back. I was told they were seen doing a burn, but my people are not sure when they'll get home."

"They made you a bit of a vid star didn't they?" Jon asked. "What happened to make things go so badly, after you walked away from them in the boom?"

"Oh, I badly underestimated the head fellow here in the Chinese delegation. I thought once he was locked out of the boom he'd be sensible and go home, but he enlisted the current control room fellows, who were Chinese and bypassed the elevators and locked himself in there with his countrymen. As you saw he called the tractor crew to ram your friends also. I never imagined he was so stupid. I had no idea April was running her suit camera and recorder in the boom. I still don't understand her foresight in doing so. So many things I've missed lately. Maybe I'm getting past prime for this game. In any case, Lee was one of those fellows you saw taking a suitless space walk in the vid, so he's not a factor anymore."

"You said you meet Eddie's uncle. Does he live there on II? I've never meet any of his folks. Didn't even know any of them were spacers."

Jan looked at him funny. "Spacers? Has he ever discussed his family with you? You've never looked into them in his background check?"

"No. He has to check clean or they'd never send him up, but all the background search stuff is run Dirtside and we never see the raw data. I have a very modest file on him. Educational history and such. It wouldn't matter who his relatives were, like unless they were all deeply involved in terror or something."

Jan was covering his mouth and seemed to be having trouble breathing. Jon decided not to pursue whatever was upsetting him. Probably some strange cultural bias thing he'd never understand. Like when his Serbian buddy in college had been so upset he'd befriended an Albanian. He had no idea who the Swiss were prejudiced against. Sometimes those feud things went back centuries, like the Turks and Albanians, or Israelis and Arabs and he didn't even try to keep track.

"I don't know when Eddie will be back, but I have a mutual friend I'll try to ask. If I find out I'll get back to you in text," he emphasized. "You might be interested also to know I turned in my resignation to Preston Harrison. So I'm not head of security here for the USNA any longer. But you're still welcome to call and chat any time. If you'll excuse me, I have to go arrange some things my friend. Thanks for calling." It was very weird that he called in the clear when he had a stack of one time pads to text message Jon. He wasn't sure at all who benefited, from knowing he was aware the
Cincinnati
was coming. Surely Jan didn't think they'd just turn back, because the mission was known? He must have some agenda of his own.

"My pleasure." Jan purred and cut the connection.

Jon put a message in their private net, "Margaret, we have the USNA
Cincinnati
inbound for dock. I just got a very casual and public heads up, from the head of security over at ISSII. You don't need to call the shuttle. We can assume it's just full of soldiers. They're not even trying to sneak in as civilians on a regular flight. They lifted a heavy military shuttle with no subtlety at all."

"Assuming they use the regular passenger dockage I'd like you to pre-position the charges I gave you on the docking tube, like you were shown and one on the face of your inspection podium, with a camera and redundant remote controls. At least we won't have to clear out a crowd of civilians trying to meet a flight. Call Skip and have him do the lockdown on outgoing data too. The
Happy Lewis
is coming in too, but we don't know which will be first. I'm trying to find out," next he called Heather.

"No, I'm not going to ping off their transponder." Heather said. "If they are back in LEO it could expose them to an intercept. I haven't sent them anything for hours, because they disappeared out at the geostationary level. If they're smart they turned it off anyway."

"We have to set up a laser com net in the future. We'll have a number of throw away minisats with known orbital elements as a receiver and when you hit them with a laser they relay the message to a general broadcast, or beam it to us here on M3. The system won't expose your location. When they feel safe they'll talk to us. I'll tell them what's happening if they do contact me."

* * *

Margaret wore her p-suit in the access tube, but left the faceplate open. It was easier to work in pressure and vent it when she was done. She positioned the disguised Claymore on the end of the tube, above the single door, but pointing back up the tube away from the ship end. There was a full airlock at the station end of the boom where the tube terminated, but this end only had a single door and depended on the ship for an airlock here. It was just a convenience to keep the tube pressurized, to avoid a long pump down, not a primary safety feature.

On the onside of the docking collar she placed a larger demolition charge, that would part the tube from the ship and likely destroy the lock integrity in the ship There was already a similar Claymore hanging on the face of her sturdy podium, pointing into the other end of the docking tube. Anyone in the tube who planned on surviving both going off, had better be in something approaching a main battle tank, not suit armor. The detonators were by radio, so even if she blew the tube off the station end, she would not be severing her controls to the ship end.

She would wait inside the hab, to watch the cameras and blow the charges, but if she failed to stop them she would retreat, leaving the inner airlock unlocked and undamaged. They didn't want to make them blow the inner lock and decompress a huge section to enter. Warning were going out now to everyone on station to get their p-suits on, or drag their emergency suits out and check them.

The
Moment of Contemplation
was arriving at M3 first. They were using the same maneuver the
Jade
had demonstrated intercepting the
Happy Lewis
. They would shoot past swinging their nose around as they passed and brake back to a rendezvous. It wasted fuel and it wasted time, but it avoided turning their rear to the station, or any ships docked there, so that they were blind to an attack. However as they caught up with the station from behind the
Happy Lewis
was dropping in, at that very disadvantage of traveling tail first, with their plasma plume obscuring their view in both visible light and radar.

Behind the
Moment,
the USNA mini-spaceplane
Big 'Nuf
was overtaking. It was an air launched single seat craft, the size and pretty much the function, of an atmospheric fighter. Its basic task was to protect the
Cincinnati,
which would be coming along behind it soon. Seeing the
Moment
setting up to overtake and turn back to the station, made the lone pilot sure it was a good thing he was here. He was watching it on passive optical.

As the
Moment
neared the station, he saw by eyeball a white hot spark separate from the
Moment
and speed forward. He sucked in a deep breath, convinced they had just fired on the defenseless station. He switched on his targeting radar, preparing to avenge the fire on the station, but the expanded display made clear the shot was speeding past the station. Then he opened up the angle of his display more and he saw the missile was tracking to intercept what must be the
Happy Lewis
. He wasn't sure if that was good or bad, as he had been briefed to be prepared to fire on the Lewis himself.

The
Moment of Contemplation
was now swinging around to face the station as it passed and immediately detected his high frequency targeting radar and painted him with its own. His board also detected a lidar sweep across his vessel. In this sort of a standoff,  he who fires first fares best.

Neither had their systems set to launch automatically, so both of them launched at the other as fast as their flesh and blood reactions would allow. It was as close to simultaneous as mattered. His advantage was his board was set to launch two missiles automatically instead of one. They were small, but he had more of them. The
Moment
 blew off a tremendous flare of light and on his radar screen he could see a spray of debris coming off her. That mystified him, as his missiles had not had time to reach her yet.

He was still slapping keys, trying to jam and counter the guidance of the missile coming down his throat and pondering what had happened to the Chinese ship, when their missile burst in proximity about ten meters off his nose. He was never conscious of his death as the sleet of shrapnel shredded his small craft.

The
Moment of Contemplation
was in serious trouble. The pilot had hurried to complete his rollover as soon as he saw the mini and had stopped being concerned with keeping a minimum profile, or even watching the unthreatening station. He had hurried to start his burn manually, trusting the computer to recalculate and actuate a cut-off in time. He had immediately grasped that the diminutive fighter must be a mere escort and was looking for what it was protecting. His weapons officer had already fired a missile on the small craft as he maneuvered. He was grateful for the initiative not everyone would have shown, as his hands were full.

Unfortunately the price came due for the hurry up launch preparations, when he poured full power on his main engines. A needle bearing, that should have been replaced in his oxidizer turbo pump, failed completely. The shrapnel from the exploding rotor in the rear, did almost as much damage as the two minimissiles that penetrated the fuel tanks and command cabin seconds later, in the middle and nose. The middle missile blew the partitions out between his tanks, mixing the fuel and oxidizer. The one that penetrated the cabin, made sure they didn't have to live with the knowledge of the other two disasters behind them. In the interval of a heartbeat there was no piece of the shuttle left over eighty millimeters long.

* * *

The crew of the
Happy Lewis
falling inward on its half kilometer long plume of white hot plasma was blissfully unaware a robotic killer was climbing for the very same beacon of heat. However the missile was designed to run up the tail of a vessel which had an exhaust not much hotter than a welding torch flame. Passing through such a mild flame for a few feet before impact would not do it any harm.

It was not designed to fly through a half kilometer of hyper velocity plasma, hotter than the face of the sun. The brief flare that brightened the plume behind the
Happy Lewis,
was like a moth flying into a bonfire. They were never aware of the missile.