The Orion Plague (31 page)

“Conn: Sensors. No target.”

“Find him, Scoggins, we can’t kill what we
can’t see.”

“Trying, sir.”

Orion
’s deceleration was almost
complete. Absen’s eyes roved the screens mounted along the dome of
the bridge, searching for the enemy, looking for some clue, some
angle. “Scoggins,” he snapped, “where are those first four bogeys?
Are those them?”

“Here, sir.” Four icons flashed red.

“They look like they are holding position
relative to us.”

“I’m not sure what you mean, sir.”

“If they are recon drones for the
frigate…they are staying in a plane perpendicular to us. Imagine if
they were the corners of a square…”

“I got it, sir,” Scoggins responded
excitedly. “He’ll be near the middle, which is…on the other side of
the asteroid from us.”

“He’s hiding!” Absen thumped the chair with
his fist. “He sneaked around! That means he might not be able to
run. How bad are we hurt?”

“Drive at full, sir,” reported Okuda.

“Sensors at about half, sir.”

“Weapon losses: one laser, three DBs,
nineteen Tridents inop, the rest still collating, sir. Roughly ten
percent of the defensive systems destroyed.”

Rick Johnstone at Comms responded, “Seven
hundred or so casualties. Engineering reports power at fifty-eight
percent.”

“Damn.”
Seven hundred
. Machines were
always tougher than people, doubly so in space. Absen didn’t know
whether “casualties” included wounded or just the dead; he hoped
the former. Edens and nanos would heal eventually.

“All right,” the captain said firmly,
“
Orion
’s still got a lot of fight left in her. Weapons,
start single-round deliberate fire of Tridents at the rock, surface
burst. I want to break that thing up, blow it to smithereens. If he
wants to hide, let’s take away his cover.”

The drive noise ceased, mercifully
eliminating the pogoing and distraction. Absen realized that he
felt much better now, despite the pounding. Perhaps the Eden Plague
was taking effect already.

“Ford, see if you can take out those recon
drones. At least make them work to maintain position.”

“Aye, sir. Let’s see how the lasers do.
Coordinated fire, all beams…no effect.”

“You sure you hit it?” Absen asked.

“There was some visible flare, sir.”

Okuda interrupted, “Did you compensate for
range and relative velocity? Lightspeed delay at one thousand
kilometers will yield a three-meter variance.”

“Damn,” Ford cursed. “Computers should be
compensating…I’ve got damage to the cross-coordinating
circuits.”

“Let me see,” Johnstone said, moving over
several seats, displacing the assistant weapons officer. “I think I
can fix this…”

“Can you do it while I fight?”

“Sure,” he mumbled, frantically tapping keys.
Then he muttered something else, shooting Ford a look, then reached
for his wrist. A pop and snick sound came and he pulled the fine
wire and plug out of his sleeve, slotting into the console. Then he
closed his eyes. “Unh…”

“What the hell?” Ford barked.

“Fight the ship, Ford,” Absen snapped. “Let
Mr. Johnstone do what he can.”

“It’s a direct interface, like mine,”
explained Okuda, tapping his head. where his own plugs trailed
wires that talked to
Orion
. “I can feel it.”

“Conn: Sensors, bogeys are maneuvering. Looks
like random evasives.”

“All right,” Absen said, “keep at it.” He
looked at the screen centered on the asteroid just in time to see
it white out with the flare of a set of twelve simultaneous nuclear
detonations. When it cleared seconds later, the asteroid had been
largely vaporized. Only an expanding field of debris showed.

“Where’d it go?” Absen asked. “Where’s the
frigate –” His words were cut off as he felt
Orion
shudder
and twist. “What was that?”

“Gyro three failure. Damage to surrounding
decks. Compensating.”

“What caused it?”

“No way to tell, sir,” reported the
Engineering station. “Gyros are relatively delicate. It could have
just taken too much shock and finally failed.” He paused in his
narrative. “I have a report from the damage control team on site of
some kind of…infestation.”

“Dispatch a biohazard team there and spread
the word to look for more of whatever it is.”

“Sir, it looks like –”

“I don’t need the details. Handle it.
Sensors, where’s that frigate?”

“Possible bogey here, sir.” One dot among
hundreds flashed as Scoggins marked it. “There’s too much crap
between us to be sure but if your idea about the drones is true, it
should be near there.”

“Helm, we need to move in.”

“Sir, if I use the drive now the damage
control and biohazard teams will have to stop and brace for
acceleration.”

“Can you reduce the G load?”

“Certainly, but the bombs are finite.
Detonating them farther from the shock plate means lower G, less
push, wasted efficiency.”

“Do it. Two G, warn them.”

Okuda nodded. “Aye, sir.” He triggered the
PA. “Now hear this, two-G intermittent acceleration, prepare for
intermittent drive. Three, two, one.” The next bomb went off almost
gently after the eight-G pushes they were used to.

“What’s our bomb stock down to, Helm?”

“Sixteen hundred ninety-four. Approximately
fifty-five percent.”
Orion
moved forward sluggishly.

“Should be enough,” Absen muttered. “Weapons,
prep a twenty-missile salvo of Grackles and SM5s. Plot them to
curve around what’s left of the asteroid and home in on our
prospective bogey. Have them look for anything the right size. Also
send one against each of those recon drones, see how they act. Fire
when ready.”

“Aye, sir.” Ford tapped industriously at his
keys, eyeing Johnstone in the seat next to him now and again until
the man’s eyes finally snapped open.

“All right,” the cybernetic Comms officer
announced, “I’ve cross-connected all the weapons into an integrated
heuristic network run by the KimPark.” He saw Ford look at him in
irritation. “The supercomputer. We should have done this earlier,
link the supercomputer for our targeting problems.”

“Listen, freak, I was doing just fine –”

“Ford!” Absen barked. “You want to join
deLille confined to quarters? Helm has implants, so does Johnstone.
Get over it. Use it. Fire your missiles, get the feed from Sensors,
load a solution and start drilling anything that looks like the
enemy. Johnstone, well done and get back to your station
.” I’ve
seen this before in green crews. They can turn on each other like
dogs. Have to keep them focused on the enemy, not each
other.

Okuda nodded to the Captain as the bridge
crew settled back down. “We’ll be past the debris in about four
minutes, Skipper.”

Skipper. That felt good. Absen knew it was a
calculated thing on Okuda’s part, but well done anyway. Using
nicknames, especially semi-official ones like “Skipper” for the
ship’s captain, demonstrated trust up the chain, and accepting the
nickname did the same downward.

“Steady as she goes, Mister Okuda.”

Gunner’s Mate Third Ted Rippin swore as he
directed his decontaminant spray forward. Whatever the alien stuff
was they were fighting, it didn’t like bleach, which was good:
that’s mostly what they had. Clever of them to include it in their
missiles, though, he had to admit.

He looked at the spots where it had touched
metal, eating holes in conduits, decks, ladders, even the brass
pressure-plated pressure doors. It didn’t like plastic, though,
which was lucky. Even though the conduits looked like Swiss cheese,
the insulated wires inside were generally left intact.

The worst part had been where the stuff had
invaded one of the molten salts reactors, causing them to have to
scram it before it blew. The Russian engineering crew was
frantically replacing shielding, insulation, and pieces of the
pressure container.
Orion
ran on electrical power,
especially the lasers, and without the reactors, they would be dead
in the water.

He also heard from the scuttlebutt the stuff
had eaten one of the gyros, and the two-story-tall flywheel had
raged out of control through the surrounding areas, dismembering
crew as it expended its thousands of RPM like an insane killer
toy.

He and the rest of his damage control team
sprayed until the walls dripped with the harsh bleach. Fortunately
the suits kept the fumes out. The whole thing reminded him
irrelevantly of H. G. Wells’ War of the Worlds, where the common
cold felled the invaders. Rippin could also remember an old sci-fi
story he read somewhere, in which salt turned out to be poison for
the aliens. He wondered about that. If these things were like giant
amoebas, would they shrivel up like snails when they were bleached
or salted?

This isn’t exactly what I thought of when
they asked did I want to go into space
, he thought.
I’m the
best damn CIWS technician in the Navy. What the hell am I doing
playing cleanup to some alien mold?
But everyone had their
damage control station, and there weren’t all that many CIWS left
to fix anyway
. At least they should have put in viewports
,
he grumbled to himself.
The railgunners are lucky; they can see
out when their weapons fire. All I do is make sure the computer
knows when it can engage, and that the ammo and power is flowing
properly. Fix one outside in a spacesuit? Good luck. I guess this
job ain’t so bad.

Cheered, Rippin went on spraying.

“No result against the drones,” Ford
reported tightly. “Missiles are too slow, they just dodge. They’re
too small and fast for even lasers at this range. Our accuracy is
just not high enough.”

“And the range is?” asked Absen.

“One hundred ten klicks, give or take.
Sir.”

“How big are the drones? Scoggins?”

“About the size of a UAV. They just have too
much acceleration.”

“How can they carry enough fuel to do all
this dodging?”

Silence reigned for a long moment. Then Rick
Johnstone spoke up. “Ah, sir? They might be collecting fuel from
their surroundings. If their fusion drive can use any fuel…they
could be eating the dust and debris. If they get anywhere near full
atomic efficiency, it would be enough.”

Ford glared at Rick, who ignored him as he
went on. “One more thing, sir: they are talking to the frigate. I
am picking up telemetry like we did before.”

“Didn’t we crack their code?” Absen asked,
leaning forward eagerly.

“Not this one; this is much more
sophisticated. But I took the liberty of getting the KimPark
working on it and I estimate decryption in approximately seventeen
hours.”

Absen shook his head while Ford smirked. “It
will all be over by then, but thanks anyway.” He saw Johnstone give
a very unmilitary shrug and turn back to his board.
As long as
there’s no outright insubordination, I think I’ll ignore shrugs and
smirks.

“Clearing the cloud in ten seconds, Captain,”
Okuda called.

“Stay sharp, people. If we see him, hit him
with everything we have.”

The screens showed several synthesized
pictures, blending optical and virtual when possible. The bridge
crew watched
Orion
approach the edge of the cloud, hearing
the faint whine of CIWS fire from time to time as the Gatlings
broke up or drove off anything big or fast enough to do damage.
Even a small rock with enough velocity could take out an R2-D2, an
Archerfish, or a sensor.

Abruptly the view opened up as the debris
field seemed to fall behind and sideways. Scoggins yelled,
“Gotcha!” A large red crosshair highlighted the frigate, now a
blinding white blob against the starry black. Beside the icon,
range showed sixty-eight point six and falling.

“Ford, engage,” Absen snapped as the Weapons
officer stabbed down at his console.

“Laser strike initiated. Recharging. DBs
firing. Missile salvo away.”

“How long to recharge the lasers?”

“Approximately fifteen seconds.”

“Any effects?”

“None visible. High reflectivity of the enemy
is probably a mitigation strategy for laser weapons. Oh!” Ford
gaped and pointed at the main screen.

The enemy frigate suddenly sparkled, then
several small flares appeared on its sides.

“Report!”

“Looks like kinetic strikes, sir. Some of the
railguns hit it, knocked it sideways a bit, and the flares were
probably thruster corrections.”

“So they have thruster power and they have
some control, enough to keep their pointed nose directly toward us,
which will make them hard to hurt. But their main drive must be out
or they would have run. I mean, why stay and fight when we’re so
damn slow?” Absen bit his tongue, clamping down on his flow of
speech.
Stop running your mouth, Henrich, they need confidence,
not doubt.

“Or perhaps they have a short-range weapon
that can take us out,” Okuda suggested.

“No…” Absen responded. “That makes no sense.
They could stand off out of our range and pound us with those
hypervelocity missiles. In fact, they could do that now, we’re nose
on and we couldn’t avoid them. Oh my God, are we nose on?”

“No, Captain,” replied Okuda. “I’ve brought
the tail around again, we just can’t tell here on the bridge,
between the gimbals and the computer stabilization.”

“Good work. We may need that drive as a
shield.”

“Understood.”

Absen realized he was still talking too much
but he could hardly stop himself. All of his experience counted for
little in a battle he felt completely unqualified to visualize. He
was barely able to keep up with the pace, so much faster than in a
submarine. Then he realized what he was doing wrong, and scolded
himself.
Stop trying to take control of the situation. Okuda’s
the pilot, he’s really fighting the ship. Take a step back,
Henrich, and nudge people, don’t steer them.