Trial by Fire: Chapter Fifteen

Part Two
December 2119
Washington, D.C, Earth

    When Downing returned to the conference room from the fresher, he started. Opal Patrone was there waiting for him.

    “You’re early, Major. To what do I owe the honor?”

    “Closed museums.”

    “I beg your pardon?”

    “The museums are closed. The public buildings are off-limits. Congress is in seclusion. DC has become one dull city.”

    Downing grimaced. “As long as the Arat Kur continue to consider it more dull than Jakarta, I’ll consider it a blessing.”

    Opal’s jaw came out in a truculent, fine-pointed wedge. “At least in Jakarta we’re fighting the bastards directly.”

    “Except, Major, that too many of the bastards are our own people, taking the traitor’s coin from either the megacorporations or President-for-Life Ruap.”

    The door to the conference room opened again. Trevor walked in a step ahead of Elena, who was carrying a mostly empty shopping bag.

    Downing’s first impulse was to cross the room to Trev, but their parting on Barney Deucy had been anything but warm. And although all the reports indicated that Trevor had been turned over by the Arat Kur in “excellent condition,” one could never be sure if Nolan Corcoran’s son was simply playing the role he was expected to play: the bluff, impregnable ex-SEAL.

    So, uncertain what to do, and once again awkward with the people he loved the most, Richard leaned both his hands on the conference table and said, “Welcome home, Trevor. It’s good to have you back, safe and sound.” Neither seeing nor hearing any contradictions to the happy assumptions of that greeting, Downing turned to Elena. “Christmas shopping for Connor?”

    “Trying to,” muttered Elena, “The stores have almost nothing left in them for a thirteen-year-old boy, and even less staff to find it for you. And there’s still a lot of panic: most streets are empty and most offices are closed. But look who I met coming into this building.” She smiled at Trevor.

    Who smiled back–somewhat wanly, Richard thought. Is he tired, still infuriated at me for turning his father’s body over the Dornaani, or some combination of the two? “No worse for wear after the debriefings with the intelligence chiefs and the POTUS, Trev?”

    Trevor shrugged. “No. Although the Arat Kur treated me better than the intel folks. You’d have thought I was an enemy agent.”

    “It’s the way they’re trained to think. You’ve been in the enemy camp and come as the messenger bearing their new terms for our capitulation. You’re damaged goods to them, I’m afraid.”

    “Well, I didn’t enjoy being their chew-toy for my first day home.”

    “So, the Arat Kur treated you more civilly?”

    Trevor quirked a smile. “Actually, in some ways, they did. The one who found us–or rather, the Arat Kur that Caine and I found–wasn’t a bad little guy. For a scum-sucking alien invader, that is.” Trevor saw Opal smile, returned it. Perhaps a little too broadly and readily, Downing thought.

    “You are referring to the Arat Kur named”–Downing checked his palmtop–”Darzhee Kut?”

    “Yep. Most of the other Arat Kur were standoffish, but still polite and careful in their treatment of us.”

    “You haven’t said anything about the Hkh’Rkh, though.”

    Trevor looked sideways. “If Caine and I had been their guests, I think we’d have been lucky to get bread, water, and a shared head. Hell, I think we’d have been lucky not to be shown out the nearest airlock. Fortunately, Yaargraukh was there–our Advocate from the Convocation–and he talked them out of their initial blood frenzy. But most of them never really changed their opinion of us.”

    Opal’s eyes were on his, unblinking. “Given Hkh’Rkh hospitality, I’m just glad that the Arat Kur made sure both of you survived that misunderstanding. But–no offense, Trevor–why did they send you back? You’re a soldier: Caine was our Speaker at Convocation, almost a third ambassador. Shouldn’t he have been the one the Arat Kur sent back with new terms?”

    Trevor avoided her sustained gaze. “Actually, that’s kind of why Caine insisted on being the one to stay behind. And he managed to persuade Darzhee Kut to support it, too. I told them they were wrong, but–”

    “But Caine convinced Darzhee Kut that your military career made you just that much more annoying to the Hkh’Rkh?” asked Opal. “Put you that much more at risk than him?”

    Trevor nodded, his eyes still evasive and uncomfortable. Downing looked away, being the only person other than Trevor who possessed the prerequisite knowledge to understand his deeper levels of guilt. And you fought–hard–to stay in Caine’s place, didn’t you, Trev? You had to, because if the worst happens, then Connor loses the opportunity of ever meeting his father, and Elena loses the possibility of marrying the man she still obviously loves. But Caine outflanked you, found a way to prevent you from taking the danger on yourself. And it’s eating you alive that he did.

    Opal still looked vaguely worried. “Trevor, Caine is all right–isn’t he?”

    “Yeah, yeah,” Trevor said, feigning a dismissive wave. “He may be safer than any of us. After all, he’s sitting up in orbit with the Arat Kur, not down here in their cross-hairs. Not that the Hkh’Rkh wanted to keep him around, but they didn’t have any choice in the matter. Because they are so significantly technologically inferior to the Arat Kur, they’re clearly playing second fiddle. That’s probably annoyed the Hkh’Rkh from the moment they agreed to conduct joint operations, which is only possibly because they’re being carried piggyback.”

    Downing started taking notes. “What do you mean by that?”

    “Well, the Hkh’Rkh lack the shift range to attack our space with their own shift-carriers. So their constant chest-thumping about how they are self-reliant, dominant warriors makes about as much sense as a six-year-old in a booster seat claiming that he’s driving the car.”

    “Ouch,” said Opal with a grin. Which, once again, Trevor swiftly answered with one of his own.

    Which, once again, worried Downing. “And how do the Arat Kur feel about the Hkh’Rkh?”

    Trevor shrugged. “They didn’t say and we knew not to ask. But, from the interactions I saw, the Arat Kur aren’t completely comfortable with their allies. Darzhee Kut made it pretty clear that his species is highly conflict-aversive. Harmonizing with each others’ opinions and emotions seems to be one of their strongest social drives.”

    “Apparently that doesn’t include harmonizing with other species.”

    Trevor rubbed his chin. “You know, I thought that at first, too. But Caine sensed highly receptive attitudes in some of them, and I’m not so sure he’s wrong. They do seem to get along better with us as individuals than they do with the Hkh’Rkh.”

    The irony got the better of Downing. “Then why the bloody hell did the Arat Kur attack us?”

    Trevor shrugged. “We didn’t get into that. Not an officially sanctioned topic of conversation, I suspect. Speaking of official topics of conversations and war plans, when I was in the Oval Office, there were some veiled references to us counterattacking their fleet out at Jupiter. Any word on how that went?”

    Downing nodded and activated the room’s main display. “We just got this thirty minutes ago.” He aimed his palmcomp at the screen, thumbed a virtual button, leaned back, and suppressed a sigh.

    The screen flickered to life, showing the long keel of a naval shift carrier. The crook-armed midship hull cradles were almost empty; the carrier’s complement of cruisers, frigates, sloops and drones was deployed elsewhere in the inky blackness that filled the rest of the screen. They were probably not that far away–some less than a hundred kilometers, probably–but at that range, even the largest battle cruiser in Earth’s entire military inventory would not show up as anything other than an inconstant star, its brightness altering slightly as it changed its attitude or applied thrust. Along the bottom of the screen, white, block-letter coding indicated that the perspective was from the ESS Egalité.

    The curved white expanse of one of the few still-docked hulls rose higher into the frame as it cast off from the shift-carrier. Elena cleared her throat. “Perhaps everyone else knows what we’re looking at, but I’d be grateful for a little context, please.”

    “That’s a cruiser, El, Andrew Bolton class,” Trevor answered. A pair of tapered arrowhead shapes rose up from underneath the cruiser itself: two sleek remoras emerging from beneath the thick body of a bull shark. Trevor resumed his narrative. “Those two streamlined boats are the newest sloops in the Commonwealth inventory; the ‘Gordon’ class. Sloop is now a slang term, though. Navy acronymization has relabeled them as ‘FOCALs’: Forward Operations Control and Attack Leaders.”

    “That sounds very impressive. What does it mean?”

    Richard unfolded his hands. “The sloops stay close to the drones–the fleet’s various unmanned attack and sensor platforms–and relay commands to them and coordinate their actions. Their crews get the closest to the enemy, which is why, comparatively speaking, they are built for speed.”

    “So they’re like fighter aircraft,” Opal summarized.

    “No, not really. They carry armament, but only as a last resort. Their role is to direct attacks made by remote-operated and semiautonomous systems. They ensure that human judgment continues to guide all our units, even those operating many light-seconds away from the cruisers and other ships.”

    The Bolton-class cruiser ignited its plasma thrusters in addition to its pulse-fusion main engine and began angling off from the Egalité. The two Gordons split off to either side of the Bolton.

    The scene changed to a view of space, upon which a collection of blue guidons were arrayed. Each was capped by a slightly different symbol with a short data string attached.

    Opal nodded. “So, that’s our fleet, right? Ship types and tail numbers on the guidons?”

    “Yes,” affirmed Downing.

    Elena frowned. “How are we getting this view? Why is there a camera just waiting in the middle of deep space?”

    “It’s mounted on a microdrone,” Trevor supplied. “We launch dozens of them before and during combat. They not only give us pictures like this, but relay damage-assessment views of our hulls, and help during salvage and rescue ops. And they’re so small that they blend in with the rubbish and then work like spy-eyes after an engagement.”

    Opal was frowning. “I count four carriers: Egalité, Beijing and Shanghai close to each other, and Tapfer way off to the left. Why is it out there?”

    Downing shook his head. “After the first engagement, the Tapfer was forced to show her heels. She only got half of her complement back in the cradles and was too far out of position to regroup with the rest of the fleet elements. It took them this long to get close enough to add their limited weight to the engagement.”

    The scene changed again, this time to a camera mounted on one of the Gordon class hunter/seeker sloops. Superimposed on the view were hordes of small blue and red triangles attempting to swarm around each other, the red ones being notably faster and more agile. At the points where the swarms intersected, there were occasional flashes, like fireflies seen at great distance on a lightless night.

    “Those,” explained Downing quietly. “are drones destroying each other. Mostly ours on the receiving end. And as you watch, the rate of our force erosion will increase. The Arat Kur capital ships are picking them off with their UV lasers.”

    Trevor uttered a dismayed grunt. Opal leaned into his field of view. “Why’s that so bad?”

    Trevor sighed. “If Richard is right, it means the Arat Kur lasers retain decisive hitting power at much greater ranges than ours.”

    “But I thought we had some pretty dangerous UV lasers, ourselves.”

    “We do, but only on the biggest cruisers. Even then, there’s ongoing debate whether they’re really worth all the expense, the space, and the special engineering they require in a hull.”

    “Why?”

    “They’re energy pigs, and they have much more complicated and expensive focusing requirements. Morgan Lymbery, the guy who designed the Andrew Bolton class, said it best: ‘you don’t really build the UV laser into a ship; you build a ship around the UV laser.’”

    The screen changed to the viewpoint of another minidrone, riding close alongside what looked like a Chinese light cruiser. The ship’s counterbalanced habitation-modules had stopped spinning and were being retracted toward the hull, a sure sign that it was going to general quarters. Downing sat up a bit straighter. “A little context about what you’ll be seeing. We fought the first engagement against the Arat Kur using the same tactics we employ against human opponents. In short, not knowing the enemy’s specific capabilities, it wasn’t prudent to close too quickly, but to maintain range and take them under fire, closing in only if and when we perceived a decisive advantage.”

    “Or to run like hell if it turned out that they had all the advantages,” Trevor added.

    “Yes, and that is just what happened at the First Battle of Jupiter. The Arat Kur demonstrated superior speed, superior long-range accuracy, and superior destructive power. Consequently, the notion of standing off at what we had believed to be long range was a mistake; we were overmatched in every meaningful performance metric. So the logic of this second battle was to force a meeting engagement.”

    Opal frowned. “Which means what, in space?”

    Trevor took over. “Well, it’s kind of like a joust in that you run at each other head-to-head, if possible. If you’re confident you’re going to win, you do it at low speed, so you can retroboost and catch the other guy–sometimes weeks later–to pound on him some more in an extended stern chase.”

    “And if you’re not so confident, then you approach at high speed, so that the other guy can’t catch you, later on.” Opal deduced.

    Trevor nodded. “That, and you minimize the engagement time, thereby minimizing damage to your fleet.”

    “Those have always been fairly reasonable tactical alternatives,” Downing concluded. “Against human opponents, that is.”

    Onscreen, there were light puffs of what looked like dust jetting out from the rounded nose of the light cruiser. “The Chinese ship is firing its primary armament–a rail gun–now,” mentioned Trevor. “The puffs are buffering granules, doped on the rails to prevent wear and to ensure uniform conductivity.”

    “That ship seems to be putting a lot of lead–or steel or depleted uranium or whatever–downrange,” commented Opal.

    “Yes, it is,” agreed Downing.

    There were two more puffs, and then the ship shuddered as hull fragments came flying off just behind the nose. Two sensor masts went spinning backward, one almost smacking the camera, just before the drone carrying it swung around to survey other damage farther aft.

    Halfway down the long tail boom, a sparking thruster bell was hanging on by a single strut. Intermittent flames were curling out of a blackened hole in a hydrogen tank, which meant that a nearby oxygen feed line had also been clipped. Two cargo modules–hexagonal tubes–were tumbling behind.

    “What hit it?” Elena said in a small voice.

    “Laser, probably pulsed UV, given the range, the power, and the multiple hits,” said Downing in a tightly controlled voice.

    As the camera began rotating to show the stern of the ship, a flurry of smaller explosions pocked its smooth midship flanks. Then a larger blast ripped one of the rotational gee-modules out of its hull-flushed housing recess. “Rail gun submunitions,” Trevor murmured, apparently for Opal’s benefit. “A long-range space shotgun.”

    The viewpoint drone was evidently struck by some of the debris that had spalled off the hull. It shook a bit, righted itself, and refocused–just in time to show what looked like a flame-trailing star arc suddenly out of the velvet blackness and strike the cruiser amidships. The screen went blank.

    –And changed to a more distant space shot. But in this one, a small blue-white sphere burgeoned into existence at the lower right hand corner.

    “Was that the cruiser, exploding in the distance?” Opal asked quietly. “And was that a missile which got it?”

    Downing nodded as the viewpoint changed to the bow camera of a Gordon-class FOCAL. It was apparently engaging in emergency maneuvers. The camera had to gimbal a bit to maintain the same perspective.

    A bright yellow-white smear flashed in the center of the screen, then two more in quick succession far to the left: the death-blooms of smaller ships, probably human. Firefly flickers of dying drones and missiles stretched across the view, some very near. One was surprisingly close.

    “That was a near miss,” Trevor said confidently. “I’m guessing our viewpoint ship’s own Point Defense Fire system got an Arat Kur missile?”

    Downing nodded tightly, never taking his eyes off the screen. After a lull in the flashes that signified the deaths of smaller human ships and drones, a much larger blue-white sphere expanded to dominate the center of the screen. “That’s the Egalité.” murmured Downing. “Destroyed when we thought she was still safely out of range.”

    Another sphere bloomed in the upper left.

    “And the Beijing.” he added.

    The picture shifted to a distant side shot of a third naval shift-carrier. Its forward-mounted hab ring was already missing two sections and spewing bright orange flame. A moment later, the bridge section at the bow blasted outward into an expanding hemisphere of debris. Pointing toward the epicenter of the cone of destruction, Downing commented, “Definitely a laser–and a bloody powerful one. Only a focused beam could inflict so much damage to such a small area.”

    The spalling, splintering, and outgassing of that hit had imparted a small tumble to the ship. The nose of the crippled carrier began pitching down, the engine decks at its stern rising slightly. As it did, the hull spat out two small white ovals from behind the torus’s rotator coupling: escape pods. Another one came out of the engineering decks–

    Almost too fast to see, a pair of stars streaked into the picture, one striking the keel just abaft the torus, the other slicing into the engine decks. Blinding light rushed outward, swallowed the ship, the pods, the whole screen–then, static.

    Downing sighed and turned off the screen. “And that was the Shanghai. I received the final loss list from The Second Battle of Jupiter just minutes before you all arrived. It is not reassuring.”

    “How bad?” asked Elena quickly.

    “Both of the Chinese carriers and the Egalité were destroyed, as you saw. So were ninety percent of their complements. The other Euro carrier, the Tapfer, managed to cut across the primary axis of the engagement and is making for the outer system. But the fleet is effectively destroyed as a force in being. By all assessments, the strategy of closing quickly with the Arat Kur to inflict more damage was more disastrous than long-range sniping. We’d need a significant numerical superiority in hulls and drones to make such a tactic advisable.”

    Opal looked up slyly. “What about the drones we haven’t shown them yet, the ones hidden in deep sites?”

    Downing started. “How do you know about those?”

    “I’ve been hanging around you sneaky intel types long enough now. I know how your minds work.”

    “Very good–I think. At any rate, we had none in range of this engagement. Most are committed to cislunar defense, but we have no way to use them at the moment. Having established full orbital control, the Arat Kur can jam any ground-based control signals, other than tightbeam lascom. And they are not going to tolerate any of the latter. They proved that right after their exosapient ‘solidarity forces’ began landing in Indonesia at the invitation of now-President Ruap.”

    Elena narrowed her eyes. “So is that why the Arat Kur made those limited orbital strikes against a few of our cities, and wiped one off the map in China?”

    Downing nodded. “Yes. When the second Arat Kur fleet arrived by shifting into far cislunar space, they blasted all our orbital assets, including all our control sloops. The Chinese, who have an immense number of remote-operated interceptors, did not want to cede the high ground. So they launched a wave of antiship drones, all controlled from their large lascom ground station in Qinzhou.”

    Opal’s voice was tight, angry. “And so the Arat Kur bombed it–and Qinzhou itself, for good measure. And now they’ve got how many ships floating over our heads?”

    Downing aimed his palmtop at the flatscreen, pressed a button.

    A brace of Arat Kur ships–all gargantuan shift-carriers–glided out of view, huge spindly gridworks crammed with an eye-gouging assortment of subordinate craft, rotating habitation modules, cargo canisters, and other objects of less determinable purpose. Arrayed around them were the less gargantuan, but still massive shift-cruisers: smooth, single-hulled oblongs, flared and flattened at the stern. Other ships of the line–each a freight-train composite of boxes, modules, engine decks, rotating hab nacelles and fuel tanks–looked drastically smaller, both because they were only a third the displacement of the shift cruisers and because they were more distant, arrayed in a protective sphere around the shift vessels.

    “Those tinier guys don’t look so tough,” said Opal with a false bravado that fooled no one.

    “Actually, except for when a shift cruiser uses its drive capacitors to charge its spinal beam weapon, the slower-than-light craft are far more deadly. They have no heavy, unipiece hull. No shift drive and no antimatter power plant to drag about. Far fewer fuel requirements. They are built purely for maximum speed and firepower.”

    “But once the STL ships are detached from their carrier–”

    “Yes, that’s the rub. Once they are deployed, they’re stuck in-system until they make rendezvous with a carrier.”

    Opal looked back at the screen. “Do they have anything else up there, maybe hulls we haven’t seen?”

    “Doubtful, but we can’t be sure. We haven’t wanted to risk our last orbital assets taking new pictures unless ground observatories detect additions to the blockade.”

    “Wait. We still have orbital assets?” Trevor asked. “I thought they smacked down everything.”

    “Everything except our old ‘disabled’ satellites,” Downing corrected.

    Trevor frowned. “You mean we’re getting pictures from broken satellites?”

    Downing smiled. “We call them Mousetraps. Seven years ago, we started replacing the innards of failed satellites with dormant military systems. Some contain lascom control relays, others are communications transfer hubs, some conceal weapons.”

    Opal sounded indignant. “So why didn’t we use these, uh, Mousetraps to attack the Arat Kur’s orbital fleet?”

    “The armed Mousetraps don’t contain weapons large enough use on the big ships. Not all of which are blockading Earth, by the way. Most of the fleet we engaged at the First Battle of Jupiter has moved to the Belt, primarily to take possession of our antimatter facility on Vesta.”

    “And the remainder?”

    “Still controlling Jovian space.”

    Opal drummed her fingers on the table-top. “So, they left some guards at the self-serve gas station.”

    “Just so.” Richard smiled at her archaism.

    “So this means that right now, all told, Earth has lost–?”

    “–nine of its eleven military shift carriers, Major Patrone.”

    “Can civilian carriers be used to replace them?”

    “Not really. While any carrier can pick up and shift a payload to another system, fleet carriers are designed to do it on the move and under fire. They have far more thrust potential, far more system redundancy, far better weaponry, and autonomous docking systems for high-speed deployment and recovery.”

    Elena sighed. “So it seems like we have very few military options left. Which makes me wonder what answer First Consul Ching is going to give the Arat Kur tonight. Any guesses, Uncle Richard?”

    “Elena, I’m not even sure what the invaders’ new surrender terms are. But I do know someone who’s been talking about that with the president today.” Downing looked at Trevor meaningfully.

    Trevor shrugged. “The Arat Kur haven’t moderated their initial terms of surrender. In fact, they’ve put in an additional requirement.”

    Downing grimaced. “So what do they want now?”

    Trevor seemed to repeat the new demand from memory. “‘The World Confederation must hold a species-wide referendum to officially confirm or reject it as humanity’s legitimate government.’”

    Elena made a disgusted noise. “Do they have any conception of just how long it will take to solicit a complete global vote?”

    “Not just global,” Trevor corrected, “speciate. Their requirement specifically extends to offworld colonies.”

    “But it would take a whole year just to get the notification to Zeta Tucanae, and another year to get the results back here.”

    “That’s right–and they know it. Believe me, they know it.”

    Opal was frowning. “Then what are they trying to do with a condition like that? Sabotage the peace process before it gets started?”

    Downing nodded. “That’s exactly what they’re trying to do.”

    “But if they push us too far–”

    “Then what? At this point, how can we threaten them? Their air interdiction of Indonesia is absolute, as we learned when we tried to contest their ‘invited’ landings near the Indonesian mass-driver. One hundred seventy-eight combat aircraft and interface vehicles lost with all crews. Chinese, Australian, Japanese, a few American craft out of Guam: it didn’t make a difference. The best Arat Kur visible light lasers can reach right down to sea level with enough force to instantly take down any air vehicle in our inventory, even the armored deltas. And a maritime counterinvasion would be even worse. You’ve seen on the news what happens when an unauthorized ship crosses over the fifty-kilometer no-sail limit they imposed around Java.”

    Opal nodded. “A hail of kinetic-kill devices from orbit and down she goes to Davy Jones’ locker.”

    Elena looked around the room. “So that’s it? We’re just going to give up?”

    And again, all eyes drifted toward Trevor. He shook his head. “No, we are not giving up.”

    Downing found he was exhaling in relief. “Then what message is Ching going to send in answer to the Arat Kur and Hkh’Rkh demands?”

    Trevor looked at him. “Nothing.”