Charles Stross - Singularity Sky

“Anything else?” Marek was flustered. “Not unless something’s come up—”

“Contact!” It was the same sensor op. He looked up apologetically. “Begging your pardon, sir.”

“Describe.” It was the Captain’s turn.

“Second fusion source, about two M-kilometers above and south of the first. It’s tracking on a parallel course. I have a preliminary solution, looks like they’re vectoring to pass us at about one-zero-zero K-klicks, decelerating from eight-zero-zero k.p.s. Time to intercept, two K-seconds.”

“Any other activity?” asked Mirsky.

“Activity, sir?”

“You know. Anomalous lateral acceleration. Jamming, comms traffic, luminous pink tentacles, whatever.

Anything else?”

“No, sir.”

“Well, then.” Mirsky stroked his beard thoughtfully. “Something doesn’t add up.” The door to the bridge opened again; Lieutenant Helsingus came in. “Permission to take fire control, sir?”

“Do it.” Mirsky waved his hand. “But first, riddle me this: Why by the Emperor’s beard can we see two drive torches, but nothing else?”

“Ah—” Marek shut up.

“Because,” Commander Vulpis said over Mirsky’s shoulder, “it’s an entrapment, Captain.”

“I don’t know how you could possibly imagine such a thing; they’re obviously inviting us to a dinner dance.” Mirsky grinned nastily. “Hmm. You think they ditched a bunch of mines before they fired up the torches?”

“Quite possibly.” Vulpis nodded. “In which case, we’re going to get hit in about”— he punched at his board—“two-five-zero seconds, sir. We won’t be in range of anything you can cram on a mine for very long, but at this speed, even a cloud of sand would make a mess of us.” Mirsky leaned forward. “ Guns . Point defense to automatic! Comms, please request an ack from the commodore’s staff, and from Kamchatka and Regina . Make sure they’re watching for mines.” He smiled grimly. “Time to see what they’re made of, I think. Comms, my compliments to the Commodore, and please say that I am requesting permission to terminate emission control for defensive reasons.”

“Aye aye, sir.”

Emission controls were desperately important to a warship. Active sensors like radar and lidar required an echo from a foreign body to confirm its presence; but a sufficiently distant (or stealthed) body wouldn’t return an echo loud enough to pick up. Sending out the initial pulse gave away a ship’s position with great accuracy to any enemy who happened to be stooging around outside the return range but within passive detection range. By approaching Rochard’s World under emission control, the battle squadron had attempted to conceal themselves. The first ship to start actively radiating would make its presence glaringly obvious — painting a target on itself in the process of lighting up the enemy.

“Sir?”

“Yes, Lieutenant Marek?”

“What if there are more than two ships out there? I mean, we carry probes and a shuttle. What if we’re up against some kind of larger force, and the two we can see are just a decoy?” Captain Mirsky grinned humorlessly. “That’s not a possibility, Lieutenant, it’s a near certainty.”

“Mine intercept waypoint one, four minutes.” Vulpis read off timings from the glowing nixie tubes before him. He glanced up at the command chair; Captain Mirsky, seated there, nodded.

“Weapons, arm torpedoes, stand by on missiles. Remotes, status on red, blue, orange.” Mirsky was calm and collected, and his presence was a settling influence on the otherwise tense ops room crew.

The red telephone rang, jangling. Mirsky listened, briefly, then replaced the handset. “Radar. You have permission to radiate.”

Radar One: “Going active now, sir. One-zero-second pulse-doppler train, four octave agile spread, go to jamming sequence alpha afterward. Decoys, sir?”

“You may launch decoys.” Mirsky folded his hands in his lap and gazed straight ahead at the main screen. Beneath the calm exterior, he was seriously worried; he was gambling his life and his ship — and all those aboard her — on a hypothesis about the nature of their pursuers. He wasn’t confident, but he was sufficiently well informed to make an educated guess about what was after them. Maybe the UN

woman had the right idea , he thought gloomily. He glanced around the ops room. “Commander Helsingus. Status, please?”

The bearded gunnery officer nodded. “First four rounds loaded as per order, sir. Two self-propelled torpedoes with remote ignition patches on my board, followed by six passive-powered missiles rigged for EMP in a one-zero-degree spread. Laser grid programmed for tight point-defense. Ballistic point-defense programs loaded and locked.”

“Good. Helm?”

“Holding steady on designated fleet approach pattern, sir. No evasion authorized by staff.”

“Radar?”

Lieutenant Marek stood up. He looked tense and drawn, new lines forming around his eyes- “Humbly report, sir, active is on cold clamp. Passive shows nothing yet, except on infrared trace, but that should give us a fix in”—he glanced down— “about three minutes and counting. Decoy is overboard, running out to radiation rangepoint one.” The decoy — a small unpowered drone trailing behind the warship on a ten-kilometer-long tether — was preparing to radiate an EM signature identical to that of the ship: synchronized by interferometer with the active sensors aboard the Lord Vanek , it would help confuse any enemy sensors as to the exact position of the battlecruiser.

“Good.” Mirsky looked at the clock beside the main forward display, then glanced down at the workstation before him. Time for the checklist. “At waypoint one, be prepared to commence burn schedule one on my word. That’s four-zero gees continuous until we build up to six-zero k.p.s. then shut down, full damping, course three-six-zero by zero by zero on current navigation lock. Comms, notify all elements of squadron one. Guns, at time zero plus five seconds, be prepared to drop torps one and two, on my word. Comms, signal torpedo passive drop to Squadron One. Please confirm.”

“Aye aye, sir. One and Two”—Helsingus snapped a brass switch over—“are armed for passive drop at time plus five.”

“Good.”

‘Time to possible mine intercept, two minutes, sir.“

“Thank you Nav Two, I can see the clock from here.” Mirsky gritted his teeth. “Helm, status.”

“Program locked. Main engine is available for burn in five-zero seconds, sir.”

“Radar, update.”

“We should pick ’em up in about two minutes, sir. No emissions—” Lieutenant Marek stopped. “What’s that?”

Radar Two: “Contact, sir! Lidar registers ping one. Waiting for—” An alarm shrilled. “Something just pinged us, sir,” said Marek.

Everybody except the radar techs were staring at Mirsky. He caught Helsingus’s eye and nodded.

‘Track beta.“

“Aye aye, sir. Guns Two, track beta.” An almost imperceptible thump shuddered through the structure of the battlecruiser as the main axial launch coil spat twenty tonnes of intricately machined heavy metal and fuel out through the nose of the ship. A second bump signaled the release of the second torpedo. Drifting unpowered, cold but for their avionics packages, they would wait behind when the Lord Vanek began to accelerate.

“Minus three-zero seconds,” called Nav Two.

“Beg to report on the contact, sir,” said Marek.

“Speak, Nav.”

“We managed to get a look at the pulse train on the contact, and it looks, um, strange. Noisy, if you follow my meaning; they’ve done a good job of concealing their recognition signature.”