Marko Kloos - Lines of Departure

“That was the last one,” the Networks admin says. “The reactor output fail-safe and automatic shutdown. Unhackable , they said in tech school.”

“There’s no such thing,” I say.

“There’s only the fear of a court-martial.” He taps his screen and initiates the reactor warm-up. “Fifteen minutes to one hundred and ten percent. This baby will go out of the starting blocks like a fighter.”

I watch through the external feed as the automated tugs wrestle the two remaining cargo pods into position and lock them into place. The freighter itself is a long, knobby hull with a command section at the front and an engine section aft, connected by a long spine. The external cargo pods all connect to the spine of the ship and form the bulk of the Gordon ’s hull. Each cargo pod can be jettisoned separately for orbital drop—an easier and cheaper method than ferrying everything down to the surface with atmospheric craft.

The Networks admin lets out a low whistle.

“Gross weight is forty-three thousand metric tons,” he says. “I think that’s a class record. The water in the main hull added damn near eight thousand tons.”

Dr. Stewart taps around a bit on her data pad and lets out a whistle of her own.

“If this thing hits— when it hits—we’re going to need some heavy-duty eye protection back here. Because the impact energy will be two hundred gigatons . Give or take a few depending on how much water she burns along the way.”

There are general sounds of amazement and appreciation in the CIC. The nukes in the tubes of all the task force ships put together probably total less than a thousandth of that yield.

“If we miss that shot, it will be the biggest waste of ordnance in the history of space warfare,” the tactical officer says.

“Then let’s not miss.” Colonel Campbell looks up at the time readout on the CIC bulkhead. “Is the Lanky still where we want him to be?”

“He’s skipping in and out. Sensors keep losing him, but the computer is tracking his projected path with the optics. Every once in a while, we get a reflection, and he pops back into the visible spectrum. He’s right on track. One-gravity acceleration. Thirty-six hours, eleven minutes, and three seconds to turnaround. Unless the Lankies have a way to negate physics and stop their ships on a dime without having to counter-burn,” the weapons officer adds.

“Well, let’s hope they don’t. XO, reset the shot clock. Prep for send-off. Weps and Networks, whenever you’re ready.”

At minus thirty-six hours and three minutes, the Networks administrator opens the throttles on the Gordon ’s fusion rocket engines and increases the reactor output to 110 percent, emergency military power. The Gary I. Gordon leaps out of her orbital parking spot like a MARS missile popping out of the launcher tube, faster than I have ever seen a warship accelerate from a dead start, let alone a fifty-year-old freighter. We had debated using the gravity well of Fomalhaut c by slingshotting the freighter around it, but with all the reactor power being available for the engines, we concluded that the risk of losing telemetry and having an unfortunate freighter/planet interface wasn’t worth the extra acceleration out of the starting block. We’ve slaved the navigation system and thrust controls of the Gordon to the neural network on the Indianapolis , and now the freighter is a giant guided missile, unmanned, with the remote control sitting in front of me in the CIC.

“Send a courtesy message to the Midway and her entourage,” Colonel Campbell says. “Tell them to stay clear of that neighborhood. Not that they’ll need the encouragement.”

The comms officer does as instructed, and I take the opportunity to contact the ops center down in New Longyearbyen’s admin center.

“Fallon, this is Grayson. Operation Doorknocker is in progress. Time to target is thirty-six hours.”

“Rolled the dice and bet the house on one throw,” Sergeant Fallon replies. “Are you staying up there, Andrew?”

“Affirmative. Thirty-six hours to go, I’ll be backing up their Networks guy so we don’t have to pop a bunch of go-pills.”

“Makes sense. I’ll inform the troops down here.” There’s a brief pause. “If we miss, how long until our party crashers arrive?”

“They’re going a steady one-g, so once they flip and accelerate the other way, seventy hours.”

“One hundred and six hours, then. Guess I don’t have to have everyone lock and load just yet. Good luck, Andrew. If we miss, get your butt back down here so we can do our epic last stand together.”

“That’s affirmative, Sarge,” I say. “Grayson out.”

I turn around and watch the tactical display. The Gordon is out of sight of the low-power optics already, but on the plot, she has barely moved toward the Lanky. Blue icon accelerating toward orange icon, irresistible force hurling itself against immovable object.

Don’t you fucking miss , I think. I’ll be in deep shit if I don’t make it back for my own wedding.

The combat-stations alert on the Indy is a very well-mannered low electronic trill that yanks me out of my sleep instantly nonetheless. I open my eyes to find that the berth is illuminated by red combat lighting. It feels like I had just fallen asleep, but when I check the chrono on the bulkhead, I see that I’ve slept for almost six hours. I drop out of bed, put on my boots again, and rush to the CIC.

“We’re picking up radiation signatures from the Alcubierre node we mined a week ago,” Colonel Campbell says as I step across the CIC threshold and almost fall on my face as my boot catches. “Several nuclear detonations in the triple-digit-kiloton range.”

“Sounds like someone tripped the minefield,” I say.

“Or something ,” the XO suggests.

“Anything come through?”

“Can’t tell yet,” Colonel Campbell says. “At this range, the nuclear noise is blotting out everything else. We’ll have to wait a little until the dust settles, so to speak.”

I look over at the running shot clock on the CIC bulkhead. It shows twenty-eight hours left to go until the freighter meets the Lanky ship. The newcomers, if they are coming from the bearing of the Alcubierre node, will be coming in almost from the opposite bearing of the incoming Lanky. Our fleet combat units are playing chicken in deep space, so whatever just entered the system through Alcubierre only has to push aside our little OCS to take control of New Svalbard.

“Maybe it’s reinforcements,” the XO says. “They’re coming from our Alcubierre node.”

“They wouldn’t trip the mines,” I say. “Unless their IFF transponders went to shit.”

“Could be the SRA has figured out the location of our node,” the colonel says. “Could be their node just happens to be close to ours. I’ll take all of that over another Lanky coming our way from the other direction. At least we can surrender to the SRA, and they’ll leave our colonists alive.”

The sensor package on the Indy is the best on any fleet ship, and it doesn’t take very long for the computer to sort out the clutter between optical arrays, infrared, and radar.

“Can’t make out who it is, but there’s a bunch of ’em,” the tactical officer says. “Too far away for comms, but I don’t get any IFF verifications.” He cycles through a few windows on his display. “Three…four…five…six…make that eight, maybe nine.”

“Can’t be Lankies, then,” I say. “I’ve never seen more than one of theirs at a time.”