Ian Douglas - Singularity

There she was … the Jeanne d’Arc , a light star carrier, perhaps three quarters of the mass of America . Like all Alcubierre Drive ships, she had the same general design—slender spine aft, large, flattened dome forward. The shield cap had been painted blue and white, a sharp contrast with the sandblasted gray-black of America ’s prow. Her name and number appeared pristine, newly painted. According to the warbook, the Jeanne d’Arc didn’t have America ’s twin launch tubes running through the center of the shield cap. Instead, she possessed a single high-energy particle cannon, which gave her a formidable long-range bombardment capability above and beyond the punch carried by her fighters.

A whale swimming with minnows, the Jeanne d’Arc was accompanied by a cloud of fighters, tiny blue motes moving in her shadow.

Gray didn’t immediately recognize the Pan-European fighters, and had to pull an ID up on his warbook: Franco-German KRG-17 Raschadler fighters. He felt himself relax slightly. The Raschadler was roughly equivalent to the USNA SG-55 War Eagle, a design about twenty years old. They didn’t have the delta-V of Starhawks, the endurance, or the warload capability, and they didn’t possess the Starhawk’s high-tech ability to change its configuration for launch, for high-velocity travel, or for combat. In head-to-head knife fights with the Pan-Europeans, the Dragonfire Starhawks would come out on top every time. The problem was that no one wanted such a confrontation in the first place, least of all, Gray was certain, Koenig.

How could CBG-18 stop the Pan-Europeans without destroying their ships or risking the destruction of their own?

He zoomed in closer, magnifying the image. The Raschadler fighters were obviously positioned to prevent CBG-18’s fighters from getting close to the carrier’s central spine—the weapons sponsons and rotating hab modules and drop bays tucked away just aft of the shield cap.

Just ahead of the Jeanne d’Arc was a tiny, blurred tumble of distortion—the projected drive singularity that was pulling the giant through space.

The ship’s gravitic shields would be down on the forward cap, to enable the field projectors to create the singularity, a tightly knotted distortion of space.

And Gray thought he saw a way. …

CIC

TC/USNA CVS America

Kuiper Belt, HD 157950

98 light years from Earth

1732 hours, TFT

“Admiral?”

“Yes, CAG?”

“One of our people came up with something. Thought you should see it.”

Koenig read the downloaded text, transcribed from a pilot’s laser-com transmission. “Lieutenant Gray?” Koenig asked.

“Yes, sir. Acting CO of VFA-44.”

“I remember. Hero at the Defense of Earth … and again at Alphekka. He knows his shit.”

“Yes, sir. And his idea might work. Gives us something to go on, anyway.”

“We’ve got nothing better,” Koenig said. “Okay. Mr. Sinclair? Pass the word to all ships, tight beam and quantum encoded. Jeanne d’Arc will be the first target. We won’t hit the others unless this doesn’t work and they keep coming.”

“Aye, aye, Admiral.”

Koenig, an avid military historian, smiled. Lieutenant Gray, he thought, knew a secret first uncovered by an aviator back in the days of fabric-winged biplanes and oceangoing navies, a man named General Billy Mitchell.

“It appears,” Koenig said, “that our fighters are going to earn their pay today, David-and-Goliath style.”

“David and who, sir?” Sinclair sounded puzzled.

“Never mind.”

Since the passage of the White Covenant, in the late twenty-first century, the religious beliefs or training of others—or the lack of such—was no one’s business. Technically, it was only against the law to try to convert someone else, but in practice it was considered bad manners even to make a casual religious comment, or to make a reference to religious mythology.

“Our boys and girls out there are going to need something more than a sling,” Wizewski said quietly. The CAG, Koenig recalled, was religious, a member of some small and semi-fundamentalist Christian sect. There were so many nowadays it was impossible to keep track.

“Amen to that, CAG,” Koenig said quietly, so no one else would hear. “Amen to that. …”

CIC

TC/PE CVS Jeanne d’Arc

Kuiper Belt, HD 157950

98 light years from Earth

1739 hours, TFT

Grand Admiral Francois Giraurd studied the pattern of colored icons unfolding in the tactical display tank. Koenig would have to capitulate. He had no other sane option.

“Sir,” his tactical officer said. “We cross their line in twelve minutes.”

“Very well.”

“Sir … do you intend to attack?”

“It won’t come to that, Lieutenant. We will cross their line, they will scatter and refuse to confront us, and we will put our boarding party across. And then …”

“Sir?”

“And then we go home.”

They were ninety-eight light years from Earth, farther than any human had ever before voyaged. The emptiness, the darkness scattered with myriad unknown suns and civilizations, filled him with foreboding and a brooding sense of agitation, even fear. Humans didn’t belong out here, not in a galaxy already staked out and claimed by millions of other technic cultures.

He magnified the image in the tank. “What ship is that?”

“The Valley Forge ,” the tactical officer told him. “One hundred fifty thousand tons.”

“Target to disable her,” Giraurd said. “Power systems and weapons. We will push past her, then, and engage the America .”

“The cruiser is accompanied by a number of fighters.”

“Those are of no consequence. If they get too close, destroy them.”

“Our orders, sir, are to effect Koenig’s surrender without causing damage to their ships, or causing casualties.”

“We will damage them as little as possible, cause as few casualties as possible. But I see no other way of reaching the America , do you?”

“No, Grand Admiral.”

“Direct our fighter escort to move out ahead of us,” Giraurd said. “They will be our wedge to sweep the enemy aside. Order them to fire only if they are fired upon.”

“Yes, sir.”

“And accelerate to combat speed.”

“Yes, Grand Admiral.”

Giraurd smiled. They would end this standoff soon enough. Koenig was a fool if he thought he could make military policy for the Confederation. The Jeanne d’Arc would push through Koenig’s outer screen, close with America , and put boarding parties across to capture Koenig and take command of his fleet.

And then they could all go home.

VFA-44

Kuiper Belt, HD 157950

98 light years from Earth

1748 hours, TFT

“Here they come!” Gray called. “Their fighters are deploying ahead of the carrier, and they’re accelerating!”

“Hold position, Dragonfires,” Wizewski’s voice said in his head. “We’re doing it by the book.”

“Holding, aye, sir. …”

By the book meant a warning shot, a formal nicety in which modern naval vessels rarely engaged. Generally, the idea was to launch an attack, all-out, complete and devastating, zorching in before the enemy was even aware that your forces were in the area, with missiles and kinetic kill impactors coming in just behind the light announcing their arrival.

He switched to the tactical channel. “All ships! Engage squadron taclink.”

Gray and the other pilots each focused their thoughts, connecting with their fighters’ artificial intelligences. The twelve fighter craft were interconnected now by laser-optic feeds linking their onboard computers into a single electronic organism.