Ian Douglas - Centre of Gravity

Cutting their drives and flipping end-for-end, they opened aft venturis and fired their plasma-maneuvering thrusters, using jets of super-heated water as reaction mass. Unlike uniform gravitational acceleration, the thrusters had a kick. Gray was plastered against the embrace of his seat at three Gs as he began gaining speed once more, this time directly toward the aft end of the America .

In normal space operations, they would be using their gravitic drives and coming in from much farther out, at much higher speeds. Trapping on board a carrier snugged up to the dock was child’s play by comparison, or it would have been if a missed cue or a lapse in concentration hadn’t risked punching through the gossamer strands and struts of the synchorbital base.

The hab modules on board the carrier were turning, providing spin gravity for the crew. Each approach had to be precisely on the money; Dragonfire Twelve—Lieutenant Jacosta—made the first approach, accelerating slightly as he slid into the deep shadow beneath the carrier’s belly, then at the last moment fired his lateral thrusters to give him a side vector of seven meters per second, matching the movement of the landing bay as it swung in ahead and from the right. Dragonfire Eleven—Kirkpatrick—was missing from the formation. Tucker was next, in Dragon Ten.

The landing bay was rotating at 2.11 turns per minute, so every twenty-eight seconds, the opening swung around once more and another incoming fighter was there to meet it.

And now it was Gray’s turn. Traveling at one hundred meters per second, he passed into the shadow beneath the carrier, watching the massive blisters, domes, and sponsons housing the ship’s quantum taps and drive projectors smoothly passing seemingly just above his head. It took almost ten seconds for him to traverse the length of America ’s spine. His AI used his thrusters to adjust his speed with superhuman precision, dropping into the sweet-spot moving pocket and nudging him to port for that critical side-vector of seven meters per second. For an instant, the gaping maw of the moving docking bay appeared to freeze motionless as the fighter swept in across the line of deck acquisition lights. At the last moment, he entered the tangleweb field that slowed his forward momentum sharply, bringing him to a halt.

Magnetic grapples clamped hold of his ship and rapidly moved it forward, clearing the docking bay for the next incoming fighter, just under thirty seconds behind him. As the fighter dropped through a liquid-nano seal and into the pressurized bay immediately beneath the flight deck, he thought-opened the Starhawk’s side and pulled off his helmet with a heartfelt sigh of relief.

He was home, and where he belonged … even if for only a few minutes.

21 December 2404

High-G Orbital Shuttle Burt Rutan

Approaching SupraQuito Fleet Base

Earth Synchorbit, Sol System

1532 hours, TFT

Captain Randolph Buchanan and several of his aides had gone down the Quito space elevator that afternoon to reach the eudaimonium. Normally, he would have taken the captain’s gig down to Giuliani, but an engineering downgrudge report had taken his gig off of flight-ready status, and he’d relied on civilian transport instead.

That had left him at something of a disadvantage when the fleet recall had come through. He could have gone back to the ship with Admiral Koenig, but there’d not been time to find him or the admiral’s barge in the chaos down there.

Instead, the Burt Rutan had been summarily commandeered by no less a luminary than Admiral of the Fleet John C. Carruthers, and Buchanan and several other high-ranking officers and aides had climbed aboard a mobile passenger module at the eudaimonium docking area for the short flight north to the spaceport.

The Rutan was a cargo transport, designed to boost heavy loads up to synchorbit for the ongoing construction of the bases and facilities tethered high above Quito, and she was not designed with passenger comfort in mind. The passenger module slipped into the big shuttle’s cargo deck and locked home. It was claustrophobic on board, with few amenities, but with a boost of five hundred gravities, it would take less time to reach synchorbit than it had for the flight from the eudaimonium to Giuliani.

Buchanan leaned back in the embrace of the hab seat as the vast, light-dusted blackness of Earth’s night side, aglow with cities, dropped away aft. He was linked through his implant to Commander Sam Jones, America ’s executive officer. Admiral Koenig was riding the link from the Admiral’s barge, which was trailing by a hundred kilometers, following the Rutan in to the docking facility. Koenig was listening in, but not interfering. Captain Barry Wizewski, America ’s brand-new CAG, was also on board the civilian shuttle, linked in with the communications net connecting the Rutan with the carrier’s CIC.

“Damn it, Sam, I want full readiness for space five minutes after I step onto the quarterdeck,” Buchanan growled.

“We’re working on it, sir,” Jones replied, “but things are kind of chaotic on board right now. We have civilians on board …”

He spoke the word with evident distaste. In fact, there would be several hundred civilian contractors on the ship, part of the small army of inspection teams and drive magicians who came aboard each time the carrier entered its berth.

“They can come along with us, Number One. We won’t be going far.”

“We also have about a thousand ship’s personnel coming in from liberty. A lot of them won’t make it for an hour or two.”

“Then we’ll boost without them,” Buchanan said. He glanced at the comm icon representing Koenig. “What’s the status on the fighter wings?”

“VFA–44 is coming on board now, sir. We’re ten for twelve there. VFA–31 is on deep patrol but has been recalled. They should get the recall order in another two hours. VFA–49 is on Ready Five. The others are scrambling. We went to GQ about seven minutes ago.”

America carried six fighter and fighter-attack squadrons in all.

“Whiz?” Buchanan said, addressing America ’s CAG. “I’d like to get the Peaks out there, too. What do you think?”

“I’m giving the orders now, Captain.”

VQ–7, the Sneaky Peaks, was America ’s reconnaissance squadron, flying under the flamboyant Commander James Henry Peak. Flying CP–240 Shadowstars, they would have the best chance of getting close to the intruder spacecraft without being noticed.

“How long before the Dragonfires are rearmed and set for launch?”

“Twenty minutes, sir.”

Buchanan nodded. Twenty minutes was damned fast. The ready crews would be busting ass to turn those fighters around.

“Do you have anything to add, Admiral?” he asked.

“I suggest that we get all squadrons spaceborne ASAP, and keep them out there,” Koenig said from his barge. “Priority to the fighters, of course, but get the EW and SAR squadrons off the carrier as quickly as you can. America will be a target, especially while she’s in dock.”

“Aye, aye, sir.” That made sense. If America was crippled or destroyed while still in dock, at least her fighters would be spaceborne and on an attack vector.

“Number One,” Buchanan continued, “get my ship out of dock if you have to cut the lines with a pocket knife and haul her out on your shoulder.” He glanced at the Rutan ’s bulkhead display. The shuttle was approaching the carrier now, approaching over the curve of her shield cap. He could see a fighter coming in from astern, heading for a trap on the hangar deck. The Rutan wouldn’t be going in that way. They would dock in zero-G, the quarterdeck docking bay, just forward of the rotating hab modules. “We’re about five minutes from docking, so stop gabbing with me and get on it!”