CHAPTER TWO
At the time Ian Trevayne had dispatched Elaine De Mornay to Alpha Centauri, he had been putting the finishing touches on his address to the fleet. He had spoken of summoning ghosts.
He had no idea! she now thought, as she stood before a large viewscreen and watched the latest antique glide soundlessly past. For this was—God help them all—an Athabasca class superdreadnought from the Bug War, just arrived from Epsilon Indi.
The image of the new arrival was being transmitted across almost ten light-minutes, for it was pulling into one of the orbital shipyards in Alpha Centauri A’s asteroid belt. She herself stood on a balcony in the cavernous control chamber of the great space station that was the Pan-Sentient Union Navy’s command center for the Alpha Centauri system, the second most important system of that polity’s human worlds—and, by some estimates, not even second. She manipulated the screen’s controls and it went to actual outside view. Before her were the magnificent twin planets of Nova Terra and Eden, whose common center of mass the station orbited at a little over a light-second. Beyond, at seven light-minutes, was the Sol-like type G2v yellow sun Alpha Centauri A. The secondary component of this binary system, the K1v type star Alpha Centauri B, was visible only as a superlatively bright orange star, for it was currently almost two hundred and forty light-minutes away, well out toward apastron in the highly eccentric orbit which, at periastron, brought it within ninety-four light-minutes of Component A.
When the exploration ship Hermes, bound for Neptune in 2053, had blundered through Sol’s solitary (and utterly unsuspected) warp point, its crew had naturally been more than a little surprised to abruptly find themselves thirty light-minutes from Alpha Centauri A. But further surprises were soon to come. In the heady years of the early twenty-first century, when extrasolar planets were first being discovered in wholesale lots, an Earth-sized world had been detected around Alpha Centauri B, orbiting far too close to be a habitat for life. But no such discoveries had been forthcoming around Component A, and there had been a tendency to write off Sol’s nearest neighbor. It turned out, however that Alpha Centauri B II had simply been easy to find, whipping around its primary so rapidly as to induce an easily observed “wobble.” Component B’s other planet—a small gas giant with a marginally terraformable moon—had gone unnoticed. So had the entire planetary system of Component A, which turned out to have an extremely dense Kuiper Belt, obscuring observation of the inner planets, including the life-bearing twins which were of somewhat less than Earthlike mass but were denser and therefore smaller. (This was a somewhat younger system that Sol’s, and had thus coalesced from a more heavy-element-enriched interstellar medium.)
Thus Alpha Centauri had turned out to be an unexpected treasure trove of colonizable real estate. But the real reason the system was a prize had emerged when humans, who now knew what to look for, had explored it for other warp points. They had found seven of them, leading to various nearby stars with warp points of their own. (Only much later, during the Bug War, had yet another warp point—a “closed” one, undetectable until someone came through from the other side—come to light, with all its freight of both terror and strategic opportunity, for it had connected to Bug space.) All at once, the gates of the galaxy had seemed to burst open, and human expansion had exploded outward in a series of surges, punctuated by wars, for other toolmaking species had also discovered the enigmatic warp network that brought the stars within reach.
Commander Andreas Hagen joined her on the balcony, interrupting her thoughts. Trevayne had sent him to Alpha Centauri before her, to prepare the way. To some, it might have seemed an odd assignment for Combined Fleet’s staff Intelligence officer. But he and Trevayne went back all the way to the latter’s unique resurrection from near-death, for Hagen—then a lieutenant commander, recently seconded from the Rim Federation’s Bureau of Ships to the faculty of its naval academy—had been assigned to the newly reborn living legend as a special liaison officer, charged with bringing him up to speed on the technological developments of eight decades which he had spent, as he himself put it, getting well and truly freezer-burned. Now Hagen had reverted to his old area of expertise. In Combined Fleet’s present pass, rigid occupational pigeonholes counted for no more than the fact that he and she belonged to two different (and historically hostile) star nations. Having one’s head on the block confers a certain sense of proportion about the true relative importance of things.
Now Hagen wore a wry smile. “I just thought you’d like to know that we’ve gotten another message from Assemblyman Morosini out at B, demanding passage back to Sol for his junket.”
A jag of irritation shot through De Mornay. The current crisis had caught a delegation from the PSU’s Legislative Assembly on Alpha Centauri B II (a), investigating the cost-effectiveness of investing in that moon’s terraforming. Ever since arriving here, her concentration on far weightier matters had been periodically interrupted by their squawks of indignation.
“You tell him I said exactly what I’ve said before,” she said through clenched teeth. “There are only a finite number of time-slots available for transits through the Sol warp point. All of them and more are earmarked for the foreseeable future for the Mothba . . . that is, the reserve fleet. I will not disrupt our schedule for their convenience. They can bloody well cool their heels out there.” (She had picked up a number of expressions from Trevayne.)
“Will do.” Hagen’s smile was now one of pleasurable anticipation, for he knew the politicos’ wails of anguish and bellows of outrage would be in vain. There were, of course, far more senior officers than a mere captain in the Alpha Centauri system. But Trevayne had made it very clear that his chief of staff spoke with his voice on all matters pertaining to the preparation of what was being derisively dubbed the “Mothball Fleet.” In fact he had broken one insufficiently cooperative rear admiral pour encourager les autres. Regarding the use of Alpha Centauri’s warp points, Elaine De Mornay’s word was law.
After a moment, De Mornay switched the screen back to the pickup from the shipyards. The venerable superdreadnought she had been observing was now being nudged into a construction dock.
“At least,” Hagen commented, “we’ve got adequate dock space since we terminated new construction. Not that everybody agreed it was a wise decision.”
“No, they didn’t,” De Mornay acknowledged. “But it was an easy one in the case of the devastators and superdevastators. It was a harder call for the lighter ships that haven’t become death traps for their crews. But it’s a matter of resource allocation. When the choice is between building one new ship or upgrading ten old ones, it’s no choice at all. Especially considering how many old ones we’ve got.”
Hagen nodded. They both knew the history of space-warship design philosophy. Most of that history could be summed up in the phrase bigger is better. At the beginning of the First Interstellar War in the early twenty-third century, the largest warship had been what would be considered today a light cruiser. By its end, the superdreadnought had ruled the skies. There had been a hiccup of sorts in the Third Interstellar War, when the late unlamented Rigellian race had introduced the one- or two-seat strikefighter, with its ability to maneuver into the “blind zone” that reactionless drives created aft of the big ships. But countermeasures had kept pace, and a well-handled battle line with adequate fighter support had continued to be the decisive factor. The trend had continued in the Bug War, with the introduction of the monitor, twice the tonnage of a superdreadnought, and on into the Fringe Revolution, when Ian Trevayne had unveiled the supermonitor. And it had accelerated when the invention of phased gravitic propulsion—the “Desai Drive”—had robbed the fighter of its speed advantage. The devastator and then the superdevastator (the largest hull capable of warp transit) had followed; and with the development of the gravitic disruptor, which those titanic ships’ engines could use effectively, it appeared that the warship of space had reached finality . . . and invincibility.
But then had come the Kaituni RAW, within whose range no devastator or superdevastator could live. Abruptly, the proudest ships ever built had been relegated to the role of glorified long-range missile platforms. And, just as abruptly, the superdreadnought had once again become the ideal warship size, too small for a RAW targeting solution, and with reasonable speed and cloakability.
“Yes,” said Hagen. “And thank God the upgrading is relatively simple. It’s largely a matter of ripping out modular systems and sensor arrays and plugging rapid-firing energy torpedoes and up-to-date sensor and targeting arrays into the existing power systems. At least we don’t have to install new engines.” He frowned at the viewscreen. “Of course, with museum pieces like that one, that don’t have Desai Drive . . .”
“They can still be useful for system defense, within the Desai Limit,” De Mornay reminded him. Within twenty light-minutes of a stellar mass, or two light-minutes of a planetary one, the Desai Drive would not function and ships that mounted it were reduced to an even footing with those that did not.
Still, she reflected, it was no wonder that the term “Mothball Fleet” for what she was assembling here from the various Heart Worlds was approaching semi-official status. People who used it, she thought with a certain asperity, ought to be grateful that mothballing was very simple in the vacuum of space.
Hagen’s mention of the installation of energy torpedoes reminded her of something. “How is the re-installation of the old stuff progressing?”
“Very satisfactorily, as you’ll see when you get your regular report on it in a couple of days. Fortunately, there are a lot of asteroids around here.”
“And a lot of skilled labor in the belt,” De Mornay nodded. Long ago, the invention of artificial gravity units had meant that the resources of asteroid belts could be exploited with no nonsense about having to build spin habitats or genetically engineer a human subspecies specialized for life in microgravity—the latter not free from ethical issues in any case. By now, Sol’s belt was highly developed indeed, and Alpha Centauri A’s little less so.
Ian Trevayne had resolved to take full advantage of that fact. The obsolete weapon systems being removed from mothballed ships and replaced with energy torpedoes—all the force beams and hetlasers and standard missile launchers and so forth—would not go to waste. Following his instructions, De Mornay had been remounting them on robotic weapon buoys (to the extent they were available) and asteroids (whose availability was effectively infinite). The density of such improvised defenses was growing impressive. Any invader of this system would, she was grimly determined, have to hack his way through a thicket.
The thought of passive defenses brought another thought to the surface of her mind. “I keep expecting to get a courier drone from Admiral Trevayne , augmenting his instructions about the fortresses. Some of the things he’s said seem to suggest that he’s had some new ideas on their deployment.”
Like all populous, highly developed systems of the PSU, Alpha Centauri was defended by massive orbital fortresses. Unfortunately, that very mass—typically somewhere between a devastator and a superdevastator—made them meat for the RAW. Trevayne had ordained that they should not be shackled immovably to their orbits. Here, again, the system’s extensive asteroid developments provided a solution. There was an abundance of tugs, mounting powerful tractor beams. De Mornay had commandeered as many of them as possible and was having them slaved to the fortresses. They would never be anything but slow, yet the arrangement could provide them with a certain strategic repositioning capability, though not a realistic tactical one. Simultaneously, the fortresses were being turned into pure long-range missile batteries—all other antishipping weapon systems were being ripped out to make room for more launchers and missile storage.
“Well,” Hagen reminded her, “we’re not quite due for one of his regular communications just yet—” At that moment, his wrist communicator beeped for attention. It was the comm officer.
“Commander, a courier drone has entered the system through the Bug-15 warp point. The contents are already coming in via selnarmic relay.” A pause. “It’s from Admiral Trevayne, sir.”
Hagen and De Mornay exchanged a meaningful look. “The chief of staff and I are on our way,” said the former. They departed, not quite at a run.
By the time they reached the comm center, Trevayne’s message had already been downloaded, even though the Bug-15 warp point was a good twenty-seven light-minutes distant, by grace of the instantaneous selnarmic relay developed by humanity’s Arduan allies. They read it in silence.
“So,” Hagen breathed, “the Bugs are already attacking Harnah.”
“At least the Bugs,” De Mornay cautioned. “As usual, we don’t know whether the Kaituni are ready yet to participate directly or are still hanging back. But either way, the point is that Admiral Trevayne wants to know how long he needs to fight a delaying action there. In other words, how much more time do we need.”
“Shall I have the various departments submit reports?”
“No time for that. And no need, I think. You and I both know more or less where we stand, And the longer we delay in replying—and the more time we ask for—the more of the Admiral’s people are going to die in Harnah.” De Mornay paused as though inviting Hagen to disagree. But he said nothing. She turned to the comm officer. “Prepare a courier drone—right now.”
As soon as it had become horribly obvious that devastators and superdevastators could not be exposed to the possibility of contact with the Kaituni, Trevayne had formed his into a special task group under the command of Commodore Hugo Allende and stationed them far back from any threatened warp point, in close proximity to a warp point of egress. But in Harnah he had, to Allende’s fierce satisfaction, risked placing them a little closer to the Bug-16 warp point than usual. Thus, before they had gotten very far in from that warp point, the lead Bug formations entered a blizzard of long-range missiles .
In the meantime, fighters swarmed around and through those formations, seeking ship’s blind zones. It was clear to Trevayne that the fighter, like the smaller warship classes, seemed destined to make a comeback. His pilots were all veterans by now, and they included avian-descended Ophiuchi, the best fighter jocks in the known galaxy. They also included Orions, risking themselves with the fearlessness demanded by the warrior code of Theernowlus and afire to avenge their shattered homeworld.
Yet still the Bugs came, and came, and came. It was the kind of stolid, insensate advance, totally without regard to losses, that had always horrified humans, who felt themselves to be in the presence of some inexorable natural force with no resemblance to intelligent life as normally understood. It couldn’t even be called suicidal. The Arachnid hive consciousness was very much concerned with its own survival. When it lavishly expended individual units, it was no more being suicidal than a human is being suicidal when he trimmed his hair or fingernails.
Little by little, Combined Fleet pulled reluctantly back. Disregarding Allende’s frustration, Trevayne ordered him to take his slow behemoths back first, giving them a head start in crossing the thirty-two light-minutes to the Bug-15 warp point, where they were to take up position. This, of necessity, robbed the defenders of their firepower. But the delaying action continued.
It was still continuing when a courier drone from Alpha Centauri arrived, considerably sooner than expected. After Trevayne and Gordon Singhal had read it, the acting chief of staff looked up with a smile. “That sounds like Captain De Mornay, doesn’t it?”
“It does indeed,” Trevayne agreed in a tone of quiet pride. “And it was because I more than half expected something like this that I got the devastators and superdevastators started back when I did.” He drew himself up. “Captain Singhal, Combined Fleet will commence the withdrawal to Bug-15 as planned—immediately.”