“Engage power,” Admiral Sioux said.
“Proton Beam power on,” the Power Chief said.
“Target acquired,” the First Gunner said.
Admiral Rica Sioux smiled thinly. She and ship’s AI had already chosen the targets ten days ago. They would follow a strict procedure aboard the Bangladesh. If the Highborn did something unforeseen, only then would they change procedure.
“Admiral?” the First Gunner asked.
She sighed. A good officer, the Pakistani First Gunner, but he was a little too anxious. Why couldn’t he allow her to enjoy the moment? After one hundred and twenty-one years of life, she had learned that savoring a moment was often more enjoyable than the actual moment itself.
“This day,” she said to the command crew, “we teach the Imperialist warmongers that you can contain the People momentarily, but you can’t keep them down forever.”
One fool actually started clapping, although he quickly looked around, saw that no one else clapped and sheepishly turned back to his screen.
“Hear, hear,” said the Second-in-Command.
There, much better, and with an actual touch of the antiquated navy. The Admiral liked that. She closed her eyes and refrained from fiddling with her cap, as much as she wanted to adjust it because her head itched abominably. That would seem like a nervous gesture, though. She opened her eyes, trying to memorize every detail.
“Fire,” she said.
The First Gunner pressed the button.
Ship’s AI took over. Within the Bangladesh, power flooded from the storage cells and the ship’s Fusion Drive pumped in more. Said power charged through the proton generators. Needles and gages jumped and quivered, and then out of the single cannon poured the incredibly powerful proton beam.
It almost sped 300,000 kilometers per second for Mercury, for the Sun Works Factory that churned armaments for the Supremacists. For 1.7034 minutes, the tip of the beam flew through the vacuum of space. Meanwhile, Mercury traveled along its orbital path around the Sun, and around the pitted planet rotated the vast ring habitat, its exact tilt known even to the lone scientists far out on Charon. The proton beam almost charged as fast as anything could possibly travel in the galaxy. It was a little less than the speed of light, amazingly fast to terrestrials, but when set against the vast distances of space, a mere crawl.
On the Sun Works Factory technicians and secretaries, Highborn officers and premen underlings, repairmen, computer specialists, welders, deck crew, cooks and maintenance all went about their normal activities. None knew what sped toward them. Nothing could have given them warning. If radar could have bounced off the proton beam, the return radar blip would have traveled only a little faster than the attacking protons. Like a literal bolt out of the blue, the proton beam flew onward.
Approximately 1.7 minutes after leaving the proton cannon, the beam lanced past the solar collectors that girded the outer shell of the Sun Works Factory. For all the precision of the Bangladesh’s targeting system, the first shot missed its target by 100 meters. The proton beam shot past the solar collectors, flashed over the rest of the spinning station and speared at Mercury. There the beam churned the already molten surface.
Shuttle pilots and pod-crew near the beam stared at it in dread fascination. Highborn command officers swore. In seconds, alarms rang everywhere.
Then the beam shifted, as it had been shifted 1.7 minutes ago aboard the Bangladesh. Ship’s AI had predicated the possibility of a miss. Because of that possibility, ship’s AI had suggested that the Admiral re-target the beam every six seconds.
Thus six seconds after the harsh proton beam flashed past the Sun Works Factory and hit Mercury, it readjusted and smashed into the solar collectors that protected the outer skin of the station. They had never been built to take such punishment. An old-style military laser would have destroyed it and little more. For a laser beam didn’t stay on target, on the same spot, for more than a nanosecond. But this was the improved proton beam, Social Unity’s single ace card against the Highborn. It punched through the solar collector and through the heavy shielding behind it. It stabbed into the Sun Works Factory itself, into the orbital fighter construction yard that had been built in this part of the Factory.
The proton beam touched welder equipment and ignited engines. Blasts added to the destruction, awful, fierce annihilation. For six seconds the proton beam wreaked the needed orbital construction yard. It punched through that part of the ring-factory, slicing it like a gigantic knife. Gouts of purple plasma erupted into space. Burned bodies floated into the vacuum, some of those crisped corpses were Highborn. Titanic ammunition blasts combined with the beam and ruptured the Sun Works, a devastating first strike. In nearby areas, the blasts ruptured hatches and ignited more fires. Shocked technicians, pilots and service personal died by fire, by vacuum and sometimes by toxic fumes.
Then the proton beam shifted again.
The first attack lasted three minutes, the beam shifting every six seconds. It was three minutes of hellish terror for everyone on the nearest side of the Sun Works Factory. In the hit locations, it was three minutes of incredible destruction. It was three minutes of brutal death. Maybe for the first time in the war, the Highborn knew they could be hurt.
Aboard the Bangladesh, the command crew and proton-beam technicians held their breath. Or it seemed to them they did. The three minutes went by in a flash. Then:
“Power low,” the Power Chief said.
Admiral Sioux watched the seconds tick by in her VR-monocle. Three, two, one: “Shut down the proton beam.”
“Proton beam shutting down,” said the First Gunner.
“Engage engines,” ordered the Admiral.
Everyone abandoned the modules and floated to the acceleration couches in the center of the capsule, buckling in. Soon the mighty engines burned. The Bangladesh thrust to a different heading, just in case the Highborn tried anything unexpected.
In another half-hour, they would fire again. For the next several days, they were going to pound the Sun Works Factory and see if they could teach the Highborn a thing or two about space warfare.
Admiral Rica Sioux loved it.
16.
Nadia Pravda nervously paced before a Plexiglas bubble dome that hissed from a crack four meters up. She was a fool. She should phone Hansen and explain that none of this was her fault. She was sick of hiding in crawl spaces, wondering if Marten could build a spacecraft to take her out of here.
She laughed at the impossibility of the idea. Yet she recalled his performance at the Pleasure Palace. He had taken out the two monitors and then everyone in the drug room. Stunning. She shivered as she remembered the tumbling bodies and that dead monitor shot through the eye by the thickly muscled Korean. Omi had checked each person, shooting several just to make sure they were soundly asleep. He’d seemed ruthless. But Marten, he seemed to be more than ruthless. Something drove him.
She made a face. The smart thing would be to call in and tell her foreman she’d been sick, so sick that she hadn’t even been able to reach the com system. He would know she was lying. That’s why she might need a call from Hansen. Then she should have her job back. Yes, and then she would owe Hansen two favors, one for not killing her and another for getting her job back.
Why had the sump exploded that day?
Nadia eyed the hissing crack and checked her watch. Marten was late. Fear twisted her resolve. What if he didn’t show? What if he had been caught? What if even now monitors raced here to, to—Nadia hugged herself. Would they really shove her naked out an airlock? That’s what they’d threatened to do if she double-crossed them.