“Lock-on, I need lock-on,” Su-Shan muttered.
There was no one to hear her plea. Su-Shan stood alone in the governing pit, making all command decisions and observations. Technicians waited in the outer shell, ready to affect any needed repairs. Otherwise, they were useless.
Baffled by their failed lock-on attempts, several nearby laser operators beamed their powerful rays at the enemy. Perhaps they’d concluded that would upset the Onoshi equipment, or maybe they’d simply become tired of waiting.
The anti-missile rockets speeding on near-intercept courses concerned the lead AIs more than the lasers did. Nuclear near-explosions and x-ray and gamma ray beams could upset the primary mission. Therefore, the lead AIs opened their point-defense cannons and fired their first flock of anti-missiles.
The launching of the anti-missiles, however, helped the Callisto ECM. At that point, several laser-satellites achieved lock-on.
In her governing pit, Su-Shan grinned with manic delight. She hadn’t sleep for thirty-seven hours, and she had ingested too many stimulants with too little food. She was jittery, hated the prospect of death and despised the cyborgs for endangering her. She found it hard to accept that she was going to die, and that made her even jitterier and affected her normally calm demeanor.
With her manic grin came something that might have sounded like a bitter laugh. Her fingers twitched in her twitch-gloves, and she swung her sheathed arms into position.
The laser on her satellite adjusted. The magnitude of power rose. She beamed. The beam sped through space, covering 300,000 kilometers per second. Her laser struck a Voltaire’s nosecone.
The sensation caused the missile’s AI to engage sub-thrusters. The missile moved to a slightly different heading. The laser beamed harmlessly past it.
In the governing pit, Su-Shan adjusted. Her motions and decisions were aided by a battle-computer that did the molecular-level, precision targeting. She attacked the same missile, heating the shielded nosecone. Again, the AI veered.
The contest took nine point five-thee minutes to complete. In that time, the pack of Voltaire Missiles entered into the point-defense cannons’ range. Su-Shan’s targeted missile exploded a hull section and jinked constantly. At the end of the nine point five-three minutes, however, the AI poked out targeting rods and committed seppuku.
Seppuku was ritual suicide predicated on the ancient codes of Bushido, the warrior ethos of the Japanese Samurai. When an ancient samurai lost honor or face, he often went to the one who had offended him, knelt, took out his knife and slit open his belly. Often, a second stood behind him, ready to chop off his head if the pain overwhelmed the proud warrior. In this way and according to Bushido, the warrior regained his honor.
The Voltaire’s crystal AI, grown and programmed with a Bushido-like code, ignited its massive payload. As it slit itself through annihilation, it used the nuclear energy to pour x-rays and gamma rays at the offensive laser-station that had caused its life to end approximately eight minutes too soon.
The rays traveled at the speed of light, hitting the shielded torus, chewing through the asteroid-rock and murdering countless systems. In the governing pit, Su-Shan writhed. The x-rays burnt her bones and the gamma rays took away her speech centers.
It was at that point that Chief Strategist Tan broke through the communication system with override command authority. She used the laser lightguide system of the Kant and she used the dreadnaught’s recognition codes.
Tan’s voice was scratchy and distant-seeming, but it was recognizable to her dying cousin. “Listen to me, Su-Shan. You have little time left. Callisto is doomed. There is no saving it. What you must save is the future. Retarget and attack the following dreadnaught—I’m sending you the coordinates. Everyone in the satellites, you must retarget and attack the enemy warships in the second wave. Kill them for us. This is a priority one message from the War Council.” The proper emergency sequences followed.
Chief Controller Su-Shan listened to the message. It was the last thing she heard. The gamma rays that had stolen her speech now cooked her brain. She died, having killed a missile. But she failed in her mission to protect Callisto from thermonuclear disaster.
Other armored satellites also went offline, their operators slain, the fusion cores burnt or the focusing system melted into slag. They had taken a bitter toll, however, destroying fifty-seven percent of the Voltaire Missiles. The anti-missile rockets killed or caused to detonate prematurely fifteen percent of the cyborg-controlled missiles. Together, the primary orbital defensive systems took out seventy-two percent of the cyborg surprise attack.
Now, in this short operational window left, the remaining laser satellites retargeted, aiming at the approaching cyborg dreadnaught.
Seven orbital stations lanced their powerful beams at the dreadnaught, what had a short month ago been a Guardian Fleet vessel.
Massive lasers beamed and struck on target, chewing into thick, asteroid-rock protection. The dreadnaught’s particle shield absorbed the hellish heat as rock slagged and dust bloomed. Across the hundreds of thousands of kilometers, the lasers relentlessly bore deeper and deeper into the particle shielding.
Over five million kilometers away, Gharlane received data of the retargeting. Since light traveled 300,000 kilometers per second, this information was already seventeen seconds old by the time Gharlane observed it. It also took time for Gharlane and the cyborg dreadnaught Force-Leader to realize the number and intensity of the laser attacks. More time passed as Gharlane ingested the meaning of the attack. Then even more seconds ticked away as Gharlane realized he needed to do something drastic to save his precious warships. Finally, even more seconds faded into the past as he ran through options and then the agonizing decision to use the best means at hand to thwart the lasers. He had not anticipated an attack upon the second wave, but a continuing defense against the Voltaires, as they threatened Callisto with greater harm. This switch in targeting, it went against Homo sapien conditioning.
During those minutes of indecision, another two laser satellites joined the assault. These were heavy, orbital lasers, the strongest in the Jovian System. They lacked Doom Star power, but approached that of a main SU Battleship of the Zhukov-class. Such primary lasers chewed through asteroid rock at an incredible rate. As Gharlane transmitted his orders to several selected Voltaire Missiles, more seconds passed as the order sped at 300,000 kilometers per second.
Callisto Orbital Defense lasers now punched through the particle shielding. In four point seven seconds, they punched through the dreadnaught’s hull and bored like sonic drills. Lasers smashed through the bulkheads into crew quarters, melting seven cyborgs. The red beams cut into the ship’s galley, its gymnasium, the computer core, coils three through nine and directly smashed through the bridge, killing the force-leader, originally a native of Neptune. Then beams burned into the fusion core, and they ignited nuclear-tipped cruise missiles meant to destroy Callisto’s Jupiter-facing cities. The combination of hot, slicing lasers and nuclear detonations caused sections of the dreadnaught to slide away in chunks and other sections to explode outwardly. Ninety-seven percent of the cyborg-crew died immediately. There was a three percent probability the others would survive the coming hour.
At this point, the Voltaire Missiles Gharlane had selected exploded. They used x-ray and gamma rays to attack the last laser satellites. Those final satellites had retargeted, aiming now at the second cyborg vessel, a meteor-ship.
It was a deadly contest that demanded perfect decisions. Gharlane had to count the number of remaining missiles, decide on how many he could spare and how important fleet superiority would be in the coming days and battles. Finally, he had to decide how many missiles he needed to destroy Callisto as a military installation. Because Jupiter spewed such heavy radiation, seventy percent of Callisto’s population lived on the targeted face. That meant Gharlane possessed a rich field of targets, if he could breach the defenses. He would never face such a powerful concentration of lasers again, as Callisto’s orbital defense was the core of Confederation strength.