The Captain took a breath as the timer entered its final countdown. “I have an authorised launch code,” he said, to the Exec. “Do you concur?”
“I concur,” the Exec said. Trembling hands inserted a key into the correct socket. Only the Captain knew that the Exec had had friends in the Red Zone, friends he might be condemning to death. “Mr Navigator?”
“I concur,” the Navigator said. His face was blank, unwilling to accept what they were about to do. He inserted his own key and tried to smile. It didn’t work. “May God forgive us.”
“I concur,” the Engineering Officer said. The Weapons Officer followed him in concurring. “Captain?”
The Captain glanced once at the timer and then composed himself. They’d had to rewrite several modules of programming, digging up old programs from the Cold War, back when it was all-too-possible that there was a Russian submarine closing in on their position, ready to sink them before the bundles of death were launched towards Russian targets. The irony was almost killing him; there might have been Russian submarines in the area — hell, there were Russian submarines in the area — but they were friendly. The Redshirts, as far as anyone knew, didn’t have submarines. They had orbiting Rods From God instead and if one of them hit the submarine, they were dead…
“Insert keys,” the Captain said, to the two who hadn’t inserted their keys. “On my mark… mark!” The keys were twisted almost as one. The weapons were now armed and very dangerous. The Kentucky carried twenty-four Trident II D-5 Ballistic Missiles and they were going to launch them all as fast as possible. The noise of the tubes rapidly filling with water could be heard throughout the boat. “Weapons?”
“All tubes are flooded and ready to fire,” the Weapons Officer said. His voice shook slightly, but training still held. The Captain watched him carefully; he’d known people who collapsed during drills, despite knowing that they were drills. No one’s behaviour could be really predicted until they faced a real test… and by then, it could be too late. The Weapons Officer touched a covered button and opened it. “Timer now at twenty seconds and counting down.”
“The responsibility is mine,” the Captain said, as calmly as he could. The Weapons Officer looked relieved; the Captain made a mental note to ensure that he had as much of a break as was possible on the submarine. He would have offered drink, but it was forbidden onboard American submarines. “Ten seconds…”
The timer ran down. “Firing,” he said, and pushed down on the button. There was a dull rumble as the first missile was blasted into the water, and then it’s drive ignited, safely behind the boat. The second followed, and then the third, until the Captain thought that the entire boat would shake itself apart. They’d betrayed their location now and their only hope was that the aliens didn’t have anything overhead to react to them before they could hide. The shaking stopped suddenly and everything was quiet.
“Evasive action,” the Captain barked. They had exposed themselves now. “Sonar?”
“They all fired,” the Sonar officer said. The young man looked shaken by what he’d just heard through the computers. “I counted over two hundred missiles, fired into the air… and no sign of any enemy retaliation.”
The Captain closed his eyes. Thirty missile boats — American, French, British, Russian and even — finally — a Chinese and Indian boat — firing all of their missiles towards Texas. If God was with them, the aliens would have very little to intercept them in their boost phase… and they would have to shift their orbital positions. They’d see the missiles, of course, but would they react the right way? It didn’t matter any longer, not to him; USS Kentucky was out of the war now.
“Take us down,” he ordered, knowing that the remainder of the small squadron would be doing the same. “Run silent, run deep…”
And hope that we can make the rendezvous, he thought, silently. If we can’t…
The High Priest had been studying the plans for the expanded settlements in the Middle East when the first reports of the attacks down in America had come in. He hadn’t been unduly worried, despite the somewhat panicky tone of newcomers to Earth who hadn’t faced the humans before, but it was possible that the humans intended to launch a second attack. The orbiting spies hadn’t picked up anything that might suggest that the humans had massed another attack force — although it had turned out that nothing they picked up from human radio could be entirely trusted — but the humans were masters at camouflage. He’d issued orders for the parasite ships to prepare to repel any armoured advance and for reinforcements to advance out to help secure the border — now that the settlement process was underway, they could no longer trade space for time — and turned back to the other matters. By now, the War Priests and their subordinates had the experience to handle the humans without his direct intervention.
The second report had shocked him back to the issue. They’d learned about human missile-launching submarines — a concept the Takaina had never actually invented — when they’d been used to attack the Texas Foothold and the orbiting ships with EMP, but they’d thought that they had destroyed them all. The reports had obviously been exaggerated, the High Priest decided, as the new missile tracks started to rise up from the trackless wastes of the oceans, reaching for orbit.
Smart of them, the High Priest thought coldly, as the tracks kept rising. He thought, for a moment, that the humans were actually intending to attack Guiding Star itself, or one of the starship’s sections, but the missile tracks weren’t aimed at the starship. It was almost a pity — the missiles were slow and Guiding Star’s point defence would have picked them off before they became a danger, even if they were armed with nukes — but instead, the missiles were aimed at Texas. For a moment, the High Priest couldn’t believe his own eyes; they had to be out of their minds! There were millions of humans — and Takaina settlers — in the targeted zone… and the insurgents had been knocking down their local air defence units. The warheads would fall to Earth and detonate, burning Texas down to bedrock… and slaughtering everyone within the area.
“They’re mad,” he breathed. There was time, yes, there was time, but barely enough to react. He opened his channel to the war room. No one would dare not to take his call unless Guiding Star himself was under attack. “War Leader, move the parasite ships from their patrol positions to intercept the missiles before they can scatter their warheads.”
“Yes, Your Holiness,” the War Leader said. “Should we move, also, to defend the settlements in the Middle East?”
They, the High Priest saw, were also coming under attack. “Do so,” he ordered. If the humans intended to destroy Texas, they might intend to destroy the Middle East as well, even though they needed the oil. It was insanity, as far as he could tell, but so much about the human race made no sense. If they had needed the oil so badly, why hadn’t they thrown out the previous owners, or converted them to their own religion? How many submarines were left, anyway? “Order the parasites to hunt down the remaining submarines and teach them a lesson.”
“Yes, Your Holiness,” the War Leader said. The High Priest could hear his subordinates barking orders in the background. The Takaina Warriors were responding to the new challenge… and, soon, the humans would discover that they’d made a mistake. They’d wasted a lot of very expensive, even in human terms, missiles… for nothing. “The parasite ships are on their way now.”