Doom Star: Book 02 - Bio-Weapon (14 page)

A huge shape made out of stealth material sat before him. He blinked and remembered the countless hours his Dad and he had worked to make the ultra-stealth pod. And here it was. PHC had never found it. It had no fuel, however. But…

Nadia clinked her helmet against his.

“Is that it?” she asked.

“Yes.”

“That means we can escape?”

“As soon as we fill her with hydrogen.”

The flood of emotions became too much and Marten began laughing and whooping in delight and shedding tears in remembrance of his parents.

“Chief Monitor,” said a young woman in a dark, secret policeman’s uniform.

Hansen looked up from behind his messy desk. There were a thousand details to this job and finding Bock’s hidden wealth had taken all his extra time. He’d had no idea that Bock was so secretive. He scratched his cheek. The woman before him, ah, by her shoulder tabs she was a class three operative. She was pretty in a slattern sort of way. No doubt, she had once been Sydney slum-trash just like him. She held onto photos and grinned as if she had something important.

“Yes,” he said.

She slid a photo onto the litter of papers.

He peered at—he smiled. There was Marten Kluge as he hurried down a utility corridor. Marten wore a white maintenance uniform. Well, well, well. He reached for the photo, but the woman placed a second one on top of the first.

He hunched forward, glanced up sharply and picked up the second photo. He couldn’t be certain, but the woman in the photo looked like Nadia Pravda. She wore a vacc suit.

“I brought them right away,” the class three operative said.

Hansen leaned back. This woman was ambitious, a climber, in Highborn terms.

“I knew you’d want to see them,” she said, smiling, promising many things with it.

Yes, a climber indeed. “These photos were taken during night duty?” he asked.

“Yes, Chief Monitor.” She cocked a hip and her smile grew.

“I take it that only you have seen these?”

“Yes, Chief Monitor. I knew you’d be interested. The man is a shock trooper. The computer matched him. Marten Kluge is his name.”

“Very good work,” said Hansen. “Does your superior know?”

“I hope I did the right then by bringing them directly to you.”

Hansen gave her his patented fox-with-a-chicken-in-his-mouth grin. “Would you wait outside, please? And tell no one else about this.”

“Yes, Chief Monitor.”

She exited. Hansen studied the photos and then called on the intercom for his best clean-up man. The Praetor wanted the shock troopers, and he would give them to him. But first, he planned a little revenge of his own, a few more key deaths, some returned product and mouths that would never talk. Too bad the class three operative who had given him this would have to die.
Loose lips sink ships
. Well, no one was going to sink him.

The door opened and a short, wide-shouldered monitor entered. His gray eyes seemed dead, lifeless, without any emotion.

“I have a little assignment for you, Ervil,” Hansen began.

Behind her dark visor, Admiral Rica Sioux chewed her lip.

A little over a week of weightlessness had given her chest pains. She refused medication, as that would be a sign of weakness. And if the others saw weakness as they neared the Sun Works Factory—
no, at least admit it to yourself
. They neared the Highborn. No one had defeated the genetic super-soldiers. Who was she to think the
Bangladesh
could?

She squeezed her eyelids together. The waiting wearied her. She felt a tap on her shoulder and turned.

The First Gunner raised his gloved thumb.

What did he want now
?

He tapped the command-pad on his arm. His visor slid open, revealing a dark, bearded, unwashed face. Hollow marks ringed his brown eyes. He was from Pakistan Sector, a good officer, one of the last true loyalists aboard the beamship.

Ship etiquette overruled her wants. Admiral Sioux chinned a control, and her visor slid open. She was old, with a terribly wrinkled face, as only her Native American ancestors seemed to have ever had. Her longevity treatments had started late, and she’d never had time for skin tucks. So her face showed all of her one hundred and twenty-one years of age.

Admiral Sioux scrunched the flat, triangular-shaped nose that dominated her face. The command capsule stank of unwashed bodies and stale sweat. She peered around the small circular room, with its sunken pits and VR-module screens. Only half the posts were filled. Some of the officers lay strapped on the acceleration couches in the center of the capsule. They were apparently asleep as their visors pointed up at the low ceiling.

“Admiral,” said the First Gunner. “I think you should look at this.”

“Do you smell that?” she said.

“What? Oh, yes, yes, of course. If you’ll please look at this, Admiral.”

“Maybe I should order them out of their suits. We’re past the radiation leakage.” She knew she should have already thought of that.

“Admiral Sioux.”

Maybe this enforced inactivity, or maybe the dreadful waiting…

“Admiral!”

She scowled, not liking the First Gunner’s tone.

“Admiral,” he said, pointing at his VR-imager.

She studied the readings and frowned. “Radar pulses?” she asked.

“Enemy.”

A sharp pain stabbed her chest. She wanted to vomit. So she clenched her teeth together.

Of course, the Highborn would launch new robot probes. And just as certain, a few of the SU Cruisers in this region were supposed to have tracked and destroyed them. SUMC had assured her of that.

“As per your orders, Admiral, the beamship’s ECM warfare pods are inactive.”

She chewed her lip, thinking. The
Bangladesh
traveled roughly 90,000 kilometers an hour, or 25.4 kilometers per second. She’d ordered the heavy particle shields aimed at Mercury and to the sides of their craft. 600-meter thick shields of rock and metal would probably give a radar signature of an asteroid. The question became, when the Highborn checked their radar would they think of the
Bangladesh
as a rogue asteroid or a newly discovered comet?

No, definitely not.

“Admiral—”

“Let me think!” she said. Her rheumy old eyes glittered, a window to the reason why at her age she still captained a ship. Not just any ship, either, but an experimental super-ship.

In a little less than two weeks, Mercury would reach perihelion, its closest distance to the Sun: 46 million kilometers. During much of those two weeks the fiery Sun looming behind the
Bangladesh
would make it impossible for optic visuals of them
from
Mercury. The harsh radio waves from the Sun would make it just as impossible for radar location.

Admiral Sioux was certain the Highborn didn’t have a combat beam that could reach this far, at least not accurately. She grinned tightly. Space warfare brought a unique set of problems to the game.

Light traveled at roughly 300,000 kilometers per second. So a laser beam shot from the Sun to Mercury at perihelion (46 million kilometers) would take nearly 2.6 minutes to reach the target. Yet how did one spot the target? If by radar, the beam had to travel to the target, bounce off it and then return. That took 5.2 minutes. If by optics… it had better be damn good optics, and there had better be enough light to see by, too.

What if the target shifted or jinked just a little? Then by the time the beam reached its target, the beam would sail harmlessly past, that’s what.

Admiral Rica Sioux studied the radar signal being bounced off her precious beamship. They had traveled from the Sun for over a week. She needed approximately eleven more days to bring her to what the SUMC tacticians on Earth considered her practical, outer-range limit. When Mercury reached perihelion, its closest orbital distance to the Sun, the
Bangladesh
would fly past the planet by 30 million kilometers. The beamship angled toward the flyby point at 25.4 kilometers per second, while Mercury sped along its orbital path at roughly 50 kilometers per second. In eleven days therefore, and for a week after, Mercury would be in the
Bangladesh
’s
range, or more accurately said, the very stable Sun Works Factory circling Mercury would be in range.

Admiral Sioux grinned, and some of the chest pain went away.

By their very nature, spaceships moved, shifted and jinked. But space habitats, especially world spanning ones like the Sun Works Factory, their orbital location was known to a mathematical nicety.

In eleven days, the target would be a little over 30 million kilometers away. Her ultra-powerful proton beam, the same type used in Earth’s May 10 Defense, would fire and travel at 300,000 kilometers per second. It would reach the target about 1.7 minutes later. Of course, the proton beam could reach farther than that. The truth of that made it important to know if any friends were behind what one attacked. In this case, that wasn’t going to be a problem. The reason 30 million kilometers was the practical range-limit was that the proton beam spread over distance (its dissipation range) and that the
Bangladesh
lacked a more accurate targeting system.

Thus, as a matter of reality, because spaceships jinked, shifted and changed headings, lasers were close-in weapons, usually used at a distance no greater than 100,000 kilometers. She recalled her training teacher and his comparison reference. The average distance of the Moon from the Earth was 385,000 kilometers. Under 100,000 kilometers, the time lag of the speed of light became much less of a tactical military problem.

Long-range missiles, although infinitely slower than beam weapons, became the tools of choice in distance-duels because of their self-adjusting abilities. A missile was launched toward a cone of probability: to where the enemy ship would most likely be at the time of the missile’s arrival. Then the nearness to the target would allow more accurate readings and the missile could readjust. Sometimes there were laser-firing missiles, and sometimes—

Admiral Sioux shook her head and scrunched her brow. The entire point of a 30 million-kilometer flyby was that by the time they first fired their beam, the Highborn would be unable to launch any missiles from Mercury that could reach them before the missile’s fuel exhausted itself. The
Bangladesh
’s
head start would make missiles catching them a near impossibility. Or rather the ship’s much greater velocity, as it shot past the planet, would do that. But if the Highborn knew where they were now… This radar ping might turn the entire mission into a close run thing.

“Do we kill the radar probe?” whispered the First Gunner.

“Ship’s AI has backtracked the pulse?” asked Admiral Sioux.

The First Gunner pointed at his screen.

“If we kill it,” she said, “the HBs will have no doubt that we’re hostile.”

“In my opinion, Admiral…”  The First Gunner trailed off as she peered at him.

“Yes? For the record, First Gunner?”

He swallowed, perspiration slicking his brow.

“You don’t want to stick out your professional neck, is that it, mister?”

The First Gunner licked his lips and said, “They already know we’re a ship, Admiral.”

“I agree,” she said. “Destroy the radar probe.”

His hands flew over the controls.

Admiral Sioux shouted to propulsion. “Warm up the engines. We’re going to jink.” She peered at her screen. Then she turned sharply. “Everyone out of their vacc suits, and let’s take showers, people. This place smells like a gym.”

Marten strolled down a corridor, one they were allowed to use during a break period such as this. He checked for spy-sticks, to see if they’d put in a new one. He’d deactivated the one already in place. Satisfied, he pried open a secret wall panel and took out his recorder and clicked it. Nadia had secured another bug in place of the one he’d used on Hansen. The bug was linked to this device.

He clicked on the recorder.

NADIA: It’s fueled and ready to go. All I need is the entrance code and you and your friends. Then… Well, you know what I mean. I love you. Please hurry. Out.

He hefted the recorder, smiling, and then shook his head. After all this time, it was really going to happen. His features hardened. He wasn’t aboard yet. So he erased the message and replaced the recorder.

He checked his chronometer: forty-five minutes until the end of break. With a rueful smile, he strode to a hatch at the end of the corridor. It was specially coded, but he’d cracked that several weeks ago. It was with surprise that he now saw it open. He didn’t know of anyone else who used it.

Hansen stepped through, together with Ervil and two other backup men. The backup men were big and tough looking. One of them had a nasty scar across his forehead and two obviously false teeth. They aimed projacs at Marten, grinning the entire time.

“Marten Kluge,” said Hansen. “This is a surprise. Well, a surprise for you, I would imagine. I’ve been itching to speak with you again. So have Dalt and Methlen. They’ve reminded me more than once than they owe you several beatings.”