Doom Star: Book 02 - Bio-Weapon (21 page)

She couldn’t shrug with the tangle strands wrapping her. “The short answer is yes,” she said.

“What are you thinking, boss?” asked Ervil.

“Have you ever spent any time in a pain booth?” Hansen asked Ervil.

The short, wide-shouldered monitor shook his head.

“It’s unpleasant, an experience I don’t plan on repeating,” said Hansen. “It has also opened my eyes to reality. You can never please a Highborn.”

“You don’t think the Praetor would be pleased if you turned this up?” asked Ervil. “He might even make you Chief Monitor again.”

“He plans to stamp out all dream dust production,” said Hansen. “And to find the manufacturers and… I don’t know his plans for them, but that’s us, you and me—and you,” he told Nadia.”

Ervil touched the bandage swathed across his nose. His dead, emotionless eyes revealed nothing.

“I have a question,” said Nadia.

“Ask,” Hansen said.

“How did you find me?”

“Ah. When you last entered the habitat, to get your dream dust, I presume, a spy-stick shot an automated tracker onto your vacc suit.”

Nadia closed her eyes. She had forgotten to sweep her suit for bugs. Stupid. When she opened her eyes, she said, “So what do you plan?”

“Can you pilot this ship?” asked Hansen.

“Yes.”

Hansen blew out his cheeks in relief. “Then here and now I forgive you your errors.”

“What about him?” she asked.

Hansen regarded Ervil. “We’re finished in the Sun Works Factory.”

“You got too greedy, boss, that was the problem.”

Hansen stiffened. Maybe he wasn’t used to that sort of talk from his clean-up man. “Maybe so,” he said. “But I propose that we start fresh in the Jupiter System. She brought dream dust. So did I. That will be our stake in the new world.”

Ervil didn’t move and his gray eyes seemed to grow dull. “How long will the trip take?”

“Six months,” she said. “Maybe longer.”

Ervil shook his head. “You’ll go stir crazy, boss. And two men with one woman, that’s bad.”

“We need her to pilot the ship,” Hansen said.

Ervil turned his lifeless eyes on Nadia. He shrugged. “What about Dalt and Methlen?”

“They’ll have to fend for themselves,” Hansen said. “Five seems like too many people for this craft.”

Ervil grunted.

“Now untangle her,” said Hansen.

“Maybe it would be smarter to keep her tangled,” Ervil said. “She could tell you what to do and you pilot the ship. That way we don’t take no chances.”

Hansen seemed to consider it.

“Piloting is much trickier than that,” Nadia said. “I’d have to actually be at the controls.”

“She double-crossed you once already, boss. I don’t trust her.”

“We’ll watch her closely,” Hansen said.

“Take turns, huh?” said Ervil.

“Now, now, none of that,” Hansen said. “Don’t needlessly frighten her.”

“We can’t leave right away,” Nadia said, who was terrified of these two. Why had she ever gotten involved with drugs in the first place?

“Why can’t we leave?” asked Hansen.

“Things are too quiet,” she said. “We have to wait until the pods come back online.”

Hansen pursed his lips. “I destroyed my files, so we have a little time. The sooner we can leave the better.”

“Dalt and Methlen might be angry that you left them behind,” said Ervil. “They might talk too much once the Highborn catch them.”

“We’ll have to count on their staying out of sight for awhile,” said Hansen. He turned to Nadia. “Do we have a deal?”

She had no choice and she knew it. But she didn’t like the look in Hansen’s eyes, nor in Ervil’s. What would six months be like cooped up with these two? “It’s a deal,” she said.

“Good,” said Hansen, taking the bottle off Ervil’s belt. He sprayed her tangle strands and they wilted and fell to the floor. “Let’s get ready to leave.”

Admiral Rica Sioux wore a spotless tan uniform, with a glittering row of medals. A snug, tan military cap hid her hair. She swiveled in the command chair, with a comlink embedded in her right ear and a VR-monocle over her left eye.

Everyone else on the command capsule wore a stiff, tan uniform of the Social Unity Space Fleet. Most were webbed into their modules, with VR-goggles and twitch-gloves. A clean odor filled the capsule, while brisk movement and sharply spoken words added to the military bearing. The transformation in the past eleven days had taken hold throughout the entire ship.

Admiral Sioux shifted anxiously. Short, swift, gratifying days with command briefings, inspections and practice drills had changed a sluggish, orbital-sick crew into eager warriors. Not even the flock of blips picked up by tracking had been able to check this impulse.

It was too bad about the early radar probe and the subsequent missile launches. Enemy jamming kept them in the dark about the exact nature of the incoming missiles. To warm up their own ECM pods to try to defeat the enemy sensors would give away their exact position. No. Long-distance beam shots out of the dark were the
Bangladesh
’s
MO. The spread of enemy missiles proved the Highborn hadn’t spotted them again… unless they had done so optically. In any case, it would take over a week for the missiles to get close enough to fire any missile-borne lasers—if they even packed lasers.

Unless
—she tapped her armrest—
unless the very spread of missiles was a bluff!
Admiral Sioux frowned, creasing her face full of wrinkles.
Maybe the Highborn had spread the missiles to try to fool me. Maybe they track us with a hidden, secret ship of their own
.

Admiral Sioux sipped from a sealed cup. It was a special medicated drink that smelled like coffee. This way only the medical officer knew that she was taking drugs to help calm her nerves.

Why did she have to worry so much? She hated it.

The First Gunner broke into her reverie, saying, “Entering firing range… now.”

Admiral Sioux savored the moment. Now! The
Bangladesh
was intact. Despite her fears, the Highborn could surely have no idea about what was to commence. 30 million kilometers was a short distance in space terms, but in terms of Solar System warfare, it was a revolution.

“Rotate the particle shield aft thirty degrees,” she said.

“Aft thirty degrees,” said the Shield Tech.

Outside the massive beamship, the huge 600-meter thick shield of rock and metal lifted as if a man lifted a visor on a helmet.

“Focus the projectors,” said Admiral Sioux.

“Projectors focused. Projectors in firing position,” said the First Gunner, his supple fingers flying over his control board.

A vast section slid open on the inner armored skin of the
Bangladesh
. A squat nozzle poked out, a green light winking in its orifice.

“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.