Luna Marine (35 page)

There were two basic approaches to powering an antimatter spacecraft. You could manufacture the antimatter, a few atoms at a time, in a particle accelerator, and store it in magnetic bottles, an approach using old and well-established technology that had been around for half a century at least, almost certainly the route the Americans had pursued in their AM-drive research.

But the An had known how to manufacture antimatter, specifically positrons—antielectrons—in large and continuous quantities. How the antimatter reactor recovered from the dusty floor of Picard did this was still not well understood—at least in terms that Larouche could comprehend, and he suspected that the UN engineers working on the problem only dimly glimpsed the principles involved. Zero-point energy? Energy drawn from the vacuum of space? Energy converted in its creation into, not matter, but antimatter? It sounded like magic to Larouche.

Using the An AM generator as a weapon was relatively easy, so long as you knew how to manipulate positrons in a magnetic field. Using it in a
controlled
fashion, however, feeding a precisely measured and balanced stream of antimatter to the reaction chamber, was orders of magnitude more difficult. It must have been much the same in developing early atomic energy; slapping two chunks of plutonium together to release energy in an uncontrolled chain reaction was relatively simple; producing controlled and controllable energy from the same equations had been much harder.

They'd had the weapon portion of the project working in April, when they'd first used a positron beam to destroy an American reconnaissance spacecraft. The actual weap
on emplacement had been mounted high atop Tsiolkovsky's central peak, with power provided by a large, deeply buried fission reactor. The
Guerrière
, then still the
Millénium
, had at that point only recently arrived at Tsiolkovsky, and the engineering team hadn't yet begun the conversion of the big shuttle. In fact, they'd used the ship as an ordinary transport, first to ferry troops to Picard during the fighting there, and a month later, at the Lunar north and south poles, to stop the American takeovers of the Moon's only sources of water.

In June, however, the engineering team had begun the actual ship conversion, removing
Guerrière
's liquid-core fission reactor and primary thruster assembly and replacing it with a much more robust thruster unit shipped up from Earth. The positron weapon had been dismantled in August and lowered down the mountainside; by October, the positron weapon was working again, mounted now inside the sleek, black hull of the
Guerrière
rising above the Tsiolkovsky plain. A ball turret in
Guerrière
's side channeled the positron stream through magnetic conduits and directed it at any radar-locked target within line of sight. It was that ball turret that was vulnerable to enemy counterbattery fire. And if they hit the turret while positrons were actually in the conduit, the result would be the same as an antimatter attack against the
Guerrière
.

As for the drive, however, the engineers still were having trouble finding a way to regulate the flow of antimatter from the generator. They were confident that they would have the problem under control soon…but how soon was unknown.
Guerrière
could fight, but she could not fly. It left Larouche's forces at a terrible disadvantage.

They would have been better off, Larouche thought bitterly, if they'd simply used the alien machinery to produce positrons and store them for later use, as the Americans were. The thought of using equipment that no one really understood to power a spacecraft was, frankly, a bit frightening.

Worse was possessing such a terrible weapon, but finding oneself in the faintly ridiculous position of knowing that if he used it, he would lose it almost immediately. At
the same time, if he didn't use the primary weapon, the enemy might well take the ship.

An impossible dilemma.

“Colonel d'André?”

“Yes, General.”

“Have the special weapon crew stand by to engage with the primary weapon. We may not be able to fly, but by God we can give a good account of ourselves!”

“Yes, General.”

“Get the hopper fireteams aloft.”

“Yes, sir.”

“And place the computer safeguards on active,” he added after a moment's consideration more.

It was a measure of last resort, but a vital one.

He might sympathize with the enemy cause, might hate the fact that his countrymen had attempted what amounted to genocide against the Americans, might have the gravest of doubts that the UN cause was right.

But there was also the matter of honor and duty, virtues instilled in him by his father long before their falling-out.

He would not be known as the man who'd lost the UN's greatest weapon to the enemy.

MONDAY
, 10
NOVEMBER
2042

Lieutenant Kaitlin Garroway
Tsiolkovsky Crater
0034 hours GMT

On the floor of the crater, the LAV could make top speed, bounding across the surface at eighty kilometers per hour. The faster it went, of course, the higher and broader the plumes of dust thrown up by its tires. This was both blessing and problem. It made their approach a lot easier to see; on the other hand, the enemy couldn't be sure of exactly what it was that was approaching from the west, or even how many of them there were.

Kaitlin clutched the sides of her seat as LAV-1 bounced and lurched across the Lunar regolith. Though her armor was securely harnessed to the seat, she was taking a beating inside, and she had to grab hard and hold on to keep from rattling around inside the suit's hard torso like a marble inside a tin can.

Beside her, Hartwell drove with sharp, precise pulls left and right with the joystick, trying to be as unpredictable as possible as the LAV raced across the plain. Ahead, on his monitor, Tsiolkovsky's central peak rose against the night, smooth-sided, its flanks scoured by eons of infalling micrometeorites. Tucked away at the mountain's base, just visible now rising behind a low-lying spur of the mountain, was their objective, the slender spire of the UN supership they'd come to capture or kill.

There'd still been no fire from the mountaintop, which suggested that the enemy weapon was now mounted aboard the ship. That made the most sense; the UN couldn't have many of the alien-derived antimatter weapons and likely had only the one.

But the three LAVs were almost certainly in the enemy's sights now. The only reason they weren't firing was the fear—a fear quite justified—that at the first shot, the LAVs would target the antimatter weapon's vulnerable turret. Lasers allowed a degree of pinpoint accuracy and precision in running gun battles unheard of in any previous war in history.

The Marines, Kaitlin decided, needed something better than an armored, four-wheeled box to deploy troops across modern combat distances. She
hurt
, the wild motion was making her sick to her stomach, and something like panic claustrophobia—a gnawing dread that within the next instant or two white fire was going to sear through the LAV and reduce them all to a cloud of hot plasma—was growing with each moment that she was trapped inside. Hartwell's tiny display screen was no substitute for the wide-open spaces and a place to dig deep and hide; it would be even worse, she knew, for the rest of her Marines, who could do absolutely nothing but sit there strapped to their seats, wondering what was happening.

“We have aircraft taking off at the base, Lieutenant,” Hartwell announced.

Kaitlin twisted her head inside her helmet, trying to get a better view. The term aircraft was almost comically in-appropriate here, in the Lunar vacuum, but old habits die hard. On the monitor, she could just make out four tiny constructs gleaming in the sunlight as they lifted off from beyond the low-lying spur. They were hoppers, short-range Lunar transports, like the one Chris Dow had taken out during the approach to Picard. They would have enemy riflemen aboard, probably with squad laser weapons at least as good as the Sunbeam M228, and the LAV's upper-deck armor wasn't all that thick…a design compromise for greater speed and fuel efficiency.

An even greater danger, though, was the possibility of
a low pass by a hopper with its ventral thrusters on full. She well remembered the Marine use of that strategy at Picard, and the UN forces would remember as well.

“Are we close enough yet to pinpoint the ship's main weapon turret?” she asked.

“I've got five different blisters or bumps registered on that thing that
could
be the turret, Lieutenant,” Hartwell replied. “Don't know which is the target.”

“If we start shooting randomly, they're liable to open up,” she said. “Of course, we might get lucky.” She thought for a moment, working up her courage. She felt like she was about to stick a pin into a sleeping lion. “Any sign of First Platoon?”

“Negative,” Hartwell replied. “Other side of the mountain.”

They were pursuing their original plan, with Second Platoon swinging south of the central peak, while Captain Fuentes and First Platoon swung around to the north. With the enemy base probably located on the site of the old radio-astronomy facility, nestled up against the southeast flank of the central peak, the idea was to split the enemy's fire and keep him guessing…but with Second Platoon, Second Squad stranded back there on the floor of Fermi Crater, it was getting a bit cold and lonely here to the southwest of that high and brooding mountain.

Another twenty kilometers to go.

“Okay,” she told Hartwell. “Keep an eye on the ship, but let's engage those hoppers before they get close enough to fry us.”

“Roger that.” He manipulated a joystick, centering a targeting cursor to move the LAV's laser turret topside. “Firing!”

PFC Jack Ramsey
USS
Ranger
0035 hours GMT

The
Ranger
was now less than ten minutes from its objective, and only now was Jack beginning to hope that he was going to make it.

After only minutes at six Gs, he'd decided that he wasn't going to be able even to think about doing more work on the nutcracker code. The pressure, the apparent weight of five full-grown men lying in a stack on top of him, was suffocating, crushing, and made gasping down each breath a struggle. Finally, he'd shut Sam down and switched the seatback display instead to a view relayed from a camera in
Ranger
's nose.

The view of Earth, visibly growing larger minute by minute as the
Ranger
accelerated toward her, was absolutely spectacular, but Jack hadn't been able to muster more than a passing and somewhat lethargic interest.

An hour after they'd cut free from the L-3 construction shack, at just before midnight GMT, they'd whipped past the Earth, traveling now at over two hundred kilometers per second. For a blessed span of minutes, zero gravity had returned as the
Ranger
pivoted, nose skewing toward the fast-passing Earth with an unpleasant wrench to the gut and head, until she was traveling tail first, past the Earth and on her way now toward the Moon.

Jack had heard hear the harsh retching sounds of several Marines being sick elsewhere in the cabin. He'd kept his eyes carefully on the screen, unwilling to let his own stomach rebel as well. Amazing how contagious nausea could be.

Then acceleration returned…deceleration now, rather, as the
Ranger
began killing her tremendous velocity after the turn-over. Jack's maltreated stomach twisted, and he'd nearly lost it then; only the fact that he'd been on a special low-bulk diet for three days already saved him. The diet, evidently, hadn't helped everyone in the company; when weight returned, Jack was glad he wasn't farther aft, where, judging from the yells and curses, tiny, free-floating globules of vomit were suddenly falling like rain.

“Okay, people,” Captain Lee's voice said over the cabin comm system, moments after the six-G torture resumed. “Not much longer. Remember, we're going…for either Plan Alfa…or Plan Bravo. Which way we go…depends on…our fellow Marines. On whether they…were able to nail that damned cannon…or not. Either
way…we have a good chance…of pulling this thing…off. Stay focused…stay alert…and you'll come through fine….”

He spoke quietly, calmly, and reassuringly, despite the pauses between each phrase as he caught his breath and rallied his strength for the next handful of words. What Captain Lee was saying, Jack found, wasn't nearly as important as the fact that he was saying it…demonstrating to each miserable Marine in that cabin that he or she was not alone, that this punishment was routine, that it was all part of the game. After a few moments more, he wasn't even aware of the captain's voice…only of the reassurance.

With a grunting effort, Jack found he was able to toggle the seatback screen's display either to the receding blue-white beauty of Earth or to the fast-swelling, crater-battered visage of the Moon, visible now beyond the Tinkertoy struts of
Ranger
's landing assembly. After several changes of mind, he settled on the Earth; he thought he knew now what the Apollo astronauts had felt, seventy-some years ago, when they'd looked back at the world of their birth and realized that all of humankind, all art, all history, everything that made him what he was, was contained in that one small and delicate bubble of cloud-swirled blue.

That bubble was so fragile. What if his Uncle David's theory about the Hunters of the Dawn was right? Man's birthworld seemed so vulnerable from out here; the attack on Chicago had demonstrated just
how
vulnerable it could be.

And if the Hunters of the Dawn didn't destroy that frail beauty, how long before Man himself did?

He pushed the churning, unpleasant thoughts aside. For now, Earth's beauty was enough, something to cling to, to lose himself in. For Jack, it felt as though all of the years he'd yearned to be out in space had been distilled to this one peaceful, crystalline moment.

Despite the discomfort, he wanted to savor the experience as long as he could.

Lieutenant Kaitlin Garroway
Tsiolkovsky Crater
0035 hours GMT

A point of incandescence appeared against the ungainly, strut-crisscrossed flank of the nearest hopper, and in seconds the vehicle was falling from the sky, its reaction mass tanks holed. A second flare of light appeared on the side of the UN ship.

“Objective is under fire!” Hartwell called.

“Outstanding!” That meant that LAV-2 and LAV-4 were also close enough to engage, somewhere on the other side of the UN base. Approaching from two directions, coming around both sides of the central peak, must have the enemy commander beside himself. “Pop a comm relay!”

“Roger that!”

Hartwell pressed several screen touchpoints as the LAV gave another lurch and thump. On the upper deck, just behind the laser turret, a hatch popped open and a burst of compressed nitrogen blasted a baseball-sized sphere into the black sky.

Almost immediately, a crackle of radio voices sounded in Kaitlin's helmet headset.

“
LAV-2, this is LAV-4! I've got movement on the ship
!” That sounded like Staff Sergeant Mohr. “
I think I see the turret
!”

“
Hit it
!” the captain's voice cried back. “
Take out the turret
!”

“
Firing
!”

“
Damn! You hit something! Can't see what
!…”

“Two, this is One!” Kaitlin called. “Target in sight! Watch out for hoppers!”

The other two LAVs were masked by Tsiolkovsky's central peak, and there was no ionosphere here to bounce signals off of, but the comm relay, following its mortar-lobbed trajectory, could relay communications between the widely scattered elements of the company for over a minute before the Moon's sixth of a G could drag it back down to the surface.

“
Roger that, One
,” Fuentes replied. “
Nice you could join us
!”

“
Hoo, yeah
!” Mohr added. “
Kick ass and take names
!”

“
We'll be moving too fast to take names
,” Fuentes replied. “
I'll settle for initials
!”

“
Two, Four! I've got hoppers incoming, bearing one-nine-five
!”

“
LAV-1, this is Two! Hit the primary target, and keep hitting him! LAV-4, open fire on those hoppers
.”

“
Roger, LAV-2
.”

“Roger that, Skipper,” Kaitlin said. She looked at Hartwell. “You heard?”

“Aye-firmative. Lemme get clear of the damned dust!” Hartwell's erratic driving had provided at least one side benefit—sending a cloud of fine, lunar dust into the sky…dust that at least partly obscured the fast-moving LAV. As the image on the screen cleared, Hartwell began moving the targeting cursor up the side of the UN ship.

An instant later, a flash of intense and silent light blanked out Hartwell's monitor, a flare as dazzling as the surface of the sun.

Général de Brigade
Paul-Armand
Larouche
Tsiolkovsky Base
0037 hours GMT

“A hit!” d'André shouted. He pointed at the monitor, which showed now the view from a camera mounted on the main weapon turret. From that vantage point, thirty meters above the ground, an immense cloud of dust was rising from the barren Lunar plain, just beyond the low hill sheltering the base to the west. For a moment, the camera's optics had been blinded by the flash, but as the image cleared, there was little to be seen but a slow-falling cascade of dark gray dust. “We got him, General!”

“Swiftly, now,” Larouche ordered. “Bring the weapon to bear on the two vehicles to the northeast!”

“Slewing about to zero-eight-one…”

With the lone attacking vehicle killed, perhaps they now had a chance. Even if the primary weapon turret was knocked out now…

“It's going to be difficult, General. Our people are too close!”

Merde
! That was the biggest disadvantage of being forced to fight at such close quarters. The blast of the positron beam—heat, light, and radiation—was as undiscriminating as the detonation of a small nuclear weapon. The UN troops outside would suffer, too, if they were too close to the blast.

“The main turret is taking hits!” d'André shouted.

But that couldn't be helped. “Fire! Fire
now
!…”

God forgive me
!…

Captain Carmen Fuentes
Tsiolkovsky Crater
0037 hours GMT

“Fire!” Carmen yelled. Her eyes were watering from the flash that had momentarily blanked the screen. “
Fire
!”