Project Sail (30 page)

While he watched the monitors and marveled, the bridge crew erupted into cheers, but the celebration ended as the heavy cruiser
Guiyang
climbed the horizon.

“We should get them, too,” Parker’s enthusiasm for defeating the mightiest ship in the enemy fleet overcame his sense. In a fair fight, the
Guiyang
could easily defeat the
John Riley
.

Hawthorne attempted to reign in command: “Do not move this ship and keep systems at minimum power.”

Although amazed by the surprising defeat of the
Shanxi,
he did not forget the tactical realities.

“It doesn’t look like they have spotted us,” he said as the heavy cruiser approached the wreckage. “Unless the
Shanxi
got off a message, they won’t know what happened and they sure as hell will not think a frigate took out a battleship.”

Duncan said, “If I were them I would guess an engine or weapons malfunction, or possibly a ship-to-ship collision.”

The cruiser dodged the debris cloud, slowed, and approached the surface above the two large pieces of hull that had crashed on Ganymede.

“They are looking for survivors,” Hawthorne said. “Christ, it could be hours before we can move.”

“Sooner or later they will see us,” Duncan said.

“We cannot fight that ship,” Hawthorne replied, “and we aren’t going to have a clean shot at its bottom like we did the
Shanxi.
”

Duncan studied the screens, sizing up the enemy. Hawthorne worried she planned something stupid again and after knocking out the
Shanxi,
there would be no stopping her.

She leaned over Cooper’s shoulder, touched one of his monitors, and zoomed in on one long section that had once been a stretch of the
Shanxi’s
starboard hull. She referred to bulges there and said, “Those are RDM cisterns and they are clearly breached, I can see clouds of RDM floating around in there.”

“Hit it with a nuke?” Parker suggested.

“That won’t do it,” Duncan told him. “That is Refined Dark Matter; it is too stable to be ignited. We need an intense electrostatic discharge to cause the particles to separate back into their natural state, and then they are unstable.”

Parker said, “Use an EMP warhead,” and she pat him on the shoulder congratulating him for finding the answer to which she had led him.

Confused, Hawthorne tapped the image of the
Guiyang.

“Way too much shielding for an EMP to hurt them. Besides, they have backup systems like we do.”

Duncan explained, “No, hit the RDM floating around in the wreckage with an EMP.”

“Won’t that just cause an anomaly?”

She explained, “No that happens when the electricity used to stimulate the RDM creates a cascade, like causing a vibration that keeps getting worse. A powerful EMP burst in one quick dose will act like an electrostatic separator, and destabilize the dark matter.”

Hawthorne’s head spun but in the chaos he came to realize that Amanda Duncan was the real commander on the bridge, showing a foresight and courage that he would never possess.

A pair of small shuttles launched from the crescent-shaped cruiser and approached the wreckage with spotlights scanning for survivors.

“Looks like the
Guiyang
is ten kilometers from the cisterns, close enough to be caught in the blast, but so are we. Parker, when we fire you need to move us out of here as fast as the engines can go. That blast will take out a good hundred square miles.”

“Wait a second,” Hawthorne threw up an obstacle. “They will see it coming and shoot it down.”

“Not if it’s aimed at the debris that is ten klicks away from their ship. Cooper, load tube one with the biggest EMP we have onboard and target the
Shanxi’s
debris field.”

The weapons officer called down the loads to the missile room while Hawthorne peered at the monitor, trying to see her vision. Yet he could only see a pissed off Chinese Heavy Cruiser crushing them with a gravity wave or slicing them to pieces with cutting lasers.

Cooper reported, “Tube one, loaded and ready.”

Duncan looked at Parker, who nodded, and then said to Hawthorne, “Commander, it’s your order to give.”

He did not think that was true, but amid the fear and confusion swirling in his head he appreciated the courtesy.

Hawthorne swallowed and then gave what he feared was his last order: “Fire one.”

The missile shot away from a bow launcher, a bright red ball of plasma glowed on its tail and it flew low across the surface of Ganymede. A moment later, Parker brought the damaged engines to life.

The
Guiyang
reacted to the sight of its enemy, gaining altitude and firing a flurry from anti-air cannons. However, the missile remained outside that defensive veil, veering toward the larger of the two pieces of destroyed battleship and entering a hole in the hull.

The warhead detonated in a lightning-like flash, an electromagnetic pulse that bounced off the
Guiyang’s
hull harmlessly, but destabilized and detonated the Refined Dark Matter floating inside the debris field.

A second flash came, followed by an expanding sphere of red and black energy that thoroughly obliterated anything within twenty kilometers of ground zero. The
Guiyang
disappeared; even its super-strong construction could not save it from total annihilation.

As the eruption swelled, it tore a new crater in the moon’s surface and rumbled toward the
John Riley
.

Lights flickered, a vibration threatened to tear the ship apart, and Hawthorne felt the force of the shock wave fight with the ship’s artificial gravity for control of his body. His world became a spinning nightmare of screams, flashes, and pain as he bounced off workstations and walls.

And then it passed, leaving the
John Riley
damaged, but intact.

---

“So there you have it,” he did not have the courage to take his eyes of that flickering light that was Earth’s sun thirteen years ago. “Amanda Duncan deserved the credit; I was along for the ride. But, of course, the brass did not want America’s greatest space triumph overshadowed by a cowardly commander and a bridge crew that nearly mutinied, so they edited the logs and painted a story.”

She consoled, “Trying to hide was the better strategy.”

“Point is, we did fight and that is why I am a so-called hero. And yes, that is the same Duncan—as in Admiral Duncan—who called me about our assignment here.
She
was the hero.”

He finally turned to Kelly, expecting to see a crushed little girl who just found out that Santa Claus was a fib. Instead, she smiled softly and touched his arm.

“That is the first time a man has ever told me a story where he gave credit to someone else. Most are just trying to impress me.”

“Yeah, well, you should be impressed this time because you are the first person I have ever told the truth to.”

She blinked and he saw the hint of tears in her eyes, and then she threw her arms around him and hugged.

He said, “Didn’t you hear me? I am a fraud, Kelly.”

She squeezed a little tighter and told him, “I am the first person you ever told; the first person you ever trusted enough to tell. That means more to me than anything else.”

33. Gliese 581g

Hawthorne stared at a lonely door near the aft end of the command deck. Glowing strips set in the walls provided just enough light to illuminate the stenciled words WEAPONS LOCKER, but it was still a dark place.

Captain Charles’ voice broadcast over the ship-wide intercom, “Arrival in fifteen minutes. Commander Hawthorne report to the bridge.”

He entered his security code and the heavy door slid open. Inside, cabinets and shelves lined the room with labels identifying “flares, demolition charges, PDWs, and body armor.” The Commander’s eyes fixed on a rack of automatic pistols.

“Arrival in ten minutes.”

Reagan Fisk came up from the lower level and stood next to the Commander, looking over his shoulder at the small arsenal man had brought on his first interstellar journey.

Hawthorne smelled the fear in Fisk and saw it in the perspiration lining his brow, but he also saw determination. During the last week of the trip, Hawthorne noticed Fisk eating less and isolating himself from the group. He thought he had heard their corporate liaison throwing up on more than one occasion, which would explain the young man’s weight loss.

Not that Jonathan was immune. As they neared Gliese, the Commander neared the bottom of his alcohol stash. While he avoided public drunkenness, he found that sleep came easier if he drank.

But Jonathan had the advantage of confession. Telling Kelly the truth about Ganymede lifted a weight off one shoulder and while her hero worship abated, he felt they had grown closer. For the first time in a long while, he could trust someone.

“Eight minutes until arrival. Commander Hawthorne, to the bridge. Now.”

Fisk muttered, “What are you waiting for?”

His hand reached for a pistol, paused, and then withdrew.

“No matter what the reason, this is mutiny and murder. I don’t think I can do it.”

Fisk tried to shove the Commander aside.

“Then hand me a gun.”

Fisk sounded determined, as if he had spent the last three weeks working up his courage for this moment. But his wide eyes, his dramatic weight loss, and the tremble in his hand suggested a man frightened to the point of mental breakdown.

As much as he found him annoying, Hawthorne felt a sense of responsibility for him, so he muttered, “I will do it,” and grabbed a pistol from the rack.

“I hate you and the entire company for making me do this. When we are done here, UVI can shove my contract up their collective asses and I am going back to the
Princess
with a big fat bonus and UVI will never bother me again, right?”

The kid nodded, but Hawthorne knew Reagan Fisk was in no position to make promises.

---

“Where the hell have you been?” Charles growled from his chair as Hawthorne entered the bridge with Fisk close behind.

“My apologies, Captain.”

Charles seemed ready to push the issue, but Professor Coffman appeared on a monitor and spoke in a giddy voice, “Sixty seconds until shut down; we are almost there!”

Hawthorne sat at his station, Fisk stood in the back.

If they arrived as scheduled at the proper location and everything was as the probe suggested, Captain Charles would transmit his report and Commander Hawthorne would kill him.

Can you really do this, Jonathan?

He did not want to shoot anyone, but there was one motivating factor to consider: if Charles summoned his European Alliance friends to Gliese 581g, they would surely kill the entire crew of
SE 185.
With Charles as a witness—or even without him—they could manufacture a story and then lay claim to whatever riches the planet held. Like the old colonial days, whoever planted their flag the firmest—not necessarily the first—annexed the territory.

“Stand by for A-H shut down.”

Their arrival felt anti-climactic. Except for a touch of dizziness that briefly swept through the crew, the ship felt as stable and silent as sitting in space dock.

“Captain, the drive has shut down and we have reached our destination,” Coffman proudly announced over the video link with engineering.

“Navigation?”

Tommy Star responded, “Captain, the nav computer is catching up…hang on…according to my charts we have arrived and I show a planet one million kilometers to starboard.”

Charles pointed toward one of his screens and, using his thinker chip, activated the ship intercom.

“All hands, attention, we have arrived at Gliese 581g. Welcome to the constellation Libra. You are the first human beings to reach a new solar system, and history will remember your names.”

Around the ship, smiles and excited shouts, but Jonathan Hawthorne did not feel like celebrating, he felt like hiding from the universe.

Warner said, “Our wash from the drive is away and heading out into space with nothing in its path.”

“Okay then,” Charles moved toward the helm, stooping and then kneeling next to Stein. “Let’s take a look.”

The plate covering the bridge’s only window retracted. As it did, red beams shot inside one by one until the crimson glow of star Gliese 581 filled the bridge.

Starr reported, “Sir, the computer is running crazy with data, confirming what we already know. That is a class M dwarf star with an effective heat of 3,200K and peak emission at a wavelength of roughly 805 nanometers.”

Charles slowly raised his hand and said, “Tommy, just hold on a second.”

At that moment, Hawthorne saw a different side to Captain Donavan Charles, a side captivated by that red dwarf star; enthralled by the beauty shining outside their window. He had spent so much time thinking of Charles’ politics and surly attitude that he failed to remember that Charles was an astronaut and no one went into space without dreaming of a moment like this.

Hawthorne stood and shared the breathtaking view of a small sun glowing red amid a star field arranged in patterns alien to his eyes. For the first time since blasting off from Earth, he understood the importance and scope of this mission. A new solar system, one with no connection to the only star he had known in his life.

The possibilities were endless. If they found only the same elements as they might find orbiting Sol, then it would suggest a pattern to stellar evolution that would make the universe a more familiar place. Conversely, they might make discoveries that would re-write the periodic table and change two thousand years of science.

For a few seconds, he felt the optimism Fisk preached when they first met, the hope that space was a giant treasure trove not just in resources, but also in potential for improving mankind.

And then he felt the weight of the pistol hidden in his waistband. Any secrets Gliese held were likely to be tainted by humanity, not appreciated. That optimism morphed and he felt like a virus invading a healthy body.

“Stein, use the maneuvering thrusters and bring us around forty degrees to starboard.”

“Aye, Captain.”