Which was all Sal’s problem.
They aren’t doing anything, the reporters objected with increasing frustration, even anger, and Graff said, finally, with a heart going faster and faster, eyes fixed on the monitors beyond the spex panes: “Oh, yes, they are. They’re maintaining output silence. The carrier’s doing all the transmission, noisy as it wants to be. They launched something on either side before they braked, one’s a decoy, one’s the rider, and the rider doesn’t want to be seen yet, that’s the name of the game—even we don’t know which it is, because they haven’t told us and motion hasn’t started.”
Questions broke out, a shouted confusion.
“Yes, we have no doubt they’re still conscious. See the four dots on the screen, all doing fine...” Trajectories were widening their perspective on the screens and one reporter noticed the obvious. “That’s going straight through Luna space—is that Luna space?”
“All system traffic’s suspended. The firepaths will have been cleared and safed.”
“What if—”
Chatter kept up. Media seemed to abhor a dunking silence.
He watched the situation on the screens, thinking, Damn, who’s feeding them their orders? But he heard no calculations emanating from FleetCom. He suspected the carrier armscomper had primed them for this—set up the incoming and the response: he personally suspected that anything and everything Porey did was with mirrors; but he kept his mouth shut and hoped to God no reporter got onto that question.
And the firepaths were damned close to Luna... me reporter was right, they were terrifyingly close, from the viewpoint of civilians not used to starships at entry and exit v—close, and with a maneuver that, if they did it—damn, it was Russell’s Star, replayed—
Long, long time on a hold-steady. Easy to become hypnotized, if not for the nuisance chatter on internal com. Dekker did the small breathing exercises that kept him aware of time—nothing but freefall at fractional light, minimal signature, nothing noisy, no output at all, no input but the passive receipt of the carrier and its boards that advised them things they couldn’t output to see.
Couldn’t prove it wasn’t real, what they were receiving. You couldn’t assume: it, daren’t assume it.
“What we’re going to do imminently, Dek-boy, we’re about to do a little round the corner shot at this sumbitch. Luna’s shadow’s your boost point, God, I hope you get it right...”
“Copy that,” he muttered. “Do your own job, Ben.”
“Ordnance up,” Sal said. “Meg. Dek, that’s your plot-points, you copy?”
Dots and lines were multiplying in his midvision now, floating in space, designating essential fire-points, orientation, mass decrease. Considerable decrease: Hellburner was 90% fuel, engines, ablation surface, and ordnance.
“He’s got it,” Meg said. “Here we go, guys. —Initiate.”
Pulse of the main engines. Missiles launched with a shock through the frame, one and two away.. .straight .toward the moon. Adrenaline stretched time arid distances.
“T-l,” Ben was saying, calling out the major coordination points.
Second pulse, high-g RO, intermittent accel and launches directly down their backpath toward their carrier, staccato hammer of missiles away, Hellburner’s mass diminishing fast.
Second RO, braces engaged. Had to hold the track with immaculate numbers—crossing the carrier firepath now, edge on, minimum profile.
“Son of a bitch,” Ben yelled, as the emissions receipt picked up launch, but their four missiles had kicked off the frame on the mark and Dekker swung into his scheduled Profile RePosition with an instant eighth less mass and a violence that blurred vision. “Track!” Ben yelled at Sal. “Track!”
“Got it, got it, got it,” Sal cried, onto a steady stream of profanity, as their chaff gun opened up down the hostile firetrack straight for the incoming. “Burn it!” Ben yelled, and Dekker shoved it to 4-10.5 instant gs ahead, on the instant, rotated sideways as they were.
Countered. Graff watched the fire bursts, listened to the dispassionate voice of FleetCom confirm the intercept.
It looked so slow on this scale—so incredibly slow. But his heart knew the speed at which things were moving, his gut was in knots, he wanted his own hands on controls, he wanted that with every breath he took—
They were on. God, God, they were making it. So had Wilhelmsen—this early on. Another Reorient and they were still throwing fire...
But, damn! the lines intersected, and of a sudden—missiles near Luna were off the scope of a sudden—
Range safety? or hostile action?
“Test stop,” came over the speakers. “The test has been terminated.. . this is FleetCom mission control...”
Disaster? Graff felt cold all over. Couldn’t have. The plot was still tracking.
“The incoming is confirmed as EC militia merchanter Eagle, proceeding at V to maintain effect shields against inert chaff which will not, repeat not, intersect civilian traffic. Luna-vectored ordnance was destroyed by the range safety officer. At no time was this ordnance capable of reaching the lunar surface: technical explanation will follow. The remaining ordnance is being cleared from the area by destruct commands issued by range safety. Rider ordnance trajectories have been computed as intersecting Eagle presence and moment with three major strikes, sufficient to have eliminated the incoming threat. This concludes a successful test of the Hellburner prototype. In-progress System traffic will resume ordinary operations in fifteen minutes ...”
Impossible to hear in the spectator gallery, after that. Crews and techs inside mission control were out of their seats, pounding each other on the backs with complete disregard of uniform or gender. “Damn on!” Villy roared from the other side of the spectators, Optexes were going, reporters were shouting questions—a few of them loudly incensed about the apparent proximity to the moon.
God, he just let it go. Gave fragments of answers, how he felt—damned happy; had he been nervous—wanted to be out there, he said, all the while tracking on the screens, the celebrations, the communications from FleetCom telling Hellburner 1 there was no need to brake, the carrier was on direct intercept, and from UDC System Defense saying that lift traffic would resume in areas declared cleared, starting with alpha zone, near Earth’s atmosphere.
Was it an unwarrantable risk to Luna? a reporter wanted to know. He said, tracking on the politics as well as the damned brilliant straight-line shot, “In the first place, it was never going to hit the moon. It was moving past the moon faster than it was moving toward it. By the laws of physics it absolutely couldn’t hit the surface.”
“If something had gone wrong with the missiles—”
“They didn’t have enough fuel to reach the moon soon enough to hit it. It’s absolutely impossible.”
“But they could reach the carrier.”
“The carrier could run into them. The range officer got it well within the safe zone. If it had failed to detonate, there were two back-up systems; and, I reemphasize, the ordnance was not infalling Luna, no more than the ship itself was. The armscomper knew exactly what she was doing.”
“She,” a reporter pounced on the question, but another shouted:
“Was it a successful test, when the duration was half an hour less than the Wilhelmsen run, at a slower speed?”
“The rider eliminated the threat. It had nothing left to shoot at. There’s no point in continuing beyond mission accomplished.”
“But could they have kept going?”
“No doubt whatsoever. And let me point out, they were slower, but their target was moving at system entry speeds. Wilhelmsen’s targets were only randoms, from known fire points, nothing this real-time. But he gave us data that helped us. It wasn’t a pointless sacrifice—never a pointless sacrifice.” Tanzer had just shown up in mission control, Tanzer accepting handshakes of his staff, beyond the sound-damping spex, and the whole press corps was suddenly trying to figure out how to get where they weren’t going to be admitted. Villy clapped him on the shoulder in passing and escaped the intercepts, while another Optex pickup arrived in his face with, “Ms. Salazar has denounced the choice of Paul Dekker as the source of tape for the program and called for the disfranchisement of the Beet. How do you feel about that?”