When the torpedo was eighty kilometers out, less than a second away, one of the laser beams nicked it, just barely burning through the outer casing. Had the shot been just five centimeters more to the center, it would have destroyed the weapon, rendering it incapable of detonation and turning it into nothing more than a projectile. Instead a sensor in the weapon, detecting the damage, immediately set the detonation sequence into action. It took less than three hundredths of a second for the nuclear material to be compressed and explode in the distinctive double-flash.
Since the range of the detonation was considerably further out than had been the case with Camel, the ship was not completely obliterated from existence. The energy burned into the hull, causing huge rips along the entire port side, basically tearing the ship in half lengthwise. All of the landing ships on the port side were ripped open as well, instantly killing all within as they were opened to space in explosive decompressions. The worst damage occurred when two of the fuel tanks of the landing ships exploded, sending shrapnel ripping through the rest of the ship. The delicate fusion engines were put out of commission by the opening of the rear of the ship and then destroyed completely by the secondary explosion. The propellant tanks were ruptured, their contents blasting out into space as a tremendous cloud of vapor, but they did not explode this time due to the lack of sufficient oxidation. Nevertheless, more than three quarters of the men aboard Mule were killed outright by the impact or the secondary explosion. Of the remainder, most of whom were located on the bridge or the starboard side of the vessel, well over half were trapped forever in compartments that had been fused shut by the heat and the buckling. Their fate would be to drift forever into space, entombed in a dead, twisted hulk. Of those that were able to abandon ship, they had only fifty minutes of air in their emergency pressure suits and would have to hope for rescue from the other ships of the armada. And if they did manage to be rescued in time, all would have to be treated for severe radiation sickness.
Mermaid's engines had long since been shut down and she drifted silently through space, her passive sensors keeping an eye on the frantic search that was being undertaken on their behalf. The crew had been at general quarters for nearly five hours now, all of them anxious, scared, but also proud that they had just helped take forty thousand marines out of commission.
Brett and the rest of the bridge crew watched their screens as the Panamas continued to pass far above them and as the anti-stealth frigates and the attack ships that came from the middle portion of the security screen circled back and forth and probed into space. They picked up many radar signals and infrared sweeps bathing their ship in energy but so far they had not been detected. And as the minutes ticked by the ships in pursuit of them moved further and further away, carried along by their own momentum.
"They're well outside of potential detection range now," Sugi said as he watched the circling of a pair of A-22s about 40,000 kilometers away. They had been as close as 12,000 kilometers at one point, close enough that any sort of heat dump or engine usage would have meant instant discovery.
"Good," Brett said, puffing nervously on a cigarette, "but they won't be the only ones. We still have the rear screen to worry about. They'll be out in force as well. And all it takes is for one to get a little sniff of us."
Sugi said nothing, didn't even nod. He simply went back to studying the display, remembering how he had once begged for something to appear on it. Now there were more symbols on it than he thought he could handle. And more would be gracing his view at any time.
"Have you found them yet?" General Wrath demanded of Jules. They were sitting in Jules' quarters, both sipping from cocktails as they sat in leather bound chairs before the huge picture window that looked out on the empty space before them.
"Not yet," Jules sighed. "The first group of search ships have passed beyond where the torpedo could have conceivably been fired from and the attack ships have run out of maneuvering fuel. They're being recovered right now."
"So we lost them then? Almost forty thousand of my men dead and you can't find the people responsible for it? That's unacceptable, Jules! I want that ship dead!"
"The anti-stealth ships from our part of the screen will be coming into range in about twenty minutes," he told him. "And the entire wing of A-22's will be launching in five to fan out ahead of us. We'll find them."
"Christ," Wrath said, shaking his head angrily. "How in the hell could something like this have happened? How in the hell could you let the greenies attack this armada with nuclear weapons? That's outrageous."
"There will be a full investigation, I can assure you of that," Jules said. "Those responsible for the lapse in security will be punished harshly." He was in fact already formulating just who would be blamed for the attacks. The on duty combat information center crew made handy scapegoats. They were, after all, the ones responsible for detecting enemy craft or weapons, weren't they?
"I want some heads to roll over this, Tanner," Wrath said. "And I want them to roll soon. Nothing like this has happened to the corps since the Jupiter War. And then we were at least fighting a real enemy!"
"They'll roll," he promised. "And we'll find that ship. You have my word."
Wrath sighed and took another sip from his scotch and soda. He looked out at the stars for a moment and then turned back to his colleague. "What did the executive committee have to say about this?" he asked.
"I just got their reply about ten minutes ago. We're still able to relay messages directly instead of sending them to Jupiter first. They were a bit upset by the news of course."
"I take it that that is an understatement?"
He gave a cynical smile. "Yes, perhaps the biggest of the trip so far. They were infuriated. They're very worried about what effect this is going to have on public opinion."
"Understandable. What did they have to say? Do we have orders for what to brief the media on? They've already started picking up the rumors."
"It was a collision," Jules said. "That's what the official story is going to be."
"A collision?" Wrath said in disgust. "You've got to be kidding me."
He shook his head. "One of our captains was trying to adjust his station in the formation. He let his engine burn a little too long and ran his ship into another Panama, therefore causing the rupture of the propellant tanks aboard Camel. The explosion completely destroyed Camel and caused severe damage to Mule."
"Holy Jesus," said Wrath. "And just how are we to explain why we had to treat the survivors of Mule for radiation sickness? Did that occur to them? Or how about what's going to happen when one of the surviving bridge crew starts blabbing his mouth? Or one of our own CIC crew that was tracking this thing. Do they really think that something like this can be kept under wraps?"
"They didn't explain things any further than what they ordered," Jules told him. "They left that up to us. We could say that the surviving crewmen were exposed to intense solar radiation before being rescued. After all, we are near the sun."
"Their suits have protection from that," Wrath pointed out. "That'll never fly."
"They'll make it fly," Jules insisted. "Remember what we're talking about here. They can control the media if they really want to, if they really need to. They did it during the Jupiter War. Remember, the big three are nothing more than huge corporations themselves. And whose behalf are we really fighting this fucking war on?"