"Ingram, designate a contact for that thing and put it on the big screen."
"Yes sir," he said, his fingers moving over his terminal. "We'll call it Sierra 21. It's now on the screen as an unknown, bearing only contact."
The captain pushed off of Ingram's chair and drifted back over to his own. "I've got the con," he told Braxton, hovering above him as the XO unstrapped himself and floated over to his own chair. Once he seated himself and strapped in he turned on the ship's intercom system. "All personnel," he said, his voice being amplified throughout the ship. "General quarters, prepare for acceleration and contact prosecution."
The general quarters alarm blared and on all decks men dropped what they were doing and stowed any loose items that were in their vicinity. Kitchen crews put away their knives and forks and pressure cookers. Cleaning crews (all of whom were Martians) stowed their rags and spray bottles. Everyone on board reached into small fanny packs that they wore around their waists and pulled out emergency decompression suits, which they unfolded and slipped on. In the event of a hull breach, these suits would automatically inflate and allow the person to survive for a short time in the vacuum that would result. Once in their suits, everyone propelled themselves as quickly as possible to their GQ station. The engine crewmen all assumed their stations in the reactor room. The torpedo room crews passed through a security access hatch and into the room where Mermaid's twelve thermonuclear torpedoes were stored. Two additional crewmen floated up to the bridge and assumed secondary terminals where they could control the four eighty millimeter anti-ship lasers and the two ten millimeter anti-torpedo/fighter lasers.
"All stations report manned and ready, captain," Braxton said three minutes after general quarters had been called.
"Very good," he replied, obviously a little perturbed about the slow response but keeping it to himself. "Helm," he said, "sound acceleration alarm and initiate a point one zero G burn. Heading 100 mark 50.
"Aye aye sir," the helmsman said, activated his maneuvering thrusters and sounding the acceleration alarm. Once the ship was pointed in the proper direction — a task that the computer oversaw rather than the human instructing it — the main engines began their burn. It was of course, not actually a burn since the method of propulsion was a fusion reaction acting against a propellant of liquid hydrogen, but the term, which was as old as space flight itself, remained in use.
Fusion engines did not produce significant acceleration. Their advantage over chemical rockets was not how fast they could burn but how long they could burn. Fusion power allowed a ship to build up velocity over a period of days, gently pushing it faster and faster. Even a California class warship, which sported the most powerful engines of anything spaceborne, could accelerate at no more than one half of standard gravity. For an Owl, which had to cloak and cool the plasma exhaust to keep from being counter detected, the maximum acceleration was one quarter of a G. At one tenth of a G, there was just enough gravity produced for the personnel on board to feel the slightest downward push against their chairs. Slowly, ever so slowly, the stealth ship moved higher in its orbit and began to ease closer to the contact they were prosecuting; hopefully without giving away their own location.
For more than an hour they built up velocity. Ingram continued to track the elusive flickers of blue and occasional white in the infrared spectrum, comparing different bearings from different locations, the contact gradually firming up into a solid reading. "I'm starting to get enough for a range estimate, sir," he announced.
"Give it to me," the captain replied.
"This is tentative, but we're looking at six to eight thousand kilometers in a standard Ganymede semi-polar orbit. Also I've got enough readings from the various spectrums to confirm that it's a spacecraft and not a random piece of metal."
"Sounds good, Ingram," he said. "Weapons control, start working on a solution."
Of course they would not really fire at the ship even if it were identified as being an EastHem Henry. Though there was a cold war going on it had not been hot since the Jupiter War armistice was signed. And though the Henry — if that's what it was — was violating WestHem space by being within one hundred thousand kilometers of Ganymede, this was actually a fairly common violation, something that both sides did with frequency. If they were able to catch them there the report would be forwarded to Rear Admiral Cirby, the commander in chief of far space command, or CINCFARSPCOM, back on Earth. A formal protest would be lodged at the EastHem embassy and the EastHem government would be embarrassed and forced to apologize. It was something that had happened on both side many times before.
It took another hour before Mermaid had moved close enough to get a firm lock on their target. By then the fusion drives had been shut down, allowing the ship to drift once again and therefore reduce the possibility of counter detection. Once Ingram had multiple spectrum analysis of the target, he was able to positively identify it. The blue of the spectrum near the plasma outlets, the white of the thrusters when they fired, the darker blue of the occasional waste heat dump, and the very low end readings everywhere else all added up to one thing.
"I'm gonna call a positive ID on this, captain," Ingram announced. "It's definitely a Henry class stealth attack ship. Range is solid at eight hundred kilometers, velocity is standard orbital for Ganymede."
"Are you sure it's not the Dolphin playing games with us?" Braxton asked snootily. "An Owl and a Henry can be remarkably similar on the displays you know. And we are expecting Dolphin to show up at any time."
"It's not Dolphin," Ingram said tonelessly. "It's not one of ours. I've detected more than a few Owls during exercises. Our heat vents and our exhaust ports are both in a different spectrum."
"Mark it on the display," the captain said. "Fire control, do you have a solution?"
"On the mark, sir," the fire control technician said. "We're too close for torpedoes but we could really pound the shit out of them with the lasers if we wanted to."
"Good enough," he said. "Keep them locked up. I'm gonna make a little call to SCNB and report our discovery." He turned to Ingram. "God help you if you're wrong about this, greenie."
"Yes sir," Ingram said.
He wasn't wrong. The captain sent an encrypted message to Standard City Naval Base by means of a pulsed laser burst aimed directly at their receiver. Ten minutes later a flight of six A-12 attack ships, each armed with high intensity, rapid charging lasers and two thermonuclear torpedoes, roared out of the base and up into the high orbit. Ingram and the rest of the bridge crew were able to see them as bright white plumes on the display. The tracking crew of the Henry was undoubtedly able to see them as well and had to know that they meant the jig was up. Within minutes the A-12s went active with their sensors, probing the area with radar beams and infrared energy, searching for the hidden intruder. It didn't take them long to find it once they knew where to look. Ingram, who was scanning all of the emissions in the area, was able to pick up the guard frequency transmission from the control room of SCNB. With the captain's permission, he put it on the screen.
"Attention EastHem vessel in orbit around Ganymede," said Admiral John Cates, commander of the base, his weathered face stern and unforgiving. "You are illegally in WestHem space. Identify yourself immediately and state your intentions or you will be fired upon."
The captain of the Henry, knowing he was caught, did as he was told. A moment later a young, German featured face appeared on the screen. When he spoke his words were thick with an EastHem accent. "This is Commander Mark Beil of the ESS Granite," he said. "It would seem that we've made a minor navigational error and strayed into your space. We offer our sincere apologies. We will of course vacate the area at best speed immediately."