LOW EARTH ORBIT
NEAR LAUNCH PLATFORM SKYLORD SIX
ABOARD DASCS SUBOTAI
MAY 23, 1982
“ . . . drive systems at one hundred percent,” a voice was saying in the background—the last of the checklist.
Yolande leaned back in the big crashcouch. Only the elastic belts were buckled across her skinsuit; the massive petal-like sections of the combat cocoon had folded back into the sides. The bridge of Subotai was dark, lit mainly by the screens spaced around the perimeter of the eight-meter circle. A dozen stations, horseshoes standing out from the walls with a crashcouch in the center, all occupied. Her own in the center portside of the axial tube, surrounded by sections of console like wedge-shaped portions of a disk. Dozens of separate screens—physical separation rather than virtual, for redundancy’s sake. Light blue and green from data read-outs, pickups, graphs, and schematics.
“Subotai on standby,” said the First Officer, Warden Fermore; she had voyaged with him before.
A screen before her flicked to the face of Philia Garren, captain of the other warship. “Batu on standby,” she said.
“Marius on standby.”
“Sappho on standby.”
“Crassus on standby.”
“Alcibiades, on standby.”
Cargo carriers: the heart of this mission. A substantial proportion of the Domination’s fast heavy-lift capacity, originally built for work around the gas-giant moons. She tapped for an exterior view. The Telmark IV flotilla was stationary a bare kilometer from SkyLord Six and perhaps ten from each other, touching distance in these terms. The armored globe of the launch station swung before her, with the 200-meter tubes of the free-electron lasers around it like the arms of a spider. The other ships . . . Yolande allowed herself a moment of cold pride at the power beneath her fingertips.
“Status, report,” she said. And there was a certain queasy feeling, before any mission. Like having eaten a little too much oily food—and it was worse this time. This time everything was her responsibility . . .
“Time to boost, three minutes and counting,” the First Officer said.
She looked at the other ships. The Batu was a twin of her own. Two hundred and fifty meters from the bell of the thrust plate to the hemisphere dome of the forward shield; most of that machinery space open behind a latticework stretched between the four main keel beams. The heat dumpers, running the length of the keels and the drive lasers; the long bundles that held the plutonium fuel pellets; the jagged asymmetric shapes of rectennae, railgun pods, Gatling turrets, launch tubes. And the cylindrical armored bulk of the reaction-mass tank, with the smaller cylinder of the pressurized crew zone half embedded in it. The transports were blockier, squat, similar propulsion systems but without the weapons, more reaction mass . . . A pulsedrive could run on just the fission reaction and the byproducts, but that was bad for the thrust plates and squanderous of fuel.
All of them clamped to strap-on boost packs, of course. It was not very nice to fire off a pulsedrive just outside the atmosphere; the EMP would destroy electronics over half a continent.
“Cleared for boost, SkyLord Six,” she said
“Guidance lasers locked. All locked. Excitement phase beginning.”
An amplified voice that would sound throughout the flotilla: “STAND BY FOR ACCELERATION. STAND BY FOR ACCELERATION. FIVE THOUSAND SECONDS, MAX AT ONE-POINT-SEVEN-EIGHT G. TEN SECONDS TO BURN. COUNTING.”
She gripped the rests, let the fluid resilience of the couch enfold her. Far behind her back the supercooled oxygen in the strap-on booster would be subliming under the first teasing feathertouch of the station’s lasers. A pulse to vaporize—
Whump. The Subotai massed 14,000 tonnes with full tanks; now that moved with a faint surge, growing as the magnetic equalizers between thrust plate and hull frame absorbed the energy. And another pulse to turn vapor to plasma—
WHAMwhumpWHAM—too fast to sense, building to hundreds of times per second as the lasers flickered. The exterior view showed long leaf-shaped cones of white flame below the strap-ons, and the ships were beginning to move. Weight pressed down on her chest, building; the acceleration would increase as mass diminished. It was nothing compared to flying atmosphere fighters, but it went on much longer . . . 5,000 seconds of bum. Very economical, to save their own onboard reaction mass. It was liquid 02 and dirt-cheap here near Luna where the mines produced it as a byproduct; more precious than rubies out where you needed it, at the other end of the trajectory. Even more economical to save on the tiny plutonium-beryllium-plastic pellets that powered a pulsedrive. Full load for a Great Khan cruiser was half a million pellets, which meant six tonnes of plutonium.
The world had been mass-producing breeder reactors for twenty years, to fuel ships like this.
Minutes stretched, and the pressure on her chest increased. She breathed against it, watching the time blinking on half a dozen screens and remembering. Other launches; her first . . . only six years ago? Assistant Pilot Officer, then. Not quite a record for promotion. There had been casualties, and a massive expansion program, and not everyone wanted space assignments . . . Uncle Eric had pulled strings to get Gwen allowed up for the launch, and she had actually been quiet when they showed her the ships through the viewport; there was one who was definitely going to go spacer herself.
The stars were unmoving in the exterior view, but the station was dwindling. Dwindling to a point of light, against the curved shield of Earth; that shrinking to a globe. Other spots of light around it, some things large enough to be seen: station powersails, then a real solar sail half-deployed near a construction station. Ten minutes, and the planet was much smaller. The terminator was sweeping over the eastern Mediterranean. Dusk soon at Claestum. Jolene was there, with Yolande’s child below her heart; she remembered holding the serf’s hand in the Clinic. Pinpoint lights from the darkness over Central Asia, possibly launches from the laserlift stations in the Tien Shan. City lights. Very faint straight lines on the northern and southern edges of the Sahara; one of the few things you could see from this distance were the reclamation projects.
The moon was swelling; they would use it for slingshot effect, about an hour after the burn stopped. Back in . . . ’62, it had been, she remembered how exciting, the first moon landings. Going out with Ma and Pa on the terrace at home, the servants unfolding the 150mm telescope, Ma showing her how to spot the tiny flame. The Yankees ahead—may they rot—but only by a few months. Strange-looking clunky little ships, hand-assembled around those first primitive orbital platforms. A dozen figures in black skinsuits and bubble helmets climbing down the ladders in dreamlike slowness to plant the Drakon banner on the moon; she had stayed up past her bedtime, glued to the viewer, and no one had objected.
“How far we’ve come,” she murmured. Only a single generation. Of course, we had incentive. Ten percent of GNP for decades could accomplish a great deal.
The First Officer responded to her words rather than the meaning. “Making eight kps relative, Cohortarch,” Fermore said. “Twelve hundred seconds of burn to go; then a quick whip ’round and it’s a month to Mars.” Minimum burn, for pulsedrives. And you could pick up reaction mass, at the Draka station on Phobos.
She felt the weight of the sealed data plaque over her breast. Sealed orders, and there were only six others in the flotilla who knew, of more than six hundred; she would tightbeam the course change when they were a week out. A profligate trajectory, since it was necessary to deceive the enemy until the last minute, burning fuel and mass recklessly, but the prize was worth it.