Deep Time

The Elliot was a destroyer massing eight thousand tons, the Hawes a smaller frigate, a light escort of about three thousand tons. The two had recently been assigned to America’s carrier group and were now deployed in HEO—high Earth orbit, about thirty thousand kilometers out.

“Who would be trying to escape, Mr. President?” Whitney asked. “If we have both Denoix and Korosi—”

“Might be members of Korosi’s staff,” Koenig said. “Or it might be the real architects of Columbus.”

“The real architects, Mr. President?” Whitney shook his head. “We already know Korosi was behind that, don’t we?”

“No, Marcus, we don’t. He’s a nasty character, I’ll admit, but the Confederation really didn’t have reason to eat a city, not when they had to take that big of a public-relations hit.”

As Koenig had noted, the attack by the Confederation ship Estremadura—awful as it had been—had done more damage by far to the Confederation than to North America. Nation states that had been sitting on the sidelines of the fast-evolving civil war—the Chinese Hegemony and the Islamic Theocracy, especially—had openly come into the war against the Confederation. Perhaps just as important, members of the Confederation—including Russia, North India, and England—had immediately distanced themselves from the world state, with Russia and North India both seceding from the Geneva government.

But the politics over there were still murky. One of the Confederation ships escorting the Estremadura on her deadly mission, Koenig remembered, had been the North Indian heavy cruiser Brahmaputra. At least some within the North Indian government, clearly, had known about the nature of the attack that had destroyed Columbus … and approved of it. If fighters were coming up from Surat, they might well be piloted by officers still loyal to Korosi, even if New Delhi had disowned the guy since the attack.

And knowing if that was true was crucial. With the takedown of the last major fortress controlled by Korosi forces, Koenig knew it was vital to maintain the momentum; handled properly, Korosi’s capture might end the war.

So the question remained: Who the hell was trying to escape the USNA’s tightening noose?

VFA-96, Black Demons

LEO

0022 hours, TFT

Megan Connor thoughtclicked a symbol, sending two VG-10 Krait missiles streaking toward the last Confederation fighter. At a range of just two hundred kilometers, the missiles detonated in twin flares of dazzling, silent light … and the enemy Todtadler disintegrated in tumbling, half-molten fragments.

Elsewhere in the sky, soft-glowing clouds of expanding hot plasma and debris marked the passings of the other fighters; one had re-entered the atmosphere below, a streak of ablating hull material scratched across the intense blue of the Indian Ocean.

Through her communications link, Connor could hear the chatter among the other pilots in her squadron.

“Nice shot, Five! That’s a kill!”

“The last one! Hot damn, and we didn’t loose a single damned ship!”

That was pretty spectacular, Connor thought. Eight fighters in that first launch out of Turkey … and six more from North India. Fourteen fighters against four of the new Starblades, and every single one of them shot down without a single loss. That was worth a hot damn in anyone’s flight log.

“Hey, Skipper? Demon Six. My scanners weren’t picking up any people in those ships!”

“Copy that, Six. America’s S-2 concurs. They were all on AI.”

“Shit, why? Aren’t we good enough for them?”

For centuries, the debate had continued to natter back and forth over the need for human pilots in fighter cockpits. Undeniably, artificial intelligences were faster than humans, sharper, more immediately aware, and surer in their assessment of data … but humans seemed to add a degree of creativity and inspired improvisation to the mix. So far, at least, the best tactical advantage seemed to rest with human brains cybernetically wired into AI-controlled spacecraft.

And the 14-and-0 victory they’d just won was a resounding validation of that … that and the fact that the new Starblade design left even the most advanced Confederation spacecraft chewing hard vacuum. But maybe the unbalanced outcome wasn’t so surprising after all, since it had involved enhanced humans fighting machines.

Especially machines on some sort of preset program …

“Skipper?” she said, running through her sensor feeds. “See that, to the north?”

“What the hell?”

“That’s a fucking starship!” she exclaimed. “Running hot and under escort!”

And now the Confederation’s plan was clear. The attack rising from a spaceport in Turkey had served to scatter the four fighters riding that part of the space superiority orbit—not badly, but a little. The second wave of enemy fighters, coming south from Surat, had scattered the flight even further; the nearest other fighter to Connor’s right now was Mackey’s … a good fifteen hundred kilometers to her southeast.

And with the four Starblades scattered all over the sky, now was when the enemy was launching something big … and escorted by twelve more Todtadlers.

“The ship is cloaked,” Connor reported. “But I’m getting a mass of around four thousand tons.”

“Small,” Lieutenant Ruxton said. “Frigate size.”

“Fleet Combat Command is designating the target as Charlie One,” Mackey said.

“Where the hell is our capship backup?” Dobbs was referring to the two capital ships, the Hawes and the Elliot, which had been ordered down to LEO to support the USNA fighters.

“On the way, Demon Six,” Mackey replied. “In the meantime, let’s see what we can do.”

Connor was trying to read through the enemy’s cloaking, which was an offshoot of gravitic screening. The technology to bend light around a ship, affording partial invisibility, had been around for several centuries, but the effort generally wasn’t worth the power consumption … or the fact that a cloaked ship couldn’t see out any more than others could see in. There really was little point in doing it at all … unless there was something about that small starship that the Confederation didn’t want the Americans to see.

Now what the hell, she wondered, were the bastards trying to hide?

Chapter Three (#ulink_fe7ee386-c0bd-5cf5-940e-0c2dc75fe86f)

29 June, 2425

USNA Star Carrier America

Naval Base

Quito Synchorbital

0032 hours, TFT

Admiral Trevor “Sandy” Gray was patched into the operations datastream in his private office, just off his sleeping quarters. According to ship’s time, it was just past midnight, but he always had trouble sleeping when an op was going down, even with electronic sleep aids. And so he was stretched out on a recliner, following the datastreams coming up from Earth.

Operation Fallen Star was pretty much academic so far as he was concerned. Some of America’s fighter squadrons had been deployed to LEO to provide aerospace superiority, but the carrier herself was docked at the synchorbital naval base and was taking no other part in the proceedings.

He could turn in, he knew. Laurie was waiting for him in the other room, unless she’d already fallen asleep. If so, he envied her that.

America’s AI was monitoring the feeds as well, of course, which should have further put him at ease: if anything happened, he’d be alerted immediately. As if the AI were reading his mind, he felt an inner nudge, directing his attention to new data—Confed fighter launches from Turkey and North India, and … something else.

“Now what the hell?” he wondered aloud. “Bridge, this is the admiral.”

“Gutierrez here, Admiral.”

Captain Sara Gutierrez was America’s skipper, and apparently she was burning the midnight photons as well.

“What the blazes just launched from North India?”