Beginnings Read online

  “I see it, Sensors. Get me a triangulation on the probable point-source.”

  “Can't do it, sir—not with the remote sensors we're depending upon currently.”

  Bernie chewed his lip, staring at the orange glow. “That's a lot of juice, if we can see it as this range with portable passive sensors. What do you think—?”

  “Nuke drive,” Lee answered flatly.

  “Sounds like you were expecting it,” Finder said from the back of the bridge.

  Lee turned, barked. “Sergeant, your post is in auxiliary for the duration of all combat. If this bridge is destroyed—”

  The faces around Lee suddenly became pale. Finder snapped a salute. “I'm on it, Sir.”

  Bernie smiled—until Lee swiveled around to face him. “Mr. de los Reyes, you are the only man on this bridge who is not secured in an acceleration couch. Do so at once.”

  Bernie gulped, nodded, sat, and pulled at the straps.

  The Mars-lean crewman manning the Sensors sounded as if he was being strangled. “That halo is heating up, Sir. Readings suggest high-energy particles—”

  “I'll bet they do,” muttered Lee. “Prepare to re-angle the passive sensors—but be careful not to impart any vector change to the debris we mounted them on.”

  “Aye, sir. The ROV tugs are ready to rotate the debris and converge the scanning cones of the individual sensors.”

  And not a moment too soon. From over the rim of 216 Kleopatra, the orange halo coalesced as it rose, shrinking and concentrating into an angry red blob.

  “Vampire, vampire!” shouted the Sensor Rating. “Moving at—holy shit!”

  Lee ignored the profanity. “Gunnery, sensors are now under your direct control. Triangulate upon the emissions with the passive sensors.”

  “That won't get us a serviceable target lock, sir.”

  “I am aware of that, Rating. I'm not trying to get a hard lock with them—yet. And with our on-board active arrays still dark, he doesn't even know we've got him located. Unless he has ESP and knows that the junk paralleling us is concealing passive sensor packages.”

  Bernie breathed appreciatively. “And working almost like a phased array of thermal detectors.”

  “That's the idea. Let's hope it works. Helm, stand ready. Navigator, plot a direct retreat from that vampire.”

  “We—we're running, sir?”

  “No, we are opening the range. And if you wait another second to plot that course, I will cite you as derelict in your duty, mister.”

  “Sir, plotting new course, Sir!”

  The engineering rating licked his lips. “Do I bring our own power plant on-line?”

  “Not yet. Right now, we're putting out less radiant energy than the plant on the Blossom. I want to keep it that way.”

  Bernie smiled. “So we're hiding in the liner's thermal shadow.”

  “Hopefully. Gunnery, ready a wide missile spread.”

  “How many birds, Sir?”

  “Salvo all.”

  “Sir?”

  “Given how fast that ship is approaching, do you think we're going to get a chance to shoot twice?”

  Gunnery gulped. “Salvo all, aye, Sir.”

  The red blob seemed to have angles now, but was more intensely red—and it was growing visibly.

  “That damn thing has twice our thrust,” muttered the helmsman.

  “More like five times, and unless I'm very wrong, it's leaving a rad trail so hot that it almost glows in the dark.”

  “Damn—yes Sir, I think it is,” said the sensor rating.

  “Gunnery, do we have a preliminary target lock?”

  “Still working, Sir. Interpolation is pretty messy with these portable sensors—”

  “Sensors, has the vampire lit up its active targeting arrays, yet?”

  “No—but he should have done it, Sir. He's in range. Is he damaged—?”

  “He probably has home-brewed missiles with shorter range than ours. So he's hoping we'll panic when we see how rapidly he's closing on us, and that we'll go for a Hail Mary shot from extreme range.”

  Bernie nodded. “Yeah, he wants us to launch while he's still just a thermal smudge. And once we do, he'll go active, get a fast reciprocal lock on us by tracking back along our own active sensor emissions, and run a missile up our ass.”

  Lee nodded; he felt his armpits growing unpleasantly wet. “I say again, Gunnery, do we have a preliminary lock?”

  “Not ye—Lock! It's fuzzy and unsteady, but I've got a piece of him. Not enough to guarantee a hit, though, Sir.”

  “Salvo all, Gunnery. Set missiles to follow our guidance datafeed.”

  “But Sir, if they're to have any chance of hitting him, we've got to light up our own arrays, get an active lock with our on-board sensors.”

  “Negative. Not until fifty percent of our missiles' flight time has elapsed.”

  “Which is happening . . . right . . . now!”

  “Active arrays on,” ordered Lee. “Send that new datafeed straight to our missiles: give them a solid lock. Engineering, power to full. Helm, best speed away from the vampire.”

  Gunnery whooped. “Missiles are transferring over to active array target lock. Eighty percent of them are still inside a possible intercept footprint pattern and are closing.”

  Out in space, the missiles were no longer following the imprecise and irregular targeting data being relayed from the tactical thermal sensors riding the ROVs slaved to the Blossom's detritus. Now that they were using the active arrays' clean, infinitely superior guidance datastream, they rode it straight toward their target. The crude guidance from the passive arrays had put eight of the ten missiles close enough to adjust to a true intercept course—even though they had already closed sixty percent of the range to target.

  Obviously, the enemy craft had expected the Gato to launch and engage her active arrays at the same time—the latter being the target they had been waiting for. Now, with eight missiles already bearing down upon it, the vampire attempted to evade, tumbling ninety degrees and using its extraordinary thrust to alter its vector as abruptly as possible. But the tremendous delta vee it had already invested in closing the range to its target now worked against it. Although the enemy hull could side-vector dramatically, it was still closing with the oncoming missiles, which tracked along with its vector changes unwaveringly.

  The adversary discharged a desperate flurry of its own missiles—and then was gone in a short, vicious flash.

  The elated whoops on the bridge died at the sound of Lee's harsh question. “Inbound missiles? “

  “Three, sir. Jamming, but they're still on us.”

  “Probably flying by simple on-board sensors now, looking for our emissions. Deploy decoys; put in a heavy mix of thermals.”

  Bernie nodded. “Another reason you kept our own rockets cold for so long. If we had been building up engine heat over the past hour, their birds might have been able to distinguish us from our decoys.”

  That was the very moment that the countermeasures rating reported that one of the enemy missiles had spent itself homing in on an RF emitter decoy; the other two expended themselves on the thermal flares.

  Lee undid his seat-straps and stood. “Secure from general quarters.” He leaned over to the voice-activated comm system. “Sergeant Finder to the bridge on the double. Helmsman?”

  “Yes, Sir?”

  “As senior rating present, you have the con. I will be in the ready room with Mr. de los Reyes, preparing an after-action report and waiting for the sergeant to join us.”

  * * *

  As soon as the ready-room's door closed behind Finder, Lee turned to face his two NCOs. “Okay, gentlemen, now that we have a few minutes to talk, you have some explaining to do. Specifically, I need to know the origins of the gyrojet zip gun that you passed to me on the sly, Sergeant Finder, and why you made sure Rating Lewis was left out of the team that went into the forward section of the Blossom. Who, you later intimated, may have shot the last hijac
ker three times not out of nerves but in order to ensure that we had no prisoners left to interrogate. And then there's the white-noise generator that you obviously had installed in this room, Mr. de los Reyes. A pretty unusual modification for a man who ‘always follows regulations.'”

  Lee sat down. “So I need both of you to remedy my Dirtsider ignorance about these matters. Right now. Before Mars can respond to the after-action report I just sent.” He folded his arms and waited.

  “Wow,” breathed Bernie after blinking. “We had you pegged for the mild-mannered type, L.T.”

  “Sorry to surprise you. Now, it's time to share your surprises with me. What the hell is going on out here?”

  Finder massaged a calloused palm. “L.T., just to make sure that we don't waste time reinventing any wheels that are already spinning between your ears, what do you think is going on out here?”

  “Well, what I already know is that what we Dirtsiders are told about Upside is incomplete and slanted to flatter the dominant political party on Earth, the Greens. Who have a penchant for information control, whereas the Neo Luddites don't have the clout, organization, or—most of allð—the patience to oversee the necessary subtleties and nuances. What I suspect is that despite all the rhetoric, the Customs Patrol Officer corps isn't the Earth Union's only ‘loyal eyes and ears' in space. The Union has to have other, less obvious methods of surveillance.”

  Bernie shrugged. “We know where our officers' loyalties lie, given where all of you come from. No offense intended, L.T.”

  “None taken. But that means you're more worried about informers from inside your own, Upside ranks.” Lee turned toward Finder. “So that's what was going on with Lewis. You suspect him of being an informer for the Earth brass.”

  Finder nodded soberly. “Yeah. He's new and no one knows his family—not even the other Loonies.”

  “He's a Loonie? He doesn't look it.”

  “That's because he's not lunar-born. But his zero-gee skills are too good for him to have been born Dirtside.”

  Lee thought about Finder's assertion. “Could he have grown up on one of the rotational habitats—like you, Sergeant?”

  Finder smiled. “So you pegged me already? Good for you.”

  Lee shrugged. “I've heard your accent in the mess. Sounds like one of the L-4 hab rings. And you didn't get that build living anyplace that had less than a one-gee equivalent. Means one of the big toruses. Which could be where Lewis' family came from. That would explain his Upsider skills, but why he'd be a first-generation Loonie, even so.”

  Bernie nodded. “Which would also make him a perfect candidate for the Greens to recruit as a snitch.”

  “Why?”

  “The Earth Union maintains strict immigration limits between the different Upside communities. But there are ways to increase your chances of getting permission to move.”

  “Such as a demonstrated willingness to ‘cooperate'?”

  Bernie nodded. “They extort a lot of favors that way—particularly when people have a real need to change where they live. Medical needs, for instance.”

  “Such as?”

  Bernie leaned forward, legs wider, hands rubbing roughly between his knees. “You sure you want to hear all this, L.T.? Might change your world view more than you think. Might make it hard to go back.”

  Lee breathed out. “Not sure I want to go back Dirtside. Not sure I want to live Upside, either.”

  “Hell,” grunted Finder, “ain't like there's much in between.”

  Lee smiled. “And there you have the crux of my dilemma, Sergeant. But go ahead, Bernie: tell me how the Earth Union uses medical blackmail.”

  Bernie shrugged. “Okay—and remember: you asked. So, when I was growing up on Mars, we had some neighbors, two domes farther down the main tube. Nice folks, two kids, one a daughter. Guess I had a bit of crush on her. Anyway, when she was twelve, they diagnosed her with environmentally-induced leukemia.”

  Lee frowned. “I thought the habitats on Mars all had to meet rigorous radiation protection standards.”

  “Yes, and all our nonexistent pigs have wings, too. Look, L.T., maybe the protections passed spec when they were built. But in some cases, that's more than two centuries ago. Materials get compromised, shielding wears away, berms get eroded. Bottom line is we have to maintain them as best we can, but Earth always finds excuses to delay or cancel crucial cargos.”

  “They delay shipments of basic shielding?”

  “They delay shipments of everything. Including—and here we return to my story—specialty medications. My cute neighbor with the leukemia should have been getting her meds weekly, but the supply on Mars ran out after five weeks. She had to wait ten weeks before another batch arrived. If that had gone on, she'd have been dead in two years, three at the outside.”

  Lee unclenched his teeth. “So her parents made a deal.”

  “Of course they did. Wouldn't you? They got permission to go to one of the low-gee rotational habitats out near Earth's Trojan asteroids. And I'm guessing they're still there, working as snitches for the Earth Union. Lewis is a more typical candidate, though.”

  “Why?”

  “Well, frankly, because he's a Loonie. See, Loonies are generally the wealthiest Upsiders. They get lots of shipments from Earth, they get lots of loyalty perks, they have a lot of regular contact with Dirtsiders. And because it's only a light-second away, and it's part of the same public data net, and because you Dirtsiders see a lot of it on your screens, the Earth Union has got to make life on the moon look nice. So Loonies tend to enjoy the same social services and access to needed supplies. And where that kind of money and privilege is flowing, it's always easier to find sympathetics for the Earth regime.”

  “If there's an Earth Union snitch on board a ship,” grumbled Finder, “it's even odds that he's a Loonie. Which is why we're careful sharing secrets with them. Like our home-made zero-gee pistols”

  Lee leaned back. “This isn't exactly what they teach us in school about Upside life.”

  “Yeah,” Finder said gruffly, “we know. Remember; we've dealt with a long line of your predecessors, a new one every year. And that's touches on the mystery we've been trying to solve, L.T. How did you become so—um, ‘open-minded'?”

  Lee shrugged. “Well, some of my relatives are Fifthers.”

  Now it was Bernie's turn to stare blankly. “‘Fifthers?'”

  “Yes. As in ‘I invoke my rights as guaranteed under the Fifth Amendment'?”

  “What's the Fifth Amendment?” asked Bernie.

  Finder frowned. “If I remember correctly, that's the part of the American Constitution that gives people the right to refuse to respond to a question, even in a court of law, if it would incriminate them.”

  “Wow,” wondered Bernie. “Whatever happened to that right?”

  Lee shrugged. “It still exists in the U.S.—technically. But back about a hundred years ago, when the Greens were consolidating their hold on power before revamping the UN into the Earth Union, they managed to get the equivalent of loyalty oaths passed in most countries. In some places, like northern China, you had to respond. In others, if you didn't respond, it was the old ‘silence grants consent' construance. In a small number of countries, you could still refuse to take the oath. You had to explain why, however—except in the U.S. There, you could still just fold your arms and shut your mouth, as per your Fifth Amendment rights. Ever since then, anyone in the U.S. who doesn't roll over for the powers that be is dubbed a Fifther.”

  “Huh. So you come from a long line of troublemakers,” observed Bernie. “I knew there was something I liked about you, L.T. But that doesn't explain why you're—well, competent.”

  Lee shrugged. No reason not to tell them. “Probably because I grew up reading all the radical books in my great-grandfather's library—half of which you can't even find anymore.”

  Bernie mused. “What sort of books have the Greens and Neo Luddites weeded out of Dirtside circulation?”

&nbs
p; “Lots. Decent history of any kind. Fiction—or plays or poems—that had heroes whose behavior didn't ‘exemplify the spirit of communal cooperation.'”

  “What?” Finder exclaimed, “No Shakespeare?”

  “Oh, that's different. Anything from before the nineteenth century is now considered ‘primitive' literature.”

  “Damn,” said Bernie with a stare, “I though they were called the ‘classics' of literature.”

  “Yeah, well that was before the Behavioral Standards committees made sure that all our society's heroes unfailing demonstrated ‘model-worthy behavior.' So the earlier heroes are relegated to semi-barbarian status. No fault of theirs, of course. They lived in the benighted epochs before the Green Awakening.”

  Finder was frowning. “Didn't the Russians try to control book availability during their Communism phase?”

  Lee shook his head. “Can't say. It's hard to find much accurate history from 1800 onward. We had a little in great-granddad's library, but mostly books about America's past and its military campaigns. But novels—” Lee pictured the dark wood shelves that went on and on, that had been silent gateways into worlds other than his drab, narrow reality, in which bold ideas or actions were viewed as destabilizing and dangerous. In the books, characters had saved cities, built or broken empires, discovered continents, explored planets . . .

  “L.T., you still with us?”

  Bernie's quiet prompt jarred Lee out of his fond recollections. “So I decided I was going to live as much of that life as I could.”

  Finder's bushy eyebrows climbed toward his receding hairline. “And how did you do that?”

  Lee shrugged. “After college, I enlisted in the only service that still went in harm's way: the Coast Guard. Search and rescue. And the Earth Union is always glad to find people willing to sign up for that kind of duty, particularly officer material. Not a lot of folks with good grades are willing to take those kinds of risks anymore—not even to save someone else's life.”

  Bernie nodded. “Well, that explains why you didn't get rattled on the bridge when we started trading shots with those bastards. Damn, even us Upsiders don't head straight into danger. If it's coming toward us, we sensibly run like hell. If we can.”