Chapter 10B

July 20, 2146
Deep space, near the sun

Mermaid had finished her deceleration burn several days before and was now drifting along in a solar orbit, just over sixteen million kilometers away from the bright yellow orb that gave life to the solar system, well inside the orbit of Mercury. Her orbit was east to west, timed to correspond with an intercept course with the approaching armada when it came around from the other side. By this point, nearly four weeks after leaving Triad and encountering their first contact, the crew was as well drilled as they were going to be for their mission. They had run through every procedure so many times that they could do them in their sleep, and often did.

On the bridge everyone was strapped into the chairs since the engines were no longer burning and there was no acceleration to provide even the most meager of artificial gravity. Brett drifted into the room from the direction of his quarters. He was well rested after a five-hour sleep period and had just finished with his traditional post-awakening bowel movement in his private bathroom, although the vacuum device that needed to be employed in the absence of gravity took much of the pleasure out of such an action.

"Good morning, Brett," greeted Sugiyoto, who had been in charge of the bridge during his absence. Sugi wasn't quite up to taking complete command if something should happen to Brett, but he was getting there.

"Is it morning?" Brett asked with a yawn. "I didn't notice. I guess I must've missed the sunrise."

"Well, a figure of speech really," Sugi told him, unbuckling and floating up from the command chair. "It's actually about 1600 New Pittsburgh time, and the sun is most definitely up. We've done six heat dumps while you were out. It's rankin hot out there."

"Nothing like the sun," Brett said, ignoring the chair for the moment and propelling himself over to the corner of the room, where a coffee maker designed to work in zero or minimal G was always percolating. He grabbed one of the pressure cups and fastened it to the tap, allowing the cup to fill. "About three of these things and I should approaching wakefulness," he said. He kicked off the wall and pushed himself over to the captain's chair.

"All systems working just like they're supposed to," Sugi told him. "Waste heat is currently at 64 percent with another dump due in about ninety minutes or so. Our position is on the screen, right on course. And we're do for a communication link-up in ten minutes."

"Static," Brett said, pulling himself into the chair with a practiced flip of the hands on its back. His backside settled neatly down in place and he quickly pulled the strap around his waist, securing himself. He set his coffee cup down on the magnetic holder that was specifically designed for such a purpose. "I've got the con," he said automatically.

"Brett's got the con," said Mandall, who was operating the helm at the moment although there was really nothing to con since they were in a stable orbit and weren't maneuvering.

Sugi drifted over to his own chair at the detection console, relieving the junior crewmember who had been training on it. The junior crewmember was then allowed to return to below decks to get a little sleep.

"Nothing out there yet?" asked Brett once Sugi was strapped in and tuned in to his equipment.

"Nothing but the sun," Sugi said after checking the board.

"About what we expected then. It's awfully nice of those WestHem folks to continually broadcast their present position to us. They surely making our job a lot easier."

What he was referring to were the media reports being beamed out live from the armada in each and every briefing given by General Wrath and Admiral Jules. These reports were seen not only on Earth and on the Jupiter colonies, but on Mars as well since Internet transmissions were still being sent there. In each briefing, for the enjoyment of the viewing audience, a graphic would be presented of the armada's exact position in space at that particular moment in time. This graphic was always accompanied by a countdown clock showing how many hours, minutes, and even seconds until the first ships entered orbit around Mars. The Martian intelligence network, which would have otherwise been blind to the armada's exact course, speed, and location, was beaming this information via communication laser to the Owls that had been deployed, therefore keeping them constantly updated on their targets' position. While it was possible that the information might actually be deliberate misinformation, designed to mislead the Martians, nobody really believed that. It was so very Earthling to transmit such information out for the entertainment of the masses.

"Like General Jackson said," said Sugi, "it's their arrogance that's gonna defeat them."

"Here's to their arrogance," Brett toasted, picking up his coffee cup and grabbing a sip. "Now how about giving me some status reports on crew fitness? Are they keeping up with their exercise routines?"

They talked of crew fitness and other shipboard physical and sociological factors for a few minutes, Sugi hesitantly bringing up the fact that at least two sets of couples had formed among the coed crew members and that there had been some experimentation with zero gravity sexuality in the storage rooms.

"Did you actually catch them doing this?" Brett asked. "Or are you merely telling me rumors?"

"One is a rumor," Sugi said. "But Wentworth and Loggerman I actually caught in the act. I'm sorry, I hate to rat people out but..."

"I understand," Brett said. "And I'm sure that no one blames you for ratting them. After all, you are the executive officer. But tell me something, were they on duty when you caught them?"

"No," he said. "They were both on sleep period."

Brett simply shrugged. "Well then, I guess that's their right as Martian citizens, isn't it? As long as they weren't pilfering the food, damaging anything, or otherwise endangering the ship, I say let them screw their brains out. Maybe they'll find some new positions."

After a flabbergasted silence by the bridge crew — who had really been expecting Brett to simply explode when he heard this — laughter broke out.

"In fact," Brett added, "let's make that a general order for the crew. Anyone who can score themselves a companion, of either sex or creed, is free to use any storage room for sexual activity as long as they are both off duty and as long as no one needs the storage room for anything else at the moment."

"Are you serious, Brett?" asked Sugi. "Do you really want to put that out for the crew?"

"Fuckin aye I do," he replied. "It'll help boost morale. After all, a happy crew is a productive crew. We may not be the best-trained or the most experienced crew in space at the moment, but goddammit, we're gonna be the happiest."

"I'll put it out right away," Sugi assured him, already thinking of a certain torpedo technician that had been casting eyes at him lately.

"Of course, if there are any fights, physical altercations, or any other problems as a result of this policy, it will be rescinded immediately," Brett qualified. "Be sure to put that bit in as well."

By the time Brett was finished with his first cup of coffee of the waking period, it was time for the communications link-up. The standard status report was prepared and digitized. It was roughly one third the size the standard report had always been back when Mermaid had belonged to WestHem and had been run by Commander Hoffman. Admiral Belting just didn't want to hear about all of the non-essential things that the WestHem bureaucracy had insisted upon. Belting wanted the basics: current speed, course, fuel and consumable status, and whether or not contact had been made with the enemy.

"Establishing link," said Frank, the young communications technician. He pushed a few buttons on his computer screen and the communications laser on the top of the ship popped out of its housing and rose slowly upward on a narrow, retracting pole. The laser itself was only three millimeters in diameter. It spun on it's axis, guided by the ship's computer which was utilizing the exact positioning and attitude of the vessel so that it could hit the receiver — a two hundred meter dish — on a communications array on Phobos. Once it was in position, a window popped up on Frank's display letting him know that the laser was locked.

"Go ahead and send it," Brett ordered.

"On the way," Frank responded, pushing the transmit button. The laser pulsed for two and a half seconds, sending a modulated beam of light out across the emptiness of space. Nineteen minutes later, the beam struck the receiver just five meters off center and the information was encoded and sent via encrypted radio link to Admiral Belting's office. Twenty-six minutes after that, a message was returned to them, sent through space as an encrypted radio signal.

"Ok, let's see what they got for us," said Brett, who was now on his third cup of coffee. "Open the report and let's see where our friends are today."

"Right," said Frank, punching the encryption code so the message could be de-scrambled.

The computer took less than five seconds to break the code and display the information on Brett's view screen. It was another position report of the WestHem armada, updated less than three hours before. The front elements of the fleet were just on the other side of the sun, almost exactly where Sugi and Brett had plotted them out to be on their chart.

"How's it look?" Sugi asked as Brett perused the data.

"If these reports are accurate, we should be able to detect the lead elements in twelve to sixteen hours."

There was a moment of silence on the bridge of the ship as everyone contemplated that fact. They had been out in space for weeks now, all of them knowing what their mission was, training hard for it, but at the same time, trying not to think too much about the danger of it. Well now that danger was just around the corner from them. Now it was very hard to put off thinking about it.

"Sugi, let's make sure that everyone is well fed and well rested before then, okay? Once we start tracking them, things are gonna get rankin busy around here."

"Right Brett," he said. "I'll make sure."

July 21, 2146
Deep space, near the sun

It was 0532 hours when the first detection was made. Mermaid was drifting along in her orbit, her passive sensors peering into space, paying particular attention to the area between ten and twelve million kilometers due west of the sun, along the planetary elliptic. Sugi, who had just come off of a rest period of his own, was looking at the display, waiting for it to show him something different. Finally, at long last, it did.

"Con, detection," he said aloud, moving into formal naval procedure now that something was happening. "I'm getting some strong flickers from bearing 296 mark 05."

"Copy, Sugi," said Brett, who had not had any more sleep since the last radio update. "What do you have?"

"It's in the medium range, spread out over about two hundredths of a degree. Moving rapidly from right to left but holding on the elliptic."

Brett nodded, already knowing what he was seeing, but he wanted to hear Sugi identify it as well. "What's it look like to you?"

Sugi took a deep breath, hesitated for the briefest instant, and then said slowly, "Absorption heat on the side of a spacecraft maybe?"

"Exactly," Brett told him. "The sun is heating that ship up mighty hot. Good call. Get it up on the display and give it a target designation. That's probably the lead ship of the armada."

Sugi continued to track on it, fine tuning his instruments a little. Within five minutes he was able to detect other information from it as well, namely internal heat from an inertial damper and some faint radar waves, probably from the anti-meteor defense.

"Do we have an ID on it?" Brett asked.

"Computer has it as a Seattle class anti-stealth frigate. Not enough of a signature yet to identify the particular ship. And we're still bearing only at this point."

"Okay, let's do a little maneuvering and see if we can get a range. Helm, stealth procedures in place."

"Copy that, Brett," Mandall replied. "Thrusters on minimum, cooling systems on main plasma jets active."

"Very good. I'm sounding the acceleration alarm." He pushed a button, activating it. When it was done running through its cycle he turned on the intercom. "All personnel," he said, his voice broadcast throughout the ship. "We have detected a Seattle class frigate coming around the sun. It is probably the lead element of the nice folks that we came out here to meet. We will be maneuvering at low acceleration to attempt to pin down a range on the ship. We will not, I repeat, not, be going to general quarters just yet." He turned the intercom off. "Helm, turn us to 270 mark 300. Once aligned begin a burn at point one G."

The ship turned on its axis and then began to slowly accelerate, changing their orbit. The plasma ejecting from the rear was still white hot, but was cooled enough and was coming out at such a rate that the ship would remain invisible to infrared detection, especially from the distance they were at. As she moved along, and as the target of their inquiry moved along as well, Mermaid's sensors continued to collect data, everything from heat levels to Doppler shift. Within an hour an exact range and speed was pinned down.

"612,345 kilometers," Sugi announced when the calculations were complete. "It's on a course of 186 mark 1, moving at seventy kilometers per second. Fusion engines are idle."

"Beautiful," Brett said. "And the other targets?" While they had been tracking the first target, four others had come into view and were now being tracked as well.

"I've got a tentative ID on target two as another Seattle class frigate. Target three, four, and five are still unknown."

"Let's keep working them," Brett said.

They kept working them and one by one the front escorts of the armada were all identified and their courses and speeds calculated. They were all moving on the same course, towards Mars, at the same seventy kilometers per second. Ship number five was a California class, lagging behind the main escorts but unmistakable due to its size and the amount of heat it generated, even with engines off.

"They're running dumb," Brett said in amazement as he stared at the data coming in. "They're probing forward with nothing more than radar beams for anti-meteor defense and a few active systems. They don't seem to have any attack craft up at all."

"Then that means we've achieved surprise?" Sugi asked.

"Either through blind luck or their own stupidity, it would seem so. Let's start setting up an intercept course here. Helm, bring us to 340 mark 0 and decrease the burn to point zero six G."

"Copy, Brett," she said, making the adjustments. This course and speed put them facing directly towards where he hoped their targets — the large Panamas — would begin to emerge in another thirty minutes or so. Mermaid was off to the side of the formation and moving relatively slowly at an angle of about forty degrees towards it. Brett's plan was to slip in behind the front escorts and in front of the middle escorts to take advantage of the gap in coverage.

A few more escorts became visible and were identified over the next twenty minutes, Sugi's skills with the computer becoming such that he was able to get signatures from them and assign actual ship names. And then, the moment that they had been waiting for, the first of the Panamas appeared. It, like the California, was unmistakable on their screen once enough data was collected. The Panamas were huge and they absorbed a lot of heat from the sun on their hulls.

"Here come the targets," Brett said happily, though with a little trepidation as well.

Two more came into view over the next fifteen minutes and Sugiyoto calculated their courses and speeds out. Brett then made his decision. "Let's go after number three to start with," he said. "The angle of attack is about right and the front escorts will be well beyond our firing position by the time we get there."

"Sounds good, Brett," Sugi said, staring at that particular ship on his holographic display.

"Helm," Brett ordered next, "calculate a course to target twelve please, the third Panama in the line. Let's go for a 400,000 kilometer release."

Mandall hesitated. "Uh, Brett," she said nervously, "don't you think that maybe you should do that. I mean..."

"It's your job Mandall," he told her. "You've done it on the simulation many times. Just do the same thing here."

"But..."

"You'll be fine, Mandall," he said. "Now get it done while our window is still open please."

She nodded and bent to her computer screen, inputting several pieces of data and letting it know which target she wanted to prosecute. The idea was to put the ship on a direct intercept course, a collision course in fact, and then, when 400,000 kilometers out, to release a torpedo and set it drifting on that course. The ship could then turn away and move to another position while the torpedo drifted on. By the time the torpedo was detected Mermaid would be long gone.

"I've got the course," she said after a minute had gone by and after she'd double-checked her data. "It's on your screen right now."

Brett took a glance down at it but didn't bother to check it himself. "Very good, Mandall," he told her. "Get us on that course please. And I think it's about time that we go to GQ." He pushed the red button on his panel that sounded the general quarters alarm. He then turned the intercom back on. "All personnel, we are now prosecuting a Panama class transport ship that is presumably filled with WestHem marines and their equipment. Let's get to general quarters now and button this ship up. The fun has begun."

While the ship turned and began to head towards its target, the crew went into the general quarters drill. By now they were well practiced at this all-important aspect of combat operations and they had their emergency pressure suits on and their stations manned in just under two minutes. Brett, hearing the reports of manned and ready from each station, beamed with pride at this accomplishment. He had taken a bunch of civilians, undermanned a warship with them, and despite the madness of it they were behaving like a veteran crew.

Things became very tense as Mermaid closed in. The first group of escorts moved beyond her position, their holographs drifting rapidly across the display and off the far edge of it. Though they could still send attack craft after Mermaid, there was no longer much danger of being detected by the Seattle's. Then the Panamas began to get closer and closer. The minutes ticked by and the range closed to half a million kilometers.

"Twenty minutes to firing point," Mandall reported. "Still on target."

"Thanks, Mandall," Brett told her. He then raised Chad Hamilton in the torpedo room on the intercom system.

"I'm here, Brett," Hamilton answered up within two seconds of the hail.

"We're less than a hundred thousand kilometers out," he told him. "Coming up on the firing point. Load torpedo tubes one and two and set the weapons for semi-controlled flight."

"Copy," Hamilton replied. "What's the burst range?"

"Set it for fifty kilometers. I won't those things to burst as close as possible. I don't just want those Panamas wounded, I want them dead."

"You've got it, Brett," he answered.

The next thirty minutes went by slowly, with everyone on the bridge watching the display in front of Sugi's terminal, staring fascinated as the symbol that represented their target came closer and closer to the center.

"Twelve thousand kilometers to release point," Mandall reported at last. "That's just over two minutes, Brett."

"Two minutes," he repeated, chewing his lip a little. He called Hamilton again. "Torpedo room, open tube number one and prepare for launch."

"Opening tube one," was the reply.

On the front of the ship a circular hatch irised slowly open, revealing the blunt nose of the torpedo. On the bridge, Mandall began to count down every ten seconds as the launch point approached. When she reached zero Brett gave a simple order.

"Launch tube one," he said.

In the torpedo room, Hamilton took a deep breath, tried not to think about what he was doing, and flipped up the protective cover on a large red switch. Across the room from him, at the same time, one of his enlisted men flipped up a cover of his own. With a nod towards each other they pushed down on their switches, thus fulfilling the requirements of the launch system. Nothing terribly dramatic happened at that point. There was no sound, no gout of flame, no shuddering of the ship. A simple hydraulic arm connected to a plate of steel extended, pushing the five-meter long weapon out of the tube. When the arm reached the end of its stroke the mounting bracket released from the rear of the torpedo and it slowly drifted out in front of the ship, its powerful rocket engine idle.

"We have good separation," Hamilton reported to Brett. "The weapon is drifting free."

"I copy good separation," Brett said. "Let me know as soon as you have a laser lock on it."

The torpedo, which was nothing more than a two hundred megaton thermonuclear missile, was encased in radar and heat resistant material to keep it from being detected as it moved in on its target. On the top of it a three-meter laser receiver dish unfolded from its case and stuck up into space. When the weapon, which was moving at about a half a kilometer per hour faster than Mermaid — was six hundred meters from the ship, a tracking laser shot out from a mast located atop Mermaid's sensor array. Similar to the communications laser system, this beam would keep a lock on the torpedo as long as a line of sight was maintained. With this link established, Mermaid's computers, acting under orders from Brett, could control the torpedo. It's course could be corrected by the tiny maneuvering thrusters and a short burn from the main rocket engine, or the engine could be throttled up to full power for the terminal dive to target, or the weapon could be detonated in the event it was detected and the target began to fire on it. In case the line of sight was lost or some other problem caused the disconnection of the beam with the ship, the torpedo had an active seeker head as well and was programmed to continue seeking its target and correcting it's own course. The optimum detonation range — the range that was considered universally lethal to a ship — was inside seventy kilometers, although heavy damage would be inflicted anywhere up to one hundred and fifty kilometers away.

"I have a laser lock," Hamilton reported. "The weapon is continuing normally on course."

"I copy you have a lock," Brett responded. He turned to Mandall. "Sugi, how many Panamas do we have identified now?"

"Six," he said, "and two more ships are just becoming visible on the display that are more than likely Panamas as well, but I don't have quite enough data for a positive ID yet."

"Good. Put them on my screen. I want to get that second weapon out there too."

"On the way," he said.

"And keep your eye peeled for Owls. We know the WestHems have some out there but we don't know where they are. The last thing we need right now is detection."

"I'm looking," he assured him.

Brett looked over the display for a moment and ran some basic angles in his head as he compared his ship's position and speed with that of the oncoming vessels. It looked like he could turn Mermaid and launch on the sixth Panama back with a minimum amount of maneuvering and within the time frame allowed him by the first weapon's trip to target.

"Helm," he said to Mandall, "lock onto target fifteen and plot a launch course. Once again, let's shoot for 400,000 kilometer separation."

"Plotting," she said, turning back to her computer screen.