Dreadnaught

“They might if it was free beer, but we won’t have to motivate them in that manner.” A diagram popped up before Carabali. “Because of the nature of this mission to investigate the alien race, our equipment load-out includes a larger than usual amount of maximum-stealth configured armor, enough to equip thirty of my Marine scouts. I had some of my subordinates run the numbers, and we can do this. If the fleet launches those scouts toward the asteroid while passing by at four hundred thousand kilometers out, we should have a high probability of avoiding detection during launch and during the transit to the asteroid. Once on the surface of the asteroid, the scouts can plant scramblers and jammers, as well as disabling charges on any visible alien equipment. By blinding alien systems and jamming incoming and outgoing transmissions, we should be able to give the fleet time to reach the asteroid and launch shuttles to dock and pull people out of there as well as recover the scouts.”

Tulev leaned in. “What velocity will the scouts be traveling?”

“We need it to be slow enough to not stand out too clearly against background space, and slow enough for the suit systems to manage a braked landing on the asteroid that will neither kill the scouts nor have a high chance of their being spotted.” Carabali pointed to the diagram. “Average velocity would be four thousand kilometers per hour, though we’d want to be launched faster than that and be braking gradually during the last portion.”

Commander Neeson gave the general a startled look. “You can brake down from four thousand klicks an hour to a safe landing velocity and remain stealthy?”

“That’s right,” Carabali said. “My scouts say they can do it, and they’d be the ones placing their lives on the line.”

“Averaging four thousand kilometers per hour will still require four days’ travel time,” Geary objected. “Can your scout suits keep someone alive that long, plus the time needed to go over the asteroid and plant those charges and jammers?”

Carabali nodded. “We can hang on some extended-duty life-support packs, and use meds to slow down the metabolism of the scouts during the trip to the asteroid. That will both reduce the demands on their life support and the amount of heat and power usage that the stealth equipment has to conceal.”

“Can the jammers work against anything the aliens have?” Badaya questioned. “We don’t even know how their faster-than-light comms work.”

“The jammers have been upgraded using some ideas gleaned from the Syndic device for preventing gate collapses,” Carabali explained. “Just like our system security can eliminate the quantum probability–based alien worms without knowing how they work, we have a high degree of confidence that the jammers can halt the alien comms.”

A long silence this time, as everyone studied Carabali’s work, finally broken by Duellos as he pointed to part of the depiction of the star system. “There’s an enigma installation on the second largest moon orbiting that planet. If we head toward it at the right time, we’ll have that as an apparent goal, apparently repeating our attempt to examine a single isolated installation as at Limbo, but we can pass part of the fleet within four hundred thousand kilometers of the asteroid’s orbit while seeming to head for that moon.”

“It’s doable,” Badaya declared, and a hundred voices joined him in agreement.

“If you use the battle cruisers,” Desjani added, giving Geary a hard look. “All of the battle cruisers. We’re going to have to move as fast as possible.”

Geary kept his eyes on the display for a moment longer, thinking of the lives riding on this decision. He didn’t want to make this decision. But Carabali had proven her competence, and his fleet officers felt they could do their part, and those humans needed to be rescued if it could possibly be done. Ironically, one of the things making the operation feasible was the lessons learned from the Syndic device he had bargained with Iceni for. “All right. We’ll do it.”

This time, everyone cheered.

IT had the same strange feeling as when walking past a police officer even when you had done nothing. Look calm, look innocent, look non-threatening. That was quite a bit harder to do when you were a fleet carrying enough firepower to devastate entire planets, and you were trespassing in a star system where you were definitely not wanted, and the police officers were in fact aliens with a demonstrated eagerness to kill you and a willingness to suicide in defense of their privacy, and when you were in fact plotting to do something of which the local “police” would not approve at all.