Heirs of Empire

“I knew I wouldn’t like it,” Brashan sighed, and Sean gri

“You’re just sore you didn’t think of it first. Look, it let us get within twenty-eight light-minutes before it even began bringing its systems on-line, right?” Tamman and Brashan nodded. “Okay, why’d it do that? Why didn’t it start bringing them up as soon as we entered missile range? After all, it couldn’t know we wouldn’t shoot as soon as we had the range.”

“You’re saying it didn’t pick us up until then,” Brashan said.

“Exactly. And that gives us a rough idea how far out its passive sensors were able to detect us. Sandy and Harry ran a computer model assuming it had picked us up at forty light-minutes—a half hour of flight time before it powered up. Even at that, the model says our stealth field should hide the drive to within a light-minute if we hold its power well down. That means we can sneak in close before we shut down everything and turn into a meteor.”

“Seems to me you’ve still got a little problem there.” Tamman sounded doubtful. “First of all, if I’d designed the system, it wouldn’t let a rock Israel’s size hit the planet in the first place. I’d’ve set it to blow the sucker apart way short of atmosphere. Second, we can’t land, or even maneuver into orbit, without the drive, and we’ll be way inside a light-minute by that point. It’s going to spot us as a ship at that range, stealth field or no.”

“Oh, no it won’t.” Sean smiled his best Cheshire Cat smile. “In answer to your first point, you should have made time to read that paper I wrote for Commander Keltwyn last semester. Our survey teams have looked at the wreckage of over forty planetary defense systems by now, and every single one of them required human authorization to engage anything without an active emissions signature. Remember, over half these things were set up by civilians, not the Fleet, and the central computers were a hell of a lot stupider than Dahak. The designers wanted to be damned sure their systems didn’t accidentally kill anything they didn’t want killed, and none of the system’s we’ve so far examined would have engaged a meteor, however big, without specific authorization.”

“So? The whole point is that we will have an active signature when we bring the drive up.”

“Sure, but not where it can see us long enough to matter. We come in under power to two light-minutes, then reduce to about twenty thousand KPS, cut the drive, and coast clear to the planet.”

“Jesus Christ!” Tamman yelped. “You’re going to hit atmosphere in a battleship at twenty thousand kilometers per second?”

“Why not? I’ve modeled it, and the hull should stand it now that we’ve got the holes patched. We come in at a slant, take advantage of atmospheric braking down to about twenty thousand meters, then pop the drive.”

“You’re out of your teeny-tiny mind!”

“What’s the matter, think the drive can’t hack it?”

“Sean, even with one node shot out, my drive can take us from zip to point-six cee in eleven seconds. Sure, if we program the maneuver right and leave it all on auto we’ve got the oomph to land in one piece. But we’re go

“Ah, but by the time the drive kicks in, we’ll be inside atmosphere. I doubt whoever set this up programmed it to kill air-breathing targets!”

“Um.” Tamman looked suddenly thoughtful, but Brashan regarded his captain dubiously.

“Isn’t that a rather risky assumption—particularly if, as Harry and Sandy argue, there’s an unpredictable element to the control system?”

“Not really.” Harriet sounded a bit as if she were agreeing with Sean despite herself. “This is a quarantine system. It’s probably programmed to wax people trying to escape after the bio-weapon hit as well as anyone coming from outside, but Sean’s right. Every one we’ve seen before has required human authorization to engage anything that wasn’t obviously a spacecraft. It shouldn’t care a thing about meteors, and it’s almost certainly not set to shoot before a target leaves atmosphere. Even if it is, you’re forgetting reaction time. It’ll take at least two minutes just to spin down the stasis fields on its platforms. There won’t be enough time for it to see us and activate its weapons between the time the drive cuts in and we cut power, go back into stealth, and land.”

“I suppose that’s true enough. But what do we do once we’re down?”

“That’s where Sandy and I part company with our fearless leader. He wants to put down on top of the power source and take it over. Which sounds good, unless it’s got on-site defenses. We won’t be able to tell ahead of time—we can’t use active sensors without warning it we’re coming—but if it does have site-defense weapons, they may be permanently live. If they are, they’ll get us before we can even go active and sort out the situation.”

“We could just waste the whole site from space,” Tamman suggested. “Coming in that slow, Harry should have plenty of time to localize it on passive. We could pop off a homing sublight missile from a few light-seconds out. And, as you say, even if it spotted the launch, it wouldn’t have time to react before the bad news got there.”

“We could, and it’s something to bear in mind,” Sean agreed, “but I’d rather take the place over intact. We can’t use active sca

“A point,” Tamman conceded. “Definitely a point.”

“Which brings us back to Sandy’s and my objection,” Harriet pointed out. “If we don’t want to take the place out from space, then we shouldn’t be landing on top of it, either. Not when we don’t know whether the site’s armed or what that ‘something else’ in the command loop is.”

“I believe the girls are correct, Sean,” Brashan said. “I confess your plan seems less reckless than I assumed, but they’re still right, and there’s no need to charge in precipitously.”

“Tam? You agree with them?”

“Yes,” Tamman said positively, and Sean shrugged.

“All right, I can be big about these things. What say we plan our insertion to set us down over the curve of the planet from the site?”

High Priest Vroxhan sat in his gilded throne and surveyed the worshipers with studied calm, trying to assess their mood.

Mother Church had been shaken to her foundations, but by God’s blessing the Trial had been upon them and then past so quickly few outside the I

Yet however unorthodox events might have been, the outcome was clear: the Trial had come, and the demons had been smitten as the Writ promised. Thousands of years of faith had been vindicated, and that was what this solemn festival of thanksgiving and the priestly conclave to follow were all about.

The last human soul entered the packed courtyard of the Sanctum, and he raised one hand in blessing from his throne as the choir sang the majestic opening notes of the Gloria.