Dark Running (Fourth Fleet Irregulars Book 4) (39 page)

This, however, was where it got scientific, interpreting the data that came in. Denni, the Devast geologist who’d come out with them on the first Ignite test, had made that look very easy. Martins, with his sub-graduate diploma, was very aware that both the data and his own analysis of it would be closely scrutinised by experts, so there was just a little frisson of nerves, there.

He was, at least, perfectly at home on the command deck. Like any of the ship’s CPO’s, he was qualified to hold a watch and had done so on the Heron several times. He took his place at the table, giving the skipper a polite nod, called up the geophys screens and got straight to work.

Twenty minutes later, realising that he just couldn’t check things any more, Martins gave the word.

The geoprobe fired. They’d left a monitor at ten kilometres distance and were able to watch from that feed as the mole’s lasers fired up, oscillating in a sweep that would vaporise everything in front of it. A cloud of vapour erupted round the probe, obscuring the visual.

‘Viability confirmed,’ Martins said, double-checking the readout which gave all-green to the probe being launched. ‘Thrusters engage in three, two... mark.’

Powerful thrusters fired up, sending the plume into a boiling tumult.

‘Thrusters green, all green,’ said Martins, even though he was technically reporting that to himself. ‘Cradle release in three, two... mark.’

As the launch cradle let go of the mole, it hurled down into the shaft that it was itself making. Vaporised rock erupted from the shaft like the plume of a volcano.

‘Mole is in the hole,’ said Martins, just a little self consciously, though he did grin at the cheer and scattered applause. Denni had told them that the geophysicist on mining surveys, which was her own background, yelled ‘mole in the hole’ at full volume at this point. This, she’d said, was so that everyone on the survey ship knew that the most critical phase of the surveying was under way, and that if they distracted the geophys for so much as one second they could expect to get sworn at, or on some of the rougher ships, punched. Here, though, they were showing Devast how the Fleet did things, so Martins merely spoke the words calmly, then glanced at the skipper.

Alex nodded.

‘Thank you, Mr Martins,’ he said, his own manner relaxed and interested as he watched the data coming in.

That was watched with close attention across the ship, too, and with considerably more understanding than would normally be expected amongst spacers. Denni’s lecture on mole surveying had been very well attended at the time, and most of the crew had watched it again the day before. They were all following the progress of the probe with keen eyes and well informed commentary. They all knew how important this was. Devast had specified for this test a planet that was as close to ‘standard habitable’ as possible. That defined the size range, the presence of some kind of atmosphere, an active magnetic field and a normal geologic composition. All the surveys said that this was a perfectly ordinary rock planet, but if it turned out to have some anomalous geology, they would have to abandon this site and start all over again somewhere else.

The mole took three and a half hours to blast its way down to the critical point, boring deep into the mantle. Forward scans took readings of the rock in the nanosecond before the lasers destroyed it, and on-board sensors analysed the geochemistry of the vapour as it streamed through filters, too. Martins did not look up from screens for one moment of that three and a half hours. He didn’t speak, either, other than for an occasional pleased murmur. He had the projected, theoretical model of the planet’s interior along with that actually being found by the mole. Every now and again, when a key point was reached, he would give it a neat little tick.

Finally, when the mole reported back the composition of deep mantle rock, Martins raised his head.

‘We have hit hot toffee,’ he announced, ‘and it
is
ferropericlase.’

Thunderous applause and cheering, and Alex shook hands with him, giving him a grin and ‘Well done.’ The mole would last another sixty seven minutes before it finally gave out, and all of that data would be collected, too, but that was the moment that gave them the go for the Ignite test.

They did that next day, after final preparations of the missile were complete. The most important and most dangerous part of that was charging it with superlight fuel. They came to alert stations for that, as the Fleet required for any procedure involving uncontained fuel, and there was a certain tension as the customary ask came for silence on deck during the procedure.

Morry Morelle, though, made it look easy, handling the fizzing incandescent fuel pod into the missile as calmly as if he was putting a charged cell into a toy rocket.

Now, though, the ultimate test had arrived.

Pride was at stake, here, big time, not least because they knew very well that quite a few people at Devast considered them at least partly to blame for the failure of the first test. People with no understanding of how intolerable Candra Patello’s behaviour had become had said that the Fourth should have kept her on the ship as a vital member of the team. They had sucked teeth and shaken heads over the Fourth allowing a mere crewman to get hands on with their missile, too. Even the team here on the ship had been insultingly dubious about their abilities. If this test failed, the Fourth would be humiliated.

They left the target system shortly after ten in the morning. The Stepeasy swung into formation with them for a while, but peeled away again as they approached the point where the Heron would be releasing the missile. They were nowhere in sight as the frigate prepared for the launch.

‘At your discretion, Mr Sartin,’ said Alex, once all the checklists had been done.

Jonas tried not to swallow nervously, though his mouth felt very dry. He reminded himself that there was no more pressure on him, really, than on all of them. All he had to do was say one word.

Time stretched out like the deliberate tantalising of low-grade game shows. The whole ship seemed to be poised in a breath-held state of anticipation that went on interminably.

‘Fire,’ said Jonas, and was surprised at how calm and matter of fact he sounded.

The Ignite fired. It wasn’t a spectacular launch – it was designed for soft release, gliding out of the missile tube only fractionally faster than the ship was travelling. It didn’t accelerate, either – this was a stealth missile, after all, and high speed had been sacrificed for low visibility.

So, they followed it back to the target system, which took another two hours. There was nothing to do but keep an eye on the tiny fuzzy pixellated blob at the very edge of their long range scopes, so that was what they did. Lunch was being served as normal, but soppo and dogs were brought to the command deck for those who couldn’t tear themselves away.

Micky Efalto accepted a mug of soup, but waved away the traditional hot beef roll.

‘I’ll eat later,’ he said. He had been invited to the command deck to watch the test. That wasn’t somewhere the leading star felt at home, particularly not sitting at the big table with the officers. He was well aware of what responsibility lay on him, here, too, everything resting on whether he had correctly identified the reason for the misfire, and whether his solution worked. He was attempting a lordly nonchalance, but could not have even attempted to swallow solid food at this point.

Alex did, eating soppo and a dog with unaffected appetite. He resisted the temptation to have a game of triplink with Buzz as the ship cruised after the missile, though. That was something he would have done, before, both to distract himself at a time when there was nothing else he could be doing, and to convey to the crew a sense of relaxed confidence. Now, though, he’d accepted that could be confusing to the crew, not knowing when he was working and when he wasn’t. He had also come to understand that it would not look good to Devast, when they got this footage as part of the report. Civilians had been trained by the movies to expect eagle-eyed tension in command at such times, along with clipped orders and at least one close up of a sweating subordinate. Devast wouldn’t get that. What they would get instead was footage of the skipper enjoying a hot beef roll and mug of soup, keeping a contemplative eye on screens.

The Ignite missile slipped through the comet cloud exactly on schedule. It detonated less than four hundredths of a second later.

As before, there was a flare that was no more in the scale of the solar system than a camera flash in a major stadium.

This time, though, there was no catastrophic shattering of the target planet, no hurtling mass of debris. It was just as if the planet had been edited out in stop motion animation – one second there, the next, abruptly,
not
. There was no visible debris, though sensors on the frigate could see the tremendous surge of energy as the planet was blasted into sub atomic particles. It looked amazing on superlight scopes, an expanding sphere of tachyons that rapidly engulfed the entire system and spread out beyond. Visually, though, there was just nothing to see. One planet, totally destroyed in less time than the human eye could blink.

There was a second or two aboard the Heron for people to believe what they were seeing, then uproar.

Alex grinned at the yelling cheers and thunderous hammering on tables and pipes that made the whole ship feel as if it was vibrating.

‘Excellent work, Mr Efalto,’ he said, and reached out a hand.

Micky Efalto leaned forward to shake hands with him, his face flushed with pleasure and relief.

‘I never doubted it would work,’ he declared, ‘not for one minute.’

‘Me neither,’ said Alex. The two of them looked into one another’s eyes for a moment, with perfect understanding, and grinned again as they sat back.

They had to shake hands again, very soon, this time with the Devast team. They’d been in the lab, monitoring the data as it came in, but came running to the command deck as soon as the ship was stood down from alert. They were practically gabbling with delight, all shaking hands with Alex, Micky and everyone else around. Micky got apologies for having doubted him, too, along with excited congratulations and exclamations. Alex allowed them to express their amazement and delight for several minutes, then suggested they might benefit from going to calm down with a cup of tea.

‘Time to relax, now,’ he advised.

‘Are you kidding?’ Mack was wild eyed with joy, having seen six years of work come to fruition. ‘We’ll be up all night with the data!’ he declared, and as if that had triggered a need in all of them to get back to the lab, they shook hands again with as many hands as they could grab before rushing off.

‘All right,’ Alex said, with a glance around at the triumphant officers and crew on the command deck, ‘let’s try not to be
too
unbearably smug, shall we?’

Fourteen

Two days later, the Heron and the Stepeasy parted company.

Before they did, though, the Heron’s crew enjoyed an unexpected treat – five hour shipleave passes, issued in waves so that everyone got the opportunity to visit the superyacht. They were royally entertained, with haute cuisine catering and all the ship’s luxurious facilities available to them, including the hair salon with intersystem-class stylists, the on-board spa and leisure facilities.

Top of the to-do list, however, and the most popular by far, was the opportunity to have a tour of Davie North’s private quarters. And not just a tour – by Davie’s own orders, visitors were allowed to bounce on the bed, walk through his wardrobe and try on any clothes they liked, use his bathroom and play with the state of the art environmental controls. It was the lounge that most people came back raving about – it was full surround holographic, with VR systems so sophisticated you really did feel that you might actually be in one of the tens of thousands of locations programmed in. Davie usually had it set to one of its many astrodome options, giving a real-time view of the space around the ship. That was how it had been when Alex von Strada first met him there, a disconcerting experience to walk out across what seemed like a glass floor, surrounded by infinite space, to the white fur-covered sofas.

There were only two people on the ship who didn’t take that leave. Even Jermane Taerling accepted, commenting as so many others had that it wasn’t every day you got the chance to see how the super-rich lived. Davie had not seemed surprised, though, or offended, that Alex had declined the invitation. And he was, himself, the other person who had declined it; there was nothing on the yacht that he wanted, after all.

During that two days, they were also busy transferring a good many supplies and equipment from the Second’s lab into quarters being set up for them on the Stepeasy.

Not all of them were going. Sam Maylard had made a case for being allowed to stay, in order to monitor, operate and develop the food vats which had become his particular baby. Misha Tregennis, too, had made her case for the assistance she could provide in analysing Samartian technology, should that opportunity arise.