“No argument there,” Fuentes said.
“I’d like to know why we can’t use the Ranger against those fragments,” Kaitlin wanted to know. “From what I’ve been reading, the hardest part about rendezvousing with an oncoming asteroid is matching vectors with the thing. You’ve got to fly past it, stop, and accelerate back to match course and speed. That takes time, and a hell of a lot of reaction mass. But if Ranger’s specs are anything close to what I’ve seen published, she could match vectors with the rock easy enough.”
Rob grunted. “She could…and then the UN would know all about her. Maybe even rush through the completion of their own antimatter drive. Besides, she’s not ready yet, is she? I know they don’t have her weapons installed yet.”
Fuentes shrugged. “I heard her drives were operational. They could’ve used her to plant Marines on the asteroid, if they’d gone that route instead of trying to nudge it with nukes. But that would’ve given the game away, y’know?”
“National security,” Rob added.
“Yeah. The UN would know we had a working antimatter-drive vessel. Maybe they’re close enough with their AM ship that they could rush it through to completion, confront us with an armed supership. We lose the edge…maybe lose the war.”
“Somehow, that’s a worrisome thought,” Kaitlin said. “Sacrifice five million civilians in the name of national security.”
“We’ll only have one shot with the Ranger,” Fuentes pointed out. “She has to work, and she has to work perfectly, first time. If we lose her, if something goes wrong on her first mission, we don’t have anything on hand when the UN unveils their AM supership. And scuttlebutt says they are armed, with something that makes lasers look like flashlights.”
“What’s Ranger supposed to be packing,” Rob asked. “You know?”
“Lasers. Probably in the hundred-gig range. Probably missiles. I don’t know. Everyone’s being pretty tight-lipped about it.”
“All things considered, that’s good,” Kaitlin said. “If we don’t know, maybe the UN doesn’t either!”
The door at the far end of the room opened and Major Avery stride in, accompanied by Captain White and a base photographer. “Attention on deck!” someone yelled, and the Marines already seated in the briefing room came to their feet.
“As you were, as you were,” Avery said, waving them down. He made his way to the podium at the head of the room, taking his place there with his hands braced on the sides as though he were conning the thing through a storm. His photographer crouched nearby, taking shots as the rest of the Marines in the room filed through the aisles to take their seats.
“Good morning, Marines,” he said as the room went quiet. “First item on the agenda. The Deep Space Tracking Net at Colorado Springs has just issued an all-clear for Earth, which they now say is safe from Asteroid 2034L. Apparently, the vector change introduced by the Aerospace Force strike a month ago was sufficient to deflect the body. They report that, while we may be in for some shooting-star fireworks on Monday evening, the main body has definitely changed vector sufficiently to easily clear the Earth as it passes us.” Several of the Marines in the room broke out into cheers and applause at the news. Avery waited, frowning, until the noise had died down before continuing. “Of course, this means that the One-SAG alert is canceled. It now appears that our services will not be necessary in dealing with this threat.”
He almost seems disappointed, Kaitlin thought, be-mused. She wondered how much career capital Avery had had riding on the possibility of a Marine-SAG mission to disintegrate 2034L. It was possible. Of course, after the UN strike against Vandenberg, it would have been impossible to launch any kind of space intercept mission at all, which was probably why the UN had launched it in the first place. The sub-carrier air strike must have been planned months ago, before 2034L’s course had been changed in the first place.
“We can, therefore, turn to the second item on the agenda, which we are now calling Operation Dark Star. Gentlemen, ladies, we are now assured that the USS Ranger will be fully operational within two weeks. We have authorization from President Markham himself to use her in a combined-arms sky-and-ground assault against the enemy forces dug in at Tsiolkovsky, what the Army tried to do last May, and failed. We now anticipate being able to mount a major op against the enemy within the next two months.”
That caused a stir in the audience. Avery tapped out something on his podium’s touch pad, darkening the room lights and opening the wall at his back to reveal a large display screen. Another few taps, and the screen lit with an image, a high-orbit view of a portion of the Moon’s surface.