Confederation -- 38

Chapter 38

After the meeting, we returned to the ship and were now back out in the asteroid zone with the entire squadron of four ships. Holmes and Joe were already towing small asteroids back towards Earth, perhaps a couple of hundred feet in diameter. Rudy and I were in the process of grabbing a couple more rocks. We locked onto them with our gravity point-source and began to move, catching up with Holmes and Joe.

We slowly came up to speed, pulling the extra mass. The rocks slowed down our acceleration, but the EM-drives gradually built up velocity, and we began the traverse back to Earth orbit. The plan was to insert the rocks into high orbit and then cut them into smaller pieces. I didn't want to leave their masses intact. That would be irresponsible. If one of the large rocks became unstable and its orbit decayed, it would do extensive damage when it impacted Earth's surface.

We'd re-counted and discovered sixteen major camps set up by the Motherland Army, along with several smaller ones, including artillery batteries. We intended to cut the rocks up into carefully calculated sizes, so we would have enough to hit all of the camps with enough mass to wipe them out.

I wanted to break the rocks up into smaller pieces that were the right size to keep the impact force under control. The gravity point-source projector conveniently had a sensor that indicated the mass of the item being towed, which allowed us to calculate the rock's average density. The only problem was that the sensor used Sunny units, so we had to translate, but that was easy with a computer.

I needed to calculate the density of each asteroid and then use that single number to calculate mass by volume. This gave approximately the right size for cutting the pieces. The computer would calculate the velocity attained by the piece on its descent from orbit, and that, paired with the mass, would give us the impact force.

I wanted to keep the damage localized to the immediate camp area, so I decided to try and keep the yield of the KEW's impact equal to about a kiloton of TNT. I thought that should be adequate to vaporize even the largest camp.

We eventually eased back into high orbit. The rocks had made the necessary braking and maneuvering more difficult than usual, but we finally got in position and shut down the engines. The next step was to determine how we would scale down the items to size.

Frazzle, when asked, was somewhat vague, "I never did anything like dis before, Dec. Maybe you send out Marines, and they use anti-matter rifles to cut the asteroids up withs. We don't haves any cutters that will cut that big in our shop."

I sighed. His suggestion was something I'd already thought about but hoped to avoid. The potential for accidents was significant. The anti-matter bursts would have to be aimed carefully. If someone missed, the destructive matter would continue until it struck enough ordinary atoms to dissipate. If some of those normal atoms happened to be currently holding the configuration of one of our other spaceships or another Marine, the result would be unpleasant, to put it mildly.

The other thing I worried about was whether there was any potential for the asteroids to shatter unpredictably. We'd carefully removed all angular velocity from each of them so they were sitting still in space and not rotating. That was about all we could do to minimize the possibility of flying fragments, but if one of the rocks had some kind of internal stress, it could conceivably break apart, throwing pieces around. That could be dangerous.

I finally decided to use a minimal crew of men with only one anti-matter weapon. They'd work on one asteroid at a time, cutting it carefully and removing one piece at a time. That was the best I could do, aside from moving all of our orbiting ships from the line of fire, something that we'd already done.

I was also going to be part of the crew myself, despite Liz's arguing against it.

She said, "You're our leader. Can't you delegate this kind of stuff? I'd think that you'd at least have the sense to let your men handle this. They aren't idiots, you know."

"This is dangerous, and I decided that I wasn't going to ask any of my men to do something I wouldn't. If we can cut one of the rocks with no problems, I'll leave them to do the rest. I want to be there at first to see how it goes," I replied, whispering so as not to disturb our children.

It was the early part of alt-shift, and we were resting in our cabin. The kids were asleep, having exhausted themselves earlier playing in zero-g in the hold. They were getting so proficient that I allowed them to go in when others were exercising there. Both children were more than capable of staying out of the way, although, if the truth be told, watching their antics did sometimes make me nervous.

All on their own, they were developing ways of moving that those of us who had been gravity-bound during our childhoods would never have created. I'd noticed some of the Marines watching Michael carefully and then trying out some of his moves. The kids were going to have a huge advantage over older people at zero-g maneuvers.

Liz seemed to forget about the KEWs and snuggled closer to me, sighing.

"It's been a long time since we could relax together," she said as she moved her head on my shoulder.

I felt the need to be defensive. It had been a long time, and I didn't want her to think it was because I didn't love her.

"Well, I've been busy and apprehensive about the entire situation. It's so complicated, and there are so many moving parts, what with the Pugs and Pug-bears, our relationships with the Sunnys and Sim-tigers, and then those blasted Motherland Army people. Their President gives me indigestion. He's a severe pain in the ass," I said, getting louder as I continued.

She put her finger over my lips just in the nick of time. Rowan was stirring around restlessly. I'd disturbed her.

"Listen, Dec, you don't have to be defensive around me. I know how much stress you've been under, and I understand. There are some times when I wish we were still in our little cabin, though," she whispered.

I moved my lips close to her ear and whispered back, "That reminds me. There's something we need to do, and now might be a good time."

My breath moved the tiny hairs on her neck, causing her to have goosebumps. She giggled a little and rolled over so we could kiss.

I forgot my worries during the next few minutes and had a wonderful night's rest as a result.

We were suited up and waiting for the loading bay port to open. I checked in with each of the four men using our spacesuit radios.

"Okay. Is everyone ready to go?" I asked.

They checked back with affirmatives, and I proceeded to review my instructions. "We're going to jump to the nearest asteroid. Frazzle has pulled it close, so it'll be no more than fifty meters. Go slow with your jump, just like in training. I don't want to have to chase anyone down just because you hit too hard and bounced off. Once we're on the asteroid, we'll use our adhesive packs to glue our tether lines to the stone," I said. They all nodded with the bobbing motion imposed by their spacesuits.

I continued, "We'll wait on the asteroid until the ship moves away. If we knock any fragments loose, I don't want to damage the ship accidentally. Once they're a few miles distant, you will stay behind me and watch as I use the anti-matter rifle to separate a piece of stone. I intend to keep it fairly small, so once it's cut loose, you can push it away from the asteroid. When you push it away, push it ahead in orbit and not towards the ship. We'll cut the pieces and push them out in a line where the ship's gravity point-source will be able to grab each piece easily."

The port was now open, and we jumped out, one at a time, floating slowly towards the large mass of rock that hovered in space nearby. It was interesting. The rock was larger than I'd thought it would be. It was ten meters from end to end and shaped like a spindle. The waist was about four meters across, giving it a spaceship-like look.

I led the way across, landing softly near the middle part of the rock. There was probably a tiny amount of gravity associated with it, but I couldn't tell. I carefully pulled myself hand-over-hand to the large end, and after some fiddling around with my utility belt, I managed to glue my tether to the rock.

The adhesive was supposed to set up instantly, so I braced my feet and tugged at the tether. It held. I was shortly joined by three of the men, but the fourth guy missed his jump. He didn't miss by much. He stretched out, reaching for the rock, and glided past about three inches too far away.

He was drifting slowly away, waving his hands in a vague swimming motion as if that would help. I checked my tether to make sure the other men were clear and then carefully jumped directly at him. You might think this would be easy, but I had to jump quickly enough to catch him before he got farther away than my twenty-meter tether line, but not too quickly. If I hit him too hard and missed my grab, the impact would push him away faster.

He continued drifting away but stopped waving his arms when he saw that I was coming after him. I kept checking his distance and the length of my remaining rope. I might just make it, but – no. I was going to be slightly too late. It looked like I would hit my tether's end about five feet short of his position.

So far, he hadn't said anything over the com, save a quick gasp and a curse under his breath. Neither had I.

I realized that he was holding his tether in one hand, and I called him, "Carefully throw your rope to me. I'll pull you back with it."

He jerked when I spoke and then quickly shook out the rope and tossed the anchor end my way. It went past me and then recoiled. As the coils moved back towards him, one of them got close enough for me to grab. I did and held on as tightly as I could.

I reached the end of my line at that moment, and it jerked me to a halt. It had a slight stretch in it, but the jerk still hurt. The result was that I started back towards the rock, dreading what was to come next. I grabbed hold of his tether with my other hand, now holding on with two.

He hit the end of his rope, and that painfully jerked me backward away from the rock. The impact had slowed but not stopped his drift, and we slowly moved away, taking up the slack in my line. Then it tightened up, pulling me back, and as it did, his mass came full on the line I was holding. There was a moment when I thought I might lose my grip. I tightened my hands and arms in anticipation, but we were both drifting slowly back towards the rock the next second.

One of the other men caught my tether and reeled us in like two stupid fish. We got back to the rock and finalized attaching everyone. Now we had another task, and it might be even more ticklish.

"You three stay on this end of the rock while I try to cut a piece off of the other end," I ordered.

I drifted away from them and ended up floating about two meters away from the rock near the far end. Our mishap had imparted a little angular velocity to the long stone through the jerking on my tether, and it was now slowly pivoting about its center of mass, moving away from me. I detached the anti-matter rifle from its clips, pulled it down and under my arm to my front. I adjusted the focus, narrowing the aperture so that the anti-matter wouldn't spread. Then I took a breath, hoping for the best, and fired a pulse, sweeping the weapon across the point I hoped to cut.

The anti-matter worked as usual. There was a sparkling effect as atoms annihilated each other, a few at a time, and then the point that I'd aimed to cut disappeared. The beam hadn't widened much, and the cut was clean. The loose end of the stone didn't move in relation to the rest of the rock.

I called up two men and had them jointly shove the free piece away from the central mass. They pushed it in the direction we were moving so that it would float free but remain roughly in the same orbit, slowly moving ahead of us.

We repeated the operation, changing the pushing crew when the original two got tired. It took an hour or so, cutting carefully, but we ended with ten chunks of rock that were approximately the same size. They were strung out over a kilometer or so, gradually drifting apart. There hadn't been any sudden splintering or shattering due to a release of internal tension, and I was glad that possibility hadn't materialized.

Frazzle brought the ship close, and we unhooked the shackles from the tether adhesion points, leaving the flat pads and loops attached to the last piece of rock, then we jumped back through the open bay door. We slowly drifted down to the floor under the light gravity when we passed through the door.

The dismantling of the other asteroids went reasonably smoothly and proceeded in much the same fashion, although I didn't actively participate. The whole operation took two main shift periods. The only hitch was that one of the Marines got his hand smashed between two loose pieces. The injury broke some of his fingers, but fortunately didn't break the seal of his spacesuit.

We had our ammunition, and now it was time to use it.