Other Times Than Peace by David Drake

Author:David Drake [Drake, David]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Published: 2011-12-01T11:09:33+00:00

The Murder of Halley's Comet

by Larry Niven and David Drake

Even with half a square kilometer of light-sail deployed, the Khalian projectile was an insignificant blip compared to the four-kilometer diameter of the comet's core. The entire unit weighed just under ten kilograms. There was a terminal-guidance system which incorporated a proximity fuse, a small bursting charge, a reflective shell, and tiny servomotors coupled to the spars of the light-sail.

The sail blazed with a terrible intensity, a tiny, peculiar star, brilliant green. It was traveling at almost 25,000 kilometers per second—8 percent of light speed—when the payload detonated. The cloud of shrapnel grew but continued with the same course and velocity as the missile had before exploding.

Its target was black with age, invisible against the sky.

The projectile had become a cloud over four kilometers across when it splashed across the ancient ice ball. Traveling at a significant fraction of light speed, the shrapnel's effect was that of a blast of gamma rays. Half of the comet's surface absorbed the impact and vaporized instantly. Stresses transmitted by flash heating shattered the remnant of the loosely compacted ball of snow and slag.

The comet exploded. Thirty-meter chunks of rock and finger-sized shards of ice drifted apart in millions of separate orbits.

The Admiral Wilhelm Canaris hadn't moved in nearly a decade. The huge spiky cylinder rested in unstable equilibrium in the L3 point of the Earth-Moon system, at the fringes of Earth's gravity field. Escape craft were positioned to serve as attitude jets. Their main motors fired now and then to adjust the big vessel's orbit.

The heart of the Willy C wasn't the vessel's bridge, but rather the office deep in its interior where sat Sector Commander Lars Eriksen, the Fleet's highest ranking officer for thirty light years in any direction. The bridge only controlled the vessel's rare course adjustments: trivial matters to a sector commander.

A sector commander's business was politics.

The spymaster-class command and control ship circled Earth itself, where the Alliance Senate met and deliberated on the Fleet's budget. In an hour Eriksen would be meeting the Senate's Trade and Industry Committee. Deep inside several concentric metal shells within what could still be described as a tremendous warship, Eriksen sat within a ring of heads. He was choosing among the alternative hairstyles that his coiffeur had downloaded into his hologram projector.

Two of the three doors into his office burst open simultaneously. Eriksen looked up. So did six bodiless heads, each slightly different yet each his own, all rotating, all annoyed.

"Our telemetry links—" blurted Captain Crocker, head of the sector's Bureau of Military Affairs.

"On the omni—" said Captain Krasnowski, head of the sector's Bureau of Civil Affairs as he pointed to the omni unit beside the desk.

The captains were too agitated to notice one another's presence. The admiral gestured with his little finger; his desk's artificial intelligence shut off the omni hologram projector. The other heads faded.

"—on Halley's comet—" continued Crocker.

"—Noel Li says—" continued Krasnowski.

"—report that the comet has exploded!"

"—that the Khalians have blown up Halley's comet! Oh, sorry, Grig.

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