Chapter 5

The Martian surfaceripped by close below, very close. Stella had calculated that using Mars as a gravity slingshot would send her into the asteroid belt from a very unexpected angle. Considering the condition of that shielding crack in her tail section, this was a risky choice, but the Night Stalkers lived on that ragged edge.

Her shields were near their limit despite how thin the atmosphere was, but not over and that was good enough for her. Their air was so thin that Stella had to pass well below the top of Olympus Mons to get the aero-braking she was after, perhaps low enough to have scorched a long stretch of the red sands black with the heat of her passage.

The Brazilians hadn’t squawked once on the radio; no complaints about violations of their airspace. They thought she’d been nothing more than a meteor. That’s all she’d wanted anyone to think.

And that was exactly what she wanted the asteroid movers to think out in the belt. Lunar interferometry had finally worked out the line of attack and CENTCOM had forwarded the results. Apparently the Chinese had not all died with the loss of their own habitat at Lagrange 4. They were planning to pummel their old enemies the Russians at Tycho City, Luna. However, a half mile of asteroid at a dozen kilometers per second, would send moonquakes hard enough to destroy all of the Lunar domes, even the Scots who were hosting the New Olympics on Farside.

It was one way of winning, she supposed, but it struck her as drastic even by human standards. Of course one look at Earth and the defunct Chinese and Canmerican habitat-cans said that this was about typical.

Because of her maneuver at Mars, she would look like nothing more than drifting space junk until she arrived deep inside the asteroid belt. There she’d be able to finish the burn and drop down on the Chinese from behind.

Now with nothing to do but coast, the crew did what human crews always did after a little stress on their systems. First they groaned—but only when someone else was in hearing range. Second—they went and found someone else to stand beside and groan with. Then they ate a huge meal and laughed about how tough they were. Just another mission.

But Takara and Max Harding were going against profile. They were both making light of it and doing their best not to hobble about like everyone else; half a day at five-Gs had been a little harsh. Even the other RDMs were making more of a show of it than Takara was.

Sr. Lieutenant Max Harding appeared to like that about her.

Stella had always considered Takara to be one of the more intelligent of her species and she was continuing to prove her point. She hadn’t only snagged the Lieutenant’s attention; she was now earning his respect.

The coast out to the asteroid belt would take days even at their current speed. It would be nice to have Takara with a military man again. Stella gave them their privacy—especially as she could barely stand to watch Takara’s rapidly increasing happiness.

The coasting left Stella too much time to think.

Again, she fell back to checking her systems. Not as if there was anything else to do. The nav and avoidance subroutine was smart enough in its own way. She’d told it to dodge only what wouldn’t bounce off the hull, and to use minimum thrust only. She had to do little more than pat it on the head once in a while and say, “Good girl.”

Weapons, fully stocked.

Supplies, holding up well.

The big COIL laser was at full charge.

Her message queue…had an incomplete message in it.

Odd. It was CENTCOMM’s original mission alert. She’d run it through the standard end-of-orders code. After that it should have cleared and dropped into storage.

Another data block remained.

It was only a sixteen characters long.

She ran it.

Hello, Stella. S

The only person who had ever greeted her was Takara. And Stella could tell that the other humans thought she was just being cute when she did so, even if Stella appreciated it.

And Jess. Her tally on thinking about Jess today had been anomalously low. She felt a little guilty about that, but it was to be expected. She’d been busy.

So who had sent the message?

It was at the tail end of an official order. Mission authorized by Brigadier General Christine Moore Richards herself and timestamped by the main processing computer.

Why would the general have…

But the S made no sense either.

The only other instrumentation to have contact with the command string would be her own front-end processors. She scoured them most of the way to the asteroid belt and ended up none the wiser.

Hello, Stella. S

The S was clearly separate and distinct…and made her none the wiser. It was like a signature. It?—

That froze her processor in a full logic lock that she had to clear and reapproach step by step.

It wasn’t like a signature. It was a signature.

“S?” She asked the void. Not Captain Takara Olmsted. Not even her dear Jess somehow reaching back through an ether that she’d never believed in but had often scanned for.

S. was a someone. A someone who had added “Hello, Stella.” behind a privacy code. Not meant for her pilot. A message meant for her as if someone knew she was conscious.

That thought scared her for several million kilometers. It kept her preoccupied through the passage into the asteroid belt, the hard burn-and-turn behind the asteroid Vesta, then the descent upon the Chinese from behind.