Chapter 4

Lucius hadn’t really thoughtthrough the next part of the mission. Actually, he had. He simply hadn’t calculated on spending it with Major Syra Clairborne in the close confines of an Inserter ship.

“India has one blind spot,” he’d explained. “The sun is pouring out more than 1.367 kilowatts per square meter per hour. If we come directly out of the sun, timed to when the Mirror Moon exactly aligns in orbit with the sun, we should be undetectable among the 4.29 gigawatts of solar energy pouring down on the satellite’s solar collector.”

“How far out?”

Syra’s question had led to a debate on just how invisible an Inserter was. Once he’d done the math, it simply felt too close. So they’d looped out an extra ten million kilometers. Syra even had the idea of staying off-axis and waiting an extra day for the Earth’s orbit to swing into alignment with them, rather than making a maneuver right in front of the sun. They’d look like little more than some lazily wandering space rock in visible light—they wouldn’t leave the slightest trace on radar due to the Inserter’s stealth design. Also, with the sun behind them, their engine’s heat would also be invisible.

That was all good.

But it had meant most of three days living side by side with Syra and Star in the tiny Inserter. Zero-g meant that sleeping aboard the ship wasn’t a problem. And the suits were comfortable enough that it didn’t matter that there wasn’t room to take them off.

Star herself was interesting. He enjoyed their three-way discussions. He’d worked with AIs before—incredibly advanced calculating ones anyway. But Star was advanced enough to have what passed for opinions of her own. Sometimes she and Syra would squabble over minor points. He half wondered if Syra had programmed her computer to do that—she certainly seemed to enjoy the debate.

Syra herself was a different matter. She attacked everything. Every idea he put forth, she dove into wholeheartedly and gleefully shredded it to the winds. His own habits—methodically building a hypothesis and working to layer on credible evidence then test for structural flaws to the expanding solution—survived bare seconds beneath her barrage.

“No. No. No. The Chinese and Canmerica West were never going to survive in space together no matter how you contrived it.”

“But if they had cooperated to?—”

“The last time they cooperated was when the old Canmerica Combined allowed their economy to be shredded by Chinese imports. Who built the L5 Habitat cans for Canmerica?”

She didn’t even give him time to answer.

“The Chinese. So how did the Chinese solve the final trade war? They switched off the environmental systems that the Canmericans had hired them to run.”

“But—”

“Right.” Syra was on a roll and there was no stopping her. “The Canmericans weren’t idiots, but they were never subtle. The Chinese were ready for anything from the Canmericans, except brute force. They expected and prepared for computer viruses or even a missile. They didn’t expect a doomsday command that launched a two hundred kilometer-wide asteroid into their hab-can’s orbital path three months later—long after they’d let their guard down due to being dead.” The asteroid was so vast it had barely noticed wiping out the massive Chinese orbital complex.

“I always assumed that the Brits did that.”

Syra’s puzzled look surprised him. Making her racing thought processes screech to halt for even a moment made him want to laugh.

“Because of the asteroid’s name. The one they used to erase the Chinese from orbit.”

Still nothing.

“Asteroid 121 has the common name of Hermione.”

That led him to trying to explain pre-space literature to someone who never read fiction.

“What did your mother read you at bedtime, the Royal Delta Marine training manuls?”

“Yes.” Syra’s tone said he was being stupid to even ask.

He had no good answer to that.

He also had no good answer to how he was feeling about Syra Clairborne. She was stubborn, driven, opinionated, dangerous, and if he was a different man—with no particular fear of dying—he’d have grabbed her by the end of Day Two and seen just what could be done in the tiny confines of an Inserter.

Of course, he’d have to ask Star to shut down her inputs.