Bright Light. Ian Douglas

know, I know,” she grumbled. “Damn it, Keating, get us in closer!”

      “Aye, aye, ma’am,” the helm officer replied. “Another few minutes subjective.”

      The twists and turns of relativistic combat tended to make Gutierrez’s eyes cross, and it was a damned good thing, she thought, that the ship’s AI could handle that stuff without blinking. America had released the fighters when she was just under five astronomical units away from the objective. Those fighters would have crossed that gulf in a bit over forty minutes, reaching the target at around 1720 hours. During that forty minutes, America herself had closed the range to just under 2 AUs—say, fifteen light-minutes.

      Fair enough. But that meant that America was now picking up telemetry beamed from her fighter squadrons fifteen minutes ago, letting her literally see the recent past.

      But what was happening now was still hidden and would not be revealed for another fifteen minutes.

      And so Captain Gutierrez and her bridge crew had seen the destruction of three fighters out of VFA-211 and were watching now as the Headhunters conducted a skillful fighting withdrawal. The outcome likely had already been decided, one way or another, but America wouldn’t see what that outcome was for another … make it another eight minutes. America was still hurtling toward the far-off firefight at a bit under seven-tenths c.

      “Captain?” Mallory said, his voice steady and calm in her head. “CIC. We don’t know how our fighters will stand up against those … things. We have to be prepared to try a different set of tactics when we get there. I recommend using nano-D.”

      The idea shocked … though she’d been thinking about it herself. “That’s on the proscribed list, Commander!”

      “Yeah, and it may be the only damned thing we have that can touch those things!”

      “Point. Do we have any?”

      “Affirmative, Captain. A few thousand rounds. We were scheduled to offload it at SupraQuito, but events … ah … kind of overtook us.”

      “You can say that again.” Gutierrez thought furiously. The use of nano-D was not illegal … not exactly, not yet. Use of the stuff was strongly restricted, however, bound up in red tape and prohibitions, to the point where Gutierrez would quite literally be putting her career on the line if she gave the order to use it.

      Weapons-grade nanotechnic disassemblers were molecule-sized machines that attached themselves to any material substance with which they came in contact and took it apart atom by atom, releasing a very great deal of heat in the process. Just over a year earlier, in November 2424, a rogue element in the Pan-European military had launched a string of nano-D warheads at the USNA capital of Columbus, Ohio, in an attempt to decapitate the rebellious North-American government. Buildings, pavement and subsurface infrastructure, vehicles, and people all had been reduced to their component atoms in the space of seconds. The heart of the city had been cored cleanly into oblivion, replaced by a perfectly circular lake three kilometers across and half a kilometer deep. Millions had died.

      After that atrocity, many had demanded a retaliatory strike against Geneva. President Koenig had managed to deflect the call for vengeance, launching instead a memetic engineering raid in cyberspace … a purely data-oriented attack that ultimately had won USNA independence from the Earth Confederation.

      But after the Columbus attack, some within the government had begun calling for a ban on all nano-D weaponry. The stuff was deadly; there was always the possibility that it would escape human control. Nano-D was programmed to shut down after a certain period of time or a certain number of disassembly cycles, but if that programming failed, the cloud of hungry molecular machines might keep on going, gobbling up everything in their path. Worse, a small twist to the programming code could have the nanoD take disassembled atoms and reassemble them as more nano-D. The cloud would grow, and might easily expand to devour the planet.

      Back in the late twentieth century, some people had argued against the entire idea of nanotechnology. All of Earth, they’d warned, might be transformed into a mass of “gray goo” if nanotech disassemblers began taking matter apart and building new disassemblers in a never-ending spiral of destruction.

      However, like fire, nanotechnology had proven to be far too useful for human industry, medicine, and economics, despite its obvious dangers. With careful safeguards in place to control the disassembly process, gray goo had never become a serious threat. Despite those safeguards, though, nano-D weaponry had been refined and improved over the years until its potential for mass destruction in warfare had become unrivaled.

      As well as fatal for some millions of the citizens of Columbus.

      What, Gutierrez thought, a little desperately, would Admiral Gray have done here? America carried nano-D weaponry. Earth was under the gravest threat it had ever faced. Would he have ordered its use if he’d been the one calling the shots?

      Sara Gutierrez was fairly certain she knew the answer. Gray had always been an unorthodox tactician, using what was available in new, decisive, and often astonishing ways. Hell, twenty years ago, as a young fighter pilot, he’d won the nickname “Sandy” Gray by launching AMSO rounds—anti-missile shield ordnance—at attacking Sh’daar vessels. AMSO warheads were little more than packages of sand fired into the paths of incoming missiles; Gray’s tactical innovation had been to launch that sand at capital ships at close to the speed of light.

      Damned few enemy ships had survived that encounter.

      Was using nano-D any less moral or ethical than throwing near-c sand at someone?

      She doubted very much that Gray would have seen much of a difference there.

      “Okay,” she said. “Load the first two nano-D rounds, spinal mount,” she said. “CAG! Tell our people out there what’s happening and make sure they get the hell out of the way!”

      “Yes, Captain.”

      According to the most recent set of regulations, ship captains were supposed to get permission from higher military authority to launch nano-D weaponry. There was a loophole, though. Sometimes, the speed-of-light time lag was just too long to make checking in with headquarters possible.

      But … heaven help you if you were wrong.

      “Okay. How far is the objective from Earth?”

      “It’s currently crossing the orbit of Jupiter, Captain,” the helm officer reported. “But at an oblique angle. Call it eight light-minutes.”

      Too far, in other words, for her to ask permission.

      She took a deep breath. “Notify Earth of my intent to launch nanotechnic disassembler warheads at the target once the tactical situation is clear.”

      It would have to be a case of shooting first and asking permission later. But such was the nature of deep-space combat.

       Chapter Five

       1 February 2426

       New White House

       Washington, D.C.

       2045 hours, EST

      “She’s going to what?”

      President Koenig wasn’t angry so much as startled. Sara Gutierrez, so far as he’d known the woman through reports and after-action briefs and discussions with Trevor Gray, had always struck him as a cautious and somewhat conservative ship commander. She was a consummate professional, meticulous and very good at what she did.

      Unlike Gray, she wasn’t one for dramatic gestures or surprises. Certainly, he’d never expected her to be the sort to unleash nanotechnic hell on the enemy.

      “The report gives no details, Mr. President,” Marcus Whitney,