To The Stars

They toasted each other with tiny glasses of frigid akvavit, downing them in a gulp. The chef instantly refilled them from the bottle — frozen into its own cake of ice on the table. Thickly buttered rye bread was heaped high with lashings of herring in endless variety. Cold beef with grated horseradish, caviar with raw egg, more and more and all washed down with bottles of cold Danish beer. Theirs was the appetite of victory — of survival as well. In defeating the enemy they had extended their own existences a bit more into the future. Eat and drink; the morrow would come soon enough.

Over coffee, with just enough room left to nibble a bit of cheese, their thoughts returned irresistibly to the final phase of the battle.

“Would you believe that I had the computer programmed for at least two dozen future plans, depending upon the outcome of the battle?” Skougaard said. “And of all of them I came up with the best. Number one. So my next problem is how to keep that plan a secret from the enemy’s reserves. Let me show you.”

He arranged the salt cellar, mustard pot, knives and forks upon the table top. “Here we are, our squadron is the knife. Next to us is the fork, the second squadron. Over here is Earth and that is the way they are headed. The remaining enemy ships are in loose groupings, here and here. They’ll be on interception orbits by now but they will be too late to interfere with what will happen next. Before they can reach this spot our ships will capture and occupy these spoons, the power satellites. As you know these big mirrors turn solar energy to electricity and radiate it to Earth as microwaves This energy feeds the electric grids of Europe and North America, which means that they will be very unhappy when we cut it off. All of the satellites, at exactly the same second. With a little luck we’ll start a blackout cascade. But all of this is really just nuisance value. Earth has enough other energy sources that they can cut in, so it won’t matter at all in the long run. But the present is what concerns us. Hopefully they will try and dislodge our men. This will have to be done hand to hand because they don’t dare fire missiles or they will destroy their own satellites. But we have no compunction about firing at their ships. It will be an interesting battle. And totally unimportant. A diversion, nothing more. Here,” he tapped the knife, “is where they should be looking.”

The knife moved out and around one plate and back toward another which had some small cream cakes upon it. “The Moon,” Skougaard said, touching the first plate. “The Earth,” pointing to the second plate, then taking one of the cakes. “Hopefully the diversion will pull off a lot of their defenses. The second part of the plan should make a big hole in what is left.”

“This second part. This is where we coordinate with the attack on Spaceconcent in the Mojave desert?”

Skougaard licked a last bit of cream from his fingertips. “Exactly, My hope is that with the destruction of their main fleet, the attack on the satellites, blackouts and power failures, resistance sabotage, why they just might forget about Mojave for the moment. If your friend — our friend hopefully — Thurgood-Smythe is telling us the truth, why he will have a lot to do with increasing the confusion. In any case, win or lose, we go for the big one.” He put a second knife beside the first one and moved them around the plate, to the back of the Moon.

“Here is where I divide my forces yet again. We will be out of sight and detection from the Earth stations when we are on the far side of the Moon. Also, when we pass this spot, here, we will be over the horizon and past the last remote detection station. That is when we fire our engines for a course change. A minor change for the main body of the squadron,” he moved one knife slightly away from the other, “since we don’t want it to come out into the waiting missiles of the defense forces, which will be in position by that time. But a major change for the remaining two ships. This one and the troop transport. We change orbit and pile on the G’s. We whip around the Moon like a weight on a string — and come out here. Far from the defenses and on a precise orbit for Earth.”

“An orbit that will eventually terminate over the Mojave?”

“Exactly. The Dannebrog will supply cover, a missile umbrella screen against anything coming up from Earth. That should be easy because they have to rocket up out of the gravity well. We should have plenty of time to pop them off as they come. And we have nothing to fear from the Moon bases behind us since they will have had a few bombs and iron cannonballs down their throats to, give them something else to think about.”

“You make it sound simple,” Jan said.