The Hades Connection

by Gabriel S. Timar

Chapter 10

part 2 of 2

The Rising Sun Alliance had declared war on the Northern League just as Commander von Vardy, the captain of the Saturn was finishing the shakedown cruise of his new vessel. It was the first combat space vessel of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. As a matter of fact, the Saturn was the only operational fighting spaceship of either of the belligerents.

Since the Empire was a staunch member of the Northern League, the High Command immediately gave von Vardy a quasi-combat assignment. He had to keep the peace in space, since the new Geneva Convention forbade combat beyond the stratosphere.

Thus, the initial mission of the Saturn was the monitoring and enforcement of the Geneva Convention. In other words, she was there to keep everybody honest. The mission was not dangerous at all until the first combat vessels of the Rising Sun Alliance, the Honshu class hunters appeared and started knocking off the Northern League’s communication satellites. Both sides quickly repudiated the Geneva Convention; a free-for-all in space began.

The Saturn was the combination of a satellite hunter and a powerful fighter. It could efficiently locate, chase, and kill all orbiting installations as well as confront any other space vessel in battle. It was very heavy: it had the first set of nitrogen rams, a bouquet of four installed on one side of the spherical hull. The ship’s armaments included self-propelled torpedoes, a medium laser cannon, and several pressor beams.

The Saturn enemy satellites attacked by using a simple tactical maneuver: the Saturn matched orbit with the target and gave it a radial push with the pressor beam. With an upward shove, the target accelerated, broke orbit and departed for outer space. When the push of pressor beam was directed towards the surface, the target decelerated, fell out of orbit, reentered, and burned up in Earth’s atmosphere. The latter was the preferred method of attack, since the ship needed less power to recover its orbital station.

Meanwhile, a conventional war had started on the surface. In the early days and weeks, the war did not go very well for the Northern League. The Russians fought a life-and-death battle in the Caucasus Mountains and on the Siberian steppes. The Americans did not do too badly, although Pearl Harbor was lost in the first week following the declaration of war. The Northern League swiftly occupied Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Oman, and the Emirates. The events resembled the Gulf War of the 1990’s.

On the other side, Iran and Iraq put their centuries-old feud aside, joined the Rising Sun Alliance, and launched a vicious rocket attack on Israel, which was an affiliate of the Northern League. The Israelis retaliated immediately. Their raid aimed at Iraq was a Pyrrhic victory. Iraqi air defense technology was state of the art, and despite the success of the attack, the League’s air forces suffered considerable losses.

Von Vardy and the Saturn found a few Rising Sun communication satellites and pushed the lighter ones into outer space with relish while forcing the heavier installations to go into re-entry. Meanwhile, a message from command center reported that the enemy had launched several improved hunter-fighter ships, the Nagasaki class light cruisers.

The cruisers were much stronger than the Honshu hunters. But, as von Vardy discovered, neither was a match for the Saturn. The Nagasaki cruisers had only a laser cannon with self-propelled explosive shells, light pressor beams, and no shielding at all. Von Vardy knew that he had a superior weapon and was hoping for a confrontation with the enemy ships. Obviously, the Rising Sun spies had not discovered how strong the Saturn’s hefty impact shield was and that it was invulnerable to the weapons of the Nagasakis.

The construction of the Artemis started, and the Saturn covered the assembly of the orbiting gun platform. Von Vardy fought off several surface-to-space rocket attacks while grim-faced veterans labored on the frame and components of the Artemis.

About two weeks after the construction of the Artemis had begun, laser cannons and high explosive torpedoes unexpectedly attacked Cape Canaveral and Vanderbilt Air Force Base from space, demolishing both. From then on, the Americans could not launch anything.

The space-based weapons of the Rising Sun began to destroy launching sites in Europe. Fortunately, the French managed to put two more Saturn class fighters in orbit before the laser cannons of the Rising Sun’s gun platforms caught up with their launching facilities in the South Pacific.

With the two French ships available to defend the Artemis, von Vardy, already considered a veteran, set out to locate the orbiting weapons of the enemy. His orders were to destroy them if possible.

He lowered the orbit of the Saturn and started the long-range radar scanners. They did not find anything. During the attacks of the surface facilities, the observers fed the Saturn the coordinates of the laser fire’s point of origin from the ground. However, by the time von Vardy got the specified location, he was staring at empty space.

Finally, he concluded that the enemy had a mobile gun platform with stealth coating, which did not show up on radar. In addition, he realized the gun platform must be very fast and that it moved after each salvo. Von Vardy selected a computer controlled, self-propelled torpedo and had it loaded with conventional high explosive. He had the torpedo’s guidance system up and running but without target coordinates.

The crew of the Saturn did not have to wait very long. When the phantom lasers opened fire at the Mercedes factory in Stuttgart, Von Vardy requested the origin’s coordinates, fed them into the guidance system of the torpedo, and hit the firing button.

Immediately after firing the missile, von Vardy ordered the pilot to chase the torpedo at full speed with her radar at maximum range. The phantom’s salvo had not yet finished when the Saturn’s torpedo found its mark.

Von Vardy, with eyes glued to the radar screen, hardly heard the torpedo man reporting that the missile had exploded.

That must have been a direct hit, he thought. Let’s see if it scratched the stealth coating.

“I have an echo,” announced the radar operator.

“Specify,” snapped von Vardy.

“It has no definite shape, sir,” came the reply, “and it is very small.”

Big enough, thought von Vardy. “Just don’t lose the damn thing,” he said. “Helmsman, steer toward the echo,” he continued and with the same breath ordered red alert, and the laser cannon was charged.

The radar image was growing as the Saturn with all four rams spewing orange flames raced toward the target.

“I have a visual,” announced Lieutenant Weston, the laser gunner and weapons officer. “She’s a big son of a bitch... the Orange Blossom, for Crissake!”

Suddenly the Saturn shook from the impact of cannon fire, but the shield held.

“I have another visual,” reported Weston. “Nagasaki class light cruiser two thousand meters off starboard. Firing...”

Von Vardy flipped the tactical command screen on and analyzed the situation.

“Cut rams; full stop; shields to full; power the pressor beam aft tubes,” he ordered.

In space combat, a ship only stops when it loses power completely. Therefore, the crew thought the Captain had lost his mind. The Nagasaki was coming at them at full speed, all rams working. The Rising Sun crew was fooled completely by von Vardy’s ruse.

The captain of the Nagasaki thought that the Saturn was disabled and dead in space, and that he could board it. He reversed the thrust of its rams. When no more than ten meters separated the two ships, von Vardy activated the Saturn’s pressors. Weston’s laser cannon opened up, aiming at the rams’ suspension arms at the extremities of the spherical body of the enemy vessel. The Nagasaki lost its rams and tumbled out of control, sinking into the upper layers of the atmosphere.

He’s not going to give us any more trouble, von Vardy thought. His eye caught the gun platform, which was oblivious of the battle between the Saturn and the Nagasaki. The Orange Blossom’s laser cannons were working over the East end of London, Weston’s home city.

The young Englishman lost his temper, slammed the laser cannon to maximum aperture and, without orders, he fired. The range was extreme for good aim, but Weston was an exceptional gunner, and his first salvo severed the ram supports of the gun platform. The blazing rams separated; the station started a slow spin. Weston shot a questioning look at the Captain.

“Not bad, Andy,” von Vardy replied with a heavy sigh. “We could have gotten closer. Now we must give her a shove. Let’s see if their gunners will take us out in time or not.”

He turned the shields to full power, ordered the helmsman to steer for the Orange Blossom, and opened the nitrogen flow to the rams.

The big gun platform was disabled, but though a toothless lion, it still had its claws, the laser cannons. It was obvious that the captain of the platform knew what was coming. With his few remaining steering thrusters, he tried to control the station’s spin and bring the huge cannons to bear. Fortunately, the laser fire did not hit the Saturn, and the pressor beam pushed against the Orange Blossom, shoving the gun platform into outer space.

As a parting salute, the laser cannons of the Orange Blossom found their target. Two of the four rams of the Saturn were disabled, and a good chunk of the shield was gone. The gun platform was slowly spinning, a beautiful sight as it disappeared over the horizon.

Von Vardy realized that the reaction of the pressor push had irrevocably placed the Saturn on a re-entry path. A large part of the shield was gone; thus, the chance of surviving the heat of the reentry was very small. It was academic at this stage; without all four rams working they could not slow the spacecraft enough for a controlled crash landing. Rudolf von Vardy and his crew were getting ready to die.

However, the commander did not give up easily. He switched on the pressor beam, hoping to find a fixed point to hold the damaged space craft oriented in the proper position. Miraculously, the beam found something solid on the surface; it was holding precariously. Now the crew had to reduce the power of the pressor and, like an elevator, descend to terra firma. The crew cheered the Captain.

At forty-five thousand feet, the pressor beam suddenly gave out; it could operate a few seconds only. By this time, the beam had been going full blast for fifteen minutes. With complete loss of steering, Von Vardy had no illusions about a crash landing on two rams. The Saturn’s crew realized that their chances of survival were nearing zero again.

The damaged rams had very little power; even if the secondary pressors hit something solid, they would not be strong enough to steer the ship and slow its descent. Commander von Vardy estimated the speed at impact would be about five hundred knots. He was resigned to die.

In the last seconds of their epic flight over the Swiss Alps, the secondary pressors hit something solid and the Saturn tumbled. As the rams pointed forward for a fraction of a second, von Vardy fed full power to them just before the ship hit a mountain slope like a ski jumper. Half the crew survived, but needed a long time to heal wounds to their minds and body. None of them flew ever again.

* * *

Although the trip into the past of Captain Rudolf von Vardy took less than a couple of seconds, the memories had me bathing in cold sweat.

But I had not come to the captain’s quarters to reminisce, I just wanted to visit the place and have a look at myself in the mirror. I was curious to see what kind of body I had. With a great sigh of relief, I concluded that I had no reason to worry.

Although Captain von Vardy was only about five foot ten, his body was superbly proportioned and in tremendous physical condition. He had many scars from head to toe, no doubt acquired during the crash landing of the Saturn.

I ran a comb through my — or his — sandy hair and splashed some cologne on my face. I was getting ready to visit Miss Ann Forrest. I hoped that all of Captain von Vardy’s glands were in good working order.

To be continued...