I had four hours of that, like everybody else. I was nervous until the first “attack,” when I saw how little there was to it. The light went on, I let go, the gun aimed, and when the drone peeped over the horizon-zzt! Nice touch of color, the molten metal spraying through space. Otherwise not too exciting.
So none of us were worried about the upcoming “graduation exercise,” thinking it would be just more of the same.
Miami Base attacked on the thirteenth day with two Simultaneous missiles streaking over opposite sides of the horizon at some forty kilometers per second. The laser vaporized the first one with no trouble, but the second got within eight klicks of the bunker before it was hit.
We were coming back from maneuvers, about a klick away from the bunker. I wouldn’t have seen it happen if I hadn’t been looking directly at the bunker the moment of the attack.
The second missile sent a shower of molten debris straight toward the bunker. Eleven pieces hit, and, as we later reconstructed it, this is what happened:
The first casualty was Macjima. so well-loved Macjima, inside the bunker, who was hit in the back and the head and died instantly. With the drop in pressure, the LSU went into high gear. Friedman was standing in front of the main airco outlet and was blown into the opposite wall hard enough to knock him unconscious; he died of decompression before the others could get him to his suit.
Everybody else managed to stagger through the gale and get into their suits, but Garcia’s suit had been holed and didn’t do him any good.
By the time we got there, they had turned off the LSU and were welding up the holes in the wall. One man was trying to scrape up the unrecognizable mess that had been Macjima. I could hear him sobbing and retching. They had already taken Garcia and Friedman outside for burial. The captain took over the repair detail from Potter. Sergeant Cortez led the sobbing man over to a corner and came back to work on cleaning up Macjima’s remains, alone. He didn’t order anybody to help and nobody volunteered.
As a graduation exercise, we were unceremoniously stuffed into a ship-Earth’s Hope, the same one we rode to Charon-and bundled off to Stargate at a little more than one gee.
The trip seemed endless, about six months subjective time, and boring, but not as hard on the carcass as going to Charon had been. Captain Stott made us review our training orally, day by day, and we did exercises every day until we were worn to a collective frazzle.
Stargate 1 was like Charon’s darkside, only more so. The base on Stargate 1 was smaller than Miami Base-only a little bigger than the one we constructed on darkside-and we were due to lay over a week to help expand the facilities. The crew there was very glad to see us, especially the two females, who looked a little worn around the edges.
We all crowded into the small dining hail, where Sub-major Williamson, the man in charge of Stargate 1, gave us some disconcerting news:
“Everybody get comfortable. Get off the tables, though, there’s plenty of floor.
“I have some idea of what you just went through, training on Charon. I won’t say it’s all been wasted. But where you’re headed, things will be quite different. Warmer.”
He paused to let that soak in.
“Aleph Aurigae, the first collapsar ever detected, revolves around the normal star Epsilon Aurigae in a twenty-seven year orbit. The enemy has a base of operations, not on a regular portal planet of Aleph, but on a planet in orbit around Epsilon. We don’t know much about the planet, just that it goes around Epsilon once every 745 days, is about three-fourths the size of Earth, and has an albedo of 0.8, meaning it’s probably covered with clouds. We can’t say precisely how hot it will be, but judging from its distance from Epsilon, it’s probably rather hotter than Earth. Of course, we don’t know whether you’ll be working. . . fighting on lightside or darkside, equator or poles. It’s highly unlikely that the atmosphere will be breathable-at any rate, you’ll stay inside your suits.