| Soft Target
'Soft Target' is long-term work-in-progress. Set in my Convention time-line, it follows 'City of Lincoln'. I've made four or five attempts at it, let my notes and drafts go fallow. Perhaps this will come right...
'One Pole, null gee,
Three thrust, five fly,
Earth, Moon and Mars,
Nine go to the stars !'
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### Soft Target ###
Plop ! Plop ! Plop !
Three great ovoid ships erupted from Over-Space with weapons hot. Passive sensor arrays cycled to 'sub-light', drank data fast-- No myriads of mines or sensor satellites, no weapon platforms, no pickets, no fleets, no immediate hazard...
Details built. The mile-long ships were high above this system's ecliptic, 8 light-hours out. A stark, face-locked inner planet showed some industry in the twilight zone. The arid second planet had dark-side lights, and a geo-stand orbital construct which fountained wide-band comms.
The signature was not The Enemy's, but that was irrelevant. Who-ever they were, they stood on The People's path. That could not be permitted. Only The People had a place in this universe.
The ships' triplicate AIs conferred, concurred. No massive population, so a sparse system. Un-militarized, there could be scant defence. This was a soft target. For such, the War Plan read, 'Through & Through'.
The ships started their in-system drives. One thrust towards the inner planet to scour that industry. The others would raze the arid planet and flense the single orbital. Three days flight, one flaming, hyperbolic pass, coast out to the Over-Drive limit, proceed to the next candidate system...
It was a nice plan. It held nested contingencies and massive over-kill. It held the lessons from centuries of bitter space combat, millenia of planet-bound warfare. These were not the usual Enemy, but they'd be cleansed in the usual way.
It was a nice plan-- while it lasted.
These People could not know their bane was the least particle in the cosmos. They would never believe three such splendid warships were doomed by the fleeting, yet so numerous 0.3 eV Neutrino...
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