"Sir, we've got positive contact. Alfa Charlie gate guard reports a single high-acceleration intruder."
The Lieutennant Colonel practically choked on his coffee. "How the hell did it get past the gate guard in one piece?"
"They didn't give any details," the young Lieutennant replied, then snorted derisively. "They've been customs inspectors for so long they've probably forgotten how to fight."
The Lt. Colonel grunted, then: "Course?"
"Uh . . . looks like the craft is making a least-time burn right for us."
"They're attacking Station Jove?" the Lt. Colonel puzzled. "With one fighter? They've got to be kidding. The xorns must be testing our defenses. Ah well, put us on condition red, Lieutennant, we're going to have company."
"Right, sir," the curly-haired youth replied, switching on an intercomm and engaging the klaxons. "All personnel, red alert. I repeat, red alert. This is not a drill . . ."
Deep in the yawning gulf between the Sol/Alpha-Centauri hyper hole and Jupiter, the semi-intelligent electronic brain aboard the lone fighter went meticulously through its battle projections. This pre-programmed powerhouse could withstand accelerations that would have turned any living occupants into paste, and its deuterium-burning engines provided it with all the acceleration it could use. Although it had its own arsenal of weapons and could perform any number of sophisticated battle maneuvers, fighters often inflicted the greatest devastation on stationary targets simply by ramming them. Much debate within military circles had centered on whether there was really any difference at all between a fighter and a guided missile. The only concensus anyone had ever reached was that a spacecraft was a fighter, and not a missile, if it was cheaper to reuse than to expend.
Suicide ramming was not, however, in this particular fighter's primary mission programming. This time.
Orbiting Jupiter so close it nearly touched its outer atmosphere, Station Jove bristled to life. The station itself — nicknamed Cape Jovial by its inhabitants — was little more than a vast skeletal framework of docking clamps and conduits, barely armed and scarcely armored. Its military might, and importance, came from the enormous fleet of spacecraft docked there. Sol's military had rightly determined, long ago, that every heavy object in space could be turned into a deadly missile, capable of smashing any fixed installation to rubble with little effort. The only defense was to keep all equipment and supplies mobile. Even fuel storage tanks were absent from Station Jove's main structure, deuterium instead being supplied by a flotilla of lumbering tanker spacecraft that made regular runs to and from the Jovian atmosphere.
Now, with the alert having sounded, crews scrambled to make every docked spacecraft voyage-ready. One by one, the fuel tankers, fighter carriers, personnel transports, and other assorted craft came to life and undocked themselves, moving far enough away from the station that they could run or fight at an instant's notice when their attacker came.