by Saxon Andrew
“Set it up, Josh.”
“You’re genuinely worried about this, aren’t you?”
“I am; their Planet Killers number over a million. Set it up and let me know when you’re ready.” Grady walked out of the office and left Joshua staring at the door.
• • •
Ten days later, Grady and Taffy met Joshua on board an uncompleted Hare outside the construction building. Taffy was bothered by Grady’s insistence at knowing if the new warship could stand up to an alien Planet Killer, “Grady, I really hope you don’t intend for our ships to move inside the range of those huge ships.”
“Taffy, it’s not a question of moving inside their range. It’s an issue of thousands of them surrounding our ships. We must know what this new hull can handle.” Taffy shrugged and walked up the boarding ramp to the landing bay.
Taffy looked around and said to Noel, “Where’s the rest of the ship?”
Noel smiled, “We’re probably going to destroy this ship to discover its limits, there was no need to waste all the internal systems.”
“Is this ship capable of flying?” Grady asked.
“Yes. We’re taking it out to a star shortly to see how close we can get to it.”
“I do hope no one is on board when you do that,” Taffy commented.
Noel chuckled, “No one will be on board; the ship will be remote controlled. Let’s go meet Dr. Goldman in the reactor room.”
Noel led them to the rear of the ship and they heard Joshua yelling at an engineer, “I wanted two reactors on this ship!”
A white-haired woman had her hands on her hips as she replied, “YOU TOLD ME NOT TO WASTE ANYTHING IN GETTING THIS SHIP READY!!”
“One reactor isn’t enough!”
The woman’s expression turned angry, “One of our new reactors will fly this ship as fast as a Super Rabbit. I know what I’m doing so just back off and worry about something that matters!”
Grady smiled, “What’s the problem, Joshua?”
“Dr. Hessler didn’t follow my instructions and only installed one reactor. We should have at least two.”
“Why?” Taffy asked.
“Because, uhhh…”
“Didn’t she say it would fly as fast as a Super Rabbit?” Taffy interrupted him.
The woman stated, “Joshua is a brilliant scientist, but he should leave engineering to the engineers. This ship is fully capable of going wherever it needs to go.”
Taffy was looking around the reactor room and saw one large conduit leading to the single reactor. She noticed there were nineteen other unconnected conduits attached to the ceiling. “How many reactors are there normally on these ships, Joshua?”
“Ten, Taffy.” He turned back to the woman, “Hessy, are you sure this ship is capable of flying fast enough to get to our target star?”
“Have I ever let you down, Doctor?”
Joshua huffed out a breath and turned to Grady, “We should go to your ship and get moving.”
“Where are we going?” Grady inquired.
“There’s a Blue Giant Star further out the spiral arm and we’re taking the ship there.”
“Why?” Taffy asked.
“We’re going to fly the ship close to the star and see how close it can get before the hull fails.” Grady turned and led them out of the ship.
• • •
They arrived at the giant star with the warship in tow behind the Rex Hare. Joshua gave the target’s ship frequency to the computer and ordered, “Connect with the target ship’s controls and then connect it to my computer pad.”
Joshua lifted his computer pad and heard the computer respond, “Connected.” He moved a slide on the pad’s display and the large ship began moving away from the Rex Hare.
Grady watched the ship move away and asked, “Tell me why you’re doing this, Joshua.”
Joshua looked at the woman, “Hessy, you were the lead on this project. Why don’t you tell him?”
Hessy pointed at the ship on the optical monitor as it moved away, “The hulls on the Super Rabbits and carriers are about six-inches thick. They are incredibly hard and can handle the most advanced blaster beams being used by the warships of our three enemy civilizations. However, there is a limit to how much they can withstand. If they’re hit by multiple blaster hits from their most advanced warships, the hull could fail. They can also withstand a single blaster hit from a Fagan Fortress and alien Planet Killer, two would vaporize them. A single hit from one of Earth’s Defense Platforms would also break through their hulls.”
Taffy frowned, “Abby and Rory’s Super Rabbit withstood thirty hits from Earth’s warships when the aliens invaded Earth.”
Hessy nodded, “I’m aware of that but they were hit by the beams on their older model warships, not their newest model. The hulls of the Super Rabbits absorb the heat from the blasters that hit it and distribute it around the entire hull. When it fails, the entire hull disintegrates. The carriers can withstand huge numbers of blaster hits because its hull is so large that it takes hundreds of them to heat the carrier’s hull to a melting point. However, the enemy’s giant warships can take out a carrier if they manage to hit it with fifty hits.”
“What about our new ship?” Taffy asked.
“The hulls on our new ships are five feet thick,” Hessy responded. “They’re ten times thicker than the hulls being used by the carriers and Super Rabbits.” Grady and Taffy knew the hulls were thicker but not exactly how much thicker. Hessy pointed at the ship moving toward the giant star in the distance. “We fired more than a thousand of our most powerful beams at that ship and got absolutely nothing. The only way to see its limits is to take it as close to a Blue Giant as possible and determine at what temperature it melts.”
“Is the temperature of a star higher than our most powerful blaster?” Grady asked. He turned to Joshua, “I thought you told me the new beams are hotter than the sun.”
“They are hotter than a normal star, Grady. But a Blue Giant is a different sort of beast from normal stars,” Joshua answered.
Hessy added, “The hottest place in a star outside of its core is its corona. We’re moving the ship inside that star’s corona and see how long it survives. A Blue Giant’s corona is hotter than the core of most stars.”
“Couldn’t you have just flown the ship inside a normal star’s corona and fired our beams at it to help raise the temperature?” Taffy asked. “Why did we have travel this far to find a star this big to do this?”
“Wouldn’t have worked,” Hessy quickly answered. “Our beams would have been blown apart by the star’s corona. Remember the corona covers millions of miles and a blaster beam would never make it through it to hit the ship inside the corona.”
“The hull temperature is going up,” Joshua announced. The optical scanner showed the black ship moving closer to the star and Joshua sent the pad’s data to one of the Hare’s monitors. Everyone looked back and forth between the monitors and the temperature was quickly rising. Thirty minutes later, the optical scanner could no longer follow the ship. “The star is overwhelming the optical scanner; it’s too bright to see the ship.” Joshua paused and said, “The current hull temperature is higher than we were able to get it using our blasters and it’s continuing to climb.” The monitor showed the hull temperature above ten million degrees Celsius when the monitor went black. Grady shook his head and looked around the bridge, “Let’s go to the conference room and discuss what we’ve found out, shall we?”
• • •
Grady sat down on his chair in the conference room and ordered, “Computer, record everything that’s said during this meeting and send a copy of it to everyone in attendance.” He turned to Joshua and asked, “What did you learn from this exercise?”
“Well, the new warships can survive a couple of hits from Earth’s Defense Platforms,” Joshua replied. “They can also survive numerous hits by the alien and Fagan major warships to a point.”
“What point?” Grady asked.
“If our ships are continuously hit by beams from those giant warships, they should survive for five minutes or so, if this data is right.”
“That’s not very long,” Taffy commented.
Grady shook his head, “It’s an eternity during a space battle, Taffy; we can run before the hull overheats.”
“And what if there’s nowhere to run. Our ships could be trapped inside a huge formation of them and have no escape.”
“Taffy, you can’t pack those ships so tight that there isn’t space between them. We can get out if we can withstand their barrages,” Grady replied.
Taffy turned to Joshua, “Is he right about that?”
“I really don’t know; I’ve never piloted a ship during combat. However, with the speed of our new ships, it would be very difficult to keep a blaster locked on them.”
Taffy shook her head, “I still don’t like having to go in against them and try to take them out at close range. Haven’t we developed a missile to do that from long range?”
“Yes, but once their Planet Killers start exploding, they’ll figure out that missiles are causing their destruction and they’ll use their beams to form a shield around their ships.”
“I don’t think there will be much of an issue in escaping.” Everyone turned to Noel and he shrugged, “They can’t have their ships inside the range of their own blasters. Every time they’ve sent large numbers in during an attack, they stayed outside the range of their giant beams. If our warships are moving at high speed through their formations, they can’t follow them without endangering their own ships if they’re close to each other.”
“I still don’t like getting inside their formations, Grady.”
“I don’t see anyway to avoid that, Taffy.”
“Can our blasters take them out?”
“Yes, if we can get close enough to hit them in a vulnerable place. But our blasters could be blocked by a blaster barrage surrounding them,” Hessy interjected.
“I don’t see another way to attack them,” Grady added.
Taffy stared at them and then said, “I noticed on the target ship that there were twenty conduits for reactors in the ceiling, but we only have ten on our new ships.”
Joshua waved a hand, “By removing the rear thrusters from the new ship, there was a lot more space to install new reactors in the future if a need arose.”
“And how many of those ten reactors are used to operate the thirty blasters on the ship’s hull?” Taffy inquired.
“Five,” Noel answered.
“So, one reactor powers six blasters, right?” Noel and Hessy nodded. “What if you installed five more reactors and used all of them to power one blaster, what would happen?” Taffy asked.
Joshua started shaking his head, “We don’t have a blaster barrel capable of handling that much power.”
“Why not?”
“The barrel would melt,” Josh answered.
“But you just demonstrated that the hull could withstand unheard of temperatures.”
“Yes, but the hull is five feet thick? The blaster barrels are only a foot in diameter,” Hessy responded.
“How thick would they have to be to handle five reactors?” Taffy asked.
Everyone stared at Taffy and Grady turned to Joshua, “Do you have any idea?”
Noel spoke up, “It would have to be at least three feet in diameter.”
“Why not five feet?” Taffy asked.
“Because the beam wouldn’t be fired continuously, Taffy. It wouldn’t have to be that thick. If you added a cooling shell around it, it might only have to be two feet in diameter,” Noel answered.
“There’s still the problem with the bore of the blaster.” Everyone turned to Hessy. “If the bore is a foot wide, the barrel would have to be four feet thick.”
“What if the bore was smaller?” Grady asked.
The room was silent, and Noel lifted his pad. He began entering data and after a few minutes, he looked up. If the bore was only six inches, the beam would be extremely narrow.”
“How narrow?”
Noel shrugged, “It would only be two feet wide at two hundred miles, Grady. It would be hard to target anything with a beam that small.”
“Even a twenty-mile-long warship?” Grady asked.
“Just how powerful would that beam be at two-hundred miles?” Taffy asked
Noel shook his head, “If this theoretical beam is powered by five reactors, it just might punch through the hulls of our new ship at that distance.”
“But I thought you said the new hull would distribute a blaster beam over the entire hull!” Grady interjected.
“Normally, it would. But this beam would be tight and would deliver a hit more powerful than four Earth Defense Platforms in a two-foot circle.”
“Would this beam make it through a blaster barrage?” Taffy asked. Noel nodded.
Grady’s eyes narrowed, “How long would the beam last when it’s fired, Noel?”
Noel shrugged, “No longer than a second or two, longer might melt the barrel.”
Taffy leaned forward, “So, you could put ten more reactors on our new warships and use them to power two of these blasters, right?”
“It isn’t that simple, Taffy.” Joshua replied.
“Why not?”
“Because we’d have to modify two blasters on the hull and tear the interior apart to run the conduits to them. It would take a major overhaul of the ships we’ve built to do this.”
Taffy smiled, “I don’t think it would be that hard.”
“Taffy, I know what I’m talking about. We’d have to remove most of the interior to do this.”
Taffy looked at Hessy and smiled as she replied, “Joshua, if there are ten conduits on the ships that aren’t being used, I feel reasonably certain that the designers of the ship made allowances on how to connect those conduits without having to take the ship apart.”
Hessy was chuckling and Joshua turned to her, “What do you find funny?”
“She’s right, Doctor Goldman. We installed portals in the ceiling and deck to activate the conduits not currently being used. We can get five conduits to a blaster located in the middle of the new ship’s hull without having to dismantle the interior. Any good engineer would plan for their use in designing the ship.”
Joshua shook his head, “But the blaster assembly would have to be replaced and the hole in the hull for the conduit feeding it is too small.”
“Joshua, the generators powered by the reactors that feed power to the blasters are inside the hull,” Noel interjected. “Adding the additional conduits would take up the most space under the blaster and the feed to the blaster itself would still fit through the original hole made in the hull. As I think about it, this new blaster assembly won’t really be much larger than the current one, if at all.”
“If it’s this easy, why haven’t our enemies come up with this idea; they’re not stupid!” Grady responded to the argument.
“That’s easy, Grady.” Grady turned to Taffy and she smiled, “They don’t have the material we use to build our hulls. They don’t possess anything to handle that much heat and are forced to use giant ships to house their blasters.”
Grady chuckled and turned to Joshua, “I want you to start working on this immediately.”
“But we have more than five-thousand-warships that would have to be modified, Grady!”
“Then build another construction facility to make the modifications but change the current construction plans to incorporate this new blaster.”
“We’ll have to stop construction until the design is complete.”
“So be it, Joshua. The only issue we must resolve now is a targeting program to aim this new blaster at a distant target. Noel, can you do it?”
“I’ll get working on it.”
Taffy clapped her hands, “Looks like you’ve found our rock, Grady. It’s small but it packs a punch.”
Hessy looked at Grady, “Rock?”
&n
bsp; “I’ll explain it later,” Grady replied.
Chapter Eight
Nine months had passed since the Fagan had been attacked by Earth’s fleet and Wade had to admit things seemed rather quiet. Well, quiet in the sense of no battles taking place. However, the Fagan were building up the number of Fortresses at an incredible rate. “Sir, I’m intercepting a communication coming in to the High Leader from one of his scout leaders.”
“Send it to me, Gerri.”
• • •
“High Leader, one of my scouts has detected a single enemy warship moving past the spiral arm and headed toward the Empire.”
“Are you certain it’s alone?”
“I’ve dispatched a hundred scouts to search behind it and they’ve found nothing.”
The High Leader called the Supreme Fleet Manager to his office before saying to a fortress commander, “What is it doing?”
“High Leader, it appears to be flying toward our territory at a moderate speed. All of its external lights are on and none of its weapons are charged.”
The Fleet Admiral arrived and heard the Fortress Commander’s last statement. He looked up at the wall and saw the single Planet Killer moving through space. The High Leader turned to him, “What do you think that ship is doing?”
“I believe it’s coming to communicate with you.”
The High Leader waved a hand, “I’m ordering it destroyed.”
“High Leader, I’d recommend not doing that.”
“Why?”
“I’d like to hear what it has to say. We can destroy it any time we choose. There must be a reason they’ve come to talk with you.”
“They don’t have anything I want to hear.”
“High Leader, I’d really like to know what their intentions are; it would help me in commanding our fleets.”
The High Leader stared at the Fleet Manager and ordered, “Send three fortresses out to intercept it just inside our communication range. Do not fire on that ship until I order it.”
The Fleet Manager bowed his head, “Thank you.”
• • •
The alien War Leader stared at the giant wall monitor and heard his scanning leader announce, “There are three of the enemy’s giant warships moving toward us at high speed, War Leader.”