by Kali Altsoba
“Graphene aerogel spray. No different than painting. Bots pass it back-and-forth over smaller prefab panels and printed parts we want armored. They make thousands of spray passes over every piece. It’s real ‘kill-me-please’ boring work. Sure glad bots don’t get bored like us!” She giggles.
Adélaïde is startled. She could swear one of the AI sprayer-bots just looked at her with something like an appeal for quick, lethal mercy in its anthropomorphically-pleasing face.
“When a micro-projectile like space dust or ice contacts a thin target shield made from graphene, it dissipates kinetic energy extremely efficiently.”
“What about plate for ships? It’s a lot thicker, right?” Adélaïde asks.
“Yes, but not as thick as you might think, just larger in area. We do the biggest slabs on oval assembly lines with thousands of bot sprayers. Usually in orbital wharves astride the God’s Lifts, way up the risers. Or in the big Lagrange naval yards. It’s not something that requires low or no-gravity conditions. Even if, just like great sex, having no gravity makes it a lot more fun!”
This time Adélaïde does let out a laugh. ‘Does she know how totally uncomfortable she’s making the general? She mustn’t! She wouldn‘t dare! Would she?’
“Why use graphene instead of ceramics?” Adélaïde recovers quickly.
“It’s transparent, conductive and flexible. Submerged in liquids, it doesn’t oxidize like other conductive materials. That’s important, especially in warships since, you know, they use water in just everything, from life-support to radiation shielding to coolant to steam-catapults.”
“Graphene adds hardly any weight but in multi-layers gives truly incredible hardness and protection. I know weight’s real important for the Army, ‘cause reducing armor weight leaves more capacity for bigger motors, troop compartments, and secondary and tertiary weapons.”
“So it’s relative weight that decides the material we use in armor protection?”
“No. Superceramics are pretty light too. Not as light as graphene, but still. Graphene’s wonderful stuff, but in armor and weps sometimes conductivity is a real bad thing, like when graphene armor gets hit by a maser and carries the energy into the loader cab to fry your AI or a real person. Sometimes you just want ceramics.”
Back in the lead, Chan waves her lithesome arm and immaculately manicured hand. Her fingers stretch and dance and flex and promise so much more, seductively pointing to a complex of conveyors steadily moving bricks of ceramic cake into furnaces. The great kilns take up a long section of floor and smell powerfully of white-hot supersteel melt and radiant heat.
“General, ladies and gentlemen, err, I mean officers ... sorry. This is where green body is fed into the sinter kilns.”
“Excuse me, did you say ‘green body’? What’s that?” LeClerc asks. Chan Wèi positively flutters, giving out a little warble like an excited wren. The general’s speaking to her again.
“I did, sir! It’s our name for ceramic slurry or cake. Look, you can see it over here, green body heading from the big slurry pits into fusion kilns.” He grunts understanding. The military also uses lots of peculiar slang that isn’t any prettier or more sensible than this odd industry term.
“Inside the kilns,” Chan continues without taking a breath, “sintered green body achieves molecular diffusion. That makes it a polycrystalline. That’s why ceramics are so wonderful!”
“Why is firing so important?” LeClerc asks it to reclaim his position of authority. That’s his plan at least. It’s hard to think with those remarkable bronze legs rising out of such red heels to hide again under a short black skirt, a fully filled-out matching red blouse straining against...
“Strength depends on microstructure,” Chan cheerily continues. “Sintering green body at fusion temperatures reduces porosity and increases atomic density. That’s why...” She seems utterly unaware that looks of bored duty are overtaking several young faces as she slips deeper into what squirming aides elide over as, ‘Oh shit, please, not more blasted tek-speak.’
LeClerc has an advanced degree in Molecule Design and Nano-Engineering, yet even he’s had about enough. He drifts back, realizing she’s still talking. “... and that means we can provide you in the military with lightweight yet superstrong armor, low-mass plate for warships, skycraft and armtraks, flexible cloth weaves for soldiers.”
“Is there anything ceramics can’t do?” he asks wearily, but dutifully.
“Well, it’s nearly all ceramic nowadays. Body protection, weapons-guidance, helmets, laser amplifiers and lenses, superconductors and superinsulators, adiabatic engines that don’t need coolant and have reduced mass, hosts for solid-state lasers, optical windows for gas lasers, infrared heat seekers and night vision plates, the viewers in pilot and HUD displays. All basically superceramics. I think you call the clear viewer type in view plates transparent armor?”
“Yes. It’s used in ACU vehicles, prefab dugouts and so on, and of course in ships’ Main Scuttles and NCU side and rear viewports.”
“Scuttles?”
“Portholes, view plates ... err, windows if you prefer, though that’s not strictly right. The big one, the Main Scuttle, is always on the Bridge,” Adélaïde offers.
“Thank you, sir, err ... ma’am. It’s ma’am in the Navy right, not sir?”
“It is, but only addressing the senior female officer on duty station. Not female-to-female, unless used by ratings, err ... by the ranks. Weird, I know, but it’s tradition. Anyway, I’m an ensign so you don’t have to call me ma’am, ever.”
LeClerc cuts her off below the jib. “We don’t need a protocol lesson, Ensign Sauvageot.”
Adélaïde is fair, a natural blond and pale in complexion, so she flushes full scarlet at the public chastisement. She knows she’s blushing badly and is even more embarrassed about being embarrassed.
‘Don’t take it out on me! Whatever it is that’s eating at you. OK, now I hope ‘Miss All World Argos’ trips up again and lands right on top of you with those big boobs you’ve been staring at! Let’s see how embarrassed you can be!’
Chan Wèi picks up right where she left off. “A better word than ‘transparent’ would be ‘interactive.’ Oh my, not my place! You call it whatever you like.”
“No offense taken, Ms. Wèi.”
“Clear ceramics transmits light in the visible range, from 0.4 to 0.7 micrometers, stopping at mid-infrared, about 1-5 micrometers. That makes armor harder and clearer than strong glass used by our ancestors.”
“Strong glass?”
“I think they used to call it ‘bullet-proof glass’ or something like that? When I was a kid I always wanted to know what a bullet was, how it worked. They never explained it when we studied ancient history.”
“A kinetic projectile shot out a hard plastic or metal tube by chemical propellant. Limited range and not lethal at all if you were wearing good personal armor. That’s why they stopped using them. Our modern side-arm kinetics are a little bit like them but much more lethal.”
“Oh, now I see! Thank you, ensign! Any questions?” She stops talking so suddenly that everyone is abducted into silence by their surprise.
Adélaïde recovers first. The other aides waive her off with grimaces and gestures but she ignores them all. “Is there a limit to the effects that kiln firing, that fusion sintering, produces?”
“That’s a good question. Theoretically, ceramics become infinitely strong if grains are made infinitely small. In fact, if you go too small the ceramic material become amorphous. We found the optimal balance that retains crystalline hardness is around 10 nanometers.”
“Why is Argos Labs still working on armor, if we already know optimum limits?”
“Our latest research is bio-inspired, taken from certain exo-bacteria and extreme viruses from non-terraformed planets. We think we can nanoscale self-assembly to achieve entirely new, complex structures. AI organic machines that can grow themselves ... oh! Sorry, I’m not supposed to talk about that.”
It looks like she suddenly remembers, blushing scarlet under her bronze complexion and giving off another signature giggle.
Adélaïde’s guard goes way up. Chan is shifting personas. She just went from competent tek back to empty-headed, fluttery coquette. And too damn fast! The giveaway is too many faux stumbles and especially the blushing. Adélaïde knows all about blushing. ‘That was totally fake, calculated! More than flirting, she’s dissembling. She’s lying! What’s she hiding?”
No matter how brusque or even rude LeClerc sometimes is to his aides, Adélaïde is a key member of his team and perfectly loyal. She doesn’t like the idea of some brash girl barely older than her trying to manipulate an important man she admires. ‘What’s her hidden agenda?’
“May we see the moldings next?” LeClerc asks unusually politely. He seems resigned to her nattering, wanting only to reach the end then try for an hour’s sleep to clear his migraine. ‘Or maybe his suspicion’s aroused, too, and not just his libido? What’s going on?’
Adélaïde
“You know about moldings? Well, of course you do! You’re our Director of Armaments! This way, general. They’re a few buildings over. Bit of a hike.”
Chan makes an almost military hand signal to form a line behind her advancing rear, so easy to follow and admire in a tight black skirt. She launches straight into another tek monologue that reminds LeClerc of rackety crickets back on Jocasta. ‘They never stopped chirruping either.’
He’s working hard to unclog sclerotic arteries of military production before it’s too late, which he fears it already is. His irritability comes not so much from chronic insomnia as out of concern that, if he fails, too many of the brilliant young men and women in uniform beside him today, and millions or billions more, will die in horrible battles. And far worse, in losing battles.
It takes three minutes to cross to the silicon-nitride plant, passing though heavy smells of acidic chemicals and thick Argos humidity. Five more to review hydrogen peroxide propellant experiments, for use with star-turbine blades. Workers are also making prototype supercooling nozzles for improved torpedoes, warship missiles hosting miniature magnetic-chamber plasma drives. More work on laser-cooled, magnetically trapped anti-hydrogen, trying to make it stable. Designers are still trying to think up things to do with the wobbly stuff, but without much luck.
Near completed projects include an assault maser that’s so AI sophisticated soldiers can be turned into highly proficient users in under a minute. It’s powerful pink-crystal chamber and anti-defilade capability give it a dual setting: in front of an obstacle (clear sight) or behind (defilade). Its beam can penetrate supersteel walls or just stone rubble to cook a hidden enemy. It’ll mean there’s no more natural cover on a surface battlefield. Only e-camo and light-bending tek will be able to hide the enemy from assaulters. LeClerc has already ordered an emergency production run. The long-range plan is to assign one of these XM-7s to each heavy weps platoon across the entire ACU, with more going to special forces units and commandos.
“The XM-7 is easy to use, natural and intuitive. All you do is set the binary and laze the target. It decimates anything organic in its lethal radius, preset to 1,000 meters. We suggested increasing lethal range to 10,000 meters, but the previous Director told us not to bother. Why?”
“A year ago she thought we would need it for urban settings where a longer-range isn’t required, and might cause political issues if anyone with bad eyes got trigger-happy. We thought homeworld control would be its primary use. You can go ahead and increase range. We’re going to need this in any coming vacuum fights, say on a moon’s surface or out in the belts and LPs.”
They don protective gear that smells of rubber seals and antiseptic, then Chan Wèi shows them ceramic paints that micro-bond with ultrasteel hulls of assault craft, and heterodiamond and nitrobon shields that enhance thermal protections up to 500 times for use in close-stellar naval ops. LeClerc hardly pauses where bots are spraying and assembling old-fashioned ceramic shield and transparent armor, but his ACU aides stop to fuss over several prototype infantry transports.
Chan keeps up rapid-fire tek talk all the way to the second last building, largest by far in the complex. It’s a factory, not a lab. Inside, it looks like an enormous distillery, with rows of hundreds of tall coppery vats, each a dozen meters in diameter and 10 meters high. The stench is awful. Like boiling paper pulp and oily barks, mixed with sour vomit.
“This is how we make pink crystal. We quadrupled production last year, after General LeClerc became Director.” The flattery no longer seems like innocent flirting to Adélaïde.
“Gods, it smells like a witches brew in here!” She says it to provoke Chan Wèi, to see how she reacts to the double insult to her person and profession. It works. The switch back to tek persona is too sudden. ‘Girl must be getting dizzy in there, so many personalities to track.’
“You get used to it. We cook pentacene with p-terphenyl to make pink crystal, as you soldiers call it. A centimeter is good for side arms, four in an assault rifle. Crystals over a meter go to the navy, for its big ship’s guns. Ten meters are for the huge planetside batteries.”
“I don’t see anything that large here.”
“We don’t make the big ones here. Any really large crystal needs to cool in weightless conditions, along God’s Lift platforms or at stable Lagrange point factories. You need low-grav to eliminate the smallest imperfections at that scale, or the big crystals might misfire.”
“Or worse,” adds Adélaïde. “They’ll rip out the whole side of a cruiser or battleship.”
“Goodness! How brave you must be!”
Adélaïde ignores her, ostentatiously checking a tek e-read out instead, on her personal AI-aid: “Pink crystal lets hand weapons operate at room temperatures, with heat rising rapidly upon firing. Tiny lasers excite the crystal to a metastable state before a burst of microwave hits near-instantly, forcing its molecules to relax. This two-step lazing process gives all masers a signature ‘click-clack’ sound, as the laser stirs the firing crystal before it releases huge amounts of microwave energy. It’s the same principle as in an optical laser except microwaves spit from pink crystal at enormous energies, up to a 100 million multiple of energy put in by the lasers...”
When she looks back up Leclerc appears to have lost his earlier hostility as Chan shows off marvels coming down the pike. The more he relaxes in the seductress’s company the more Adélaïde tenses, her light blue eyes narrowing, finely-drawn brows thinning to lines.
LeClerc admires a mock-up for 500 and 1,000 barrel launchers. ‘It’s a whole new type of artillery, in quantity and quality. It could be a true deal-breaker in a big ground battle.’
He remembers a line favored by his classical history professor, Juan Castro. He thinks now just as he did then, as a cadet: ‘Ultima ratio regis indeed. Except artillery isn’t just the last argument of kings, it speaks for republics too. Guns don’t have a master. They’re treasonous whores who’ll serve anyone who pays to use them. Well, I shall authorize payment for this!’
“It’s just moving out of the concept room, general, not yet even in prototype design.”
“How long before you move on from these holo mock-ups and start the machine tools up? And how long from then to actually building and testing the prototypes?”
“At least a year to tools up, another to full-scale prototype, and two more of field testing and results analysis before you can make the decision ‘go-no-go’ to real world production.”
‘Four years! We’re going to need this new-style heavy artillery long before that.’ He knows why it takes so long. Even under his authority each stage must be approved by the design committee in MoD and funding advanced to production levels by the Lok Sabha. And there’s lots of competition for funds. He knows, because he’s making most of the decisions these days.
Adélaïde sees LeClerc go all gloomy again. This time she knows why. She’s his top aide, the one he trusts most among the five. So e
ven though she doesn’t have security clearance at that level, LeClerc let her read some of the Core Secret intel reports. They frightened her.
She cheers up a bit when she sees that the NCU will get multi-layered, cero-whipple shields for ships’ bow and stern dodgers, the big “catchers” that intercept micrometeorites and stray canister spray. Even ships already in service are to be retrofitted with the upgrade.
“It’s promising, but still early days.” Chan explains. “We were asked to work on this starting about a year ago. Seems there’s a report about someone thinking about using canister as an offensive weapon in ways that might expose basic dodger vulnerabilities in Kaigun ships and therefore also in ours. I don’t believe it, myself. Really? Shooting gravel at a warship? Don’t you have missiles and lasers and plasma to shoot at each other instead? Seems a bit silly, but OK.”
LeClerc and Adélaïde know the report. It came out of a KRN war game where the NCU had an observer, and sent a scare into Admiral Gaétan Maçon. A couple of destroyer captains came up with it on their own, in a little side action. No one else noticed or cared, but he had the idea battle-simulated afterward just in case. He was shocked to see what canister did to his blue capital ships if reds fired a gravel spread while both approached at relativistic speeds. He ordered Argos Labs to rush dodger reinforcement as a priority. The new defensive tek is almost ready.