“Sure. Thanks ma’am.” I always equated ‘efficient’ with ‘flimsy’ and was unimpressed, but she seemed to like the new engine setup.
She apparently sensed my dislike. “More mass for armor and firepower.”
I looked at her and smiled. She climbed back down the ladder and went to her office. The height of technology came at the very end of the Terran Empire, its collapse causing the end of any meaningful research. That was over a thousand years ago. Since then it’s been a matter of surviving, holding on to whatever technology it’s been practical to use to solve immediate problems. But from time to time some old technology is found or adapted to new uses. It seems to me that these dual mini-fusion bottles came out of some such recovered knowledge. The Stallion tank was a new design, sort of. A re-jiggering and re-balancing of existing technologies for the most part, but this engine setup was unique. That, and the main gun.
The main gun is charge twelve capable. It’s a laser cannon and the charge rating means how dense it can make the beam by reflecting the laser beam up and down the gun’s length before releasing it to destroy a target. Regular lasers, the huge ones in space or fixed in ground defenses, are much more powerful and can put out a single beam strong enough to do serious damage. But vehicle-mounted laser cannons aren’t that big. They take the laser beam and reflect it inside the gun tube for up to a full second for each charge level, the beam getting stronger as the amount of light occupying the same space increases. The beam first passes through a one-way reflector at the breach of the gun, travels to the muzzle and then gets reflected a centimeter to the side, then back to the breach, then sideways a centimeter, then back to another reflector at the muzzle, several times. The reflectors are set at both the breach and the muzzle, arranged in a circle. The gun is fired by making the final reflector at the muzzle transparent, when its material polarizes to become clear and allows the concentrated laser bolt to pass through. The ability to reach charge twelve meant the discovery of a better material for making the reflectors. The beam of light is made more dense, something like that. Charge Twelve means the beam of light is more dense by a factor of twelve. At charge one, a laser beam 300,000 kilometers long is condensed into a laser bolt two meters long. Times that energy density by about two thousand times for charge twelve, I think. I’m no math whiz, but that’s a lot of energy.
However, with each increase in charge there is a tradeoff in range and accuracy because the laser beam wants to spread back out to a normal density and doesn’t spread in a predictable pattern. I’ve fired at charge ten before, in a Hercules tank. Beyond a thousand meters it spreads like a shotgun, and past five klicks at that charge it does no more damage than a handheld laser pointer. The manual for the Stallion says that the main gun on charge twelve is ineffective against hard targets beyond five hundred meters, but is ideal for soft targets and dismounts at that range or less. Basically, a street-sweeper. But at charge six it’s a viciously accurate laser capable of burning through composite armor up to half a meter thick at a range up to ten kilometers.
But armor is always a guessing game, kind of like playing rock, paper, and scissors with the enemy. Before a battle, analyze the threat and then decide what armor will best resist the enemy’s weapons. And consider the overall mission. And then decide how much of what type of armor to hang on the tank. Which is another new feature of the Stallion tank, its outer hull lifts off as a single piece so it can be replaced in the field. And the three types of hulls have varying layers of kinetic, beam and explosive resistance. One has reflective outer armor, the next, explosive resistance and the third, kinetic. It takes a half hour under optimum conditions to change out the upper hull, so good intelligence before a battle is key to making the best use of that feature. Plus there’s bolt-on armor of each type to take into account as well, dependant on the need for mobility. I suppose the weight saved by the flimsy engine is worth it, but still, I’d prefer a more rugged and reliable engine setup.
Parks climbed out of the hull. “All done. Clean enough to eat off of.”
Caldwell handed him the cleaning gear and climbed out as well. “Break time.”
“Be back in an hour,” I told them. I stayed and watched the mechanics as they put the road wheels back on. It was a specialized job, getting the hubs seated just right. Each road wheel rode on its own electric motor, cutting the friction to near zero. It also meant the tank still had limited mobility if the track were thrown or blown off. Still good for improved surfaces and most solid terrain, but not much good for rough ground or soupy mud. Still, better than nothing. They used the bay’s overhead crane to lift the tank and remove the jack stands, then put the upper hull back on and then installed the turret.
I got in the driver’s seat and backed the tank onto its track. Then the mechanics used their recovery vehicle’s wench cable to pull the loose end of the track up and over the return rollers and up to the front main drive sprocket. My crew came back in time to help me install the track fixtures and rejoin the track and adjust its tension. Job complete, we parked the tank in its designated spot on line, painted on the correct bumper and identification numbers (ORF-2, for Ordinance Float #2) and reported back to the motor officer. She shook my hand and dismissed us for the day. I checked my chronometer: 2300 hours.
I looked at my crew. “Thirteen hundred tomorrow. You’re off until then. I’ll call you if I need anything before that.”
I left the motor pool through the walk-through gate. The Mandarin couple that ran the snack stand were closing up, the doors open, the woman hosing off the umbrella tables while the man swept the floor inside. He let me buy a bottle of ale which I drank as I walked to my barracks. I had just dropped the bottle in the trash can outside the main entrance when my communicator buzzed. The text said, “Brief. Conference room. 00:00 hours.”
I still had more than forty minutes to burn so I dragged my tired self over to the conference room and slouched in my conference room chair and took a brief nap. I woke to the clap of a single pair of hands.
“Wake up!” Captain Blythe stood at the head of the table. “We’ll get started in a minute.” He moved aside and sat at the screen controller. I looked around. The staff was there, the unit commanders as well. In various states of wakefulness, sipping coffee. I got up and grabbed a cup of coffee and sat back down.
Just then the BN XO entered and moved to stand behind his chair. Then Stallion Six entered, wearing combat coveralls. The XO said, “Ladies and Gentlemen, the Battalion Commander.”
We stood and presented a hand salute and held it. Six returned the gesture and said, “Take your seats.” We sat. He stood by the presentation screen and nodded at Captain Blythe. The Battalion logo showed on the screen, then an overhead view of the Milky Way Galaxy. “If you haven’t figured it out already, we’re going on a contract.”
“Hoorah.” The A company commander.
Six said, “We’ll start with a brief on geography. Major Wood, if you will?”
Major Wood stood. The screen zoomed in on a star system near the bottom center of the screen. “The planet Tumbler. From the nearest jump point it will take us at least three months to reach it at subluminal speed. I project four months, to be on the safe side. We’ll go into stasis for most of the trip to preserve combat skills and prevent boredom. But the last two weeks we’ll be up, acclimatizing. The ships atmosphere will gradually change to match that of Tumbler so that we can hit the ground ready to go to work.”
The picture changed to a view of the planet that took up most of the screen. “Tumbler’s axis is perpendicular to its star. Sort of. It keeps its orientation, so that during one point in its orbit its North Pole points nearly directly at the sun, and at the opposite end of the orbit, its South Pole points at the sun. And twice, the sun is directly above its equator. Viewed from the planet itself, the sun’s path seems to tumble, hence the name Tumbler. And its orbit takes seven hundred and forty two Terran Standard days, making it’s year more than two years. The gravity is point ni
ne five, so…not too bad. Its rotation is eleven hours, spinning pretty fast, and its magnetic field is pretty strong. Non-linear comms will be a real headache at longer ranges.”
The picture on the screen changed to a satellite picture of a section of the planet’s surface. A large green plain, burnt desert encroaching at one end and retreating ice at the other. “What happens here is the livable zone moves with the coming and retreating of the sun. Some of these people have been here for about fifteen hundred years, sent out to settle this planet by the Terran Empire. They were largely abandoned when the empire collapsed, mostly because the jump point is so far away and because they are barely scratching out a living and have nothing to sell. They have mobile habitats and follow large herds of grazing animals, keeping up with the livable zones, following the track of the tumbling sun. They also cultivate some fast-growing fruits, grains and vegetables in limited quantities.”
Six said, “Thank you, XO. Now S-3, Major Deskavich.”
The XO sat and the S-3 stood. The screen showed a cylindrical space craft with large solar arrays extended from each end, the cylinder that made up the center rotating. At one end, several ionic propulsion nacelles were mounted to the base ring, stationary and thrusting. In the background was Tumbler. The bits of light that escaped from the thousands of tiny windows, and the relative size of the planet and stars in the background, demonstrated the immense size of the space craft.
Major Deskavich said, “Our employers. What we see here is their generation ship. They left Terra more than two thousand years ago, right after Terra came under a single government. They didn’t like that government so they built a generation ship and came here. But jump points had not yet been discovered, the existence of space fabric had not yet been proven and therefore they had an incomplete understanding of the laws of movement through space and time.” He paused to sip his coffee.
The A company commander said, “So they’re stupid.”
The S-3 glared at her. She twirled her unbound black hair and smiled at him. He smiled back.
“No, they are anything but stupid. No more stupid than the people who used hot air balloons to fly long before the existence of atoms and molecules were discovered. Back when air was thought not to exist because its existence was not yet proven. Long before the laws of thermodynamics were formulated. They set out to travel space, successfully, when space fabric was not even a concept. No, they are pretty damned smart. Now for their plan. They set out long ago with very basic data about Tumbler. Now they have arrived at Tumbler and it is their intention to slow the planet’s rotation and tilt its axis and increase the speed of its orbit. Using the energy of its rotation, taking it to…well like I said, they are pretty damned smart. Smarter than me, for sure.”
Master Sergeant Gates, The C company commander, raised his hand. The S-3 pointed at him.
He stood and said, “Well, who’s stopping them?”
“The people on the ground. When the new guys land to set up the machinery to alter the planet, the old guys interfere.”
The C company commander sat down.
Six stood and tapped the S-3 on the shoulder. “I got this.”
The S-3 sat.
Six cleared his throat. “Listen up, here’s the deal. Our employers are smart. Scientists with advanced degrees in everything you can imagine. But they are old and young at the same time. They took off from Terra and while en route they monkeyed around with near light speed and then while they were travelling learned to slip past light speed for brief periods. For them, inside their ship, time passed slowly relative to the rest of us. Instead of being a generation ship, it became a time capsule. They perceive us as more advanced and they will have plenty of questions. To them, we are advanced beings from the future.” Six smiled and winked. “I don’t want you to look stupid so I’ll explain the basics.” The image on the screen changed to a schematic of a jumpship generator. Six pointed at it. “I don’t understand none of that, but I do understand the basic principle. Anybody knows what happens to an aircraft when it passes from subsonic to supersonic?”
Captain Blythe said, “The flight controls are reversed?”
“Right. So when we go from subluminal to superluminal, the controls are reversed. When we pass through a jump point, the flow of time stops outside our ship and we instantly appear at a far point. Now, who knows what governs our destination when we jump?” Silence. Six smiled. “That’s right, nobody knows. We just know that entering a point at just the right angle always brings us out at the same point on the other end. And inversely, to get back to the first point. Establishing jump points is a crap shoot, but once established, they’re predictable. Now on to the next item. Our language.”
Six took a sip of his coffee. “Can anybody explain the origins of Standard?”
Captain Stovall, the Bravo company commander, said, “It’s derived from English.”
“And can you explain why?”
“Well, it was recorded. Written down. And it incorporated words and phrases from other languages.”
“Right. And what else?”
“Well,” Stovall squinted. “Entertainment at the beginning of the digital age. All the entertainment, the vids, the games, the literature, was all in English for the most part. Anyone who wanted to understand it, enjoy it, had to learn English.”
“Right. They tried Common, a fused language taking grammar and vocabulary from all languages, but it never caught on because it meant everything would have to be translated into it and then everyone would have to learn the new language. And the language Trade, that was strictly for business, but was so convoluted with lawyer-speak, no contract composed in Trade would hold up in any court. Then a stroke of genius amongst the linguists. They took English and re-named it Standard. Common just sounded so common, Trade sounded so greedy, but Standard… everybody wants to meet a standard; Standard was the language that facilitated Terra’s first recognized global government. Changing the name from English to Standard made accepting it easier, took away any political stigma. And in the databases, the overwhelming majority of information was already in Standard. That’s why today, right here and right now, we can read this:” Six pointed at the screen.
Captain Blythe changed the image to a page of printed text.
He pointed at me. “Read that.”
I said, “In the Beginning, when God created the heavens and the earth…”
Blythe changed the image.
I said, “Two households, both alike in dignity, In fair Verona, where we lay our scene, From ancient grudge break to new mutiny…”
“And this:”
“It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune must be…”
“Okay,” Six said. “I think we all get the point. But our employers were adamantly against the formation of a world government on Terra. That’s why they built a ship and took off, and that’s why they speak French.”
The A company commander said, “They came from France?”
“No. They came from Canada. So they speak their own kind of French. But they also have a working knowledge of Standard, which they think of as English. We’ll be able to talk.”
I asked, “What about the indigs, the people on the ground?”
Six said, “They speak Standard, which is good. I can explain things to them in no uncertain terms. Three, your turn.”
Six moved to his seat and the S-3 took his place beside the screen. The image changed to rolling grassland and panned around to show vehicles and mobile shelters and a herd of grazing animals off in the distance. “They scratch out an existence chasing large herds of Beefalos around. They go out ahead and seed grass and veggies and stuff into the ground as the snow and ice pack recedes, and chase the herds away from the encroaching heat at the other end. They generally trek twenty five thousand kilometers either side of the equator, over a period of about two Standard years. They operate in several confederated groups or enclaves and generally get along with ea
ch other. But make no mistake, they do have military capability. Occasionally they settle their differences through force of arms in limited exchanges that emphasize conservation of forces.”
Six stood, the staff stood. “We’ll talk about that later. For now, all you need to know is we leave here in four days. Starting tomorrow at thirteen hundred hours, we’re in field uniform. Our mission is we’re tied down on those drop boats and we blast out of here no later than sixteen hundred hours Friday.”
He looked around the room, eye contact with everyone there. He came to attention and said, “Hundred Percent!”
The staff saluted and said, “Hundred Percent!”
Six returned the gesture and strode out of the room.
Chapter Three
I spent that next afternoon at my desk deciding which troops I had to pull out of schools, which ones I could leave in. It could have been a very easy task. All I had to do was pull them all out. Notification of a contract takes precedence over schools, after all. But I’m not that kind of person. I looked at the assigned duty positions of the people I had in school, looked across the Brigade for troops qualified to re-fill those slots, made requests. I couldn’t look through the Mechanized Infantry Battalion’s roster, of course, because they were going to Tumbler with us. Contacted the individual troops first to see if they wanted to do it, then contacted their Battalion commanders for approval, ran the whole mess through Brigade. Swapping out troops, trading mine for theirs so that the individual troops could complete whatever leadership or skill training they were taking. When the sun set and the work day ended, I’d only had to pull one troop from school. She was a former Stallion gunner who was training to make a lateral job skill change to medical technician. I assured her she would be put right back in school after the Battalion returned. She didn’t seem to mind. She even said the main reason she’d wanted to change over to being a medic was because it meant going on more contracts, so that worked out just fine. But I had to put her in Alpha Company and she clearly had a Type B personality.
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