Vorpal Blade (ARC)

by John Ringo

  "I need to make some measurements. This will only take a minute or two."

  "Look at that!" The pilot pointed out the window at a brilliant flash of light that seemed to be just outside the ship. In fact it was likely hundreds of kilometers away.

  The XO frowned. "Way too close for my tastes."

  "Agreed," Spectre said.

  "This disturbance zone must act like a funnel to the comets of the two star systems. The odds of seeing impacts should be too unlikely for us to see two of them in just a few minutes. That can't be shiny." Weaver said. "Can't. Be. Shiny."

  "Figure out a way to get us out of here Mr. Weaver." Spectre said sternly but still with a fighter pilot's calm and cool demeanor. Gibbering was simply not on.

  "Perhaps we should try backwards this time?" the XO asked.

  "Forward brought us here. Backward might take us right back." Captain Blankemeier shrugged as best he could from the sideways falling position. "Maybe we are thinking about this too two-dimensionally while we are in three-D space?"

  "Sure sir. We could try going out of the ecliptic above or below it so to speak, but the gravitational disturbance has a spherical wavefront so it is three dimensional too. And each star system is moving with its own spin rate and proper motion so there will be a lot of frame dragging and similar effects. Hmm . . ." Weaver paused in thought. "That might work. Good idea, sir. We should go in a vector of . . ." He typed in some code and started running a quick simulation.

  "Mr. Weaver?" Spectre was hesitant of interrupting the scientist turned naval officer. But time was quite possibly important here and the CO didn't want to be around when a couple of comets caught the Blade in the middle of a chance meeting.

  "Working on it, sir." About a minute later as the simulation completed, he had what he was looking for. "We need a continuous thrust vector arced upward and inward toward YZ Ceti in the same direction as its proper motion."

  "Proper motion?" the XO asked.

  "The star's motion within the galaxy."

  "Whatever, just do it Mr. Weaver," Spectre ordered.

  "Aye, sir. Pilot, the coordinate vectors are coming in now." Weaver tapped one last key, sending the coordinates to the pilot's console. "Hold on XO, this could get bumpy."

  "Aw maulk."

  "Don't worry, sir, can't be any worse than one time off Johannesburg . . ."

  * * *

  The ASS Vorpal Blade lurched up along the vector that Dr. Weaver had calculated, in fits and jerks. The ship's internal artificial gravity vector fluctuated randomly and pretty much covered all possibilities, flinging the ship's XO around like a cowboy riding a bucking bronco. As the ship began to match the velocity vector of YZ Ceti's proper motion the gravitational randomness smoothed out into a flow of ups and downs that could only be described as a slow tumbling feeling. Then finally the alien artificial gravity system created by the little alien black box inside the coryllium sphere down in the engineering section of the ship was able to overcome the gravitational fluctuations and the ship's gravity settled out with only a few bumps and jerks here and there but no more unusual onboard gravity configurations. The XO of the ship was likely to describe the "bumps" and "jerks" a little more, well, dramatically.

  "Astrophysics survey." The XO shook his head and dragged himself to his feet. "The next time someone, and I'm not naming any names, suggests an astrophysics survey I'm going to—"

  "Yes, well, that was interesting," the CO interrupted as they cleared the last gravitational wave. "Remind me never to let you do that again. No astrophysics surveys from within an AU of said anomaly. Got it?"

  "Yes, sir," Weaver replied. "But I think I understand now why Tau Ceti has too much debris in its Kuiper Belt and Oort Cloud, sir."

  "No kidding." The XO laughed, rubbing at his sweat soaked brow and slightly massaging the red bump on his forehead. The ride had been far less than "fun" for him. He made it to his station and collapsed in his chair.

  "XO, why don't you report to sick bay and let 'em check you out. That looked like a hell of a ride."

  "Aye sir." The XO nodded as he glanced at the messages on his screen. "Note that we have a few damage reports coming in but nothing serious. Repairs are already underway. A few minor casualty reports are starting to come in as well."

  "Glad its nothing serious. Sick bay." Spectre nodded at the XO and clicked his safety harness free. "Where to from here Mr. Weaver?"

  "Epsilon Indi, sir." Weaver pointed. "Its that away."

  "Let's go find some planets worth talking about and take a break from any undue astrophysics surveys for a while," the CO continued. "I think I'd rather be fighting the Dreen . . ."

  "Yes sir."

  16

  Under Pressure

  "INTRUDER ALERT! INTRUDER ALERT! SECURITY TO REPEL BOARDERS!"

  It had been ten days since they landed on what everyone now knew as Dean's World. Ten days of, as Sergeant Jaen called it, "dickbeating." Weight training, maintenance, Wyvern sims, climbing fast-ropes, drills, computer sims . . . The latter had been proven to increase combat efficiency but everybody had a hard time not calling it "gaming." Basically, you lay in your bunk and played Dreen War over and over again. He wished they'd at least let the Marines play Halo III, which was more interesting by light-years.

  Ten uneventful days and then in the middle of the platoon's "night" . . .

  Berg's eyes flew open as the light automatically came on, but he waited a heartbeat for the next order.

  "SECOND PLATOON, WYVERNS. FIRST AND THIRD, GROUND MOUNT."

  Both voices were prerecorded female voices, but the second order was important. It detailed who had to clear the compartment first. Since everyone couldn't move in the corridor at the same time, the personnel with Wyvern duty had to move first. Since they only had to slip into skinsuits, they could be dressed fastest, anyway.

  He pulled out his skins and then dropped to the deck. Right on top of Lance Corporal Revells from Third Platoon.

  "Get the grapp off my back, Two-Gun!" Revells said, trying to struggle through the mass to the forward hatch.

  "Get in your grapping rack, Revells," Jaen snarled. "You're not supposed to be moving, yet!"

  "Get your elbow out of my face!"

  "Get your dick out of my ass!"

  The compartment was a madhouse of struggling Marines as everyone tried to get to different hatches at once, all order dissolved.

  "FREEZE!" the first sergeant bellowed from the forward hatch.

  Berg froze in place, arms over his head, most of the top of the skinsuit over his face.

  "Two-Gun, you may lower your arms," Top said into the silence. "Carefully."

  Berg shrugged all the way into the skinsuit and lowered his arms, carefully. He had to; the Marines were packed in the companionway like sardines.

  "The term here is FUBAR," the first sergeant said, quietly. "Y'all can't struggle out of this compartment in two minutes, which is the time it's supposed to take you to settle on your equipment. So we are going to do this again. And again. And again. Until you can, in fact, exit this compartment in an orderly fashion. At that point, and at that point only, will we then move on to donning said equipment and drawing ammo in an orderly fashion. And don't think you can cut time by keeping your uniforms on. We're going to randomly pick which platoon has which duty. Back in your racks."

  * * *

  Berg waited at the position of attention, sucked into the bulkhead of the locker room, until Gunny Hedger from Third Platoon shouted "Third, Clear!" then grabbed the stanchion on the gear locker and drove it, hard, towards the starboard bulkhead. Staff Sergeant Summerlin was on the far side of the locker and, if anything, was driving harder.

  Falling in on the armor was a drill that had to be done as precisely as a parade. As tight as the ship was, getting everyone onto their armor, fast, was nearly impossible. But it could be done if everyone did their jobs precisely on the beat.

  With the containers spaced, the Marines darted in lockstep to their posi
tions and almost simultaneously opened their compartments. As the seats fell they turned and, nearly in unison, sat down, reaching up and pulling their armor over their heads. The combat harnesses were attached to the armor so they came down at the same time. Two moves and the armor was latched. Reaching up, they pulled down their helmets, then snatched out their weapons and stood up.

  Gunny Hocieniec was already there, in armor, and nodded at the first sergeant.

  "One minute and forty-three seconds," Top said. "Seventeen seconds under standard. I think we can better that, but it's good enough for now. Fall into the missile bay."

  * * *

  "I'd say that I'm only going to say this once," the first sergeant said, striding down the ranks of Marines standing at attention. "But I'm not. I'm going to say it over and over and over again. We do not know what we are going to encounter out here. We know the Dreen are out here, somewhere. And some of you have fought them before and know how nasty that is. But we could, God help us, run into nastier things. Or better. Or nothing, as on Dean's World. That's the point. We just don't know. So each and every one of you had better be ready for anything at any time. Somebody who is ready for anything at any time is a Space Marine. I will not accept anything less in my company. Is that clear, Marines!"

  "Clear, First Sergeant!" the Marines shouted.

  "You've all passed Common Tasks, but to be a Space Marine means practicing uncommon tasks. We're going to make you the sharpest, hardest group of Marines in the Corps, because that is being a Space Marine. We're going to make you the smartest group of Marines in the Corps, because that is being a Space Marine. And if you've been tired of dickbeating, then you're going to get really tired of what I'm going to throw at you. By the numbers, replace your gear and hit your racks. Tomorrow, we're going to start adding some polish."

  * * *

  "So, mesons are a type of boson," Drago said, furrowing his brow. "They're two quarks . . ."

  "A quark and an anti-quark," Berg said, trying not to sigh. "That's actually pretty important."

  As the first sergeant had said, it was time to put the polish on the apple. The Marines had been looking at their sensor systems and learned to recognize basic information but they'd never really understood what they were looking at. Berg had been drafted as an ad hoc instructor for his platoon and was trying to get the basics of particle physics through some skulls dense enough to stop neutrinos.

  "Okay, they're a quark and an anti-quark," Drago said. "Any particular type of quark? I mean, strange, charmed?"

  "What in the hell is a charmed?" Lovelace asked. "What's a quark?! I mean, there's all these particles and it's all about quarks but nobody ever said what a quark is!"

  "Oh, maulk," Berg muttered. "It's in the manual but . . . quarks, muons, and electrons are elementary particles. That means they can't be broken into smaller pieces. And quarks are the only fundamental particle that interact through all four of the known forces. They come in six flavors: up, down, top, bottom, sometimes called beauty for some damned reason, charmed and strange. And, no, I'm not making this maulk up, Drago."

  "This is some crazy maulk ."

  "Oh, I forgot something else. They're also waves, the whole 'both a particle and a wave' thing."

  "How can it be both?" Lovelace asked, grabbing his head. "That doesn't make grapping sense!"

  "Welcome to quantum mechanics," Berg said, grinning. "Whenever you really get something in quantum mechanics, you're required to roll a sanity check. But that's the point; they're both and since they're down to the point where they can be both, there's nothing smaller. Quarks and electrons are what make up 'solid' matter. Put enough quarks together and you get the basic protons and neutrons of an atom. Electrons are just . . . electrons and they spin around the outside of the protons and neutrons in atoms. Oh, and until the Adar came along we thought that you could only have quarks in twos or threes or some other multiples but never a single quark by itself—"

  "Why?"

  "Well, the gluons that hold them together—"

  "Gluons? Grapping gluons?"

  ". . . get stronger the farther apart you try to pull them until they eventually pop back together. But somehow the Adar know how to pull the quarks apart and keep them that way. And as far as I know there are probably only two humans alive who really understand how that is possible and both of them are here on this boat—"

  "Grapping maulk, here he goes again!" Drago rolled his eyes.

  "Let us guess . . . Commander Weaver is one of them?" Lovelace added.

  "And Mimi is the other . . ." Berg finished.

  "Damn, I know you've got a jones for the commander Two-Gun, but the kid too? That's serious jailbait."

  "And as I was saying," Two-Gun ignored the comment. "Then there's photons . . ."

  "Photons! Hey, I've heard of that. Like a photon torpedo?" Drago said excitedly.

  "Uh, yeah, Drago," Berg said. "Like a photon torpedo."

  "I got one right!"

  "Light's a particle and a wave. Sort of."

  "What's a tachyon?" Lovelace asked. "I heard something about tachyons."

  "It's what you get when you let rednecks play with particle physics," Berg said, grinning again. "Seriously, what it is is a theoretical particle that travels faster than light only and would take infinite energy to slow it down to light speed. Most of these particles only exist when you have some sort of weird reaction, and decay in less time than I'm going to bother to explain. Some of them, though, hang around and we get to detect them."

  "I don't get why the sensors don't just say 'hey, bosons!' " Sergeant Lovelace said.

  "Because there are different aspects to particular mesons and bosons," Berg said. "The real kicker is fermions and pentaquarks. So far, we've never seen pentaquarks in nature. If you're getting a reading that indicates pentaquarks or other high-multiple quark formations, then something strange is going on. Fermions do occur from some natural processes. After all, electrons, muons, and tau particles are fermions and we are pounded by electrons and muons all the time. The higher energy ones are the key to things we are interested in. Usually, you get them as the result of a recent quarkium explosion or a Higgs boson nearby. Pentaquarks, too. So if you see a bunch of high energy fermion or pentaquark signatures, fermions that are nonstandard fermions, there's probably been a big boom."

  "Which means there might be another," Sergeant Lovelace said, nodding. "I'm starting to see some point to this."

  "Go, Brain," Lujan said, grinning. "I think it's a much better handle than Two-Gun."

  "Can it, Drago."

  "And baryons, more specifically mesons, can indicate there's a gate around," Berg said.

  "Wait!" Drago interrupted. "I thought it was muons that said there was a gate around?"

  "Well, yes. Muons are a fermion that is a fundamental particle like an electron and they do indicate a boson or a gate."

  "This is confusing as hell."

  "It is that," Berg continued. "According to something I read on the declass science system notes, there was baryon presence after we did that dimensional shift. So baryons might indicate something is dimensionally shifting. Or, and this is sort of science fiction, it might mean there's something out of phase. It might be invisible, in other words. It might even be able to see you, but you not see it. Possibly. Maybe sorta."

  "Wait," Drago said again, frowning. "I got some pentaquark readings from my Wyvern the last time we did maintenance."

  "Ship gives off pentaquarks," Berg said, nodding. "We've got a quarkium drive. That's another indicator. But we don't give off baryons unless we're doing a dimensional jump. Maybe."

  "Dude, I did not join the Corps to study quantum physics," Crowley moaned.

  "Welcome to the Space Marines." Berg shrugged. "Learning this is nearly as important as learning how to field strip your M-675."

  "Everybody's to fall in to the missile room," Staff Sergeant Summerlin ordered. "Some sort of announcement."

  "Shiny," Crowley said, st
anding up. "Anything has to be better than this maulk."

  * * *

  The XO arrived late to the command meeting and set a stack of paper in front of the captain before sitting down.

  "That's not only the consumables report but the data backing it." The XO sighed. "We've only got two more days of air and we've already cut the water ration to one quarter. Unless we find some water to process we're going to be breathing pure CO2 in another three days."

  Standard submarines have very limited fresh water and oxygen storage. Both could be extracted from seawater so large storage areas were a waste of space. The Vorpal Blade had been designed with much more extensive storage of both, mostly by cutting down on its ballasting system, but it was still limited.

  Since the surprising find in the E Eridani system the ship had been cruising for three weeks without finding another even semi-habitable planet. And things were getting a bit grim.

  "Commander Weaver," the CO said, looking over at the astrogator. "Suggestions?"

  "Well, it's a bit tricky, sir," Bill replied. "We haven't found any planets with an Earth type atmosphere, which was what I'd been hoping for. But we can get all the air we need from gas giants. Water, too, but that's trickier."

  "I thought their atmosphere was hydrogen," the XO said, puzzled.

  "Mostly hydrogen," the CO replied. "But it's got a lot of other stuff in it."

  "That's the point, sir," Bill said, nodding. "Oxygen, after hydrogen, is about the most common atom in the universe. Stars pump it out constantly by first fusing their hydrogen into helium then continuing fuse down to iron in what is known as the CNO cycle . . ."

  "Chief of Naval Operations?" the XO asked, confused.

  "Carbon-Nitrogen-Oxygen," Bill said, trying not to sigh. "Oxygen's a common fusion point and is put out in quantity as a by-product of stellar evolution. Most of it ends up locked up with hydrogen, water in other words, but a good bit gets into the atmosphere of gas giants. But gas giant atmospheres are layered. We're going to have to drop actually into the atmosphere and hover while we extract O2. There's going to be water there, too, but it's going to be disperse, and extracting it is going to be harder. We'll pick up some from the oxygen extraction process, but I think we're going to have to find the rest of it in ice."