The Merrimack Event (Shieldclads Book 1)

by David Tatum

  “Ms. Verne,” Chris’ voice suddenly piped up, though his gaze refused to leave the monitor. “Are there any reports coming in at all, and if so are any of them near the interior housing of the quantum wheel?”

  “No, sir,” Carol Verne replied, her voice wavering. She didn’t like having attention called to herself, and as everyone had gone quiet so that Chris could hear her response the entire crowd on the bridge was now focused on her. As the Damage Control Officer, she would get status updates on certain electrical failures before the engineers did. She also received casualty reports. “The only thing I’ve heard so far, sir, came from sickbay. A weapons tech burned himself while calibrating a rail gun, but there was no report of any defects in that weapon to cause it.”

  Chris sighed. “I suspect we can make do without Rosebaugh.

  Verne flinched. “How did you know it was him, sir?”

  “Educated guess.” Chris answered. “I need to know, priority one, if there are any reports of fluctuations or turn stress damage coming from around the quantum wheel housings, before you even send the repair teams. Unlike the weapons, which are all practice rounds and light shows, we’re running live shields during the exercise. If something goes wrong with them, we may have to shut down the shield immediately to prevent a disaster. We have failsafe devices, but obviously they haven’t been tested under live combat-related stress conditions.”

  “Understood, sir,” she squeaked. Rachel was quick to notice Verne’s relief when no further questions came her way.

  “Coming up on the extreme range of their broadside rail guns, sir. We’ll be in our particle gun range before we’re within optimum range of their broadside, however,” Rachel noted. She knew what Burkhard was planning, and felt that was an important point to make.

  “Acknowledged. Have they opened fire with anything since that chaser round, yet?”

  Rachel hesitated. “Not exactly, sir. They have been firing far-side rail guns, sir, but not at anything on my scan. I’ve been wondering if I’m seeing things, sir.”

  There was a pause before Burkhard laughed. “Oh, tricky, tricky. Minefields, Ms. Katz. He’s laying a minefield. Ms. Weber, make certain that we do not cross any area in a firing line from their far side broadside. If we do, we lose.”

  “Yes, sir,” Weber acknowledged, slightly altering her projected flight path. “Sir, if we continue to close range at this angle, we will be unable to avoid the mines without directing the quantum wheels to speed our deceleration and turn after the first pass.”

  “Then we’ll have to get them on the first pass. Mr. DiMarco, do you have that firing pattern ready yet?”

  “I... think so, sir. I still have no tracking from Navigation as to the Tarantula’s projected maneuvers, sir.”

  “There’s no data to make a projection from, sir,” Schubert noted before Burkhard could reply.

  “I agree,” Burkhard nodded. “Feed him what your own plan would be, if you were aboard the Tarantula, Mr. Schubert.”

  “But—”

  “Just do it, Mr. Schubert. There’s nothing else to base a predictability pattern on.”

  Schubert sighed, and typed some keys quickly. “Sending best guesstimate... now.”

  Luke DiMarco looked over the numbers coming into him and frowned. “Sir, this isn’t exactly textbook.”

  “That’s what I would do,” Schubert insisted.

  “Yes, sir,” DiMarco sighed. “Firing pattern altered based on the new data. Helm may need to anticipate temporary AI override – brief being sent now. Waiting orders to fire.”

  “Brief received,” Weber answered, and then considered it carefully. “Can I tweak the AI responses slightly?”

  DiMarco laughed nervously. “Please. I’m not exactly comfortable with those numbers, myself.”

  Weber fussed with it for a moment. “AI prepped.”

  “We’ll be hitting their optimum particle cannon range in fifteen seconds,” Rachel called. “Our own will be five seconds after that.”

  “Ms. Weber, at precisely one second until our optimum firing range, change course to present bow full-on against Tarantula, and activate Mr. DiMarco’s firing program,” Burkhard ordered. “Everyone else... standby.”

  “Sir!” Rachel called. “Incoming fire, particle cannon, top shot staggered from bottom.”

  “Brace yourselves!” Burkhard barked.

  Nothing happened. “We’re hit!” Rachel noted. “Simulation shows the shields held, sir. If it were a real shot, we might have been shaken, but—”

  She didn’t have time to finish explaining before Schubert’s call of “Fire pattern Alpha initiating!” echoed across the bridge,

  There wasn’t immediately the telltale mechanical grind of turrets turning nor the electric drum sound of a capacitor releasing a shot, however. Instead, the ship spun in what appeared to be a wild version of the Immelman turn, keeping its shield to the Tarantula as the other ship also began some sort of maneuver charging almost directly at the Chihuahua before ducking under it. The result was to keep the shield pointed at the Tarantula until the very last second, when suddenly all of the particle cannons fired simultaneously, intercepting the other corvette at point blank range when it passed the bow.

  “Coming to all stop!” Weber called. “If we didn’t get him, we’re a sitting duck.”

  Rachel didn’t say anything for a moment, gaping at the figures she saw on the readout. She knew it had been possible, but she wouldn’t have believed it if she hadn’t seen it.

  “Ms. Katz?” Burkhard prompted.

  “Sir, that would have killed a frigate. Probably something much bigger than a frigate, in fact,” she said. “A little Hornet class corvette, sir? She’s gone.”

  “Captain of Tarantula hailing us, sir,” Mumford called from across the bridge. “His exact words, uh, aren’t repeatable, sir. Essentially, he acknowledges the kill and requests to know just what we did, sir.”

  Burkhard laughed. “Tell him if he’ll take our bridge crew here to dinner at the station, his treat, I’ll explain everything.”

  CHAPTER XVI

  EAS Chihuahua

  It had been a wonderful victory celebration, with all but a handful of the officers and crew of the Chihuahua given the night off. After a few minutes of post-dinner socializing, Chris had managed to drag Rachel away for some fun. The terraforming station orbiting 94 Ceti wasn’t exactly a tourist trap, but it wasn’t completely Spartan, either. Among some half-decent dining joints and a number of simple shops selling various trinkets and clothing which had sprung up in the station’s commercial sector, there were also a number of facilities which one might conceivably wander to on a ‘date-like thing,’ as Chris had described it. While they both had decided against heading to one of the many low-gravity dance clubs which seemed quite popular in the local dating scene, they found that they were both interested in a local Shakespearian theater (which, sadly, didn’t have another show until they were supposed to be back on duty), a museum displaying various archaeological finds from the planet surface (which turned out to have its entire display closed for cleaning), and finally a zoo dedicated to the native wildlife.

  Given the earlier disappointments, neither of them were very hopeful when they found the little zoo. As they neared the entrance, however, they found that they had hit the jackpot. Much to everyone’s surprise, there had been a considerable amount of native life on the planet when Humans arrived. The Earth Alliance had, in fact, investigated the system many centuries before attempting to establish a colony, and until relatively recently it had been set aside as a form of nature reserve. It had only been released to colonization because of an urgent need for new colonies in Earth Alliance territory following the loss of several worlds in a war against the 16 Cygni Confederation.

  Enough life prevailed that the terraforming project was really nothing more than a study to determine which species of plants and animals from Earth could co-exist with the native wildlife, and which species of native wildlife we
re hazards to humans and their crops. It was for this reason that the colonization of the planet was taking so long – 94 Ceti had been in the ‘terraforming process’ (a misnomer for sure, in this case) for three decades, and so some of the species on display were about as well studied as any animal from Earth itself was. Several of these more heavily studied species, including the salmon-like fish that Rachel had eaten as sushi several days before, were labeled as ‘safe for off-planet export.’

  The couple made their way through the rest of the zoo without incident. Well, almost without incident – one of the fire-breathing ‘millipedes’ on display in the insect house burned some of the stubble off of Chris’ face, although he wasn’t really hurt. They quickly decided together to move on from the zoo after that.

  Not wanting to return to the Chihuahua right away, they found a small coffee bar where they could sit together and talk. They started chatting about the zoo trip, but soon ran out of things to say. An awkward silence started to descend upon them as the conversation broke down.

  Not wanting to give up without a fight, Rachel decided on a desperate ploy.

  “Why don’t you tell me something I don’t know about engineering?”

  Chris shrugged. “You actually know quite a bit, already. You’d ace that Basic Maintenance course by now, and probably pass an equivalency test for the Freshman and Sophomore level Engineering courses with what I’ve taught you. If you want, I’ll see if my academic advisor can work out an Engineering minor for you. What more do you want to know?”

  Rachel snorted. “I think I’ll stay away from a possible career in engineering. I’ll leave that to you.”

  “You might enjoy it, actually,” Chris said. “I’ve noticed that you seem more and more interested, the more I teach you. Otherwise, why would you even ask to find out more?”

  “Well, that’s because it’s you,” Rachel explained, blushing slightly. “It’s been rather repetitive work, but I’ve enjoyed those few nuggets of wisdom you toss in on occasion. I wouldn’t like it as a career, but I might be willing to join you in some of your hobby work from time to time.”

  Chris smiled softly. “I think I’d enjoy that. So, you still want me to explain something about engineering you don’t know?”

  “Yeah,” Rachel answered, nodding. “Something like, say, why the particle cannons can only fire once every fifteen seconds. Or why cold fusion plants are more effective than standard fusion plants. Or even why we can’t miniaturize a decent propulsion system small enough to create a fighter class. Or—”

  “I get the idea,” Chris laughed. “Okay, I suppose there are a lot of engineering principles which aren’t explained simply by studying a shock chair’s electronics package. Let’s take those questions in order, then, shall we?”

  “Well, if you want. I was really just listing a few examples, so if there’s something else you’d rather—” Rachel began.

  “They sound like good enough suggestions to me,” Chris intervened, hoping to head her off. Much to his surprise, she had developed the nervous habit of babbling whenever she tried to express any curiosity about engineering to him. “Okay, the first one was about the limitations of a particle cannon, correct?”

  “Well, I was a bit more specific than that,” Rachel corrected, “But I suppose that would be more of what I was trying to get at.”

  Chris nodded, and coughed slightly. Rachel suspected he didn’t know it, but whenever he tried to teach her something he always cleared his throat before letting out a long lecture – something which she knew several other professors at the academy did. Vaguely, Rachel wondered if he would become a teacher one day.

  “There are two main factors limiting a particle cannon, both of which contribute to the slow rate of fire,” he began. “The primary problem comes from the ‘backwash’ caused by the shot – when firing with enough power to be effective against modern ship armors, a particle cannon overheats quickly from the tremendous amount of charged plasma it shoots out. Usually, it takes about fifteen seconds for a cannon to cool off between shots, so at most we can fire four shots a minute. The secondary problem is that it’s impossible to send the necessary power to the cannons without a heavy pulse-power capacitor bank, and a fairly large one at that. When pulse-power particle cannons were first built, you could realistically fit, at most, four capacitor banks in the housing of the cannon. The size of these heavy capacitor banks have gone down a lot in recent years, but by the time you’ve shot the cannon four times with the proper cooling period between shots, the first capacitor bank will have recharged.”

  “So even if you were able to speed up the cool-down period, you would still need to increase the number of capacitors in order to improve the rate of fire,” Rachel concluded. “You would have to redesign a modern ship in order to increase that number. But if you retrofitted older ships that were designed for these larger capacitors, I would think you could add more. Using modern capacitors, how many could we fit into the Chihuahua’s cannons?”

  “In the Chihuahua’s time, you practically needed a whole room for one single charge. Now, for the same effect, you only need something slightly larger than a dinner plate. It’s hard to say accurately unless I took some measurements, but I imagine we could squeeze in several hundred. Most modern ships still use somewhat less advanced capacitors, though, since they’re cheaper and need replacement less frequently. Probably about two or three dozen of that standard. There really isn’t any point in doing so, however, with the overheating issues.”

  Rachel’s nose scrunched up as she thought hard. “Has anything ever been tried to reduce the cooling time? It goes without saying that great tactical advantage could be had if you could fire six times as fast as your enemy.”

  Chris shrugged. “A few things have been tested over the years. Most involve using more heat resistant materials or some kind of coolant tubes, but nothing seems to really reduce the time between shots without rendering the weapon ineffective. Fairly recently, some improvements in metallurgy have reduced the frequency of the ‘unbushing’ phenomenon – where a particle cannon had to be taken offline for repairs because of heat-induced metal fatigue in the focusing tubes. I’m going to be replacing the Chihuahua’s tubes with modern ones, myself, assuming we can get our hands on some. I hope to get Chihuahua purchased back into the regular Navy when this is all over, and small fixes like that will help.”

  Rachel considered her knowledge of engineering very limited, but as she considered what Chris had taught her she realized it wasn’t very limited at all – just very specialized. That specialty seemed to her as if it might provide an answer to the cool down problem. It wasn’t possible that she was the first to think of it, though... was it?

  “You know,” Rachel began slowly, “the shock chairs I’ve been working on must have been developed for the same sort of problem. Humans couldn’t survive the G-forces a ship’s acceleration would release on them, so a system had to be developed that would bleed off the kinetic energy a person was exposed to without obstructing his vision or his ability to work at his workstation. The resulting development would absorb excess kinetic energy and transform it into storable energy. Could such a system be developed to work on the heat energy that potentially could damage the particle cannon?”

  Chris laughed. “Actually, I suppose I was wrong – there was a more useful system developed from those experiments. The shock chairs were developed based on a failed design to eliminate the heat problem in particle cannons. It doesn’t work – the electronics are too sensitive. It didn’t reduce heat enough to protect them, and so the system failed after just two or three shots.”

  “Has it been tried recently?” Rachel asked, curious. “You know, using modern heat shielding materials? I mean, if they’ve improved enough to eliminate ‘unbushing,’ wherever that term came from, then maybe they could have improved enough to protect the electronics package of a shock chair-type system. And if power was reduced to, say, 80% of what we currently fire, wouldn’t that
further reduce the heat backwash?”

  He stared at her for a long moment. “Are you sure you don’t want to be an engineer?”

  Rachel blinked. “Huh?”

  Downing the last of his now cold coffee, he stood up. “Come on – we have to get back to the ship. We’ve got work to do.”

  “We do?”

  “Yeah. You, me, and the entire engineering staff. We’ve got to set up a fabrication shop for newer, smaller, more efficient capacitors, we have to start adding heat shielding to several of those shock chair electronics packages you’ve been fixing up, and we’ve got to modify my replacement plans for the focusing tubes.”

  “You mean my idea?” Rachel asked, bewildered. “But... surely... I’m not... aren’t you even going to test it first?”

  “I’ll have to the moment we get back, just to prove to Rappaport, it can work. I don’t need to do the test it, though,” Chris said cheerily. “I always say our best technology is rooted in the past. Even I make the mistake of not adapting past theories to modern advances, however. You’ve never had it ground into your head from day one that such a system can’t possibly work, though, so of course you’d think of it.”

  “I don’t understand,” Rachel answered in a daze. Chris guided her up out of her seat by the arm and led her out of the coffee bar.

  “That’s okay,” Chris said, pulling her into his arms and giving her a quick peck on the lips without even thinking about it. “You and I just invented and designed the biggest leap in particle cannon technology since they were developed into a practical weapon. However, we won’t have time to get it ready unless we start right away.”

  Rachel groaned. “This is why you hated me in class, isn’t it? Because I always found a way to make you work, even when you had leave or were on liberty. Great, now the entire engineering team is going to have it in for me.”

  “I don’t think so,” Chris laughed, almost dragging the young woman with him as he raced to their shuttle. “For a project like this, I suspect most real engineers would be glad to give up their leave.”