by David Weber
The sergeant major glanced at the corporal, who caught the look.
“Oops, sorry, Gentlemen,” González said with a half grin, “I mean, it puts out a heck of a punch.”
Gerber chuckled. “I’m familiar with the vernacular. What I’m not familiar with is what a sub … a sub penetrator is. Is that what you called it?”
“It’s a sub-caliber penetrator, Sir,” González explained, back on track. “Just like the tank rounds you saw earlier, the bullet fired by the M-1 is actually forty percent narrower than the diameter of the barrel it’s fired through. The bullet sheds its sabot petals after it emerges from the barrel, and the super-dense projectile proceeds the rest of the way to the target. That lets it focus the kinetic energy on a smaller target area.”
“Just like the tank round,” Favre said with a nod. “Got it. Still … with a bullet that heavy, the muzzle velocity has to be fairly low, doesn’t it? While I can see how it would have a lot of stopping power, wouldn’t a lower muzzle velocity significantly shorten the rifle’s effective range?”
“You’re right,” González said, nodding. “It takes a hel—a heck of a lot of energy to propel the new round, and if we tried to do that with a traditional powder charge, like in our legacy ammunition, it either wouldn’t work, or it would kick a soldier’s shoulder out of joint when it fired. The M-1 is a modified railgun, though—it doesn’t have any powder at all. It uses an electrical charge to propel the bullet down the barrel.”
González showed the men end of the rifle, which was a rectangle of composites with the barrel in the center. “You’ll notice the rifle’s forestock goes all the way to the muzzle. That’s because the forestock holds the electronics and magnets that propel the bullet. All of this is powered by a Hegemony-level capacitor that’s included in each of the bullet cartridges. Unlike the bullets of old that had ‘powder’ in the cartridge, our new bullets have ‘power’ in them.” He smiled.
Favre looked thoughtful. “The question is, though, is it enough?”
“Absolutely!” González exclaimed. “Our old rifles had a muzzle velocity of just over nine hundred meters per second. These new rifles have a muzzle velocity of right at twenty-one hundred—that’s more than our old tanks had. And when you apply that kind of energy to a three-hundred-grain bullet, you get a muzzle energy of over thirty-two thousand foot-pounds—uh, around forty-three kilojoules. That’s over twice that of the old Barrett .50 caliber rifle, and it’s a lot easier to carry around than the Barrett! Plus, it’ll take out anything you want it to!”
Clayton chuckled. “Despite Corporal González’ enthusiasm, that kind of energy caused some huge problems during the design phase, because the recoil force has the same energy as the round does leaving the muzzle. Unabated, the recoil from a bullet leaving at Mach six would have broken the corporal’s shoulder, if it didn’t knock it off him entirely.
“I’m told the problem drove the designers to distraction, and they almost gave up on this design several times before they figured out a series of mitigation features. In addition to some low tech options like recoil springs made of alien composites, they also incorporated some cutting-edge Hegemony tech, and they finally made it work. The whole assault rifle system is really cool.”
He pointed to the rifle’s barrel.
“Really heavy rifles—like the Barrett—sometimes used muzzle brakes that captured some of the expanding gases that propelled the bullet and ejected them to the rear. It was sort of like using a rocket venturi to pull the rifle forward at the same time the recoil drove it backward. Since we no longer have those gases, this rifle uses a variation on the same principle. The M-1’s inner barrel has some range of motion, and as the bullet traverses the barrel, the recoil force creates an electric potential in the outer sleeve. As the inner barrel surges backward, the same magnetic field that drives the bullet ‘grips’ the barrel liner and damps a lot of the recoil force, and the springs absorb most of the rest of it. In effect, the inner barrel functions like a hydraulic piston as it pulses backward and then returns to its original position as the force damps out. The motion eliminates nearly all the recoil force—there’s still more than there was with the M16, but less than with something like the old M1 Garand—and the system provides an added benefit in that the inner barrel charges a capacitor-type device the way a regenerative braking system stores energy, so the rounds don’t have to hold quite as high a stored charge.
“That’s what the manual says, anyway. There’s a ceramic tube that clamps onto the barrel that you have to pull off so you can clean the connector. If you don’t, it sparks like crazy when you fire the rifle.”
“Ceramic tube?” Favre asked.
“Yeah, it’s got some sort of mesh in it. You don’t want to mess with it.” Clayton shrugged. “We could talk about it all day,” he added, “but a demonstration would probably be a lot more informative. Corporal, why don’t you show them how it works?”
“Yes, Sir! If you’ll follow me, Gentlemen?” González led the men to the firing line.
“Damn!” Favre muttered as he looked out across the range. A little louder, he added, “Aren’t those targets a little far? What’s the distance?”
González smiled. “Well, yes, they probably are farther than what you might be used to, but that’s because we had to move them back a bit to make it more of a challenge. It used to be that in order to qualify, you had to hit at least twenty-three out of forty pop-up targets at ranges from five meters to three hundred meters. Turns out, with the integrated ballistic computer, sensors, laser ranger, and the new scope system that comes standard on the M-1, they’re like firing a laser for distances out to over half a mile—wherever you aim, that’s where the bullet’s going to go. Even without the scope, you still ought to be able to put at least thirty into a target at five hundred meters.”
“Is that right?”
“Yes, Sir,” González said. “The problem we had wasn’t hitting the target; it was keeping the bullets on the range. With even a little bit of extra elevation, you could easily toss a round off base. The first day we had the new rifles, we put five rounds into people’s houses and cars where they’re rebuilding Fayetteville outside Fort Sanders. Thankfully, no one got hurt, but we had to put in a new rifle range that was longer and had higher backstops. And buy up all the land beyond it for about ten miles.” He gave them a bashful grin. “It was kind of a mess.”
“I guess so,” Favre agreed.
“Okay, González, assume a good prone position,” Sergeant Major Jenkins said.
“What about hearing protection?” Gerber asked, looking around somewhat frantically. “Don’t we need some?”
“These rifles aren’t that loud,” Jenkins replied. “I can get you some if you want, Sir, but generally, we no longer use them for normal range operations. Most militaries were pretty fanatical about that, using the old-style firearms, and we still use them if someone’s going to be firing for extended periods or we have a lot of weapons on the firing line. But normally, they aren’t necessary for something like this.”
“If you think it will be all right.…”
“You’ll be fine,” Clayton reassured Gerber as he handed each representative a set of binoculars. “If you’d like to step back a few paces, please feel free.”
Gerber looked uncomfortable, but when Favre stepped up to where González was lying on the firing line, Gerber took a step closer, although he still stayed ten feet behind the trooper.
“Lock one magazine of forty rounds and load,” Jenkins ordered. González snapped a magazine into the rifle and worked the bolt manually to charge it.
“Ready on the right?” Jenkins asked. “Ready on the left?”
“Ready,” González said as the two representatives looked around.
“The firing line is ready,” Jenkins noted. “Place your selector lever on semiautomatic, scan your sector, and commence firing.”
After a couple of seconds, González fired, and the rifle made a crack! The
sound was sharp, but not as loud as a conventional military rifle. In fact, it was less noisy than most .22 target rifles.
“That’s it?” Favre asked. “That’s not so bad.”
“No, Sir, it isn’t,” González said with a smile. “But the Bronto’s bark is still the crack of doom … for the enemy, that is.”
One of Favre’s eyebrows went up. “The Bronto?”
Clayton sighed. “Yes, that’s the slang name some of the soldiers have given the rifle. As you may have noticed, the rifle itself is fairly silent; the noise it makes when it fires is the crack of the Mach six bullet breaking the sound barrier as it leaves the rifle.”
Favre nodded. “But, ‘the Bronto’?”
“As it turns out,” Clayton said, “there’s a debate among paleontologists about the brontosaurus. Some of them believe the bronto could snap its tail as a weapon, the same as the triceratops used its horns or the stegosaurus used its tail spikes. If you think of a fifty-ton bronto cracking the whip with its forty-foot-long tail, some paleos think it would have been able to break the sound barrier, and it would make a crack! similar to what the round makes as it leaves the rifle. One of the troopers—”
“Jim Beall, Sir,” González interjected.
Clayton continued over the interruption. “One of the troopers was a dinosaur enthusiast, and he said the rifle made a similar noise to the bronto whipping its tail, and the name kind of stuck.”
He shrugged. “As we already discussed, the mass of the projectile affects the rifle’s recoil; the sound it makes is affected by its cross-section—the wider it is, the more noise it makes breaking the sound barrier because it creates a larger shockwave. The actual round the rifle fires is smaller, like a needle, so the round is loudest right at the muzzle, while its still in the sabot, but it’s a lot quieter downrange after the petals discard.”
“That makes sense,” Favre said.
Clayton looked at González. “If you would finish the demonstration, Corporal?”
“Yes, Sir!” He continued firing. After a few shots, there was a hole in the bull’s-eye large enough to be seen without the binoculars. By the time he finished the magazine, he’d shot out all of the bull’s-eye.
“Cease fire,” Jenkins ordered. “Lock and clear your weapon.”
“Wow, that’s impressive,” Gerber said. After five shots, he’d gone to stand next to Favre so he could see better. He’d still jumped every time the rifle fired, but less and less with each successive shot.
“No,” Clayton said, “that’s just really cool. This is impressive.” He turned to the sergeant major. “Give them three rounds of full-caliber explosive in a three-round burst.”
“González, lock one magazine of three full-caliber explosive rounds and load,” Jenkins ordered.
“Yes, Sergeant Major, it would be my pleasure,” González replied. He pulled a small container from a cargo pocket, loaded three cartridges from it into the magazine, and locked it back into place. He charged the rifle and got back into his firing position.
“Ready on the right?” Jenkins asked. “Ready on the left?”
“Ready,” González said.
“The firing line is ready,” Jenkins noted. “Place your selector lever on burst, scan your sector, and commence firing.”
Crack! Crack! Crack! The three rounds fired within less than a second, and the ground around the target erupted in three large fireballs. Boom! Boom! Boom!
As the smoke cleared, Clayton couldn’t find any evidence of the target. He smiled.
“Those are the full-caliber explosive rounds,” he explained. “Basically, they’re like ten-millimeter grenades. They fire at a lower muzzle velocity than the penetrators, only about Mach five, because they don’t need the same degree of penetration to be effective. They’re just as accurate, though, and the M-1’s onboard ballistic computer adjusts the sights or scope automatically. For that matter, its sensors can detect and measure changes in gravity—the difference between ours here on Earth and on Mars or the Moon, for example—and factor that information in right along with wind, humidity, and atmospheric pressure … if any.”
The colonel smiled at Gerber’s expression.
“The grenades themselves are formed out of an explosive compound hard enough it needs no case, unlike conventional grenades,” he continued. “In the standard U.S. forty-millimeter grenade, the explosive filler accounted for less than twenty percent of the total weight of the round and maximum effective range was only about three hundred and fifty meters—and it wasn’t very accurate at that sort of distance. This round is effective to over three times that range, with a very high degree of accuracy, and it delivers ninety percent of the forty-millimeter’s explosive payload by weight. Since the explosive compound is about forty percent more energetic than anything we had before the invasion, it’s actually about thirty percent more powerful than the forty-millimeter at only a quarter of the old grenade’s diameter. That means we no longer need the under-barrel grenade launcher; all we have to do is put in a new magazine and rock and roll.”
Both representatives stared at him, open-mouthed. Favre started to ask a question, but Clayton held up a hand, silencing him, as three young female corporals approached. One of the soldiers, an Indian woman, carried a small table, which she set up on the firing range. The second, who looked Hispanic, carried a chair she set next to the table. The third, a tall, lithe Caucasian, carried a set of goggles and an integrated keypad and joystick. Without a word, she sat in the chair, pulled on the goggles, and began tapping on the keypad. As she sat, the group could see she also had on a backpack, from which a thin sliver of metal projected.
“I would ask you to turn your attention back to the range,” Clayton requested. “In the back left of the range, there are three tanks. Do you see them?”
“Yeah,” Gerber said, confusion coloring his voice.
“I see them,” Favre replied in a firmer tone.
“Good,” Clayton said. “Now, if you look above it, you can see four things flying there. If you look closely, you’ll see that two are a little larger than the other two.”
“You mean those little specks?” Gerber asked. “What are they?”
“They’re drones,” Jenkins replied. He nodded to the blond woman sitting at the table. “Corporal Adamescu will be controlling them for the final demonstration of the day.”
Clayton cleared his throat. “Corporal Adamescu, when you’re ready, you may begin.”
“Yes, Sir,” the woman replied, although her voice was hollow, as if her concentration was elsewhere.
“You’ll want to focus your attention on the tank to the left,” Clayton noted when the two representatives continued to stare at the corporal.
The two men refocused their attention in time to see a pair of the drones dive towards the tank. The drones fired—although it was impossible to tell exactly when, since there were no muzzle flashes or other indications—and explosions danced on top of the tank, with a few other misses nearby. After two seconds, and numerous hits, the tank exploded. The two drones raced off and were quickly lost to sight.
The other two drones dove on the center tank of the group. These drones were larger, and carried missiles of some type, which could be seen as they launched. The missiles appeared to accelerate all the way to the target, and detonated on impact. They obviously penetrated the tank, as its turret blew off in the resulting explosions. The second pair of drones, although larger, also disappeared quickly.
“Is that it?” Gerber asked.
“No,” Clayton replied. “Keep your eyes on the last—”
The third tank exploded.
“Wha … what was that?” Gerber asked.
“Mini-drone,” Jenkins replied. He held out his hand, and a small drone came and hovered over it. The drone was an ovoid about three feet long and two feet in diameter at the midpoint. He caught it with both hands and brought it over to show the two representatives.
“When we were watching the tanks,�
�� Clayton said, “you may remember I said the key was to do it to the enemy before they could do it to you. This is one of the ways we can. This is one of our stealth drones, which can operate over an enemy battlefield, or any other high-value target, for a surprisingly long length of time. A controller like Corporal Adamescu can control a small fleet of them, since they’re fairly autonomous and usually don’t need much more from the controller than permission to fire.”
Clayton smiled.
“Although the Puppies didn’t arm their drones—they only used them for reconnaissance and as communications relays—we’ve altered their designs somewhat. The one Sergeant Major Jenkins is holding has a laser that can be used to take out high value targets, usually without anyone knowing, as its reactive camouflage makes it extremely hard to see. The one issue we have with it is that, due to the size of the counter-grav unit, there isn’t a lot of space for armament. We’ve been able to reduce that—a lot—from the Puppies’ original design by stripping out redundant components, but it’s still the major squeeze on the drones’ internal volume. Because of that, each mini-drone can only fire three or four shots, so they aren’t as good against troops or large concentrations of vehicles; for those targets, we have the drones you saw earlier … which are now located behind you.”
The representatives turned to find the other four drones—each about three times the size of their smaller, laser-armed cousins—had come in and landed on the firing line behind them, and they’d never heard them coming!