But there was “no time to cry over spilt milk or flying shit,” as one of his flight instructors used to say. And he had to present a calm, collected, confident face to the locals who were actually going to fly the mission.
Once inside the bay, Bowden found Ferenc studying the lead aircraft. They’d spoken frequently over the weeks, mostly about the additional electronics it needed to be able to drop ordnance with any chance of hitting the target. As it turned out, the SpinDogs had a variety of lasers they used in space, so the development of the needed emitters and receivers hadn’t been an issue, nor had the necessary rocket technology.
Or so he’d thought. As Bowden approached the craft, though, he could see a number of new pieces of gear scattered about—in addition to what was obviously the SpinDogs’ versions of the AGM-123 Skipper and the AIM-9 Sidewinder—and they weren’t what he’d discussed with Ferenc.
“What do you think?” Ferenc asked with a big smile.
“Well…uh, I think they are good demo versions,” Bowden said, trying to keep his comments positive. Ferenc had complained—at length and often—about how much trouble he had getting the components into the production line, and how much grief he had received from the leading families for disrupting their normal operations.
“I like what you did with the rockets.” Bowden pointed to the bomb, which now had small rockets mounted between each pair of rear fins. “The problem is going to be if one of them fails to fire or doesn’t function correctly. You have the guidance fins mounted mid-body on the bomb; that isn’t going to work as well as if they were mounted on the nose.”
Ferenc made some hand motions as he went over the aerodynamics of the bombs in his mind. A pilot himself, it didn’t take him long before he blushed. “I should have thought about that,” he said. “They asked me where we wanted them mounted, and I didn’t give it any thought.”
“But you see why they would work better on the front?”
The SpinDog nodded. “It will take less movement of the fins, and it will be more precise.”
“Exactly,” Bowden said, happy to be able to compliment the man on something. “We want the bomb to fly as smoothly as possible. The more corrections it has to make—especially the big ones required in this configuration—will cause it to use up all its energy, and it might not make it to the target.”
Bowden wiggled the receiver to test its movement. “Can we power it up and see how it works?”
“Uh, I don’t know how to do that. I will have a technician here tomorrow, and he can show you.”
“Okay, that’s fine,” Bowden said. He turned toward the air-to-air missile. Unlike the bomb, it was hanging from a hardpoint on the wing of the craft. The missile was easily twice as thick as the Sidewinder he was used to seeing, and—at almost five meters tip to tail—was easily half again as long. “So, tell me about this.”
The man sighed as he looked at it. “The guidance fins will need to move to the nose of the missile.”
“Yes, they will. What is the warhead made of?”
“Warhead?”
“Yes. What happens when the missile hits a blimp?”
“Well, it goes through the blimp, making a big hole, and the blimp deflates.”
“There’s just one problem with that.”
“Which is?”
“Assuming the seeker is an IR seeker like we discussed, this is going to hit the hottest part of the blimp, which is the exhaust for its motor. If it hits it hard enough and accurately enough, it may knock the engine out, but there will still be people in the gondola firing at you. They’ll be at the same level as you, so shooting you will be easier for them. And, if they have any handheld missiles…”
“We’d be easy targets.” The SpinDog slumped, obviously seeing more modifications and production time needed. He studied the weapon with tired eyes. “We have missile warheads, of course, but they are for ship-to-ship use in space. No streamlining, and their only purpose is to breach the hull and inflict structural damage. No fragmentation or incendiary effects.” He sighed. “So, what do we need to do to fix it?”
“Well, I’ve been thinking about that,” Bowden said. “The standard blast-frag of your Sidewinder copies will do less against a blimp, and the odds are we’d probably have to hit one with several missiles to knock it out of the fight. We could either make the missiles even bigger than this one—which I don’t want to do because of overloading the aircraft—or we can change the warhead.”
Bowden thought for a moment. “Pretty much everything on a blimp—especially the gas bag, but even the gondola—is going to react pretty poorly to fire. Do you have anything we could use as an incendiary charge?”
Ferenc smiled and nodded. “I will talk to my people, but I have some things in mind. We have plenty of flares.”
“Great. Flares would be wonderful.” Bowden pointed to a new, smooth-edged box hanging under the port wing, closer to the wing root. “Is that…is that the laser designator?”
“It is. At least this should not need many changes. It’s a laser we use for ranging on our mining craft. That is something we didn’t have to make new.”
“Well, uh…I like that you can use existing gear, but is it possible to redesign it a little?”
“In what way?”
“I don’t know what it originally came from, but the wires stick out from the side of the box. They’re just begging to have a bird, or something, hit them and tear them off. Hell, even maneuvering through the atmosphere is going to be hard on them.”
Ferenc peered critically at the wires. “It was originally in a small spacecraft. Maybe the wires can be moved…”
“They need to be, because—”
“I know,” the SpinDog said with an exaggerated sigh. “If it can go wrong, it will.”
“Do you have the handheld laser designator?”
“I should have it tomorrow.”
“Great! So we can test it tomorrow with the Skipper. It would be best if we could mount the weapon to the plane and run the test from inside the cockpit.”
“I…uh…I don’t know if that will be possible. The wires haven’t been run yet…”
“Okay. Well, do the best you can. Will you have a PRF analyzer in the cockpit?”
“A what?”
“You’ll need some method of setting and receiving the pulse repetition frequencies—the PRFs—of the lasers in use.”
“What is that and why do we need it?”
Bowden forced himself not to sigh. “When the weapons are fired, we’ll be going for two separate targets, with two sources of illumination guiding the bombs onto the target. If one designator is high power and the other is low power, what is to keep all the bombs from going for the same target that’s being illuminated by the high-power designator?”
“I don’t know,” Ferenc said. “Dropping them at different times?”
Bowden shook his head. “By using different PRFs, you don’t have to worry about separating the aircraft or which laser is firing at which time. If you can change the PRF that the bomb is looking for to match what each laser designator is sending out, the bombs will go where you want them to. We’ll need at least two settings, but six is probably better.”
“How does your Murphy know all this?”
“He’s a smart man.”
“I will see what I can do, but I do not think the engineers will like it.”
* * *
“The Terran says the guidance fins for both the bomb and the missile need to move to the nose,” Lotho Ferenc said.
“So?” Primus Dolkar Kormak asked.
“We have the data packets for replication of the Earth weapons he is trying to build.”
“I ask again, so?” Kormak did not try to conceal his annoyance. “Why are you wasting my time with this?”
“Because it would be much easier to simply replicate what he needs, Primus, rather than to cobble them together from scrap. Not only easier, but they are more likely to function correctly. The same t
hing goes for the targeting lasers Bowden is looking for.”
“No. I do not want the disruption to the production schedule, nor do I want them to know the depth of our true capabilities.”
“I understand, Primus, and I respect that. However, in this case, the things they are asking for will help them destroy the transmitter the locals are building to communicate with the Kulsians. You have indicated that it is far better for us to prevent, rather than permit, that outcome. It also will make it less likely we will lose the interface craft you have allotted for this endeavor.”
Kormak frowned, considering. Although the production schedule was normally sacrosanct, it would be better if the remaining raiders weren’t able to make contact with Kulsis. Adding in the costs of potentially losing an interface craft swung the decision for him. “I will permit it,” he said. “You can make the guidance fins for the missiles and bombs, but that is all. Everything else must be assembled from existing parts.”
“Thank you, Primus. The Terran also has issues with the wiring protruding from—”
“Let him have issues! They are living off my largesse!” Their daily needs were actually provided by all the Families, but Kormak felt he had taken a greater part of the burden than the others. “If this Bowden person does not like it, let him rewire it himself. You are not to ask for anything else. Am I clear on this?”
“Yes, Primus,” Ferenc said, then he bowed and left.
* * * * *
Chapter Thirty-One
Spin One
Bowden didn’t get the word that the equipment was ready for testing for another five days. In the interim, he had asked the major for a couple of troopers to attend the next briefing, so he could familiarize them with the handheld lasers. No decision had been made yet on whether a squad would be sent to attempt a ground designate for the targets, but Bowden wanted people prepared for the mission. They probably wouldn’t know until it was nearly “go time,” and if he waited, there wouldn’t be any time to train them. It was now or never.
He wasn’t surprised, therefore, when he showed up at the craft for the operational testing and found three troopers in addition to Ferenc and the SpinDog technician who’d been assigned to the project.
“Lieutenant Bowden?” asked one of the soldiers. “I’m Sergeant Young. I’m the squad leader who’s been assigned to this, if we get the go-ahead to do it.” He nodded to the other two men. “Here are your two victims, Dork and Renaldi. Try not to poke too many laser holes through them.” He walked off, chuckling to himself.
“Uh, suh, you’re not really gonna poke holes in us, are you?” asked a large, hulking man. The accent placed him from rural Alabama. The other soldier snorted in derision.
“You’re Dork?”
“Yes, suh, Private Dorkhouse, but they all just call me Dork, ‘cause I, uh, get lost sometimes.”
“I see.” Probably not the only reason. “No, Private, I’m not going to poke any holes in you. Although you’ll need goggles while dealing with the laser to protect your vision, the laser isn’t strong enough to hurt you. Right, Alak?”
The SpinDog tech, Alak Lekral, looked up from the wire he was running to the bomb. “No, we tuned it to your specifications. You could stand in front of it all day and not be injured. Although I would not recommend it.”
“Told you Sarge was just fucking with us,” said the other trooper, Private Adam Renaldi. His accent marked him as a New Yorker. An interesting pair.
“Okay, thanks. Just didn’t want to get home and have to explain to my mama why I had holes in me.”
“Your mama’s long dead,” Renaldi said.
The big man shrugged. “Maybe, maybe not. That’s what they say, but we won’t know fo’ sure ‘til we get home.”
Renaldi started to say something else, but Bowden held up a hand. “You guys can argue that later; I’d like to see what Alak’s put together for us.”
The SpinDog tech nodded. “First, we were able to design some new fins for both the bomb and the missile,” he said, pointing to the guidance assembly on the bomb, “moving them to the nose on both.”
Bowden stepped up to the bomb. He’d never seen a real-life Skipper before, but the guidance section looked just the way he’d imagined it—a laser receiver followed by movable fins. This was attached to the bomb’s main body—about 1,000 pounds of high explosive—then larger, fixed fins, and the rockets. The rockets still looked stupid in that configuration, and with four, there were multiple opportunities for failure. He shrugged. If this was the best they could do, it was pretty close to what he’d wanted. Assuming the guidance section worked, it’d be fine.
They could always press in closer to the target if the motors didn’t work. It would suck for the pilots—flying through triple-A was not fun—but it could be done if they had to.
He walked over to where the air-to-air missile sat in a cradle of its own. While he’d never seen the Skipper guidance package before, he had seen the Sidewinder’s, and the one that was now attached to the missile looked exactly like an early Sidewinder guidance section from back home, including being the same size as the original missile’s. Although the SpinDogs had designed a step-up section to mate the smaller guidance section to the bigger missile, it was obviously not intended for this missile. It was a lash-up.
“Where did this come from?” Bowden asked.
The tech shrugged. “There was actually an original missile seeker head in with the Lost Soldiers’ equipment. That allowed us to replicate it much more closely.”
Bowden inspected it. “This looks like a real Sidewinder guidance section all right. It’s not as sophisticated as the ones I had—it looks like an earlier model—but it looks like a genuine AIM-9 seeker head. Right down to where you filed off the serial number.”
The tech shrugged again. “I do not know.”
“You must come over here,” Ferenc interrupted, gesturing toward the handheld laser designator, “so we can provide a quick demonstration.” Once Bowden and the two soldiers had drifted over, he continued, “As you can see, it is the same device as the one hanging from the aircraft, so there will not be any interoperability issues between them.”
Bowden nodded appreciatively. If true, that would be the first thing without any interoperability issues.
“We developed a tripod for it to sit on so the operator can keep a steady spot on the target,” Ferenc continued. “The battery on it is the weakest part. Since it is normally wired into a spacecraft, we had to add a battery to it, and the one which worked best will only fire for about ten minutes before you have to recharge it or put on a new one.”
“That’s not too bad,” Bowden said with a shrug. “I think that’s comparable to ours back home.”
“Good. I was worried that it would not be long enough.”
“That’s what we’re here for?” Renaldi asked, looking critically at the gear. Bowden couldn’t blame him; it looked big, bulky, and—what was worse for the troopers—heavy. “What is it? And please, tell me I don’t have to carry that damn thing.”
“That is a laser designator,” Bowden said, “and that’s what we’re going to use to destroy the antenna the indigs are building to call back to their bosses on Kulsis.”
“But you said it was safe,” Dork said. “How are we going to blow up the antenna with it if it is safe to stand in front of?”
Bowden smiled. “That’s a good question. Here’s how this is going to work. When it’s turned on, this box emits a beam of laser light. You’re going to carry this box—and another one just like it—to the target, and then you’re going to point the laser at it. The beam will hit the target and bounce off. Meanwhile, Mr. Ferenc here, along with several others, will fly some of those aircraft behind us into the target area and drop a bunch of bombs. Those bombs will see the laser light that’s being bounced off the targets, and they will follow it all the way down and blow up, wiping out the antenna and the control station.”
“What’s it weigh?” Renaldi asked.
“It is only about twenty kilos,” Ferenc replied.
“Only twenty kilos, says the man who doesn’t have to hump it around on his back all day,” the soldier muttered. The man’s eyes widened as a thought came to him. “You said the bomb follows the laser beam down?”
Bowden nodded.
“How does it know to hit the target and not this giant piece of shit I’ve been carrying around all day?”
Bowden smiled. “It’s all due to the geometry of the attack.”
“I’m sorry, suh,” Dork said. “I wasn’t very good at math.”
Bowden chuckled. “You don’t have to know math to use it. What I meant was how things will be arranged.” He pointed to the objects. “Here’s you, standing at the designator, and the target is over on the bulkhead over there. The bomb is coming from behind us. If you’re pointing the laser at the target, the only light the bomb can see is what is reflecting off the target. As long as the bomb can’t see the front of the designator, it can’t see the beam, and it won’t guide on you.”
“Okay,” the big man said, nodding. “How does it work?”
The tech moved forward and handed everyone goggles. “Put these on, please. The laser will not burn you, but it is not good for your eyes.” Everyone put on the goggles.
The tech flipped a switch on the left side of the box, and it gave off a low hum. “First you turn it on. Then you dial in the code.” He typed in “1666” on the pad between the two switches. “Then you activate the laser beam.” He flipped the switch on the right. “Now you just point it at the target, and the bomb will follow it in. We could not make it any simpler.”
“The box is on?” Renaldi asked. The tech nodded. “I don’t see a laser beam.”
“It is invisible. Trust me; it is on.”
“Great,” Renaldi muttered. “A heavy fucking box that you can’t even tell is on. Probably won’t be working after a day on the march, and we’ll never know.”
“I can show you it is working,” the tech said. He walked over and plugged a wire into the bomb, and its laser receiver popped up. “See? The bomb can see the reflected laser light, even if you cannot. Move the designator around.”
Murphy's Lawless: A Terran Republic Novel Page 33