Zhu gritted his teeth. "Fine! But I can’t get a clear shot at any of them!"
"Wait till the SMG runs dry, then cover me!"
"Yes Ma’am!"
Lee looked back at the shooters. They weren’t ex-military, else they’d be dead by now, she though. One man had a submachine gun. He kept them pinned, swearing at them between bursts. The other two had pistols and fired from good cover. They showed no interest in coming out to flank the Chinese.
She saw movement by Huang’s still form.
"Oh God. Oh God no."
Stockwell commando-crawled through the grass.
Everyone had fled, waiters, screaming guests, even the maitre d. The shooters kept firing, their backs to him. He watched Lee and her remaining agent yelling back and forth.
The agent’s shirt was soaked in red. He had twisted as he fell, his eyes staring behind Stockwell. Stockwell grimaced, and reached for the man’s hand.
The pistol was so light it felt like a toy. He felt the rough print grain along the sides.
In front of him, the SMG gunner smelled like apples. He kept snarling at the Chinese in between inaccurate bursts.
Click. He tore the clip from the gun and pulled out a new one. Knuckles whitened and he pitched forward, red spraying from his head. The other two shooters stopped and looked.
Blam. Blam.
Stockwell ran forward. "Are you alright?"
"You stupid fool," Muddied and torn, Lee rose from behind the table.
"What?" Stockwell glared. "Hey what the hell lady, I just saved you and your man’s life! You’re goddamn welcome!"
Zhu ran over Stockwell. He crouched by Huang and held his finger under the agent’s neck. He looked back at Lee and shook his head.
"Bring him," she said in Mandarin. "But first, take the gun from the American."
"Yes Lieutenant Colonel."
"What are you doing?" he gave up the gun. Lee was dragging the other woman’s body to the sea wall. She reached the edge, and pushed it over.
"You’re just dumping her in the sea?" He ran over to the edge.
In the water was a black dingy with an armed frogman. He looked up at Stockwell. Another was in the water, pulling the dead agent’s body towards the inflatable. Zhu reached the edge, and pushed the second dead agent into the water. Then he jumped in after him.
"There’s a ship out there?"
Suyin grabbed Al-Moussawi by the scruff of his neck, pulled him up one-handed, and shoved him over the sea wall. He gasped and screamed, Zhu and the frogman pulled him into dingy.
"Yes. A submarine. We’re taking him to China."
Stockwell pulled off his shoe.
"No," she put her hand on his shoulder and shook her head. "I’m sorry Evan. You have to stay here."
"What? No I can’t. I’ve just shot people. I literally have blood on my hands!"
"There is no room on the sub for you."
"The submarine is top secret Evan. Your people can’t know what we have. There isn’t enough room for you anyway."
"I’m not expecting a four poster bed, lady!"
"I’m sorry. I truly am. You should never have got involved."
"Look Suyin, you can’t just – "
She jumped into the water and swam to the dingy. The water suddenly become choppy, then violently so. Something shaped like a killer whale erupted, gleaming water pouring off its matte black surfaces. A hatch opened, and the Chinese climbed in dragging the dingy behind them. The beast resealed and sank back underwater. The waves swirled but slowly calmed as before.
The hotel’s lights came back on. All along the coastline, he saw the city relighting block by block. Stockwell looked around. People were staring from lit balconies and windows. Phones were being held out as if he’d been performing an ethnic dance.
His phone chimed. He pulled it out.
Run u idiot
INS Agni, 120 meters, Off Colombo, 10:33pm
"Captain I’ve picked up the contact again! Bearing, Red 045."
"Excellent!" the Captain and XO looked up from the chart table. "Can you identify?"
"Negative Sir, it’s nothing I’ve ever heard before."
"What are your orders?" asked the XO.
"Load tubes One and Two."
"Aye Sir. Load tubes One and Two!"
"Helmsman, all ahead, left full rudder. Get us on course with that submarine."
"Yes Sir!"
"Captain, what if it’s Chinese?" asked the XO.
"I’m betting that it is."
"Contact, bearing Green 060."
"Identification?" asked the lieutenant.
"Sounds like a Soryu," said the ensign. "Mainframe is confirming now: Indian-owned Soryu. 90 plus percent probability this is the Agni."
"Speed and distance?"
"Five miles, moving at 18 knots. That’s almost the top speed for that class. I think they’ve spotted us, Sir."
"Launch the decoy."
"Launching Sir."
"Shall I change our bearing and depth?" asked the pilot.
"No, I don’t want to lose the current. What’s salinity like?"
"Quite high," said the pilot. "It puts the BP at around 115."
The lieutenant sat back in his acceleration seat. He strapped himself in with a five-point, jet fighter safety belt.
"Let’s go to supercavitation. All ahead full and boil the hull."
"Sir, picking up a new contact. Bearing Red 010, moving fast."
"Identification?"
"Sir," the sonar operator’s eyes widened, "it’s the same as the target. Speed, 40 knots!"
"A second submarine?" asked the XO.
"No, that’s fast as a torpedo. Sonar, show me the sonar profiles for both contacts."
"Yes Sir," two wave patterns appeared side by side on a screen.
"Superimpose. See? There are slight differences."
"It could still be a second sub. Some variation in profile can be expected."
"Or it’s a decoy. Gentlemen," he addressed the bridge crew, "we are definitely engaging a new kind of submarine. We need to gather as much data as we can about it. XO, let’s fire a torpedo at it. I want to see what it’ll do."
"Yes Sir. Fire One!"
"Torpedo! Speed 50 knots!"
"Impact?"
"Six minutes," said the ensign.
"What’s our hull temperature?"
"64 degrees Celcius and climbing," said the pilot. "Six minutes isn’t enough time."
"Boiling point?"
"At this depth and salinity, still 112-115."
"We’re in the Indian Ocean in summer; surface sea temperature should be over 25 degrees. Take us up to three fathoms."
"We’ll be visible from the air," said the pilot.
"Yes but let’s see them catch us."
"Target is climbing Sir," said the sonar operator.
"A surrender?" asked XO.
"Weapons, torpedo self-destruct stand by."
"Aye Sir," a cover flipped and fingers closed over a red switch. "Standing by."
"Sir – " one of the officers turned, jaw open, "I – don’t understand what I’m seeing."
"Do better than that, Mr. Darzi."
"The target has just shown up on the infra red– it has to be quite hot for that to happen at this distance. And, it’s getting hotter."
"What?" the Captain leaned over the officer’s shoulder. The infra-red display lit both their faces.
"What is that?"
"The whole hull is this temperature. It’s heating up, completely evenly. Like a good pan."
The XO came over.
"That’s a sub?" he asked.
"No," said the captain standing back. "It’s a fighter jet."
"Hull temperature 115!"
The vessel shook like a climbing rocket.
"Torpedo impact, 18 seconds!"
"Hull temperature 117! It’s hot enough Sir!"
"Hold ignition till 120! This goes wrong they’ll capture the ship!" The lieutenant pres
sed himself back into the acceleration couch.
"Impact, 10 seconds!"
"119!"
"Ignite rockets!"
The boom sounded through the Agni. A cup fell over spilling cold tea. Bridge crew looked around and at each other.
"Detonation?" asked the XO.
"Negative," said weapons. "Torpedo has missed, now bearing Red 030. It’s been knocked off track."
"New contact," the sonar operator winced and held his headset away, "My God it’s loud! Bearing – bearing is changing rapidly, speed – speed is 300 knots!"
There was gasps.
"300?" repeated the XO. "That’s – but that would be – "
"Supercavitation," the captain sat against the chart-table, hunching. "The Chinese have subs that move at half the speed of sound." [liv]
Jansen Henrikson, IV
Asteroid 2043 QR 3, Pathinder Antimatter Research Facility, Paul Dirac City
"We’re just not getting enough antimatter."
Doctor Jacob Henrikson looked out the window. Shallow drifts glittered against black rock - hydrocarbon snow. They had spun 2043 to maintain a permanent dark side. Once done, the deep fissures coughed, choked, and finally died. The heavier, slower ejecta had fallen back as snow. The tracks of heavy mining rovers crisscrossed them. Most lead to the open cast mine. Others went around the growing slag piles. There, shielded by the spoil, was the linear accelerator.
"We’re getting only one or two percent of expected yield," said the scientist. Closer to the sun than any human before, his skin was vampire pale. "I’ve checked the metrics and the decay products again and again. I’ve run the experiments again and again. I’d like otherwise, but I doubt that you’ll get different results."
"Let us decide that," said another scientist. His skin showed no pallor, his eyes were hard. "We’ve come a long way for this, Johnson. For your sake, you’d better hope you’re right."
"We will of course replicate all your experiments," said Henrikson. "But barring simple measurement errors - which you have checked for - I think your findings are correct. If so, even with improved technology, we’re not getting much more than a couple of percent."
The second scientist’s brow furrowed and he shook his head. "This is nuts. I was hoping the test accelerator would do 10 times better. We can’t go back to Spektorov with this. He’ll fire the lot of us."
Henrikson snorted. "He understands this is R&D, Simmons. R&D is expensive, time consuming, and seldom cooperative."
"Seldom cooperative?" said Dr. Simmons. "He’s built a base on an asteroid. There are fifty prison workers out there, hauling radioactive ores. Do you want to tell him his investment is seldom cooperative?"
"I think he’ll understand."
"He’s a businessman. He will blame us both for this."
"That he might. But consider that he’s not doing this, just to invest in the antimatter fuel business. The antimatter fuel business doesn’t exist."
"So?"
"So big businesses are risk averse. They let startups take the risk, and then buy them out. You can justify high cost to a board if you’ll make your money back. If you’re not sure – you don’t bother. Paul Dirac City breaks those rules. It’s not a business decision, it’s just about Pathfinder. He applies different rules to the program."
Simmons folded his arms, "I think his idealism will be quite tested when you tell him this isn’t going to make him richer."
Out the window, an arcing survey satellite was a lantern in space.
"Look," began Henrikson, "We shouldn’t be worrying about our jobs right now. If it looks like that’s all we did after coming out here, that will get us fired. We should be figuring out how to make the program succeed with just a few percent of the antimatter. We needed kilos. Now, we have grams."
Simmons snorted. "This is perfect for you, isn’t it?"
Henrikson smiled but quickly killed it.
"I think I just missed something," said Johnson. "You want to fill me in? I have only prisoners to talk to, you know. All they do is bitch and watch porn."
"My apologies Dr. Johnson. At HQ we’re divided on this matter," said Henrikson. "Some of the team would like to see us avoid Von Neumann technology altogether. Others are much more in favor."
"They’re weapons of mass destruction," said Simmons. "Research on them is banned under international law. There’s nothing to discuss. You cannot do the Hundred Gram mission profile."
"Perhaps, but now even the Hundred Kilogram mission, now seems to be physically impossible. Yes?"
Simmons said nothing.
The pale Dr. Johnson handed them heated squeeze bags of coffee. "So what’s the Hundred Gram mission?"
"It’s a constrained model," he sipped from the drinking tube. "A backup plan. I put it together assuming antimatter would be more limited than expected."
"It uses a hundred grams of antimatter?"
"No, that’s 90 grams of systems and 10 grams of payload. It uses an additional 35 grams, of antimatter."
"It’s ridiculous," Simmons glared.
"You just don’t like that someone could misplace it in their room."
"How big is the ship?" asked Johnson.
"You mean how small. It needs two liters of propellant as reaction mass. Anything will do, I suggest water."
"Water?"
"It’s bulky, but can be stored outside the ship, as ice. It then acts as additional shielding. The whole thing would be the size of a large soda bottle."
"You can see why the idea is ridiculous," said Simmons.
"I dunno. I kinda like it," said Johnson.
"Well Spektorov didn’t."
"He didn’t dislike it," said Henrikson.
"He laughed when you finally mentioned it! Forget the antimatter constraints. No one is going to take a soda bottle space program seriously! Even if he came round to the idea, he would be a laughing stock. Pathfinder needs strong public support. The public want a big ship."
"The public are welcome to one, if they can find the Antimatter Fairy."
"Well, you’re suggesting they use the Von Neumann Fairy."
"Which is real."
"Which is illegal. Guantanamo illegal."
"You two are free to argue about this all you like. But for now, shall we go over to the accelerator and confirm my results?"
Four hours later, "Night" Shift
"Wait, hold up," Johnson held up a space suited hand.
They watched, holding the "highway" guide cable, as the rover passed. It was strung with lights, yellow headlights glaring forwards. Dust dripped from balloon-wheels like water off a steam boat paddle. A red light lit the space suited insect in the bubble cockpit. Stacked in its storage bins were long, thick cylinders. They were painted with radiation signs.
"Where’s it going?" asked Simmons’ radio.
"Waste disposal. It’s not Thorium or Uranium anymore, but it’s still incredibly dangerous."
"What are the decay products?" asked Simmons. The rover ambled away.
"All kinds," said Johnson, moving hand over hand again, along the "highway." "Lighter metals mostly, but many quite radioactive. Half-lives vary. Those canisters won’t be safe to open for a few thousand years."
"How do you dispose of it? Do you bury it?" asked Henrikson.
"Yes. At first we were dropping them down mined out seams. But as the base started expanding, those felt a bit too close."
"So now you just dump them further away?" asked Simmons. "You make it sound like it’s a chore."
"It is though," said Johnson. We have to travel further, and dig new pits. Pits with nothing in them of value. I was involved in the planning on Earth, and none of this seemed a problem. We hadn’t taken into account how difficult it is to work here. As production ramps up, disposal is going to become a bigger problem."
They made their way down the cable. Floods lit the silos and slag covered mounds of Paul Dirac City.
"Why aren’t there any surface structures?" asked Simmons
. "This is in permanent night side."
"Cosmic radiation. There’s still enough nasty stuff out here, even with the sun blocked. I did orientation in Antarctica, it was nothing like this. Here you’re underground all the time, and when you come up it it’s always night. And dangerous."
"Do you get a lot of accidents?" asked Henrikson.
"No one has died yet, but we’ve have some close calls. It does change your perspective though."
"How so?" asked Henrikson. The "highway" cable ended at a cement block, mounted on a silo. Other cables snaked out from it, into the dark. On the floor was a large, submarine hatch.
"We’ve got career engineers making their money. Convicts who want to go home. Pathfinder First Volunteers who’ll jump at any task. Knowing what’s a few meters above their bunks has kept everyone on the same team."
They entered the hatch and cycled through the airlock. Henrikson popped his helmet. His suit hissed and clung to him as the pressure equalized. A Department of Corrections guard walked past.
"I’ve never seen one of those before," said Henrikson.
"You’re not supposed to, unless you’re in prison," replied Simmons.
"The robots keep out of the way," Johnson climbed out of his suit. "We don’t have any hardened violent criminals here, and like I said, it’s too dangerous for real drama. They just remind people they’re around every now and then, and that’s fine."
In the mess, dinner was greenhouse rice and peas, served with aquaponic tilapia. Men – some aggressively tattooed and pierced - nodded and smiled at the scientists.
"People are looking at us," said Simmons stiffly. "I don’t like how those guys are looking at us."
"Are you worried they’re going to rape you?" asked Johnson, suddenly smiling. "My God that’s it; you’re worried they’ll rape you."
"Our ship brought butter, Simmons," said Henrikson cutting into his fish. He held a morsel on his fork. "This has been sautéed. I wonder when the last time was that they had real butter."
"We’ve made our own margarine once, but it tasted foul," said Johnson.
"You made margarine?" asked Henrikson.
"It wasn’t the engineers, but we helped get the equipment. It was one of the prisoners."
The Hundred Gram Mission Page 18