Vorpal Blade

by John Ringo

  However, the Navy was the right service for a space fleet. The Air Force, which had argued that it had much more experience with three dimensional combat than the Navy, was based around small systems with short mission times. There was a degree of complexity in creating, and especially running, a ship that was orders of magnitude away from being, say, a squadron or wing commander. There were human complexities that simply didn't occur in the Air Force when you packed a huge number of humans into a small space and then told them they had to get along or else.

  So the Navy had wholeheartedly offered Newport News when the new boat was under discussion. Out of their own pocket, drawing on funds detailed for other bases and ship maintenance, they had upgraded the facilities to be as "state-of-the-art" as they could, even before the decision was made. The Air Force had pointed out that, unlike Dreamland, there was no way that a ship taking off from Newport News, by day or night, could remain undetected. The Navy had pointed out that the boat was to be based on a submarine. All it had to do was submerge, get far enough offshore, make sure there wasn't anything in view via sonar, and then take off from there.

  In the final event, Newport News, a quiet little seaport on Chesapeake Bay, had become the world's first starport. Stranger things had happened, but not many.

  The outer door to the guard facility was easy enough to pass; all he had to do was wave his card at the reader and the door opened. Beyond he was in the "blast" room. Weaver had been consulted on the design. The room wouldn't quite stop a nuke, but it would stop anything else. There was a single door out of the room. It was designed around a bank vault, unmarked and with a keypad next to it.

  He swiped his security card past the reader and punched in his code, then went in as the powered door opened. This revealed another room. On the left-hand side was a window of aliglass.

  "Weaver," Bill said, holding up his ID to the guard. The guard's name was Johnson, Bill remembered. They'd chatted one time in the breakroom. If Johnson recognized him, it wasn't apparent.

  Johnson looked carefully at the ID, then consulted a list.

  "Please enter your keycode," the guard said in a monotone, still staring at Weaver as if he was a suspected terrorist.

  Bill swiped his card again and punched in a different code. That door led to a small room, windowless, with a video camera over the far door and a laser to the left. The laser swept over him, doing a retinal and surface temperature scan. The room was a "mantrap." The inner door was interlocked in such a way as it couldn't open until the outer door had closed.

  "Weaver, William, Lieutenant Commander, Astrogation," a robotic voice intoned. Then the inner door opened.

  Bill had once done a short stint as a consultant to the NSA. Getting into the National Security Agency involved showing your card to a guard and then walking in. He wasn't sure if this setup was overkill or if the NSA had lousy security. But, surely, there was somewhere in-between?

  As soon as he got through the final portal he turned left down the corridor and stopped to check a computer terminal. The meeting he was supposed to be at, in two minutes, was in Secure Four, a high-security auditorium. When they'd first started work on the 4144, meetings were getting so turned around that they'd installed this system to keep track. They still got shifted from time to time, so checking it had become habit.

  The system showed that the meeting was still on time and in the same place, but there was a peripheral note keyed to him saying that he had been cancelled as a briefer. He was supposed to report to call a secure extension instead.

  "What the . . . ?"

  » » »

  Bill flopped into his office chair and punched in the extension, wondering who would answer.

  "3326."

  "Weaver," he said, as calmly as he could.

  "Commander Weaver, this is Admiral Townsend," the voice said. "I'm the base commander at Norfolk. A blast from the past apparently needs to talk to you. Now." The admiral did not sound happy.

  "Sir . . ." Bill started to protest and then stopped. If Townsend was saying they needed to meet, now, it was something serious. "Where?"

  "My office, as soon as you can," the admiral said. "You know how to find it?"

  "Yes, sir," Bill replied. "I'll be there in about . . . well, it's going to take at least forty-five minutes."

  "See you in one hour." The phone clicked off.

  Maulk. He had to drive back to Norfolk!

  When Bill reached the admiral's office he was surprised as hell to see Chief Miller, in a Hawaiian shirt of all things, waiting in the room. Not to mention Mimi and Tuffy.

  "Good to see you," Bill said, puzzled but pleased. "Long time, Chief."

  "You can trip down memory lane later," Townsend replied. "Apparently our security isn't as tight as we would have liked."

  "I don't think that you can really say that, sir," Miller replied unhappily. "There's no real way to tell how Tuffy got the information."

  "Go ahead and explain, young lady," the admiral said, leaning back in his chair.

  "Tuffy says that we, that is Mr. Miller, myself and Tuffy, have to go along with you on the ship," Mimi said calmly. "You have a warp ship, converted from a submarine, docked at Newport News. Naval Construction Contract 4144. You're leaving in about a week. Chief Miller needs to be outfitted with a Wyvern Five. That's why we had to meet today; he'll need to get started tomorrow."

  "Just like that?" Bill asked, amused. "Does Tuffy say why?"

  "Not . . . really," Mimi said, showing the first sign of agitation. "Usually, we communicate with . . . concepts, not really words. I just realize that I've known something all along. But this time, it's like I can't understand what I know. There's math in there, that's mostly what it is. Very high end math, further than I've gone. Maybe further than you've gone, Dr. Weaver. But it's locked up in causality and . . . chaos. The concept is just very big. I think what he's trying to say, although he says I'm wrong, that it's more, is that if we don't go along, and stay with the missions in the future, the universe is going to end. Not the Earth, the universe. I get a sort of feeling like a bubble popping and then . . . nothing."

  "Oh," Bill replied, blinking. "Does he explain why? In a way that you can understand?"

  "I think it's more like something tied to probability," Mimi said, shrugging. "I can't make heads or tails of it, really. But he's definite. We have to go along."

  "Okay," Bill said, shrugging. "You're in."

  "Just like that?" Admiral Townsend asked, aghast. "The entire team has already been chosen. And they have been training for the last year."

  "Admiral, whatever Tuffy is, he's never been one to joke around," Bill replied. "And if he says that these three have to come along, they have to come along. My recommendation, sir, and I will gladly put it in writing, is that they be assigned as crew."

  "Okay, I'll get started on the paperwork," the admiral said, looking over at the former chief. "There are days, Todd, when I wish you'd just left me in that damned jungle."

  Mimi and Tuffy had been invited to stay with the admiral for the evening. While Weaver would have preferred to repair to the bar for the discussion with Miller, that was out of the question. So the two of them found themselves in a secure room with nary a beer in sight.

  "So you got your ship?" Miller asked, taking a sip of coffee. It was Navy coffee, at least, so it wasn't exactly bad.

  "The United States now has a warp ship," Bill said. "You wanna hear?"

  "Go ahead," Miller said, leaning back.

  "I figured out a way to get the little black box to work," Bill said. "The Navy built a spaceship around an old Ohio. In two days we're lifting off for the first deep space mission. We've tested it in the system, but we've never even gotten to the heliopause. This time we're going to other worlds. You in?"

  "Like I'm going to settle for just that," Miller grunted. "I want access to the details. The thing is, I don't know why that furball wants me on this trip, so I don't know what I need to know. And neither do you or Greg T
ownsend. So I need access to all of it."

  "That's gonna be tough," Bill admitted. "The security level on some of this stuff is cut-your-throat-after-reading. And in case you hadn't noticed," Bill added, waving at his gold leaves.

  "I'll admit I'm having a hard time with that," Miller said. "Who the grapp was stupid enough to give you a commission?"

  "More a concession to reality than anything," Bill said, shrugging. "Lots of stuff works the Navy way for this. How to pack people into a ship and keep them fed, watered, aired and sane. How to run multiple complex systems. One big difference . . ."

  "It ain't water," Miller said, leaning back.

  "It ain't indeed," Bill said, grinning. "It ain't even underwater. Space has damned few reference points, stuff that you don't find on earth. Vacuum. Stars. You can think of them as rocks and shoals, but there's a fundamental difference between brushing too close to a reef and brushing too close to a sun."

  "Heh," Miller said, grinning back. "You run aground in a star . . ."

  "And it's a bad thing," Bill said, nodding. "But then there's gravitational effects, which are active when the boat is in normal space and . . . There's a billion things that naval officers, no matter how well trained, aren't prepared for. So we've got a CO and XO who are, in order, a former fighter pilot and a bubblehead, and then there's me. Columbia was going through the merger mania that started after the Adar Commerce bill and they kept yanking me around to different departments and off the ship project. So I convinced the right people that what the boat desperately needed was an astrogation officer. Someone with fundamental knowledge not only of astronomy but of the way that the drive worked, how to handle gravitational effects . . ."

  "Too bad you're not the commander," Miller said, shaking his head. "Wouldn't that be a hoot."

  "It's a command slot," Weaver replied. "I'm in line for command. Third officer in line."

  "Jesus," Miller said, his eyes widening. "Now that is grapping nuts!"

  "I've been on two cruises as wet-navy navigator," Bill replied, calmly. "Six month deployments. One in a carrier and one in a sub. I aced the Navy Nuclear Power Training course. I've been to Surface Warfare School, Underwater Warfare School and I did Submarine Officer Advanced Course and Command and General Staff College. I am a commissioned officer in the United States Navy and I'm damned well doing the job."

  "Sorry, sir," Miller said, frowning. "I guess we've both been through changes," he added, waving at his clothes.

  "The point being, that while I'm an unusual lieutenant commander I am, nonetheless, a lieutenant commander. I'll call some people but I can't guarantee that you're going to be given 'full access.' "

  "Figure it out," Miller growled. "And you're going to need to think about it for Mimi, too. But I definitely want to know how things work on this damned trip. I don't know how I'm going to save the universe or whatever, but if I gotta I gotta."

  "You sure?" Bill said, wrinkling his brow. "I mean, there's things about this tub I wish I didn't know. You're going to puke when you see the navigation system."

  "And all of it's built by the lowest bidder?" the chief grumped.

  "Lowest bidder, hell," Bill said, chuckling. "Some of it was built by me in my garage while suffering from sleep deprivation. I could wish the lowest bidder had gotten it that right."

  "I just hope you got all the physics right this time," Miller said with a grin.

  "What the maulk does that mean, Chief? I always get the physics right."

  "Well, after things cooled down for us I read up on some of that particle physics stuff you were throwing around on that mission. And you told me that muons were made of two quarks. I remember it like it was yesterday. But muons ain't . . ."

  "Naw, Chief. I'm sure I didn't say that," Bill said sheepishly and took a sip from his coffee cup. "Muons are fundamental particles. Are you sure I didn't say that mesons are made of two quarks?"

  "No, sir. You said muons. And according to wikipedia.com muons ain't made of quarks." Miller grinned tight-lipped. A few years as a navy officer hadn't changed his friend's slow southern drawl a bit and hearing it brought back memories for Miller. After all, Miller thought, with Bill the word "naw" had two syllables.

  "When exactly did I tell you that, Chief? Hell, I wouldn't make such a fundamental mistake . . . not under any normal circumstance I can think of." Weaver scratched at his head and shrugged as he tried to remember the conversations they'd had from, what was it, eight or nine years ago.

  "It was right after the spike throwin' boys rushed us . . ."

  "Holy maulk, Chief. There was big green monsters from outer space tryin' to grappin' eat us for all I knew and you're bitching cause I told you that muons were made of quarks?" Bill wasn't sure if he should laugh or try to kick Miller's ass. Come to think of it, laugh was probably the better choice.

  "Hell sir, I'm just glad you figured out how to turn the safety off on that pistol." Miller winked and tried not to giggle coffee across the table at his old friend.

  "You think the way I handled a pistol was something wait till you see what I can do with a submarine!" Bill said with a chuckle.

  4

  Fear the Pink

  "So we've really got a spaceship," Berg said, shaking his head.

  "Nobody briefed you, huh," Lance Corporal Al Hattelstad said, grinning devilishly. The third member of Charlie Team, Second Platoon was short with curly, dark-brown hair. "Yeah, they got a drive from somewhere, where is classified, and stuck it in an old missile sub. It works, but it's funky as hell. There's plenty of gas, but sometimes we have to stop and 'chill.' Which really grapping sucks."

  "During chill we have to go to zero gee," Jaenisch said, scrubbing at the breech of the M-10. The simulation rounds tended to dirty up a weapon even more than regular fire so they'd brought the weapons from the test engagement back to the armory to clean them. Normally, weapons cleaning was done in barracks or the unit offices, but the way that things were laid out it made more sense to do it in the armory. And since it was a secure area, they could talk about their jobs, which Jaenisch had pointed out was verboten in the barracks. "I don't mind it but—"

  "Free-fall sickness is the worst grapping feeling in the universe," Hattelstad said. "Except maybe pre-mission physical. But I have to protest. Berg is still a Nugget. It's a violation of standard operating procedure to give him a team name until he has established himself. We will be shamed before all the other teams if we assign him full nickname status as a mere Nugget! I mean, sure, he's been through the physical . . ."

  "Actually," Berg said, uneasily. "I haven't been through any new physical. Last one I had was at FOT."

  "See!" Hattelstad said. "He's not a real Space Marine. He hasn't been through pre-mission physical!"

  "Wait till you see the grapping clip," Jaenisch said. "Then you, too, shall forever after call him 'Two-Gun.' "

  "So we're going out on this ship?" Berg asked. "I mean, out of the solar system?"

  "Where no Marine has gone before and all that," Jaenisch said, nodding. "No PT tomorrow. We start final load-out at 0800. But we're not planning on leaving until somewhere around 2400. The bitch is, you're probably not going to get a chance to show off. The mission is supposed to be pure Wyvern. And they're M-5s. Top told me all your Wyvern time is M-4."

  "Yeah," Berg said. "What's the difference?"

  "Lots," Hattelstad said. "Faster and stronger and all that with more ammo storage. But the worst part's the damned sensors. The grapping things have got sensors out the ass. Most of it's maulk I don't even understand."

  "They've got all these grapping particle sensors, just in case there's some invisible monsters," Jaenisch explained. "Nurtonos and mersons and . . . Maulk you have to be a physicist to understand the damned things. We've got a simulator on the ship. Hopefully, you'll have time to get adjusted to it."

  "I'm looking forward to checking them out," Berg said. "I got an A in physics."

  "Maulk, he's a Two-Gun mojo expert and he's a grap
ping physicist?" Hattelstad crowed. "What is the Corps coming to?"

  "A better and brighter day, Lance Corporal," the first sergeant said.

  "Maulk," Hattelstad snapped, jumping in his seat. "Sorry, Top, but you got to stop sneaking up on us that way. One of these days we're going to be holding live rounds and then where will we be?"