Chapter 19
Taddeuz Bertingas: STRIKE FORCE
The inside of a dragon was more crowded than Bertingas had imagined. Armored ductwork for the fans squeezed the control space fore and aft.
“Why do they put such heavy plating around the inside rim of the fans?” he had asked the Capuchin who was ground chief for the vehicle and flew as gunner and number-one fixit. “I wouldn’t think you’d take many hits from that shallow an angle.”
The Capuchin raised its eyebrows—a Human gesture which distorted its facial markings into the parody of a sad clown. Tad had quickly learned this expression was one of disdain.
“None at all. But you take one heavy bead, at any angle, through the fan and it will shed some blades. At 35,000 revs they will travel the length of the ship without slowing down. You need the armor, unless you want to wear holes.”
The sides and overheads of the space were squeezed with equipment, control panels, gauges, lights, and screens—for navigation, defensive ranging and detection, offensive ranging and targeting, turbine read-outs, generator read-outs, control surface indicators, plasma-beam focusing and firing, and communications.
As soon as they climbed aboard, Mora had found a flip-down seat and settled into it. She pulled her knees up and hugged them, making herself small. Aside from Tad and the ground chief, the crew consisted of two other Capuchins and a goggled Cernian pilot. For any one of them to move, two others had to slide out of the way.
The only clear headroom was the throat of the turret. It was choked with the target chamber of the plasma gun, which was the size of a prize-winning pumpkin.
“I’ve never seen one of those up close before,” Tad said. They had a long ride before them, nothing to listen to—yet—but the drone of the fans, and too much to think about—if he let himself. So he intended to ask questions.
“Not much to see, Counselor.”
“Can you tell me how it works?”
Again that sad-clown stare.
“Crude device, really. Pre-Pact technology by a thousand years or more . . . Back here is the laser ignition system.” One small paw, with a wrinkled, black-skinned finger that looked almost Human, pointed to a cylinder that stuck out of the rear of the spherical target chamber.
“It’s a carbon dioxide pulse laser. Puts out about 200 watts in the infrared. Very tight beam. Very hot. These here”—the Capuchin pointed to a series of six graduated pipes that angled off from the working end of the laser, came forward, and angled into the chamber—“are the mirror splitters and the beam guides. And these jackets here, here, and here are photoflash amplifiers. They pump the beam up to about four megawatts on its way to the target.”
“What’s the target made of?” Tad asked.
Crouched on her seat, Mora smiled and rolled her eyes at him.
The Capuchin reached up, flipped open the lid on an injector that looked like a toothpick dispenser. Out came a steel whisker.
“The chamber is hollow.” The alien tapped it. It rang. “The exact center is where those six beams all come to focus. Now, this whisker has a glass bead at one end. Can you see it?”
Bertingas stared. He saw something that might have been a bubble of spit. Maybe it was just a reflection off the steel. He nodded.
“The bead is filled with a mixture of deuterium and tritium. Both isotopes of hydrogen. Get the right mix and it’ll fire every time. That bead isn’t glued on too tight. This mechanism”—the Capuchin tapped the injector—“flexes the steel and snaps it in synch with the laser pulse. That shoots the bead—actually a whole string of beads—into the chamber, right into the focus as the pulsed beams arrive there . . . Then what happens, Counselor?”
“With four megawatts coming down on it, the bead goes poof!”
“Right, but it’s more complicated than that. The glass shell has two sides: an outside and an inside. As the bead vaporizes, the outside goes flying away to anywhere—but we don’t care about that. It’s the inside surface we need. That side has nowhere to fly to except more inner, you see?”
“Sure.”
“That creates pressure. Now, we already have heat from the laser beam. Together, heat and pressure set up a perfect reason for those hydrogen isotopes to fuse into helium.”
“There can’t be much hydrogen in that tiny pellet.”
“Don’t need much to get the fusion bang we need. Okay. What’s a hydrogen bomb? Just an expanding wave front of plasma, moving fast—”
“And the pressure,” Tad picked up, “pushes it out the firing tube at the front end, right?”
“Wrong, Counselor. Not unless you want to burn hell out of the inside surfaces of the chamber—and get just a drip of cold plasma out of the firing tube for your trouble. You have to control the wave front from the start. That’s what these bulges are for.”
The Capuchin ran a hand down the polar ridges that gave the target chamber its pumpkin shape.
“What are they?” Bertingas asked.
“Electromagnets. They create a magnetic bottle inside the chamber. Its envelope contains the plasma and pressurizes it. An opening in the field conducts the superheated fluid out the tube and toward the objective.”
“What about radiant heat—the infrared? That chamber must be pretty heavily insulated and cooled, eh?”
“It still gets pretty hot in here.” The Capuchin shrugged. “Hot enough to crinkle fur.”
“I see. Uh—thank you for the explanation.”
“Oh, that’s not all. I’ve added an improvement or two of my own to this gun.”
“Such as?”
“See these rings on the firing tube?”
“More magnets?”
“In a way. Those are the stators of a magnetohydrodynamic generator. They pick up a charge as the plasma leaves the gun. I’ve fed the current back into the power supplies for the laser ignition, the bead injector, and the magnetic bottle. At peak firing rates, this gun is almost self-powered.”
“A perpetual motion machine?”
The Capuchin grimaced. “Until you run out of deuterium beads.”
“Of course.”
Bertingas clapped a hand on the alien’s shoulder—a gesture from which the little Capuchin shrank. Then Tad turned to the Cernian pilot.
“You don’t have to draw me out with your questions, Counselor,” the pilot said. He sounded cold, but beneath the dark goggles of his race, he was smiling. “We’re on course for Batavia. Over the inland sea now. The deepest part. Which isn’t too deep for any deep-water sailor.”
“Where are the boats?”
“They’re already on station. Playing at their cover. They even have nets out.”
“They still have their guns under wraps, I hope.”
“They’d better. At four klicks, they’re inside electronic surveillance range by the island.”
“With surprise, maybe they can knock out the dome generator . . . ?”
“Not unless they level the island. Those spinners are buried deep.”
“I guess so.”
“But you’re right, Sir . . . Once the refractor dome goes up, then we’re outside, they’re inside, and the war’s over. So, what’s our plan for dealing with the dome?”
“Maybe we can get them to drop it.”
“How—by asking nicely?”
Bertingas smiled and changed the subject. “How’s our wing holding up?”
The Cernian—whose name was Turkhana Maas, but no relation to Choora—tuned his ranging screens and studied the pattern of transducer blips. Tad watched over his shoulder.
Two hundred air vehicles, some paid for but most stolen, spread out in a shallow vee behind them. The brightest blips were the hardened fliers in the line: armed dragons like their command car, armored personnel carriers, a few ship’s boats with ablative shielding. Weaker images showed where the lines were reinforced with transports, cargo trucks, commercial carriers. All were loaded to the slats, Bertingas knew, with the Department’s security troops. Each body sagg
ed under the weight of assault gear—repulsors, bolt guns, static chargers, concussion and fragging grenades, comm sets, flares, ropes, pitons, picks, and hammers. Seventy-eight hundred fighting personnel, freshly trained and eager. Soon the sergeants and psychers would pass among them, recalling signal examples of offense and insult, chanting the names of those who were dead and maimed under the Zergliedern system, whipping up the troops’ enthusiasm for the coming attack on the Haiken Maru.
“Those old buses you dealt for are barely holding formation,” Maas said. “And in another ten minutes they’ll be switching to reserve tanks. If they’re going to land ground troops, we’d better get them over something you can walk on. Soon. Our wing isn’t going to be attacking the causeway, is it?”
“No, that’s Follard’s objective.”
“Thought not. Then I’d say we’re going to have a couple of loads of our effectives swimming for Batavia.”
“Can we do midair refueling?”
“On a modified city bus? You’re kidding, Counselor. Somebody should have worked all this out before we lifted off.”
“There wasn’t time to think of everything,” Bertingas said smoothly.
“There never is, especially when it’s our lives at stake.”
Tad held his silence at this jibe. He exchanged a look with Mora. She shook her head.
After a pause, Tad said, “Could we have some Freevid?”
The pilot jerked in surprise. “Unh—which channel?”
“Any one will do.”
The timing was impeccable. As the holoscreen settled its long-distance static, they could make out the ornate, four-color seal of the Governor of Aurora Cluster. A deep male voice was saying, “ . . . for an important message from Her Excellency Deirdre Sallee.”
Very formal. Subdued crisis atmosphere. A nice touch.
The screen dissolved into the face of Her Excellency, lined with cares and wrinkled with concern. It was a face that Bertingas was sure Madame Sallee had never—either intentionally or by mischance—shown to a pickup lens. He mentally gave Gina a gold star in electronic make-up.
“My fellow citizens and subjects of the Pact,” the image began, with just the right note of sadness.
“It is my solemn duty, and one I fulfill with deepest regret, to report to you an instance of intolerable transgression among one whom we all had believed to show loyalty to the Pact. Evidence has been placed before me that one of our—formerly—most respected trading organizations, the Haiken Maru, has aided, armed, and supported elements currently in rebellion against Pact authority. The receiver of this support, the officially deposed Governor of Arachne, Aaron Spile, has used it in a vicious and unprovoked attack, with heavy casualties, on a loyal Central Fleet base in our Cluster.”
Bertingas glanced around the dragon’s control space. Mora was staring with open-mouthed wonder.
“The governor would never acknowledge—!” she began. Tad smiled and shushed her.
“This was, for the Haiken Maru,” the screen went on, “no simple mistake of trade policy. Caveat emptor does not apply. This was a calculated act of vile treason beyond any explanation or justification. Valence Elidor and his fellow traders have made a cunning choice, to support a rebel and a renegade, in defiance of established order.”
The image of Deirdre Sallee took a breath. A long pause.
“As your governor, I must make my choices. As of this date, this hour, the Haiken Maru are disbanded. Their offices and emporia are closed; their inventories, assets, and records confiscated; their contracts with any and all parties abrogated. I take this action under the authority invested in me by the high secretary, both the late Stephen VI and his futurely elected successor.
“At this moment, loyal units of the Kona Tatsu and our own Cluster Command, as well as remnants of Central Fleet—”
“Remnants!” Mora hooted.
“—are effecting this order. If you, as citizen or subject, have honest dealings with the Haiken Maru and experience an inconvenience under this civil action, I urge you not to attempt interference. Opportunities will be made available at a later date to obtain redress.”
“Whatever that means,” the Cernian pilot muttered.
“As of this date, this hour,” the screen said, “I am electronically publishing a warrant for the arrest and detention of Valence Elidor, Wynan Corfu, Abraham Wile, Pers Glomig, and John Does 1 through 250 who may be proven to be Haiken Maru agents and administrators.”
“Thank you, Gina,” Bertingas said aloud. “Now my ass is officially in a felony.”
Mora giggled.
“The miscreant Aaron Spile will be dealt with under military action at the appropriate time and place . . . It is my wish, as your governor, that the current civil actions may be completed in a timely fashion and without undue disruption of honest Pact business.”
“Whatever that means!” Mora, the pilot, and Tad all chorused.
“I thank you for your continued support,” the governor’s image finished and faded.
Bertingas reached over to the communications panel and turned off the receiver.
“That’s our go signal,” he said to the pilot. “Proceed to full speed.” He keyed to the operations frequency for his own wing of the expedition: “Blue corps, pick it up, follow on me.” Then to the command network: “Red Leader, Green Leader, go and go.”
“Roger that, Blue,” Halan Follard replied. “Tell Gina that was a beautiful piece of work. The governor won’t be able to withdraw or deny her position now.”
“We hope . . .”
“Four minutes to the boats,” Patty Firkin cut through.
“Do we have a dome yet?” Follard.
“Not this side—whoops! Just went up. Tuned to full black.”
Bertingas glanced into the miniature strat tank that was tucked in between the pilot’s station and the comm panel. It was tuned to accept coded and scrambled sitreps from the sensor equipment on Follard’s and Firkin’s lead ships and collate them with data from Bertingas’ position in the attack. The tank, which a moment earlier had shown a tiny holo image of the saw-toothed island, now held only a mute, black hemisphere. It was fringed with Batavia’s outlying defenses and the shallow green sea beyond her docks. It looked like a huge tumor exposed on a surgical field of green cloth.
“I see it,” Tad said.
Mora craned over from her sideline seat.
The first wave of their assault—troop carriers, old trucks, and city buses—slid onto the fringes of the island. Armed and eager aliens from Bertingas’ scratch security force poured out and infested the quays, docks, and empty warehouses outside the dome.
The plasma batteries of Batavia’s external defenses tried to depress far enough to take out these insignificant attackers. Yet the guns had been sized and aligned to ward off approaches from the sky by cruisers arid destroyers, at least. Low-flying aircars and ground troops moved beneath their swivels with impunity. The one or two gun captains who tried to fire on the attackers only vaporized seawater a hundred meters beyond the docks.
Within ten minutes, the officers leading the assault reported the enemy’s outlying guns captured. Beyond that, however, they faced the deep black curtain of the dome.
The “fishing boats” opened up with their plasma beams. One, two, three lines of sputtering white fire arced up to touch the dome. Without effect. After a minute or so, the rocking, pitching vessels were able to bring their beams together into a single spot. That spot began to turn gray, then milky, then almost transparent. Then the ships’ fire drifted slightly. The spot dissolved. The dome’s face turned black again. One by one, the attackers’ impromptu navy ceased fire.
“End of game,” Mora said quietly.
“Not quite,” Bertingas replied easily.
“What do you mean? Those things are impassable. Missiles, ballistics, and ships moving at any speed just get deflected. You can pump plasma into one all day, and it only feeds the generators, makes the shield stronger.”
/> Bertingas smiled at her. To the network, he said, “Did you two crack the formula for that virus?”
“Virus?” Firkin’s deep voice rumbled, surprised. “Never thought of it that way. More like a dose of poison—”
“Whatever,” Follard responded. “To answer your question, Tad, yes. Once we got hard data on the field strength. My forward tactical eldef is releasing the drone now.”
“Can they see it?”
“They literally won’t know what hit them.”
“Roger that. We will observe from this side.”
“What—?” Mora began, but Tad just smiled and pointed into the tank.
One the far side of the dome, a small missile darted forward from a lumbering aircar in Follard’s van. Kona Tatsu technicians had loaded the ship down with electronic defense gear and this one strange weapon. The tiny missile approached the blank, depthless curve of the shield and exploded about 300 scale meters short.
Mora groaned, but Tad just smiled harder.
As interpreted by the strat tank, the detritus of the missile showed up as a thousand tiny stars, bright points of light drifting forward against the dome. Tad knew, from the theory explained by Follard and Firkin in one of their late-night sessions, that the reality was much less impressive: the stars were microscopic metal filings, shreds of a ruthenium-nickel-ferrous compound that had no place in nature.
Each scrap of metal was a cultured magnetic monopole.
When the sprinklings entered the outer layers of the dome, its computer controls began their mindless routine. The resident AID divided and reversed the electromagnetic field to rend anybody within it. As the field reversed itself, each monopole reversed it again, locally. The computer re-reversed the field. The monopole reversed it. And reversed it. And reversed it
While Tad and Mora watched, the smooth black curve mottled with a thousand tiny dimples and bumps, like abrasions on a black curve of glass. Each dimple snapped out into a bump, each bump sucked in to become a dimple, back and forth, in and out, until a quadrant of the dome began to glow with yellow incandescence. The local interference spots began to grow larger and merge together into one uncontrollable spot that flexed in and out. When the surface of the dome finally tore, it was like a weather balloon coming apart. The rent split the dome halfway to its zenith and spread like a white grin over a blackened face.
An Honorable Defense Book 1 Crisis of Empire Page 22