Vorpal Blade votsb-2

by John Ringo

  “What?” Miller asked.

  “Shhh,” the Marine replied. “Listen for hissing. It actually works.”

  “Pressure check?” Berg asked.

  “Doesn’t count with us,” Jaen said. “It’s a crew announcement.”

  “Sorry, they didn’t cover it at Paris Island,” Berg said, grinning.

  “God, I want to be there the first time some DI has to,” Hattelstad said. “ ’Upon atmospheric exit your ship’s skipper will call for pressure check to ensure air integrity. This command means nothing to Marines, for we are hard as steel. Space Marines therefore neither leak at-moh-sphere nor need at-moh-sphere!’ ”

  “I don’t hear anything,” Mimi said, blinking.

  “We wouldn’t in here,” Julia said, shaking her head vigorously. She hadn’t been able to clear her left ear and it was painful. “This room is in the middle of the add-ons they put in the missile room. But there are sailors moving around listening for leaks. They’ll dial down the pressure in just a minute.”

  “All sections check clear for leakage,” the XO said. “Pressure drop, nominal. Space drive nominal, ardune generator nominal. Heat sink… nominal.”

  The last was important. The engines, various electronics, and human bodies installed in the boat created a huge amount of heat. Underwater it was dispersed into that magnificent heat sink molecule H2O. In space, the heat dissipated poorly.

  The answer was a new and innovative heat sink. Installed in the slots that on a normal sub held the towed array sonar were two extensible cylinders of, essentially, glass with some iron and a few other trace elements thrown in. Heat from the sub would be pumped into them until they were boiling hot. The mixture of molten silicon dioxide (glass) and other elements were perfect reservoirs for thermal energy until the molten tubes reached near vaporization state. At that point, the boat would have to find a deep space, very cold, spot and “chill.” To extend the heat capacity of the tubes they were surrounded in liquid metal heat-pipes that flowed out to the underside of the spaceship. The heat-pipes would radiate some of the energy into space and the liquid would cool and be flowed back over the molten glass tubes. This only bought time; eventually the thermal load became far more than the thermal management system could handle and “chilling” would be necessary.

  “Recommend we come to heading two-one-eight or head out, sir,” Weaver said. “We’re going to be in range of NASA sensors in Australia in two minutes.”

  “XO, are we all clear for space ops?” the CO asked.

  “Certify clear for space ops,” the XO said.

  “Astrogation?”

  “Recommend come to heading one seven eight, mark one dot three. Two hundred G delta-V to two-zero-zero kilometers per second. We’ll be to two planetary diameters in two minutes and seven seconds at that acceleration and velocity, then we can go to Warp One. Maintain Whiskey Two Dot Five for niner seconds at Warp One, then turn to heading two-zero-five increase to Warp Three. Saturn orbit on that heading is seven seconds.”

  “Why not a direct course?” the CO asked.

  “Alpha Centauri is currently on the back side of the sun, sir,” Weaver said. “We sort of need to fly around the system to get there. And if we cut closer than that course, we risk hitting Mars. Not close or anything, but I’d prefer some margin. We could go up and over if you’d prefer…”

  “No, that sounds good,” the CO said, shaking his head. “Make it so, XO. I would prefer to avoid the edges of space until we reach Saturn. But tell everybody we are leaving.”

  8

  Taste the Soprano

  “All hands. Now leaving Earth orbit. Last shot of Earth on the viewscreens, now.”

  “Gotta watch this,” Everette said, keying the TV in the compartment on with his implant. As they watched, the Earth started to fall away from the view. Then the image changed to a rear camera view and the planet slowly started to shrink.

  “I’m not sure if this is scary or just really cool,” Mimi said. “I think both.”

  “I agree, honey chile,” Julia said.

  “I think it’s cool,” Miriam said as the planet got smaller and smaller. “And if you don’t have much to do until we reach a planet, I don’t have anything to do unless we find aliens. Except talk to Tchar.”

  “I thought I saw an Adar,” Mimi said. “Where is he?”

  “Engineering,” Miriam replied. “We’re not allowed in there. He bunks in Section D, aft. That’s right by the entrance to the missile compartment and the shortest distance to engineering. He has a real problem moving around the boat cause he’s so big.”

  “Where are we allowed?” Mimi asked.

  “This area,” Everette answered. “That is, the entire mission section, but I’d say you should steer clear of security in general. The sick bay, which is just off of this section to starboard. And the away pod, which is on top of the boat.”

  “Stand by for warp entry,” the 1-MC proclaimed.

  “This is so cool,” Miriam said as the camera shot changed to a wide angle apparently out of the front of the sub. The stars, which had been pinpoints, suddenly began to lengthen and brighten, shifting into long strands, red towards the front and shading to blue. Then they snapped back to normal, but they were now, appreciably, moving.

  “You can see out?” Mimi asked. “I thought we were in an alternate universe? At least, that’s the math.”

  “The drive automatically cycles,” Everette said. “We’re actually jumping very short distances, then dropping back into normal space. But each cycle is in nanoseconds, just enough time, in fact, for certain wavelengths of light to pass the barrier. So it looks as if we’re in normal space. None of the wavelengths, interestingly enough, are useful militarily. You can’t make a high energy laser out of any of them. And the cycling is too high for cosmic rays to penetrate. But we can still see out. It’s a very neat system.”

  “Something’s happening,” Miriam said, pointing at the TV.

  The view was slewing and suddenly it zoomed.

  “Mars,” Everette said, nodding. “I guess we’re going close enough it was worth a look.”

  “No chance of landing and taking a couple more samples?” Julia asked.

  “Not this trip.”

  “More samples?” Mimi asked.

  “We’ve had five shakedown trips,” Julia said.

  “We’ve landed on Mars, the moon and Titan, one of the moons of Jupiter,” Captain MacDonald said. “The last two were damned cold. You could feel it right through the Wyvern armor. Next, I think you need to meet the rest of the security team. That is still shaking down.”

  “Marines and Special Forces?” Miller said, grinning. “I can imagine.”

  “You guys haven’t got anything better to do than clean weapons?” Master Sergeant Steve Runner asked.

  Steve was a sixteen-year veteran of the Special Forces and had come to the conclusion that he needed his head examined for volunteering for this mission. With medium build, brown hair and brown eyes, he’d fit in well in Afghanistan once upon a time. But the hammering the Islamics had taken from the Dreen had pretty much taken the juice out of the World-Wide Jihad. Frankly, there weren’t many wars worth fighting on Earth anymore.

  He’d picked up a bachelors in geology through the Army, mostly using it to bank on his retirement. The “suggestion” that he volunteer for this mission had come out of the blue. But, hey, going to space. How bad could it be? So he had to baby-sit some doctorate types. They hadn’t told him he was going to have to deal with jarheads.

  “At least we’re not playing nursemaid to a bunch of eggheads,” Jaenisch replied.

  “Nope, you’re going to be out on point playing red shirt,” Runner said, grinning. “Better make sure them M10s are dialed in.”

  The M10 was a .308 version of the venerable M-16 series of weapons. During the brief war with the Dreen, it had become apparent that fighting them took something with more stopping power than the 5.56 mm rounds the M-16 series fired. The ammo
weight went way up for the same number of rounds, but then again being able to stop a charging howler butt-cold was worth it. For that matter, they’d proven in Africa that it could kill a leopard pretty cleanly or a lion if you pumped enough rounds into the things. But one team member, who had been medically retired, also learned that they weren’t worth a damn on Cape Buffalo.

  “Me, I’ve got a date with a probe,” Runner continued as he exited the mess. “Don’t miss the Saturn fly-by. It’s gonna be good.”

  “You can’t walk on it, you can’t breathe it and you can’t shoot it,” Hattelstad said. “Besides, we’ve seen it.” The short, slim red-headed gunner clicked together the pieces of his Squad Support Weapon and jacked the grenade launcher. “What the grapp do we care about Saturn?”

  “I’d rather see Mars,” Berg said, reassembling his M10. “Glad we caught it on the fly-by.”

  “What’s so special about Mars?” Hattelstad asked.

  “Saturn was the god of partying,” Bergstresser said, jacking back the bolt of the rifle and then letting it fly forward. “Mars was the god of War. God of the Marines.”

  » » »

  “Doctor Dean,” Runner said, nodding at the scientist. “You sent word you needed a hand?”

  It had taken nearly ten minutes to make his way from the mission specialists’ quarters to the torpedo room where the probes were maintained. Clearly Dr. Dean was unhappy about the time.

  “You’re finally here,” Dean said. “Set the oscilloscope up and make certain that the output of the ACP is following design spec. And then I need a readout on the GCMS instrument heater output. This thing wasn’t quite complete when we got it from APL.”

  “Uh, ACP?” Runner looked around the room thinking he should recognize the acronym.

  “Damnit boy, the Aerosol Collector and Pyrolyser needs to be checked out. Then check the wiring connections for the heater on the Gas Chromatograph and Mass Spectrometer!” Dr. Dean said, scowling.

  “Yes, Doctor,” Runner said, trying, as always, not to say it with a German accent. Runner didn’t mind getting maulk: He was SF, he ate maulk for breakfast. But condescending maulk was another matter all together. He bit his tongue and set about the task of connecting the ACP and GCMS modules to the probe.

  After nearly an hour of last-second modifications and unapproved preflight checkouts Dr. Dean proclaimed the probe ready for service. Flight readiness review teams at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory or at Johns Hopkins would have had a conniption fit and probably fallen over dead from the fact that a high level Ph.D. and a Special Forces NCO prepped the spacecraft for flight. Russian counterparts on the other hand, would have smiled, patted them on the back, and started shooting cognac at a job well done. The Blade was breaking through multiple paradigms of America’s views of space exploration.

  “Is there anything else, Doctor?” Runner asked as the probe slid into the tube.

  “No, you can go,” the planetologist replied, not bothering to turn around. “Next time, though, I expect you to be here when I call. I know you’re military but in the scientific world, time is of the essence.”

  “I’ll try to keep that in mind, Doctor,” the master sergeant said as he made his way out of the torpedo room. The worst part was, his job was keeping this asshole alive.

  » » »

  “Probe ready on Tube Number Four,” the tactical officer said. Lieutenant Souza was grinning madly. “Ready to launch space probe, sir!”

  “Ready Tube Four,” the XO replied.

  “Tube primed,” the launch controller replied. “Tube Four ready to launch.”

  “Launch probe.”

  The boat shuddered as the probe was fired from the torpedo tube and began its descent to Saturn’s atmosphere.

  The probe was essentially identical to the Huygens probe that was part of the larger Cassini spacecraft launched many years before. Once clear of the tube, gyros rotated the rear of the probe in the direction necessary to slow its progress and a rocket fired, slowing the probe so that Saturn’s gravity could capture it.

  The entire assembly remained together, the retro rockets firing from time to time to slow its fall or correct its entry, until it hit the outer shreds of the deep Saturnian atmosphere. Then the “mission package” detached from the rocket, which was left to plummet away into the depths.

  The mission package, though, deployed a parachute, initially just a thin ribbon of high-tensile cloth, that slowed its descent as automated systems began air sampling. The GCMS was an only slightly updated copy of the Huygens package. The instrument was a versatile gas chemical analyzer that could measure a wide variety of chemicals and their concentration in the Saturnian atmosphere. The gas chromatograph of the system made fine measurements of the gas content, then implemented a heater to create pyrolysis products that would then be more finely measured by the ACP. The ACP would also suck in some of the Saturn atmospheric gasses through various filters and cook them as well to decompose them into more basic materials that could be analyzed via the GCMS. The system worked flawlessly and generated the most detailed understanding of the gas giant planet’s atmosphere that mankind had ever had.

  The most important component of the mission was locality. The receiving station was the Blade and it was very close to the probe when compared to the distance between Cassini-Huygens and Earth. The close range allowed the probe to connect to the Blade with a data rate similar to broadband Internet as opposed to the few bits per second available to the Cassini-Huygens probe. Therefore the probe could pump data continuously as it plunged deeper and deeper into the vapors of Saturn’s atmosphere without worrying about overloading the memory of the Blade. The Blade could also send real-time commands to the descent probe that couldn’t have been done from Earth. Actual data points only meters apart along the descent trajectory were taken and a constant optimization of the probe’s descent was maintained. The difference of actually being there and tossing a robot from Earth was immediately apparent.

  Most people on the boat, though, weren’t paying much attention to the “take”…

  “Thank you for letting us up here, Captain,” Mimi said, staring up through the boat’s sole viewport.

  To drop the probe the Vorpal Blade had actually come inside the orbit of Saturn’s rings. From Earth they were just a thick band of white. Up close the rings, composed mostly of ice with some rocky material, reflected a billion colors like a rainbow. Light from Saturn shone on them as well as the light from the distant sun, causing an effulgently rippling coruscation across the surface.

  The light reflected down into the conn, giving the normally austere compartment a glory that was rare indeed.

  “You are very welcome, Miss Jones,” the captain said. He was still unsure about having an underage female on-board, but it was fun to give her the treat. He’d actually let several of the mission specialists onto the conn to enjoy the sight. Select members of the crew had been let in earlier. He wasn’t about to deny the sight of this vista to the youngster.

  “We have about another thirty minutes until the probe completes its descent,” the captain continued. “But there are other people who want to come up and see. It’s not the same on the videos. So you only have fifteen minutes.”

  “That’s okay,” Mimi said, turning away from the sight and smiling at him. “I’ve seen enough. You can let someone else up.”

  “You can stay…” the captain said.

  “I’ve seen it,” Mimi said, shaking her head. “I can recall it perfectly any time I’d like. Give someone else the chance.”

  “Very well,” the CO said, nodding.

  “Hello, Dr. Weaver,” Mimi said, looking over at Bill.

  “Hi, Mimi,” Weaver replied. “But it’s commander on the conn.”

  “Yes, sir,” Mimi said. “I heard that we’re going to do an investigation of the heliopause and the bow shock.”

  The heliopause was the point where the solar wind stopped holding off the ISM, the interstellar medium, the
thinly diffused helium and hydrogen that filled interstellar space. The solar wind, a collection of rays and charged particles blown out by the sun, held back the ISM from entering the solar system. And the solar system was not stationary; it was moving “spinward” with the galaxy. So the wind, blowing out, hit the interstellar medium especially hard in the spinward direction. The heliopause was therefore compressed on that side so that the whole zone looked much like an egg with the “flatter” side to spinward and the elongated side anti-spinward.

  At the point where the solar wind stopped holding off the ISM to spinward was a particularly compressed zone of hydrogen and helium called the bow shock. Thin by comparison with planetary atmospheres, it nonetheless was a relatively volatile region. Bill had planned pausing in the area to do some sampling, but had not anticipated problems with it.

  “Yes,” Bill said, frowning. “The Pioneers and Voyagers have been acting weird. NASA wants to know why.”

  “I would advise you to travel carefully in that area,” Mimi said, frowning in turn. “You know the theories of the causes, right?”

  “Either magnetic build-up or gravity fluctuations,” Bill said, nodding. “And?”

  “I… I’m a proponent of the latter,” Mimi said carefully. “There is theory that indicates that gravity acts differently around stars than in interstellar space at a fundamental level.”

  “Know that one,” Bill said. “You’re worried about fluctuations? We’ll be in warp, we should be fine.”

  “There’s a possibility that the fluctuations could be… strong,” Mimi said. “You could be looking at gravitational standing waves of two gravities or higher.”

  “You sure?” Bill asked, gesturing with his chin at Tuffy.

  “Tuffy… lets me figure out things on my own,” Mimi said. “But if you hit a high gravitational fluctuation—”