by John Ringo
Well, he was a good Catholic but he didn't believe in that kind of prayer. It was an advanced technology, that was all. But one that he couldn't, for the life of him, figure out how to replicate. So it was back to the drawing board.
Microencapsulation was the key. If he could microencapsulate, instead of using fossil fuels, the entire world (what was left of it at this point) could convert to antimatter. Now that production was fixed, microencapsulation was the Holy Grail.
There was one theory of microencapsulation that might work. There was a material called "fullerene," after Buckminster Fuller the inventor of the geodesic dome, which was a spherical molecule of carbon. Since each of the carbon atoms generated a "repulsion zone," any molecule or atom trapped in the center was automatically held away from contact not only with the carbon atoms but with the rest of the universe.
After exhausting every other theory, Mickey threw himself into the chemistry and physics of bucky balls. There was an existing knowledge base of how to produce them, and even how to wrap them around another atom. But wrapping them around anti-hydrogen, without it coming into contact with them, was a whole nother ball of fullerene.
It took time. And the process was not without its failures. But if Tennessee had anything it had miners (to dig holes in mountains to build the remote-controlled experimental facilities) and mountains. And it had only taken three mountains to find a way to perform microencapsulation safely. (Well, relatively safely. They weren't going to move it out of mountain four and into the middle of a city any time soon.) In the process he even got a minimal understanding of how the Indowy were warping physics to their own ends. Unfortunately what he got was useless for his purposes.
Fullerene was tough stuff. To get the energy out of the encapsulated hydrogen required "breaking" the fullerene first. And breaking it took nearly as much energy as was recovered from the explosion. It worked better setting up a chain reaction, putting a quantity of the "hyperfullerene" into a vessel and forcing the destruction of a small amount (usually by injecting anti-protons) which then broke up the rest.
Unfortunately, gauging the exact amount was difficult. After the first such difficulty, and at the request of the University of Tennessee regents, they moved the new lab into another mountain until the building was rebuilt. And somehow he couldn't see GM buying into a "chain reaction drive." What he basically had was a handful of black dust that was darned near impossible to get to explode. But when it did, look out.
He had an explosive, not a fuel. And had he mentioned the radiation problem?
When the initial carbon atoms were reacted, they were not fully consumed and they released a blast of alpha and beta particles along with a bit of gamma rays ("The Castanuelo radioactive chain reaction drive?" No, GM would not be happy.) The violence, at the atomic level, of the explosion also tended to cause some of the surrounding carbon atoms to chaotically fuse. The result was a spray of very "hot" radioactive material, more deadly than, if not as long lasting as, standard nuclear fallout.
Well, the Posleen had arrived at this point. And they seemed exactly the sort of people that deserved a very hot, radioactive, antimatter-driven, reception. Unfortunately, the President of the U.S. did not agree. So he was left with this remarkably stable stuff that in a nanosecond could turn half the eastern U.S. (he saw no point once the process was perfected in shutting down the production facility) into a radioactive wasteland. Although it was only really hot for a day or two. On a theoretical level it seemed like the perfect area denial weapon.
And, as has been mentioned, Miguel was a fanatic.
* * *
"You've got a what?" Jack Horner rarely shouted so it was that much more surprising when he did.
"We can range to the Gap." Gerald Carson, the President of the University of Tennessee, was not happy about the call. But he had been asked a question so he was answering the question. Calmly, politely and with sweat pouring down his face.
"We've got a gun project," he continued to the general's nod. Since the Posleen apparently couldn't hit ballistic projectiles, practically every school with an engineering program did. "It's able to range. It lofted a fifty-pound package into a low temporary orbit last month. It's a modified Super-Bull, three hundred millimeter. And we've also got this professor in the nuclear program, Mickey Castanuelo. He's a . . . he was considered a bit of a tenured nut before First Contact because he's been crazy about antimatter. Since First Contact he's been crazy about production and containment, which is why he's been getting a blank check from Ground Force R and D. He was working on energy systems."
"So we paid for this?" Jack asked.
"I don't know exactly what he was supposed to be researching," the president frowned furiously, "but he finally figured out a way to microencapsulate. Unfortunately, it was useless from an energy standpoint. But he's been from nuke energy to weapons and back so I guess he went back again. And he apparently got the specs for the Supergun so what he went and built was an antimatter cluster bomb . . ."
* * *
Cally walked out of the cache and sat down on the exterior ledge, looking down at the long slope to the distant valley. She'd never really looked over the terrain on this side of the mountain before and now seemed like as good a time as any; the adults weren't going to be back for a while.
To the north there was another ridge that flanked the narrow valley before her. The valley curved to the east, then back to the south before it reached Rabun Valley just west of the Rabun–Nacoochee School; the stream in the valley twisted its way through the former school property before reaching the headwaters of the Tennessee.
To the west there was another line of ridges that at the head of the valley, just below her position, were practically a knife-edge. There were some trees even there, but with the recent winds the leaves had mostly been stipped away. There was a red-tailed hawk flying just above the trees in the valley about a hundred feet below her and she watched it circle down and back until it disappeared around the shoulder of the ridge.
As the hawk crested the north ridge she noticed a movement among the trees and pulled up her binoculars for a closer look. At first the figures appeared to be a line of deer heading for the bisecting ridgeline but then her eyes adjusted to the perspective. And deer only carried weapons in cartoons.
"Oh, shit," she muttered.
It was a short company of Posleen with a God King, dismounted from his saucer. If she drew back, the group would probably pass right by the cache. But there hadn't been a Posleen group in the area since the first attack and this one was in a really odd place; the Posleen generally tried to stay off of ridges. So there had to be a reason they were here.
And the only really viable target in the area was the resupply team.
The Posleen weren't all that fast on the ridges, but as soon as they got down in the valley they'd be able to really speed up. And with all the guys loaded down with those huge frigging boxes, there was no way that the guys were going to be able to outrun them, even if they knew they were coming. Which they didn't.
She stood up and walked back into the cache, looking around at the kids. After a moment she came to a decision. It wasn't a happy decision, but it was the only one that made sense. Sometimes you just had to be an O'Neal, even if you were a thirteen-year-old girl.
"Billy, I'm going for a walk," she said, picking up her armor and throwing it on.
"I thought you were supposed to stay here," the boy replied, watching as she loaded up.
"Well, I've got something I have to do," Cally said with a frown. "Girl stuff."
"Oh." Billy frowned in turn as she locked and loaded her weapon. "Girl stuff. Okay."
"I'll be back before the grown-ups," Cally added. "If anybody comes by, get in the GalTech cache and close the door. Nothing can get through that."
"Will do," Billy replied.
"Bye," she finished, stepping out onto the ledge. The Posleen were halfway across the ridge. If she was going to get into a good position she had be
tter hustle.
Whistling quietly, she started off along the narrow ledge. She didn't know the name of the song that she whistled, but if her grandfather was around to hear it he would have recognized it immediately.
"Fight the horde," she sang, sliding down the slope towards the lower ridgeline, "sing and cry, Valhalla I am coming."
* * *
"The system consists of fifty-five sub-projectiles with an Indowy initiator in each," Dr. Castanuelo said, pointing at the diagram on the screen. "After firing, the system reaches its target point and begins to spread projectiles. It doesn't just drop them, which would cause massive overlap, but lays them down during its flight. Each projectile has slowing fins. These have been shown to not "trip" Posleen defensive systems. This system lets all the projectiles attain complimentary altitudes. At a preprogrammed height above ground, which is determined by radar altimeters in each sub-projectile, the Indowy containment field releases a burst of anti-protons into the fullerene matrix which then sustains a rapid chain reaction."
Jack looked at the presentation as the projectiles fell out of the back of an imaginary artillery shell and scattered across a wide area. The effect looked similar to a cluster bomb until you realized that what looked like gullies and small hills in the background was a backdrop of the Rocky Mountains.
"What's the footprint?" Horner asked. He had commandeered a shuttle and flown down to the university as soon as he got the word. He still didn't know if he had the answer to a maiden's prayer or the worst nightmare since the word of the invasion.
Dr. Castanuelo cleared his throat nervously. "Thirty-five miles deep, fifteen miles across. It's the equivalent of a one hundred and ten megaton bomb, but with significantly different gross effects. For example the thermal pulse is equivalent to a two megaton."
"And you built this on your own?" Jack asked quietly. "Without authorization? Or even mentioning it? One hundred and ten megatons?"
"Well, I had the hyperfullerene and the initiators just sitting there," Dr. Castanuelo said hotly. "I thought it might come in handy."
"You thought it might come in handy. Just how much of this . . . hyperfullerene did you make?"
"Well, once we got the production model worked out it seemed reasonable to continue production," Dr. Castanuelo said defensively. "I mean, we had the power plant and the materials. After that it was easy."
"How much?" the general asked smiling faintly. The question was nearly a whisper.
"Well, as of yesterday, excepting the material in the bomb, approximately one hundred and forty kilos."
"Of hyperfullerene?" Jack asked, taking a deep breath.
"No, we generally refer to it in terms of anti-hydrogen atomic mass rather than the . . ."
"You have one hundred and forty kilos of antimatter sitting around on my planet????"
"I thought it would come in handy," the doctor said lamely.
"Sure, for fueling Ninth Fleet!" Jack shouted. "Tell me about the radioactive effects of this bomb."
"Very hot, unfortunately," the scientist sighed. "It's one of the reasons it's useless for an energy source. But very short-lived as well. In a day or two the area is down to high background and in a month it would require sophisticated sensors to tell it has been hit. But not the sort of thing you want running your car. Fortunately, it's readily detectable."
"Sure, with a Geiger counter!" President Carson said.
"Oh, no, there's a visual chemical cue," the professor said. "It was the suggestion of one of my grad students and it made sense. The truly 'hot' areas will be readily detectable visually and the cue will fade as the radiation does."
"But the entire system has not been tested," Carson pointed out with the sort of quiet calm used when an emergency happens during brain surgery.
"We fired a mockup with transmitters in duplicate Indowy containment fields," the scientist said. "They all survived. If they survived, the containment works. And hyperfullerene has been tested against every kind of shock imaginable. Unfortunately, the problem is not it detonating prematurely but getting it to detonate at all."
"And it is armed," Carson said, accusingly.
"Well, yes, that follows."
"Positive action locks?" Jack asked.
"Not yet," Castanuelo admitted. In other words, the bomb could be detonated by anyone with rudimentary technical skills.
"Guards? Electronic security? Vault safety?" the general asked furiously.
"Well, we've got it in one of our mines," the professor said with a shrug. "And I've got a couple of students watching it. Look, it was a crash project!"
Jack glanced at his wrist where his AID used to be and then at his aide. "Jackson, get on the phone. I want an outside expert in here, one on antimatter, one on Indowy containment systems and one on guns and submunitions. I want a company of regular troops around wherever this thing is in no more than an hour and I want them replaced by special operations guard units by the end of the day."
He looked at the scientist and nodded. "Dr. Castanuelo, you're right, we did need it. I'm pretty sure that that is going to keep your bacon out of the fire. As long as it works. If it doesn't . . ."
"Sir, if it doesn't, I'll never know it," Castanuelo said. "If it, for example, detonates on launch, there won't be a Knoxville left."
"And if the rest of your material sympathetically detonates, say goodbye to Tennessee!"
CHAPTER NINE
Rabun Gap, GA, United States of America, Sol III
1522 EDT Monday September 28, 2009 AD
Mike didn't have to look at his readouts to see how bad off the battalion was. Most of the suits were laid out flat on the log-covered hillside. Part of that was fatigue—even with the suits, being in combat was murderously tiresome—but the greater part of it was experienced troopers trying to conserve every erg of power. Some of the suits were down to one percent power and when it dropped to zero the suit would pop open and "decant" the Protoplasmic Intelligence System out onto the cold, wet ground. Not a happy prospect.
Together with the loss of Gunny Pappas, it was a pretty bleak and depressing situation.
There were other problems. He still had nearly two companies of troops, but he had lost Captain Holder in the landing and Charlie Company was looking pretty ragged as a result. And he was short on officers except on staff, where they were doing less and less good. At this point he didn't really need an intelligence officer. The Posleen were right there and there and there and . . . On the other hand, he also didn't need an operations officer. The Posleen were going to come on in the same old way and they would fight them in the same old way. Hell, this battalion didn't even need a commander.
Stewart would probably be the best choice for a company commander. He was naturally charismatic, he had a good feel for tactical, and, hell, operational maneuver, and he didn't have Duncan's . . . problems.
So why did he keep thinking he should put Duncan in command of Charlie Company?
He took off his helmet and spit his dip out on the ground, looking around at the suits. The whole battalion was simply fragged. Half of the personnel had gone to sleep where they dropped, Provigil be damned. He wasn't much better, which was why he was considering putting a combat-shocked officer in command of a company.
Duncan, along with Stewart and Pappas, had been with him for years, since his first company command. But before that Duncan had also been on Diess and then was transferred to Barwhon. Something about the fighting on Barwhon had just . . . snapped him. He was fine calling in fire and coming up with really elegant ways to manage complicated battles, but put him in the line and he just . . . closed down.
Duncan had a responsibility streak a mile wide, though. Putting him in charge of Charlie Company would do one of two things. It would either break him out of it or shut him down permanently.
And, frankly, if he went down, that would leave Stewart in place to take over battalion command. Which just might save everyone's butts.
"Duncan," he said finally. "I need y
ou over here for a second."
* * *
"This really sucks," Shari said as she stumbled over another piece of debris.
The suits had cleared a path up the road to the house, but there wasn't much they could do in the valley; it was just too torn up.
The Rabun Gap Valley had once been a rather pleasant place, its hillsides lined with trees and the valley itself filled with a mix of light industrial plants and cropland. But repeated nuclear-class explosions had changed all that.
The trees on the hillsides had not only been knocked down but in many cases thrown around, some of them out into the valley. Along with them were the remains of the corps that had died there, shattered hulks of tanks, howitzers flipped end for end and sticking out of the ground, bits and pieces of trucks, buildings and people scattered across the ground in a crazy quilt. Added to this were ripples of soil and craters thrown up by the explosions, some of which had happened low enough to dig into the ground to the bedrock.
Through this nuclear nightmare the suits and the unarmored humans stumbled with their massive loads. The suits had it fairly easy; with unlimited power they could practically float over obstacles. The humans, though, had to struggle under, over and around them.
"Don't knock it," Tommy said nervously, looking to the east. "I think we'd have had company before now if it wasn't for all of this."
"The Posleen should be able to plow through this," Mueller said then cursed as he fell when one leg plunged into a hole. The weight of the battlebox on his back pushed him face down in the ground and for a moment he couldn't get the angle to straighten up. "Shit."
"No lying out, Master Sergeant," Tommy said with a chuckle. He set down one of the boxes he was carrying and pulled the massive NCO out of the hole like a cork out of a bottle.
"You know, Lieutenant, you could positively get on a guy's nerves," Mueller said with a rueful grin.