Dubious Heroes: a novel

by Nicholas Blue

  “Angie”, I said. “We need you to randomly alter our course and speed. Make it random enough so some Einstein over there doesn’t average your changes, and predict where we’re going next. Shouldn’t be hard to do, since we don’t even know where we’re going next.”

  “Other than going after the Defender“, Kyra said. “Assuming we haven’t lost them, already.”

  “I suspect that would be a quick way to find our UP friends again”, I said. “Vassily isn’t exactly helpless. They should be able to take care of themselves, and last for a short while.”

  “Those UP ships are going to show up again”, Eng said. “They may hang back for a while, to see what we’re doing, but they’ll be back. We’re not going to be able to ignore them.”

  “Who said we’re ignoring them?” I said. “We will deal with them, but in the meantime, we can use every extra minute they give us.”

  “That said, I’m going below to see if I can locate that transmitter”, Cozi said. “If we can disable that, we can disappear again.”

  I felt the gravity increase slightly, as Angie increased our acceleration.

  “Before you go”, I said, “It’s time you told us about the new weapons. What the hell are they, and how do they work?”

  Cozi spun his chair to face the console, and tapped on one of the vidscreens.

  “Check your primary vidscreens”, he said. We all looked at what appeared to be some sort of blueprint.

  “Nice”, Eng said. “I had an idea that was what you were doing.”

  “Hardly cutting-edge stuff”, Cozi said. “I got the idea from back when the Ming Shu threw that load of scrap metal into the path of the UP cruiser. I thought it was an effective solution, if not very elegant. I mean, why pressurize an entire cargo bay? As a weapon, it’s inefficient, and not particularly accurate, either.”

  “Nevertheless, it works”, Eng said. “High speed starships and debris don’t mix well. That’s why we have a cargo bay full of the stuff that we picked up on Babylonia.”

  “You’re right”, Cozi said, “Almost. If you go look at it now, you’ll see that I had the mercs take a torch to the scrap, and cut it up into smaller pieces. That might reduce its effectiveness a little, but I don’t think it’ll be by much.”

  “Why’d you cut it up at all?” I asked.

  “Ammunition”, Cozi said, and grinned evilly at me. “It had to be able to fit inside the weapons.”

  “So those are weapons?” I asked, then realized it was a stupid question. Of course they were weapons.

  “Cannon”, Cozi said. “Plural.”

  “Jesus”, I said. “Those funky-looking things are cannon?”

  “Yep. Well, technically, one is an air cannon, and the other is more of a rail gun. Both of them shoot scrap metal. In theory, anyway. Like I said before, they haven’t been tested, yet.”

  “How many shots do we get with each?” Kyra asked.

  “Well, both have a bore diameter of about a meter”, he said. “The air cannon is shorter; it’s only twelve meters long. It’s the big tube running along the forward bulkhead of Cargo Bay Two. I had to rig some special pressure seals for it, and they’re blown out with every shot. Unfortunately, I hadn’t planned for the seals, and was only able to scrounge up enough material for half a dozen of them.

  “Six shots?” Kyra asked. “That’s not a lot.”

  “Just for that one”, Cozi said.

  “”How do you load it?” Eng asked.

  “Someone has to load the breech with the scrap”, Cozi said. “I figure two people should be able to load one in a couple of minutes.”

  “What kind of range do they have?” Eng asked.

  “I’d say close “, Cozi said. “The air cannon should have a velocity of around twelve hundred feet per second.

  “That’s not very fast”, I said.

  “Still, it’s a lot faster than scrap blown out of a cargo hold”, Eng said.

  “And a lot more accurate”, Cozi said. “Still you’re gonna want to be pretty close when you fire it.”

  “What about targeting?” Angie asked. “I’m not finding an interface for me to use.”

  “They’re fixed weapons, Angie”, he said. “You’re going to have to use the ship to aim them. Just line em up, and blow a load of scrap at whatever you want.”

  “Um”, I said, “It’s not going to eat into our air supply too much, is it?”

  Cozi gave me a look that suggested I’d asked a stupid question. Again.

  “I had some compressed air tanks installed on Babylonia”, he said. “The weapons won’t use any of our life support resources at all. There’s enough air in the tanks for about a hundred shots. Still, you’re only gonna get six, because of the seals. If I could test, I could probably come up with something better, that doesn’t use disposable parts.”

  “Six shots beats none”, I said.

  “Provided it works”, Cozi said.

  “You still didn’t say who controls the firing”, Kyra said.

  “Angie has control of both weapons”, Cozi said. “It has to be that way, because she’ll have to use the ship to aim them. We could probably do it in a pinch, but she’ll be a lot more accurate.”

  “What about the other cannon?” I asked. “The rail gun.”

  “That’s’ the big tube running through cargo bay four. It’s about thirty meters long, which was as much as I could fit into the bay, without too much of it sticking outside the ship. If you see it, you’ll notice it has rings around the outside of the tube, spaced a couple of inches apart.”

  “Electromagnets”, Eng said.

  “Yep”, Cozi said. “Sequenced by a computer. The magnets pull the load of scrap down the tube, each magnet ahead of the load charging to pull it forward, then shutting off as soon as the next magnet in line charges. It all happens very quickly. The ammunition gains speed as it’s pulled down the barrel, until it’s ejected out into space, hopefully to hit whatever we were aiming at.”

  “How many shots do we get with this one?” I asked.

  “Depends on how much scrap you’ve got”, Cozi said. “With what we have, I dunno… maybe thirty or forty shots? The power, on the other hand… that, we don’t have so much of. At max acceleration, I figure each shot will use about fifty kilowatts of power, or about five percent of our supply. At any given time, we’ve got about a megawatt on tap. Unless you start doing any more of those short transits. The last one ate up three hundred kilowatts in the blink of an eye, which is why managing our power is now a big deal for us.”

  “This rail gun thing isn’t a new idea”, Eng said. “I’ve heard of them before. I think they used them on the old military ships, a century or two ago.”

  “They did”, I said. “I read about them, in some of my naval history books. They were one of the first space-borne weapons. It started something of an arms versus armor race, with ship builders adding more and more armor, and rail guns getting bigger and bigger to punch through it. It reached the point where the warships were these huge, cumbersome things, with rail guns so big, they ran the entire length of the ship.”

  “I’ve never even seen a ship like that”, Eng said.

  “They’ve all been mothballed”, I said. “Once they developed stuff like the plasma cannon, which will drill a hole through most armor, the ships had outlived their usefulness. No sense in spacing with a battleship carrying a hundred tons of armor, when a little cruiser with a plasma cannon could take it out, in minutes. I think the last one in use was over a hundred years ago.”

  “I’ve heard there are a few still out there”, Kyra said, “But I’ve never seen one.”

  “Which is why no one bothers to armor anything anymore”, I said, “At least, beyond the stuff to stop micro-meteors.”

  “I never said they weapons were new”, Cozi said. “Then again, maybe we’ll start a trend, with non-military ships using them.”

  “I doubt that will happen”, Kyra said. “No offense, but it’s a lot cheaper j
ust to blow a load of scrap out of your airlock into someone’s path. Against a military ships, like those other UPDF frigates, they’ll probably just hang back and shoot missiles at us, outside of the range of your cannon.”

  “Maybe, maybe not”, I said. “The tactics you use with cannon are a lot different than how ships fight these days. If we tried using our new toys against someone a hundred years ago, we’d probably get waxed. These days, no one knows how to fight with, or defend against them. Also, they don’t even know we have them.”

  “You’d better hit the books again, then”, Kyra said.

  “Not sure I need to”, I said. “I already have a pretty good idea how they ought to be used.”

  “Care to share?” she asked.

  “Not at the moment”, I said. “If I tell you, you’ll just tell me what a bad idea it is, then you’ll get pissed off when I do what I was going to do anyway. So… I’m not saying.”

  “Fine with me”, she said. “I doubt you’ll ever get a chance to do anything really stupid, at least, not if I can hit them with missiles first.”

  “Speaking of which”, I said, “Since we’re aboard a ship, they’re called torpedoes, not missiles.”

  “I don’t see the difference”, Eng said.

  “That’s because neither you nor Kyra were in the navy”, I said. “Ground pounders call em missiles. In the navy, they’re torpedoes. Considering how much shit you guys were giving me about calling the deck the floor, or the bulkheads walls, or the head the fresher, then you guys can use the right names, too.”

  “As long as they work, I don’t care what you call them”, Eng said.

  “Ground pounders?” Kyra asked. She was not smiling.

  “I think we’re done here”, Cozi said, sighing loudly. He rose, and headed for the lift door, wobbling a bit as Angie altered our course again. “If you need me, I’ll be looking for that SpeedLink box.”

  “It’s gotta be there”, I said. “I’m guessing that this ship has the ability to send and receive SpeedLink signals. Unfortunately, I might have overwritten the interface software, when I moved Angie over.”

  “Without an interface”, Angie said, “There’s no way for me to even know it’s there.”

  “Well, it has some software”, Eng said, “If it’s telling them where we are all the time.”

  “Whatever it has, we need to find it and shut it down”, I said. “We can figure out how to use it later. Preferably when there’s no one shooting at us.”

  I rose, and joined Cozi at the lift door.

  “I’m going down to see about our new weapons”, I said. “Mister Eng, you have the conn.”

  “Aye, Captain”, he said, as Cozi and I entered the lift.

  We rode down in silence, until the lift stopped at the Cargo Module. I was about to exit, when Cozi stopped me.

  “You’re going to need people to load the cannon”, he said. “They’re not automatic.”

  “Yeah, I thought you said something like that”, I said. “How many will we need?”

  “Two should do it”, he said. “The mercs would be perfect for it. Maybe put the doctor to work.”

  “Yeah”, I said. “That’s not happening. The mercs, no problem. Angie, have Cisco come down to Cargo Bay Two, please. And tell him to bring someone with him.”

  “Aye, boss”, she said.

  “Can Cisco and I figure these things out by ourselves?”

  “They aren’t complicated”, he said. “I’ll send Lola up, just in case; she knows how they work.”

  “Thanks”, I said, as the lift door slid closed, and I was alone.

  Cannon. Cozi had built not one, but two of them. For a guy who didn’t act all that enthused about the pirate stuff, he was certainly getting into it, in his own way.

  Go figure.

  Chapter 33

  I walked around the curve of the corridor to the interior door for Bay Two. The changing course and speed kept throwing me off balance. I didn’t think the maneuvers would accomplish much beyond buying us a little time, and annoying the UP ships, but it beat sitting around and doing nothing. Unfortunately, it also meant that the UP knew we were onto them, and what our ships could do.

  It didn’t take long for Cisco to arrive. Donner was with him. Both were in their combat suits, and carried their helmets, mostly as a precaution, in case someone tried to board us, or, more likely, we were holed. I didn’t really believe the UP forces would try the boarding thing, if for no other reason than grappling one of our ships would be a real bitch, if they could do it at all. Kyra thought they might have other ways of boarding, so I figured being prepared couldn’t hurt.

  I was pretty sure that unless we offered our unconditional surrender, and that option was probably not on the table anymore, then the United Planets Defense Force had only one objective; to destroy us. Whatever else happened, they had to prevent the new technology on the Revenge from getting into the public domain. Sure, someday everyone would have it, but right now, it gave the UP ships one hell of an advantage.

  “Captain”, Cisco said, as he and Donner walked in. They both snapped to attention, and saluted. The formality still struck me as odd, but the simple fact was, you could run your ship as a navy vessel, or not, but you had to pick one way or the other. It wasn’t something you could do half-assed, and make work.

  “At ease”, I said, and they relaxed. “You guys know anything about that?” I pointed to the big tube running along one bulkhead, and out through the hull.

  “Some kind of cannon, isn’t it?” Cisco asked.

  “Yes, it is”, I said. “I’m not sure exactly how it works, but we have this one, and one on the other side, over in Cargo Bay Four. Cozi says they both need to be manually loaded.”

  “Probably with pieces of metal”, Donner said. “Cozi had us cutting up the shit for like five days.”

  “Yup, that’s what they shoot”, I said. “Anyway, we need someone to load them, so you two have a new job, at least until we need you for something more important.”

  “Like repelling boarders”, Cisco said.

  “Exactly”, I said.

  “So how do they work?” Cisco asked.

  “Cozi sort of explained it”, I said, “but honestly, it beats the shit outta me. Angie, get me Cozi.”

  “What now?” Cozi said, a moment later.

  “Where’s Lola?” I asked. “We’re waiting for her.”

  “She’s manning Engineering”, Cozi said. “I can’t be off on a snipe hunt and be there, too.”

  “Send her up”, I said. “This won’t take long, and it’s priority.”

  “Doon”, he said. “Don’t get your hopes up about those things. They might not even work. Of the two, I’d say the air cannon is the safest bet, since it’s the least complicated. The rail gun works okay in the simulations, but in reality… we’ve never tested it.”

  “Well, you may get your chance to test both of them”, I said. “If I can get us into position to use them, I’m going to.”

  “I should go over them with you guys in person, but I’m ass deep in wiring chases right now. I’ve already sent Lola, so she should be there in a minute.”

  “I hope so”, I said. “I have a feeling we’re running out of time.”

  “Let me know if you run into problems”, he said.

  “Will do”, I said. “Doon out.”

  We walked over to the end of the cannon that wasn’t sticking out into space. Lola walked in a moment later.

  “We need to make this quick”, she said, walking over to us. “Cozi left me watching the store down in Engineering, while he’s crawling around in the wiring. Looking for something, I think. Anyway, he’s not happy about his domain being unmanned. You know how he gets.”

  “Yes, I do”, I said. “Still, I think Angie can keep an eye on things for a little while.”

  “And probably do a better job than I can”, Lola said.

  “So”, I said. “How does this monstrosity work?”

  “Wel
l, first we need some scrap metal”, she said. “There’s a shitload of it over in Cargo Bay Three.”

  We walked over, to find several large containers, filled with chunks of metal, all secured to the deck.

  “Cozi wanted all this cut up”, Lola said. “Nothing bigger than four or five pounds. That’s so it’ll fit better into the cannons. Either one will hold a couple hundred pounds of the stuff.”

  She found a couple of wheeled carts, and we all donned heavy gloves someone had left in the bay. Minutes later, we began loading the carts with metal. It was noisy, dirty work. A short while later, they were each loaded with maybe a half ton of scrap apiece. We wheeled one cart into Bay Four and left it, and took the other back to the air cannon in Bay Two.

  At the end of the cannon, Lola showed us a small control panel mounted on the bulkhead above the tube. And indicator glowed green. She touched a button, and a meter long hatch on the tube slid open, revealing what I figured was the firing chamber. The indicator light was now yellow.

  “You could stuff a person into that”, Donner said, which gave the rest of us a pretty clear idea of how her mind worked, if anyone still had any doubts.

  “No shit”, Cisco said. “Be a helluva ride.”

  “Personally”, Lola said, “Unless you’re really bored, I’d stay out of it. Okay, here’s what you do.”

  She picked up a big black disc from a small stack by the tube. Flexing it, she stuffed it into the outer end of the breech.

  “This is the seal”, she said. “Cozi had problems maintaining air pressure as the load traveled down the barrel, so he came up with these things.”

  “I didn’t think he’d tested it”, I said.

  “I imagine he just modeled it on the computer”, she said. “Or, had Angie do it.”

  “Like wadding in a shotgun”, Donner said.

  “A what?” I asked.

  “A shotgun”, Cisco said. “Antique projectile weapon. Actually, they’re great for shipboard use, if you can find one. Expensive to have the ammo made, though.”

  “That’s nice”, Lola said, apparently not a fan of historical weaponry. “Anyway, grab some scrap, and load it in there. As much as you can cram in, as long as the hatch will close.”