Hell's Faire lota-4 Page 12

  Miguel Castanuelo, in the meantime, had become totally Americanized. The Hispanic community in Atlanta in the 1960s and ’70s was infinitesimal and his father had no intention of raising his child as a “separate but equal” citizen. Miguel quickly became Mickey, using Spanish rarely at home and never in public. He played American football and was indistinguishable from the Chads and Tommies and Blakes around him, until an announcer had to try to pronounce his last name. But his senior year at St. Pius, it had become a game. Whenever the announcer at some away game stumbled, the entire Pius side would resound: “Cast-a-new-Way!-lo!”

  He had decided that on graduation he would enter the Army, much to the dismay of his parents. But Mickey had become more than Americanized, he was a fervent patriot. He knew that everything in life that really mattered was represented by that Coast Guard cutter that had risked stormy seas to save him and his family, by the sponsorship families who had welcomed them with open arms and the society that had let his father have that all-too-rare second chance. He felt that he had to give something back. And if that meant a tour in the Army before he went to college, so be it.

  However, in his junior year of high school, a father of one of his classmates made a presentation to the physics class. The father was a senior officer in the United States Navy, stationed at the eminently land-locked Georgia Institute of Technology. What the father discussed was the opportunities open to bright young men (and women) who would be willing to give a few years to the U.S. Navy. The Navy was always desperate for anyone who could pass the rigorous academic challenges involved in nuclear power generation. And Georgia Tech had one of the premier schools in that subject. The Navy would pay for the education of eligible men (and women) who were willing to give six years of their life to the Navy.

  Miguel practically broke an arm signing up.

  He was easily accepted at Georgia Tech since his SAT score had been 1527 and his GPA was 3.98 (he’d gotten a B in Latin one year) and graduated in four years with a BS in Nuclear Power Generation. He then went to the Navy’s nuclear power school “where we’ll really teach you about generation” and then into service with the active fleet, working in nuclear “boomers,” where he developed his long-term love of elaborate practical jokes.

  Unfortunately, after one tour of duty he was beached with a previously undetected heart murmur. Unsure what to do with himself, he went back to Georgia Tech and got the rest of a Ph.D. in nuclear physics. From there he went to the Department of Energy, but at Tech the second time his focus had changed from generation technology to weapons tech.

  He ended up at Oak Ridge, which was no longer in the weapons building business but was involved in basic research. From Oak Ridge he moved to the University of Tennessee, to which he officially transferred his football allegiance when Georgia Tech started a business school. UT was pretty much right next door and had a long and fruitful revolving door policy with the government facility. He then spent a decade cycling from one facility to the other, with his theoretical research becoming more and more esoteric over time. Or so, at least, it seemed.

  When the news of the Posleen invasion had come, he thought he was going to be going back into a blue suit; the conditions of space-board battle were similar enough to subs that submariners were at a premium in the Fleet. Instead, he had stayed at the University and Oak Ridge because it was there he could make the greater contribution. Because the “theoretical” research he had been involved in at Oak Ridge was the manufacture, capture and management of antimatter.

  Mickey was just a tad on the “Green” side. He recognized that fossil fuels were both limited and an environmental nightmare. Not so much from the much overblown “greenhouse effect,” which was clearly junk science, but from the extraction and distribution end. Not to mention traffic of which Knoxville, Tennessee, had more than its fair share. But he also was a realist and knew that to replace fossil fuels you had to have something equivalent or better. Petroleum, at its theoretical base, was a means of transporting energy. Hundreds of millions of years before, tiny marine algae (not dinosaurs) had gathered the energy of the sun and then died. They were overlaid with limestone and compressed, resulting in petroleum. It was relatively easy and cheap to extract and transport.

  From Mickey’s perspective, the only viable answer was antimatter. It could be produced in remote locations using nuclear power and transported easily and cheaply. An amount of antimatter the size of a thumbnail sliver would power a car (or even a flying car, which would help out the traffic no end) for a reasonable lifetime. Of course, if the containment was destroyed the car would become a nuclear fireball. But that was just engineering.

  The real problem, which his colleagues were happy to point out, was making the antimatter in the first place. Until there was a way to make it in quantity, and control it, he was researching science fiction.

  With the coming of the Posleen, and the Indowy, and the Darhel, and the Tchpth, it was apparent that his “wild ideas” were anything but science fiction. The Indowy could make antimatter like there was no tomorrow and microencapsulate it for safety. Suddenly, all the planet’s problems, excepting only that it was about to be invaded by cannibalistic aliens, were solved.

  As it turned out, the Indowy technique for making antimatter was trivial; it was one of the few things that human theory could comprehend about the new technologies. And they could contain it. The latter was important. Antimatter that contacted “regular” matter converted all of its mass to energy. It was that energy release that made it so alluring. Best of all, it could be contained in very small amounts. That way if some of the encapsulation failed, there wouldn’t be a massive nuclear fireball. Microencapsulating it, though, or even containing it, turned out to be tricky. The Indowy knew how, but nobody else did.

  But Mickey was a fanatic. Whatever it was he put his mind to, he threw himself at fully. The theory of manufacture was easy. And the Indowy could microencapsulate. It was only a matter of reverse engineering.

  Unfortunately, that was not the case. After studying Indowy techniques (to the extent that they would allow) for nearly a year, he came away a frustrated man. The Indowy defied the laws of probability and that was just not fair.

  All quantum mechanics, all chemistry, all metallurgy, comes down to probabilities. When two chemicals are mixed, there are several ways that they can recombine. But only one way is “probable.” Therefore, almost all of the molecules combine in that way, with a scattered handful combining in others.

  Often the “alternate” combinations are more useful. But they are also hysterically unlikely. The Indowy got the alternate combinations every single time. It was like hitting Lotto not once, but Every. Single. Time. What a rip.

  It was the answer to all the problems. Not just microencapsulation but their armor, their drives, their energy and gravity technologies. All of them depended on hitting the Lotto, consistently and dependably. He didn’t understand how they did it and they couldn’t, apparently, explain it in terms that made sense. They just “prayed” and it happened.

  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 o
f 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 better 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.”