Vorpal Blade (ARC) Read online

  "Actually, that has always bothered me," Berg admitted.

  "And things in the brain and weird addictions and so forth and so on," Dr. Chet said. "By doing these tests, both before the mission and afterwards, we should be able to determine if aliens have taken over your body and are bent on world domination. Or at least the former. So, we shall begin. What is your name . . ."

  Two hours later Berg was sweating more water than he could afford to lose in his dehydrated condition. He'd been asked to do math puzzles in his head; sometimes the questions had been too fast to answer, other times he had been given all the time he needed to answer. He'd been asked about his childhood, about his military experience, about his mother and father and sister. He had been posed nonsensical koans of the "what is the sound of one hand clapping" variety and about general philosophies. He'd been asked if he had ever killed anyone, if he'd like to kill someone, if he'd ever thought about it or about suicide. He'd been asked so many questions his head was buzzing.

  "Good profile," Dr. Chet said, nodding. "Good good profile. You are so much center of the norms I suggested for this mission I could use you as the profile." He looked at his watch and grinned.

  "And now for the bad part," he said, pulling out two pink bottles from his lab coat, then glancing at the monitor. "You do not fear the pink bottles?"

  "You can tell by looking at the monitor?" Berg asked.

  "Oh, yes, at this point very easily," Dr. Chet said. "And you do not."

  "I've been nauseated before," Berg answered evenly.

  "You thought you had been nauseated before," Dr. Chet said, grinning. "You will come to a new appreciation."

  Nurse Betty had silently reappeared and started unstrapping the Marine.

  "So, we will now do the MRI and CAT scans," Dr. Chet said. "After you take your medicine."

  The pink stuff was just as awful as the white, but Berg didn't feel any negative effects. Maybe he was immune or something.

  He undressed and got into a nonmetallic robe, then was slid into the MRI. The thing was noisy as hell and it was initially boring as hell. But then Dr. Chet started asking him questions again.

  The session in the MRI wasn't all that long, though, no more than fifteen minutes. Then he was led to the CAT scan. That time, there weren't any questions. He just lay in the thing for another fifteen or twenty minutes while it took pictures of his head.

  "Very well, we are done," Dr. Chet said after he'd gotten dressed again. It was after midnight, but if the doctor was tired it wasn't apparent. "How are you feeling?"

  "Fine," Berg said.

  "Yes, well," Dr. Chet said, looking at his watch. "Three . . . two . . . one. How are you feeling now?"

  "Holy maulk," Berg said, his eyes flying wide.

  "Bathroom is through that door," Dr. Chet said, pointing. "I'll see you in about thirty minutes."

  5

  The SSBN Blage

  "Now that's an odd looking sub," Miller said, looking at the boat.

  The 4144 was alone in a covered pen made for six submarines. And it was odd looking. The sail was truncated and swept back with no diving plane on it. The rear section was "humped" for about a third of its length. The "hump" appeared to be a separate vessel, something like the SEAL vessel the Navy had been working on for years; there was a very definite seam where it met the boat.

  Just at the tip of the composite nosecone that housed the sonar suite and other instruments was something completely different. Extending from the nosecone was a long protrusion that looked like—and Miller was sure he couldn't be the only person to make the connection—a sword about thirty meters long, six meters high at the base where it was attached to the nose of the sub, only two meters or so wide in the horizontal dimension, and then flattened out to a point. The rest of the body of the submarine could very well represent the hilt of the blade, although it was much longer than the blade itself. It really and truly looked like the oddest, most peculiar, and largest flat-black dull sword the chief warrant officer had ever seen. Also a bit like a narwhal. He just knew that Weaver was somehow behind it.

  "Uh, what the hell is the giant blade all about?" Miller asked, then paused and added, "Sir?"

  "Oh, yeah the supercavitation initiator." Weaver shrugged. "Had to add that. Otherwise, when the ship tries to reach maximum underwater velocity there would be a serious problem with Euler buckling. Serious. Problem."

  "Oiler buckling," the chief said. "Sounds like a game involving a football team from Texas and a bunch of gay cowboys."

  "The Oilers moved to Tennessee a long time ago chief. Never was a big fan of the Cowboys either." Weaver grinned. "But it's Euler with an E, named after the guy who understood it first.

  "Uh huh."

  "You ever stood on an empty beer can slowly until the force of your entire body weight was finally enough to collapse the can flat?" Weaver explained.

  "I'm more of a liquor drinker, sir."

  "Work with me here, Chief. You have seen somebody stomp a can flat before?" asked Weaver rubbing at the back of his neck and raising an eyebrow.

  "Yes, sir." Calling Bill "sir" was going to take some getting used to.

  "Okay then, beer can equals submarine and big dumb SEAL equals force of water on boat at maximum underwater velocity. Flat can equals sub without initiator. Got it?"

  "How does the sword help? No wait, scratch that. Euler buckling bad. Blade on nose of boat, good. Got it." The SEAL shook his head left and right subtly.

  "It's basically the same thing that we do on supersonic stuff, plus a new trick that works kinda like the warp field. We put spikes on jets here and there to create shock waves where we want them and in a controllable manner. Ever seen the long needle on the end of a supersonic plane?"

  "Yes, sir."

  "Same deal. The initiator creates a bow wave far enough out in front of the ship that a boundary layer is created around the ship. This reduces the buckling forces on the ship by about two orders of magnitude. But that only helps with the Euler buckling force some."

  "Wait a minute," Miller said, furrowing his brow. "Nukes are built to take all kinds of unimaginable hell. It couldn't stand up to even two or three times the normal top speed without modifications to the structure?"

  "Two or three times normal top speed, perhaps," Bill said with a grin.

  "No maulk?"

  "No maulk."

  "Uh, sir. I know subs. I've spent one hell of a lot of time around them. They're pretty damned fast. I mean, just between us, here in a secure sub pen, a big boat goes somewhere around seventy or eighty knots. Right?" Miller wasn't sure if he was glad he asked the question or not. With Dr. Weaver—Lieutenant Commander Weaver—explanations could sometimes create an eyes glazing over effect that could damage one's brain.

  "Actually for this boat, the terminal velocity is a little lower than that. No matter how much power we pour into the propulsion it's not that fast. And if it was that fast, it would . . ."

  "Crush like a beer can, got it," Miller said. "So what gives?"

  "Well, you see the initiator there has millions of little holes in it about a millimeter in diameter that are dispersed about it in a precisely calculated manner. It took us months to run that simulation and more than eight months to construct the thing. Anyway, we force air out through those holes as we come up to speed. An envelope of water supersaturated with air flows in around the vessel and dramatically reduces the friction with the water. It really is a warping of the parameters of the ocean so that the submarine can go faster through it than it should normally be able to. And, of course, it's got a spaceship engine in it. That helps. A prop won't work by a long shot."

  "Did you think of that?" Miller hesitated and then added, "Sir?"

  "Nope," Weaver admitted. "The Russians have been trying to figure out how to do it for fifty years. Some call it supercavitation; others call it underwater warp drive. The U.S. Navy decided to go slow and stealthy and quit trying to figure it out because the propulsion system required
was a volatile rocket engine. The Navy didn't want that on a sub. But the new drive changed their mind and DARPA was so thrilled by it that they lobbied hard for the design and even paid for most of it."

  Weaver looked at his ship with affection. Oh sure it was Captain Steven Blankemeier's command—and most certainly it was the captain's ship—but Weaver thought of it as his ship. After all, he'd designed most of the retrofit systems on it. Nobody understood it like he did.

  "It looks like a sword. A short squatty sword with a big assed grip, but a sword nonetheless."

  "Never noticed that," Weaver admitted. "Hmmm."

  "Sooo, we sort of ram the water with that sword thingy . . ." Miller said.

  "Correct."

  "And we use it to make fizzy stuff that makes the ship slipperyer."

  "More slippery. Sure."

  "And that keeps us from getting crushed like a beer can."

  "You see?" Weaver said. "It is possible to explain things to SEALs."

  "Got a question, sir," Miller said, stone-faced.

  "Go."

  "So, can we ram people with that? Sort of like a narwhal skewering a whaling ship? I mean, it's not our first line of defense but is there, like, a ramming speed? Sir?"

  "Let's just tour the ship, shall we?"

  The strangest thing on the exterior of the ship was definitely the ramming blade. However, close on the heels of the blade was the odd appearance of the base of the sail. There was some sort of sliding hatch on the front that really looked out of place. It currently covered whatever was under it, but if memory served it was right above the conn.

  The Navy had balked at giving a civilian "full access" to the details of the 4144. But they had admitted a willingness to give access to a SEAL chief warrant officer. Which was why Miller, wearing a brand new pair of digi-cam, carrying a seabag and occasionally rubbing his recently shaved head, was following Weaver across the gangplank to the spaceship.

  He paused and saluted the American flag, then saluted the bridge.

  "Permission to come aboard, Lieutenant?" he asked the officer manning the entry.

  "Permission granted," the LT said, extending his hand. "Lieutenant Jon Souza, tactical officer."

  "Please to meet you, sir," Miller replied.

  "Time's a wastin'," Bill said, nodding at the lieutenant. "How's the loading going?"

  The boat was bustling with loading.

  "We've got the ardune torps loaded," the lieutenant replied. "We're waiting until this evening to load the SM-9s. Laser Two failed the last charge cycle test. Brian's got it stripped down."

  "While all that's good to hear," Bill said. "I hope we don't need any of it."

  "Lasers?" Weaver asked. "What's an SM-9?"

  "Where to start?" Bill asked as they entered a hatch on the rear of the sail. There was a ladder there, which made Miller happier. He was half expecting a teleporter or something. Weaver grabbed the sides of the ladder and slid down rather expertly. He'd clearly been around boats. Miller was having various shocks but the one worst one had to be Dr. William "How do you use this pistol?" Weaver as a commissioned officer with sea time.

  "At the bow?" Miller asked as he slid down the ladder after Weaver.

  "Torpedo room," Weaver said, opening the hatch to the conn. "Not very interesting. Planetary study drones and some microsatellites. Well, and the 'torpedoes,' which are really Adari missiles. Range of about seventy klicks. Tracking system from an AMRAAM with some Adari additions. Ardune warhead."

  "That's that . . . quark stuff, right?" Miller asked, looking around the conn. It looked pretty much like most of the conns he'd seen in his time. The big difference explained the sliding hatch. There was a big . . . window just under the front of the sail. And a portion of the conn had been elevated so you could see out. He was in a submarine with a . . . window!

  "Quarkium," Weaver said, nodding. "Gives about three times the bang of an equal amount of antimatter. Yield's about sixty megatons. Of course, in space it doesn't have much range. The SM-9As have a nuclear fission triggered quarkium warhead that works similar to a hydrogen bomb. The fission bomb triggers the quarkium release, which in turn releases a maulk load of gamma-rays, neutrons, neutrinos, and muons. Did I say energy? Lots of that."

  "How fast are the missiles? I mean, space is big, right, so they have to be fast?" Miller continued peering out the window, on a submarine, in front of him. The window seemed to be harder to get used to than the fact that he was standing inside humanity's first starship. A freakin' window on a submarine, he thought.

  "The propulsion system is a mix of Adar tech and human. The thing is basically designed around the old nuclear thermal rocket concept but uses a small quarkium reactor instead of a fission reactor. No radiators needed and we use a dense Adar coolant for propellant instead of LOX or hydrogen or water. The Adar stuff gives us waaaay better m-dot. Using an Adar material for the nozzle we were able to get over eight thousand seconds of specific impulse out of it."

  "Uh, huh," Miller said, looking at the window on a submarine! "Is that good?"

  "Pretty good. They've got an accurate range of about four thousand klicks if there's not a gravity well to fight, but here is the kicker. Max V is right at eighty kilometers per second so it'd take the thing a little less than a minute to travel the full accurate range. After that, they are out of propellant and would be coasting with no control. The ship can go a lot faster than that, so we'll have to be careful and not shoot ourselves. " Weaver shrugged. "No idea if the missile's capabilities are good or not compared to anybody else out there, but it's the best we can do. Currently. We're looking at some ways to extend the maneuvering range. Any other questions?"

  "More of a statement, sir."

  "Yeah, Chief?"

  "Sir, there's a grapping window on this submarine."

  "Spaceship, Mister Miller," Weaver said with a laugh. "Spaceship."

  "Where's your station?" Miller asked, shaking his head and finally tearing his eyes from the window on a submarine!

  "Over here," Bill said, waving to a station. "It's a bit odd. I have to be able to navigate underwater and in space." Miller saw a paper plot charter and three separate computer screens. Bill brought up one of the latter and pointed at the planet on the screen. "Since I'm also, effectively, the ship's science officer and they figured that Conn's going to be asking lots of questions, they managed to squeeze me in Conn instead of the usual Nav spot downstairs. Anyway. We're here. Terra. This system's really easy to use until you start filling it with real data, but if we wanted to go to, say, Jupiter . . ."

  He brought up a menu and found the planet, then punched in a command. The system displayed a series of coordinates.

  "It's at angle 233 mark 5.18, more or less," Bill said. "We need to come around to 233 and point up about five degrees. Only problem is . . ." He punched in another command and nodded. "Depending on how fast we're going, we're liable to run into Venus if we go that way and we're going real close to the Sun."

  "I think you need to find a different vector," Miller said dryly, trying not to look over his shoulder. He might need to know this stuff to save the universe and maulk. But there was a . . .

  "Sho-tan," Bill said. "So we vector to 197, catch a slingshot around the moon, catch another around Mars and there we are . . ." he added, showing the movement on the screen.

  "Glad you're doing it," Miller noted.

  "That's what everybody seems to say," Weaver replied, grinning. "One guy I was showing how to do this grabbed his head right in the middle of the lecture and screamed 'Rocks don't move!' "

  "Who designed the system?" Miller asked.

  "I did," Bill replied, shutting it down. "We paid Rath-Mirorc fifty-five million dollars for a system and they turned one in, late, that couldn't navigate its way out of a wet paper bag. So I built one."

  "That's . . . a lot of coding," Miller said. "Isn't it?"

  "Nah," Bill replied, waving him towards the rear hatch. "Not that much. Besides, I scagged a bunch
of it from other programs."

  "Wait; what other programs?" Miller asked, as he ducked through the hatch.

  "Oh, here and there . . ." Weaver replied. One of the crew coming the other way limpeted himself into the starboard bulkhead, so that the two officers could squeeze past.

  A nuclear submarine does not have much free space. Besides the obvious areas that fill the boat—the conn, the engine room, the missile and torpedo compartments—the boat had to pack in the thousand and one things that kept it going. Kitchens, mess halls, quarters for the crew, a state-of-the-art workshop, laundries.

  Because there was only so much space to work with, the boat was cramped. The corridors were narrower than a hallway in a home and much lower. Doors were narrow. Bunks in the crew compartment were four-high stacks and everything the crew carried onboard had to fit in either their bunk or a very small locker.

  "You got that thing off the Internet, didn't you," the warrant officer said, sliding past the crewman. He'd spent enough time in subs to know the moves. "You're navigating using some damned freeware program!"

  "Only the basic data," Bill protested. "And some of the graphics code. And the kernel, okay. But the gravitational effect algorithm is all mine! Mostly . . ."

  "Oh, God," Miller muttered.

  "You know we've got to be able to pinpoint our position, right?" Weaver said, cycling open another hatch.

  "What?" Miller said, stepping past the officer so he could dog the hatch closed. It was the internal hatches that, in the event of flooding or depressurization, would give the crew some marginal chance to survive. "Let me guess. Use a sextant or something?"

  "Sextant's old tech," Bill replied. "I figured out something better."

  "I can't wait," the SEAL said.

  "See, all you have to do is pick out bright spots against a dark background," Weaver said. "You need to make sure they're the right bright spots, but that's really all it is."

  "Some sort of telescope?" Miller asked as they walked down a corridor. They had to stand to the side as a seaman walked past with a large box of cans in his arms. Besides all the other crowding, every nook and cranny of the boat was slowly filling with boxes of food. The major limitation to time "at sea," or in space in this case, was how much food the boat could cram in. It could desalinate water for drinking, cooking and washing. It could break out oxygen from that same water for air. But nobody had figured out a way to make more food. You could pack prepared food into a much smaller area than a hydroponics department could ever create. There were some very new systems that created meat from nutrients and a "kernel" but those were still in their infancy. Until someone came up with a replicator, the menu was canned food.