“It’s on the edge of what we consider travel-able space, but you can’t get there with a wormhole. And Gandy and I didn’t think you wanted to wait an extra four years or so for our return. So we came back.”
Harris nodded. “Now that is interesting. Kind of convenient, don’t you think, that you can’t quite reach it without making a big sacrifice?”
Gandy replied, “We tried every angle, too. Above, below, didn’t matter. The wormhole wouldn’t generate.”
Harris grinned as he pointed to the hole in the pilot’s console where the gauge was missing. “Might be because you don’t have one of those.”
Gandy asked, “You put it in?”
Trish nodded. “I did.”
“And? What’s it do?”
Harris cut in. “It does exactly what it’s supposed to do. I guess if you had one you’d know what that was.”
Trish asked. “So what do we do from here?”
Tawn replied, “I have building materials I need to get shipped out to the Retreat. I have a cargo transport and crew rented for it, but knowing the gravity, they’ve refused to do the unloading, so I have to round up some volunteers.”
Harris frowned. “I’d love to help, but I think I’ll be checking up on Trish as she swabs the deck and hoists the jib. Or whatever other maintenance is needed. You know these noobs, you have to watch them like a hawk.”
Trish shook her head. “I can’t even comment on any of that.”
Tawn sighed. “Well go swab your jib or whatever it is you have to do. I’ve got work to get to. Mr. Boleman, I’m sending you a list of supplies we need for the Kingfisher. See to it that those are aboard before we leave at… oh-two-hundred.”
Harris gestured to his first mate. “Come on kid. Let’s go see what trouble we can get into. You getting hungry?”
“You going to a buffet?”
Harris chuckled. “I was thinking about it, yes.”
Trish sighed. “I guess it’s something I’ll just have to get used to. Lead the way.”
As they walked toward the Emporium, Harris said, “The Bangor at one time had a pair of railguns on her. Parts of them are still there, but they’ve been made inoperative. What would you say about having a side project of trying to bring those back to life?”
Trish thought as she walked. “Wouldn’t those be illegal?”
“You the cops?”
“No.”
“Then as far as you know, no. And besides, there’s not an inspector out there who would go looking for a functioning railgun. They just don’t exist anymore except in the old movies or games. And you have to admit, it would be kind of fun to shoot one.”
Trish took a deep breath. “Am I gonna regret saying it would be?”
Harris chuckled. “I think you and I — the crew of the DDS Bangor, the only, soon-to-be-fully-functioning, three-hundred-year-old defense ship — are gonna get along great. I might even be tempted to spring for your meal this evening. Watch how I get this comped.”
Trish nodded in acceptance as they walked into the Emporium. Harris flashed his fake badge, claiming to be a DDI agent. The attendant at the register requested a deposit of forty-four credits. Trish was convinced the meal would be taken care of at the end, and as such placed the deposit to be held until then.
The carnage lasted for two hours before a young manager in a clean pressed shirt came forward to check credentials for the comp. Harris stood in protest, heading for the door as Trish looked down at her depleted credit store.
The walk back to the ship saw a snickering captain and an agitated first mate.
Harris sat as he held up his credit store. “Come here. Get your credits. I was just having some fun.”
Trish replied, “Not fun for me. I had to watch that. And then you made me pay for it.”
The transfer of credits saw the end of the protest. Harris turned and pulled the schematics of the railgun up on his console.
“The breech for each rail is under a plate in the back of the cabin. The autoloaders are of course gone, but I’m almost certain the power circuits and capacitors are still there. We figure out how to replace those loaders and we might just be in business.”
Trish looked over the diagram. “Interesting. This design looks a lot like the beverage dispensers on the big cruiseliner project I was working. It moves forty cans per minute into the pneumatic room-delivery tubes. If we could get one of those, I might be able to adapt it. Might cost you fifteen hundred credits to pick one up, though. And I’ll have to track down the manufacturer.”
Harris winced. “So we’re gonna go into a fight spewing beverage cans? You think that will be effective?”
Trish giggled as she shook her head. “You have a warped sense of humor, Mr. Gruberg.”
Harris nodded as he smiled. “We’d have to check, but that might actually make the weapon legal to have.”
Trish looked up from the tablet display she was studying. “Don’t push the comedy too far, sir. Learn to pull back from the fight when you already have a win.”
“Noted.”
Trish flipped through screens on her tablet. “Here… Claymonte Manufacturing. Domino Bend. Down on the surface. Retail for that unit is sixteen hundred ninety-nine credits.”
“Who else would use something like that?”
Trish replied, “You ever order a beverage while in your hotel room? That tube it came through was probably fed by one of these.”
“Can we go pick it up or is it an order thing?”
Trish opened a comm. After placing an order she was advised that a unit was in stock and available for immediate pickup. The Bangor was soon zipping down through the atmosphere.
Trish glanced up from a series of bumps and jerks. “I see what you mean about the feedback. You have to make your brain react with it and not against it. Already feels better.”
Harris nodded. “Good. We’ll have you trained as an expert pilot before we’re done. And as a consequence of that, you’ll be able to do the same with any ship with a minimum of practice. That same feedback mechanism is in most of them.”
“Funny… every flight simulator I’ve been in, they all use the autopilot with set waypoints. Nobody pushes manual flying. I think the lack of control at first scares most everyone off from that.”
The automated feeder was collected. Trish immediately got to work on its integration with the breech of the railgun. A return to Chicago Port Station saw a number of tools, including a welder, rented from a tool shop. Brackets were fastened and welded into place. The can-size holders of the feed were modified to hold the small tungsten pellet that would be fired from the gun.
Two days later, Trish stood from the floor. “You ready for a test?”
Harris laughed, “Don’t you think we should take her out of the slip first?”
Trish shook her head. “No, you idio—t. Sorry. That slipped out before I could stop it.”
Harris smiled. “Not my first time being called that. And I was joking about taking her out. I assume you were just referring to the feeder itself.”
“I was. See that red button on the top left of the console? Push it.”
Harris complied.
“Now, there are two trigger settings there. Auto and Manual. Set it to manual.”
A rocker switch was flipped.
“There’s an enable button beside the switch you just flipped. Press it. It should light up as yellow. From there, the red button on the control stick is your trigger. One press should advance the feed by one notch. Let’s give it a shot.”
Harris pressed the enable button. “And you’re sure there’s not a leftover round in the breech?”
Trish nodded. “I’m sure.”
The trigger was pressed. A low vibration shook the ship.
Harris asked, “Were we supposed to do that?”
Trish looked over the controls. “Hmm. The rails were energized. Wasn’t expecting that. Probably not a good thing to do while in port.”
There was a comm
otion out in the docking bay with a number of individuals yelling. Harris poked his head out the hatch, talking briefly to a neighboring captain who was standing outside his ship while scratching his head. Within minutes, port officials were walking from ship to ship and checking power systems.
Harris came back in. “I think we might have a problem.”
“What’s happening.”
Harris grimaced. “I think we’re happening. Those rails going off inside this bay might not have been the best thing. EMP maybe? I think half the ships in this bay lost power.”
Trish frowned. “That has to be coincidence. They’re all shielded. Even if we did put out a big spike, they should be able to handle that.”
Harris glanced around. “Are you certain? We are in an enclosed area and in extreme close proximity. I saw one other ship still leaving out there. We might want to slip out of here before anyone comes nosing around.”
Trish looked over the console. “Here… Rail Enable. I guess we could have flipped that off first.”
Harris sat in the pilot’s chair. “Pull that hatch while I get us moving.”
The auto-exit procedure was performed and the Bangor was quickly out into free space. A short ride and a jump had her parked above the colony of Grytus.
Harris pulled up an image on his console display. “This desert area… has to be a thousand kilometers in each direction. What do you say we go down there and fire this thing for real?”
Trish returned a worried look. “Shouldn’t we run more tests first?”
“Did your feeder advance by one notch?”
“Yes, but that’s not much of a test. We don’t know if the rest of this system works or not. What if you press that trigger and it blows off the front of the ship?”
Harris laughed. “Other than your feeder, this is all military grade equipment. If it’s going to work at all, it already works. Now, put us a tungsten round in there and let’s see what she can do.”
Trish sighed as the feeder was opened and a single tungsten pellet was placed in the hopper. “You’ll have to advance it three times before it’s in the breech. Your fourth press should send it on its way… if it already works.”
Three flips of the trigger brought the same vibration through the cabin. Harris piloted the Bangor down to the surface, positioning the rearmed ship a half kilometer from a large sand dune.
“Does it look like our round went in place OK?”
Trish looked over the equipment. “It’s not in the holder anymore. Don’t know where else it could be.”
Harris grinned as he squeezed the trigger. The vibration could be felt and was followed by a crack sound as the projectile went supersonic. The dune in front of them erupted with sand being thrown in the air, but the expected destructive power of the weapon was not perceived.
Trish said, “That was it? You can get that out of a plasma rifle. That couldn’t be all there is to this. You couldn’t fight a war with that.”
Harris scowled. “We’re missing something. Check the power to those rails.”
Harris looked over the console controls while scratching the back of his neck. “There must be a setting were missing. I just don’t see it.”
Trish pulled a diagram of the railgun system up on her tablet. The power feeds into the rails were checked. From there, the lines going back to the capacitor and battery bank proved out as OK. She stopped as she came to a circuit on the exterior of the power bank.
“Hang on. This doesn’t show on the diagram.”
Harris walked back. “What is it?”
Trish looked the device over. “It appears to be a limiter.”
Harris reached for it. “Well let’s yank it out of there.”
Trish grabbed his hand. “You might want to wait until we shut this down and bleed off any residual power. That line carries two hundred amps at fifty thousand volts. If it still has a charge you would basically explode. And I don’t want to have to clean that up.”
Harris lowered his arm. “I guess I’ll leave the maintenance work to the mechanic, then.”
Ten minutes later the device had been removed and the power lines reattached.
Trish closed up the access panel before loading in a new tungsten pellet. “We’re all set.”
Harris looked over the console. “Hey. Our new gauge is now reading a thousand.”
Trish leaned over. “Hmm. Might be a power indicator for that weapon. If so, this round might be a bit different.”
Harris smiled. “Let’s find out.”
The system was enabled. The feeder was advanced until a tungsten pellet entered the breech. The trigger was pressed. The vibration and crack of the pellet being expelled at a supersonic speed was followed by three quarters of the large dune lifting away from them into the air. A violent returning shockwave rocked the small ship.
Harris stood and raced to the hatch as it opened, jumping the two meters to the ground before sprinting the half mile to have a close look at the destruction. A ten-meter-deep crater, forty meters wide and running back sixty meters from the front, now sat where the large dune had once been. Fused glass shards, from the heat of the impact, lay strewn in every direction going away from him. Trish piloted the Bangor up to his location.
Still grinning, Harris climbed aboard. “Now that was impressive. Had I had one of these at Helm, I could have wiped out their whole army in a couple minutes, by myself.”
Trish returned a half frown. “I don’t know if this is a good thing to be enabling.”
Harris waved the comment off. “Relax. It’s not like we’re going to use it. But wow, I do like having that available.”
Harris pointed at the feeder. “Load us up with a dozen rounds. I want to see what the auto setting will do.”
Trish counted out twelve pellets, placing them in the hopper on top. “I would use manual until the first is in the breech.”
Harris sat back in the pilot’s chair. “Miss Boleman, would you care to pick our next target?”
Trish sat in the copilot’s seat, strapping herself in with the lap belt. “How about that one?”
“Excellent choice. You’d make a fine target selection officer.”
“Really? You had those?”
Harris shook his head. “No. But if we did, you would have been right up there with the best of them.”
The Bangor was moved back to a half-kilometer distance. Harris pressed the trigger three times with his thumb before flipping the rocker switch to auto. After a nod to his first mate, the trigger was pressed.
Twelve rapid cracks were followed by a wave of molten sand blasting the front of the Bangor as the selected dune disintegrated. Trish bounced up and down in her chair as Harris was thrown up to the ceiling and then slammed down to the floor, the inertial dampeners of the ship reacting slowly.
As the dust and debris began to settle, Trish unlatched her lap belt and jumped to help her captain. “Mr. Gruberg? You OK?”
Harris sat up as he winced while rubbing his shoulder. “Didn’t see that coming. How’d I get down here?”
Trish chuckled in relief. “First you went up there. Then down here. Came in pretty hard from what I could see. Of course I was in the middle of getting my brains shaken out. You OK?”
Harris rotated his shoulder several times. “Yeah. Just gonna be sore for a bit.”
The two stood, looking at the console displays. “Well that’s not good. We crapped out our cameras.”
Harris flipped a switch on the console. The blacked out images came to life in a quasi-wireframe form.
“We’ll have to run with the radar system.”
Harris walked to the hatch, sliding it open. Black shards of heat glass covered the sand just below and around the ship. Poking his head out into the still dusty air, he took a look at the destruction.
“Whoa.”
Trish stuck her head out behind him. “What? Wow… we did that?”
The crater before them was fifty meters deep in the center, stretching back half
a kilometer and out to a hundred meters on either side.
Trish said, “That’s incredible.”
Harris asked, “How many pellets does that say we can fire in auto mode?”
“Continuous. And we have another rail we haven’t messed with.”
Harris rubbed his shoulder. “Miss Boleman, I’d say our test was a success.”
“Why did they ever get rid of these as weapons?”
“Harris moved back to his chair, taking a seat. “Proximity. You have to be within a few kilometers for it to be effective. Plasma cannons made these obsolete. Is rare that two ships come that close in battle now. Same with air-to-ground campaigns. Why get close if you don’t have to?”
Trish said, “Hang on.”
The Bangor settled on the blackened sand. Trish hopped out and walked to the front of the ship, returning a minute later.
“Sandblasted the whole front. That hull now looks like wire-brushed aluminum or something, on all the forward surfaces.”
Harris said, “We can paint it when we get back.”
Trish sat in the copilot’s chair. “I don’t know. It looks kind of cool. Like it was purposefully done.”
Harris half scowled. “Well, we’re gonna paint it anyway. I have no interest in drawing attention. Would rather just blend in with the rest of them.”
The Bangor was soon rocketing up through the atmosphere on its way back to Chicago Port Station.
Chapter 18
_______________________
Two days had been spent at the Luxus Hotel and Spa. Harris was again on his eating and drinking binge as Trish spent her days and nights on the Bangor. Tawn and Gandy returned from a trip to the Retreat to oversee the delivery of building supplies for the hundred fifty new homes that were under construction. The population at the Retreat had grown to thirty-six hundred.
Tawn stepped up into the cabin of the Bangor. “Knock knock.”
Trish answered from the cockpit. “In here. Just watching the news on the console. Your trip go OK?”
Tawn nodded as she walked into the cockpit. “Where’s the stump?”
Trish sighed. “Out wallowing. Been doing nothing but eating, drinking, and sleeping for two days. Thought this job was gonna be nothing but excitement. Now it’s nothing but boredom. Pays good, though.”
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