Vorpal Blade (ARC)

by John Ringo

  "There's a telescope involved," Weaver said. "But the system that picks it up comes from an optical mouse."

  "An optical mouse?"

  "Oh yeah, its actually kinda cool. You ever seen those optical mice that have a little red light coming out the bottom where a ball is on the old-style computer mouse?"

  "Uh, huh." Miller knew Weaver well enough to know that this explanation was not going to reassure his confidence in the ship's navigation system. But, what the heck. They had some sort of weird sword that would go through the foot of the guy trying to crush them like a beer can, a navigation system off the Internet and a window on a submarine. How much worse could it get?

  "Well, they work off a DSP chip that is actually quite remarkable—"

  "Doc . . . Sorry, 'Sir' . . . ?"

  "DSP . . . digital signal processing. Anyway, there is a little video camera inside the mouse that looks straight down at the table surface. The little red light is just for, well, light. The DSP chip stores the image from the camera and makes note of where any spots, dust specks, scratches, or any other surface features of the table are within the image. The chip then grabs another video image a fraction of a second later and compares it to the previous one. If the spots moved within the image, the chip calculates how far and then moves the cursor on the computer screen a similar distance."

  Weaver paused for a breath and Miller stood motionless, not making a sound, but the slightest hint of a rictus grin began to form on his face. It was worse.

  "I had the idea that the little DSP chip should work for any sort of scene change. I mean, after all, a video image of stars against the night sky looks about the same as dust specs on a tabletop with the contrast inverted. So, I blaged a few prototypes together to show that it would work. There are several small two-inch diameter telescopes distributed about the surface of the ship and each of these has an optical mouse DSP system fixed at its focal plane. The data is then piped into the main navigational computer where the vector changes found in each DSP chip are filtered and optimized. It actually works really well. And, the good news is we've got over a hundred spares on board."

  "Is the whole boat like that?" Miller finally moaned. He'd given up. He had to face it. He'd lost his hardcore doing flowers. He did not want to go fly around the universe in this . . .

  "Yep, pretty much," Weaver replied. "Utter blage."

  "Okay, you got me again. That's twice you've used that word and I've no clue what it means," Miller said.

  "Adar word," Bill replied, shrugging. "Sort of means everything from cannibalize to jury-rig. To blage, I blaged it, we can blage that, it's a blage. Funny thing is, the Adar never had the concept of blaging before they ran into us; all their stuff is so carefully crafted and integrated it makes the Japanese look sloppy. So I don't know where they got the word. But, yeah, it's about as mil-spec as a fifth grade science fair project. An Adar corporation did the IT systems integration and they did a damned fine job. And Rath-Mirorc got the SM-9s right, I'll give 'em that."

  The last hatch, as Miller recalled, would have led them to the missile compartment. The missile compartment was the one really open area on the whole boat. Three stories high, with separate decks on each story, it was lined with giant "tubes" that held the ballistic missiles with open areas down the middle and to either side. Bubbleheads called it "Sherwood Forest." It was where SEALs traditionally did their running on-board. Instead of the cavernous area he'd expected, he was confronted by another hatch, a ladder to the side and narrow corridors leading port and starboard. There were two more hatches in the corridor and ladders at both ends.

  "Now it gets complicated," Weaver said. He turned right, to port, and went up the ladder. The hatch above opened on another corridor, this one with bunks along the inner bulkhead. Halfway down there was another hatch, just a simple door, with one more at the far end and another ladder going down.

  "This is the security section," Bill said. "We've got two security groups. One is Marines; they play outer security. Then each of the technical people is assigned a small security and support detachment. They're drawn from Special Forces."

  "No SEALs?" Miller protested.

  "No SEALs," Weaver replied. "Wrong sort of mission. Anyway . . ."

  He opened up a hatch and waved to the room. It was . . . small. And there were two bunks.

  "You get to bunk with the Marine first sergeant," Bill said. "He previously had the compartment all to himself."

  "He's going to be pleased as maulk," Miller said, tossing his seabag onto the upper bunk.

  "He was indeed," Weaver said.

  He led Miller out of the room and down the corridor to the ladder. At the bottom there was a door but he turned to starboard and led Miller to a door in the center of the mission specialist section. This one had a card reader and a big sign "Authorized Crew Only."

  Weaver fished out his keycard and held it up, then opened the door. Beyond was the missile compartment. But it was much smaller than on a normal SSBN, with only four missile tubes.

  "Those aren't Tridents," Bill said, gesturing at the missiles. "They're 9As."

  "How many of them?"

  "How many tubes?"

  "Four."

  "See?" Weaver said, grinning. "It's not true. SEALs can count to ten without taking off their shoes."

  "That's it?" Miller asked. "The ship's got four missiles to defend itself?"

  "And a couple of lasers that probably won't scrape the paint off of anything we find and some torpedoes that are the rough equivalent of a Saturday Night Special in space terms," Weaver said. "But I think that the LBB is probably superior tech to most of what we'll run into. If I'm right we'll be able to run away from most ships."

  "Nice to hear," the SEAL said dryly.

  Down both sides of the missile compartment were new generation Wyvern Mark Vs.

  The Wyvern had been in development since shortly before the Chen Event. The massive suits were "piloted" by a person sitting more or less in the abdomen. The pilot wore a harness that transferred their movements to the much larger arms, legs and "head" of the Wyvern. With wheels on the elbows, knees and belly, the Wyvern was capable of just about any movement an infantryman could make and was much better armed and armored.

  The Mark V stood about three meters tall, the same height as an Adar male. They looked like a very fat man with thin arms and legs, a big butt and a low, rounded vaguely insectile head. The "butt" contained a well-shielded americium nuclear generator for power while the "head" of the suit contained most of the sensors of the suits. In the case of the Wyverns on this mission those included not only full EM sensors, capable of picking up "light" ranging from X rays to deep infrared, but a variety of other particles and waves.

  The Mark V used the newest digital active camouflage system that took a reading from surrounding coloration and pattern and transmitted it to the surface of the suit. Under certain conditions, it could make the suit virtually disappear. They were still damned big things to hide, as both Weaver and Miller knew from painful experience.

  "Only twenty Wyverns?" Miller asked, taking a count.

  "Three levels to the section," Weaver replied. "Fifty in all. Thirty-eight Marines with armor, me, the three ground mission specialists, their security teams. And a few spares. I guess you're going to be fitted to one of those."

  Each Wyvern had to be individually fitted to the user, a process that took about three hours.

  "Now for the engineering section."

  "I get to see that?" Miller asked. He'd never been given access to engineering.

  "You said full access," Weaver replied, grinning.

  "I'm not going to like this, am I?"

  * * *

  "Oh, sorry," Mimi said, blinking her eyes.

  The small compartment she'd been directed to already had a lady in it. She was sitting at a fold-down desk with a small extensible lamp over it, typing on a computer. And she wasn't wearing a uniform like the rest of the people on the ship; she was wearing
jeans, high-heels and a spaghetti-strap top. All three were black and the jeans had a dragon on the thigh.

  "It's okay," the lady said, standing up and grinning. She had long red hair with the front dyed bright blue and blue and red streaks in it. She was also very pretty, arguably beautiful, with a small chin and nose and bright brown eyes. "Are you my roommate? Aren't you a little young? What's that on your shoulder?"

  "I'm . . ." Mimi paused trying to figure out which question to answer. "I was told this was my room, so I guess I'm your roommate. I am young and it's weird that I'm here but there's a reason, and this is Tuffy," she finished, fishing the creature off her shoulder and holding him out.

  Tuffy extended one pseudopod towards the woman and then bowed. Mimi had never seen him do that before.

  "Isn't he cute?" the woman squealed, walking over and petting him gently. "Tuffy. You're Mimi Jones. Sorry it took me so long. The last picture of him I saw he didn't look so cool."

  "That's okay," Mimi said as Tuffy crawled up the woman's arm. He'd never done that before, either.

  "He's tickly," the lady said, plucking him off and handing him back. "I like you, Tuffy, but Mimi's your special friend. So you're on this boat, too? What's your job?"

  "Tuffy just told me we had to come," Mimi said, shrugging. "I don't really know what I'm supposed to do."

  "I'm Miriam," the lady said, holding out her hand. "I'm the linguist."

  "I'm pleased to meet you, ma'am," Mimi said, shaking her hand.

  "I'm glad you're here," Miriam said. "Everybody else is so stuffy. It's good to have a friend. We're going to have so much fun!"

  Mimi, for the first time since Tuffy told her she had to leave her home, started to hope that might be the case.

  * * *

  "What in the hell is that?" Miller asked, blinking his eyes in astonishment.

  The engine room of the boat was almost blindingly white. And it had all the usual sort of stations he'd expect to see in a nuclear reactor. But . . . floating in the middle of the room was a big silver ball with what looked like very close longitude and latitude lines drawn all around it. Above and below it were large circular . . . somethings. They looked sort of like big magnets.

  "That, my friend, is the coryllium sphere," Bill said, grinning. "In the center of that sphere is the little black box we played with oh so many years ago. See that?" he asked, pointing to something that looked like a broad, squat cannon with no opening.

  "And that is?"

  "That is a meson canon," Bill replied. "Turns out that was the answer. Send that thing electrons and it goes ape-maulk. Fire mesons at it and they degrade into neutrinos. Feed it with neutrinos and it generates a black hole. A stable one. And it is inside the box. Generate a large enough one and it somehow . . . warps reality. Creates a special universe that the boat exists in where normal Einstein physics no longer apply. More neutrinos, bigger hole, we go faster. Well, really Einstein's General Relativity does allow for some of the things but that's a long story and a maulk load of tensor math.

  "The reason for the big sphere is two-fold. The outer layer is coryllium; it's a room temperature Adar superconductor. So we can balance the sphere on a magnetic field and hold it there using the Meisner effect. The rest of the sphere is radiation absorption material. The Schwartzchild radius of the black hole puts out a maulk-load of hard rads. The sphere absorbs them. I figure it's good for about four hundred thousand hours of use, then we'll have to switch it out. Pretty much like the rods on a sub's reactor.

  "Also turns out that the effect you get depends exactly where you aim the neutrinos. That's one reason for having the sphere floating. We can control the impact point of the neutrinos to within a nanometer and with that thing nanometers matter. The lines represent spherical coordinates theta and phi that are basically the same as lat-long, but we drew the lines on there very precisely. It helps align the ball initially. Like I said alignment is . . . important. There's one point where input causes . . . bad things to happen."

  "Define bad things," Miller said.

  "That you don't have access to," Weaver replied. "I was careful to check. But I will point out that it's one reason there are still five keys on this boat even though we're no longer considered a ballistic missile sub." Weaver fished into his uniform top and pulled out a red key attached to a lanyard. "You do not want me to pull this out for real."

  "Oh," Miller said, nodding. "Very bad things."

  "Very bad things," Weaver agreed, putting the key away. "There are probably damned near a billion combinations on the thing. We've only figured out about two or three. Basically, we can use it to get around but we don't know what all it is capable of.

  "The big problem with the box is you have to dial the mesons down slowly or the hole explodes. So we can go into warp fast. Coming out takes five to thirty seconds, more or less. Try to just turn it off and we go boom. Also won't form one when we're too near a gravity well. Not sure why. But no matter how many mesons we pump into it, it won't form until we're about two planetary diameters away. What it does, instead, is create a normal space drive with all the fixin's. It generates pseudogravity, reactionless acceleration and, best of all, an inertial compensator so that we don't get smashed into paste by the accel. Internal gravity is about ninety percent of Earth's, so whoever created this thing likes more or less Earth gravity.

  "The warp also won't form inside Venus' orbit, more or less; the sun's gravity is too powerful in that region. The kicker is, if we get too close to a gravity well, it can just shut down. Fortunately for some reason the black hole doesn't explode in that case. I'm pretty sure that's something having to do with the engineering of the device but since I haven't a clue about the theory on the thing, that's just a wild ass guess."

  "Where are the mesons coming from?" Miller asked.

  "Charged Higgs in the cannon," the astrogator said. "An upgraded version of the aimer doo-hickey we started opening gates with. There's a small Adar ardune reactor in the back of the room. That supplies plenty of power. More power than the system can handle."

  "So, you've got quarkium warheads on the missiles," Miller said wonderingly.

  "And the torpedoes," Bill pointed out.

  "I so don't want to know about the torpedoes," Miller said. "You've got contained quarkium in this room and a micro blackhole generator. One that, if you hit it with either electricity or neutrinos in the wrong spot, very bad things happen. And the whole ship is one big . . . blage. With a grapping window. Why do the words 'warp core breach' come to mind?"

  "Because if any of the fine technicians in this room grapp up," Bill replied, "we are going to light up like a supernova. This sucker shouldn't ever come near a planet, much less be sitting in Newport News. But I try to downplay that. . . ."

  6

  Rule Thirty-Two:

  Never Trust an Adar with Acronyms

  "First call!" Jaenisch said, sticking his head through the door of Bergstresser's room. "Time to rise and shine!"

  "Oh, grapp," Berg moaned, rolling over and getting to his feet. "I'll be right . . ." He stopped and ran to the head, a room he had occupied for, on average, ten minutes an hour all night.

  "What time did you take the pink maulk?" Jaen asked, ignoring the sounds of dry retching.

  "About midnight," Berg answered, sipping some water and rinsing out his mouth.

  "Shiny. You're over the worst of it," Jaen said. "By noon you'll be back to your usual chipper Two-Gun self."

  "Grapp you, Jaen," Berg said, too miserable to realize he'd just cussed an NCO.

  "Uniform and accoutrements in thirty minutes in the bay," Jaen said, ignoring the insult. "Don't eat breakfast, but you'll be fine by lunch."

  * * *

  Load-out was a pain in the butt, especially in the morning.

  "What I don't get is why we're even taking battle rattle if we're going to be using Wyverns," Hattelstad said. The best way to move the battle rattle, boron carbide body armor, combat harnesses and rucksacks loaded with mi
nimal gear, was by carrying it in place. So they'd all loaded up, then toted it to a secure loading dock at the rear of the barracks. That involved climbing down four flights of stairs, and while that normally wouldn't have even fazed Berg, at the moment it nearly killed him.

  "Nobody knows if we're going to have to go ground-mount," Jaenisch replied. "For that matter, we might end up fighting in the ship. We can't use Wyverns for that."

  "The very idea makes my balls shrink up," Hattelstad said. "You know we've still got missiles, right?"

  "No," Berg said miserably. "I am as ignorant of the ship as it is possible to be while knowing that it exists."

  "And they're loaded with that Adar ardune stuff," Hattelstad said gleefully. "It's more powerful than a nuke and it blows up if you look at it wrong. Wanna know about the food?"

  "The word is unwelcome," Berg said. "But if you insist on talking about greasy bacon or whatever, I'll just have to puke all over you. Satisfied?"

  "We ain't supposed to be chatting, anyway," Jaenisch pointed out. "So can it."

  The loading dock was crowded with other Marines, carefully tossing their rattle into the back of a five ton.

  "So this is Two-Gun," a tall, dark PFC with the nametag "Prabhu" said. "And either you're hung over as hell, or you just went through that Shiva damned pre-mission physical."

  "Pre-mission," Berg said, walking in the back of the truck and taking off his armor. He carefully put his harness in his mostly empty ruck and then banded the armor around it. "But I'm told that the effects pass by noon."