Vorpal Blade (ARC)

by John Ringo

  "Something's happening," Miriam said, pointing at the TV.

  The view was slewing and suddenly it zoomed.

  "Mars," Everette said, nodding. "I guess we're going close enough it was worth a look."

  "No chance of landing and taking a couple more samples?" Julia asked.

  "Not this trip."

  "More samples?" Mimi asked.

  "We've had five shakedown trips," Julia said.

  * * *

  "We've landed on Mars, the moon and Titan, one of the moons of Jupiter," Captain MacDonald said. "The last two were damned cold. You could feel it right through the Wyvern armor. Next, I think you need to meet the rest of the security team. That is still shaking down."

  "Marines and Special Forces?" Miller said, grinning. "I can imagine."

  * * *

  "You guys haven't got anything better to do than clean weapons?" Master Sergeant Steve Runner asked.

  Steve was a sixteen-year veteran of the Special Forces and had come to the conclusion that he needed his head examined for volunteering for this mission. With medium build, brown hair and brown eyes, he'd fit in well in Afghanistan once upon a time. But the hammering the Islamics had taken from the Dreen had pretty much taken the juice out of the World-Wide Jihad. Frankly, there weren't many wars worth fighting on Earth anymore.

  He'd picked up a bachelors in geology through the Army, mostly using it to bank on his retirement. The "suggestion" that he volunteer for this mission had come out of the blue. But, hey, going to space. How bad could it be? So he had to baby-sit some doctorate types. They hadn't told him he was going to have to deal with jarheads.

  "At least we're not playing nursemaid to a bunch of eggheads," Jaenisch replied.

  "Nope, you're going to be out on point playing red shirt," Runner said, grinning. "Better make sure them M10s are dialed in."

  The M10 was a .308 version of the venerable M-16 series of weapons. During the brief war with the Dreen, it had become apparent that fighting them took something with more stopping power than the 5.56 mm rounds the M-16 series fired. The ammo weight went way up for the same number of rounds, but then again being able to stop a charging howler butt-cold was worth it. For that matter, they'd proven in Africa that it could kill a leopard pretty cleanly or a lion if you pumped enough rounds into the things. But one team member, who had been medically retired, also learned that they weren't worth a damn on Cape Buffalo.

  "Me, I've got a date with a probe," Runner continued as he exited the mess. "Don't miss the Saturn fly-by. It's gonna be good."

  "You can't walk on it, you can't breathe it and you can't shoot it," Hattelstad said. "Besides, we've seen it." The short, slim red-headed gunner clicked together the pieces of his Squad Support Weapon and jacked the grenade launcher. "What the grapp do we care about Saturn?"

  "I'd rather see Mars," Berg said, reassembling his M10. "Glad we caught it on the fly-by."

  "What's so special about Mars?" Hattelstad asked.

  "Saturn was the god of partying," Bergstresser said, jacking back the bolt of the rifle and then letting it fly forward. "Mars was the god of War. God of the Marines."

  "Doctor Dean," Runner said, nodding at the scientist. "You sent word you needed a hand?"

  It had taken nearly ten minutes to make his way from the mission specialists' quarters to the torpedo room where the probes were maintained. Clearly Dr. Dean was unhappy about the time.

  "You're finally here," Dean said. "Set the oscilloscope up and make certain that the output of the ACP is following design spec. And then I need a readout on the GCMS instrument heater output. This thing wasn't quite complete when we got it from APL."

  "Uh, ACP?" Runner looked around the room thinking he should recognize the acronym.

  "Damnit boy, the Aerosol Collector and Pyrolyser needs to be checked out. Then check the wiring connections for the heater on the Gas Chromatograph and Mass Spectrometer!" Dr. Dean said, scowling.

  "Yes, Doctor," Runner said, trying, as always, not to say it with a German accent. Runner didn't mind getting maulk: He was SF, he ate maulk for breakfast. But condescending maulk was another matter all together. He bit his tongue and set about the task of connecting the ACP and GCMS modules to the probe.

  After nearly an hour of last-second modifications and unapproved preflight checkouts Dr. Dean proclaimed the probe ready for service. Flight readiness review teams at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory or at Johns Hopkins would have had a conniption fit and probably fallen over dead from the fact that a high level Ph.D. and a Special Forces NCO prepped the spacecraft for flight. Russian counterparts on the other hand, would have smiled, patted them on the back, and started shooting cognac at a job well done. The Blade was breaking through multiple paradigms of America's views of space exploration.

  "Is there anything else, Doctor?" Runner asked as the probe slid into the tube.

  "No, you can go," the planetologist replied, not bothering to turn around. "Next time, though, I expect you to be here when I call. I know you're military but in the scientific world, time is of the essence."

  "I'll try to keep that in mind, Doctor," the master sergeant said as he made his way out of the torpedo room. The worst part was, his job was keeping this asshole alive.

  "Probe ready on Tube Number Four," the tactical officer said. Lieutenant Souza was grinning madly. "Ready to launch space probe, sir!"

  "Ready Tube Four," the XO replied.

  "Tube primed," the launch controller replied. "Tube Four ready to launch."

  "Launch probe."

  The boat shuddered as the probe was fired from the torpedo tube and began its descent to Saturn's atmosphere.

  The probe was essentially identical to the Huygens probe that was part of the larger Cassini spacecraft launched many years before. Once clear of the tube, gyros rotated the rear of the probe in the direction necessary to slow its progress and a rocket fired, slowing the probe so that Saturn's gravity could capture it.

  The entire assembly remained together, the retro rockets firing from time to time to slow its fall or correct its entry, until it hit the outer shreds of the deep Saturnian atmosphere. Then the "mission package" detached from the rocket, which was left to plummet away into the depths.

  The mission package, though, deployed a parachute, initially just a thin ribbon of high-tensile cloth, that slowed its descent as automated systems began air sampling. The GCMS was an only slightly updated copy of the Huygens package. The instrument was a versatile gas chemical analyzer that could measure a wide variety of chemicals and their concentration in the Saturnian atmosphere. The gas chromatograph of the system made fine measurements of the gas content, then implemented a heater to create pyrolysis products that would then be more finely measured by the ACP. The ACP would also suck in some of the Saturn atmospheric gasses through various filters and cook them as well to decompose them into more basic materials that could be analyzed via the GCMS. The system worked flawlessly and generated the most detailed understanding of the gas giant planet's atmosphere that mankind had ever had.

  The most important component of the mission was locality. The receiving station was the Blade and it was very close to the probe when compared to the distance between Cassini-Huygens and Earth. The close range allowed the probe to connect to the Blade with a data rate similar to broadband Internet as opposed to the few bits per second available to the Cassini-Huygens probe. Therefore the probe could pump data continuously as it plunged deeper and deeper into the vapors of Saturn's atmosphere without worrying about overloading the memory of the Blade. The Blade could also send real-time commands to the descent probe that couldn't have been done from Earth. Actual data points only meters apart along the descent trajectory were taken and a constant optimization of the probe's descent was maintained. The difference of actually being there and tossing a robot from Earth was immediately apparent.

  Most people on the boat, though, weren't paying much attention to the "take" . . .

  * * *

&nb
sp; "Thank you for letting us up here, Captain," Mimi said, staring up through the boat's sole viewport.

  To drop the probe the Vorpal Blade had actually come inside the orbit of Saturn's rings. From Earth they were just a thick band of white. Up close the rings, composed mostly of ice with some rocky material, reflected a billion colors like a rainbow. Light from Saturn shone on them as well as the light from the distant sun, causing an effulgently rippling coruscation across the surface.

  The light reflected down into the conn, giving the normally austere compartment a glory that was rare indeed.

  "You are very welcome, Miss Jones," the captain said. He was still unsure about having an underage female on-board, but it was fun to give her the treat. He'd actually let several of the mission specialists onto the conn to enjoy the sight. Select members of the crew had been let in earlier. He wasn't about to deny the sight of this vista to the youngster.

  "We have about another thirty minutes until the probe completes its descent," the captain continued. "But there are other people who want to come up and see. It's not the same on the videos. So you only have fifteen minutes."

  "That's okay," Mimi said, turning away from the sight and smiling at him. "I've seen enough. You can let someone else up."

  "You can stay . . ." the captain said.

  "I've seen it," Mimi said, shaking her head. "I can recall it perfectly any time I'd like. Give someone else the chance."

  "Very well," the CO said, nodding.

  "Hello, Dr. Weaver," Mimi said, looking over at Bill.

  "Hi, Mimi," Weaver replied. "But it's commander on the conn."

  "Yes, sir," Mimi said. "I heard that we're going to do an investigation of the heliopause and the bow shock."

  The heliopause was the point where the solar wind stopped holding off the ISM, the interstellar medium, the thinly diffused helium and hydrogen that filled interstellar space. The solar wind, a collection of rays and charged particles blown out by the sun, held back the ISM from entering the solar system. And the solar system was not stationary; it was moving "spinward" with the galaxy. So the wind, blowing out, hit the interstellar medium especially hard in the spinward direction. The heliopause was therefore compressed on that side so that the whole zone looked much like an egg with the "flatter" side to spinward and the elongated side anti-spinward.

  At the point where the solar wind stopped holding off the ISM to spinward was a particularly compressed zone of hydrogen and helium called the bow shock. Thin by comparison with planetary atmospheres, it nonetheless was a relatively volatile region. Bill had planned pausing in the area to do some sampling, but had not anticipated problems with it.

  "Yes," Bill said, frowning. "The Pioneers and Voyagers have been acting weird. NASA wants to know why."

  "I would advise you to travel carefully in that area," Mimi said, frowning in turn. "You know the theories of the causes, right?"

  "Either magnetic build-up or gravity fluctuations," Bill said, nodding. "And?"

  "I . . . I'm a proponent of the latter," Mimi said carefully. "There is theory that indicates that gravity acts differently around stars than in interstellar space at a fundamental level."

  "Know that one," Bill said. "You're worried about fluctuations? We'll be in warp, we should be fine."

  "There's a possibility that the fluctuations could be . . . strong," Mimi said. "You could be looking at gravitational standing waves of two gravities or higher."

  "You sure?" Bill asked, gesturing with his chin at Tuffy.

  "Tuffy . . . lets me figure out things on my own," Mimi said. "But if you hit a high gravitational fluctuation—"

  "The boat could come out of warp," Bill said, his eyes closing in thought. "Hell, the damned sphere could get pulled out of the mag field. It'll take the shock, but . . ."

  "I would advise going carefully," Mimi said. "Especially around the bow shock." She nodded to the captain and then walked out of the compartment whereupon the COB let one of the other mission specialists into the conn.

  "I'm starting to figure out why she's along," the captain said.

  "Yes, sir," Bill replied.

  "You know each other," the CO said.

  "I was there the night she walked in out of the middle of ground zero at UCF with that thing on her shoulder," Bill said. "Her whole world destroyed, her home destroyed, her mother dead and calm as you please. Shortly thereafter I think I went to the place Tuffy comes from. And I'd say that it's the strangest place in the universe, were it even in the universe."

  "XO has the con," the CO said.

  "XO has the con," the XO repeated.

  "Join me in my office, Commander," the CO said.

  "Sir."

  They climbed up a ladder on the port side of the conn and down the narrow corridor to the CO's office. The CO crossed it and flopped down behind his desk, waving at a chair.

  "Bill, explain to me this thing with gravi . . . What she said."

  "Gravitational standing waves," Bill replied. "You've been through a cut in the intercoastal in a small boat, sir?"

  "Yes," the CO said, frowning.

  "Well, when the tide's running . . ." Bill said.

  "Oh, you get standing waves," the CO said, nodding. "I've seen 'em run ten feet sometimes. So the boat's going to go up and down?"

  "These are going to be going more like . . . back and forth," Bill said, frowning and looking at the overhead. "I think. I've seen the theory but until Mimi pointed it out I wasn't concerned about it. The gravity out here is so diffuse that big standing waves were, I thought, unlikely. But I think I can see where she's deriving her theory from. If the conditions in the interstellar medium are significantly different than around a star . . ."

  The CO waited for about thirty seconds, then cleared his throat.

  "Sorry, sir," Bill said, looking at his commander and grinning. "I'd need to sit down and do some serious calculations to figure out if Mimi's off or not. But off the top I can see where she's coming from. If they are high, it's going to make the bow shock an interesting place. They're going to be more or less stationary, so there may be odd material caught in them. The stellar equivalent of flotsam and jetsam."

  "You get in an area that has possibly damaging material, you slow down," the CO said. "We get out there and engage the normal space drive. Take it slow."

  "Hmm . . ." Bill said, wincing. "Top velocity in normal space is three and a half kilometers per second, sir. Three point five kkps."

  "That's always bugged me," the CO said. "If we continually accelerate, we can go faster, right?"

  "Materials, sir," Bill replied, frowning. "Do you want us to sustain a relativistic impact?"

  "Relativistic . . ." the CO said. "Apparently, I'm going to ask a dumb question. What is a . . . ?"

  "If we keep accelerating things get . . . bad, sir," Bill replied. "We can continue accelerating, stopping for chill-downs from time to time, as long as our fuel holds out. And with our acceleration we'll get . . . very fast very quickly. However, long before we consume much of our quarkium, we'll get up into largish fractions of light speed. Just our top end of three thousand five hundred kps is enough of a fraction to make me wince. It's about fifty times the fastest spacecraft Earth's ever launched and about point zero one two light speed. But the problem is that space isn't totally empty. There are small bits all over, micrometeorites, that we're running into even now: the bow of the boat has armoring and micrometeorite blankets on it; that absorbs most of the impacts. However, if we get up to serious fractions of light speed, a real 'intermediate speed' when we're talking about the distance from the sun to Jupiter, those impacts stop being survivable. Newton starts to make way for Einstein and energy release stops being purely kinetic and starts getting . . . relativistic. Think nukes instead of rocks. Up close to the speed of light, if we hit something the size of a pea we'll be a smear of photons spread over an area the size of the solar system. Not to mention when we get back home our clocks will be so off we'll never be able to figure ou
t what time Jeopardy is on. But that's another discussion . . ."

  "Time dilation I've got," the CO said. "As we get up to fractions of light speed, our time slows down compared to the rest of the universe. Einstein said it was so and I heard there were some experiments that have proved it. Oh, hell. And mass increases. So that pea, since it's going at a relative fraction of light speed, would be like—"

  "Running into a planet," Bill said, nodding. "As velocity increases, gets into relativistic range, time slows, mass increases. It also means the faster we go, the harder it is to go faster, since our own mass increases. Thirty-five isn't a speed limit, it's more of a guideline. But it's a pretty good guideline, sir.

  "The point is, sir, I'm not sure what you mean by . . . 'out there,' but if you mean we stop at approximately two astronomical units from the perceived trouble area, which itself is going to be something on the order of ten AUs wide, at 3.5 kkps it will take us fifty-one hundred thousand seconds to do the approach, which is—"

  "A lot of minutes," the CO said, frowning. "Hours."

  "Thirty six hundred seconds in an hour," Bill said. "Two hours to do the approach. That's not bad. But it will take fourteen to do the full crossing. We can cross a light years in that time. And if we're damaged coming back . . . Fourteen hours might be more hours than we have."

  "So we hit it at Warp One and hope for the best," the CO said.

  "I'm not sure what else we can do, sir," Bill replied. "I do suspect, however, that the major issue will be in the area of the bow shock. So once we do this sampling . . . Probably when we enter a system it should be away from the bow shock."

  "Effects," the captain said.

  "The waves are going to create shearing stress. I'm not sure what the drive is going to do in those conditions, frankly, but we should probably warn the crew of the possibility of unusual maneuvers . . ."