The Hot Gate - [Troy Rising 03]

by John Ringo

  It was more a matter of the Myrmidons moving to the mirrors than vice versa.

  “Perfect,” Dana said. “And power up grapnels for a solid hold— Looking good. Now comes the fun part. On my mark engage five percent power on vector one-six-nine-four mark two. Readback...”

  * * * *

  “Just fly the caret,” Dana said softly.

  She had the main screen split four ways, keeping tabs on all four of the shuttles. As normal when moving an object as a formation the coxswains were following a “caret” targeting reticule. Keeping at a precise drive all they had to do was “fly” to the caret.

  It looked much easier than the reality.

  “Tarro,” Dana said. “Watch that drift.”

  “Watch the drift, aye,” Tarrago replied. “This is not easy, EM.”

  “Been there, got the scars,” Dana said. “Just fly the caret. We call this good training.’”

  “Good training for what?” Palencia commed. “Moving mirrors?”

  “Combat training?” Dana said. “I can’t imagine sneaking a shuttle into anywhere but if you did Id expect it would be slow, tedious and on a very precise vector. Besides, good training isn’t for anything in particular. Good training is defined as anything unpleasant and hard, EM.”

  “So the primary purpose of the training is simply that it be hard?” Palencia asked. “That is crazy.”

  “The more you sweat the less you bleed, EM,” Dana said. “And your port lower grapnel is showing a fluctuation.”

  “I fixed that,” Palencia snarled.

  “I don’t think the grapnels are a Granadica fault,” Dana said. “I think there’s something inherently wrong with the design. It’s not a Glatun system. There were no Glatun systems that did exactly what we wanted out of a grapnel. It’s designed using Glatun tech but it was the Night Wolves that came up with it. I suspect there’s a subtle little theory fault in their gravitic equations.”

  “It’s still holding,” Palencia commed.

  “Sometimes I swear it’s something in the software,” Dana said. “Or gremlins.”

  “Gremlins?” Vila commed. “Like the movie?”

  “Remember the old guy at the beginning talking about them?” Dana said, still watching her screens. “It was the excuse that a lot of people used for nonfunctional equipment in World War Two. Mostly it was poor maintenance or manufacture. A lot of the stuff that was manufactured for World War Two was pretty crappy compared to, say, that of the Germans and Japanese. The U.S. didn’t really figure out how to do things right until around the time of the space program. And while there’s some high precision stuff we do that equals or surpasses both countries, they’re still generally more precise than we are. Tarro, drift.”

  “Drift, aye, EM,” Tarrago said.

  “You’re overcompensating for the previous drift,” Dana said. “Either that or your seventeen thruster isn’t giving you the spec response. Pal, run a diagnostic on that thruster.”

  “Diagnostic thruster seventeen, aye,” Palencia said. He commed back a moment later. “It’s... fluctuating.”

  “Link,” Dana said, pulling up yet another screen. She didn’t have enough eyes for this. “All teams, cut thrust. Readback.”

  “Cut thrust, aye...”

  “Release grapnels...”

  * * * *

  Dana sighed as the four mirrors drifted free. Tarro’s had developed a yaw that had it spinning ever so slightly in space. And they were going to have to hook back up to them. But letting the boats just continue on their merry way while she dealt with Twenty-Two’s issues was a nonstarter.

  “Pal, pull the number sixty-three relay on Seventeen’s control,” Dana said. “Then lick the contacts and reengage.”

  “Lick them?” the EM commed.

  “Yes,” Dana said. “Lick the contacts. With your tongue. Then reengage and test.”

  “Stand by.”

  “Lick them?” Angelito said.

  “Saliva is a decent conductor,” Dana said. “When you get something like what was happening it’s usually a bad connection. Could be dirt or minor corrosion. The best way to make sure of the connection, when you don’t have time to thoroughly clean it, is to lick the connection. Of course, as soon as we stop, it will have to be pulled again and detail cleaned.” She made a note.

  She leaned back in her seat and started bringing up the data on the mirror. None of them were being used, currently, as supply mirrors. Which was fortunate. At the moment it was pointing a bright bit of light into deep space. Generally in the direction of the Aquarius constellation. Of course, with its current spin it was soon going to be pointed completely away from the sun.

  When they got it to its new position the stabilization packs would orient it properly. She could try to use the stabopaks to stabilize it. They had the override codes for the mission. But there was more than one way to skin a coyote.

  “All boats, maintain position,” Dana said. “Angelito, we need to get the spin out of that thing. Engage two percent thrust and let’s catch that sucker.”

  “Uh... aye, EM,” Angelito said. “I don’t suppose you want to drive?”

  “Nope,” Dana said. “You might want to start with a forty degree yaw on port nine. This is mostly going to be fiddly thruster work.”

  “Forty degree yaw, port nine, aye, EM...”

  * * * *

  “Okay, this time it’s a bit easier,” Dana said. They’d gotten Twenty-Two’s thrusters and grapnels working again, the mirror reoriented and finally into place. “All we have to do is cut the grapnels and back away slowly Don’t start backing until the grapnels are cut. Can I get a readback... ?”

  * * * *

  “And we are done” Dana said.

  “Thank the Mother Virgin!” Valdez commed. The coxswain of Twenty-Four had had no previous comment on the evolution and had done very well, all things considered. It wasn’t his fault that Sans cut the grapnel a fraction of a second too late.

  “So now we go refuel,” Dana said. “Purely for safety and training purposes. Which will require some very ticklish docking maneuvers. Then we go get the next set.”

  “Aaaaah!”

  * * * *

  “Comet, Raptor. Private.”

  “Go,” Dana commed without speaking. She still wasn’t comfortable with direct comming. At this point she figured she never would be. But she could play the tune.

  “What’s the status of your crews?”

  They had the second mirror nearly in place after all the fun of in-space refuel. But everyone was starting to drift off the carets. The mirrors, fortunately, had some flex. But things were getting iffy.

  “Getting worn out,” she replied. “They’re not used to this sort of driving.”

  “Same here,” Raptor commed. “Once you get that mirror in place, discontinue evolution.”

  “Discontinue evolution, aye,” Dana commed. “RTB?”

  “Negative. RON”

  “Joy.”

  * * * *

  “And we’re... done,” Dana said.

  “What’s the next mirror?” Valdez commed. He and Dario Tarrago were both CM3s but Valdez was flight division leader.

  “That’s it for today,” Dana said. “We’re done-done until tomorrow.”

  “Great,” Vila commed. “I can hear my rack calling me.”

  “You mean the fold-down one in your flight compartment, right?” Dana said, teasing.

  “EM?” Valdez commed.

  “We’re on a Remain-Over-Night,” Dana said. “Since there’s no military facilities nearby, that means we’re racking in the compartment. I hope you guys have your inventory of boat rations onboard.”

  “This is...” Palencia sputtered.

  “We’re forty-three million kilometers from base,” Dana said, trying not to let the exasperation enter her voice. “That’s a really significant fuel use. And as slow as we were taking it, it took us eight hours to get here. We’re not going to waste the time and fuel to go back. We’re
closer to Earth than we are to Thermopylae. And, no, you can’t go home for supper, EM.”

  “It had not crossed my mind, EM,” Palencia replied.

  “As to the rations, I checked your stocks because I thought we might be RON,” Dana said. “So... have fun camping, boy scouts.”

  * * * *

  “Oh, God, I want a shower,” Dana said.

  Three days of moving mirrors and even she had to admit it had been a right pain in the ass. Twenty-Two’s grapnel had finally given up the ghost, but they’d figured out a way around that. And Twenty-Four had one out. On the other hand, pretty much all of the birds in Raptor’s division were down one or more grapnels. Twenty-Eight had been more or less hanging out with nothing to do since it was down three. Nineteen, from Division One, was working on spare air since the recyclers had gone out. That had to suck. But her division was, with the exception of the grapnel stuff, still in the green. Go Division Two.

  With eighty-four mirrors moved, by their group alone, it was time to head back to the barn before something serious broke. She wasn’t sure but this might have been the longest continuous mission for Myrmidons since their initial test series. Raptor at one point had equated it with flying a fighter plane around the world for four days without any checks. Put that way, the fact that they were still functional at all was surprising.

  “I would never have thought I would look forward to the rather uncomfortable bed in my quarters,” Angelito said. “To simply flop or take a shower first? This is a great philosophical question.”

  “The first thing is you check your suit,” Dana said. “Then you get to decide.”

  They hadn’t spent the whole time in suits. When they were in “down” time they could climb out of them. Angelito had, politely, moved into the cargo compartment to change out of his. He had still been a bit weirded out being in the same compartment with a sleeping woman. She figured he was going to go find a girlfriend or Rosy Palm pretty quick after they got back.

  “Raptor, Comet,” she commed.

  “Go.”

  “Do we have to dawdle along at a hundred grav all the way back?” Dana said.

  “We’re going to reach within fifty percent of max velocity as it is,” Raptor replied.

  The Myrmidons on this long a run could easily reach velocities that were somewhat problematic. First there was the whole problem of relativity. The Myrmidons could, on long runs, start to push into areas that were called “relativistic.” It all came down to Einstein’s E=mc2. Part of the back math of that said that as an object approached the speed of light, its mass increased. One of the reasons it was theoretically impossible, before the gates, to exceed the speed of light was that mass increased exponentially as you approached the speed of light. Something had to “push” that mass, fuel in the case of Myrmidons, and eventually you didn’t have enough energy. Besides, it went right up the closer you got and you could never quite reach the speed of light no matter what you did.

  Didn’t really matter. Myrmidons couldn’t manage it no matter what. It had been calculated that given onboard fuel the closest that a Myrm could get was about .03 c. The most that anyone had noticed was that pulling full power for more than an hour caused a tiny fraction of increased fuel use. But that created all sorts of other problems. Because not only did mass distort, so did time.

  As you pushed further into relativistic zones, time “slowed” inside the vehicle. To the crew and passengers there was nothing to notice. But when you got back to base you found out that your clocks were really off. Theoretically, you could spend one duty day traveling and find out it was three on the “outside.” They called it Rip Van Winkle time. The Navy was still arguing whether “normal” time or relative time counted for time in service. So far it hadn’t been a major issue. Given operations and maximum velocities, Dana had only ended up a few minutes off of “real” time due to relativity. But it was interesting.

  And particles. Light got very strange as you started to push into “relative” space. Light started shifting. Ultraviolet, which was everywhere, started turning into microwaves, which could be very impolite. X-rays, which were common enough, turned towards gamma rays. The screens and the armor could handle some gamma but enough of it was going to kill you eventually.

  Then there was the problem that calling space “vacuum” was being polite. Especially in the inner system there were masses of charged particles as well as micrometeorites to consider. The “maximum velocity” of a Myrmidon was based on the probability of survival of the boat if it hit something the size of, say, a human finger while going at a teensy tiny fraction of the speed of light. They had light screens but an impact at that sort of speed got dicey no matter how you cut it.

  “Yeah,” Dana said. “That’s sort of the point. We can cut this run in half if we pull max thrust.”

  “And if one of these overworked boats loses an inertial compensator pulling four hundred gravs, the crew turns to mush,” Raptor pointed out.

  “This is not a challenge when I say this,” Dana said. “But my division’s compensators are going to hold. We’ve been running checks the whole time. They’re good.”

  There was a long pause before Raptor replied.

  “Division Two has permission to detach from formation and return at maximum acceleration to Base,” the flight leader said. “Division will not exceed four thousand meters per second square of acceleration. Division will slow acceleration at the slightest sign of failure of any core drive, shield or inertial compensation system. Division will not exceed thirty million meters per second velocity. Division will, and let me make this perfectly clear, observe all safety and astrogational warnings. Gimme a readback on that, Comet.”

  “Division will not exceed four thousand meters per second square, aye...”

  * * * *

  “Booyah for attention to critical engineering imperatives!” Dana caroled as the Thermopylae came into view and the decel started to fall off.

  Pulling three gravs—except for a brief turnover—for four hours had been a bitch. But they’d managed to cut the same amount of time off of the run and that shower was practically in the bag.

  “I can breathe again!” Vila commed.

  “Now you know why I have your lazy asses in the gym every morning,” Dana replied.

  And more importantly, to her personal way of thinking, the compensators and drives on the boats had worked like a charm.

  “And why I had you guys sweating on repairs.”

  “We take your point, Engineer’s Mate,” Palencia commed. “I am very much looking forward to my rack. And comming Sancho from the comfort of my rack to taunt him.”

  “Division Two, Leonidas,” the Thermopylae’s AI commed. “Welcome back. You’re early.”

  “We’ve been pulling max,” Dana said, stretching. Their spacesuits acted as G suits—compressing to keep blood from pooling in the legs—so she wasn’t in any real pain. But it had been uncomfortable as hell. “Looking forward to a shower. We are, sorry, pretty tired of the... Spartan lifestyle we’ve been living the last few days.”

  “Good one,” Angelito said, laughing.

  “Unfortunately, you’re going to have to wait on your sybaritic joys, DivTwo,” Leonidas commed. “We’ve got a hold on all entering traffic until we get Granadica in the bay.”

  “Doh!” Dana exclaimed. “How long?”

  “Not long, honey,” Granadica commed. “I’m through the gate and crawling up to the Therm now. Take a look!”

  Dana swiveled her vision blocks to the indicated vector and squealed.

  “Granny! Is that really you?”

  The fabber was now a kilometer of stainless steel pristine with the exception of enormous laser-etched script spelling out her name. She positively glittered in the light from the distant sun.

  “You look fah-bulous!”

  “Don’t I just,” Granadica replied. “I think I’ve only got about ten percent original parts what with the first major maintenance cycle and this last
one.”

  “Well, you are looking good” Dana said.

  “So are your boats,” Granadica said. “You’ve kept them very well. But did you really need to pull that much accel for four hours? You know that puts a lot of stress on the systems. They’re going to need to be fully certified as soon as you land.”

  “There’s a standard maintenance cycle for high stress flight, Granadica,” Dana said. “We were going to have to do a thirty-sixty cycle on them, anyway, given how long we were continuously operational. Otherwise I wouldn’t have done the fast run. And it’s going to wait until tomorrow. I want a shower.”