I left Al to think about whatever it was he was thinking. It was an exercise in futility though. There was no way we had time to develop a spacecraft that could get us to the moon. Maybe it would give him a break to do something fun. Who was I kidding? We were all scared shitless and at the same time still thrilled to be doing what we were doing.
I signed in and picked up my badge. As the guard let me into the secure area I noticed that Tabitha was sitting in the room with the lights dimmed and it was very quiet.
"The general is getting very tired, sir," Steve the guard whispered to me. I nodded that I understood. He pulled the door to, locking Tabitha and me in the room.
I slipped in behind Tabitha and was planning to rub her shoulders.
"Have a seat, Anson," she said, startling me.
"That's okay, gorgeous," I told her and started massaging her gently. "You're overworking yourself, General. When was the last time we had a good night's sleep?"
She rolled her head and stretched her neck. "Don't get me wrong, Anson, this feels great. But right now we don't have time. Sit down for second."
"Okay, what's up?"
She slid a panel open on the table and pressed a couple of buttons. "I wanted you to see this. In about three minutes two of the enemy warp development facilities will be in view of a couple of our spybirds in LEO. About four minutes later, we will pick up the other two facilities. Operations have been planned to take out those facilities. We're going to watch."
"Wait a minute. That would tip the world off. If they captured an American soldier, our meteor story is screwed." Images of a Chinese television broadcast of a beaten American soldier popped in my head.
"Don't worry, Anson. No ground troops will be involved. In fact, special black bag teams have taken over Chinese airfreight planes. These aircraft are going to fly into each of these locations. As far as anyone can tell, these were terrorist acts, accidents, who gives a damn what. We will have deniability."
"Who is going to fly those things? Will they be able to bail out in time? Then how do they get home?" I was upset. I hope these soldiers weren't asked to volunteer for a suicide mission.
"That isn't your concern, Anson." I could tell that this weighed heavy on her as well.
I hoped that if this was a suicide mission that there was a way to use soldiers that have been diagnosed with something terminal, who were going to die soon anyway, to conduct these types of missions. I guess generals have been ordering men to their deaths for thousands of years. That's something I'm not sure I could do. It takes some real balls to be a general. I'm glad Tabitha has the biggest set I've ever seen. Don't get me wrong. Tabitha is all hot-blooded American woman. She just must keep her balls somewhere besides a scrotum.
"Tabitha, are you sure that a plane crash will do enough damage?"
"These will. Our guys have made sure that there are some extra parcels on board." She nodded and sort of smiled, although she seemed too serious for it to be a real smile. There was a sadness and a no-nonsense down-to-brass-tacks air about her.
I reached over and held her hand as the view panel went from a blue screen with "unusable signal" bouncing around on it to four split panels of static. Then the static cleared into two separate images in grayscale. The images were of very normal-looking manufacturing type districts.
After a few seconds, an area that looked to be the size of a city block in the lower left quadrant of the screen turned bright and saturated the camera. Some software took over and adjusted the image somewhat.
I didn't see the aircraft but obviously, it hit. Then I saw a streak across the top left quadrant and a second explosion. I couldn't take my eyes off the screen. I remembered how I felt back in '01 watching a similar incident live on television. It is an eerie feeling. But for these soldiers on these planes my heart swelled. I felt a sense of sorrow and pride for them.
"Godspeed boys," Tabitha whispered. I noticed tears running down her face. I swallowed hard to keep from crying myself. Just because she has big balls doesn't mean she doesn't have a big heart also.
Tabitha squeezed my hand. I squeezed back and nodded to her. The American people would never know what had happened during the last six weeks. It would all be covered up to the point that even the people who were part of it would be confused as to what really happened. I just hoped that the families of these poor soldiers were well compensated and were told that their sons or daughters, whichever the case may be, died as great American heroes.
"Three minutes or so more to the next target," Tabitha informed me.
We sat in silence for the next three minutes. The two quadrants on the right side of the panel went to static and then an image of similar industrial areas. We watched for a few seconds in silence. Then on the upper right corner of the view screen a streak appeared and the center of the screen lit into a great bright spot. The attenuation program adjusted the scene and we could see that there had been another direct hit.
Almost immediately following the third crash, the center of the lower right quadrant exploded. All four targets had been hit. I assumed that not only were there extra parcels on board these aircraft, but that they were also full of fuel. It was my guess that these facilities would be on fire for hours if not days. There would be no more warp experiments conducted there. Tabitha watched until the screens faded to static, then automatically switched to the "unusable signal" blue screen.
"This is hard, Anson." She pulled me to her and I hugged her with all my heart.
"I know." I tried not to cry either.
We both had been accepting things too quickly and then being forced to move on to the next obstacle. We had had zero time for reflection, contemplation, or mourning. First there was the Shuttle explosion, the narrow escape from dying in space, fighting terrorists, the tornados and ECC explosion in northern Florida, escaping Huntsville by the skin of our teeth, 'Becca's flubell virus, an entire state with over fifty million American citizens destroyed, and now ordering at least four people to their deaths. We both needed to cry for a while. We hadn't even been able to attend the memorial service for our fellow astronauts on the Shuttle and now there were millions to mourn.
I held Tabitha for several minutes, both of us crying. I wiped the tears from my face and then hers. "We will make it through this, the United States of America will prevail. Besides, you still owe me a honeymoon." I smiled at her--turtle-up and focus, this fight ain't over yet.
She slugged me on my shoulder right were I had been shot. "Oww!" I laughed and rubbed my mostly-healed shoulder.
"Okay hotshot, we just bought us some time. Now get me some warp missiles before the Chinese get back on their feet," she ordered.
"Yes ma'am, General ma'am!" I saluted.
CHAPTER 17
I checked with 'Becca and Sara on the progress of the miniature energy collection cubes or Mini ECCs. We were still two months away from the first one being produced and about three months away from the next four. The second and larger automated Clemons Dumbbell deposition systems (on a higher floor) were just now coming online and would be a couple of months behind the system put in place in our basement. After the first one was generated by the basement facility, production starts over. So, in four months there would be enough Mini ECCs to power six mini warp missiles or MWMs.
Jim and I had completed the design for the MWM's warp coils and apparently, Al had completed the design for the MWM airframes and internal hardware. Jim and I passed along notes and design information to the manufacturing guys a few floors up and they began to cut, roll, and weld metal. As soon as the mini ECCs were ready we could plug them into the missiles and integrate them into a Shuttle or an expendable launch vehicle (ELV). I started looking through Al's notes and design data for the blueprints for the mating hardware for the launch vehicle. When I realized that no hardware had been designed for integrating the MWMs into a launch vehicle, ELV or otherwise, I was a tad bit heated to say the least.
I found Al in the lab conference room doing si
mulations and analyses of what looked like several of the Shuttle's External Tanks stuck together along with several other older mothballed spacecraft fuselages. "Al, I thought you said you had finished the MWM hardware design?" I blurted at him. He seemed surprised by my obvious anger.
"I . . . uh . . . did," he replied reluctantly.
"Well why then--" I paused, "--have you not designed the attachment hardpoints for the MWMs to interface with a launch vehicle?"
"Why do we need them?" He looked confused.
"'Why do we need them?' he asks. Well, how do you propose we get them to orbit?"
"The same way you get them down from orbit I guess." Al looked smug.
"What the hell are you talking abou-- Well, son of a bitch dog in heat." It hit me like an uppercut to the chin. "Of course we don't need a launch system. We raise them to orbit with the warp drive. Hell, I can't believe I didn't think of that. Al hold on a minute--" I ran to the door and poked my head out. "Tabitha!" I yelled. "Tabitha I need you for a second." A moment passed and Tabitha didn't show. Anne Marie bounced up instead, looking as perky and young as ever. God, was I ever that young?
"Mom heard your, uh, page. She couldn't leave what she was doing just yet. She sent me to find out what the hubbub was all about."
I looked at her and smiled. She always makes me smile. I took her by the hand and said, "Come with me." I led her back to the conference table where Al still sat. He was looking at me as though I were nuts.
"Annie, do me a favor and kiss him." Annie just shrugged her shoulders and planted a wet one right on Al's lips. "Thanks." I said.
"Uh, yeah, thanks." Al said shyly, as he turned four shades of taupe, maroon, red, and pale all at once.
"Okay," Annie said. "Now you might want to tell Al and me why you just had me give him mono." Al looked startled. "Just kidding Al."
"Well, I wanted your mother to do it, but you worked out better. Al here has just given us a rapid strike capability and no need for launch vehicles." I explained the idea of not having to use rockets to launch and that we could use the warp system for main propulsion for any application. Just because space is warped by the device doesn't mean that the thing has to travel faster than light. Heck, Tabitha and I probably didn't do that on our first warp ride. But, we did go very, very, very, very fast. The warp drive could be used for slower speeds and even just for offsetting other forces, like gravity, for levitation. The speed is proportional to the amplitude of the poles and zeroes of the Alcubierre warp. The amplitudes of the warp are also proportional to the energy required to make the poles and zeroes. The slower speed would mean less amplitude on the warp, which in turn means less energy. In fact, the ECCs running at only a couple of percent capacity could gain the amount of energy to counter the Earth's gravitational well.
The concept of designing the warp drive as the main propulsion system had immediate useful applications. Imagine using the devices as a crane or safe transportation. The road to the Moon and the planets within our solar system was now at least graveled. With a little bit of systems engineering, testing, and manufacturing, we would have the road paved. And for the immediate problem, our Secret War with China, I was beginning to roll some ideas around.
I called an all hands meeting of our crew. That meant the general, the Doctors Daniel (Jim and Rebecca), Al, Sara, Anne Marie, and myself. We sat down over sandwiches and "cocolas" in the conference room and had an old fashioned brainstorming session. Some people might call it a "think tank."
"Al here has kluged together some concepts as to get us to the far side of the Moon near term," I said kicking off the meeting. "What I want to do today is for us to figure out just how we could get there, get enough stuff there to support at least fifty people and to live comfortably, and sustain a research, development and engineering laboratory plus a manufacturing facility. I want to emphasize that we would want to be taking low-gee strolls on the lunar surface in less than four months. Is it not just possible, but also doable?"
Al turned the projector on and clicked on his presentation file on his laptop. "My idea is to take as many space-rated pieces of hardware as we can get our hands on and just warp them to the moon. We could live in a Shuttle Orbiter with the old Spacelab module in the payload bay while we integrated the pieces via EVAs. My list shows some possible hardware. There are several External Tanks we could grab, we could appropriate at least one Shuttle and the Spacelab module, there are several commercial airframes we could use. Jim and I think it could be done with a warp drive powered by three of the ECCs. Jim."
Jim nodded. "That's right, Al. I've run the simulations a couple of times. The mass requirements that we're talking about and the size of the warp field that we'd need to maintain would require three of the mini ECCs that we're currently building. One modified warp coil will suffice though."
"What about lifting these things? How do we attach to them?" Sara asked.
I explained, "Well Sara, as Tabitha and I found, you don't have to be attached to the warp drive to make travel possible. You just need to be within the bubble. Anything in the flat spacetime region of the bubble will travel with it. So we just put these things near the warp drive and away we go," I explained.
"Anson," Tabitha interrupted. "What about the construction on the moon? There could be a lot of EVA time there. All of this hardware would need to be mated with airlocks and tubes to connect them. We would need to weld and God knows what else. These are things that haven't been done in space before."
"I understand that Tab--but can we do it? You are the expert astronaut here." I put the ball back in her court.
"Well, I suppose we would have to live like cosmonauts. We better bring a shitload of duct tape." She laughed.
I felt in my pocket and found the small flattened roll that I've kept with me since the incident in Florida. I vowed then that I would never leave home without duct tape. I pulled it out and grinned, "Never leave home without it." She laughed.
"Why do we need all of these extra airframes and things?" Sara asked. "Why don't we just use the warp bubble to make a big underground dome or something?"
I did a double-take on that one. Again, an application with the warp technology that I had missed. I must be getting old and slow. From the look on Jim's face as he slapped his own forehead, I wasn't alone.
"Of course," Jim said. "We slowly poke a small hole down about fifty meters or so by having the warp bubble force its way downward. The Moon couldn't resist that. Then we slowly expand the bubble to a size we decide we need and then oscillate the diameter of the outer Van den Broeck bubble by millimeters back and forth and very fast. The oscillations would turn the lunar rocks or dirt or whatever it is to a molten material. When we turn off the field we have a huge ball-shaped cave with hardened magma walls."
"Excellent, Jim!" I was thrilled by these new concepts. "How about we do some quick analyses to decide the volume that we would need and the most stable diameter for such a cave. If we need to, we will build multiple caves and tie them together. These caves could be built in a matter of minutes or hours I think."
Anne Marie added, "I think we should carry as much of the hardware on Al's list as we can. We will need safe places in case the caves leak our atmosphere and we will need entrance airlocks. And what about living quarters? I don't know about you guys, but I'm feeling a little stir crazy here and we have plenty of room."
"Actually, Annie," 'Becca replied, "we could keep a warp field on inside the caves to maintain atmospheric and structural integrity. Once we get there we might as well put these three ECCs and the warp coil to further use. The ECCs would give us more than enough power to maintain the warp field and to power our entire Moon base. Annie, I do agree though that we should carry everything we can get our hands on, including several kitchen sinks."
"That gives me an idea," Tabitha laughed. "What if we made one of these balls higher than the rest and then warped a large part of some freshwater lake to the cave. We could then set up a gravity-fed plumbing
system."
"Brilliant Tabitha! I love it. Then we warp a ball of atmosphere right out of the sky into the domes, and some fruit trees to go with them, and we also abduct some livestock. This place could be self-sufficient in a matter of days! This is great stuff." I was exhilarated with the possibilities. It was cool to take my mind off of the war for a few moments. I think it helped the rest of the crew also.
"Something else, Anson," Tabitha got my attention. "Gravity is much less on the moon, about one-sixth gee. If I understand the warp theory correctly, and I'm sure I don't, couldn't we alter the gravity in the habitat dome to equal one gee?"
"Well, General, it appears to me that you do understand the warp theory," Jim said.
"Right." I laughed. "Jim, calculate a slightly slanted flat space region for me that will add to the lunar gravity to equal one gee."
We spent the next several hours batting ideas around and revising our concepts. By the end of the afternoon we had developed a complete concept plan and a drawing of the underground lunar facility. The facility consisted of the habitat sphere and "green" sphere, a manufacturing cylinder, a research and development cylinder, and there were multiple tunnels connecting them. Of course, there was also a spaceport pad on the lunar surface. The pad would be adjacent to a long wide cylinder that connected to the side of the habitat sphere. Pushing the lunar rock around with a warp field would create the pad. Jim and I were planning to work out a bulldozer scoop-shaped warp-field geometry. Creating cylinders would be easy. Pushing a ball along a straight path would create a cylindrical shaft with spherical ends. Who cared if they had spherical ends?
Anne Marie had the idea of just building a small town with all the infrastructure, power grid that would connect to ECCs, water purification pump and tower, stocked fish pond, living quarters, and anything else we could think of and then just warping that to the main habit sphere. I liked that idea a lot. Since time was a factor, we decided to go with manufactured homes. We would have the first trailer park in space.
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