Vorpal Blade

by John Ringo

  Besides the "distinguished visitors," the entire crew, military and scientific, was lined up on the deck of the sub. The Navy crew, who were going to be going back to work right after the ceremony, were in dungarees for the enlisted and khakis for the officers. The security contingent, Marines and Special Forces, were in Mar-Cam and digi-cam. The senior boat officers and NCOs were gathered to the front of the crew, with one SEAL warrant officer looking decidedly out of place. The majority of the scientific team, biologists, planetologists and astronomers, were in blue coveralls. The three exceptions were right on the end. Tchar, the Adar physicist who had been one of the first Adar ever to visit Earth and with whom Weaver had developed a close working relationship, was wearing fluorescent green pants, a Hawaiian shirt and mosh boots. Mimi and the linguist Miriam Moon were in jeans and T-shirts. He knew that Mimi had been issued coveralls so he had to assume someone had persuaded her to wear something else. One guess as to who. He hoped he wouldn't be forced to explain the presence of either one to the President or the Adar.

  Weaver had recently heard a rumor that it was the Adar who had held up the naming of the boat. U.S. Naval naming nomenclature was straightforward. This boat should be named after either a state or a distinguished person. The first name proposed was the Harley Simpson, after a senior member of the House Armed Services committee who was recently deceased. That name quickly faded due to some background discussions that even Weaver had not been privy to.

  The presence of K'Tar'Daoon, the Adar secretary of High Technology Defense and up until recently something on the order of prime minister of Adar, argued that the naming argument might have been settled.

  "The President and the Honorable K'Tar'Daoon would like to say a few words . . ." Admiral Townsend said, winding down.

  "I won't take much time," the President said. "I know that time and tide wait for no one. I'd just like to wish everyone luck and say that, after long discussions, the name of this fine ship has been finalized. I will let K'Tar'Daoon explain."

  "While this ship is not Adar in truth, we have as high hopes for it as any human here," K'Tar'Daoon said. The Adar spoke excellent English but with a strong sibilant accent. "When the naming conventions of your ships were explained, we found them most excellent, for human beliefs and understanding. However, Adar, as is often noted, think differently from humans. And while this is not our ship, in truth, we wished to present our thoughts on how this ship should be named. In time, we were persuasive in our arguments.

  "When we first encountered humans, we were confused by the name the humans had given to the boson portals. Such simple things and yet such a strange name: Looking Glasses. You did not call them mirror portals. Such a name would be logical. But humans looked upon them and gave them a name of wonder and, indeed, they are wonders. They take us all to strange lands, bring wonders to both of our worlds.

  "The Harley Simpson, the Margaret Thatcher, the George Washington, the Enterprise, each was debated in turn. But at each point we Adar argued that the name should be a name of wonder and power. For this ship is the hope of both our worlds, the sword that will carry our anger and righteous fury against the enemy that still plagues us.

  "This is also an excellent time to make an announcement. Yesterday, a mutual defense treaty was signed by the Adar Unitary Council, the President of the United States and the prime minister of England. Once this treaty is ratified by the United States Senate and the Parliament of England, it will initiate the first Space Alliance in our two planets' history.

  "In keeping with this, and the naming of the Glasses that you humans brought from your depths of understanding, this ship, this hope for all humans and Adar, is named:

  "The Alliance Space Ship Vorpal Blade."

  "Oh, Holy Maulk," Weaver muttered. From the science section came one loud braying laugh, quickly cut off. "Oh, grapp."

  "Like an ASS, dude," Miller whispered. "Like an ASS."

  7

  Rule Thirty-Three:

  Never Let a Fighter Pilot Drive

  "They couldn't have named it the Alliance Warp Ship, could they?" Captain Steven "Spectre" Blankemeier said, shaking his head. "Oh, no . . . Cast off lines aft . . ." The short-coupled former carrier commander was clearly nonplussed over the chosen name for his boat.

  "Could have been worse, sir," Commander Clay White said. The XO of the ASS Vorpal Blade was the senior submarine officer on the boat. There had been a real tussle over which portion of the service was going to control the probable future space navy. The submarine admirals had made the convincing point that spaceships would be more similar to subs than carriers. The carrier admirals, though, had a much better lobby. So Spectre had been put through an accelerated course in submarine warfare and management while White, who had been in line to command his own sub, was seconded as an "experienced XO." "At least we're so totally covert that hardly anyone will ever see our name. Cast off lines aft!"

  Despite the political infighting above their heads, the two officers had meshed well. Spectre was the epitome of a fighter pilot and the crew loved him, but he hadn't studied ship handling skills until he'd assumed a carrier command and despite a tour as a sub officer, which had confused the hell out of his commander, he still wanted to fight the boat like a plane. White, on the other hand, had started as an engineer and really comprehended the details of the boat. He was methodical where Spectre was daring. It was a good combination if for no other reason than White could sometimes keep his headstrong commander from totally losing it.

  "Cast off lines forward . . ." Spectre continued. "Sure as maulk it's going to get out. Guarantee it."

  "Cast off forward!" White repeated. "We're so black you couldn't find us with a really good sonar system, sir. All lines cast off."

  "We just motor straight out, right?" Spectre replied. "Seriously, it had to be the Adar springing that on the President. Surely he'd have caught it?"

  "Probably," White said. "Yes, sir, no tug this time for security reasons. Suggest turns for three knots."

  "Make it so," Spectre said. "I can't wait to get out of this damned gravity well."

  "Soon," Clay replied. "Astro, what's our course on launch?"

  "Two choices, sir," Weaver said. "We can head straight for the heliopause in the direction of Alpha Cent or we can do a fly-by of Saturn. It's only about two minutes out of our way and I think the planetology department would appreciate the readings. And on that course we can get a fly-by of the bow shock."

  "Make it so, Astro," Spectre replied. "I'd like to see Saturn up close again. Spectacular. Plan on at least one orbit. Got to give Planetology plenty of time to survey, right?"

  One reason that Captain Blankemeier had been chosen was that he was an amateur astronomer. There had not been a single submarine commander with that skill. A born tourist, he was always willing to do a quick check of a planet if it didn't interfere with the overall mission.

  "Can not wait."

  "Agree with you wholeheartedly, sir," Weaver said, trying to figure out the wet part of the navigation. Put him in space, he was fine. It was currents and shoals that gave him fits.

  "Oh, holy grapp," Hattelstad muttered as they made their way down the ladder to the Marine bunks.

  "You know, I love the Adar and I hate 'em," Jaenisch responded. "I can just start with the jokes now."

  " 'I'm sorry, Gunny, I must have had my head in my ASS,' " Crowley said. " 'Let me stick my head in my ASS and see if I can think of anything.' 'Time to go back to the ASS.' It even makes my head hurt."

  "Hey, Two-Gun, you play Dreen Strike?" Sergeant Lovelace said. Terry was the Bravo Team leader in the platoon, Crowley's direct boss.

  "I've played it," Berg admitted. "But I prefer WoW or Orion."

  "Figures," Crowley said. "We could use a fourth for Dreen. We keep getting creamed by Alpha First. They've got Gunga-Din as their heavy gunner and that Hindu is wicked."

  "I've got some new WoW packs with me," Berg said. "I think I'll stay on those for a while. If t
he system will let me uplink."

  "As long as they're valid copies," Jaenisch said, pausing at the corridor to their bunks. Everybody had followed courtesy protocol and was diving into their racks, but that didn't mean there wasn't a crowd. "There's a chip slit on the side of the screen."

  "Thanks," Berg said. "You guys have been doing this for a while, haven't you?"

  "We've only done two short cruises," Jaenisch said as they got to their bunks. He slid into his and then stuck his head out. "This is the first long cruise. Hopefully, nobody's gonna freak out. You might want to store all your stuff away by the time we dive."

  "Because the CO drives this thing like a fighter?" Berg said.

  "You have no idea."

  "Good news," Julia Robertson said as she entered the mission specialist mess. "Fly-by of Saturn on the way out."

  Robertson was a forty-seven-year-old skinny black woman. "People of color" were unusual enough in hard sciences but Julia was particularly unusual. A former waitress, she had gone back to school after her last child left the house. An undiagnosed sufferer from Attention Deficit Disorder, she'd found college a breeze with the right medication. Her social workers had expected her to return to the bosom of the government with a sociology degree. She'd shocked the hell out of everyone she knew when she switched to biology. She'd shocked even more people when she got her doctorate and went back to school to pick up two more.

  "That would be me," Dr. Paul Dean said. The planetologist was a tall man who fit into the bunks on the converted sub poorly. He had long brown hair, going gray and pulled into a ponytail, and a gray-shot beard that hung nearly to the middle of his chest. A former professor at the University of Colorado, he'd always resented the Top Secret clearance the military-industrial complex forced on him ten years before. That is, right up until the MIC offered the "hippie," with doctorates in planetology, astronomy, physics, geology and astrophysics, a chance to go into space.

  The former professor picked up a half-filled two-liter bottle of soda, shook it vigorously, opened up the cap to listen for a hiss, squeezed the sides in, shook it again, then took a swig. "I need to find out if we can drop a probe."

  He went through the ritual a second time, took another swig and then got up and headed out of the room.

  "Julia," Miriam said, waving to Mimi. "This is Mimi Jones."

  "And what is a young lady like you doing on a spaceship like this?" Julia said, her eyes narrowing. "Does your mother know where you are?"

  "My mother is dead, Miss Julia," Mimi replied politely. "But my Aunt Vera knows that I'm doing something with the government. And I'm here 'cause Tuffy says I'm supposed to be here," she continued, lifting the arachnoid off her lap.

  "What is that?" Julia asked, backing up.

  "That's Tuffy!" Miriam said, chortling. "You never saw Tuffy on the news?"

  "You're that girl survived the bomb," Julia said, much more gently. She sat down at the table and nodded. "I suppose there might be a reason you're here. But the Lord sure do work in mysterious ways."

  "That he does, Miss Julia," Mimi replied. "Dr. Weaver thinks that Tuffy might just be an angel. Even though he doesn't look like one."

  "Not sure just what an angel would look like," Robertson said, considering the arachnoid carefully. "But I wouldn't say he'd be a big ole terancheler."

  "I don't see why not," Miriam argued. "If Mimi went around with some glowing guy with wings on her shoulder it would cause more problems than something that looks like a stuffed toy."

  "Good point," Julia admitted.

  "What do you do, Miss Julia?" Mimi asked.

  "Biology," Julia replied. "So till we get to a planet, if we find any rocky ones, I don't have much of a job. You know what biology is, miss?"

  "A science that studies living organisms," Mimi recited. "I wrote a paper on punctuated evolution in the . . . second grade. I proposed that punctuated equilibrium only appears punctuated because of gaps in fossil data that are inherent in periods of rapid change."

  "Really?" Julia said, impressed. "I don't suppose you've done any study since then?"

  "Miss Julia," Mimi said, carefully, "I think that at this point, if I went to a university, I could probably get a doctorate in about any hard science you'd care to mention. I will admit that part of that is with the help of Tuffy. But he tries to just make me think . . . better, harder. He doesn't do it for me. You can feel free to quiz me on anything you'd like in regards to biology, geology, planetology, physics, astronomy or astrophysics."

  "Interesting," Julia said. Her rather pronounced southern black accent had nearly disappeared. "What's the definition of species?"

  "Ask a dozen biologists and you get a dozen answers," Mimi said. "According to Ernst Mayer, groups of actually or potentially interbreeding natural populations that are reproductively isolated from other such groups. I still say it doesn't explain tigers and lions, though."

  "Damn, girl," Julia said, whistling. "How old are you?"

  "Fourteen," Mimi replied. "But Tuffy says I have an old soul."

  "Just one of those definitions I really like," Julia said, grinning. "I loved to trot it out for juniors that thought they knew it all about biology then point out 'species' that don't meet the definition. And I don't know what to expect on other worlds, just want to get there is all."

  "And who is this young lady?" a man said from the hatchway. He was tall and broad, with a thick, neatly trimmed beard.

  "Everette Beach, this is Mimi Jones," Miriam said. "Mimi, Everette. Everette is the mission specialist commander. I think that makes him your boss."

  "Hello, Mr. Beach," Mimi said, standing up and shaking the man's hand.

  "You're Mimi," Beach replied. "I was briefed on your presence, but only today. And this would be Tuffy. You are both welcome. I've actually heard of you from sources besides the news. I think you supplied Professor Johnson at Caltech with the answer to his string node dilemma."

  "Yes, we did," Mimi said shyly.

  "I have to ask . . ." Everette said, his brow furrowing.

  "I can't tell you if it was me or Tuffy," Mimi interjected. "Not will not, can not. I'm not sure myself. There are times when I don't know if I'm really really smart naturally or if it's Tuffy. Simple as that."

  "Does that bother you?" Miriam asked gently.

  "No, it really doesn't," Mimi said. "Tuffy has told me that we're going to be together until I die and I think we're gonna be together after. So it's not like I'm going to lose my smarts like Algernon. And being smart lets me help people. And make lots of money."

  "You won't make lots of money working for the government," Julia said. "Oh, it pays well enough, but . . ."

  "I'm not, actually, getting paid for this," Mimi said. "And while I know I fall in the mission specialist category, even if I don't have a specialty, I'm going to be staying close to Commander Weaver and Chief Miller."

  "Any particular reason?" Beach asked.

  " 'Cause Tuffy says they are the causality point," Mimi replied. "And that's about all I can get out of him. He's shown me the math but string nodes is two plus two compared to that. Maybe one day I'll figure it out."

  "Oh," Beach said, glancing at the other two. Julia raised her eyebrows but Miriam just smiled.

  "I think you're going to fit right in here," Miriam said, patting Mimi on the leg. "You know, I read your paper on Yang-Mills Theory. Did you take into account the Looking Glass bosons connection through a virtual dimension when you worked out the mass gap? I have a hard time understanding how the LGBs enable a quantum particle with positive mass to travel faster than the speed of light. I mean, haven't we decided that the LGBs are not wormholes or even Higgs fields of the classical sense?"

  "That's right," Mimi said, smiling slightly despite the leg pat. "Dr. Weaver's original assessment that the gauge bosons created were simply the Higgs field gauge particles was . . ."

  » » »

  "Congratulations, Lieutenant Commander Weaver," Commander White said, grinning. "You
have successfully navigated us out of Norfolk Harbor."

  The sub had reached the two-hundred fathom line, the traditional dive point for the subs coming out of Norfolk. From there to England, more or less, there wasn't anything in the way of the sub. Oh, if they dove deep enough they could hit the bottom, but it would be tough. SSBNs were designed to be quiet swimmers, not deep ones.

  Unfortunately, the newly named Vorpal Blade wasn't even particularly quiet. Various concessions had had to be made for the sub to be spaceworthy, the most important of which was removing every scrap of acoustic tile from the surface of the boat. Without the acoustic tile, which muffled internal noise, it "radiated" like a rock band.