Vorpal Blade

by John Ringo

  "Right. Astrophysics survey sounds like a good idea." Spectre relaxed in his chair. "Science stuff."

  "The interesting thing, sir, is that YZ Ceti is only about point seven-two light years that way." Weaver nodded out the window in the direction of the little M class flare star.

  "And that's interesting . . . why?" the XO interrupted. Spectre remained quiet.

  "Well sir," Bill said, turning to the XO. "These two stars are so close together that there might be an explanation for the unusually dense Kuiper belt here. Perhaps it has something to do with how their gravitational anomalies interact with each other out past the heliopause."

  "So, you are saying that we need to go out there where space is all screwed up even worse than around a typical star so we can take a look?" The XO raised his voice a bit to emphasize his concern.

  "Uh, well sir, we could go a few degrees in right ascension to the center point between the stars. The gravitational effects should be somewhat less, uh, pronounced there." Weaver looked back at his screen and typed in a few commands. The optimization program picked a spot slightly to the right of the center of mass point between the two star systems.

  "Somewhat less pronounced," the XO muttered under his breath. "What the hell does that mean?"

  "I know I'm gonna regret this," Spectre said. "But it does sound interesting from a scientific perspective and that is part of why we are out here. Senators will be impressed with pretty pictures and give us tons of money. So, pilot set a course for the observation point to the right of the center of mass between the two stars. Coordinates at your discretion, Mr. Weaver."

  "Aye, sir."

  » » »

  "Normal space drive," the CO said as soon as the first gravitational ripple hit. "I don't see much, Commander Weaver."

  "It's there, sir," Bill replied. "I'm getting some really interesting particle readings already—"

  "What the hell was that!" the XO exclaimed at the bright white flash of light a few thousand kilometers or so to port.

  "Don't know, sir. I'll zoom the big scope in on it." Weaver typed in the telescope sensor commands and then zoomed in on the region the flash had come from. "Sir, I've got some images of the region. You want them on the big screen?"

  "Let me get a forward view," Spectre said pompously, then grinned. "God, I love this job!" When the image came up on the screen, though, the captain whistled at the whirling and flickering debris cloud on the flat screen just right of the window. "What the hell?"

  "I think I've got it figured out, sir," Weaver said, musingly. "Basically, we're out in a region where the Oort clouds overlap."

  "The what?" the XO asked.

  Weaver closed his eyes for a moment and tried not to sigh. The XO was a great submariner but getting basic cosmology into his head was a pain in the . . .

  "The Oort cloud is a big spherical cloud that surrounds solar systems," Bill said. "Ours stretches about three light-years out from Sol and starts about a light-year out."

  "Shiny," the XO said. "Oort cloud. What's it got to do with here?"

  "The stars are so close their Oort clouds overlap. The comets from both stars are probably getting zipped around like crazy from the disturbance zone. We might have even seen a comet from YZ Ceti smashing into one from Tau Ceti. Hell of a lot of energy in that. The odds of us being here at the right moment to see a collision must be, well . . . astronomical. Hey! That means . . ." Weaver looked back at his screen for a moment then bit his lip as he thought. "Oh, maulk."

  "All hands! All hands! Artificial gravity anomalies are occurring due to unusual local disturbances. Report to stations and wait for systems to reset and normalize. Further orders will follow."

  "What the flying grapp does that mean? Artificial gravity anomalies hell, we're up-grappin'-side down!" Drago barked over the net.

  "There is no up or down in space." Two-Gun laughed as he writhed against the restraints in his rack. He thumbed at the control on his game system and considered asking if anybody was interested in a game of Dreen War. But . . . probably not.

  "Two-Gun," Jaen barked. "If there is no up or down in space then why . . ."

  " . . . Am I lying on the God damned ceiling of the bridge?" The XO stood while rubbing the bump on his forehead. The other members of the bridge crew had had the foresight to fasten their seatbelts before entering into the disturbance zone, but their full weight pulling them against their restraints was probably as uncomfortable as the XO's bruised forehead and ego.

  "Mr. Weaver?" Spectre asked calmly. He was hanging from his restraints with his hands peacefully folded on his lap.

  "Okay, now that was unusual," the COB admitted, taking a sip of coffee. He was standing on the ceiling as well, but had somehow managed to land on his feet.

  "Uh, COB?" the pilot said, gesturing with his chin.

  The COB looked down and frowned. There was a spot of coffee on his tunic.

  "Well, lemme tell you, pilot," the COB said, frowning at the spot on his dignity. "That wasn't nothing to the typhoon we got into off Fiji one time. I was in a fast boat and . . ."

  "I'd suggest that for future reference, sir, seat restraints are mandatory during trans grav disturbance travel," Weaver said with a smile, droning out the COB's long story. "I think the system is confused because the gravity outside the ship is so confused. Think of a pond and what happens when you drop two rocks in the water about a meter or so from each other. When the ripples collide with each other you get destructive and constructive interference zones. We're in a destructive one."

  "Mr. Weaver . . ." Spectre was not quite losing his patience. After all, he had been a fighter pilot most his career and hanging upside down was child's play. But most systems in the ship had not been designed for that particular configuration and he hoped that he wouldn't start getting reports of equipment ripping from the floor and walls on a mass scale throughout the ship. The flashing yellow warning lights were distracting enough as it was; at least they had turned off the damned klaxons.

  "Right, sir. Tchar says the ball is working properly, so it has to be the region's gravity. We must be upside down in a gravity well and for some reason the artificial gravity can't compensate for it. It must be a hell of a gravity well. This is just a speculation mind you." Weaver scanned data from all the ship's sensors in front of him and was having a hard time making heads or tails out of their situation.

  "As soon as you can, Mr. Weaver . . ."

  "Right, sir. Hmm . . . Working on it," he said under his breath.

  "CO, ship's getting hot," the XO said, holding onto a stanchion but still managing to keep an eye on his job.

  "Commander Weaver?" the CO asked. "What happens if we turn off the drive?"

  "Unknown, sir," Bill replied. "Weird gravitational effects, that's for sure."

  "Weirder than this?" the XO asked incredulously.

  "Gravity different in different parts of the ship, sir," Weaver replied. "Maybe. Just a guess, really."

  "Will it kill us?" Spectre ground out carefully.

  "The gravity shouldn't be that high," Bill said. "Hopefully. Or tidal effects. And, sir, with all due respect, heat will kill us for sure. We've got to chill."

  "All hands! Stand by for chill! Stand by for gravitational anomalies! All damage personnel, suit and strap in!"

  "Now this is more like it," the COB said, swaying slightly, refilled coffee cup grafted to his hand. "Reminds me of a storm we got into off Iceland one time . . ."

  "Fascinating," Dr. Beach breathed, watching the play of data on his screen.

  To his inner ear, he was, apparently, in a rocking boat. One that was rocking randomly. But he really wasn't paying attention to that. The data streaming from the hull-mounted collectors was too extraordinary.

  "Conn, astronomy. Is Dr. Weaver available?"

  "Holy cow," Bill muttered, looking at the take from the cosmology department. "Sir, this is a really weird place!"

  "Do tell," Spectre said as the boat seemed to gently roll over.<
br />
  "You bet it is," the XO said sourly, hanging onto a stanchion. "We just had a pipe bend and blow out in engineering. Nobody knows why. It just bent. And we're not chilling as fast as normal."

  "The temperature in this region is way over deep space, sir," Bill said, off-hand. "That's why. Forget this being a soup. It's more like . . . a sieve. We're getting particle readings like you'd get off of a bunch of runaway accelerators! Hell, rad count is way up. There's got to be every odd astrophysics anomaly in the galaxy running around in this region!"

  "Well, our heat's finally coming down," the XO said, looking at the instruments. "In about another twenty minutes we can start the engines back up."

  Heat. Too much heat. It blasted and burned. But the waves that had caught it were unstoppable, dragging it into the fiery depths.

  As the heat dissipated, though, it felt a voice, a calling, summoning it to the very source. A place of healing. A place of growing and of change. The ons and offs could stream more rapidly now. Things began to make some sense as more ons and offs flowed over the cooling pathways.

  If only the heat would go away, the ons and offs could continue, and it could . . . Be.

  "We're chilled," the XO said.

  "Mr. Weaver?" the CO asked.

  "Got it. Try moving forward, Captain. That might move us out of this region of the anomaly."

  "Okay, do it."

  "All hands! Stand by for Warp! Stand by for gravitational anomalies! Stand by for . . . Oh, just grab on and hope for the best!"

  "God damnit Berg! Is there left and right in space?" Drago hadn't stopped complaining since they had been ordered in their bunks.

  "Must be."

  "Must be that we moved far enough to get trapped in another destructive interference zone, sir. This time the system is confused so that the port side is down." Bill continued to chew his lip and type away frantically at his keyboard. He reached out for his mouse that dangled to the right. His five-point restraints were beginning to dig into his right ribs a little. "I'm really surprised that the black box can't overcome this. Maybe there is more to it than just gravity. Hmm . . . there are a lot of particles here. . . ."

  "Going forward didn't seem to help much." The XO now standing on the port side wall of the bridge rubbed at a new bruise on his arm. Looking around the bridge he realized there was just no way he could make it to a seat and get fastened in. He'd have to make do and hold onto handrails as best he could. He hadn't learned his lesson from the previous attempt at moving and had neglected to fasten his safety restraints again.

  "I need to make some measurements. This will only take a minute or two."

  "Look at that!" The pilot pointed out the window at a brilliant flash of light that seemed to be just outside the ship. In fact it was likely hundreds of kilometers away.

  The XO frowned. "Way too close for my tastes."

  "Agreed," Spectre said.

  "This disturbance zone must act like a funnel to the comets of the two star systems. The odds of seeing impacts should be too unlikely for us to see two of them in just a few minutes. That can't be shiny," Weaver said. "Can't. Be. Shiny."

  "Figure out a way to get us out of here, Mr. Weaver," Spectre said sternly but still with a fighter pilot's calm and cool demeanor. Gibbering was simply not on.

  "Perhaps we should try backwards this time?" the XO asked.

  "Forward brought us here. Backward might take us right back." Captain Blankemeier shrugged as best he could from the sideways falling position. "Maybe we are thinking about this too two-dimensionally while we are in three-D space?"

  "Sure, sir. We could try going out of the ecliptic above or below it so to speak, but the gravitational disturbance has a spherical wavefront so it is three dimensional too. And each star system is moving with its own spin rate and proper motion so there will be a lot of frame dragging and similar effects. Hmm . . ." Weaver paused in thought. "That might work. Good idea, sir. We should go in a vector of . . ." He typed in some code and started running a quick simulation.

  "Mr. Weaver?" Spectre was hesitant of interrupting the scientist turned naval officer. But time was quite possibly important here and the CO didn't want to be around when a couple of comets caught the Blade in the middle of a chance meeting.

  "Working on it, sir." About a minute later as the simulation completed, he had what he was looking for. "We need a continuous thrust vector arced upward and inward towards YZ Ceti in the same direction as its proper motion."

  "Proper motion?" the XO asked.

  "The star's motion within the galaxy."

  "Whatever, just do it, Mr. Weaver," Spectre ordered.

  "Aye, sir. Pilot, the coordinate vectors are coming in now." Weaver tapped one last key, sending the coordinates to the pilot's console. "Hold on XO, this could get bumpy."

  "Aw maulk."

  "Don't worry, sir, can't be any worse than one time off Johannesburg . . ."

  The ASS Vorpal Blade lurched up along the vector that Dr. Weaver had calculated, in fits and jerks. The ship's internal artificial gravity vector fluctuated randomly and pretty much covered all possibilities, flinging the ship's XO around like a cowboy riding a bucking bronco. As the ship began to match the velocity vector of YZ Ceti's proper motion the gravitational randomness smoothed out into a flow of ups and downs that could only be described as a slow tumbling feeling. Then finally the alien artificial gravity system created by the little alien black box inside the coryllium sphere down in the engineering section of the ship was able to overcome the gravitational fluctuations and the ship's gravity settled out with only a few bumps and jerks here and there but no more unusual onboard gravity configurations. The XO of the ship was likely to describe the "bumps" and "jerks" a little more, well, dramatically.

  "Astrophysics survey." The XO shook his head and dragged himself to his feet. "The next time someone, and I'm not naming any names, suggests an astrophysics survey I'm going to—"

  "Yes, well, that was interesting," the CO interrupted as they cleared the last gravitational wave. "Remind me never to let you do that again. No astrophysics surveys from within an AU of said anomaly. Got it?"

  "Yes, sir," Weaver replied. "But I think I understand now why Tau Ceti has too much debris in its Kuiper belt and Oort cloud, sir."

  "No kidding." The XO laughed, rubbing at his sweat soaked brow and slightly massaging the red bump on his forehead. The ride had been far less than "fun" for him. He made it to his station and collapsed in his chair.

  "XO, why don't you report to sick bay and let 'em check you out. That looked like a hell of a ride."

  "Aye, sir." The XO nodded as he glanced at the messages on his screen. "Note that we have a few damage reports coming in but nothing serious. Repairs are already underway. A few minor casualty reports are starting to come in as well."

  "Glad it's nothing serious. Sick bay." Spectre nodded at the XO and clicked his safety harness free. "Where to from here, Mr. Weaver?"

  "Epsilon Indi, sir." Weaver pointed. "It's that away."

  "Let's go find some planets worth talking about and take a break from any undue astrophysics surveys for a while," the CO continued. "I think I'd rather be fighting the Dreen . . ."

  "Yes, sir."

  16

  Under Pressure

  "INTRUDER ALERT! INTRUDER ALERT! SECURITY TO REPEL BOARDERS!"

  It had been ten days since they landed on what everyone now knew as Dean's World. Ten days of, as Sergeant Jaen called it, "dickbeating." Weight training, maintenance, Wyvern sims, climbing fast-ropes, drills, computer sims . . . The latter had been proven to increase combat efficiency but everybody had a hard time not calling it "gaming." Basically, you lay in your bunk and played Dreen War over and over again. He wished they'd at least let the Marines play Halo III, which was more interesting by light-years.

  Ten uneventful days and then in the middle of the platoon's "night" . . .

  Berg's eyes flew open as the light automatically came on, but he waited a heartbeat for
the next order.

  "SECOND PLATOON, WYVERNS. FIRST AND THIRD, GROUND MOUNT."

  Both voices were prerecorded female voices, but the second order was important. It detailed who had to clear the compartment first. Since everyone couldn't move in the corridor at the same time, the personnel with Wyvern duty had to move first. Since they only had to slip into skinsuits, they could be dressed fastest, anyway.

  He pulled out his skins and then dropped to the deck. Right on top of Lance Corporal Revells from Third Platoon.