by John Ringo
Dr. Weaver got up from the chair and went to the door, opening it and leaning out to look north. Sure enough, there mushroom clouds were twining amongst each other. Robin had squeezed into the door behind him and it was a sensation he thought he’d remember for the rest of his life, watching mushroom clouds reaching for the troposphere, roiling and pregnant with evil, while two small but firm breasts pressed into his shoulder blades. He noticed that he was enormously horny. And he remembered that he’d forgotten to call Sheila back and tell her that he wasn’t in Washington and wouldn’t be in Huntsville any time soon.
Just then the ground shock hit and he had to clutch the door frame to keep from being knocked out of the trailer. Robin grabbed him for the same reason and it just made things worse.
“We need to get inside before the blast front gets here,” he said, leaning back into the room.
“Yes,” she said in a small voice.
“We’re right at the edge of where the military will let civilians stay,” a reporter was saying in an excited voice. “We just got hit by the blast front…” For a moment he was drowned out as a wave of noise enveloped the trailer. It shook on its foundations and one of the computers gave a pop and the monitor showed “No signal” but other than that there was no damage. “And that was extremely frightening but we’re in a bunker and we rode it out fine.”
“Is there any danger of radiation in your area?” the anchor asked.
“Well, we’ve got radiation detectors and they haven’t gone off,” the reporter said. “The military says that the bombs are going to be as clean as they can make them, since they’re bursting in the air. And the winds are from the west, so the explosion is downwind of our current location. Units of the 3rd Infantry Division are standing by and I can hear them revving up the motors in their big tanks and fighting vehicles. They’re going to go right into the blast zone as soon as they get the okay and try to snatch back the gate from the Titcher. I understand it’s going to be much harder in Tennessee where the terrain doesn’t let them get their fighting vehicles up to the gate.”
“Thanks for that report, Tom,” the anchor said. “And you take care, you hear? We’ve got another report from Oak Ridge, Tennessee, which is close to the gate up there. Melissa Mays is standing by with a live report.”
“I’m here in Oak Ridge where the best way I can describe it is a festival is going on,” the reporter said in a bemused voice. “About a thousand people, lab workers, shopkeepers and others including schoolchildren were out to watch the nuclear attack on the Titcher stronghold. All of them were wearing the same dark glasses we had been issued by the military and when the bombs went off they broke out in spontaneous cheers. Since then it’s just been an air of carnival. People have opened up beer kegs and started a barbeque in the town square. I’m talking with the mayor of Oak Ridge, Phillip Lampert. Thank you for speaking to us, Mr. Mayor.”
“My pleasure, Melissa,” the portly man said. He had a sandwich in one hand, a beer in the other and heavy, dark-tinted, goggles dangling around his neck.
“Can you explain these remarkable events?”
“Well, as I understand it, some sort of particle was generated at the University of Central Florida…”
“No,” the reporter corrected. “I mean this… this… party. Most people would be crying at the sight of a nuclear weapon going off right next door.”
“Well, little lady,” the man said in a voice like he was speaking to a small child. “Since 1943, when the U.S. government decided that the best place to hide their new super bomb research was a sleepy little town in the Tennessee mountains, Oak Ridge has been the main site for nuclear research in the entire United States. Some towns have steel plants, some towns have the local car and truck plant, Oak Ridge has nuclear weapons. We don’t make them here anymore, but we live with their existence every day of our lives and most of the people around here have never seen a shoot…”
“A what?”
“A nuclear explosion,” the mayor continued. “Above ground nuclear testing was ended before you were born but they used to take our parents out to Los Alamos to see the shoots, sort of like taking the employees to another factory to see how their parts are used. Besides, from what I’ve seen of the Titcher, it was the smartest thing the President could do and it took a lot of b… courage. I’d rather watch fireworks than have them invade the town.”
“But aren’t you worried about fallout?” the reporter pressed. Surely some of these idiot rednecks were going to have to realize that setting off a nuclear weapon was much worse than any conceivable alternative.
“Little lady… I’m sorry, what was your name again?”
“Melissa Mays,” the reporter said, tightly.
“Miss Mays, did you have a job when you were in high school?”
“Yes,” she said. “But the question was about fallout.”
“What was the job?” the mayor pressed.
The reporter took a moment and then said: “I worked in a McDonalds.”
“And I’m sure you were a bright spot in that cheerless place,” the mayor replied, giving her his very best “I know you think I’m a male chauvinist and I just don’t care” smile. “Miss Mays, between my junior and senior year, and again between high school and going to UT, I worked in a lead-shielded room pouring batches of green, glowing goop from one beaker into another beaker. I met the woman who is still my wife in that lab. We have two beautiful children who are straight A students and neither of them have two heads. Now, Miss Mays, do you really think I’m going to be troubled about a little cesium from an airburst?”
“No,” the reporter admitted in a defeated tone. “Thank you, Mayor Lampert,” she added then turned to the camera. “Well, that’s the news from Oak Ridge, Tennessee, where the party looks to continue into the wee hours of the morning.”
“Thank you, Melissa, for that… illuminating report,” the anchor said, bemusedly.
“Gotta love high-tech rednecks,” Weaver said, turning down the sound.
“I can’t believe they’re having a party for God’s sake,” Robin said.
“I can,” Earp replied. “You’ve clearly never been to Oak Ridge. I think the mayor is wrong, the radiation has had an effect: they’re all insane. No, they’re crazy but not insane. They just know what they’re talking about and it makes them seem a little crazy. The mayor was right. Nuking Eustis was a tragedy; people lost homes and possessions that they loved and cherished and they’ll never get them back. There might have even been a few that were missed by the evacuation sweeps and were killed. The only thing that was lost in the hills of Tennessee were some deer and bear and undoubtedly some rare and endangered species of plants and salamanders. But they were going to be lost anyway if the Titcher weren’t stopped. The Titcher consider it their job to make everything endangered, rare or extinct except Titcher. They’re a pain in the ass. Wish we could be one to them.”
Weaver was smiling at the rant but he stopped at the end. “Say that again.”
“Well, the Titcher see it as their job…”
“No, the last bit,” Bill said, closing his eyes.
“I wish we could be a pain in their ass,” Earp replied.
“Got it,” Weaver said, opening his eyes. “Thanks. I need to go find Chief Miller.”
* * *
“I’ve talked with three or four other physicists today,” Weaver said to the secretary of defense and the national security advisor. The President and the Homeland Security director were both out showing the flag and trying to explain why it had been necessary to nuke two spots in the continental United States. “And we’re all pretty much in agreement that what the bosons are doing is establishing stable wormholes.”
“And those are?” the secretary of defense asked.
“Basically what we’re seeing,” Weaver replied. “Instantaneous ‘gateways’ to another place. Meisner, Thorn, and Wheeler are the main guys to go to; hell that is why THE general relativity book is known as MTW rathe
r than Gravitation as it is titled. I sent an email out to Kip Thorn and one of his colleagues Michael Morris but got “Out of Office” replies. I then tried Stephen Hawking but he didn’t respond except to say that they were “interesting” which means he’ll think about them for eight years or so and then point out several things I missed but conclude I was right despite not taking enough care in my assumptions. The one thing we’re not getting is neutrino emissions, that I know of, but neutrino detection is very difficult. I’ve got a call out for a mobile neutrino detector but the only one is in Japan. The point is that one theory of wormholes is that if you dump enough energy into them, they destabilize.”
“How much energy?” the NSA asked. “Electrical or what?”
“Well, bigajoules, actually,” Weaver replied. “Like, a nuke.”
“You want another one?” the SECDEF asked, angrily. “At the wormhole? A ground burst? Do you know what sort of fallout that will cause?”
“Yes, sir,” Bill replied. “But I’m not planning on detonating it on this side.”
“Oh.”
“And I think we should send an assessment team in after the explosion, maybe before as well.”
“You can’t get an armored vehicle through the gate,” the SECDEF pointed out. “And people outside of vehicles will be at risk from residual radiation.”
“Not if they’re in a Wyvern they won’t.”
* * *
“Oh. My. God.” Chief Miller said in a voice of awe.
The suit was crouched on its knees, multijointed metal fingers splayed out on the recently laid gravel. Its “chest” was open and a seat and arm-holds were clearly displayed along with a complicated control panel. It was vaguely humanoid, like an artist’s rendition of a robot, with an idealized human face on the “helmet.”
“The original design came from a gaming company of all things,” Bill said, walking around the suit. It gleamed silver in the overhead lights, a titanium shell laid on a Kevlar underlayer. “The first ones were unpowered and the best aerobic workout you’ll ever have. But they were designed for a later powered version. We just tuned the design up, put in piezoelectric motivators, sealing, environmental systems and improved the electronic suite. Oh, and a little radioactive shielding.”
“Why?” the SEAL asked.
“See the big box over the butt?” Bill asked. “Americium power generator.”
“So I’m going to get irradiated when I use it?” the SEAL asked.
“I’ve got over a hundred hours in one.” The physicist sighed. “You wear a radiation counter back by the reactor. So far I’ve picked up about as much radiation as you would at a day on the beach in Florida. Don’t even get me started on flying; I took a radiation counter on a flight one time and it raised my hair.”
“Really?” the SEAL asked. “I’ve flown in a lot of planes.”
“Really,” Bill replied. “Besides, it’s the only power source we have that can run one of these things for more than a couple of hours. It’s got some bugs, it tends to want to disco occasionally, but you get past it. This is just a prototype, you understand.”
“How hard is it to learn to use?” the SEAL asked.
“Pretty easy,” the physicist said. “The electronics suite takes some getting used to. Oh, it walks like Frankenstein and it feels as if you’re on ice all the time, but you don’t fall down.”
“I don’t like the idea of standing up all the time,” the chief noted. “That just makes you a big damned target.”
“Notice the wheels on the elbows, knees and, if you look, under the belly on there,” Bill said. “It’s actually easier to low crawl over a flat surface than to walk. You can’t see unless you activate the camera on top of the helmet.”
“I want,” Miller said. “Oh, man, do I want. Screw the bugs.”
“Good,” the physicist replied. “This one’s yours. As soon as we get you fitted.”
“Why?” the SEAL said, suddenly suspicious.
“We’re going to take a little stroll,” Bill replied.
“Where?”
“Eustis.”
“Oh, shit.”
* * *
They rode on the front glacis of an M-1 Abrams, their armor-clad feet dangling over the front, one hand hooked over the barrel of the main-gun the other clutching their weapon.
The “accessories” for the Wyvern had included a shipping container filled with appropriate weapons. These ranged from .50 caliber machine guns, the venerable M-2 or Ma Deuce that dated to WWII, through the more recently designed “Dover Devil” to a new Czech 12.7mm, then onwards and upwards culminating in a massive cannon that dominated one of the walls of the shipping container.
“What’s that?” Chief Miller had asked. He was clearly a man who had never seen a bigger gun he didn’t like.
“It’s a South African one-hundred-thirty-millimeter recoilless rifle,” the armorer said, proudly. He was a heavyset gentleman in his fifties, gray haired where there was any left, with a pocket protector containing five colors of pens and an HP calculator dangling from his belt. But he was clearly inordinately fond of his weapons. “It was one of the guns they were looking at for the Stryker Armored Gun System but they turned it down. It had been sitting around in a depot for a couple of years when we picked it up.”
“Can you use it with a Wyvern?” the chief said, stroking the two-and-a-half-meter barrel. It had a big shoulder mount about a third of the way back from the end and an oversized grip and trigger.
“Oh, yes,” the armorer said. “Reloading, of course, is slow.”
“I’ll take it,” the chief said. “And one of those Gatling guns. And you got any pistols? How about swords?”
“Chief,” Bill said, chuckling. “Even with the Wyverns there’s only so much you can carry. Why don’t you take the 30mm?”
“What 30mm?” the SEAL asked. “Besides, if I’ve got a choice of thirty or a hundred and thirty, I’ll take a hundred and thirty any day. I’ll just reload fast.”
“This 30mm,” the physicist replied, pointing to a weapon hanging on the left wall.
It looked… odd. It had clearly been modified for use by the mecha-suits but beyond that the barrel looked oddly… truncated. “What the hell is it?” Miller asked.
“Well, you know those guns the A-10s use…” Bill said, smiling.
“No shit!” the SEAL replied, clearly delighted. “Besides, there’s no way you could fire one of those things off-hand in a Wyvern. The recoil would kill you.”
“Oh, we had to modify the ammo a little bit,” Bill admitted. “Just like the 25mm Bushmaster I’m going to haul. But it’s still got depleted uranium penetrators and I think you’d be surprised at what you can do in a Wyvern. Just remember to lean into the shot.”
So lying beside the chief was the 30mm chain gun and lying beside Bill was a modified 25mm Bushmaster, the same gun carried by the Bradley Fighting Vehicles. On their backs were integral ammunition packs but they’d been warned that the ammunition would not last long at full rate of fire. They had external radiation counters, which were running right up into the bottom of redline, internal radiation counters that were down in the bottom of yellow and riding behind them in pride of place a large sack.
The ordnance technician who had assembled the special satchel charge had explained it as carefully as he could.
“The material in the device is an expansion-form explosive,” the tech said. “Instead of just exploding in one place the material continues to explode on the wavefront and expands through any open space. They tested it on an old mine back before the Afghanistan war and it blew out a steel door at the back side of three hundred meters of tunnel. The thing is, it will do a number on anything but, probably, those centipede tanks. But it’s going to probably explode out of the gate as well. It’s not as effective in an open area as enclosed, but it’s going to be a hell of a blast in the local area. So you’d better run like hell.”
“How long do we have?” the SEAL asked.
> “How long do you want?”
“Seven seconds.”
There was a short battalion of Abrams and Bradleys parked a thousand meters from the gate, all of their hatches shut and their environmental overpressure systems going full-bore. The ground radiation count was high and the vehicles were going to have to be decontaminated after they were withdrawn. More likely they’d be scrapped; after a few hours at ground zero they were metaphorically going to be glowing like a Christmas tree.
Airbursts of nuclear weapons were relatively clean and caused limited radioactive fallout. But the pulse from the fusion explosion irradiated everything in a large circle. The alpha and beta particles, as well as gamma rays, struck common materials, carbon, silica, iron, and transmuted them to radioactive isotopes. Sometimes they were split and formed highly radioactive isotopes of lower-weight elements.
So the ground zero of even the cleanest nuclear weapon was highly radioactive. The radiation would fade over time, most of the particles would degrade in no more than a year and while some lingering radiation would exist for thousands of years to come it would be not much beyond background. Hiroshima, which was hit by a relatively “dirty” bomb, had been resettled since the 1950s. The only sign that it had ever been destroyed by a nuclear weapon was the memorial at its city center.
In the meantime, though, Eustis was hot as hell.
As the Abrams drew to a stop in front of the gate it was the bad time. The firesupport from the vehicles in their defensive positions behind was blocked. If the Titcher came through the gate the Abrams would be blocking the defending units. So far, no Titcher had come through the gate since the explosion. But bad things tend to happen at the worst possible time.
So Weaver and the SEAL hurried. They had planned this carefully and practiced it once, all the time they felt they could afford. They set their weapons down, leaning on the front of the Abrams, and grabbed the big bomb off the glacis. It had been secured with duct tape but the tape tore loose easily at the yank from two Wyverns.
