The Complete Thunder Series (Thunder In The Heavens)

by Dietmar Wehr

  Eagleton activated the room’s computer and transferred the file he had created after the shower. The display showed a conceptual design of the vehicle he had come up. It looked very strange with a long particle beam projector protruding from a cluster of spheres at the back.

  “I’m calling this configuration stiletto because it’s long, narrow and deadly. What you’re seeing is the largest anti-tachyon projector we have specs for, plus inertia drive, hyper-drive, crew and life support systems, and finally the power plant. Total tonnage is under 21,000 metric tonnes. This size of ship will stay undetected beyond a range of 1.38 light-seconds. This projector has an effective range of 1.55 light-seconds.” Before he could continue, the Team Leader interjected.

  “Wait a minute here, Gort. We looked at a configuration with this size of projector, and we came up with 34,000 metric tonnes, which pushed the minimum range to avoid detection to almost two light-seconds, which is beyond the effective range.”

  Eagleton nodded. “Yes, and I know why the tonnage ended up that high. This size of projector is rated at 377 megawatts. That’s how much power it can use, but it’s not how much it has to use. We’ve been implicitly assuming that various sizes of projectors needed to be fired at full power. They don’t. The narrowness of the anti-tachyon beam does not depend on power consumption but rather on the length of the focusing rod. This projector has the longest focusing rod of any of the standard designs because it was contemplated being used as a spinal weapon built into the backbone of a ship rather than in a turret that could be rotated. If we use a smaller power plant, one that has enough output to power the inertia drive at maximum speed with enough power left over for life support plus the minimum level of power needed to make this projector fire, then the beam, which I admit will not be as powerful as we’d like, will still be narrow enough to blast its way through the kind of armor that a Tyrell super-ship has at the rear where the engines and power plants are closest to. That’s what my 21,000 tonne configuration assumes. Penetration is the key, even if it’s just a small hole. You don’t need a wide beam to knock out a power plant or inertia drive unit. Hitting those kinds of delicate systems with any kind of particle beam will turn them into a pile of scrap. Once the super-ship is unable to move, it’s a sitting duck that we can then cut to pieces from any angle. Here’s the tonnage and system specs breakdown.”

  The room was dead quiet as everyone studied the numbers and systems data. Harrow sighed. She looked over at the Team Leader who looked back and nodded. He had seen the flaw too. He gestured for her to give Gort the bad news.

  “Ah, Gort, that power plant’s output is less than the minimum needed to operate the hyper-drive over interstellar distances.” She was surprised when Eagleton’s expression did not change at all.

  “You’re absolutely right, Cate, which is why this configuration can’t be operated on its own. There’s enough power to make short, tactical hyper-jumps within a star system, but to get from one system to another, this ship will have to be carried by a larger ship. And to make that whole system practical, the large ship will have to large enough to carry more than one stiletto. I’m thinking a minimum of ten. The mothership will obviously have to stay well out of detection range. It’s not supposed to do any of the fighting, so it won’t need armor or offensive weapon systems.”

  Eagleton suppressed the urge to laugh when he saw Cate’s sudden look of surprise. The group had already looked at the mothership/parasite craft concept and dismissed it because the parasite craft were too massive for their weapon’s range. He understood why she hadn’t made the leap to the mothership concept here. The Stiletto was almost four times more massive than any of the other parasite craft the group had looked at. It was nearly half the mass of Pathfinder. The idea of something close to the size of Pathfinder being carried by an even larger ship, let alone ten of them, was so far out of the box that their logical analysis had simply dismissed it out of hand.

  “That will have to be one hell of a big mothership,” said the Team Leader.

  Eagleton nodded. “Yeah, almost as big as one of the Tyrell super-ships. With the advanced robotics that Odina technology can build, we should be able to build at least a dozen of these motherships by the time the Tyrell come calling at Earth.”

  “What do you think, Cate?” asked the Team Leader. Eagleton couldn’t help noticing that this group, including the Team leader, were responding to Cate’s charisma too. That thought reminded him of Ashiana, and he wondered if she were still alive.

  “Well, Gort, ah…Lieutenant Eagleton, has obviously done his homework. The preliminary report on Odina robotics does suggest a major boost in productivity over what we developed on our own. The theory looks good. I’d want to see a prototype in action before committing to this concept exclusively, but I can’t see any flaws in the overall configuration.”

  The Team Leader asked everyone else in the group for their assessment and got pretty much the same answer. When everyone had their say, he gave his opinion. “I have to agree with Cate. Gort, this looks very doable, and unless and until anyone comes up with a better idea, I think we should work out the details of the design and figure out the overall plan that will give aerospace force a fleet of motherships with lots of stilettos by the time we have to face the Tyrell. This is damn fine work, Gort.”

  As the others offered their congratulations, Eagleton looked over at Harrow and saw her smile back at him. It was the ‘you done good’ kind of smile, and it meant more to him than all the other verbal kudos he now was only half listening to.

  When the group broke up for the day, Eagleton found Harrow waiting for him outside the conference room. As they walked toward the building entrance, she said in a voice just loud enough for him to hear, “If they approve your concept, I’m going to volunteer to be assigned to the prototype testing program, and I think you should too, Gort. You and I believe in this idea. Not only is it important for the prototype crew to want to make it a success, we’ll be the natural choices to assume important positions when the first squadron is made operational. At some point, everyone will realize that the Stiletto program will be the fast track to promotion, and we have to make sure we’re at the head of the line.”

  “Ha, I hadn’t even gotten that far in my thinking, but you’re right. Let’s just hope that whoever is in command of the mothership will be competent enough not to get us killed trying to follow stupid orders.”

  He looked over at her just in time to see a satisfied expression on her face. “You leave that little problem to me, Gort.”

  Chapter Eight:

  When all four working groups presented their results ten days later, Eagleton was relieved to see that no one else had come up with anything similar. The other three groups presented what he thought of as the ‘best of a bad set of options’ approach. There was one idea that probably would have been accepted if not for the stiletto idea. It involved a ship roughly the size of Pathfinder, armed with the same massive particle projector that stelleto had, along with a power plant output that could fire the weapon at full power, give the ship interstellar range, and overcome the mass penalty of thick armor by allowing the ship to travel at point six five of light. Naturally, it wouldn’t be able to get within effective firing range undetected, and the hope was that the armor would protect the ship long enough to get to effective range before being disabled or destroyed by FTL kinetic projectiles. Eagleton felt sorry for that Team Leader when he tried to minimize the probability that ships like that weren’t very likely to have a long life expectancy in combat. The Evaluation Board wasn’t fooled. That much was obvious from the grim expressions on their faces during that and the other two presentations, which were even more problematic. When it was their turn, Cate gave the presentation. Not only did the numbers work, but in the intervening ten days, the group had managed to come up with some rather impressive visuals of what both the stiletto and the mothership would look like. As she went through the numbers and the details, Eagleton looked around hi
m. The members of the Board were almost smiling. Some of the members of the other groups looked embarrassed by their failure to come up with something similar. Others actually looked relieved that someone had figured out a weapons system that didn’t look like a sure road to suicide.

  When Cate was finished, she fielded a dozen questions quickly and confidently. The Board was clearly impressed, and the Board Chair practically said as much when he congratulated their group for its innovative thinking. Eagleton was disappointed when it became clear that the Board wasn’t going to make its decision right then and there, but Cate wasn’t worried.

  “Don’t worry, Gort. They’ll go away and pretend to seriously consider all four presentations, but I’m willing to bet a year’s pay that they’ve already decided which presentation they’re going to recommend. This is a no-brainer, by which I mean that anyone who is seriously considering any of the other ideas has no brains. Be patient, Gort. The wheels of management may spin slowly, but they’ll eventually get to where they need to be.”

  Eagleton had his doubts, but events proved Harrow right. A week later, the Board recommended the stiletto/mothership concept to the senior aerospace force personnel who almost immediately approved it. Then it went to the politicians who put their final stamp of approval on it surprisingly quickly.

  Harrow and Eagleton were literally the first ones to request assignment to the prototype testing program. Harrow was accepted, but Eagleton was not. As they met over drinks in the Officers’ Club, she tried to console him.

  “Don’t let this rejection get you down, Gort. I talked to a couple of people I know who heard what happened in the selection process. They want to get the Stiletto into mass production fast, which means they’re only going to build two prototypes. And that means they don’t need a whole gaggle of test pilots. Being first in line only went so far. There were others who signed on later who were considered more qualified as test pilots, believe it or not. I’ll take advantage of every opportunity that comes my way to sing your praises and recommend that you be transferred to the operational squadrons when they’re ready to start forming those.”

  “I know, but it’s hard to take considering that I was the one who came up with the concept. They know that because the group’s final report said so. You’d think that would count for something for God sakes!”

  A week later, they both learned that it had in fact counted for something, just not the something that Eagleton had hoped for. The configuration the group had come up with was a conceptual design, not a detailed design that could be manufactured. Coming up with the necessary schematics was the task assigned to a combined aerospace force/private sector project group, and Eagleton was part of the aerospace force team that would help turn the concept into something that could be used to make and assemble parts. Eagleton was happy with that because the design group would interact with the testing personnel to fine-tune the design, which meant he would stay in contact with Cate. Plus, it would add a unique qualification to his service record when it came time to select operational crews.

  Another and much bigger group was set up to design the mothership. Harrow managed to get permission to join that group until the first prototype was ready for testing. Both she and Eagleton were so busy over the next few months that they hardly saw each other. Gradually, as the first prototype began to take shape, Harrow spent less and less time with the mothership design group and more and more time crawling over the partially assembled stiletto 0001. The assembly process would consist of two parallel parts. The anti-tachyon particle projector would be built separately. When both the weapon and the rest of the ship were ready, the two would be brought together. Eagleton made sure that Cate knew the day and time when that mating was to take place.

  Twenty-one days later, he was standing about twenty meters away from the ship portion when he sensed Cate come up from behind to stand beside him. The particle projector was still a few meters away from the ship.

  “You know, Gort, I’ve looked at the design on a computer screen hundreds of times, and I’ve watched the support section being built, but seeing both sections this close together for the first time is giving me a new appreciation for the size of this beast. Just the crew compartment is twice as big as your standard shuttle.”

  Eagleton nodded with a satisfied smile on his face. “Yeah, it’s a big fucker, isn’t it? This is the Mark 1 version. Our main concern is functionality. We’re already working on preliminary design drawings for the Mark 2. That one will be both shorter, although not by a whole lot, and more aesthetically pleasing to look at. Obviously, that wasn’t the main consideration, but re-arranging the internal support systems in a more efficient way also allowed for a more streamlined look that will make the mothership design people happy. The second prototype will be the Mark 2 version. The plan is to mass produce the Mark 2, but first we have to make sure the Mark 1 performs as expected.”

  The bringing together of the two sections went slowly, and the closer they came to each other, the slower it went. The weapon section had been designed to fit exactly into the center of the support section, with tolerances comparable to the width of a human hair. Getting the back end of the projector to slide into the opening was the first major hurdle, and it was achieved successfully, but it still took another five hours to slide it all the way in. By the time the Mating Supervisor gave the all-clear signal, both Harrow and Eagleton were exhausted from the tension.

  Getting the Mark 1 prototype ready to actually test it in space took another ten days. Eagleton managed to convince the Project Manager to let him join Cate and her flight test crew as the design team liaison during the flight tests. Just over one hour into the first test flight, Harrow heard the voice of the Commander of the EAF cruiser that was keeping pace with stiletto 0001.

  “Cate, this is Arren. We have a situation.” Harrow felt her heart start to race. The cruiser was monitoring all of stiletto’s systems remotely. Had they seen something that her own crew hadn’t picked up on yet?

  “What is it?” she asked.

  “We just got an FTL alert from HQ. An unidentified and very large ship has just arrived in-system. No contact yet, but the senior staff are convinced it’s the Tyrell finally knocking on our door. HQ wants to know if you feel that the stiletto is up to a real field trial by going after this bogey?”

  Harrow was stunned. While the actual timing of the Tyrell visit hadn’t been known in advance, everyone knew they’d show up sooner or later. But attempting to destroy or cripple that Tyrell ship using one prototype stiletto, which hadn’t even been tested properly yet, that was insane!

  “Are they really asking me to attack that ship, Arren?”

  “No, no. Sorry if I gave you that impression. They want to use that ship as a field trial for the targeting systems, the idea being you’d take 0001 and make a simulated attack run from the rear, testing all the attack systems, but stopping short of actually firing the projector.”

  Harrow’s sense of relief was so great that she felt light headed for a few seconds. The feeling didn’t last long. Even a simulated attack was asking a lot at this stage. “That would be a big risk, Arren. You wouldn’t be able to stay in formation with us because your ship is too big to avoid detection at the close range that we’d have to get. If we have a major systems failure, we’d be in deep shit. This prototype doesn’t have any lifeboats.”

  “I know, Cate. They’re leaving the decision up to you.”

  Harrow hesitated, but deep down she knew she’d agree to the field test. Another opportunity like this wouldn’t come along until the Tyrell came back in strength for the battle. She knew that she could justify not doing it, but what kind of impression of her would that give to the senior officers who would eventually be choosing squadron leaders? A tiny voice in the back of her head reminded her that she wouldn’t be risking just her own life. Was her career more important than the lives of her crew and Gort? If she was honest with herself, the answer to that question was probably yes and not
just because her ego said so either. She had heard the rumors around HQ that some of the flag officers were already chomping at the bit to take on a field command of a couple of motherships and cover themselves with glory. The trouble was that she didn’t have as high an opinion of their strategic and tactical skills as they did, whereas she knew that she was pretty good in both those areas. She told that tiny voice to shut up.

  “Okay, Arren, I’ll do it. You can let HQ know that we’ll conduct a simulated attack run, but you can also tell them that I reserve the right to abort the field test if I feel the ship isn’t operating at a hundred percent. I hope HQ gave you the bogey’s co-ordinates.”

  “I’ll pass on your message to them and the bogey’s position to you.” After a short pause, he continued. “Okay, you should get the co-ordinates any second now. I’ll be breaking formation in order to give you lots of maneuvering room. Good luck, Cate.”

  “Thanks, Arren. I think we’re going to need it,” said Harrow as she watched the transmitted data scroll across one of her screens. She turned to her co-pilot and said, “Bring us around to a general heading for the bogey, Frank. I’m going back to speak to the crew.”

  Eagleton was surprised to see Cate enter the systems engineering bay that he and the ship’s Engineering Officer were crammed into. Before either of them could say anything, Cate started talking.