Freedom's Fist (Freedom's Fire Book 4) Page 9

  “Enough to get us there,” asks Penny, “and back?”

  “Of course,” answers Spitz, “and back again. You’ll have extra just in case.”

  “Just in case?” asks Brice, as though he doesn’t understand contingency planning. “Besides being in system there longer than expected, why are you sending us out with so much H?”

  “You don’t know how efficiently the ship will burn, do you?” guesses Penny.

  Spitz wags a finger at Penny, not scolding, yet in a way that suggests she’s guessed perfectly.

  “What?” I ask. “This doesn’t sound good.”

  “Oh,” Spitz turns to me. “It’s not bad. We’ve made more tweaks to the reactor control software and drive array field-shaping algorithms, and run some tests with the ship.”

  “It’s ready to fly?” I ask.

  “We’ve been testing it nearly non-stop for three days,” he answers.

  “And?”

  Spitz’s brow furrows and I can’t tell if he’s frustrated or perplexed. “We’re on the edge of what we understand here.”

  “Oh, Jesus,” mutters Brice as he heaves a dramatic sigh.

  “Do you want to get out of your suit,” I ask, “for some downtime before we pack up again to head out?”

  “Oh, no,” he puts on a plastic happy face. “I need to hear this. This 20c thing, this whole jumping across interstellar space, is that the part where you tell us that we’re back to rolling the dice again?”

  “No,” answers Spitz. “What we’ve done is manage to squeeze so much power out of this ship’s reactor it can do 30c, at least.”

  “But?” I ask, because the unspoken word is hanging on Spitz’s lips like a flashing neon sign.

  “But.” Spitz crosses an arm and taps a finger against his chin. "Mind you, we can’t be certain on some of this, it’s based on instability measurements we don’t yet understand, coupled with theory in new areas."

  Penny grimaces. “This sounds awful. Why didn’t you just leave the drive system the way it was?”

  Spitz laughs. “I’m not explaining myself very well.”

  “Maybe you should,” I suggest.

  “Your ship,” he looks each of us in the eye, “is fine. You can run at 20c all day. All the way there and back. You can run it up to around 25c if you want to go that fast. And that’s the interesting part, once you pass 22 or 23c, an odd phenomenon crops up.”

  “Oh,” says Brice sarcastically, “please keep up the suspense.”

  Grinning, Spitz says, “Mass resistance drops. Maintaining the shape of the drive field requires less energy the faster you go from there.”

  “What?” I don’t believe I heard him correctly.

  “That’s right,” says Spitz. “At first, the savings aren’t significant, but as you approach 30c, you might use only half as much energy than traveling at 20c.”

  "That doesn’t make any sense at all," says Penny. "Going faster for free? How can that be?"

  Spitz shrugs, “Something we don’t understand. Yet, it’s not exactly for free.”

  “And?” I ask, hearing the hammer coming down.

  Spitz says, “Instabilities in the reactor develop at those speeds—instabilities that we can’t explain. The possibility of spontaneous runaway reactions starts to go up."

  “How quickly?” I ask.

  “Once you pass 30c or so,” he answers, “you run about a one-in-ten-thousand chance that in any given hour, the reactor will explode.”

  Not terrible odds, but I grimace anyway. “And if we go faster?”

  “By the time you hit 37c,” Spitz tells me, “it’s a virtual certainty that in any given hour, you’ll explode. By forty, the reactor will probably explode instantly.” He smiles widely again. “But that’s theoretical at this point. We didn’t fly your ship that fast.”

  Brice is looking at Penny. “I don’t see why we’ll ever need to go that fast. You?”

  Penny shakes her head. “I like 20. Maybe 25. Maybe 29 for the fuel savings. I think over 30 is off the table.” She looks at me.

  “30c sounds like the speed limit to me.” I turn back to Spitz. “We’ll be safe just below?”

  “With plenty of hydrogen to get you there and back, twice. Keep the speedometer at 29.99 and round up.”

  “What else?” I ask. “Right now, this doesn’t sound so bad, as long as Penny doesn’t get a lead foot.”

  “The ship will pull over fifty g’s at sub-light speeds now,” he answers.

  “And there’s a but,” I add, knowing there’s go to be one.

  "Yes," he’s nodding. "In that respect, it’s just like speeding in your car back on the highway. Only increased wind friction isn’t the limiting factor, it’s decreasing reactor efficiency as you pass the machinery’s limits."

  "Surpassing its physical limits?" asks Brice. "You mean it breaks?"

  "Passing forty-three g’s, not exactly, but pretty close, you risk damaging the reactor. Get up to fifty, and it’ll come apart, and you’ll be vaporized in a fusion reaction."

  “Like a hydrogen bomb,” I guess.

  Spitz nods. “Exactly like that.”

  “And the internal inertial systems?” asks Penny. “They can handle this extra acceleration?” She looks at me as if to back her up. We’ve been through plenty of scrapes where the internal systems weren’t able to match the rapid changes in acceleration we were able to punch out of our drive array.

  Spitz shrugs like it’s no big deal. "There is that. The over-grav limit on the internal plates could probably generate an anti-g field on the order of twenty-eight or twenty-nine g’s. Add some g’s for your suit’s max field and throw in the body’s ability to withstand hard g’s and you might get close to forty.”

  “While our internal grav plates are rupturing,” concludes Brice, “and our eyeballs are liquefying into our sinuses and draining out our ears.”

  Penny elbows Brice. “That’s graphic.”

  “We don’t want to sacrifice the internal plates for the extra speed,” I tell them both. “We don’t want to kill ourselves, either. I turn to Spitz, “What’s the max sustainable sub-light g we can pull without damaging the ship or injuring the crew?”

  “We haven’t had time to thoroughly test the ship’s capabilities in that respect,” answers Spitz. “We’ve been focused on getting stable light speed numbers worked out.”

  I nod. “And since we’re already the fastest ship in the solar system and far faster than anything in the Trog fleet, we won’t need to accelerate that fast.”

  Looking at Penny, Brice says, “Be careful with your hotrod.” He looks back at Spitz. “Now about those nukes?”

  Chapter 22

  Spitz points to a substantial steel bracket down in the gap between two tanks. “Notice anything unusual about this?”

  Brice shakes his head and snorts. He’s already guessed.

  I’m still looking at it. Not understanding why it’s not just a piece of solid metal, why it appears to be constructed of heavy hinges and joints.

  “The whole tank system,” says Spitz, “it’s a collar that fits around the ship. It can be taken on and off.”

  “Taken on and off?” Penny doesn’t believe it.

  “Once you come out of your last bubble jump and you’ve arrived at your destination,” Spitz pats the tank, “you send some people out to manually disengage the brackets.”

  “How many?” I ask.

  “Nearly a hundred,” Spitz answers.

  “A hundred brackets?” Brice is not impressed. “How long does that take?”

  “An hour or two,” shrugs Spitz. “Once the tank system is disconnected, you reverse the drive array’s grav field and slowly slide out the rear. To re-engage, you simply line up from the rear, and slide the assault ship inside. Mounting guides make it easier than it sounds. Once you’re all the way in, the brackets automatically lock in place, so the mounting occurs much more quickly than dismounting.” He looks at Penny and smiles. “Just don’t come in
too fast, or you’ll rip the brackets right off the tank ring system, and you’ll be stuck. Forever.”

  "And all this works?" asks Brice.

  “We’ve tested it,” responds Spitz. “It takes some practice to line the ship up straight.”

  “And if we come in at the wrong angle?” asks Penny. “If the bow collides with a tank and rips it open?”

  “That’s where speed becomes a factor,” says Spitz. “As long as you come in slow enough, the worst that’ll happen is some scratching and grinding. Be patient when you dock.”

  “Assuming we can even find it,” says Brice, looking first at me and then Penny. “What do we do, leave this thing drifting in space while we go marauding and then hope we can find it after we’re finished, after we’ve been gone for a few weeks or months?”

  “We put it in orbit around one of the planets or moons,” I suggest. “That way it’ll always be where we left it. Pretty much.”

  “That’s what we’d suggest,” says Spitz, “but there’s a multidirectional transmitter installed in the ring that sends out a burst once every ten seconds. Using the radio receiver on the ship, the software should be able to read the Doppler shift in the signal and calculate the direction and relative velocity of the ring.”

  “And the nukes?” asks Brice, tired of harping on the question.

  “Once the tank ring is off,” Spitz points up at the brackets again, “You can mount six nukes in their place. The foremost pair of mounts for each tank is designed to be actuated from inside the ship. We fabricated collars for the B61s with connectors for the brackets. They can be released from the bridge. Then, momentum carries them to the target.”

  “So,” asks Brice, “we’re carrying the nukes inside, and we have to manually mount those after the tank ring is disengaged?”

  “Exactly,” answers Spitz.

  Looking at the other two, I say, “It’s not optimal, but it’ll work. What do you think?”

  “Lots of failure points,” says Brice. “Lots of transition time.”

  Glaring back at him, Penny says, “I trust Spitz and his engineers. I think we’ll be fine.”

  I don’t share Penny’s optimism, but I’m not ready to step under Brice’s black cloud, either. “We’ll make it work.”

  The blue grav screen that holds the atmosphere inside Spitz’s hangar shimmers bright and catches our attention. I turn to see an Arizona class assault ship gliding through.

  Chapter 23

  All four of us are there when Hawkins and his crew exit. He smiles when he sees us. “You lived?”

  I laugh.

  Brice reaches out to shake Hawkins’ hand. “Is this your ship now?”

  Hawkins nods proudly. “We just took her out on a shakedown run.”

  “Already modified?” I turn to Spitz as I ask it, and he nods.

  “Just like the Rusty Turd,” answers Hawkins, and he follows it with a shrug. “Before you got the next round of upgrades.”

  “It’s as fast as the Turd?” asks Penny.

  “In that,” answers Spitz, “both ships received the same modifications. Both ships can pull the same g loads.”

  “And the axial gun?” I ask. “The same?”

  “The same,” confirms Hawkins. “But we’ve sacrificed most of the crew compartment for extra H stores and magazines. This isn’t an assault ship anymore. It’s a destroyer.”

  “A destroyer?” I like the sound of that.

  “We’re going out to kill cruisers,” says Hawkins. “No boarding. No capturing. So, no platoons of marines, or whatever you call yourselves. Just the bridge crew, the gun crew, and a few more to keep everything running.”

  Turning to Spitz, I ask, “Colonel Bird told me the UN is finally embracing the war effort? It’s true, then?”

  He nods. “We’ll support the colonies, and continue to send as many colonists out of the system as we can with our current fleet of transports, but all production efforts now are shifting to the war.”

  “What’s your strategy?” I ask Hawkins as we start walking toward the airlock doors at the back of the hangar.

  "Hit and run for now," he tells me. "With you and Jill going on vacation, we don’t want to risk our only ship in a protracted engagement against big odds—"

  “Like we would,” Brice laughs as he looks at me.

  As strange as it seems, I don’t take the remark as a snipe. Between he and I, it’s a compliment.

  “—where we’ll have a high chance of getting knocked out,” finishes Hawkins. “We have our scouts out looking for opportunities. We’ll try to catch them in ones and twos when they’re resupplying, come in fast, kill one ship on a quick strafing run, and max-grav out of the area before they can think to shoot back.”

  I nod. It sounds like a solid tactic. “They’ll adjust their habits once they’ve lost two or three cruisers that way. The Trogs and Grays aren’t imaginative, yet they aren’t stupid. They’ll react. They’ll lay a trap for you.”

  Hawkins nods, and I see that he knows the truth of that as well as I do. “We’ll adjust our tactics as we go along. Don’t worry so much about us, granny. You have your own suicide mission to live through.”

  I smile and brush the remark away, and turn to Spitz. “How long before you’ll have more ships to help?”

  “We have salvage crews out now,” answers Spitz. “It’ll be months before we have another axial gun ready to install in one, but we’re optimistic that we’ll be able to put together a small fleet by then.” He slaps Hawkins on the back. “With the colonel keeping the Trogs busy, we should buy the time we need.”

  “As long as you and Jill shut off the pipeline,” adds Hawkins.

  "Will do," I tell them, though none of us mentions the possibility that any number of Trog cruisers might already be traveling at hyper-light speed to our system. It’s something we won’t know until a year or two after Jill and I close the supply line to Trog traffic.

  Chapter 24

  We spend a few days out of our suits, though not one of my crew goes off the clear liquid diet. We’ll be back in space too soon to indulge the luxury of hydroponic vegetables, chem-lab beef, and pseudo-chicken. At least there’s no prohibition against sexual activity.

  Penny seems to have made it her business to keep up with the budding relationships and casual encounters of our crew and platoon. It’s not something I give half a care about, but she’s obsessed enough with the topic that she can’t help but share her secrets with me.

  Thankfully, she’s already inside the conference room, chatting up Jill Rafferty. I’m in the hall outside, talking with Brice about the status of our ship’s supplies, while others pass by to enter.

  Colonel Bird walks up with two of his officers in tow. He greets us and waves the two in.

  “Good work on that raid,” Bird tells me, reaching out to shake my hand.

  “Thank you,” and as I recall almost too late, I add, “sir.”

  He congratulates Brice as well, and then says, “You’ve had plenty of time to think about what’s ahead. Are you still up for it?”

  No is the answer I want to give. I dread the long months I’ll spend traveling interstellar space, but I understand the necessity. I give him the only answer—the right answer, “Yes, sir.”

  Seeming to read my mind, he tells me, “I know it’ll be a difficult assignment. I appreciate you taking it on.”

  He pats Brice on the shoulder. “You okay with it?”

  “I’m a soldier, sir,” answers Brice. “I go where I’m pointed, and do what I’m told.”

  Bird accepts Brice’s answer at face value, and he turns back to me. "How’s your crew holding up?"

  “Good. The nuke raid went well. We’ve not suffered a casualty in—” I find myself searching for the date of the last loss. And then it seems odd that I’d subconsciously started marking time that way, days since the last death. A corpse-driven calendar. The brutality of war does funny things to people.

  “Success does a lot for moral
e,” he says.

  I accept the tidbit of mean-nothing wisdom, and try not to judge him for it. He’s trying to make conversation, trying to form a bond beyond the bounds of our military relationship.

  Perhaps sensing my sudden discomfort and Bird’s unexpected long pause, Brice asks, “Sir, if you don’t mind my curiosity, I have some questions.”

  Turning back to him, Bird says, “I’ll answer what I can.”

  “What did you end up doing with Blair and Sokolov?”

  “Reassigned.” Bird says it the same way he might answer a question about the weather.

  Brice doesn’t take it that way. His face betrays his disapproval. “Reassigned?” Like me, he expected something more permanent. “In the Free Army?”

  “Of course,” answers Bird. “What did you expect?”

  Brice glances at me before he answers, looking to see if I’m on his side. He guesses right. “Something harsher.”

  Bird turns to me and asks, “What are your thoughts on Blair?”

  “I’m in agreement with Sergeant Brice. She can’t be trusted.”

  “Would you have me jail her?” Bird asks. “Execute her and Sokolov, both?”

  I suspect Bird is maneuvering me toward an answer I don’t want to give. I hesitate to respond.

  Brice doesn’t suffer the subtleties of conscience that nag me. He sees the right course and doesn’t mind taking it. “Yes. Execution is the best solution.”

  “We’re not the MSS,” Bird tells him. “I can’t do that.”

  Brice misinterprets Bird’s answer. "I can. A railgun round through the back of the head.” He shrugs, like he can’t understand the difficulties of it. And then, sensing that maybe he’s suggested the wrong method, he offers an alternative. "Or just dump them in deep space and let nature take its course. Reassignment to a new command."

  “She was stupid, selfish, and ambitious,” Bird explains. “She didn’t commit a crime.”

  “People died,” Brice argues. “Lots of good people. Not just in the battle for Ceres. Her ambition and paranoia cost us—” Brice suddenly finds himself at a loss trying to quantify the Blair effect.