A Galaxy Unknown (7 page)

"I'm afraid my vaccinations are hopelessly out of date."

"If I know Rebecca, you received your vaccination booster before you even awoke in our sickbay, so that your body would begin to build antibodies immediately. Now, back to the ship. The frame links are like the vertebrae in a human spinal column. They have a hollow core near their center. When connected, they create a tunnel that runs down the ship's length. This provides a fully pressurized passage that extends from the stern of the main ship to the last cargo link-section. The ship can be as long as necessary to transport all of the cargo being shipped, in one run, but GA regulations restrict us to ten kilometers for safety reasons. A maintenance link-section is usually attached amidship.

"Since the Raider attacks began, most cargo vessels have carried some form of laser weapon protection, and although they haven't stopped the attacks, at least the crews feel they can do something to fight back. Our phased laser arrays are mounted in special six-meter wide link-sections, inserted every half-kilometer along the entire length of our six-thousand-four-hundred-eighty-meter long cargo section. The first is the very first section attached to the ship, and the last is attached to the stern-most container link. Our total towed length on this run is six-thousand-five-hundred-seventy-meters, counting the array sections."

"How many laser weapons in each section?"

"Four. They give us 360-degree fire capability around the center axis of the ship and once the gun ports are opened and the arrays extended, each array has converging fire overlap at one-hundred-meters from the ship. They're all controlled from the bridge, or can be controlled individually within the section."

"That means you have sixty arrays intermingled with the cargo?"

"Exactly."

"How powerful are your lasers?"

"They're rated at sixty-two megawatts."

Jenetta knew that such low powered units were normally only used as defensive weapons against torpedoes, but could also be used to dispatch most unarmored or lightly armored fighters. They'd be hard pressed to seriously damage the armor of a warship, although the pulses
could
‘chip away' at it until a hole was made. Assuming an armored hardness of twenty kilojoules/cm², the laser would have to remain focused on the exact spot to be pierced for a full four-point-three seconds to punch through. Remaining on one precise spot for four and a half seconds requires a gunner with remarkably steady hands if both ships are stationary, and an incredible amount of luck if the ships are moving, even with computer tracking.

"We'll stop into one of the weapon sections later so that you can take a look," Gloria added.

"Is that your only armament?"

"Not anymore. This ship was weapons retrofit just before this trip. Four torpedo tubes were mounted in the bow at that time. The openings are camouflaged and it's supposed to be a closely guarded secret, but everyone on board knows about them, which probably means that everyone we've had contact with recently knows also. The security station on the bridge doubles as the torpedo weapons console. They also mounted four laser arrays on the main ship. Our firepower is probably the only reason we were able to keep sufficient crew for the trip. As it is, we only have enough command officers for two bridge watches."

"Only two?"

"Yes. The Captain has the first watch from 0600 to 1800, and then I take over from 1800 until 0600."

Jenetta nodded. "That explains a lot. I wondered why the first officer had the watch until 0600, and why the Captain was still on the bridge more than eight hours into his watch. There are no other officers on board?"

"Rebecca and Charley are both officers. But while each is a highly trained professional, they're not command officers. Normally, every interstellar freighter has a minimum of four command officers to cover the standard three watches."

"At least you're well armed."

"It might all be window dressing, if it comes to a fight."

"What do you mean, ‘window dressing?'" Jenetta asked, her puzzlement obvious.

"It's just that we don't have any experienced gunners aboard. In a fight, we may just be providing a light show for the Raiders. The hope is that any Raiders would pass us by if they see our laser array link-sections."

"From the outside you must look like a light destroyer."

"That's the idea. The company asked Space Command to put troops aboard to man the guns but they said that they couldn't post troops to a civilian ship. Against some military regulation or something."

Jenetta nodded. "Probably Article 38 regarding command structure in non-military environments."

"Yeah, I think that was it. Captain Lentz argued that it was done on Earth back in World War II when merchant ships were being sunk by Nazi submarines and aircraft, but the SC response was that things have changed considerably since then."

"Space Command would never, ever, agree to place troops under the control of a civilian ship's captain. It would violate Article 38 and a whole bunch of lesser regs."

"Our hard luck if we're attacked. But at least it's almost impossible to attack a ship while it's traveling faster then light. We just have to be extremely cautious before we drop our envelope. Okay— let's take a tour of Engineering and then we'll take hover sleds through the ship."

Engineering was as pristine as any found in the Space Command fleet. Obviously a disciplined engineer, Charley wasn't in the Engineering section during the tour, but no one challenged their presence. As they made their way aft, for the tour of the cargo section, a door with ‘No Admittance' printed in large, red letters caught Jenetta's eye.

"What's that, Gloria?" Jenetta asked.

"That's the starboard torpedo room. Want a look?"

"If it's all right."

"Sure it is. Space Command officers always have access to any part of the ship. A Space Command safety team performed an inspection after the tubes were installed and certified them as ‘acceptable.'"

"Just ‘acceptable?'"

"Just? I thought it was normal, like being either acceptable or unacceptable."

"Well— it is one step above unacceptable. It means that the equipment passed an operations test and that the birds won't detonate before leaving the tubes."

Gloria looked at Jenetta apprehensively as she placed her hand on a palm print reader and the door slid open noiselessly to reveal an area rarely visited. On either side of the room, five enormous black torpedoes with bright red warheads, gleamed ominously in auto-feed racks. When activated, the automatic loading system would gently lower the next of the fourteen-meter long torpedoes to a conveyor, which would in turn slide it into a tube.

"Now we're talking," Jenetta said as she saw the equipment, then, "Oh— my— God!"

"What?!" Gloria asked anxiously. "What is it?"

"It looks like a Falcon Mark III system."

"That's right, Jen. You certainly know your armament." Seeing the severe expression on Jenetta's face, her own filled with concern. "Uh, is there a problem?"

"I thought they stopped making these things a century ago. There's one in the exhibit hall at the Space Weapons Museum in Kansas."

"A century ago?" Gloria said with raised eyebrows. "They looked brand new when they were installed."

"Maybe they'd just been given a fresh coat of paint or something. I'd say some arms merchant or salvage yard had these in storage for a long, long time. Apparently they finally found a suck— uh, purchasing agent or broker to buy them."

"What's wrong with them? I thought a torpedo was a torpedo was a torpedo."

"The Falcon Mark III system has two major flaws. One, and the most serious, is that reload takes almost
five minutes
. The other guy can be pumping a torpedo from every tube every fifteen seconds while you're sitting on your hands waiting for yours to be ready. And two, once the torpedoes are fired, there's absolutely no telemetry and guidance adjustment. They either find the target you initially pointed them at on their own, or they don't. You have no way to retarget. And there have actually been a couple of cases where Falcon Mark III's lost their intended target and then acquired their own ship as the target. At least they self-destruct fifteen minutes after being fired to prevent them from becoming a hazard to future navigation."

"God! Are there any positives?"

"Just one. You get a full three minutes of controlled flight time from them before they go ballistic for an additional twelve minutes."

"But they do explode?" Gloria asked.

"Oh, yeah, they explode. The firing mechanism goes active three seconds after leaving the ship. The trick is to get them to explode inside the enemy's hull rather than your own. And where modern systems give you a choice of several different warheads, nuclear, bomb-pumped laser, or high-explosive, the Falcon Mark III's were limited strictly to high-explosives. With laser heads, you only have to get fairly close to the target, while with nuclear warheads, you have to get very close, but with high explosives, you have to literally punch through the hull of the target to get the maximum killing effect from concussive force. If you can do that, they'll do the job nicely."

Gloria took a deep breath as she thought about the damage a torpedo would do to a ship. "Hopefully, we'll never have to use them."

Thinking only about the unreliability of the weapon, Jenetta said, "I'll certainly second that prayer."

The hover-sled ride was a new and exciting experience for Jenetta. Stretching out ahead of them for more than six kilo-meters, the tunnel had two lanes for sleds, with a two-meter wide walking track between. Overhead conduits carried fiber-optic wiring that linked all sections together for communications, armament control, and life support. Before they entered the tunnel, Gloria recorded Jenetta's name and her own in the terminal near the entrance. Their names immediately appeared on the large wall monitor that listed everyone outside the main ship.

"You put it on the hover track yourself," Lieutenant Sabella said as she took one of the five-centimeter-thick, meter-and-a-half-long sleds down from a storage rack and demonstrated. "It's really lightweight; only weighing about twelve pounds. The larboard lane takes you toward the stern and the starboard lane takes you forward towards the bow. The sleds use maglev to ride about a centimeter above the magnets in the lane."

"Maglev?"

"Yeah. That was the best option when the Lewiston link frame was designed. There are so many hundreds of thousands of link frames in use now that it's unlikely the system will ever change. An independent company introduced an ‘oh-gee' sled a few years ago that could be used with the maglev track, but it flopped. It offered improved performance, safety, and comfort, but the old sleds have become so common, they're dirt-cheap. Freight company officials embrace anything that's dirt-cheap."

Gloria placed the sled on the larboard lane, and raised a piece into position to form a backrest for the rider. Simultaneously, a t-bar safety bracket lowered into a slot on the track and swiveled. "You sit on the sled, put the heels of your boots against the stops, and grip both handles. When you're ready to move, you squeeze either handle tightly and depress the button by your thumb. The pressure on that handle then determines your speed. To speed up, release your grip a little. The harder you squeeze, the slower you go. You can't manually slow so quickly that you're ejected from the seat or flip over. When you reach your destination, depress the button again before releasing your hand, remove your sled from the lane, and hang it on a sled rack or on the railing along the walking track. If you fail to slow the sled near the end of the track, the system should slow and stop you automatically to prevent injury."

As Gloria watched, Jenetta sat down on the sled and fidgeted until she felt comfortable. Gripping both handles tightly, she depressed the button by her right thumb and slowly loosened her grip. The sled started moving slowly towards the stern of the ship, picking up speed as she relaxed her grip more and more. Her face broke into a wide smile as the individual link trusses overhead began to blur into one long piece. By the halfway point, she was barely touching the handle, and the velocity caused her facial skin to contort and ripple.

As the stern of the ship loomed ever larger, Jenetta gripped the handle, slowly tightening her grasp until she came to a halt just several meters from the end of the track. She had decided not to trust the system to halt her progress. Depressing the button, she dismounted, pushed the backrest down, then picked up the sled and hung it on the walking track railing, where she stood until Gloria finally arrived.

"That was fantastic!" Jenetta said raucously when Gloria reached her. "It's better than the Descent into Doom ride at the Old Georgetown Death Thrills Amusement Park. I loved it!"

Gloria grinned and shook her head as she stood up. "Do all Space Command ensigns have a death wish, or only you?"

Jenetta, her face still flushed with excitement said, "What?"

Pointing to the small display on the sled Jenetta had used, Gloria said, "You reached the stern of the ship in just two and a quarter minutes."

"Really?"

"So that means you were traveling what— about a hundred-sixty kilometers an hour?"

"It was fantastic! It felt like I was flying!"

"You were flying. And you could have been ejected from the sled if something had happened, like a sudden power loss. There's no seatbelt on these things. Or you could have run up on top of someone going a lot slower."

"Does that happen?" Jenetta asked, her excitement diminishing slightly.

"Well— there are lots of system safeguards built-in, and I've never heard of it happening, but it
could
theoretically happen."

"But it was so much fun, Gloria! I was taught to pilot a shuttle at the Academy, which included Free Fall Spin Training, but even that wasn't anything like this. This was so real, so thrilling, so— so— visceral."

Gloria grinned and shook her head again. "Don't take this second life thing too far, Jen. You're not invulnerable, you know."