Extremis (74 page)

In a waist-high alcove just below von Tscharner’s uncommonly large feet, the tacplot showed an impossibly slow trickle of green specks entering the warp point. The codes that announced their transits alternated between those of a recon drone and those of an SBMHAWK every five minutes—a pace that had been set thirty-six hours ago and had continued ever since. It was the eighth time in the past three months that Krishmahnta had pushed the interval so tightly. On the other side of the warp point, the Baldy forces—noticeably diminished in the past two weeks—would have little reason to suspect that this time, however, Krishmahnta’s strategic equivalent of Chinese water-torture was not merely intended to fray their nerves and make them uncertain if an attack might follow. This time, hulls amounting to almost a year of ceaseless industry were poised to flood back through the warp point and drive the Baldies out of the Penelope system—either by a brilliant display of tactics or a brute-force display of tonnage.

But as Kurzweil watched, still trying to get all his recording gear up and running, the trickle of SBMHAWKs ceased—and eight larger icons began leaping dutifully through the purple hoop that signified the warp point into Penelope: AMBAMMs, off to blast their way through the Baldy minefields and any ships that happened to stray too close to the other side of the interstellar portal. A covey of RDs followed them by a second, and then the SBMHAWK transits resumed—but as a biblical flood, not a trickle. Eight at a time they disappeared into that rift in spacetime, and, no doubt, many destroyed each other upon emerging—interpenetrated—in Penelope. But those that survived were, even now, chasing the Arduan ships on the other side. In the holoplot, Kurzweil looked at the tiny icons denoting the SBMHAWKs, expecting to see them almost exhausted: instead, untold masses of them waited motionless near the warp-point icon.

Next to him, Wethermere reached up and tapped the shock harness that was hinged aloft behind Kurzweil. “You might want to think about putting that on, Leo.”

“Yeah, sure. Listen, I wanted to say how grateful I am that you’re letting me come along on this mission. The folks back on Odysseus and Tilghman will really appreciate hearing and seeing what all their work has made possible.”

Wethermere shrugged. “Don’t thank me. Thank Admiral Krishmahnta. This was her idea.”

“Yes—and not all her staff was particularly fond of it, I hear.”

Wethermere looked away. “I wouldn’t know anything about that.”

“Wouldn’t you? You’ve been in charge of this special weapons project for the last six months. Seems to me you would have inevitably been in on any discussion about a media request to witness the weapon’s first combat application. Or at least you would have heard the shouting that supposedly went on between Admirals Krishmahnta and Yoshikuni.”

Wethermere looked at Kurzweil and smiled. “You know, you’re not going to bait me into making a comment, Leo.” Then he glanced at the tacplot. “Commodore, I think it’s time we take our place in the transit line.”

Von Tscharner nodded. “Very good, Commander. Helm, at my mark, take us toward the warp point, ahead slow. Comms, apprise Admiral Krishmahnta that we have the ball and inform her when we start the clock. Ops, start the clock on my mark…and three, two, one: mark.”

Kurzweil detected no change in motion, not even a tug. That only happened when a craft was traveling at the upper limits of its pseudo-velocity envelope. At that point, real space started breaking through in a manner that felt remarkably like drag, or the rearward push of acceleration. The tri-vid action shows still liked the drama of showing people pressed back by what they dramatically labeled “gee-forces.” Despite some superficial similarities in appearance, they had entirely different causes—and sometimes, startlingly different effects.

But although the physical sensations of the
Excalibur
remained unaltered, the mood on the bridge had changed again. The crew exchanges were quiet, clipped, efficient. Kurzweil glanced up at the ops clock: they were one minute in. Which meant that, as per the stipulations put in place by Admiral Krishmahnta, he was now allowed to ask Wethermere about the “big surprise” they were going to spring on the Baldies. Krishmahnta’s chief of security had insisted upon that one-minute mark because, at this point in the countdown, all nonsecure commo links were terminated: Kurzweil no longer had any way to transmit off the supermonitor
Excalibur
—even if he had wanted to. He looked over at Wethermere—who was already looking at him—and waiting. “So, Commander, I know that whatever secret project you’ve been working on involves the five supermonitors of this task force, and that it involves energy torpedoes.”

Wethermere’s left eyebrow climbed a bit, but he didn’t look too surprised. “Oh? And how did you learn that?”

“Yard talk, sir. Consider the details you couldn’t keep a lid on. Five ships being modified in lockdown. No news about the armaments going in. But it was easy enough to find out which batteries were being dismounted—almost all the force beams. It was harder to find out what might be taking their place.”

“And how did you do that, Leo?”

“By keeping an eye on where other projects fell short of parts, Commander. Your plans—whatever they were—hit the shipyards late. Caused a stir. Grumbles rose up whereever parts designated for a project or a hull got diverted into yours. And it was always energy-torpedo batteries. But more than that—well, I haven’t a clue.”

“For which I’m thankful, Leo. As it is, you managed to get through one or two clearance layers. You are to be congratulated.”

“Well, rather than congratulations, I’d like answers.”

“Fair enough. Tell me, Leo, what do you know about energy torpedoes?”

Two months ago, Kurzweil had known nothing about them, but by now he’d become a minor expert. “Pre-fusion plasma wrapped in a very short-lived drive envelope. Travels very close to the speed of light. Almost as much punch as an antimatter warhead. Starts losing some accuracy beyond ten light-seconds but can still reach out beyond twenty. Hard to intercept because it’s moving so fast and because most defensive arrays find a blob of plasma harder to target than a regular solid object, like a missile.”

Wethermere nodded appreciatively. “Very good. So, if the energy torpedo is such a wonder weapon, then why haven’t we phased out other weapon systems?”

Kurzweil frowned. “Because of that limited range. And at close range, although the energy torpedo does a lot of damage, the studies say it would have be about twenty percent more powerful to offer destructive performance equivalent to an equal volume of force-beams. So missiles are superior at range, force-beams superior at close range.”

“But what if you double-fire the energy torpedoes?”

Kurzweil leaned back. “Double-speed fire burns out about twenty-five percent of the capacitors—every time you try it.”

“Yes—that’s why it’s not done. But what happens when you
do
actually fire that many torpedoes?”

“Oh—that’s pure lethality. Double-firing an energy torpedo battery makes its other failings insignificant. Sure, each torpedo is still less accurate than a missile—but now you’ve got twice as many of them heading downrange. Except at very long ranges, the aggregate hit possibilities are now all on the side of the energy torpedoes. And at short range, you’re putting so much hurt so fast on an adversary that they easily outperform the force-beams. And at middle ranges, where they’re already superior, they become—”

Kurzweil stopped, noticing how broad Wethermere’s smile had become. And then he knew. “You’ve found a way to reduce the double-fire burnout of ET batteries.”

“No,” answered Wethermere, “we’ve found a way to
eliminate
the burnout entirely.”

Kurzweil started to stand, eager with the reflex to send the story—and suddenly realized why Krishmahnta et al. had insisted he not be told until the operation clock was a minute in. Wethermere’s hand was on his shoulder.

“Have a seat, Leo—and last warning: swing that harness down and seal it. It just might save your life.”

Kurzweil complied absently. Like the true newsperson he was, the story had wiped any thought of his own safety from his mind…for now. “But this—this changes everything, Commander. Energy torpedoes on perpetual double-fire? God, that will obsolete so many other weapons so quickly, that…”

Wethermere shrugged. “I wouldn’t rush to any conclusions, Leo. They said the same thing about the fighter almost a hundred years ago, and here they are, still helping to decide the fate of this war. But yes, it’s going to change a lot of things—one day.”

“What do you mean, one day?”

“I mean we only managed to convert these five supermonitors to the new ET armament suite.”

“I see. Well, how did you do it? What was the breakthrough?”

“Oh, there wasn’t any breakthrough, Leo.”

Von Tscharner, evidently eavesdropping, snorted out a quick laugh.

Kurzweil fixed Wethermere with a stare. “The commodore doesn’t seem to agree.”

“Well, look, I just had a harebrained scheme. It was really the engineers who—”

Kurzweil jabbed a finger at the countdown chronometer. “Enough with the semi-genuine humilities, Commander. We are, quite literally, on the clock here. The facts—and fast, if you please.”

“Okay. Look, an energy-torpedo generator is about two-thirds capacitor and one-third launcher. In the double-fire mode, the capacitor is twenty-five percent overtaxed, meaning about twenty-five percent of the systems burn out. So you’d need twenty-five percent more power to get fully reliable function in the double-fire mode. Follow me?”

“Uh—yeah, I think so.”

“So I just sat down and asked some engineers: What if we could provide each ET generator with twenty-five percent more power? ‘Fine,’ they said, ‘that would keep the weapons from frying. But where are you going to get those extra gigawatts? Every system on the ship has its own closely balanced power supply, so there’s not a whole lot of surplus, even from the engines.’ ”

“So what did you do?”

“Well, I asked if we could remove one weapon from every battery of five generators. That put us down to four generators, but in place of the missing weapon, we put in an extra capacitor, with room to spare. That extra capacitor is like having an extra one hundred percent power surplus to spread around each battery. And since each of the four remaining ET generators requires a twenty-five percent surplus over their own output…”

Kurzweil gaped. “So now each generator has access to the extra twenty-five percent power it needs for double-fire! My God, that’s so—so simple!”

Von Tscharner smiled without looking over. “Which is probably why nobody thought of it before—and because naval designers rarely think about reducing armament, even if that would mean an increase in total offensive power. Leave it to a non-engineer—a guy who thinks outside that box because he has to—to come up with that solution.”

Kurzweil nodded. “Okay—but it’s got to put a hell of a strain on all the support systems. Is that why you also had to draw so much extra coolant from supplies? Does the system have a tendency to overheat?”

Wethermere smiled. “Oh, you heard about the coolant, too, did you? Well, actually the system doesn’t have an overheating problem. In fact, we’re using the coolant for—”

“Approaching warp point,” announced the helmsman crisply.

In a tone he might also have used to ask a mess-mate to pass the salt, von Tscharner instructed, “Sound general quarters. Mr. Wethermere, your instructions?”

“Missiles ready. Energy torpedo generators charged to full. All cargo bays designated for coolant venting, stand by.”

Von Tscharner nodded to Commo, who passed along the orders.

Kurzweil looked in the plot, saw the green blip of the
Excalibur
approaching the warp point, one similar speck ahead of her, three more behind.

“
Caladbolg
transiting, sir,” Ops reported to von Tscharner.

“Very good. We’re next. Shock harnesses down, Mr. Kurzweil. Combat has a tendency to get a bit—kinetic.”

Kurzweil swallowed, pulled down the cuirasslike seat restraint, and suddenly realized:
Holy God above, I’m about to go into combat.
Forgetting himself, he murmured, “I could be killed.”

Von Tscharner looked down from the promontory of his con. “Indeed you could, Mr. Kurzweil, indeed you could. All stations, rig for transit. Shields full. Restoration of PDF and data links have first priority upon arrival. And now—in we go.”

And then they were gone.

* * *

A moment later, the
Excalibur
blinked into existence in the Penelope system and was immediately surrounded by a seething storm of antimatter explosions. But the shields were already coming up and bore the brunt of those detonations.

“Tactics: report.”

“
Caladbolg
bloodied but steady, sir.
Dyrnwyn
just coming out behind us now.”

“The minefields?”

“A clear path through them, sir.”

Von Tscharner looked in the plot, saw dozens of Baldy SDHs equidistantly ringing the mouth of the warp point. “Range to threat forces?”

“Between twelve and fifteen light-seconds, sir. Seems that last, pre-transit rush of SBMHAWKs really caught them off guard. It certainly backed them off the warp point.”

Von Tscharner turned to look at Wethermere and nodded down at the plot in something like admiration. “So far so good on your tactical soothsaying, Commander. What next?”

Wethermere looked in the plot as the last two green icons of Strike Group Sigma emerged. “Gotta wait for the data links to come up, Commodore.” As he spoke, Wethermere started tapping his targeting stylus into a dense cluster of the red enemy icons on the left flank of the half-globe of Baldy hulls.

Von Tscharner snapped orders. “I need those data links up now.” He turned to Tactics. “Shields? PDF systems?”

“Shields up and holding, sir. PDF just coming online. And—
Tyrfing
is in the net, sir. The Strike Group’s data links are complete. Shall I—?”

But Wethermere was already shouting. “Fire control, acquire lock on the eight targets I just designated.”