Live Free or Die, Second Edition, page 35
“Fiddly bits?” the BAE rep said.
“Crew quarters for thousands, things like that,” Tyler said. “I see it as an ongoing project, frankly. I can, will, set it up to take the SAPL power and I’ll make sure there’s plenty of room for consumable storage. When you get it, it will be marginally capable of fighting. Oh, and I understand we now have a breacher heavy missile system. I’ve been taking a look at magazine storage for them. Troy should be able to hold and rapid fire about two hundred thousand.”
“My God,” the Boeing rep said. “We can’t produce that many in a hundred years!”
“Yeah, it’ll need its own fabbers,” Tyler said. “Lots of fabbers. Beyond that, it’s going to be up to other corporations to handle. All I’m really giving you is the shell.”
“We can work with that,” the general said, nodding.
“This reduces the Constitutions too…”
“I like the Constitutions,” Tyler said placatingly. “I love the Constitutions. But, face it, we don’t have the muscle or the tech or the infrastructure to make the sort of fleet we need to hold this system any time soon. The Troy is not sophisticated, even by our standards. It’s just massive and practically invulnerable. We don’t have quality. But quantity is a quality of its own. Troy is an act of desperation as much as anything. With it, we can at least hold the system. Nothing’s going to live to get past Troy once it is even partially operational.”
“That’s clear,” SpaceCom said, nodding. “If it can pump a thousand terawatts…what is that? An exawatt? If it can pump a thousand terawatts, with armor that thick…The missiles will be sort of like nuts in the brownie. I’d rather have tanks, but given that the approach is through the gate…a super-mongous Maginot fortress works.”
“And now you know why I’ve been spending so much money,” Tyler said, nodding to his CFO. “But you still don’t get to explain it to the shareholders.”
“How much are we going to get paid for it?” the chief financial officer asked, still bemused.
“I think the standard rate is cost plus eight percent,” Tyler said, looking at SpaceCom. “Which is going to be about one tenth the materials price. But the asteroid was just sitting there. However, I am not, not, NOT, going to play the usual accounting games you guys insist upon. I’ll show you my books, I’m not going to charge for overhead or any of the usual crap. But I’m also not going to employ an army of accountants. I’ll give you a price and show you why and if you don’t want it, you don’t have to buy it.”
“There are going to be screams to high heaven over this,” the general said. “I want it. My God, do I want it. Explaining it is going to be tough. And explaining why we’re just paying you for it rather than putting it out to competitive bid.”
“Nobody else in the Solar System could make it,” Tyler said, shrugging. “I own the SAPL.”
“Nobody else in the Solar System would have the balls to make it,” the Boeing CEO said, shaking his head.
“Fitting it out is going to employ every defense contractor on Earth,” Tyler said, looking at the reps at the table. “There’s plenty of graft to pass around. Frankly, I don’t think the U.S. can handle the whole thing on its own. Oh, the majority. Even with the devastation from Horvath attacks, we’ve still got the largest economy and the largest military on Earth. But we’re definitely going to need partners on this. And that, gentlemen, ladies, is all I’ve got for you. Troy. The shell, assuming no more major issues, will be formed in about seven months. It will, however, take some time to cool. Then we can really get cracking. Oh, yeah, one more thing, General.”
“What?” SpaceCom said.
“I own this thing,” Tyler said. “And I can still make more money off it by cutting it up than selling it to you. So the contract is going to stipulate that the name remains the same. Anybody who tries to name this after some unknown congressman is going to get a hundred terawatts of personal indignation straight up their keister.”
* * *
“Okay,” the CFO said, after the meeting. “I get the Troy. And I’ll admit, it’s very cool, and as a former New Yorker, having something like that in the sky will be…comforting.”
“Agreed,” Tyler said, sitting back in his chair.
“And the VDA project is, I’d guess, the new mirror.”
“The Variable Distributed Array,” Tyler said. “Any time it’s a mirror, it’s Dr. Foster.”
“Ruby?”
“Pass,” Tyler said, sighing. “I hate talking about anything I don’t know will work. Troy is far enough advanced we’re pretty sure it will work out. Or that we’ll be able to work out the bugs. Really, really, really big bugs, but workable.”
“Last but not least,” the CFO said. “You want us to secure a billion credit loan from the Glatun? For Troy?”
“No,” Tyler said. “Their government’s not going to let me borrow money for defense systems. I’m working that end. All I need you to do is the paperwork. What it’s for…? That’s sort of complicated. But we’re going to need a lot more mirrors…”
THREE
“Okay,” Tyler said, as he stepped off the shuttle. “I just told SpaceCom and my CFO and my CEO and everybody else in the ‘black’ world that we can pump an exawatt, I think, of power and manage it.”
“Petawatts, surely,” Dr. Foster said.
“Peta, exa, wattever,” Tyler said. “Tell me we can do it.”
“We can do it,” Dr. Foster said. “Probably.”
“I hate this job,” Tyler said, banging his head on the hatch coaming. “Ow!”
“Don’t,” Bryan said, clapping him on the back. “This is what you came to see, right? If we can pump a petawatt?”
“Yes,” Tyler said. “So…”
“So, first I explain how magnificent I am,” Bryan said, leading him into a conference room. This was a converted Rangora ship, rechristened the Lava Lamp, which had been refitted for the deep-space science projects involved in the VDA. Most of the materials for the VDA could only be built in space or with Glatun technology. And Tyler wasn’t interested in most people knowing he was working on a new BDL. The Horvath bombardments had gotten people looking at the sky nervously. And he still wasn’t a big hero to the news media. Having a bigger and better laser should be taken as a good thing. Somehow, though, people always started making Snidely Whiplash noises.
“Explain,” Tyler said.
“The VDA wasn’t going to work without Ruby,” Dr. Foster said. “No standard material could consistently support a petawatt of power hitting it. And the VDA, unlike the VSA, had to be capable of maintaining maximum fire of at least a petawatt, preferably one point five, for up to thirty minutes.”
“So how magnificent are you?” Tyler asked.
“Not all that magnificent,” Dr. Foster said. “I had to go to the Glatun.”
“I saw the charges,” Tyler said. He still refused to think in terms of exchange rates, even though those were getting better.
“We needed three things from the Glatun,” Dr. Foster said. “We needed superconductors, piezoelectrics and help in large artificial sapphire production.”
“And…?”
“All three were considered standard industrial processes,” Bryan said. “So they didn’t fall under military hardware restrictions. So we have all three.”
“Excellent,” Tyler said.
“We can produce the sapphires using all Earth tech,” Dr. Foster said, reaching down and setting what looked like a large magnifying glass on the table. “Those we could produce before. The problem was, they were hugely expensive and a couple of feet across was the best we could do.”
“And now?” Tyler said, picking up the artificial sapphire. It was lighter than it looked.
“If we did those assembly-line style,” Dr. Foster said, “that would cost about a buck.”
“Damn,” Tyler said, his eyes wide. “Right in there with glass.”
“Yep,” Bryan said, grinning. “Really easy once we got the kinks out. And we can make them more or less any size. I mean, any size we can physically handle. And shapes. Pretty much any shape.”
“Okay,” Tyler said, setting the sapphire down. “Superconductors.”
“Superconductors and thermoelectrics,” Dr. Foster said. “They’re connected.”
“Thermoelectrics are…they convert heat to electrical power across different…Damn.”
“You were getting there,” Dr. Foster said. “Across a potential range.”
“If you’ve got heat on one side and cold on the other you produce current,” Tyler said.
“Right,” Dr. Foster said. “Earth thermoelectrics need a very high potential and the output is low. They also don’t really cool the system. They need cool to get current. Glatun thermoelectrics don’t need as much potential and have their own inherent potential…”
“Inherent potential?” Tyler said.
“You want the math?” Dr. Foster said.
“Please, no!” Tyler held up his hands in dismay. “I’ll take your word for it!”
“Bottom line: pump in heat, any heat over about negative fifteen Celsius, and you get current,” Dr. Foster said. “And very efficient output. It’s part of their ship tech we hadn’t realized we were missing. It makes power plants much more efficient and keeps ships from overheating.”
“Which we need to distribute,” Tyler said. “Go on.”
“So,” Dr. Foster said, bringing up a schematic. “The VDA mirror. Ninety-six separate small mirrors in an array. Layer of optically damned near perfect sapphire. And by damned near I’m talking parts per billion of contamination. Like…six parts per billion. Thin layer of palladium reflector. Palladium’s the only thing that’s going to take the energy and is reflective enough. Backing of Glatun superconductor to transfer the heat from the palladium. That way the waste heat automatically gets distributed. Then three thousand lines of thermoelectric-wrapped conductors leading to the cryogenic cooling unit. Which leads, in turn, to a shielded cooling array of superconductor, again, that can dump the heat into space, we think, fast enough. For it to work in bursts of up to thirty minutes at least.
“The system doesn’t quite power itself. That would violate the second law of thermodynamics. But it’s very efficient. Oh, the stabilization is so tight you can use the beam to shave with. Tighter, actually. Accuracy of three millimeters at six light-seconds.”
“Awesome,” Tyler said. “Sounds like it’s a bitch to build.”
“Well,” Bryan said, shrugging. “How many are we going to need?”
“About…” Tyler thought about it and shrugged in turn. “About three hundred and eighty-two to start. And we’re probably going to need a bigger, tougher system, so start wrapping your brain around it.”
“You’re joking,” Dr. Foster said. “For what?”
“Compartmentalized,” Tyler said. “But there is a new need as of last month. So, when do we find out if it works?”
“Uh…” Dr. Foster said, his mouth still open. “Um…right this way? Three hundred? Really?”
“Really.”
* * *
“Asteroid 152536,” Dr. Foster said proudly. “It’s about the same mass as the original Icarus.”
“It took us six months to melt the Icarus,” Tyler said. “How long?”
“You asked about an asteroid-shattering kaboom on Icarus,” Bryan said, grinning. “Behold the power of this fully operational VDA! Chuck!”
“Yes, sir,” the technician said, grinning.
“Open fire!”
“Takes a few minutes,” Chuck said. “We’ve got to get all the mirrors repointed, permissions for retargeting…”
“Got it,” Tyler said. “I’ve done this a few times.”
* * *
“Okay,” Chuck said. “The BDA mirrors are online.”
“Lase it,” Tyler said.
He wasn’t sure what he was expecting. From the gasps of astonishment in the room nobody else was expecting the asteroid to blast apart into splinters.
“Holy hell,” Dr. Foster said, his mouth dropping again. “It wasn’t supposed to do that.”
“I think you got it, Tex,” Tyler said, chuckling. “Asteroid-shattering kaboom indeed. I’d guess it had some volatiles that hadn’t been detected. And I hope the VDA was way back.”
“Far enough,” Dr. Foster said. “Holy hell. Uh…”
“Think it works,” Tyler said with a chuckle.
“We don’t really know, though,” Dr. Foster said. “I mean…”
“Oh, it’s working,” Chuck said. “Temperatures are still nominal. I mean, the asteroid is gone but that’s no reason to stop the test.”
“The fact that we’re taking sixty percent of the VLA is,” Tyler said. “No, we need to get it fully tested, but since it apparently works, let’s test it on something useful. I doubt it’s going to do that to Troy. But it is a Very Dangerous Array.”
* * *
“The asteroid we’re constructing Troy from is fairly oblong,” Nathan said. “We thought we could work with that. We’ve been lasing the ends and trying to get them to melt. But even with a wide BDA array and seven VSAs, we can’t get the ends to heat up properly. We need a more focused system. Does the Very Dangerous Array work?”
“As far as we’ve tested it, it works like a charm,” Bryan said. “But what I’m wondering is why he knows about the VDA and I didn’t know about Troy? And, by the way, holy hell, Tyler! Are you a complete megalomaniac?!”
“Why does everyone jump straight to megalomania when this project gets mentioned?” Tyler asked. “It’s a perfectly reasonable application of physics and thermodynamics. And it will, let me add, be able to hold the gate against anything the Horvath can conceivably throw through. While protecting the VLA from attack. Well, the critical components. With a VDA set back at a light-second, firing into a sapphire collimator that then retransmits the power through the walls to the firing ports, the enemy won’t have a good target. They can get the supplying VDA—VDAs, mind you, there’s going to be more than one—with missiles, but by the time the missiles reach them the launchers are going to be gutted.”
“It’s a shield and spear in one,” Bryan said. “What about the missiles?”
“The VDA can be split,” Tyler said. “Targeting those missiles is going to be a bitch. But it’s easier when they’re first launched. Anything hostile that comes through the gate, we shred. Anything. They start launching missiles, we use a portion of the power to engage the missiles. Split the VDA beam into a dozen, a hundred separate collimators and we can take out most missile spreads. It will be a tactical decision whether to hit the ships or the missiles first. But generally, I’d think the missiles. The ships aren’t going anywhere fast. And they’re not going to take out Troy.”
“Anyway,” Nathan said. “We need to melt the ‘wings’ to get the asteroid to form into a sphere before we do the full melt and balloon. The question is, strangely, is the VDA too powerful?”
“Dialable,” Dr. Foster said. “We can take the full power and spread it if that’s necessary. Not a lot, mind you.”
“We don’t want a lot,” Nathan said. “How long to get it here?”
“It’s on the way,” Bryan said. “About two days.”
“I hate waiting,” Tyler said with a sigh.
“Get used to it,” Bryan and Nathan chorused.
* * *
“Think we need to spread the beam,” Tyler said.
The petawatt and a half of power pumping through the VDA was gouging a huge line through the exterior of the asteroid and leaving behind a trail of debris. Mostly gaseous iron and nickel with an admixture of other even more valuable metals.
“Yeah,” Nathan said happily. “I guess.”
The VDA controls were so refined he was controlling it by drawing a stylus across the image of the asteroid on a touch screen.
“Hey, look,” he said. “I wrote my name!”
“Spread the beam, Nathan,” Tyler said.
* * *
Spreading the beam stopped spalling. But…
“I’m just not believing this,” Nathan said. “It’s melting this thing like…”
“A thousand cubic meters is raised to melting temperature every ninety minutes,” Bryan said, looking up from his calculations. “Even with the conduction of nickel iron it is melting effectively. If you could just park a ship with this much firepower and beam it at Troy, you could kill it. Well, everyone in it.”
“Yeah,” Tyler said. “Except you’d have to bring your own sun with you. And in the meantime, Troy would be pumping this out at the ship. About the only thing that could damage Troy is…this. So we’d better be careful securing it. Really careful. Among other things, I don’t want the Horvath or anyone else who might enter the system hacking it and pointing it at Earth.”
“And you should be able to heat the whole thing in…about three months,” Dr. Foster said.
“That I’ll wait for,” Tyler said, grinning.
“Except it’s overheating,” Nathan said, stopping the beam. “Moving to secondary array to maintain the heat. The VDA is super-cool, though.”
“Cryogenic,” Dr. Foster said with a satisfied tone. “Cools off fast, too. Should be ready to go again in about five minutes. And when you’re doing the full melt you can use the VSA and BDA to do most of it. When you’ve gotten done with the wings on the asteroid, I’d like to take the VDA apart and see how it held up.”
“Fine,” Nathan said. “Yeah, temp is nominal again already. You guys go have fun. I’ve got an asteroid to melt.”
“Fun, yeah,” Dr. Foster said grumpily. “Now I’ve got to figure out how to mass produce these things.”
“Be glad it’s a nice simple engineering project,” Tyler said. “I’ve got to meet with Glatun bankers.”
FOUR
“I thought this was a done deal,” Tyler said, crossing his arms.
“We thought the investment was valid as well, Mr. Vernon,” Suw Qalab said, then flicked his nose. The vice president for Investment Strategies of Onderil’s Glalkod region was clearly as annoyed by this “little setback” as Tyler. “But the…overall strategic situation has, unfortunately, changed.”
“Crew quarters for thousands, things like that,” Tyler said. “I see it as an ongoing project, frankly. I can, will, set it up to take the SAPL power and I’ll make sure there’s plenty of room for consumable storage. When you get it, it will be marginally capable of fighting. Oh, and I understand we now have a breacher heavy missile system. I’ve been taking a look at magazine storage for them. Troy should be able to hold and rapid fire about two hundred thousand.”
“My God,” the Boeing rep said. “We can’t produce that many in a hundred years!”
“Yeah, it’ll need its own fabbers,” Tyler said. “Lots of fabbers. Beyond that, it’s going to be up to other corporations to handle. All I’m really giving you is the shell.”
“We can work with that,” the general said, nodding.
“This reduces the Constitutions too…”
“I like the Constitutions,” Tyler said placatingly. “I love the Constitutions. But, face it, we don’t have the muscle or the tech or the infrastructure to make the sort of fleet we need to hold this system any time soon. The Troy is not sophisticated, even by our standards. It’s just massive and practically invulnerable. We don’t have quality. But quantity is a quality of its own. Troy is an act of desperation as much as anything. With it, we can at least hold the system. Nothing’s going to live to get past Troy once it is even partially operational.”
“That’s clear,” SpaceCom said, nodding. “If it can pump a thousand terawatts…what is that? An exawatt? If it can pump a thousand terawatts, with armor that thick…The missiles will be sort of like nuts in the brownie. I’d rather have tanks, but given that the approach is through the gate…a super-mongous Maginot fortress works.”
“And now you know why I’ve been spending so much money,” Tyler said, nodding to his CFO. “But you still don’t get to explain it to the shareholders.”
“How much are we going to get paid for it?” the chief financial officer asked, still bemused.
“I think the standard rate is cost plus eight percent,” Tyler said, looking at SpaceCom. “Which is going to be about one tenth the materials price. But the asteroid was just sitting there. However, I am not, not, NOT, going to play the usual accounting games you guys insist upon. I’ll show you my books, I’m not going to charge for overhead or any of the usual crap. But I’m also not going to employ an army of accountants. I’ll give you a price and show you why and if you don’t want it, you don’t have to buy it.”
“There are going to be screams to high heaven over this,” the general said. “I want it. My God, do I want it. Explaining it is going to be tough. And explaining why we’re just paying you for it rather than putting it out to competitive bid.”
“Nobody else in the Solar System could make it,” Tyler said, shrugging. “I own the SAPL.”
“Nobody else in the Solar System would have the balls to make it,” the Boeing CEO said, shaking his head.
“Fitting it out is going to employ every defense contractor on Earth,” Tyler said, looking at the reps at the table. “There’s plenty of graft to pass around. Frankly, I don’t think the U.S. can handle the whole thing on its own. Oh, the majority. Even with the devastation from Horvath attacks, we’ve still got the largest economy and the largest military on Earth. But we’re definitely going to need partners on this. And that, gentlemen, ladies, is all I’ve got for you. Troy. The shell, assuming no more major issues, will be formed in about seven months. It will, however, take some time to cool. Then we can really get cracking. Oh, yeah, one more thing, General.”
“What?” SpaceCom said.
“I own this thing,” Tyler said. “And I can still make more money off it by cutting it up than selling it to you. So the contract is going to stipulate that the name remains the same. Anybody who tries to name this after some unknown congressman is going to get a hundred terawatts of personal indignation straight up their keister.”
* * *
“Okay,” the CFO said, after the meeting. “I get the Troy. And I’ll admit, it’s very cool, and as a former New Yorker, having something like that in the sky will be…comforting.”
“Agreed,” Tyler said, sitting back in his chair.
“And the VDA project is, I’d guess, the new mirror.”
“The Variable Distributed Array,” Tyler said. “Any time it’s a mirror, it’s Dr. Foster.”
“Ruby?”
“Pass,” Tyler said, sighing. “I hate talking about anything I don’t know will work. Troy is far enough advanced we’re pretty sure it will work out. Or that we’ll be able to work out the bugs. Really, really, really big bugs, but workable.”
“Last but not least,” the CFO said. “You want us to secure a billion credit loan from the Glatun? For Troy?”
“No,” Tyler said. “Their government’s not going to let me borrow money for defense systems. I’m working that end. All I need you to do is the paperwork. What it’s for…? That’s sort of complicated. But we’re going to need a lot more mirrors…”
THREE
“Okay,” Tyler said, as he stepped off the shuttle. “I just told SpaceCom and my CFO and my CEO and everybody else in the ‘black’ world that we can pump an exawatt, I think, of power and manage it.”
“Petawatts, surely,” Dr. Foster said.
“Peta, exa, wattever,” Tyler said. “Tell me we can do it.”
“We can do it,” Dr. Foster said. “Probably.”
“I hate this job,” Tyler said, banging his head on the hatch coaming. “Ow!”
“Don’t,” Bryan said, clapping him on the back. “This is what you came to see, right? If we can pump a petawatt?”
“Yes,” Tyler said. “So…”
“So, first I explain how magnificent I am,” Bryan said, leading him into a conference room. This was a converted Rangora ship, rechristened the Lava Lamp, which had been refitted for the deep-space science projects involved in the VDA. Most of the materials for the VDA could only be built in space or with Glatun technology. And Tyler wasn’t interested in most people knowing he was working on a new BDL. The Horvath bombardments had gotten people looking at the sky nervously. And he still wasn’t a big hero to the news media. Having a bigger and better laser should be taken as a good thing. Somehow, though, people always started making Snidely Whiplash noises.
“Explain,” Tyler said.
“The VDA wasn’t going to work without Ruby,” Dr. Foster said. “No standard material could consistently support a petawatt of power hitting it. And the VDA, unlike the VSA, had to be capable of maintaining maximum fire of at least a petawatt, preferably one point five, for up to thirty minutes.”
“So how magnificent are you?” Tyler asked.
“Not all that magnificent,” Dr. Foster said. “I had to go to the Glatun.”
“I saw the charges,” Tyler said. He still refused to think in terms of exchange rates, even though those were getting better.
“We needed three things from the Glatun,” Dr. Foster said. “We needed superconductors, piezoelectrics and help in large artificial sapphire production.”
“And…?”
“All three were considered standard industrial processes,” Bryan said. “So they didn’t fall under military hardware restrictions. So we have all three.”
“Excellent,” Tyler said.
“We can produce the sapphires using all Earth tech,” Dr. Foster said, reaching down and setting what looked like a large magnifying glass on the table. “Those we could produce before. The problem was, they were hugely expensive and a couple of feet across was the best we could do.”
“And now?” Tyler said, picking up the artificial sapphire. It was lighter than it looked.
“If we did those assembly-line style,” Dr. Foster said, “that would cost about a buck.”
“Damn,” Tyler said, his eyes wide. “Right in there with glass.”
“Yep,” Bryan said, grinning. “Really easy once we got the kinks out. And we can make them more or less any size. I mean, any size we can physically handle. And shapes. Pretty much any shape.”
“Okay,” Tyler said, setting the sapphire down. “Superconductors.”
“Superconductors and thermoelectrics,” Dr. Foster said. “They’re connected.”
“Thermoelectrics are…they convert heat to electrical power across different…Damn.”
“You were getting there,” Dr. Foster said. “Across a potential range.”
“If you’ve got heat on one side and cold on the other you produce current,” Tyler said.
“Right,” Dr. Foster said. “Earth thermoelectrics need a very high potential and the output is low. They also don’t really cool the system. They need cool to get current. Glatun thermoelectrics don’t need as much potential and have their own inherent potential…”
“Inherent potential?” Tyler said.
“You want the math?” Dr. Foster said.
“Please, no!” Tyler held up his hands in dismay. “I’ll take your word for it!”
“Bottom line: pump in heat, any heat over about negative fifteen Celsius, and you get current,” Dr. Foster said. “And very efficient output. It’s part of their ship tech we hadn’t realized we were missing. It makes power plants much more efficient and keeps ships from overheating.”
“Which we need to distribute,” Tyler said. “Go on.”
“So,” Dr. Foster said, bringing up a schematic. “The VDA mirror. Ninety-six separate small mirrors in an array. Layer of optically damned near perfect sapphire. And by damned near I’m talking parts per billion of contamination. Like…six parts per billion. Thin layer of palladium reflector. Palladium’s the only thing that’s going to take the energy and is reflective enough. Backing of Glatun superconductor to transfer the heat from the palladium. That way the waste heat automatically gets distributed. Then three thousand lines of thermoelectric-wrapped conductors leading to the cryogenic cooling unit. Which leads, in turn, to a shielded cooling array of superconductor, again, that can dump the heat into space, we think, fast enough. For it to work in bursts of up to thirty minutes at least.
“The system doesn’t quite power itself. That would violate the second law of thermodynamics. But it’s very efficient. Oh, the stabilization is so tight you can use the beam to shave with. Tighter, actually. Accuracy of three millimeters at six light-seconds.”
“Awesome,” Tyler said. “Sounds like it’s a bitch to build.”
“Well,” Bryan said, shrugging. “How many are we going to need?”
“About…” Tyler thought about it and shrugged in turn. “About three hundred and eighty-two to start. And we’re probably going to need a bigger, tougher system, so start wrapping your brain around it.”
“You’re joking,” Dr. Foster said. “For what?”
“Compartmentalized,” Tyler said. “But there is a new need as of last month. So, when do we find out if it works?”
“Uh…” Dr. Foster said, his mouth still open. “Um…right this way? Three hundred? Really?”
“Really.”
* * *
“Asteroid 152536,” Dr. Foster said proudly. “It’s about the same mass as the original Icarus.”
“It took us six months to melt the Icarus,” Tyler said. “How long?”
“You asked about an asteroid-shattering kaboom on Icarus,” Bryan said, grinning. “Behold the power of this fully operational VDA! Chuck!”
“Yes, sir,” the technician said, grinning.
“Open fire!”
“Takes a few minutes,” Chuck said. “We’ve got to get all the mirrors repointed, permissions for retargeting…”
“Got it,” Tyler said. “I’ve done this a few times.”
* * *
“Okay,” Chuck said. “The BDA mirrors are online.”
“Lase it,” Tyler said.
He wasn’t sure what he was expecting. From the gasps of astonishment in the room nobody else was expecting the asteroid to blast apart into splinters.
“Holy hell,” Dr. Foster said, his mouth dropping again. “It wasn’t supposed to do that.”
“I think you got it, Tex,” Tyler said, chuckling. “Asteroid-shattering kaboom indeed. I’d guess it had some volatiles that hadn’t been detected. And I hope the VDA was way back.”
“Far enough,” Dr. Foster said. “Holy hell. Uh…”
“Think it works,” Tyler said with a chuckle.
“We don’t really know, though,” Dr. Foster said. “I mean…”
“Oh, it’s working,” Chuck said. “Temperatures are still nominal. I mean, the asteroid is gone but that’s no reason to stop the test.”
“The fact that we’re taking sixty percent of the VLA is,” Tyler said. “No, we need to get it fully tested, but since it apparently works, let’s test it on something useful. I doubt it’s going to do that to Troy. But it is a Very Dangerous Array.”
* * *
“The asteroid we’re constructing Troy from is fairly oblong,” Nathan said. “We thought we could work with that. We’ve been lasing the ends and trying to get them to melt. But even with a wide BDA array and seven VSAs, we can’t get the ends to heat up properly. We need a more focused system. Does the Very Dangerous Array work?”
“As far as we’ve tested it, it works like a charm,” Bryan said. “But what I’m wondering is why he knows about the VDA and I didn’t know about Troy? And, by the way, holy hell, Tyler! Are you a complete megalomaniac?!”
“Why does everyone jump straight to megalomania when this project gets mentioned?” Tyler asked. “It’s a perfectly reasonable application of physics and thermodynamics. And it will, let me add, be able to hold the gate against anything the Horvath can conceivably throw through. While protecting the VLA from attack. Well, the critical components. With a VDA set back at a light-second, firing into a sapphire collimator that then retransmits the power through the walls to the firing ports, the enemy won’t have a good target. They can get the supplying VDA—VDAs, mind you, there’s going to be more than one—with missiles, but by the time the missiles reach them the launchers are going to be gutted.”
“It’s a shield and spear in one,” Bryan said. “What about the missiles?”
“The VDA can be split,” Tyler said. “Targeting those missiles is going to be a bitch. But it’s easier when they’re first launched. Anything hostile that comes through the gate, we shred. Anything. They start launching missiles, we use a portion of the power to engage the missiles. Split the VDA beam into a dozen, a hundred separate collimators and we can take out most missile spreads. It will be a tactical decision whether to hit the ships or the missiles first. But generally, I’d think the missiles. The ships aren’t going anywhere fast. And they’re not going to take out Troy.”
“Anyway,” Nathan said. “We need to melt the ‘wings’ to get the asteroid to form into a sphere before we do the full melt and balloon. The question is, strangely, is the VDA too powerful?”
“Dialable,” Dr. Foster said. “We can take the full power and spread it if that’s necessary. Not a lot, mind you.”
“We don’t want a lot,” Nathan said. “How long to get it here?”
“It’s on the way,” Bryan said. “About two days.”
“I hate waiting,” Tyler said with a sigh.
“Get used to it,” Bryan and Nathan chorused.
* * *
“Think we need to spread the beam,” Tyler said.
The petawatt and a half of power pumping through the VDA was gouging a huge line through the exterior of the asteroid and leaving behind a trail of debris. Mostly gaseous iron and nickel with an admixture of other even more valuable metals.
“Yeah,” Nathan said happily. “I guess.”
The VDA controls were so refined he was controlling it by drawing a stylus across the image of the asteroid on a touch screen.
“Hey, look,” he said. “I wrote my name!”
“Spread the beam, Nathan,” Tyler said.
* * *
Spreading the beam stopped spalling. But…
“I’m just not believing this,” Nathan said. “It’s melting this thing like…”
“A thousand cubic meters is raised to melting temperature every ninety minutes,” Bryan said, looking up from his calculations. “Even with the conduction of nickel iron it is melting effectively. If you could just park a ship with this much firepower and beam it at Troy, you could kill it. Well, everyone in it.”
“Yeah,” Tyler said. “Except you’d have to bring your own sun with you. And in the meantime, Troy would be pumping this out at the ship. About the only thing that could damage Troy is…this. So we’d better be careful securing it. Really careful. Among other things, I don’t want the Horvath or anyone else who might enter the system hacking it and pointing it at Earth.”
“And you should be able to heat the whole thing in…about three months,” Dr. Foster said.
“That I’ll wait for,” Tyler said, grinning.
“Except it’s overheating,” Nathan said, stopping the beam. “Moving to secondary array to maintain the heat. The VDA is super-cool, though.”
“Cryogenic,” Dr. Foster said with a satisfied tone. “Cools off fast, too. Should be ready to go again in about five minutes. And when you’re doing the full melt you can use the VSA and BDA to do most of it. When you’ve gotten done with the wings on the asteroid, I’d like to take the VDA apart and see how it held up.”
“Fine,” Nathan said. “Yeah, temp is nominal again already. You guys go have fun. I’ve got an asteroid to melt.”
“Fun, yeah,” Dr. Foster said grumpily. “Now I’ve got to figure out how to mass produce these things.”
“Be glad it’s a nice simple engineering project,” Tyler said. “I’ve got to meet with Glatun bankers.”
FOUR
“I thought this was a done deal,” Tyler said, crossing his arms.
“We thought the investment was valid as well, Mr. Vernon,” Suw Qalab said, then flicked his nose. The vice president for Investment Strategies of Onderil’s Glalkod region was clearly as annoyed by this “little setback” as Tyler. “But the…overall strategic situation has, unfortunately, changed.”
