SpaceCorp (12 page)

“Uh... it’s not going to go in the hub, Jason,” Mack said. “We can’t afford to give up our down thruster.”

“Let’s go down to floor level,” Monica said. “We have an idea we hope you’ll like.”

On the floor level, most of the quads were supported on construction jigs so they were four meters off the ground. Quad-IV was seven meters up.

“We used the construction drawings you sent us to mount the laser inside the hull of the ring,” Mack said. He pushed several buttons on a remote hand set causing a hatch to open and pivot out of the way. A scale model of the laser cannon descended to within two meters of the floor. Mack made it pan and tilt to show its range of motion.

“But won’t the ring be rotating?” Jason asked. “Won’t that complicate the aiming?”

“Yes, the ring will be rotating—that’s how we get gravity up there. But that’s just a software problem.”

“We have to do that with all our commercial instruments anyway,” Monica said. “What we’re doing for you is all based on TRL 9 technology.”

“What’s TRL 9?”

“Technology Readiness Level,” Mack said. “That’s space-geek talk for whether a new technology is ready for flight or not.”

“The levels go from one—still a pipe dream—to nine—been there and done it,” Monica said. “TRL 9 means it’s flown in a comparable space environment. Believe me what we’re doing for your laser is technically trivial.”

“Okay, where’s my reactor?” Jason asked. “I need a lot of juice to fire a blast powerful enough to knock down an incoming warhead.”

“You don’t need a dedicated reactor,” Mack said. “We have eight nuclear rockets mounted on the hub—four up and four down. Each rocket acts as a nuclear reactor when it’s not busy making thrust.”

“We can feed a bank of ultra-capacitors so that you can rapid fire your laser... in case you miss... not that you’re going to miss,” Monica said.

“How much power can these things generate?”

“Altogether, about a gigawatt. How much do you need?”

“One shot takes about 500 kilowatts. How much power do you draw for ship operations?”

“Couple hundred megawatts,” Monica said. “We outfitted each rocket to make more juice than the whole ship needs in case a bunch of them get knocked out during an impact. So we have plenty of extra juice to charge your ultra-caps. Question is what kind of duty cycle would you need in a real fight?”

“Obviously, that depends on how many incoming warheads we’re facing. But worst case, let’s say... ten? And we’d have to knock them all down in maybe two minutes?”

“We can provide the juice if your cannon can manage the cycle time,” Mack said.

“It can. What about fire control? I was told I’d be able to tie in to your ship’s system.”

“That’s right,” Mack said. “We have a ring of phased array radars circling the entire ring. We can point any segment any direction you want. And we can mode-switch from early warning to target acquisition to target tracking and do all that for thousands of targets at a time.”

“This is our latest debris management system,” Monica said. “We’re used to nasty stuff flying at us all the time. Our big day-to-day worry is debris that is too big to be absorbed by the hull. For that stuff we need a little more time—as in early warning and accurate trajectories—to pull off an evasion maneuver.”

“Our design philosophy has always been heavy on triple redundancy and graceful failure,” Mack said. “If we do end up in a real fight with many incoming warheads, we’ll be in a pickle if your laser fails. How do you feel about mounting a laser on a periscope mount in each quad? You’d have the option of firing all four at once if the warhead turns out to be bigger than you’re expecting. Or you can fire them one at a time giving their innards time to cool down.”

“I’d like that,” Jason said. “There’s just one problem—I only have one laser.”

“Can’t you build more?” Monica asked. “Surely you didn’t come out here with a one-off.”

“We can, but it will take at least two years.”

“Two years!” Mack said. “They’re just lasers, not time-travel machines!”

“Can’t you put a rush on getting three more cannons, plus a few spares?” Monica asked.

“The technology is not the issue. Neither is the manufacturing. The political red tape and funding are the hold up. Unlike you guys, the Federal Government still runs on money and the politicians still think they’re supposed to manage it.”

“Why don’t you let us build them?” Monica asked.

“Oh sure, then instead of two years, the security red tape will drag it out to twenty years. Sorry, folks, we’re going to have to make do with just the one for now. But can we design in the pedestal systems for the other quads? I really like the idea of having a whole battery of these things mounted on a single station. But tell me, why do you guys want so many cannons... apart from surviving Armageddon in space?”

“With a powerful enough laser or perhaps a salvo of lasers, I can mitigate a lot of the space debris problem,” Mack said.

“You’d burn them out of the sky!” Jason said.

“Not exactly,” Mack said. “But I could alter the trajectories of medium size debris objects. Over time, I think I can deorbit them.”

“How would that work?”

“I don’t want to destroy them with high energy laser pulses as you would with an incoming missile,” Mack said. “That just makes a bigger mess of a messy situation. But if I can focus the laser to a 30-cm circle on an approaching target starting at about 1000 kilometers away, the heat will create a small plasma jet—a reverse thruster, so to speak. I figure if I run a 5 nanosecond pulse at about 10 Hz and average power of, say, 75 kilowatts, I can slow a passing target by about 100 meters per second in a single pass. That’s enough to deorbit. Four laser cannons means I can do four objects at a time. Or with four lasers aimed at larger debris objects, say 1000 kg, I can slow them by maybe 30 cm per second. That might be enough for single-pass collision avoidance.”

“You don’t need government lasers to do that,” Monica said. “For the power you’re talking about, we could just build our own lasers.”

“Good point,” Jason said. “For what you’re trying to do with debris, you don’t want high energy. And my cannon is high energy or no energy—I can’t throttle it down. I guess the designers weren’t into little wimpy finesse shots.”

“Okay, then,” Mack said. “We’re going to go ahead with testing and development on that idea. The world will think we’re just monkeying with low energy lasers. That will actually help conceal the true intent of your laser.”

“By the way, Jason, shouldn’t we give this fancy ray gun of yours some kind of cool name?” Monica asked.

“No, we should not,” Jason said. “I’ve spent the better part of my career in high energy lasers. They require serious engineering and professional handling. They do not require ‘cool names.’” Then he turned and left the room.

“Sounds like you impugned his girlfriend’s virtue,” Mack said.

“Yeah, I think maybe I did.”

C
HAPTER
N
INE

September 2070

Virtual Meeting of the Revived States’ Rights Democratic (RSRD) Party

The senior senator from Mississippi, Aloysius J. Pitstick, was an elderly man with a pronounced double chin and a round head crowned with wispy white tufts of hair which he enjoyed stroking with his stubby fingers. Each time he stroked his hair he would nod his head back as though he were whipping the silvery tresses into place. He sat in a darkened mini-auditorium facing a 3x6 meter interactive wall monitor. There was an attractive male assistant sitting at his left behind the wide console desk. When the screen brightened, the assistant appeared to be in his late twenties, of swarthy complexion, eyes accentuated by mascara—a habit that many young men with political aspirations had cultivated.

The screen was partitioned into fifty squares each containing a video image of a meeting attendee. The squares were labeled with a state abbreviation and a last name in block letters. There were no women in the squares. The men ranged from middle-aged to elderly and were uniformly Caucasian. Several wore clerical collars.

 “Florida?” Senator Pitstick asked. “Is the great state of Florida with us today?”

“You mean the great
swamp
of Florida,” Georgia’s Junior Senator Wilson Pike said. His catcall was followed by several hoots of laughter.

“Hold your horses! I’m afraid the great state of Florida will only be intermittently present today. They tell me the uplink station is flooded again.”

“Duly noted. The meeting will now come to order. Does the Congressman from Alabama have something for us?”

“I do, sir!”

Senator Pitstick fumbled with his remote to enlarge the square holding the Congressman from Alabama. “Excuse me, sir, but what happened to Congressman Elwood? You folks run an election on your own?”

“I wish. Congressman Elwood was shot through the heart while standing on his very own front porch just two nights ago. Governor Jackson appointed me to stand in for him for a bit. His aide tuned me into your meeting.”

“Stand in for a
bit
, you say? So you
are
planning on having an election?”

“Not as I’ve heard.”

“Very well then, who might
you
be?”

“I am acting Congressman from Alabama, Robert E. Carroll, at your service, sir!”

“And would the acting congressman from the great state of Alabama kindly tell us how long ‘a bit’ is?”

The Congressman hesitated. “Couple weeks… maybe a month.”

The Senior Senator from South Carolina, James B. Kershaw, activated his mike. “Well, that’s just great! We are hamstrung by this Administration’s shameful, nay, purposeful refusal to root out these hooligans with their long range rifles. I demand that—”

“Simmer down, Jimmy. You’re not on the news feed today. Let’s get on with the meeting at hand. Does anybody have any ideas as to how to unseat the president so we can get on with running the country?”

“You mean one that doesn’t involve rifles?” the junior senator from Alabama asked. His quip was followed by more laughter and guffaws.

Senator Pitstick smiled in spite of himself. “I mean one that gets us an election instead of a damned appointee, especially since this particular appointee has lasted far longer than term limits normally allow. And by election I mean an election we can win!” The guffaws gave way to cheers.

“The great state of Georgia proudly nominates the senior senator from Mississippi to run for president of the United States!!”

“Oh fuck you, Willie! Ya’ll sound like a bunch of old women complaining about their husbands coming in drunk every night. Won’t none a ya’ll lift a finger to do anything about it though. Ya’ll live to bitch and moan and make snide remarks. Meanwhile, our party is gettin’ to be as big a laughing stock as... as... President Hidey Hole’s.”

“Beg to differ, Senator!” Senator Kershaw said. “We are the secessionist tail wagging the GOP dog. We will one day awaken to a country of our own!”

Cheers of “To Dixie!” and “To a country of our own!” broke out around the room. Senator Pitstick let the cheers carry the moment, a self-satisfied smile lifting the plump apples of his cheeks.

“I spoke to the Speaker of the House recently,” Billie Shiloh, Congressman from Tennessee, said.

Senator Pitstick raised his brows. “You have the floor, sir!”

“I asked him about the president. He’s getting mighty old—81 now—and the stress of six terms has not been good for his constitution. So I asked the Speaker, ‘What if he ups and croaks in office? Would you serve if appointed?’”

The monitor grew silent in anticipation. “Don’t keep us in suspense,” Senator Pitstick said. “What’d he say?”

“He said he would not.”

The meeting became chaotic as everyone began talking on top of everyone else.

Senator Pitstick restored order by silencing everyone’s mike and pressing his electronic gavel button over and over until his voice could be heard once again. “Congressman Shiloh, are you sure?”

“If by that you mean was
he
sure, why yes, I do believe he was.”

“So if the president was to die in office... of natural causes of course... we could push through a national election on the grounds that the next in line refuses to serve?”

“I’m not a lawyer.”

“Dammit, boy! If I wanted your legal opinion, I’d shit in your mamma’s bonnet and read it for myself! I want your
political
opinion, numbskull!”

“Yes, sir, I believe we could,” Congressman Shiloh said. “We’d have to run the vote electronically though. Can’t have the polling booths turned into shooting galleries, because you know they would be.”

“That would be an election we could definitely win,” Alabama Acting Congressman Carroll said.

“How you figure?” Georgia Senator Pike asked. “Rig the returns, or just not bother with them and declare our own returns?”

“Look I may be just an acting congressman,” Congressman Carroll said, “but even I know what we spent the last 100-odd years doing. We and our glorious predecessors have defended the sanctity of the vote throughout the territory of the Revived States’ Rights Democratic Party. We have worked to manipulate the so-called voting rights laws out of existence via our domination of the Supreme Court. And our careful delineation of virtual voting districts such that no state in Dixie need suffer the indignity of more than one district of undesirable voters regardless of where everybody lives has brought us the guaranteed majority we have come to depend upon. Our esteemed religious leaders have struggled hard to keep the perversions of gender confusion, women’s rights, racial equality, and all those absurd eastern religions at bay—and yes, I am unashamedly including Jews and Catholics in that last category. Our religious leaders have fought equally hard if not harder to keep our constituents in a proper state of respect for the laws of our Creator, ever watchful over our schools and communities lest our fine citizens turn to the evils of secularism, humanism, and worst of all science. For as we all know, a mind not shackled to the Lord will be drawn as a moth to the flames of damnation. Yes, we have done all that for nigh on one hundred years now. Colleagues, we have come too far to be thwarted by some seedy little coward who has made a fortress of the White House, generating a continuous stream of executive orders that spit in the face of our way of life. Colleagues, it is time we end this abominable state of affairs. The time for patience is over. The time to act is nigh!”