Claws That Catch

CHAPTER ELEVEN

“Does this cat ever get tired?”

Lieutenant Commander Clayton Oldfield was a long-service “nuke,” having primarily worked fast attack boats. However, with the changes made in the Blade, and especially in the Blade II, he was as good a choice as any for the job of engineering officer. Frankly, nobody really understood the Blade’s new systems except the Hexosehr and while he was glad they finally had repair manuals, the sections on the ball guns were impenetrable to him despite a Ph.D. in nuclear physics.

The commander was also not a cat person. He currently had no pets but if anyone asked he’d probably admit to preferring dogs. So the intensity with which he’d taken to the Savannah was as much a surprise to himself as anyone else.

“Not that anyone has noticed, sir,” Sub Dude said.

“Where do you get one of these guys?” he asked, tossing the ball down the corridor.

“From a breeder,” Red said. “All you need is about four thousand dollars and a good home.”

“That much?” Commander Oldfield squeaked, provoking a cocked head from the cat. Tiny stopped and licked a spot hurriedly then paused, ready to pounce on the evil tennis ball.

“CO’s coming!” Sub Dude whispered from down the corridor. He was tracing the fault on another part of the system and could see the approach from his chosen spot.

“Maulk,” the commander muttered, looking around. He flipped the ball into a supply compartment and Tiny bounded after it, tackling it as it bounced off one of the bulkheads.

The Eng quickly shut the compartment and leaned on it, flipping open the Hexosehr manual and perusing it with an intent expression.

“Good afternoon, Eng,” Captain Prael said, striding down the compartment.

“Afternoon, sir,” Oldfield replied. “Great weather we’re having.”

“If you mean vacuum, yes,” the CO said, furrowing his brow. “Have you got the problem figured out, yet?”

“I think it’s a quantum instability in the wiring interface,” the Eng said, frowning. “The pre-generator has to be kept online at all times and the dimensional flux field is destabilizing the strong force bindings in the wiring. We may have to back the molycirc interface away from the generation point. I’m also wondering about structural stability from the effect.”

“Could that be what was causing that strange bending noise on take-off?” the CO asked.

“Possibly, sir,” the Eng said, just as Tiny started a pre-yowl in the compartment. The hatch, however, was thick steel and Tiny never really sounded like a cat, anyway. “And then again, perhaps not. We’re still getting it from time to time.”

“Air in the sewage lines, sir,” Red piped up. “I’m telling you, it’s either air in the sewage or maybe in the water lines. I heard it on the Georgia one time.”

“It’s a bit of a debate, sir,” the Eng admitted. “But so far there is no indication of structural damage.”

“I’m hearing it, now, aren’t I?” the CO asked.

“Yes, sir,” the Eng admitted. “And that’s one indication that it wasn’t structural.”

“Well, track it down,” the CO said. “It’s annoying.”

“Will do, sir.”

“Whew,” Red muttered as soon as the CO was out of the gun compartment. “That was close.”

“Air in the sewage lines?” the Eng asked. “Air in the sewage lines?”

“Hey, sir, I could tell you were frozen,” the machinist said. “And I think I found the problem.” He held up a wire and pulled. The insulation stretched and then tore, revealing that the copper was just dust. “You were right.”

“What do you mean I was right?” the Eng said.

“That maulk about quantum flux, sir,” Red said. “This stuff is being degraded by something. Want to bet it’s a side effect of the generators?”

“But I was making that up!” the engineering officer said. “Maulk, maulk, maulk, maulk, maulk. That means we have to completely redesign the damned interface! And get it installed in transit! On both sides of the ship! How in the hell are we going to do that?”

“You’re joking, right?” Red said. “Not about what we’ve got to do, sir, but about how we’re going to do it. You’re joking.”

“No, I’m not,” the Eng replied. “We’re shorthanded as it is and the only person on this ship who could do a complete redesign is me. And I simply do not have the time.”

“Okay, he’s not joking,” Sub Dude said, sucking his teeth. “Sir, who designed this thing in the first place?”

“The Hexosehr,” the Eng snapped. “But we didn’t get the tech reps we were supposed to have!”

“Let me rephrase,” Gants said, shaking his head. “Who was in every single meeting handling the translation of our needs and interjecting her, and that’s a hint, comments on modifications. Who did most of the conversion of Hexosehr three-d sonar imagery into CAD? Who, sir? Who, for that matter, made all of the blueprints. Take a guess.”

“Damnit,” the Eng muttered. “Okay, I need to talk to Miss Moon. And the CO.”

“So now you want my help?” Miriam asked. “I’ve been going stir-crazy in my cabin since we left Earth and now you want my help? Is that what you’re saying?”

Captain Prael clenched his teeth and carefully did not point out that he knew for a fact she was getting at least daily visitors.

“Yes,” he said. “I, we, would like your help.”

“Shiny,” Miriam replied. “I’ll get right on it.”

“That’s it?” the CO asked. “No request for grovelling? No snide remarks?”

“I don’t do snide,” Miriam replied. “And just asking is probably killing you. Don’t worry about it. I’m used to men thinking that just because I’m pretty I have to be stupid. So I do the redesign and you have to, at least to yourself, eat crow. Being good is the best revenge anyone can have. Make that extraordinary.”

“Then thank you,” Prael said, trying hard not to growl. “When can we get the design?”

“Sir, I’d estimate at least a week,” the Eng said unhappily. “And redoing the installation will take much longer. I’m not even sure it’s feasible, given that we only have a limited quantity of molycirc.”

“I’ll have it tomorrow,” Miriam replied. “And it will take into account how much molycirc we have.”

“You’re joking,” the Eng said.

“I will see you tomorrow, Engineer,” Miriam said. “I have to get to work.”

With that she stood up and stomped out of the wardroom, four inch heels clacking furiously.

“No way,” the Eng said. “No way in hell. Sorry, sir, but there’s entirely too much detail to change. Doing that many CAD drawings is something that you’d usually give an entire team. And that is if you knew how you were going to change it. I’m still trying to figure that part out, and I’ve been doing this for twenty years.”

“Then we’ll see who eats crow,” Prael said, nodding. “I admit I’m torn. Everyone talks about how that little weirdo walks on water; seeing her taken down a peg would not make me unhappy. On the other hand…”

“We have to get the reinstallation done on both systems,” the Eng said, nodding unhappily. “And that, right there, is going to take more manhours than I can spare. The faster we get the plans…”

“Well, even if she’s done in a week, that will probably give us enough time,” the CO said. “Bring this to the attention of the XO, tell him that we got started on fixing it on his sleep shift and keep me apprised.”

“You’re joking,” Weaver said, yawning.

“No, we’re going to have to completely redesign and rebuild it, XO,” the Eng said unhappily. “The CO and I discussed it while you were off watch. About six hours ago.”

Like a lot of the professional officers on the Blade, Oldfield didn’t think much of his new XO. Yes, he knew that Weaver had done some terrific things — fight giant octopus thingies, space battles, first venturer into the treacherous shoals of outer space, save the world for that matter — but a person who had worked his way up the ladder had a hard time taking seriously a guy who had been fast-tracked to the Eng’s current rank and then bumped twice since. Nobody was that good. Besides, the guy was just a grouch.

“The design’s going to take at least a week, whatever Miss Moon says,” the Eng continued. “And as for the reinstallation…”

“Man, y’all are damn funny sometimes,” Weaver drawled. “By y’all I mean y’all wet navy characters. This here’s the Blade, Eng. Hellfire and damnation. We don’t diddle around with taking a week for something like this. Ain’t got the time, there’s always some alien space beast or enemy fleet trying to wipe us out. Can’t just go back to dry-dock and let the contractors handle it. It’s figure out the problem, fast, or die. And you say you told the CO at least a week for Miriam to do the plans? That maulk is just grapping funny.”

“Yes,” the Eng said, his face tight. “Do you find that questionable, Captain?”

“Maulk,” Weaver said, laughing. “Hell, yeah, I find that questionable. You do know she’s written about half the peripheral coding in AutoCAD, right? And that the company sends all their Alpha test systems to her, since she’s the fastest user they’ve ever tracked, right? That they had to rewrite one whole generation just because she proved she could crash it simply by going faster than the program could handle? And that she’s got enough classes to count for Ph.D.s in mechanical and electrical engineering and was the lead designer on this ship. A ship we designed, every last bolt and fastener, in less than a week? Most of it drawings that she did?”

“Oh,” the Eng said, his eyes wide.

“I’m kinda surprised she’s not already — ”

“Hi, Bill,” Miriam said, walking into the XO’s office. “You want to look over this redesign? I think I managed to fix it. It was my fault to begin with, I think. I figured out a way to run the circuits and cut off thirty percent of the circuit length. But I’ll admit I was hurrying the last time. I’ve been thinking about it since…”

“Be glad to, Miriam,” the XO said. “I think the Eng was just going to have supper. The menu would be a form of rook.”

“You’re joking,” the CO said, looking at the blueprints laid out on his desk. “The Eng said…”

“The Eng was unaware of some of Miss Moon’s less notable features,” Weaver said dryly. “I think he was paying too much attention to her butt and too little to her brain.”

“This is…” Prael was a nuclear submarine officer and had, in fact, come up through the engineering department. Like the Eng, he had a Ph.D. in nuclear engineering. He knew CAD drawings, used the program and knew how long it took to create something like this. Yes, she had started from extant drawings, but it was often more work to “fix” something in CAD drawings than to start anew. He flipped up the pages one by one and estimated how long it would have taken him to do something like this. More like a month, frankly. A day per drawing most likely, given the detail level. “Unreal,” he finally said. “I would have said impossible. And she did this in six hours?”

“Sir, I’m going to say something that will come across as insulting and is not intended to be,” Weaver replied carefully. “May I continue?”

“Go ahead, XO,” the CO said, leaning back in his chair. “What’s one more insulting thing? This seems to be the week.”

“The original crew of the Blade, of whom Miriam was a member, was chosen from the absolute top of their respective fields,” Weaver pointed out. “Miss Moon is one of the top linguists in the world, with a host of secondary skills, some of which are obviously as sharp or even sharper. Dr. Robertson, our biologist, was world-renowned and, again, multiskilled. Dr. Dean, God rest his liberal soul, was a brilliant planetologist and geologist even if he couldn’t figure out not to run under a herd of rampaging giant crabpus. The CO, who admittedly was a fly-boy, had a string of walk-on-water reports, never had an airman request transfer when he was a carrier commander, was a former Blue Angel and an instructor at Top-Gun. Even the individual members of the crew were chosen from the best of their rank in the sub service and the Marines were all hand-picked for the job.”

“And you’re saying that the current crop is not?” the CO replied dryly.

“You were, obviously, sir,” Bill said tactfully. “The CO of any nuclear sub is carefully chosen and the CO of the Blade more so. You’re someone who’s been pre-tapped as a future large-ship commander or an admiral. But… There’s a difference between a large-ship commander, even a very good one, and someone who is at genius level in their field. It’s like being pregnant; you can’t be a little bit genius. The replacements are not being chosen from that genius caliber. It’s another disconnect between the old hands and the new. Miriam, clearly, is at that level.”

“By the same token, you’re saying you are,” the CO pointed out.

“I think I’ll just stand on my record, sir,” Bill said, smiling thinly.

“So why aren’t you commanding?” the CO asked, smiling just as thinly back.

“Because I haven’t had a slot as XO,” Bill said. “And, hellfire, it’s way more demanding than I realized; I can see why you need to do the job before you command. But the real reason is that I can do a better job where I’m at at what the Navy wants me to do.”

“Which is teach me the realities of the Space Navy?” the CO asked. “That we have to put up with the occasional flake because sometimes we really need her?”

“Or him,” Bill said. “When we’ve established forward bases, when a ship isn’t invaluable, when there’s the choice to put into dock and fix something major that’s screwed up, then it will be more… mundane. More like the regular Navy. In the meantime…”

“It’s just us,” the CO said, nodding. “We’re a hundred fifty light-years from Earth and more from any ship that can tow us home. What? A year and a half for a Hexosehr ship to get here even if we could ask?”

“Deep space, sir,” Bill pointed out. “The Hexosehr can’t come out here short of a specially built ship. And then it would be more like…” He paused and did some numbers in his head. “Thirty years.”

“Thanks for pointing that out,” the CO said sourly, then paused. “Really?”

“Sir, if we have a major failure we cannot correct we are as dead as a sub at the bottom of the Pacific,” Weaver said. “Deader. They could get to a sub in the Marinas Trench faster than they could get to us. Absent Hexosehr, the only people who have any chance of figuring out something really bad are myself and Miss Moon. We’re both here, I guess, to teach the crew how to keep this lash-up running. But I’m up to my eyeballs in work and…”

“I’ve actually had this lecture, XO,” the CO said tightly. “From at least one unexpected source. Okay, please kindly ask Miss Moon to oversee the reinstallation. And from this point forward, she has the run of the ship. Except Conn. I will not have her on the Conn.”

“I’ll pass that on, sir,” Weaver said, nodding.

“I’ll climb down that far and no farther,” the CO stated, emphatically, knowing in his heart he was dooming himself to failure. Again. Sooner or later he’d have to have Miriam on the Conn. Damnit.

“Well, there’s one part that doesn’t work,” the Eng said, as he brought the plans back to Miriam’s office. “There’s more molycirc in use than we have.”

“Had to do it that way,” Miriam said, not looking up from her computer. “When Red and Sub Dude pulled all the wiring the damage was well back from the generators. I think I know why, but it’s complicated.”

“I was once considered a geek,” the Eng admitted. “Try me.”

“Okay, what do you know about coordinate covalent bonds? They’re sometimes called dative bonds,” Miriam asked.

“That’s when you have one atom supplying both shared electrons to the other atom it’s covalently bonded to, if I remember correctly.”

“Well… close enough. But without Ligand Field Theory I’d be afraid to delve any deeper into that aspect of it. What do you know about chaos?”

“I work in the Navy,” the Eng said with a grin. “And on a more serious note, I did some control theory in my dissertation that had some systems of coupled differential equations that would go chaotic from time to time.”

“Well, that’s more of the nonlinear dynamics view of chaos where under conditions such that all potential Fourier series frequencies are present you get a system that jumps around like nuts and is wildly tending toward disorder that sort of agrees with the understanding of the classical second law of thermodynamics. What we have here is something different termed fundamental cosmic chaos.”

“Uh huh.” The Eng, of course, had taken it as though Miriam were being condescending.

“Chaos at a cosmos level is more a fundamental of the universe that strongly contrasts with the second law of thermodynamics. In fact, wild complex systems of systems that are seemingly completely random and chaotic often generate order from within the randomness. Think, oh, fractal screensavers but really more related to Schwartzchild boundaries.”

“What does this have to do with the molyc — ?”

“It has everything to do with it,” Miriam said as she pushed one of the purple strands of alien metal. “The chaos generator actually does generate chaos. What it does, well at least what we think it does, is to create a sphere of uncertainty on the fundamental cosmic level. In that sphere there is nothing but the pure randomness of the vacuum energy fluctuations of creation and annihilation on the subnuclear scale. Within the sphere everything is broken down to its fundamental components and then set asunder following the rules of uncertainty and randomness. What the Hexosehr must not have realized is that the little black box creates a very thin shell around the ship of its own randomness at the event horizon of the warp bubble. Bill could explain that better, he’s the expert in General Relativity and warp theory, but I believe he would agree that it is a Planck-length-thick shell where absolute fundamental cosmic chaos and uncertainty exists. It works by generating nanosecond conditions of total chaos, a moment where we could be truly anywhere in the universe or possibly the multiverse, then resetting reality so that we’ve made a very small movement within the time-space continuum probably because that movement is relatively chaos energy minimal, that is it approaches the highest probability of reality that we don’t move at all. There is a region of vacuum energy fluctuations coming into and going out of reality. Maybe the Hexosehr realized the bubble wall was there, but they didn’t realize that it was going to interact with the quantum fluctuation fields the chaos generators created. The result was that from these two colliding regions of chaos driven by different sources there was a mutual order that was created. That order was a Ligand Field phenomenon. Oh, I said I wasn’t going to discuss Ligand Field Theory, didn’t I?”

“Uh,” the Eng said, staring blankly at Miriam.

“But skipping trying to explain Ligand Field theory, the effect was the creation of ligands or coordinate covalent bonds under conditions that were stochastically unlikely absent the chaotic interactions of the fields and now seem to be stochastically certain. In other words: The coordinate covalent bonds that were created throughout the molycirc shouldn’t be possible in this universe. The molybdenum and rhenium transition metals simply don’t work that way. The chaos field phenomenon caused them to form quadruple coordinate covalent bonds which became powdery brittle in the weak chaos fields that were escaping the chaos ball generator’s shielding. There was also some di-tungsten hexa hydro pyrimido pyrimidine ligands that formed but not as many. The spectral analysis of the degraded molycirc showed a bunch of odd materials. I’m making a really detailed record because there are some covalent bonds that might theoretically be useful. Some of the materials have structures and properties more similar to rare elements than molecules.

“Bottomline: The molycirc couldn’t take the stress of the chaos generator field after the fractal odd order phenomenon occurred within the material’s matrix. Oh, there was also some issue with lanthanide contraction, but it was less catastrophic as the other phenomenon. I think the lanthanide contraction was supposed to be stabilized by the molycirc and the chaos messed that up. Secondary effect rather than primary.”

“Oh.”

“At least that’s what I think happened. Might wanna run it by Bill when you get the chance.”

“Okay,” the Eng said, his eyes wide. “But I think you’re going to have to run it by him. You lost me at Planck-length shell and fundamental cosmic chaos. I can’t even pronounce the di-tungsten hexa… hydra, uh whatever you said.”

“Being a linguist makes saying chemical compounds easier for me. I can show you the equations and the spectral analysis if you’d like to see them,” Miriam said distantly. She was only half listening to the Eng at this point.

“No, that’s shiny,” the Eng said. “Actually, on second thought — ”

“I just fired them over to your e-mail,” Miriam said. “Anyway, we can produce the molycirc we need in the fabber. It’s slow, it’s about the slowest thing the fabber makes, which is why I left it as the last part we’re going to have to replace. But we can do it. We just need a source of osmium. We also need some molybdenum but there’s so much chromoly steel on the ship that won’t be a problem.”

“A source of osmium?” the Eng said. “I don’t happen to have one on me…”

“Then find one,” Miriam said. “I’m sort of busy here.”

“Yes, ma’am,” the Eng replied, snapping to attention. “I’ll get right on it.”

“Osmium?” Captain Prael asked.

“A heavy metal,” Weaver said distantly. “Atomic number 76 on the periodic table, atomic weight 190.23, in the platinum group, extraordinarily dense due to the lanthanide contraction.”

“Which, apparently, we have to stabilize,” the Eng noted.

“I know what osmium is,” Prael snapped. “More or less,” he added, less assuredly. “I used to know all this…”

“So do I,” the Eng said. “And all the rest. I mean, I knew it was a lanthanide but I had to go look it up again to refresh my memory.”

“Lanthanide?” Prael said. “That’s what uranium is. It’s not radioactive, is it?”

“No, sir,” Bill replied. “Lanthanides just have higher density than their position on the periodic table would suggest due to contraction of their electron shells. Most of the heavy metal radioactives are lanthanides, but all lanthanides are not radioactive.”

“I did find out it is a bugger to extract from all the other metals it’s usually associated with,” Commander Oldfield said.

“That’s not an issue,” Bill said, looking up. “The fabber will handle the extraction.”

“How?” the Eng asked curiously.

“If I knew that I’d be making gigabucks back on earth,” Bill said. “Or a Hexosehr. But all we need is some osmium ore.”

“And where are we going to get some in deep space?” the CO asked. “That’s the issue. I’d really like to have all my guns working before we get to an area where there might be Dreen.”

“Asteroids,” Weaver said. “Comets. Osmium is one of the deposition metals that geologists look for to determine major impacts along with iridium. I think we need to go asteroid mining. What’s the nearest solar system?”

“How much of this stuff do we need?” Chief Gestner asked.

“A lot,” Miriam replied. “Almost five kilograms.”

“That’s a lot?” Gestner asked.

“Uh…” Miriam temporized.

“That’s about sixty thousand dollars worth,” Sub Dude said, chuckling. “Think gold mining, Chief. Stuff’s actually more expensive than gold.”

“Holy maulk,” the chief said, his eyes wide.

“The problem is, we’re going to have to run through a bunch of ore to get that,” Miriam said. “The fabber will discard the waste, but it’s going to get messy. We’ll probably do it in two phases, one that just extracts the heavy metals then another that takes that and makes the molycircs. And this fabber’s maw is small. So the stuff’s going to have to be broken down into…”

“Skull-sized pieces,” Red said. “More or less. You can get your head in the fabber if you sort of turn sideways…”

“Yeah, shiny, I get the idea,” the chief said. “That’s really going to grapp up my shop.”

“Not if we move the fabber out,” Sub Dude pointed out. “Miriam, didn’t we use this model in vacuum when we were working on the ship?”

“It’s vacuum rated,” Miriam said. “Everything on the ship that’s Hexosehr is.”

“So we do it on the hull,” Sub Dude said, shrugging.

“So the plan is we do the fabbing on the hull?” the chief asked. “In vacuum?”

“Makes the most sense,” Red said. “That way we just leave our mess behind.”

“Shiny,” the chief said. “And we need head-sized nodules, which means breaking up an asteroid to get them. So, who gets that job?”