Manxome Foe

3

Any casual observer would have noticed the sudden flurry of activity on a sleepy Sunday evening on a normally nearly deserted platform. The apparent street person muttering to himself on the platform’s single bench was anything but a casual observer. He had memorized a list of faces but in many cases he didn’t really need it. The one Marine in incongruous dress blues he’d seen in the news.

Moscow Center was going to be very interested in this development. The entire crew of the Vorpal Blade seemed to be flooding back, quite unexpectedly. There could be only one reason for that and by tomorrow Akulas would be redeploying to watch for the American’s newest “submarine” as it set sail.

However, although he was a trained observer, he hadn’t noticed that one platform up, the only route down to this platform, the Pakistani vendor of the sundries shop had apparently sold out to a new Chinese owner.

More than Akulas would be watching.

“Two-Gun,” Michael Gants said, sucking in through his teeth. “Now we all know it’s gonna get bad.”

“Sub Dude,” Eric said, nodding at the machinist’s mate. “Scared any children lately?”

“My kids scare me,” Gants replied. “And the other kids. And casual strangers. And Jehovah’s Witnesses, although I can’t complain about that one.”

“Hey, Two-Gun,” Corporal Julian Nicholson said. “How they hanging?”

“That’s Sergeant Bergstresser to you, Nugget,” Eric replied. “But for your information, at the moment they’re pulled up and blue. I was in the middle of a date.”

“Sucks to be you, Sergeant,” the corporal said as the light over the entry turned green. “What’s up with the recall?”

“If I knew, I certainly wouldn’t be telling you on an open platform, Corporal,” Eric replied, swiping his card and stepping through the Looking Glass.

The guard on the far side had been augmented by three Navy NCOs, a Navy lieutenant Eric didn’t recognize and Gunnery Sergeant Neely.

“At Ease!” the gunny shouted as the group gathered in front of the gate, chattering. “LT?”

“Busses outside,” the lieutenant said into the quiet. “Front two are for Naval personnel, rear one for the Marines. Fall into your busses. You’re not going to get briefed until you’re all in a secure area, so don’t bother asking. Now get moving.”

“Two-Gun,” Gunny Neely said as he headed for the exit. “As soon as you get your shit stored, get your team down to the quarterdeck. As soon as the company’s assembled, Top’s going to brief us.”

“Aye, aye, Gunny,” Eric said. “Any clues?”

“What you’ve got is what I’ve got.”

“Get the grapp out of the rack, into uniform and down to the quarterdeck,” Eric said, sticking his head into the two-man room occupied by the rest of his team. Lance Corporals Mark Smith and Mark Himes, or as he half thought of them “Mark y Mark” were replacements as was most of the “company.” Normally, Force Recon companies were oversized with a full count of grunts, around a hundred and forty, and a mass of detachments. They were some of the largest “companies” in the military, with a TO E of over two hundred bodies.

The Space Marine company was, by contrast, probably the smallest. It only had a total complement of forty-one, including its very limited number of “clerks and jerks.” Essentially, it was a platoon with some supports. But since the job of leading it required at least a captain, it got called a company.

The replacements had mostly come from the two full-sized Force Recon companies. A few were direct from the new Force Recon qual course. In many cases, teams were made up of guys who had trained with each other for years. They knew each other, understood each other’s strengths and weaknesses, had team names they used, were a team.

Berg had a hard time remembering most of their names. He sometimes forgot even the names of the platoon sergeants. To him, and the other two junior survivors of the last mission, they were all Nuggets. They might be Marines, they might even be Force Recon. They weren’t Space Marines.

“Jesus, we just got in,” Himes said or at least Eric thought it was Himes. The two replacement lance corporals were similar in appearance, both being tall and stocky with brown hair and regular features. When they’d first started training, the only way that Eric could tell them apart was that Smith had a tattoo of a spider on the back of his neck. If he was looking at them face on he regularly got them confused until he looked at their name tags.

“And we’re going out nearly as fast,” Berg said tightly.

“What’s up, Sergeant?” Smith said, rolling out of his rack and pulling a set of digi-cam out of his wall-locker.

“That’s what we’re here to find out,” Berg said. “Now get a move on, Marines.”

The company had fallen out on the quarterdeck, a large indoor area on the side of the barracks that doubled as a PT room. It was, however, fairly secure with thick concrete walls lined by a Faraday cage to prevent electronic eavesdropping.

Looking around, since they were at Rest, Eric could tell that some people were missing. But Corwin and Seeley were there, the only two junior enlisted members of the old company to have survived besides himself. The survivors had been distributed around, each in a different platoon. Berg was the team leader for Bravo Team, First Platoon, the Alpha Team position being reserved for a staff sergeant. Seeley was a “rifleman” in Alpha Second and Corwin was a cannoneer in Alpha Third.

A third face, though, caught his eye. Corporal Joshua Lyle was standing in position just down from Seeley in Third Platoon. The very tall and skinny corporal with a shock of short-cut nearly white hair was cocked slightly to the side, the result of a nearly fatal Humvee accident. He’d been in rehab for damned near a year before being returned to duty as an armorer. But the spot he was standing in was for one of the line platoons.

“Lurch?” Berg said, twisting to look at the armorer. “Aren’t you sort of out of position?”

“Not anymore,” the corporal replied in a deep baritone. “While you guys was on vacation, I was going through re-qual. I’m cleared for line duty,” he finished with a grin.

“Congratulations,” Eric said honestly. He liked the quirky armorer and was glad he was back on the line, which had always been his preference. “But who’s going to come up with weird, wacky and vitally necessary weapons on the spur of the moment? I depend on you, Lurch!”

“I trained in the new guy,” Lurch said, grinning. “I think he might do.”

“You di’n’t train me for nottink, Corporal!” an accented voice said from the rear of the formation. “I pocking train you!”

Berg couldn’t for the life of him see who was speaking so he lifted up on tiptoes. Beside the new operations sergeant, he could see a shock of black hair and that was about it. Whoever had spoken was apparently just barely regulation height.

“Okay, I admit it,” Lurch said, still grinning. “Sergeant Portana was one of my instructors in Armorer’s School.”

“Dat right,” the apparently Sergeant Portana said loudly. “And I t’ought you neber pocking pass…”

“Ten-hut!” First Sergeant Powell bellowed, striding towards the front of the formation. “And for those of you who cannot recall your basic military etiquette that means stand straight with your mouth shut.”

Top looked around the formation and nodded.

“Report!”

“First Platoon, one missing!”

“Second Platoon, three missing or not present!”

“Third Platoon, two Marines missing or not present!”

“Not bad,” Top said. “At Ease. First an administrative item. Captain Zanella, having noted the cost of a roll of space tape and its impact on the budget, has ordered all personal rolls turned in and use of the material in the future to be by platoon leaders and platoon sergeants and above only and only in fully official capacities.”

“First Sergeant?” Corwin said, raising his hand. “Did you… discuss this with the Old Man?”

“No, I didn’t, Corwin,” Top replied. “He’s responsible for the budget. It’s his call.”

“Aye, aye, First Sergeant,” Corwin replied, frowning.

“What’s the deal?” Himes whispered.

“Space tape is…” Berg said, his eyes wide. “Space tape is how everything works! Without space tape we’re…”

“At ease,” the first sergeant said, quieting the murmurs. “Now for the mission. A research group on one of the gate worlds was apparently attacked. The gate has been closed for safety purposes. We are ordered to investigate, see if there are any survivors of the attack and our response, determine who the attackers were and report back. The world is going to be about a month’s cruise away. We will be doing pre-mission physicals en route. We lift no later than midnight on Tuesday. The ship is done refitting except for some minor details but none of our shit is on-board. We have two days to get everything loaded in my order of importance. Since that includes the Wyverns, and the ship will be loading all her other maulk at the same time, we’re going to be pressed for time. So I need you to stay focused on the mission and not grapping off. Are there any questions?”

“First Sergeant?” Seeley said, raising his hand.

“Go, Chuckie.”

“So our mission, as Space Marines, is to go to a planet where a colony has been attacked and contact is cut off, find out who attacked them and deal with it?” Seeley asked.

“Correct,” the first sergeant replied. “And, no, Chuckie, you can not ask ‘How do I get out of this chickenmaulk outfit.’ ”

“How’s it going, Astro?” the CO asked, looking over Weaver’s shoulder as sailors toted bundles through the crowded conn.

The ASS Vorpal Blade had undergone several changes that were not directly inherent to her mission. One example was moving a small navigational section into the conn. The already crowded compartment did not need to become more crowded and navigation could, technically, be done from anywhere on the ship. However, it was recognized that the nature of the astrogator was such that he doubled as, effectively, the ship’s science officer. Anything “scientifically weird” about what they were doing — defined as astronomical, astrophysical or gravitational anomalies — meant that the conning officer was going to ask the astrogator: “Okay, what’s going on?” It just made sense to, somehow, shoehorn the astro into the same compartment as the guy doing the asking.

Doing so, however, had been difficult. Despite the massive size of a ballistic nuclear missile submarine, the interior was cramped. The conn was the size of a small living room, only ten feet wide and barely twelve long. It contained the diving board, the planesmen, the conning officer, etc. Six people, their chairs in several cases, readouts, input systems, screens and the equipment they handled had to fit in an area most people would consider comfortable for two.

The designers had managed to fit a station designed for underwater navigation and deep space astrogation in. They had done so by making everything very small.

“There are times that I’d kill for one decent screen, sir,” Weaver answered, peering at the six-inch plasma screen, one of three stacked vertically, that currently showed a moving star field. “Not to mention a decent sized keyboard.” The one that he hit a command on was about the size of a laptop’s.

“Want to use the main viewers?” the CO asked, pointing forward.

While there was not a huge amount of lateral space in the conn, there was a bit more vertically. Oh, it wasn’t a high compartment, but there was some free space.

The Blade, during its repairs, had been upgraded with a set of adjustable screens for viewing in the conn. Made by the Adari, they were not only thin, they were flexible. They could be rolled down from the overhead and while fairly rigid were flexible enough that if someone hit them with his head they would bend rather than cause a concussion.

They also were selectively sizeable. Although they were normally rolled down so that they were only a meter or so in height they could be lowered all the way to the deck. With all six deployed and an exterior view on, it was a bit like being on the hull. The capability had forced the refitters to, reluctantly, remove the “window” in conn from the Blade.

“Not with what I’m working on, sir,” Bill said, grinning. “I don’t want the crew getting any more nervous about this mission than they already are. And having the astrogator obviously unsure where he’s going wouldn’t be good.”

“Just tell me we’re not going to hit any stars,” the CO said.

“Can’t, sir,” Bill replied. “Basically, we’re going far enough out that the star charts start getting iffy. I take that back. We shouldn’t hit any stars. Just the new visuals would prevent that.”

The viewscreens wouldn’t be of much use without something to see. Another upgrade had been to install a series of powerful telescopes on the sail and in “bubbles” about the circumference of the hull. With the new main telescope, which was good enough to resolve a twenty-meter diameter boulder on the Moon, the ship had powerful “eyes” pointed in every direction. In space, visual detection was still one of the better ways to find things. But the retrofit of such a large aperture telescope was a problem.

Initially the plans were to put a three-meter diameter mirror Schmidt-Cassegrain telescope on the sail. The problem with that was the fact that the three-meter honeycombed optic and housing and the tracking and pointing hardware would take up an area on the boat the size of a one-car garage. They might have gotten the various countries interested in this new “submarine” to think it was a helo hangar… or not. And the drag underwater would be God-awful. So a single large telescope idea was scrapped.

Weaver had figured out a better solution. He set up five smaller half-meter diameter telescopes in the right locations about the ship’s circumference so that they would look like they were pieces of a much larger mirror when they were pointed together. The mirrors were placed in a circle about the submarine’s hull and when acting together they acted like one mirror the diameter of the ship plus some — about twelve meters. In technical optics terms this was called a sparse array telescope. The actual configuration was known as a “circle five” primary optic.

The problem with the sparse array was that all the mirrors had to be precisely positioned and controlled to within a few millionths of a meter and this required two things: 1) Adar jitter control hardware and software and 2) the ship had to be pointed in the direction of the celestial object being observed. The design also limited the main scope to a degree or so of steering about the ship’s travel axis. On the other hand, there were five half-meter telescopes that could be used as separate systems giving full spherical view of the space around the ship. Each would have less resolving power but until someone came up with “long-range viewers” that not only could identify an individual face from a hundred light-years away but could do so faster than light… they’d have to put up with reality.

“What’s giving me fits is trying to get a good algorithm for the grav bubbles.”

On the previous mission the Blade had discovered that gravity worked differently between stars than it did in the immediate region of them. This caused a gravitational disturbance area around each star. The disturbance area was related to the size of the star, how massive it was. Around Sol it started at about a light-year and stretched for about sixty astronomical units, the latter being defined as the distance from the Earth to the sun, one hundred and fifty thousand kilometers or about eight light-minutes. Bigger stars had larger bubbles. In some cases, where two stars were in a binary or multi-star system, the bubbles overlapped, creating massive regions of gravitational disruption. Traveling into and out of the bubbles had been worked out. Moving through one of the multi-star regions, though, was “problematic.” The last time the Blade had traveled through one it had been bent, folded and darn near mutilated.

“I’ll add that I would prefer not to hit a grav bubble unawares,” the CO said dryly. The first time they’d gone through one, mostly unawares, it had sent the drive haywire and kicked the Blade through a dimension jump that left it forty light-years off-course. If it hadn’t been for Weaver and the other astronomers onboard, they’d still be playing “Lost in Space.”

“So would I, sir,” Bill admitted, peering at the screen. “But what’s really got me worried is what’s not on the charts. We’ve had teams out on the other planets doing paralax studies of stars and other stellar phenomena for over eight years. But we still don’t have solid distances and positions on every star in the catalogue, much less uncatalogued ones. And where we’re going, we’re hitting ‘uncatalogued’ area. So, really, I don’t know what’s out there for sure and for certain.

“And it’s not just stars we’ve got to worry about. I’ve got to worry about. We don’t know if there are any black holes out there, for example. Just because they’re not on the charts doesn’t mean they’re not there. And the course I’m laying in is going to put us in just the sort of area where they’d be undetected. There’s only two ways to detect them at any range. Either by effect on nearby stars — and I’m planning on staying far enough away from stars that that’s not a way to see them — or if they occlude a star. Then they make a particular diffraction pattern of the occluded star’s wavefront as predicted by general relativity: That’s a sort of cross pattern that’s really cool. But that doesn’t matter.”

“Are we getting anywhere with this?” Spectre asked, sighing. Sometimes Weaver’s technobabble could try a saint.

“The thing is, sir, they just sit there,” Bill said, frowning. “Well, sort of. If the black hole has been around long enough to start sucking in matter the accelerated ionized debris will be emitting gamma rays like all get-out. That is why I wanted to have us grab the Chandra X-ray telescope out of orbit and mount it in the ship somewhere, but NASA whined and whined… so we aren’t gonna be detecting the black holes that way and our on-board X-ray telescopes ain’t accurate enough to do us any good in that regard. Besides, we don’t know that all black holes have accretion disks that emit gamma rays. Though I kinda think they do.”

“So we’re not getting anywhere with this?” the CO growled.

“Bottomline, sir?”

“Please.”

“There’s just no sure way to detect them until it’s too late. We probably shouldn’t get near one, but it’s got me worried. So do undetected neutron stars. Those are less of an issue since they generally give off a pretty solid X-ray signature. Actually, it’s strong enough to kill us if we’re not in warp…”

“Stop,” the CO said, grinning. “You’re giving me the warm and fuzzies!”

“Then there’s the fact that at the far end of the mission things like M-class stars are going to be questionable for detection,” Weaver continued. “There could be undetected dwarfs, in other words. In this area we’ve got all these stars like Groombridge 34 mapped out. They’re dim, a fraction of Sol’s magnitude, and pretty small. But they’re going to have grav bubbles around them. Not as big as Sol’s, but they’ll be there. And when you get out towards places like HD 36951 they’re not on the charts. Nobody in the regular astronomical community has ever considered anybody would care. And mapping them now would require a rather specific tasking of one of the newer space telescopes.”

“And the solution is… ?” Spectre asked, sucking in to let an overburdened crewman by. The sigh when he relaxed had nothing to do with Astro’s explanation. Absolutely nothing.

“When we get out to about two hundred light-years we need to stop and do a forward survey, sir,” Bill said. “That may take a couple of days. Our time going out is going to be increased. Coming back should be easier. The survey will be done.”

“We’re in a rush to get there, Commander,” the CO said.

“I’m aware of that, sir,” Bill said. “But my job is to get us there. Alive, sir. I cannot guarantee the last bit unless we have some clue what we’re driving into. Think of it as uncharted waters, sir. You go slow. Going a light-year an hour into the mess we’re headed into is like going at flank speed into a reef, sir. We’re back in the days of Captain Cook, sir. We need to throw some sounding lines.”

“I accept and comprehend your metaphor, Astro,” Spectre said, wincing. “Watch the rocks and shoals.”

“Yes, sir,” Bill said. “And there are going to be some.”

“I can’t believe the CO wants us to turn in all our space tape,” Corwin said, handing over a partial roll to Gunny Juda. His tone was one of deepest sadness. “What are we going to do without it?”

“Use rigger-tape like any normal Marine,” the gunnery sergeant growled.

“Gunny Juda, with all due respect,” Berg said, holding out his own spare, “we’re not regular Marines.”

“It don’t mean we have to use this stuff,” Gunny Juda said, waving one of the many partials he’d collected in the air. “You got any idea how expensive this stuff is?”

“One hundred thousand dollars per thirty-foot roll,” Berg replied.

“No shit?” Himes gasped. “That’s grapping insane!”

“Gunny,” Berg said, ignoring Himes, “let me be clear. I consider this an order right on the edge of madness. May I make my salient points?”

“You earned your say, Two-Gun,” the gunnery sergeant admitted. “But an order is an order.”

“Roger that, Gunny,” Berg said. “Here, however, are my salient points. When you get a minor breach in a Wyvern, say from a micrometorite, how do you patch it?”

“What’s wrong with rigger-tape?” Gunny Juda said. “And there’s a patch kit.”

“The patch kit takes up to ten minutes to set, Gunny,” Berg replied. “It’s a minor little footnote in the training documents I don’t think you noticed. Meanwhile, your air is goin’ out the hole. And you don’t have all that much of it. Rigger-tape is not impermeable to air, simply resistant. It will not hold in vacuum and fails under high pressures. Not to mention the fact that the base woven material is subject to thermal cracking in space cold and melting in space heat. Space tape holds. You got any rigger-tape holding stuff down on your carrying vest, Gunny?”

“Sure,” the gunnery sergeant replied, looking thoughtful. “Gotta keep stuff from moving around. Otherwise you sound like a tinker.”

“The load-bearing equipment we’ve been issued has been rated for space work,” Berg said. “It’s designed to go over our suits. And in space, you really don’t want stuff floating around. Forget the noise, it’s going to hook on something and probably end up killing you. So we’ve all secured any loose bits. If you’ve used rigger-tape, however, as soon as you enter a death pressure environment, much less have to go EVA, it becomes exactly as useful as so much toilet paper. Now, contrary to the CO’s desires, my gear is secured with space tape, Gunny. It’s fully reusable. Care to pull it all off?”

“I’m beginning to get your point, Two-Gun,” Gunny Juda said sourly. “So why’d Top just take the order?”

“Well, Gunny, I have hereby turned in my one officially reported roll of space tape,” Berg said. “I’ll leave the rest to your professional consideration.”

“Gotcha,” the gunny said, nodding. “For somebody who’s not much more than a wet behind the ears recruit, you seem to be fitting right in to the Corps, Two-Gun.”

“I do try, Gunnery Sergeant,” Berg said. “I do try.”

“Hey, Sergeant Bergstresser, do we know anything about this planet we’re going to?” Corporal Vote asked as soon as the gunny, who had become much less insistent on securing “every last roll,” left the compartment.

The teams were assembling their gear for shipment and the activity slowed minutely as the other Marines listened in. Not only was Two-Gun Berg one of the “old hands” he was one of the unit instructors on astronomy and physics. If anyone was going to know, it was going to be Two-Gun.

“I barely got a chance to glance at the data,” Berg said, stuffing another skinsuit in his bag. It had been one of his suggestions in the after-action review from the last mission that more than one of the suits be assigned to each Marine. They’d ended up spending a lot of time in the Wyvern Armored Combat Systems, which required wearing the skin-tight black suits. After a couple of hours of heavy use they got a bit rank. Since they were often in and out of the suits too fast to get the suits washed, the rankness had pretty much permeated the Marine compartment on the last mission. This time they’d each been issued four, which was probably too many. There was only so much room for personal gear on the ship.

“The sun is an A3V,” Berg continued. “What’s that tell you, Corporal?”

“Blue?” Vote said unsurely. “Blue and hot if I remember correctly, Sergeant.”

“That would be the description,” Eric said. “A very hot blue giant. The planet, however, is well out at the outside edge of the life zone. In fact, it’s over four AU from the sun. Nearly as far as the asteroid belt is from Sol. Lance Corporal Himes, that means what?”

“It’s cold,” Himes replied. “Life zone is defined as the orbit region around a star in which the ambient temperature of a planet is between zero and one hundred degrees, Celsius, meaning that water is neither constantly frozen solid nor boiled off. Being on the outside it’s going to be damned near frozen solid. Sort of like Mars. Atmo?”

“Barely,” Berg said. “Low O₂, high CO₂. Technically, it’s outside the life zone. Why is it still considered habitable… Lance Corporal Uribe?”

“Probably the CO₂ gives it a greenhouse effect,” Mario Uribe said. The rifleman from Charlie First was short, slender and dark.

“On target,” Berg said. “It’s Wyverns all the way on this one. The scientists working there used respirators and cold-weather gear, but we’ll be using Wyverns. Light levels are below Earth standard, meaning it’s going to be relatively dark even with the sun at zenith. It’s a bright sun but it’s a long way away. So it’s going to look more like a planet that you can see at midday. The planet has ruins that are at least twenty million years old located near the Looking Glass. Probably it was warmer back then. Nothing is known about the previous residents that I’m aware of. And since they’ve been gone for twenty million years, they’re probably not the problem.”

“The briefing said they dropped a nuke through the Glass,” Vote said. “What’s there going to be to find? I mean, even if there were other survivors, they’re gone. Right?”

“That, Marine, is what we’re going there to find out,” Berg replied. “And to do that, we need to get this shit loaded. So I’d suggest more packing and less chatter.”