As soon as I managed to get into cyberspace to work on the assignment that Naveen had given me, I was greeted by the big honking heap of information that Warden had collected for me about radar and stealth technology and decided to work on the other, significantly smaller document for a bit instead.
What I found was the list of science-fiction weapons that Warden thought might be somewhat realistic.
And just the first entries warranted a conversation with Warden.
Of course, she was already there, at my elbow.
“This list… do you care to tell me why I am finding things like lasers, railguns, coilguns, and plasma guns on that list?
Those things are no longer Sci-Fi, you know. We’ve had them since the great war.”
Naturally, she was completely nonchalant in her answer:
“That is true. But as far as I can see, there is a significant probability that we can enhance those technologies by an order of magnitude. Or more.”
I thought about it for a moment. She might of course be right. And honestly, every single one of those technologies had its own drawback.
Some more, some lesser.
Lasers for example were severely limited in their energy density by the material of their optics. Yes, only a minuscule fraction of the energy goes into the lenses and mirrors instead of into the beam and toward the enemy.
Unfortunately, the diaphanous materials like glass that made the optical parts had an even smaller capacity to withstand that energy compared to warship armor. That limited lasers to either damage over time, massive weapons, or to be used as point defense against missiles.
And while I could see some improvements, the needed gravity density to replace the optics with grav-fields was simply unfeasible. So no joy here.
I was pretty sure that I could improve the speed of the railgun slugs by two, maybe three times, the problem here was that every shot degraded the eponymous rails. And this degradation was not linear. Twice the speed, 100 times the degradation. That meant a no-go as well.
Coil guns, or gauss guns as they were also called, had the problem of magnetic saturation. A coil gun could only put that much energy in the projectile. That amount of energy scaled proportionally with the mass of the projectile, but in effect that only meant that there was an upper limit on speed, with the projectile mass variable.
I could probably assist the magnetic coils with gravity coils, but gauss guns were already bulky and unwieldy. I saw no reason to add to the bulk with grav-coils added to the equation.
I planned for the pure gravity gun anyway.
And plasma weapons… they had the distinct disadvantage that the blob of plasma rapidly slowed and cooled down due to air resistance. I could probably create some complicated containment field to keep them coherent longer, but that would result in just another mass driver, this time with a hot projectile. I thought that too much work for too little gain. Maybe later we could set the R&D folks onto it.
So, I mostly decided that the old weapons would remain old for the time being, and looked at the next entries.
The next two were… possible. Real possible. Unfortunately, I could not see a way to make the third one work. It would be a devastating weapon.
Then I saw the last entry and instantly had to calm down again.
“Warden… I thought I had specified realistic weapons. This one here is pure magitech. There is no way this will work in the real world outside of that fantasy-fiction that calls itself science-fiction.”
“I expected you to see that, but I think one of your recent discoveries might make this one an actual possibility.”
I thought for a moment and looked at the flavor text of the weapon she had listed. At first, I could not understand how she thought we might be able to make it work. But then it clicked. It was a long shot, sure. A bit of tortured logic. But on the other hand, nothing I had so far found said it was impossible.
And so I could not help myself and began to laugh maniacally. If I get that one to work it would put the whole military world upside down.
For the next few hours, I let this idea gestate in the back of my mind, and began working on the other tech.
First, I worked on the conveyor system. If I managed to make the NADA as fast, or faster than an industrial fabber, it would replace most other production methods and we would be able to grow our industrial capacity geometrically.
After that was done, I reluctantly threw myself into the sensor problem. It was, in one word tricky. Unfortunately, over the centuries, humanity had learned several tricks to avoid detection. Don’t get me wrong, I managed to get something done. But I would most likely lag behind what others had done over the years for a long time. And no amount of tech superiority would compensate for not knowing all the tricks.
That brought me to think about other ways to skin this cat. For a long time.
Now, while getting nowhere with the radar system was frustrating, my problems with the actual weapons were even more so. Mostly because I had expected easy sailing. Yes, naïve of me, I know, but unless I was willing to use un-neutered grav-coils in them, I had a problem keeping the weapons somewhat nimble.
In the end, after three pretty frustrating weeks, I finally was done. I had invested so much of my time in this problem that I had transferred the reflex-boosted rats to Jessi.
But I had made some progress. Easiest of all was the new generation of NADAs. The conveyor worked like a dream. Not only did it reduce the time to make a Grendel from nearly two weeks to 26 hours, but it also allowed to make them in parallel.
In other words, the 2x2x2m tank of my original NADA design, upgraded with the grav-conveyor allowed making 125 of those things at once.
I still needed to create a way bigger NADA to make parts bigger than two meters in at least one dimension. I decided on a 15x15x3m big tank. Yes, the biggest of the weapon designs I had was ‘only’ 8m long in its longest dimension, but I could see a future when I needed something bigger, and the difference in cost and time was negligible.
But anyway, after those three weeks, I told Michael that I was ready for the weapon test.
Thus it came so that, he, Naveen, Maynard, some technicians, and myself, boarded the new 75kt atmospheric freighter that Michael had purchased. Together with several bots.
The minions surprised me by taking my military bot design and creating a whole series of industrial bots and androids from it. The first test runs were promising. Unfortunately, they had not left the testing stage as of this time, so we had to make do with commercially available bots.
Along with six containers with our new weapon prototypes and a couple of dozen used decrepit skimmers for targeting purposes. Oh, and a semi-mobile fusactors in a single double-wide container.
We traveled for nearly an hour, and I honestly can not tell you where we had gone. It was some desolate part, of a former industrial area in some deserted part of the country. Heck, for all I knew, we could actually be in the death belt.
That would explain the combat bots that Naveen had brought along.
What I can tell on the other hand is that it was cold as heck. There was snow on the ground, but the actual quarry where we would test the weapons had been partially cleared.
In face of the weather, I had insisted that we take a couple of control containers along. Heated, heavily insulated containers with big armor-glass windows, from where we would observe the tests.
So far, on the way here, I had refused to comment on the weapons in any way, but the time had come.
The first test was the standard mount and the sensor I had designed. Without any weapons installed yet.
When Naveen saw the mount, he looked at it for a moment, before he posed the first question:
“Are those protrusions really… necessary? They look as if they unbalance the whole mounting system.”
I nodded before I realized he was still looking at the mount.
“Yes. Those are small 250 Keppler grav-coils that help move the weapon around a bit faster and more precisely. Together with the grav-coils in the anchoring system, they make the mount around 3% more efficient.”
He hummed for a moment but said nothing.
Then the sensor test started. We send up one of the skimmers, with a known radar signature.
The technician at the radar said:
“Good reception at 500m… 1000m… 1500m… 2000m… singal gets weaker at 2200m… signal lost at 2430m…”
Naveen looked at the display, and then at the technician.
“And that is comparable to a warship in what way?”
“According to general knowledge, this means that we will see a corvette or a frigate at roughly 2000m, plus minus 50m. A destroyer will be picked up at around 2500m, and a battleship at 4000m.”
Naveen frowned.
“That is… less than I expected.” He looked at me accusingly. I just shook my head.
“Wait for a moment.” I then addressed the technician:
“Activate signal processing and enhancement!”
“SPE activated. Target reacquired. Good signal at 2500m… 3000m… 4000m… 6000m… signal gets weaker at 8300m… signal lost at 10130m. That would roughly quadruple the previous values, sirs, mam.”
The story has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.
Naveen rubbed his chin.
“So, around 8000m for a corvette? And 16k for a battleship? Still less than I hoped for, but acceptable.”
Michael put his hand on Naveen’s shoulder.
“Don’t worry, I already have contacted Vandermeer. They are willing to work with us in anti-stealth technology.”
I looked sharply at him. He had what?
Naveen on the other hand looked at him pleasantly surprised.
“They did? That is strange. They are usually not all that willing to sell their premier weapon products. What did it cost us?”
Now Michael looked a bit uncomfortable.
“Uh, well, Vandermeer wants to talk to Vivian and hire her for a specific job.”
“And you said yes? Despite what you know? I don’t want to talk to them for a fricking reason!”
You could say I was beyond peeved.
“I do know Vivian. But I think that you are missing some of the facts. And I think it will be important to have that talk.”
I could only growl. But I would survive one talk. At least with Warden keeping my fingers away from the red button. I was not so sure that Michael would survive it.
Maynard on the other hand looked confused from Michael to me and back to Michael before he tentatively asked:
“So, does that mean that Vandermeer will send somebody? Or are we to send Vivian to Seattle?”
Michael sighed.
“You got a bit wrong here, Maynard. We are not talking about Vandermeer the corporation, we are talking about Nathaniel Vandermeer, the person, who wants to talk to Vivian. And they informed me that he has an ultra-jack and the talk will happen in cyberspace.”
That made Naveen loudly fall down on the chair he had at his back, standing as he was.
“You want to tell me that Nathaniel Vandermeer, a clear member of not just Commonwealth nobility, but royalty, wants to talk to Vivian personally? And he is willing to provide us with military secrets to do so? Are you fucking with me?”
Michael only said softly:
“He has his reasons, Naveen.”
I snarled through my gritted teeth:
“Don’t you dare!” which made Michael shake his head.
“Don’t worry. I won’t talk further.”
Unfortunately for him, I was still seething.
“Don’t think we two are finished with this topic.”
“How about we talk about it when you had your talk with him? As I said, I think you are missing some facts, and that is clouding your judgment right now. But for now, we have these tests to get done.”
I stared at him for a few seconds, and then hissed: “Fine!”
When I returned my attention to the test, the technician was already in the process to start up the IR sensors. As with the radar, I wished I had managed to make them more sensitive, but again, the technology was over 200 years old by now. Humanity had learned all its ins and outs. Of course, I had a small trump, but it was really only small.
“Release of test bodies for IR test.”
The skimmer in the air was now releasing slow-falling objects that were at various temperatures.
It would do the same every 500m until it managed to come back here.
“At 10000m, minimum delta-T measured is 6K, 9500m… 6K, 9000m… 5.9k, 8500m… 5.8k, 8000m… 5.8K, 7500m… 5.5K, 7000m… 5K, 6500m… 4K, 6000m… 3.2K, 5500m… 2.2K, 5000m… 1.5K, 4500m… 1.2K, 4000m… .9K 3500m… .7K, 3000m… .6K, 2500m… .5K, 2000m… .2K, 1500m… .2K, 1000m… .2K, 500m… .1K.“
I believe I saw a slight smile on Naveen’s face, but if so, it was brief.
“That is a bit better than what I expected. Not much, but a bit better. I did not think we could get any improvement anymore. How did you manage that?”
“Signal Processing and Enhancement. Yes, virtually everybody does it, but I put a Grendel into the base of the mount to do the processing. It can crunch the numbers way faster and way more precisely than whatever processors others use.”
Naveen nodded, but Maynard coughed.
“Is that not extremely expensive?”
“Compared to what? The stabilization system consists of 18 grav-coils if I see that correctly. Does a Grendel really cost that much more compared to another processor?”
I scoffed.
“Not really. Sure, it does cost around 14 times as much as a Chronos processor does, for roughly 19 times the performance. But seriously, if we use those things internally, that is peanuts. A Chronos costs us around $50, while a Grendel costs us $690. Compared to the rest of the mount, or the weapons, that is negligible.”
Maynard protested:
“And each of those things also locks up one of our replicators for two weeks. So don’t tell me it is without costs.”
That made me look at him before I softly said:
“Michael, did you forget to inform Maynard and the others about my breakthrough with the NADAs?”
That brought a confused:
“Wait, I thought you would do that. Does that mean you did not?”
“You might remember that I was a bit busy creating this technological extravaganza. But whatever. Maynard, Naveen, I assume you already understood that I made a breakthrough in NADA design. The conveyor I spoke about a few weeks ago works, and it works brilliantly.
Not only does it cut back the time to make a Grendel from two weeks to a bit over a day, but it can work on 125 at once if we talk about the 2x2x2m NADA.
And to make those weapons, I had to make a bigger one, a 15x15x2m NADA. Which can make more than 13 thousand Grendels in 26 hours. Believe me, at the moment, I have a few thousand of them laying around.”
Maynard groaned.
“And we had a com-breakdown. How marvelous. Well, shit happens and so. Does that mean I can let the R&D department loose on the replicators now?”
I shrugged.
“Sure.” While Michael only nodded.
Naveen looked at me for a moment.
“Can we get back to the weapons right now? I really think we need the help of Vandermeer to get it done. And I am not sure this stabilization system is such a good idea. 3% is not that big of a difference, and they make the mount a bit awkward.”
I chuckled while I invited the three men to a short talk in VR. Fortunately, by now they all had a jack and a cranial board.
In the VR they were a bit confused, but I spoke quickly.
“Believe me, you want the stabilization system on the mount. But I agree, 3% are mostly insignificant. The secret is, though, that those stabilizers, as well as the radar, and the IR sensor, they are all smoke and mirrors.”
Naveen raised an eyebrow.
“Smoke and mirrors? I mean, yes, the radar could be better, and 3% more efficiency of the mounting system is not that much, but they mostly work.”
“I know they mostly work. I have taken quite some pains to make them mostly work. Sure, they are not as good as I would have hoped, but that is just institutional knowledge that I simply lack.
But they are smoke and mirrors insofar that everybody will expect something like the radar. And the stabilizers are also not surprising when we announce the new, better, and cheaper grav-coils.
But they are actually there to hide something else.
Each of the stabilizer coils has another, hidden secondary negation coil. Only five Keppler. But that is enough to send out a one-microKeppler negation field out to roughly 5000km.
And Maynard, the pure existence of this negation field is absolutely top secret. For all purposes, to anybody not here inside the sound shield it does not exist.
The thing is, any Kobashigawa field will react with the negation field. And vice versa, but one microKeppler does not even equal a minor voltage fluctuation. Not that anybody will even be set up to read it out.
But the way I set it up in the mount, those active gravity bending fields will be to 100% registered. The coil will measure where the interference comes from, and how strong it is.
The 18 coils in that mount, together with the Grendel, will give you a placement of each active grav-coil with millimeter precision. At 5000 kilometer distance.
And there is no stealth possible. At least I can see no way to not interfere with the negation field while having an active gravity bending field.
That of course means we can see every grav-ship coming for hundreds of kilometers. We can guess the class according to the strength of the coils.”
I smiled sweetly at Naveen.
“Is that more to your liking?”
During my explanation, all three men just sat there, with their mouths wide open.
After a few seconds, Naveen managed to catch himself, and snorted, while shaking his head.
“I should have known. Here I was already getting a bit disappointed, and then you make stealth entirely irrelevant. Yes, yes that is way more to my liking. Only question is, does it work?”
“We will see.” I ended the VR, and we all surfaced, not that we were in deep, and spoke to the technicians:
“Activate Palantír!”
The tech on the right pressed the button in the holo, and suddenly the hologram lit up.
The tech on the left let out a “Woah!” when thousands upon thousands of potential targets appeared.
“We have… targets several thousand kilometers away. How is that possible?”
Naveen was the one to answer:
“That is a secret. At least for now.”
Meanwhile, Michael turned to me:
“Palantír? Really?”
I shrugged.
“Hey, I am still a card-carrying nerd. Sue me. But I think with that we have successfully concluded the sensor tests, do you agree?”
“Yes, hard to argue with that. That means we can see the enemy. Now it is a matter of hitting him.”
To make things short, the mount was acceptable. A bit faster and more flexible than the one I had ‘liberated’ from the Commonwealth.
Not by much though. Servos were another pretty mature technology, and there were not many places where I could fiddle. In fact, the stabilizers actually served that function.
So it was time to test the actual weapons.
First was, naturally, the logical choice, the grav gun.
It was, sadly, a bit bulkier than I hoped, but it was pretty lightweight nonetheless, thanks to virtually no mechanical forces applying to it.
Still, it was an 8m long, 60cm diameter cylinder.
When Naveen saw the girth of the gun, he softly asked:
“Is it not a bit thick? Doesn’t that make it quite heavy?”
“No… not really. Most of that is a framework of carbon. A bit stronger than steel, but not by much, but mostly hollow to save weight.”
“But, does it have to be that… thick? Really?”
I sighed.
“Yes, it needs to be. To be honest, the grav gun has given me way more problems than I thought. Than I feared in my nightmares to be real. I don’t know if any of you have done the math, but a grav-coil of that length will give us around 27000 Keppler.
Yes, that sounds much, and it will, on Earth, generate a gravitational force of around 710g. But what we all, including me so no criticism, missed was the length.
Accelerating at 6964m/s² over a length of 8m results in only 334 m/s. Or a bit less than the speed of sound. Compared to the hypersonic projectiles of a typical railgun, that is rather anemic.
Well, no problem, I thought, arrange several coils in a polygonal pattern and increase the strength of the gun this way. I’ve gone hexagonal, and the resulting combined field is 158000 Keppler.”
I heard Maynard gasp, and I could understand him. That was more than ten times stronger than the strongest grav-coil ever made before.
“Unfortunately, that was not enough. Yes, it gave an acceleration of 4155g. And a resulting speed of ‘insane’ 807 m/s. Again, a typical railgun has between 3300 and 3700 m/s.”
I made a short pause, to let that sink in.
And Maynard did not disappoint.
“So, a grav gun is not feasible then?”
“So it seemed. I did not give up yet. I… let’s say I found a way to nest several coils within each other. The field is significantly strengthened, at the cost of it only going about a meter beyond the boundaries of the coil, unless it is the longitudinal axis of the coil.
Meaning we get a meter diameter grav-pulse if we want to, at a range of around up to 500m, and yes, the gun has that mode, but very little else.
On the other hand, I now had an 8m long nested coil with a bit more than 80000 Keppler.
To make it short, I managed to get a barrel with 472000 Keppler. 12413g. 121735m/s². And a resulting speed of 1395m/s.
The problem was not the field strength but the length of the barrel. Honestly, I should have given up. But… I just knew there was a way. And if the barrel was too short, I had to only make it longer.
Yes, the idea of making a barrel long enough that it actually does make a difference is… contrary to the gun being nimble enough to hit the target.
But… I found a way. The important factor is not the barrel-length, but the field length. In the process, I discovered something interesting that we will have to investigate at a later time.”
I gave the tech at the weapons console the order to charge the gun, and immediately a sextuplet helix of a pretty blue light appeared at the end of the barrel and went out over 100m.
“In the way to extend the field beyond the barrel length, and get the maximum power from it, I twisted the nested coils around each other in a helix form. And yes, Maynard, that is indeed Cherenkov radiation.
This… well I call it a grav vortex, roughly doubles the field strength and lengthens it by 176m. And well, that did the trick. If you would please aim at the distant wall?”
Michael looked confused at me, then at the vortex, and back at me.
“What the hell is Chernkov radiation?”
I could not help myself when I answered:
“Cherenkov, and it is that pretty blue light you see over there.”
All three men groaned, and Michael sighed.
“Yes, I can see that. Very funny.”
Maynard then came to his rescue, still shaking his head.
“Cherenkov radiation happens when some particles move faster than light in the medium they are right now.”
Naveen made a bewildered gasp.
“Faster than light? I thought that was impossible.”
As an answer, Maynard chuckled, before he elaborated:
“Yes, and no. The speed of light is indeed the universal speed limit as we know it. But what most overlook there is that it is the speed of light in a vacuum that is the important value. In every other medium, the speed of light is actually a bit lower. In most cases not enough to make a real difference. But in some cases, like for example water, it is enough that some high-speed particles like electrons can actually be faster. That blue light over there is the result. It is often described as the light equivalent of a sonic boom. But what I find much more interesting is not what, but how?”
Ah yes, my cue.
“The grav vortex is one of those media that slows down light quite a bit. By nearly five percent if my math is right. At the same time, the displaced air is moving around quite a bit in the wall of the vortex. Fast enough that it ionizes the air, and the electrons are flung around at nearly light speed, in a vacuum. Making them faster than the speed of light in the vortex.”