there,” Koenig told him. “Nine hours and some to go.”
Quintanilla pulled his way to the display projection at the center of CIC. There, small globes of light glowed in holographic projection, showing the positions of both Eta Boötis A and B, fourteen major planets, the task force’s current position just outside the orbit of one of the system’s gas giants, and a red haze around the objective. The carrier task force had no way of receiving telemetry from the fighters it had launched nine and a half hours earlier, of course, not while its ships were encased in their Alcubierre bubbles, but if everything had proceeded according to the oplan, the Dragonfires should have reached the vicinity of Eta Boötis IV some forty-five minutes earlier.
“Does that mean we’re going to do a skew-flip, Admiral? To start decelerating?”
“No, sir, it does not. You’re thinking of the gravitic drives on the fighters. The Alcubierre Drive works differently … an entirely different principle.”
“I don’t understand.”
Koenig wondered if that man had been briefed at all … or if he’d been given a technical download that he’d failed to review.
Quintanilla seemed to read Koenig’s expression. “Look, I’m here as a political liaison, Admiral. The technology of your space drive is hardly my area of expertise.”
Obviously, Koenig thought. “The type of gravitational acceleration we use on the fighters won’t work on capital ships,” he said, “vessels over about eighty meters in length. With ships as large as the America, projecting an artificial singularity pulling fifty-kay gravs or so ahead of the vessel would cause problems—tidal effects would set up deadly shear forces within the ship’s hull that would tear her to bits.
“So for larger ships, we use the Alcubierre Drive. It manipulates the fabric of spacetime both forward and astern, essentially causing space to contract ahead and expand behind. The result is an enclosed bubble of spacetime with the ship imbedded inside. The ship is not accelerating relative to the space around it, but that space is sliding across the spacetime matrix at accelerations that can reach the speed of light, or better.”
“That makes no sense whatsoever.”
Koenig grinned. “Welcome to the wonderful world of zero-point field manipulation. It’s all pretty contra-intuitive. Free energy out of hard vacuum, artificial singularities, and we can reshape spacetime itself to suit ourselves. No wonder the Sh’daar are nervous about our technology curve.”
“Explain something to me, Admiral?” Quintanilla asked. He was floating near the system display, and had been studying it for several moments.
“If I can.”
“Why only one squadron? That’s … what? Twelve spacecraft? But you have six squadrons on board, right?”
Koenig blinked, surprised by the abrupt change of topic. He’d been expecting another physics question.
“Six strike fighter squadrons, yes,” Koenig replied, cautious. What was the civilian hammering at? “Plus one reconnaissance squadron, the Sneaky Peaks; an EW squadron; two SAR squadrons; and two utility/logistics squadrons.” EW was electronic warfare, specialists in long-range electronic intelligence, or ELINT, and in battlespace command and control. SAR was search and rescue, the tugs that went out after high-velocity hulks, attempting to recover the pilots.
“But you just sent one fighter squadron in, and they have, what? Another nine hours in there before we arrive?”
“Nine hours, twenty-one minutes,” Koenig said, checking his IHD time readout.
“So what are the chances for one lone squadron against … what? Fifty-five Turusch ships, you said?”
“More than that, Mr. Quintanilla. Fifty-five was just the number we could see from seventy AUs out. And even more might have arrived since.”
Quintanilla shrugged, the movement giving him a slight rotation in microgravity. He reached out awkwardly and grabbed the back of Koenig’s seat. “Okay, twelve fighters against over fifty-five capital ships, then. It seems … suicidal.”
“I agree.”
“Then why—”
“Every man and woman of VF-44 volunteered for this op,” Koenig told him. He could have added that Koenig’s own contribution to the plan hashed out by Ops had called for three squadrons, half of America’s strike-fighter compliment. Ultimately, that had been rejected by the Fleet Operations Review Board at Mars Synchorbital. His was still the final responsibility.
“It just seems to me that your plan should have allowed for more fighters in the initial strike.”
“It’s a little late to start second-guessing the oplan working group’s decisions now, isn’t it?”
“But you could launch the rest of your strike squadrons now, couldn’t you? We’re a lot closer to the target. It would take them—”
“No, Mr. Quintanilla. We could not.”
“Why not?”
Koenig sighed. Would it serve any purpose whatsoever to educate this … civilian? “I just told you how the Alcubierre Drive works, Mr. Quintanilla.”
“Eh? What does that have to do with it?”
“As I said, each ship in the fleet is imbedded inside a bubble of warped spacetime, contracting the space ahead, expanding behind. The bubble is moving. Right now America’s bubble is moving at about three quarters of the speed of light. But each ship in the task force is imbedded within the spacetime inside its bubble and is relatively motionless compared to its surroundings.”
“So? Why can’t you just drop out of this bubble and launch more fighters?”
“Because we would drop back into normal space with the velocity we had when we engaged the Alcubierre Drive, out in this system’s Kuiper Belt, something less than one kilometer per second. We would then have to begin accelerating all over again. If we started decelerating at the halfway point, our total trip would take twenty-five and a half hours. If we keep accelerating, we’ll reach Haris in a total of eighteen and some hours. At that point we’ll be zorching along at one-point-oh-eight c, just a hair faster than light, but we’ll cut the Alcubierre Drive and drop into normal space at a modest one kps.”
“I just hope when we do, we’ll find those fighter pilots alive.”
“War means death, Mr. Quintanilla, the deaths of brave men and women doing their duty. I don’t like it any more than you do, and if I could wave my hand and change the laws of physics, I would.”
“But another nine and a half hours …”
“Let my people do their jobs, Mr. Quintanilla. There’s nothing you can do to change things, one way or the other.”
Quintanilla thought about this a moment, then swam for the CIC exit.
The hell of it was, however, that Quintanilla was right about one thing. The oplan should have called for more fighters in the first strike. The mission planners on Mars, however, had feared the consequences if America didn’t
