While Absen slept on Desolator during the refit, his days were spent aboard Conquest, wandering the corridors and watching the machines tear his ship down and rebuild her.
The dreadnought’s bones remained the same, though newly laminated with collapsium and neutronium in microfine crystal matrices, strengthening them much as humans did to their cyborg combat troops.
Her armor likewise improved. Tiny machines like miners burrowed through the toughest materials known to humanity like gophers in soft dirt, and then filled in their tunneling with exotic substances. Dense shielding, hard overlapping plates, superconductors to instantly dissipate heat and cold and EMP and even create powerful magnetic fields to deflect charged particles, all the knowledge of Ryss, Sekoi and humans merged under Desolator’s supervision.
They were aided by a colony of human “lab rats” in white coats who wandered around with tablets, peering at everything, seeing nothing but their work. Absen imagined that if the Eden Plague had not cured most eye problems, they would have all been pushing thick taped-together glasses back onto their noses every few minutes while they poked about like moles.
As it was, the machines acknowledged Absen more often than the organics did. It appeared that a geek was a geek was a geek, no matter what the physiology. These technoids were in their own material heaven, chattering endlessly about details Absen could barely follow.
Still, he was able to ask a few pertinent questions and make some suggestions drawn from his submarine days. Despite the engineers’ assurances that all systems were extremely reliable, Absen insisted on more backups, and more damage control equipment, especially the kind organics could use. He didn’t want to rely solely on the new AI and its machines, no matter how effective they were supposed to be.
Once the structure, the hull, and the armor were completed, weapons appeared, most of them as if by magic. In reality Desolator floated their large parts across the intervening space and installed them from outside, while their smaller internal parts were brought in through the docking port.
Machines ripped down bulkheads and created corridors and enormous interior spaces within Conquest in which to work. Absen sometimes stood in a hatch and looked across hundreds of meters of openness, usually without gravplates, and watched the dance of the telefactors and robots – he hardly knew which was which, or if there was a difference – as they floated free like drifting spiders, crafting vast mechanisms of destruction at a rate dozens of times faster than EarthTech could have.
Conquest had taken over five years to build, the entire output of the Ceres planetoid and its thousands of Pseudo-Von Neumann factories as well as many pieces from around Earth’s solar system. This time she would be reborn within three months, remade and reconstructed by the efficiency of mechanical workers with no need for sleep, food or recreation.
In the ships’ evenings, Absen returned to Desolator and talked with Chirom and others of the crew of that ship, watching the old Ryss struggle against approaching age. Most of his race lived to only about fifty standard years; to make it to sixty was the equivalent of a century of life in a pre-Plague human.
Chirom was forty-six.
It made Absen’s heart ache, and gave him a taste of the dilemma Daniel Markis, who had released the life-extending Eden Plague upon humanity, must have faced. He was sorely tempted to order the planetary biogeneticists to develop some kind of rejuvenation therapy for Ryss, and even thought about giving it to Chirom against his will. Absen had that kind of power, at least for the next couple of months until he and Conquest departed.
Eventually he discarded that notion.
I can’t make that kind of decision for him, any more than I can keep people from their deaths fighting the Meme. Choosing where one dies is sometimes the most important decision any man – any being – can make.
During the third month, people of the three races came trickling off the liners that made the weekly passage to and from Afranan space. That planetary system now swarmed with relocated asteroids, shipyards and orbital fortresses, just as Earth-Luna once had, built over the last ten years. The arrivals were an eclectic mix of workers, officers, crew, engineers, scientists, even sightseers and gawkers who could afford to pay for the trip.
Desolator accommodated them all with ease, and in fact could have fit in a few million more if he had been willing to devote the resources. He provided work for those who wanted it, coordinated with the organic labor force and management, ensured the liners brought out sufficient foodstuffs and goods he could not manufacture, and generally functioned as a benevolent ruler.
Yet, whenever Absen asked for a change, Desolator seemed scrupulously deferential. Eventually Absen came to relax, hoping if not quite believing in the AI’s loyalty to his organic charges.
While Absen intended to take Conquest on a quick milk run and shakedown cruise to Afranan space before leaving the system, some of the officers and crew preferred to join the ship early, especially the unmarried ones. Ditto some of the die-hard sailors, crusty chief petty officers with renewed bodies and old eyes, who wanted to get into their sections as soon as the construction crews were done to start familiarizing themselves with the new systems.
Absen checked the manifests of these arrivals as soon as he could, and one name and job took his notice: Ellis Nightingale. If he wasn’t mistaken, this was the son of Lawrence Nightingale, the man who had run the weapons program that had armed Earth’s first space warship, Orion. Cross-checking with Conquest’s crew roster, he saw that EarthFleet HQ’s personnel directorate had assigned him as Chief Weapons Engineer.
Chip off the old block.
Another name caught his eye, that of Captain Quan Ekara. The Ekaras from Australia had been instrumental so long ago in building up Earth’s space program and economy prior to the coming of the first Destroyer. He must be one of that clan, and was listed as Chief Power and Propulsion Engineer.
Absen sent messages to them aboard their ship the day before it docked, telling them to report to him personally the evening after they arrived. When they showed up at his door, he greeted them warmly.
“Gentlemen, please come in.” The admiral waved them through the door to the enormous office Desolator had given him.
Captain Ekara, in impeccable naval whites, saluted sharply before entering. Very short, perhaps five feet two, he was dark, of mixed Aboriginal, Asian and Caucasian blood. When Absen had dug deeper into his file, he had noticed his mother had been one of the numerous extended Nguyen clan, a political marriage uniting the progeny of two of the movers and shakers of Australia. That meant he was related to Spooky Nguyen.
Powerful bloodlines indeed.
Ellis Nightingale came through the door next, a moving mountain large enough to overtop a Ryss at almost seven feet and easily four hundred pounds, also dark with his North American-African blood. Absen recalled his father had been almost as large, his mother an Amazon of outsized body and personality both. In an earlier day he might have been a professional football or basketball player, before the wartime economy relegated those pastimes only to the schools. His handshake was firm, not the crushing thing the admiral expected.
The two could hardly have been more different on the surface, save for some similarity of hue, though derived from far distant continents. Ekara seemed restless, eyes roving and taking everything in, his body crackling with energy, while Nightingale exhibited the waiting stillness some big men had, as if taking care not to inadvertently smash the fragile world around him.
Absen waved them to comfortable seats, then opened a cabinet behind him. “Drink? Whiskey, brandy, vodka, soda? Or I can ask for something to be delivered from the mess. Or coffee?” He waved in the direction of a machine.
Nightingale asked for black coffee, while Ekara said, “Whisky is fine.” He stood to take the glass from his superior, while the other man stayed seated, merely reaching up with his long arm to grasp the offered cup.
“Please, gents, relax. I just wanted to meet you, and then show you around the old girl and her overhaul. I’ll be relying on you both to make sure your sections run smoothly. Power and weapons are the heart of any warship, as you both know. Ellis,” he turned to Nightingale, “I’d like to commission you and frock you straight to Commander. I think it will help with the military personnel. Do you have any objection?”
The big man took a slow sip. “Actually I’d rather not. I’ve been offered the chance before, but as a civilian, I can relate better to those of all ranks or status.” He waved at his body. “And if that doesn’t work, I just intimidate them with my size.”
After a snort of amusement, Absen lifted his glass of bourbon. “Cheers. Fair enough. I won’t insist for now, but I will give your people a bracing piece of my mind before the trip starts, emphasizing your authority. Military personnel can be a funny bunch, and what’s on the collar gives them a sense of an officer’s place in the hierarchy. They can be like a pack of dogs; if they aren’t sure where you rank, they can test you, turn on you under pressure.”
“You don’t seem to have a lot of confidence in people.”
“On the contrary, Mister Nightingale. I have every confidence that people, as a group, will act in accordance with their culture, derived from a sense of tribe or clan. The military is a kind of tribe, with its own culture. If you refuse to join it, you will forever be set apart. I can counteract any problems I have by lending you my authority, but I’d like you to still think about it.”
Nightingale made a sour face. “All right, Admiral. I will.”
Absen turned to Ekara. “I’ve got much the same news for you, but in your case, it’s probably unwelcome. I’m going to have to frock you downward to Commander, if that is the way it’s said.” He watched the small man closely, and saw the surprise.
“May I ask why, sir?” Ekara said, his voice mild.
Good, at least he’s not taking offense right away.
Absen smiled. “Because I’ll be doing the same to myself, too. I can’t act as an admiral, or even a commodore, without a fleet, so as of our departure I’ll be taking off the broad stripes and pinning on Captain for the duration. It’s more appropriate for one ship, no matter how large, going into battle alone and unafraid.”
“And a ship can have only one captain. I understand.” Ekara seemed resigned.
“You’ll keep your permanent grade, just like I will, never fear,” Absen continued. “Once we return from this mission, I’m sure there will be plenty of opportunities to go around. I’ll make sure nothing about this adjustment reflects badly on you.”
“Fair enough.”
Absen slugged back his whiskey and set the highball on his desk. “Let’s take a look around the ship, shall we? If you’re not too tired.”
“Oh, no sir,” Nightingale said, standing up slowly. Absen realized that he probably did so by habit, taking care not to slam his head into ceilings or light fixtures. In this case, the Ryss-height overheads of three meters gave him plenty of space.
“I’d love to look around as well,” Ekara chimed in, setting his empty glass next to Absen’s. “Being cooped up on the liner for a week doesn’t make me want to go back to my quarters.”
“Besides, with these next few weeks, we can take a gander at Desolator. What an amazing piece of machinery,” Nightingale marveled.
“Don’t fall in love with the wrong ship,” Absen said with a smile.
“No worries, sir. I helped build Conquest the first time, before the big sleep here. Maybe I can help rebuild her.”
Absen just smiled at that. The two men had no idea of the pace and size of the refurbishment – yet. He called for a robot cart like the one that had first brought him to see Chirom two months ago, to cut out a fifteen-minute walk onto Conquest. This time there was no humanoid machine as driver; Absen had found out that the carts were just as smart as the rest of the telefactors, and the “driver” had been a prop that Desolator had used to ease human minds.
First, Absen led them to the Power and Propulsion quadrant, by tradition older than spaceflight called “Engineering.” As they rolled down the wide tunnel into the impressive engine room, Ekara’s breath audibly caught. “Beam me up, Scotty,” he said. “This is amazing.”
Six gleaming engines of updated design sat on the floor, pointing their massive fusion rocket exhausts downward, that is, toward the ship’s stern. Gravplates ensured that this simple orientation remained constant for those servicing the great devices, allowing them to walk around naturally among the huge fuel flow pipes, super-heavy power conduits, and myriad control circuitry. Gimbaled walls stood open like vertical blinds between each, and would close and compartmentalize when underway.
“Gorgeous,” Ekara said. “I can hardly wait to get my hands on them. Do you know their rated thrust or their fuel consumption?”
“The details are all in the files, but I can tell you they have roughly double the power and use half the gas. Also, there are another thirty-six auxiliary reactors networked throughout the ship in place of the original six.”
“For the TacDrive,” Ekara said. “Can we see it?”
“Next stop.” Absen waved the cart onward.
Five minutes and a kilometer later they had traveled from the extreme stern up to the volumetric center of Conquest. “The main bridge is a bit forward of us, and we passed the auxiliary control a minute ago,” Absen said, “but we are now in the middle of the ship.”
They rolled into another large open space, this one about the size of a basketball gymnasium. Instead of fusion reactors, a dodecahedron ten meters across hung in the center of the space. From its twenty faces projected gleaming metal tubes or pipes about a meter across. They ran straight outward and penetrated the walls at whatever angle they happened to intersect. From the bottom of the mechanism, a flexible cable the thickness of a Hippo thigh dropped to the floor, and then snaked to a bank of consoles near the wall. Those remained dark, though they looked as if they would eventually be lit with control screens.
“The TacDrive.” Absen gestured with his hand.
“I hear you came up with the idea,” Ekara said.
Absen nodded. “That’s one of the few things I can claim some credit for. As soon as I understood Desolator’s photonic stardrive system, it seemed obvious how useful it would be in combat. It’s like adding an afterburner to a wet navy ship, giving it jet fighter speed. Even better, under TacDrive we’re essentially undetectable and untouchable. By the time you see us, we’ll be there, and if we leave using it, nothing can catch us.”
Ekara hopped out of the cart to lay his hand on one of the tubes. “Is it functioning?”
“No, not yet. It’s just been installed here, and they still have to finish connecting it to the inertial field emitters, the power system, the controls...you can oversee that yourself.” Absen gestured at a spider-bot that skittered in one door and out another, parts clutched in two of its eight legs. “There’s one of your people now.”
“Hah. People.”
Nightingale spoke up. “Speaking of that...what about the AI?”
Absen said, “It’s turned on, but not connected to anything yet. The scientists and teachers are still interacting with it, from what I hear. The Desolator AI is helping, and is running the refitting.”
“Teachers?”
“Yes. As Captain Chirom explained to me, Ryss AIs are not merely programmed. Like any other person,” Absen emphasized that word, “they have to grow up.”
“So Conquest’s AI will be a person?”
“I’ve been told that its processors will be similar to Desolator’s, perhaps even better. He blows the Turing test away, so...what else would you call him?”
Nightingale didn’t answer, but merely looked skeptical. “Can we see Weapons?”
“Weapons it is. Let’s look at the upgraded railguns first.” The cart took off in a U-turn.
“Voice recognition?” Ekara asked.
“The cart?” Absen smiled. “You could say that.”
Ekara cocked his head. “What amuses you, sir, if I may ask?”
Absen’s smile widened to a grin. “You’ll figure it out.”
They cruised in puzzled silence for a couple of minutes before Nightingale spoke. “Desolator. Of course. Can we...”
“Go right ahead,” Absen said.
“Uh...” the big man stumbled. “Hello, Desolator.”
“Hello, Ellis Nightingale.” The rich tones that the AI preferred emanated from a speaker in the front of the cart.
Absen chuckled.
“Wow. It’s the first time I’ve ever spoken to a machine intelligence,” Nightingale gushed.
“I hope the experience is everything you expected,” Desolator replied with a sound of vast amusement.
“It has a sense of humor?”
“He, Mister Nightingale. He’s male, a warrior, and a Ryss.” Absen inclined his head. “That’s important.”
“I read the reports,” Ekara interjected. “Psychology was critical to, uh, circumventing Desolator’s malfunction.”
“Correct, Captain Quan Ekara.” Desolator’s voice turned melancholy, encompassing a sea of sadness. “My fractured mind needed to be reminded of origins, duty, honor and self-worth. Once I was no longer a danger to others, repair of my physical self ensured my stability.”
“But you could be damaged again.” Nightingale’s face radiated suspicion.
“Anything is possible in a quantum universe, but I have reduced the likelihood of catastrophic malfunction to less than the probability of my destruction. That is, long before damage causes insanity, I will probably be destroyed.”
“How?”
“Instead of only the original three processing modules, I have distributed my consciousness among more than one thousand nodes throughout my structure. Damage therefore may slowly degrade me, but in layman’s terms, anything that would drive me mad would likely kill me first.”
“And,” Nightingale went on, “is Conquest’s AI constructed similarly?”
“Yes. While her consciousness now resides in her central processors, eventually she can be connected to the distributed nodes throughout her body, just like I am.”
Absen spoke up. “Her?”
“Of course. Human ships are always female, is that not so?” Desolator’s surprise seemed genuine.
“Of course. I...I should have realized.”
“You are pleased?”
Absen nodded. “Yeah. I’m not sure why, but I am.”
“Perhaps it is because females with power do not threaten the egos of confident males in the same way another male might.”
All three men laughed.
“What?” asked Desolator. “Why are you amused?”
They only laughed harder. Eventually Absen answered for them. “I think we’re relieved that your understanding of human psychology is just as shallow as any Ryss.”
“My assessment was incorrect?”
“No...and yes. Very...simplistic.”
“Ah. You are reassured because I am not as omniscient as you fear. This realization humanizes me in your eyes.”
“You got it, Big D,” Ellis said.
A strange burbling hiss came from the speaker, which Absen realized was laughter. “Then I am happy to be humanized, and I hope my daughter will serve you well.”
“Daughter?” Absen paused in thought. “Yes of course. I understand.” And he did. What else would Desolator call his progeny, regardless of the method of reproduction? Struck by inspiration, he went on, “But I don’t want her to serve us. I want her to be part of my team. I want her to be just as human as you are Ryss, if that be possible.”
“It is possible.”
Absen didn't know how to answer that declaration. He had spoken metaphorically, and supposed Desolator had replied rhetorically.
They arrived at their next stop, up nearer the ship’s bow. The cart rolled through a large thick door that opened before them with a rumble, and the three men beheld machinery of quite another sort. Where before it had been all sealed tubes and pipes, this showed heavy conduits for power, enormous hoppers for ammunition, racks and conveyors and receptacles clearly built for holding metallic spheres of various sorts.
Behind thick transparent crystal they could see a three-console crew station plastered to the ceiling, upside-down, though not all of the control circuitry was there yet. Wires and fiber-optic conduits hung waiting for connections, and a dozen drones worked to complete the back end of the weapon. Apparently the current ceiling would be the floor when it was all done, so that the ammunition flowed downward into the weapon rather than being carried upward.
“This is one of our three new railguns. We’re calling it a Dahlgren Behemoth Fifty,” Absen said. “It can launch a variety of ammo at any speed up to a bit over 0.3 c.”
Nightingale gaped. “Point three lightspeed? One hundred thousand kilometers a second? That’s almost unbelievable.”
“It’s just the start.”
Ekara asked, “That’s going to gulp power. Do we have enough?”
Absen cleared his throat. “There’s never enough power. Even with the new reactors and superconducting capacitors, we can blow through what we have pretty quickly, but that’s what the TacDrive is for. If we keep one jump in reserve at all times, we can run away at lightspeed far enough to leave any enemies behind. Then we stop, recharge, and reengage.”
Ekara grunted. “I foresee you yelling ‘More power, Ekara’ every five minutes, sir. I’ll want to take a look at the management software and the system specs. I’d bet you a week’s pay I can come up with some improvements, if you want them.”
“I’d be very interested, Captain.”
“Might as well start calling me Commander, sir. Get everyone used to it,” Ekara said, resigned.
“What are these?” Nightingale asked from across the room. He ran his hands along something that looked like a wine rack several stories high, with thousands of holes varying in size from ten centimeters to a meter.
Absen said, “Special ammo storage. There will be a high-speed robot that will draw out whatever you want and load it. So, besides the usual one-kilogram cannonballs, you’ll have some different choices. Frangible loads that come apart into thousands of tiny tetrahedrons – those are good for anti-hyper or anti-fighter use. Small nukes that are made to go critical on impact, using kinetic energy as a trigger mechanism. Stealthed spy drones and mines, though those have to be launched at far slower speeds. The lab rats are working on some other ideas. I’m sure you could add your own.”
“I’m sure I can. It’s really more of a variable launch system for anything that can be packed into a metal sphere.” Nightingale’s eyes shone like a kid’s at Christmas.
“Glad you like it. On to the next stop.”
“But –”
“Plenty of time tomorrow for you to dig into detail. This is the overview, remember?” Absen hopped back into the front seat of the cart. “Particle beams, Mister D. We’ll skip the lasers.” As they rolled, he explained.
“The lasers have been upgraded to perhaps twice their power, but are now secondary, multirole weapons. They can add to the offense, but will be optimized for hyper defense and anti-fighter use, or to take down anything up to a Meme frigate. Our new offensive energy weapons are particle beams. Both Desolator and the Hippos have excellent tech in this area, and combined, we’ve come up with something better than either, the absolute latest thing.”
Nightingale wiped his mouth on the back of his sleeve. If Absen didn’t know better, he’d have thought the big man was drooling. He had a faraway gleam in his eyes, and Absen recognized it as the look of a man with a brand-new obsession.
Something like he himself experienced when he conceived the TacDrive.
Their journey was short this time, debouching into a cylindrical room something like an old-fashioned missile silo, but scaled up, fifty meters in diameter and a hundred high. This time the control room was built into the natural floor, as energy cared little for gravity’s pull.
In the center of the cylinder, from floor to ceiling, ran a tube ten meters in diameter, with rings, heavy metallic fittings, and meter-thick conduits snaking into it at five-meter intervals. It merged with the floor and exited the ceiling, which was near the nose of the ship. Like everywhere else, robots swarmed, working.
“Are we behind the nose armor?” Nightingale asked.
Absen said, “Inside it, actually, just like the Behemoths. Each weapon is in a kind of semi-socket that gives it some traverse, but mostly we have to point the whole ship near our target. The muzzles are covered by trapdoor clamshell slabs to protect them between shots.”
“Nice,” Nightingale replied. “No more surface structures vulnerable to a lucky hit.”
“True, but we have fewer of them. Three Behemoths, three PBs, alternating in a ring around the nose, about two hundred meters between each firing port. Lasers are interspersed all over the ship.”
“What about the other weapons? Electric shotguns?” He meant the railgun-like launchers of sprays of shot, used one time as a final defense.
“Gone. The armor has been upgraded so much that it’s not worth bolting them on.”
“Missiles?”
“Reloadable box launchers near the waist, six hundred at a time, but I want you to take a look at them.”
“Why, sir?” Nightingale asked.
“I’m not at all sure I want them, not for the kind of battle I want to fight. The only reason I am considering keeping them is as a hedge against unforeseen threats. I hate to throw away tools. However, getting rid of them could make room for fuel, railgun ammo, extra power reactors...” Absen turned to Ekara. “I’ll want your input too on that. I suspect I’ll have to decide what compromises will be made.”
“Yes, sir.” Ekara’s eyes roved over the enormous particle beam generator, no doubt calculating the power it would consume.
“So that’s the list?” Nightingale asked expectantly. “Particle beams and railguns as main batteries. Lasers as secondaries, and for defense. Missiles for the Black Swan factors. Fewer weapons, but each far more powerful. I like it, except...”
“Go ahead, Mister Nightingale.”
“Before, we had a lot more of them for redundancy. In the fight to take this system, you lost a quarter of your guns to the pounding we took.” He said “your” because he had been in stasis with the rest of the civilians during the battle, but of course he had studied the reports. “Now, if we lose one railgun or one PB, it’s a very big deal.”
“True, but our damage control will be dramatically better, with all these repair drones. And, you haven’t yet seen the manufactory.”
“Manu-factory?”
Absen nodded. “Yes. Just like one of Desolator’s. Once it’s complete, it will be able to rebuild and replace anything on this ship, given time and materials. Anything. A weapon, a new type of ammo, spare parts, whatever. We’ve even incorporated EarthTech nano-construction techniques that the Ryss didn’t have.”
“Wow.”
“Oh, yeah,” Absen breathed. “This girl’s gonna be hell on wheels.”
Nightingale sat down on the cart, craning his neck up at the ceiling, marveling.
“If you are trying to impress us, sir, you’ve done it,” Ekara remarked dryly. “Is there anything else on the tour?”
“One or two things. You ready to see more, Ellis, or is your brain overloaded?”
“I’ll...I’ll be fine, sir. Show me, oh wondrous Oz.”
“Let’s walk this time, stretch our legs. It’s only a hundred meters or so.”
Absen led the two, Tobias trailing along, to an open door and onto a ramp downward, deeper into the ship. The slope quickly became a floor as the gravity adjusted, undoubtedly due to Desolator’s attentiveness. The cart followed obediently behind the Steward. A minute later they walked into another control room.
“Are these centers backups?” Ekara asked. “I mean, everything can be fired from the bridge, right?”
“Weapons are usually targeted from the bridge, but there is a central weapons control room for redundancy, then one for each major weapon, mostly for damage control. They can take detailed manual charge of every aspect of the system. My bridge officers have to fight the whole ship. They can’t be trying to optimize every gun.”
“Point taken. So what is this control room for?”
Unlike the other ones, this center was not tucked into the corner of some massive installation. As it was not yet operational, there was very little to see – just three consoles, three doors, and spaces where other things would go. The floor of scuffed metal had not even been surfaced yet. Only the lighting seemed to have power.
“This is Exploder Control.”
“Exploder?”
“That’s how the Ryss word translates. The most powerful single weapon Desolator has. Antimatter bombs big enough to vaporize everything within ten kilometers of detonation, and cause damage out to one hundred in vacuum – and when I say vaporize, that’s not exaggeration for effect. The blast fuses particles, strips electrons from their shells, and causes fission in normally inert elements. Given the right conditions it can set up a chain reaction to continue fusing and consuming matter.”
“The Destroyer-killer bomb Desolator demonstrated,” Nightingale said. “One weapon and pfft. Gone.”
“If properly placed. But they’re expensive – not in money, but in time to make. We’ll only have a handful of them. We’re limited by the amount of antimatter Desolator can collect off the magnetic belts of New Jove, and it’s a rare commodity. It takes months for his array to get enough for one Exploder. He’s given us all he has for the trip.”
Ekara cleared his throat. “Antimatter would make one hell of a power source. Seems a shame to waste it by blowing it up.”
Nightingale drew a breath to protest when Absen held up a hand. “That idea has been proposed. There’s an R&D team working on an experimental auxiliary antimatter reactor, but using it as a controlled power source seems infinitely more dangerous than chucking it at an enemy and detonating it.”
“I’d like to look into that anyway,” Ekara replied, eagerness in his eyes.
“I’d expect nothing less,” Absen said.
“How are the Exploders delivered?” Nightingale asked.
“The warheads are stored securely within magazines deep inside the ship, and are sent up to be mated with a drone missile body right before launch. This is their weakness, in my opinion. The warheads can’t take the acceleration of a railgun launch, as the antimatter is suspended inside triple-redundant magnetic bottles, so they must be mounted on a missile.”
Nightingale nodded. “Which is then vulnerable to being shot down, not to mention it has to get well away from us before it can be detonated or it will take us with it. Kind of limits its usefulness.”
“Yes, they have to be handled with care, but at least we have them.”
A faraway look in Ellis Nightingale’s eyes alerted Absen that the man was chewing on an idea, but he didn’t press him. A month remained before earliest departure, and he was sure to have to referee at least a dozen good ideas in the next week, if the thoughtful faces of these two engineers were any indication.
“That will do it for this evening, gentlemen. Let’s hit the mess and then you can go your ways.” Absen gestured at the cart.
“You eat at the crew mess, sir?” Ekara asked, surprised.
“On Desolator, yes. He has a short crew and not really enough officers to form a wardroom. Once Conquest undocks, the usual traditions will apply.”
Ekara seemed uncomfortable at this development. Perhaps he felt eating with the ratings and petty officers was beneath him, Absen wondered, or maybe he had some kind of dietary peculiarities. For this meal, though, he’d have to put up with it.
They rode without conversation for a time, each man with his own thoughts watching the activity of machines and the occasional Ryss, Sekoi or human as they bustled about the ship. Once they reached the mess and had filled their trays, they sat down in a corner of the large, near-empty room.
“What about the other races, sir?” Ekara spoke up. “We’re human. Conquest is an EarthFleet ship. Will they be coming along?”
“Some, yes. A few dozen of each. It’s important to have a mixed crew, for political reasons, and for some good practical ones.”
“Practical?” Ekara seemed ready to object. “Extra facilities to accommodate aliens could be put to better use, I should think.”
“Possibly. But,” Absen ticked off reasons on his fingers. “What if we run into other Ryss out there, or Sekoi slaves of Meme? What if we run into completely new races? There are no Ryss Blends – they abhor the very idea – and only one human Blend in this system: Ezekiel Denham. The Hippos, on the other hand, have thousands. They can spare a few, and they may be very useful if we run into any Meme-controlled creatures.”
He went on before the others could comment. “Both races have some experts in certain disciplines that will be useful, particularly the Hippo Blends, with their accumulated memories of long lifespans. They are way ahead of us in the biological sciences, for example. The Ryss have some warriors that have asked to join the fight. Turning them down would have caused hard feelings. And then there’s the Black Swans.”
“The unknown unknowns.” Ekara looked like he was sucking on lemons.
“Right. Three races means triple redundancy if, for example, some kind of Meme human-killing plague got loose in the ship.”
“The Vulcan saves the day again?” Nightingale laughed.
Absen joined him in a chuckle. “I learned a lot from that old TV show.”
Ekara seemed to force his face into a neutral mask, and Absen made a mental note to keep an eye on the man.