“I don’t know if that’s the most idiotic or the most brilliant plan I’ve ever heard,” Sergeant Fallon says dryly when Dr. Stewart ends the basic rundown of the idea we tossed around the night before.
“You want to use half of our spaceborne capability and fly it into a Lanky ship?” Colonel Campbell asks.
“It’s not like the Gordon is doing us much good right now anyway,” I say. “She delivered her payload, and right now she’s just a target. She’s not big enough to load up all the mudlegs, even if we had a place to take them. But she has docking collars and arrestor clamps for standard-sized cargo pods.”
“And we have plenty of those here on the moon,” Dr. Stewart continues. “We can fill them with water, shoot them into orbit, and load up the freighter with them. Increase the mass, give it extra reactor fuel. Maybe even flood the interior. Water doesn’t compress. She’d be able to pull a lot of acceleration.”
“And the crew? Are we going to have them run the ship in vac suits? And who’s going to volunteer for that one-way trip?”
“Nobody needs to,” I say. “She has fleet standard neural-networking gear, right? I can get together with your NN admin and the weapons officer, and we can send the Gordon off from the Indy’s CIC.”
“You’re talking about hitting a bull’s-eye from, what, two AUs?” Colonel Campbell asks. “Even at one-g acceleration, you’re talking close to relativistic velocities. You won’t be able to correct the trajectory very well if the Lanky sees us coming.”
“It’s stupid.” Lieutenant Colonel Decker shakes his head. “Really stupid. You can’t hit anything at that range just by throwing a freighter at it.”
“Yes, you can,” Dr. Stewart says. “You’re talking about a three-kilometer target that’s a few hundred meters in diameter. Even at two AUs, that’s not an impossible shot for a computer.”
“If you’re wrong, we’ll be wasting that ship for nothing.”
“If I’m right, we’ll be hitting that Lanky ship with a few hundred gigatons’ worth of impact energy,” Dr. Stewart replies. “I don’t care what kind of nukes you’ve shot at them before, but I guarantee you that a twenty-thousand-ton freighter moving at a tenth of light speed is going to vaporize that Lanky.”
“A few hundred gigatons, huh?” Sergeant Fallon looks at the plot again and smiles a little. “I don’t know about you people, but I really like that number.”
There are a few moments of heated conversation in the ops center as all the civilians and soldiers in the room share their opinions of Dr. Stewart’s idea at the same time. From the sound of it, half the personnel in the room think it’s a workable plan, and the other half concur with the admin’s assessment that it’s criminally stupid. Then the chirp of the tight-beam connection from orbit cuts in as Colonel Campbell interjects.
“My weapons guy says it’s not even a difficult shot. Providing they stay on trajectory, of course.”
“Doesn’t matter even if they deviate,” Dr. Stewart says. “We send that ship off with four times the acceleration of the Lanky, we’ll have the edge no matter what they do. We can always adjust, and they won’t be able to avoid us.”
“You’re awfully sure about that stuff for a civilian,” Sergeant Fallon tells her.
“I may not know anything about weapons, but I know mathematics and physics,” she replies.
“If it’s such a sure thing, why hasn’t anyone ever had the same idea before?” Colonel Decker asks. He’s clearly not enamored with the idea, and his body language is somewhere between frustration and defiance.
“Because it’s nuts,” Colonel Campbell says from orbit. “And because we usually don’t see them coming. Besides, you never put all your cash on one hand unless you’re desperate.”
“I don’t know about you folks,” Sergeant Fallon says, “but I think desperate pretty much hits the nail on the head right now.” She looks at the administrator. “Of course, I’m open to other ideas, if anyone has any. Right now the Freighter of Doom plan sounds a little nuts. But if the only alternative is to let them land and hope we can nuke them, I’ll take a little nuts.”
“I concur,” Lieutenant Colonel Kemp says, and his sergeant major nods his agreement.
“Let’s have a tally,” Sergeant Fallon says. “All in favor of the Freighter of Doom, raise your hands.”
Colonel Kemp and I raise our hands. Dr. Stewart looks around the room as if she’s unsure whether she has a vote as well, and then raises her hand, too. The administrator joins us.
“All opposed to that crazy-ass idea, raise hands.”