Still, we gear up to throw our rocks and give them the finger because that’s what we do. The Russian cruiser captain, or whoever had survived to remain in command over there, did exactly that when the boot came down on him, and if our water-laden kinetic missile fails to hit the target, I hope to go out in a similar way. Not that anybody would ever know.
We spend the last hour before the launch double-and triple-checking all the numbers, and then starting over and checking them again from scratch. Dr. Stewart has gotten the same response from the computer every time, and she still verifies everything by hand and with her data pad. The Neural Networks guy on the Indy is a sergeant who looks to be about my age. He graduated Neural Networks School the same year I did, two classes before me, and it occurs to me that he is exactly where I would be at this point in my career if I hadn’t opted to go for the combat-controller track because I got bored watching progress bars all day long. In an alternate universe, I may be the one sitting in the Networks Center of the Indianapolis right now, with some other combat controller looking over my shoulder. Maybe in yet another alternate universe, we’re still in the task force that’s running away, or we’re part of the debris cloud that’s now dispersed behind the approaching Lanky.
I watch as the Indy’s Networks administrator systematically disables all the fail-safes and security protocols on the Gordon’s shipboard network. I went to Networks School and had his job for over a year in the fleet, so I know that some of the things he’s doing are supposed to be impossible to do, and very definitely in violation of fleet regulations. It’s also how I know that he is good at his job and not just one of the bottom 10 percent of his tech school class.
“I’m probably the first Neural guy in the fleet who has ever gotten to do this in real life,” he says as he digs his way through yet another subsystem of the Gordon’s central computer. “Pissing on every safety reg in the book.”
“They’ll bust you back to private and drum you out without your end-of-service bonus,” I say, and he grins.
“Please,” he says.
Without the crew on board and with all her hollow spaces filled with water, the Gordon will be able to pull much more sustained acceleration, and the reactor won’t need to spend any of its energy budget keeping the artificial-gravity deck plates energized. What we’re about to do has never been done, not even with a target ship, and it’s only even possible because the Gordon has military-grade propulsion and computer systems, to keep up and interface with the fleet units she was built to support. Still, nobody has ever thought of pushing a military freighter to four gravities of sustained acceleration and keeping her there for thirty-five hours. We are truly on the cutting edge of desperate measures.
“That was the last one,” the Networks admin says. “The reactor output fail-safe and automatic shutdown. Unhackable, they said in tech school.”
“There’s no such thing,” I say.
“There’s only the fear of a court-martial.” He taps his screen and initiates the reactor warm-up. “Fifteen minutes to one hundred and ten percent. This baby will go out of the starting blocks like a fighter.”
I watch through the external feed as the automated tugs wrestle the two remaining cargo pods into position and lock them into place. The freighter itself is a long, knobby hull with a command section at the front and an engine section aft, connected by a long spine. The external cargo pods all connect to the spine of the ship and form the bulk of the Gordon’s hull. Each cargo pod can be jettisoned separately for orbital drop—an easier and cheaper method than ferrying everything down to the surface with atmospheric craft.
The Networks admin lets out a low whistle.
“Gross weight is forty-three thousand metric tons,” he says. “I think that’s a class record. The water in the main hull added damn near eight thousand tons.”
Dr. Stewart taps around a bit on her data pad and lets out a whistle of her own.
“If this thing hits—when it hits—we’re going to need some heavy-duty eye protection back here. Because the impact energy will be two hundred gigatons. Give or take a few depending on how much water she burns along the way.”
There are general sounds of amazement and appreciation in the CIC. The nukes in the tubes of all the task force ships put together probably total less than a thousandth of that yield.
“If we miss that shot, it will be the biggest waste of ordnance in the history of space warfare,” the tactical officer says.
“Then let’s not miss.” Colonel Campbell looks up at the time readout on the CIC bulkhead. “Is the Lanky still where we want him to be?”