Nathan had no idea what to say. Some of the rumors he had heard about Lee now seemed to be a little closer to fact. He sat the tablet down upon the table and stared at the garden. “So, that question wasn’t a zinger. It was an actual question.”
“It was a question and a job offer, Mr. Kelley. I’ve spent the last ten years planting the seeds of our defense. Not including a few notable exceptions, people able to see beyond their own preconceived notions of what’s out there, I’ve done it all myself. Because of the nature of this new truth, it unfortunately seems like almost all of the people I can convince I’m serious are the crackpots who have the least to offer me. And don’t even ask about government support.”
Nathan turned back to Lee, whose eyes burned intensely, but whether it was in madness or determination, Nathan could not tell. “Okay. I won’t ask.”
“I’ve sown the seeds, but now I need someone to reap the results. I don’t ask that you believe me, or believe the data, but I do ask that you approach this task seriously. You have a unique skill set. I’ve read military sci-fi, but I need someone with some actual tactical and strategic skills to do military sci-fi, to make the possibilities real. I need you to lead my Special Projects branch, consolidating the results of the various research initiatives I’ve funded in order to develop a defense of the planet. I need an engineer, a manager, a leader, and a seasoned, bloodied naval warrior. You’re all of that in a single package.”
Nathan finished his beer, but his mouth was still bone-dry. He turned away from Lee and began pacing again, running a hand through his hair. “When you say ‘bloodied naval warrior’, I assume you’re referring to the Rivero.”
“Yes.”
“I sank the Rivero, Mr. Lee!”
“The enemy sank your ship, Nathan, and two other ships that day as well. You were all sucker punched, but out of every battle of that day, you were the only one to sink your attackers in return. You defeated the enemy and blunted the ferocity of his attack, saving over a hundred and fifty members of your crew.”
“And killing 103 of them, including the Captain who put me in charge.”
“I’ve read the proceedings from your board of inquiry. The board endorsed your actions and awarded you the Navy Cross in return.”
“Medals and boards don’t stop the looks of doubt every officer has when they first meet you, every officer who knows they could have done it better if they had been in that situation instead. They also don’t stop the looks you give yourself in the mirror every morning either.”
Lee spread his hands and smiled. “Look at me, Nathan. I don’t doubt you. I’m not second-guessing you. You’re who I need. Be the architect of Earth’s first space navy. Accept the most important calling in history: the defense of the whole planet. What do you say?”
Nathan turned and stared at him, shaking his head in disbelief. This was the weirdest damn job interview in history, but nowhere nearly as weird as the job itself.
4: “MATTERS OF STATE”
May 27, 2038; Allied Composites, Inc.; Norfolk, VA
Nathan lifted the enormous I-beam slowly and carefully under the apprehensive gaze of Dr. Emil Korso. Nathan looked back at him with a grin and tossed the beam up, catching it with ease. He flipped it over, examining its length closely. The surface was rippled, striated, and gleamed with a dull gray sheen. Nathan set the structural member down and turned back to Korso. “It’s everything you promised. And so light!”
“Foamed alloy of aluminum, molybdenum, titanium, and a dozen other trace elements, encasing a three dimensional weave of graphene and carbon nanotubes—one fiftieth the density of steel, and over a hundred times its structural strength per unit volume. And that doesn’t include the shear strength, which is so far off the charts, we had to come up with a new chart. I have the full specifications available if you, Mr. Lee, or your materials staff would like to examine them.”
“Absolutely. How’s the performance of test units under environmental test conditions? Shake it, bake it, freeze it, and nuke it? How does it hold together then?”
“Well, we haven’t been able to test full-sized mock-ups in every condition. We simply don’t have a freezer,kiln, or radiation chamber quite big enough. If the low end tests we’ve done are directly scaleable, though, it looks promising. Thermal properties are as expected and it’s withstood neutron embrittlement very well, in addition to a full gamma series. We’re going to need more time for better data, though.”
“Sure, sure. That’s understandable. I’ll tell you what, Doctor, flash me the specs and we’ll have our own testers do some independent validation and verification, but I doubt there will be any problems. We’ve been following Allied pretty closely. Out of all of our research projects, this one has been the biggest outright success.”
Korso smiled sheepishly and smoothed nonexistent wrinkles from his suit coat. “It pleases me to hear you say that, Nathan. We never could have expanded the way we did without Windward’s patronage, and we might have even closed down. As it is now, once we’ve fulfilled our contract with you we’ll be able to start marketing Allocarbium to the world. I foresee a very lucrative future in naval and aviation circles.” There was a new, greedy look in the scientist’s usually unassuming expression.
Nathan shook his head slightly at that. “No doubt, but we’re going to be taking every bit of your projected output for the foreseeable future, Doctor. Until you fill our order, you’re not to do any marketing of our material to outside interests: no samples, no flashes, and no personal tours.” Nathan’s voice took on a rather darker tone. “Allocarbium belongs to Windward until we say otherwise. Understood?”
“Certainly!” Korso responded nervously, as the gleam of avarice in his eyes faded.
“I’ll be sending you a list of required parts to be formed. Nothing too fancy—just beams, frames, plates, decking, equipment mounts, that sort of thing. I’ll need a breakdown by part type and size on when you can have it fabricated. And you’d also mentioned some issue about welding?”
Korso nodded, back to his blandly professional self. “Oh, yes. Any welders or post-fabrication people you use are going to have to be trained to work with Allocarbium. You can’t simply weld two pieces together. If you did, you’d end up with a fairly weak bond between the two foamed alloys. Welding does nothing for the graphene/nanotube substrate, so instead of welding we do joining. That’s an argon environment thermal bonding for the foamed metals and a microscopic interweaving for the carbon mesh underlayer-joining.”
Nathan frowned. “Sounds time consuming. And expensive.”
Korso held up placating hands. “It is what it is, Nathan, but what you get in return is a join which is indistinguishable from a prefabricated part. It’s just as strong as that I-beam and basically turns your structure into one big piece with no weak spots. Speaking of structure, I’d love to know what you’re building. There’s a pretty high stakes pool going over what it is. Any hints?”
“Well, when the pool makes it to a cool million, let me know and you and I can come to some fair arrangement, say a 90 - 10 split in my favor?” Nathan flashed a grin.
“I think I’d rather guess on my own. A mystery it remains then, but whatever it is, it will be the strongest whatever ever made.”
They exchanged suite addresses for the flashes of the technical specs and the fabrication order, said a brief goodbye, and Nathan left. Once outside Allied Composites’ offices, in the bright warmth of the Virginia sunshine, he pulled out his suite and called the first number in the memory, a number he called ten times as often as he called his family or the girl-of-the-moment. Before he could dwell on just how depressing that was, Gordon Lee answered.