Nathan took a sip of coffee before turning his head and catching sight of Kris watching him in his peripheral vision. He started, but just managed to avoid spilling the mug on himself. Pushing the suite away, he turned his stool to face the colorful, slender girl. She looked not only like the cat who had eaten the canary, but who greedily regarded the next canary in line.
He answered her smile with a cautious grin of his own and said, “Hey, Kris. What’s up?”
She shook her head and failed completely to adopt an innocent face. “Nothin’. What are you reading?”
Nathan reached back and picked up his suite, stowing its screen and returning it to his pocket. “It’s your proposal. There’s some pretty freaky stuff in there.”
Kris shrugged and pushed off from the wall. “Don’t blame me. It was yours and Gordon’s idea.” She walked over to the coffee pot and poured herself a mug, liberally dumping in the cream and sugar.
“No, it was Gordon bitching about not making any progress on the weapons, and me bitching that it was too bad we couldn’t do something with the high energy density of your drive. But this,” he said, patting his pocket, “this is … how do I put it? The perfect mix of my greatest hopes and my worst nightmares?”
She held her mug with both hands and slurped it loudly. “No big deal. We’ve blown up so many early iterations of the drive that I was already thinking in terms of explosives applications. I just changed the emitter geometry from a cone to the interior of a sphere to produce a compressive shockwave instead of linear thrust. Throw some lithium deuteride in there, flash the field, and boom: mini Bikini Atoll, and no mucking around with the government’s precious radioactives.”
Nathan shook his head. “A pure fusion weapon … the mythical ‘red mercury’ finally achieved. They’re going to shit bricks when they find out we just did an end run around the whole arms control process.”
“Screw ‘em. They don’t want to let us play with nukes in order to defend the planet, we’ll do ‘em one better.”
“Sure, but what I’m saying is that your tech and the relative ease of acquiring heavy hydrogen means we just made it that much simpler for the little guys to become nuclear powers.”
“Hey, I tinker. Others can worry about security, and all the ethics and politics.”
“Nice. How very un-Oppenheimer of you.”
Kris shrugged again and took another slurp of coffee. “I yam what I yam. Besides, it’s not all doom and gloom. If my setup works, we can make some friendlier nukes.”
“Friendly nukes?”
“Friendly-ER. Since this eliminates the radioactive cladding, the tampers, the neutron sources, and the fission primary, we can use any fusible mixture we want in the core. We can even eliminate the residual radiation that you get from a D-D or D-T bomb entirely by using some aneutronic reaction like hydrogen-boron or helium-3. It’s a slightly lower yield, sure, but you can plant flowers right after the blast wave passes and the flames die down.”
Nathan shook his head again, this time in dismay. “You can be one scary chick.”
Kris dimpled cutely. “I try.”
He stood and stretched, once more missing the lingering appraisal she gave him over the rim of her mug. Relaxing, he smoothed out his shirt and walked over to refill his mug. Looking sideways at her, he squinted. “Green?”
She reached up and twirled a curl of her brightly colored hair around her finger. “No! That would just be weird. This is teal.”
“Right. Teal is so much more conservative. What are you trying to be? An anime character?”
“I looked into getting surgery to have my eyes blown up to the size of saucers, but Windward’s HMO wouldn’t cover it. I do have a miniskirt schoolgirl outfit though. Wanna see it?”
Nathan spluttered on his coffee and pulled it away from his burned lips. “Maybe some other time. Did you come by for coffee or to torture me?”
“Both and neither. There’s a storm front moving into the launch area, so they’re advancing the timetable.”
Nathan looked worried and glanced at his watch. “To when?”
“I believe Gordon’s words were, ‘We’re lighting off as soon as Nathan Kelley gets his lazy ass in here!’”
“Jesus, Kris! Let’s go.” Nathan dumped his coffee in the sink and left his mug to be washed later. He turned and trotted from the kitchen, sending the door swinging wide.
Softly to herself, Kris said, “Run, Navy-boy, run.” She took another loud slurp and then strolled out, chuckling.
Nathan slowed when he reached Lee’s personal office. It was a cozy place, stacked high with walls of books, but unlike the gentleman’s study it was meant to emulate, the shelves were filled with technical manuals, science texts, and pulp sci-fi rather than the staples of Western literature. Newly installed banks of HD flatscreens and communications gear cluttered up the space, further spoiling the old-fashioned aesthetic, but it was far more appropriate for Gordon.
Gordon Lee spoke by video teleconference (VTC) to a number of talking heads arrayed as windows on one of the flatscreens. Another flatscreen was filled with weather forecasts, shipping and aviation data, as well as radar sweeps for a location far out in the Pacific, a spot approximately 200 nautical miles north of Guam. The third flatscreen was a video feed, focusing on a stable sea launch platform lost amid the low waves surrounding it out to the distant horizon. To one side of the platform, the skies darkened with the first signs of rain.
Despite going from preliminary design to majestic reality in only six months, the probe was much more than spit and bailing wire. Upon finally gaining access to their French reactor, Lee and Nathan had brought together all the speculative technologies they had built up over the last several years in order to build humanity’s first interstellar probe. Allocarbium frame, lead laminate radiation shields, crystalline alloy skin, pebble bed reactor, and physics-defying enhanced photon drive, the probe brought together so many unproven technologies in one package they were either assured of spectacular success … or else the whole damn thing would blow to bits upon launch. Conducting the launch away from prying eyes only seemed prudent.
One of the talking heads on the VTC screen was speaking, this one wearing USN blue and gray digi-cammies and a warship’s ball cap, complete with a line of gold fretting on the brim, a commander’s single serving of “scrambled eggs”. “Control, we have verified the range clear of air and surface tracks. The VT-UAV is RTB and will be outside of the danger zone in five mikes.”
Gordon nodded. “Thank you, Captain. I have no idea what you just said, but I’m assuming that means we’re free to launch?”
The Navy commanding officer scowled. “Yes, sir, you may launch in five minutes. McInnerney out.” He turned away from the camera and the destroyer’s crest replaced his image on the flatscreen.
Nathan shook his head. “You knew exactly what he said. It’s not necessary to punch the buttons of every single person you meet.”
Gordon turned to regard him and then returned to the checklist he carried in his hand. “Ah, Nathan. Glad you could attend. And I know that, but humorless superior bastards like our good Captain Geary just remind me of the sort of officers that forced you out of the Navy. He punches my buttons just by being.”
Nathan shook his head. It was unavoidable, especially these days. He had left the service behind years ago, but in an ambiguous, unfinished way. Nathan’s own feelings about it were a confusing mess. He could not reasonably expect someone on the outside to understand his departure any better. “No one forced me out, Gordon. I resigned. And I never even met Geary when I was in.”