Gilbert pointed out the switching mechanism. “The homopolar generator is over here. The rail is short, but we should still be able to launch the projectiles at a couple of kilometers a second. That’ll pack a real punch.”
“I hope so,” sighed Spencer. “But is it worth it?”
“If it works it will be.”
“Does it work?”
Gilbert shrugged. “Let’s see.”
They left Arnie to continue his work and met Rita outside by the transmission line. She pushed back the bush hat she had reclaimed from Lieutenant Carron. “This should do it. I need to get back and help Bobby extract the citrus oil for the explosives.” She nodded toward the electrical wiring. “Gilbert only needs a ninety-second cycle time to recharge his capacitors. With the current we can draw from batteries, he can probably get nine, maybe ten shots before we’re depleted.”
Spencer looked worried. “I’d hate to dismantle our precious satellite launcher for something that might not be decisive against Bayclock.”
Gilbert rolled his dark eyes. “That’s the physicist in you. Listen to an engineer for once. These projectiles are four to five times faster than a bullet—”
“So the energy is 16 to 25 times greater,” finished Spencer. “But still, what if you miss the target?”
“Wide-area munitions,” Rita said. “Gil’s got us filling sabots with shrapnel, so when we launch it’ll be like a super shotgun.” She turned to the short engineer. “Bobby wants to push the trigger himself when you go after Bayclock. If he’s not flying his balloon, that is.”
Spencer scowled at her eager smile. “Rita, this is going to be messy. We busted our butts to cobble this antenna farm together, but I never thought I’d have to kill anybody for it.”
Rita whirled. “Spence, a lot of people have died since the petroplague. This is a war here! Civilization against the cannibals. The golden age against the dark ages.”
Her voice became quieter. “When I was a kid, I took a lot of shit from gorillas who wanted to pick on a beanpole, egg-headed girl—but now I am not going to let a bully come down here and take our dreams. Not when I can still fight.”
“Incoming!”
Bobby Carron looked up just in time to be hit on the side of the head with a soft orange. Already leaning forward, he lost his balance and tripped into the tank half-filled with ripe citrus rinds. He sputtered and gasped at the bright, acidic stink. He climbed back out of the knee-deep vat, picking clots of spoiled lemons and oranges from his hair.
Rita grinned as she tossed another orange into the air and caught it. “Gotta keep those reflexes tuned up, flyboy. Hate to have a killer orange take out your balloon.”
Bobby brushed himself off in disgust. “What did you do that for? I was checking the acidity.”
“Awww, the big sensitive football player got his feelings hurt? You were too good a target to miss. You’re lucky it wasn’t the batch of saltpeter!”
He held his hands in mock apology as he stepped toward Rita.
“Hold it right there, you uncouth, smelly excuse for a pilot,” said Rita. She cocked back her arm. “One more step and you’re dead, zoombag.”
Bobby sprang forward and grabbed her by the wrist, yanking her to the edge of the vat. “Okay beanpole!” He picked her up and heaved her headfirst into the fruity mixture. “Now who’s calling a Navy aviator a ‘pilot’?”
Spencer’s body ached from riding back and forth: railgun launcher, microwave farm, and the encampment for the crowd of Alamogordo ranchers and townspeople. Too many things still needed to be done, and General Bayclock could arrive within a week—if he was coming at all.
The Alamogordo city council had assigned nearly fifty people to prepare a site where the coalition of ranchers, businessmen, and city workers would establish their defenses. Spencer had insisted that the encampment be far enough away from the circular expanse of whiplike microwave antennas to avoid danger from the smallsat power beaming every day at noon.
Now he sat beside a small cookfire outside the command trailers. Rita joined Bobby and Gilbert as they formulated plans for the next day; she made an extra effort to sit by Bobby, Spencer noticed, who seemed too accommodating when she motioned for him to scoot over to give her more room.
Rita turned to the side and spat some of her last tobacco. “If Bayclock has a couple hundred soldiers, there’s only one direction he can come—north. I rode out west today, and the Organ Mountains are too damned rough for an army to negotiate.”
“Could he approach on the other side of the mountains and circle up from the south?” said Gilbert.
Bobby shook his head. “Bayclock isn’t going to be interested in surprise. I’ll bet he doesn’t expect much resistance from a few wimpy scientists. He plans to strut in here, puff out his chest, and ask us to hand over the keys.”
Spencer grunted. “Then he’s in for a shock.” The others gave a nervous chuckle. “How are the other defenses coming?”
“Railgun test in three days,” said Gilbert. “We’ll try to calibrate the range. And the big catapults are almost complete. They can throw a hundred pounds of rocks half a mile. That’ll add to Bayclock’s misery.”
“Good,” said Spencer. “Any luck with the citrus explosives?”
Bobby rocked back on his heels and tossed a small stick into the fire. “Last week we located a couple hundred crates of oranges and lemons decaying at the depot in Holloman Air Force Base. One of the local businessmen remembered delivering a batch right before the base closed down; a wagonload more is due in from the surrounding groves. Rita’s, uh, coordinating the extraction and it looks like we can start mixing the stuff by day after tomorrow. If Romero can get the catapults ready, we can try the first test after Gilbert’s calibrated the railgun.”
“Good. What about the gunpowder?”
Bobby shook his head. “The piss detail—er, I mean the ‘saltpeter resource group’—has already done their part, and we’ve made plenty of charcoal. But we’re having trouble finding enough sulfur to make it worthwhile. It would take a month to ride over to Silver City and back, where they’ve mined gobs of the stuff. We’re lucky to have any gunpowder at all for the rifles.”
“Everybody keep thinking,” said Spencer. “I hate these one-point solutions. We’re just begging for something to go wrong at a bottleneck.” He felt a cramp in his leg as he stood. “Let’s get back to work. Sleep in shifts. We’re running out of time.”
As he bent to massage his calf, he watched Rita and Bobby head out side by side. He didn’t know why, but he felt a pang of loneliness. He remembered Sandy, the dark-haired girl who had rescued him from a life of nerd-dom back in high school; as he turned back to work, he wasn’t sure she had entirely succeeded.
Juan Romero surveyed the crowd of old farts by the catapult and suppressed a sigh. It wasn’t much of a fighting force, but all the men and women who could shoot or ride were training with Bobby Carron, learning details of guerrilla warfare. The few aviation-trained volunteers took turns in the lookout balloon; others had evacuated to Cloudcroft in the mountains.
That left Romero’s catapult group. Forty-two members of the “gang that couldn’t shoot straight,” he thought. Why do I feel like this isn’t such a good idea?