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“The briefing said they dropped a nuke through the Glass,” Vote said. “What’s there going to be to find? I mean, even if there were other survivors, they’re gone. Right?”

“That, Marine, is what we’re going there to find out,” Berg replied. “And to do that, we need to get this shit loaded. So I’d suggest more packing and less chatter.”

4

“Handsomely! Lower away!”

“What the grapp does handsomely mean?” Sergeant Priester asked nervously.

There was plenty of reason to be nervous. The bosun doing the shouting was in charge of the party loading the SM-9s, space-combat missiles based on the Trident and tipped by Adar ardune warheads. They probably wouldn’t destroy the entire area if one dropped free, but only probably.

Ardune was a substance known as quarkium, only a theoretical material before encountering the Adar. The material was composed of unique quarks, entirely of quarks of one particular type. Since quarks combined with other “flavors” in nature, when released to encounter “normal” material it caused subatomic chain reactions that were more powerful than equal quantities of antimatter. Antimatter just hit normal matter and released their combined energy. Quarkium did that and then just kept giving and giving. The SM-9s weren’t the only quarkium devices on the ship. The space-torps were quarkium tipped, and the drive used it. All in all, the Blade was just one giant nova waiting to happen. If there had been any choice but sitting it in Newport News, the Powers That Be would have gone for it.

Unfortunately, basing anywhere else was logistically unsupportable. The Blade was a ship. It was a big, complex system of machinery. When it returned from the last mission, whole sections of its hull blasted away, it had been forced to put down at Groom Lake, the region people knew as “Area 51.” But despite movies to the contrary, there were no facilities to repair spaceships at Groom Lake. Doing the minimal repairs to get the ship capable of entering the water had taken up more time than all the repairs at Newport News.

And building a space port was out of the question. The program was still entirely black. Any such facility would have been instantly spotted by Russian spy satellites. Heck, the construction would be obvious to commercial satellites. And creating some huge underground facility that a ship the size of a WWII battleship could fly into would have been nightmarish.

Using the sub pens at Newport News, dangerous as that might be, was the only way to maintain any shred of deniability and security. There were plans in the works, once a breakthrough made it possible to create more ships, to create a major spaceport. But in the meantime, Newport News was the world’s first.

The organized chaos of the rapid loading proved that, for the time being, it was a good choice. The missiles, under Marine guards from the nearby Naval Weapons Station, could be rapidly and efficiently loaded at the same time as the mass of material necessary for the mission was being shoved through every hatch the ship had.

The number of hatches was, however, limited. So part of the load plan detailed specific groups to specific hatches and included routes to their storage areas. Otherwise you ended up with sailors loaded with food, cleaning supplies and parts crossing paths with Marines loaded with weapons, body armor and equipment. It was never a good mix.

“Handsomely means slowly and carefully,” Berg said, negotiating his way down a ladder with an armload of body armor. “Which is how we’re going to have to load the Wyverns.”

The Wyvern suits were nine feet tall and weighed in at just under a ton. The bulbous body of the suit held the pilot, who drove it through a set of controls attached to arms, legs, head and torso. Half worn, half “flown,” the suits were getting more and more intuitive with each iteration. But they were difficult to load in a submarine.

“As soon as your team’s gear is stored, meet me in the Wyvern storage area. We’re next to use the crane after the missiles.”

“Got it,” Priester said. “I’ve never loaded them before. Is it that hard?”

“I dunno,” Berg said. “When I got to the unit, they were already loaded. But I’m told it’s a stone bitch.”

“Three teams,” Gunnery Sergeant Juda said. “Lower, tote and load. Two-Gun.”

Juda was a short, slight, intense senior NCO with jet-black hair and a face that was unusually pale for a Marine and that seemed to have a perpetual five-o’clock-shadow. His parents had defected to the U.S. during the latter part of the Cold War and although he had been born and raised in New Jersey he carried a fire of anger against anyone and anything that smacked of an enemy of the United States. What he had to say about communists, pseudo-Marxists or any other stripe of socialist wasn’t printable.

“Gunny?” Berg answered. He was already worn out from loading all the team’s gear and accoutrements. Now they had to load Wyverns. Thank God the Navy was handling the ammo.

“Your team is going to be on lower duty to start,” the gunny continued, pointing up. Room for the Marine “security detachment” and the scientists they normally carried had been made by ripping out twenty of the twenty-four missiles that had once filled the ship. A large housing area had been installed to replace them, containing not only bunks for the Marines and small cabins for the science teams but kitchens, mess halls, toilets, supply room, armory, labs and all the other things people needed to live, work and fight. There wasn’t actually much room for bodies.

The space where one tube had been, though, was left open. The open space descended through all three levels of the ship, with heavy hatches at each level and on the outside. It was the primary loading point for all the heavy equipment the Marines and scientists needed, including the Wyverns.

The Wyverns themselves were stored in racks between the remaining missile tubes, sixty of them in all. It was up to nine Marines to get them all loaded in less than twelve hours.

“The Wyvern will be dropped through that hatch,” the gunny continued. “Bosun Charles is in charge of lowering. On the first level it’s not much trouble. You attach those lines to the clamp points on the shoulder,” he said, gesturing at the devices, “then swing the Wyvern over to the side until it’s on solid ground.

“But we’re starting on the bottom level,” the gunny continued, grinning evilly. “And the problem with lowering them that far is that they have a tendency to swing. So at each level they have to be secured. Question?”

“Two secure points to prevent them swinging, Gunny,” Berg said, frowning. “There are only three of us. There are three levels.”

“You’ve put your finger on the problem,” Gunny Juda said, still grinning. “Here’s the answer,” he continued, pointing to a series of davits on the bulkhead. “One guy on each level. Run one line through the aft davit, one line through the forward, then bring the standing end together through the central davit. That centers it if you belay properly. Use the leather gloves to belay it and don’t wrap the lines around your body. I’d much rather lose a Wyvern than a Marine. Stop it at each level and put in the control lines. Sergeant Priester.”

“Present, Gunnery Sergeant.”

“When it reaches the load level, your team will then hook the Wyvern into its carrier,” the gunny continued, pointing to the thing that looked vaguely like an exoskeleton on wheels. “Hook it up from the front, which may mean swinging it around, crank it back and roll it to the secure point. There you leave the carrier, pick up the next one and return to the load point. Are you clear on that?”