I cleared my throat as I acknowledged the introduction. “So, what do these projectile weapons throw?”
“These, sir,” Jerith replied. He dropped a metal cylinder into my hand. The cylinder was about twenty millimeters in diameter and eight or nine centimeters long. One end was pierced by four equidistant holes.
“They’re actually small rockets,” Jerith said with the pride of a new father, “In space, you can see their drive flare, though we use radar to walk the rockets onto the target. This one is unplated, but the ones in the guns are plated with collapsed metal.”
I gasped. “But that would make them mass…”
Hari nodded. “About fifty kilograms in a one-gee field.” His skull-like grin was back. “You should see what they do to a hull!” He exclaimed. “They… well, what am I talking about? You're going to see! However, think about a collapsium-plated mass of fifty kilograms impacting an area only twenty millimeters in diameter at a relative velocity of several thousand meters per second. We've had them penetrate both sides of a target hulk, depending on what they hit inside. Of course, if they hit the magnetic fusion bottle…”
I nodded, and examined the turret with care. I wasn’t unfamiliar with the turret concept. They were common in tanks. But this ‘ball turret’ appeared to move in ways that a tank turret couldn’t. A tank turret rotates and has a laser or particle beam projector that can elevate. In this thing, it seemed that the whole ball elevated as well as rotating, giving an impressive field of fire — apparently an entire hemisphere.
“Let's see,” I said, “Your operator sits in the seat attached to the back of the weapons. How does he control the turret?”
Jerith grinned. “Feedback receptors in his helmet. The gunner moves his head slightly in any direction, and the turret rotates in that direction. Simple, intuitive and the gunner doesn't have to think about it, or be well trained. Most people catch on in a few minutes.”
I let myself be talked into squeezing into the seat. Jerith strapped me in. “I apologize for the cramped quarters, Commodore, but the turret is entirely self-contained. We didn't have time to figure out how to move the rockets into or out of the turret while it was moving. All this,” he waved a hand at the boxes squeezing us in, “is ammunition.”
Once seated, it wasn't uncomfortable, but an overwhelming sense of being cramped set in. Jerith slipped the helmet onto my head, then retreated and closed the small door. I looked around. In front of me were two handles attached to the rear of the box that joined the tubes. Each handle had a large red button set into its top. Suddenly an intercom hummed in my ears.
“All right, Commodore. Between the handles in front of you is a switch marked ‘Armed’. Flip it on.” I did so, and the turret immediately began slewing wildly.
“Easy, Commodore!” the voice shouted. “Hold your head still!” I froze my head, and the turret instantly steadied. After a few seconds, I twisted my head slightly to the left. The turret slewed, and suddenly I was looking out between the tubes at the planet we’d just left.
“It doesn't take much motion, Commodore. We wanted the turret to be as responsive as possible. Now, turn your head slightly to the right.”
I tried it, cautiously, and the turret obediently swiveled. I raised my head slightly, and suddenly I was looking into open space. The response was immediate but, I thought, easily controllable. I was beginning to get excited. I moved my thumbs back to the red buttons, and pressed them both. There was a thrumming more felt than heard, and two trails of fire spewed from the tubes. Yes, I thought, it wouldn’t be a problem to walk those onto a target.
A few minutes’ practice with the ‘ball turret’ made me quite confident that I could handle it. Maybe Hari and Jerith had something. Using the feedback helmet, I could control the turret quite well and very quickly. Certainly, a targeting computer would be faster and more accurate — but perhaps a man would be enough.
The intercom came to life again. "Now, Commodore, we’re going to be coming up on the target shortly. It's a scrap ore carrier. Lower the goggles from your helmet. They’re really radar repeaters that will magnify and let you see your target. Without them, you wouldn't be able to see a ship at ten meters.”
I lowered the goggles, and everything went black. I was just about to ask if something was wrong when the voice resumed. “The Captain will be rotating the ship in a moment, to give you a shot at the target. When the ship appears, you're cleared to fire. The range will be five hundred kilometers.”
Suddenly, a shape appeared at the bottom of my goggles. I lowered my chin slightly, and the image was suddenly in the center of my field of vision. Excited, I mashed the red buttons. The streams of fire looked different through the goggles, and I had to remind myself that I wasn't really seeing the fire, but magnified radar images of the tiny, fast-moving rockets. I think even the first rocket hit the hulk. At any rate, I had no trouble holding the ship in my sights.
“Cease Fire!” the command came over the intercom. I released the buttons. “The Captain would like to know if you’d like to try it on a combat approach,” the voice asked.
“Yes, I would,” I replied. “I assume we were pretty much stationary relative to the target just now?”
“Yes, sir. The Captain says that it’ll take about an hour to adjust our orbits to make a combat approach. If you'd like to step out of the turret, just turn the arming switch off.” I did so, and the turret swiveled back to its original position and froze. Young Jerith opened the turret, removed my helmet, and released the safety straps. I squeezed out of the cramped turret.
A grinning Hari was waiting for me. “Well?” He asked.
I was trembling with excitement. “You may really be onto something!” I exclaimed. “I want to try it on a combat vector, but it looks like this may work!”
We launched into a technical discussion. Yes, the gunner would have to stop when he exhausted his rockets, but the Captain could rotate the ship to move another turret into position to compensate while they reloaded the first. Besides, most space combat consisted of hours of maneuvering to permit seconds of actual fighting. Yes, they envisioned using the equidistant turrets to provide overlapping fields of fire.
The most limiting factor of the designs was the requirement that each turret be totally self-contained. They were working on it, but had no solutions at present. What about using lasers in place of the finite ammunition supply of the guns?
Hari shrugged. “We’ve got one rigged up in one of the other turrets,” he replied. “The main problem there is that there are no atmospheric particles to make the beam visible. It requires much more sophisticated sighting equipment. Besides, the magnetic bottle of the power unit takes up as much room as the boxes of rockets — and unfriendly strangers will be targeting the turret,” he added. “Imagine what would happen if a particle beam hit the magnetic bottle.”
I shuddered.
A sudden grin broke onto Hari's face. “Besides, we've got better things to do with the lasers.”
“What better things?” I asked.
Hari just grinned. “Patience, Commodore. You’ll see.”
We began the combat approach. We could feel the ship begin to jerk and corkscrew, despite the gravity compensators. The Captain was taking this drill seriously. As well he might, I figured. Any Captain would be a fool to miss a chance to drill his crew under simulated combat conditions. I hurried to the turret, and Hari and Jerith helped me slide in and buckle down. One of the things I needed to know was how long it would take to man and arm the turret. The helmet slipped over my head and the goggles dropped. I heard Hari and Jerith scramble out of the turret, and flipped the arming switch.
The turret slewed as I tried to locate the target. The Captain evidently rotated the ship, as I suddenly saw the blip of the target appear. I swiveled the turret into position and mashed the buttons. As soon as the streams of fire appeared, the Captain began maneuvering wildly, as though dodging missiles and lasers. I found I had little trouble holding onto the target. Oh, an unexpected maneuver might cause me to slew off-target, but I could reacquire in seconds. In a few moments, we were past the hulk, and I secured the guns, flipping the arming switch off.