“No maulk?”
“No maulk.”
“Uh, sir. I know subs. I’ve spent one hell of a lot of time around them. They’re pretty damned fast. I mean, just between us, here in a secure sub pen, a big boat goes somewhere around seventy or eighty knots. Right?” Miller wasn’t sure if he was glad he asked the question or not. With Dr. Weaver — Lieutenant Commander Weaver — explanations could sometimes create an eyes glazing over effect that could damage one’s brain.
“Actually for this boat, the terminal velocity is a little lower than that. No matter how much power we pour into the propulsion it’s not that fast. And if it was that fast, it would…”
“Crush like a beer can, got it,” Miller said. “So what gives?”
“Well, you see the initiator there has millions of little holes in it about a millimeter in diameter that are dispersed about it in a precisely calculated manner. It took us months to run that simulation and more than eight months to construct the thing. Anyway, we force air out through those holes as we come up to speed. An envelope of water supersaturated with air flows in around the vessel and dramatically reduces the friction with the water. It really is a warping of the parameters of the ocean so that the submarine can go faster through it than it should normally be able to. And, of course, it’s got a spaceship engine in it. That helps. A prop won’t work by a long shot.”
“Did you think of that?” Miller hesitated and then added, “Sir?”
“Nope,” Weaver admitted. “The Russians have been trying to figure out how to do it for fifty years. Some call it supercavitation; others call it underwater warp drive. The U.S. Navy decided to go slow and stealthy and quit trying to figure it out because the propulsion system required was a volatile rocket engine. The Navy didn’t want that on a sub. But the new drive changed their mind and DARPA was so thrilled by it that they lobbied hard for the design and even paid for most of it.”
Weaver looked at his ship with affection. Oh sure it was Captain Steven Blankemeier’s command — and most certainly it was the captain’s ship — but Weaver thought of it as his ship. After all, he’d designed most of the retrofit systems on it. Nobody understood it like he did.
“It looks like a sword. A short squatty sword with a big assed grip, but a sword nonetheless.”
“Never noticed that,” Weaver admitted. “Hmmm.”
“Sooo, we sort of ram the water with that sword thingy…” Miller said.
“Correct.”
“And we use it to make fizzy stuff that makes the ship slipperyer.”
“More slippery. Sure.”
“And that keeps us from getting crushed like a beer can.”
“You see?” Weaver said. “It is possible to explain things to SEALs.”
“Got a question, sir,” Miller said, stone-faced.
“Go.”
“So, can we ram people with that? Sort of like a narwhal skewering a whaling ship? I mean, it’s not our first line of defense but is there, like, a ramming speed? Sir?”
“Let’s just tour the ship, shall we?”
The strangest thing on the exterior of the ship was definitely the ramming blade. However, close on the heels of the blade was the odd appearance of the base of the sail. There was some sort of sliding hatch on the front that really looked out of place. It currently covered whatever was under it, but if memory served it was right above the conn.
The Navy had balked at giving a civilian “full access” to the details of the 4144. But they had admitted a willingness to give access to a SEAL chief warrant officer. Which was why Miller, wearing a brand new pair of digi-cam, carrying a seabag and occasionally rubbing his recently shaved head, was following Weaver across the gangplank to the spaceship.
He paused and saluted the American flag, then saluted the bridge.
“Permission to come aboard, Lieutenant?” he asked the officer manning the entry.
“Permission granted,” the LT said, extending his hand. “Lieutenant Jon Souza, tactical officer.”
“Pleased to meet you, sir,” Miller replied.
“Time’s a wastin’,” Bill said, nodding at the lieutenant. “How’s the loading going?”
The boat was bustling with loading.
“We’ve got the ardune torps loaded,” the lieutenant replied. “We’re waiting until this evening to load the SM-9s. Laser Two failed the last charge cycle test. Brian’s got it stripped down.”
“While all that’s good to hear,” Bill said. “I hope we don’t need any of it.”
“Lasers?” Weaver asked. “What’s an SM-9?”
“Where to start?” Bill asked as they entered a hatch on the rear of the sail. There was a ladder there, which made Miller happier. He was half expecting a teleporter or something. Weaver grabbed the sides of the ladder and slid down rather expertly. He’d clearly been around boats. Miller was having various shocks but the worst one had to be Dr. William “How do you use this pistol?” Weaver as a commissioned officer with sea time.
“At the bow?” Miller asked as he slid down the ladder after Weaver.
“Torpedo room,” Weaver said, opening the hatch to the conn. “Not very interesting. Planetary study drones and some microsatellites. Well, and the ‘torpedoes,’ which are really Adari missiles. Range of about seventy klicks. Tracking system from an AMRAAM with some Adari additions. Ardune warhead.”
“That’s that… quark stuff, right?” Miller asked, looking around the conn. It looked pretty much like most of the conns he’d seen in his time. The big difference explained the sliding hatch. There was a big… window just under the front of the sail. And a portion of the conn had been elevated so you could see out. He was in a submarine with a… window!
“Quarkium,” Weaver said, nodding. “Gives about three times the bang of an equal amount of antimatter. Yield’s about sixty megatons. Of course, in space it doesn’t have much range. The SM-9As have a nuclear fission triggered quarkium warhead that works similar to a hydrogen bomb. The fission bomb triggers the quarkium release, which in turn releases a maulk load of gamma-rays, neutrons, neutrinos, and muons. Did I say energy? Lots of that.”
“How fast are the missiles? I mean, space is big, right, so they have to be fast?” Miller continued peering out the window, on a submarine, in front of him. The window seemed to be harder to get used to than the fact that he was standing inside humanity’s first starship. A freakin’ window on a submarine, he thought.
“The propulsion system is a mix of Adar tech and human. The thing is basically designed around the old nuclear thermal rocket concept but uses a small quarkium reactor instead of a fission reactor. No radiators needed and we use a dense Adar coolant for propellant instead of LOX or hydrogen or water. The Adar stuff gives us waaaay better m-dot. Using an Adar material for the nozzle we were able to get over eight thousand seconds of specific impulse out of it.”
“Uh, huh,” Miller said, looking at the window on a submarine! “Is that good?”
“Pretty good. They’ve got an accurate range of about four thousand klicks if there’s not a gravity well to fight, but here is the kicker. Max V is right at eighty kilometers per second so it’d take the thing a little less than a minute to travel the full accurate range. After that, they are out of propellant and would be coasting with no control. The ship can go a lot faster than that, so we’ll have to be careful and not shoot ourselves.” Weaver shrugged. “No idea if the missile’s capabilities are good or not compared to anybody else out there, but it’s the best we can do. Currently. We’re looking at some ways to extend the maneuvering range. Any other questions?”