"Yep! I just finished it. And I know how to see to steer it. You know the problem we were going to have on the Moon making one swipe then recalculating the next trajectory or swipe? Well, to hell with that. We're going to modulate the field so we can see through it. Since we will be nonrelativistic we can see through the Alcubierre warp and by modulating the outer Van Den Broeck bubble we can see right where we're going."
"Nonrelativistic?" Jim sounded shocked. "Doc, what are you planning?"
"If you can't take the mountain to Muhammad my ass. By God, we'll rip the fucking thing right out of the Earth!"
CHAPTER 19
The next five or ten minutes were a flurry of, "Go hook that up over there. Try it now. NO! Wait a minute. Turn that on first, then connect this. Okay, I'm triggering the software. The coils are on. Do we get any readings from the detector?"
"Anson, I'm reading gravity modification as expected." Jim checked the detector twice. "It works. What now?"
"Shut it off for second. Let's get the general down here."
I ran back into my office. "Annie, check on the video system and the GPS. Have the signals sent down the hall instead. That big flat panel in there will be our window. And get me a shitload of walkie talkies will ya?"
"Jim!" I yelled down toward the lab. He stuck his head out of the door.
"What!?"
"This has now become the Engineering section of our spaceship. You're the chief engineer, got it?"
"Got it. Where will you be?" he asked.
"Somebody has to drive this thing. Do me a favor and see if your spousal unit needs help with that warp missile. We're going to need it soon."
I grabbed my computer setup and made it double time to the secure room with Tabitha. I told Tabitha to open the door and let any of our crew in. "We're going to need them on call. Also, we have to have communication with the lab, uh, Engineering."
"Anson, what are you talking about?"
I held up the overview drawing of the facility that Anne Marie had found in the pile of blueprints Calvin had supplied us. "This is what I'm talking about." I thumbtacked the drawing to the wall and drew a big red circle around the facility with a whiteboard marker. If my calculations were right, and if 'Becca's claims of the energy available from the new flubell ECC were correct, we had more than enough power to warp the entire facility out of the ground and use it as a spaceship and weapon. "Where are the enemy?" Okay, I've recovered. It's time to unturtle and come out swinging and kicking!
Tabitha turned to the flat panel controls and punched in a world flat map. Six different trajectories traced out across the globe. "They got to high LEO before our missile defense systems could do anything. Now they're out of range. We're the last line of defense. The President has been scrambled to Air Force One and I'm sure Congress has been mobilized."
"Do we have any idea what their targets are? Where do they plan to hit?"
"Not exactly sure but the trajectories all track over plenty of U.S. critical targets."
A corner of the flat-panel screen sectioned off and the face of a blue-suit general appeared. "Tabitha we just got this image and we lost contact from Ramstein." The general on the other end seemed grim. A satellite image from space showed us a large dust plume where Germany used to be. The death toll must have been staggering. A second box separated on the flat panel and another satellite image popped up. "There was also an impact that looks centered on the Vandenberg Launch facility in California."
The second image showed a plume that covered all the way down to Los Angeles, California to the south and three quarters of the way up to San Jose to the north. Millions had to have been killed. I was getting to the point of being so emotionally devastated by the destruction and death, which I was mainly responsible for that I could barely function. Sheer will to see the American way of life survive and years of martial arts training pressed me to focus. I focused on what needed to get done now and I could feel remorse, and mourn, later. What other choice did I have? Keep fighting, Anson!
Anne Marie burst into the room panting for air and wielding a walkie talkie. "Anson, here. Calvin said that the video hook-up is completed. He said just turn the flat panel to channels zero, one, and two. We also distributed the walkie talkies to everyone."
"Great," I took the radio from her. "Tabitha section us off part of the panel for those three channels." She did and three nice images of outside appeared on the screen. I touched the talk button. "Calvin are you out there?"
"Right here Doc! What you need?"
"Which direction is each of these cameras looking?"
"Okay let me see. Camera zero is looking due north, one is south, and two is a little west-northwest."
"Great, thanks Calvin. Where is my GPS?" I asked and wrote front, back, and left on three different sticky notes. Then I stuck the sticky notes on the three different images. I arbitrarily chose the north view as front.
"You're talking to him. I have a handheld GPS right here. Couldn't figure out how to get it to work down there."
"Okay, that'll have to do I guess. You hold on up there and whatever you do, don't panic. We're going for a little ride." I told him.
A third panel separated off showing an image of the eastern coast of Florida. Tabitha screamed, "They just hit Kennedy Space Center. They think we will need launch facilities."
I freaked out, "Tabitha your folks!?"
"Don't worry Anson, they were moved after the hospital fiasco. They are miles away from Titusville."
"I'm glad." I felt better. I liked her parents.
"Tabitha," the other general's face appeared back on screen.
"Yes Mike."
"Track Four will be right over you in about five minutes. Track Six will be over Washington D.C. on its next orbit, we're still guessing as to Track Five's target."
I looked at the world map and zoomed in on Track Four. In about five minutes it would be right over Roswell, New Mexico. "Well I'll be damned, that's where we've been hiding all this time." I pushed the talk button and flipped my laptop on at the same time. "Jim, you there?"
"Roger that, Anson."
"Okay, Jim. Start us up. We're about to go one thousand kilometers straight up." I opened the guidance program and started it. "Jim, are you picking up my computer signal okay in there?"
"Great, Anson. I'm getting about nine gigabits per second communication with you. More than enough." The wireless modem was working well through the walls of the facility.
"Okay, Jim, I'm starting the warp field. You tell me if there are any problems in there." I toggled the warp bubble on and the lights blinked on and off for a second.
"You must have cut the outside power line and the backup generators kicked in," Tabitha pointed out.
"Jim, did the power surge damage anything in there?"
"No, Anson. We are A-okay."
"Look at the view screen, Tabitha. We can still see out through the warp bubble. I'm going to create a hole in the bubble directly over Calvin that will oscillate at a much slower frequency. That way his GPS might still function. And our communication system might still function." The cameras worked great. But I had just thought about the sample frequency of the GPS system and our communications with the outside world. It probably worked at a much lower frequency than the high-speed cameras. The communications systems used both a satellite connection and an omnidirectional digital microwave transmitter. The satellite connection would be lost for now. But the omnidirectional signal would last as long as we could see a TDRSS satellite. The screen only flickered a few times but we maintained communications. Amazing!
"Calvin, you there?"
"Doc! It just got pitch black out here and the outside lights came on!"
"Don't panic, Calvin; that is a good thing. Listen, is your GPS still working?"