Vorpal Blade: Chapter Three

Old Friends, Same Problems

    All the Adar tech in the world hadn’t helped the lunchtime traffic on Monticello. Bill weaved his Ford Electra into the left hand lane, getting around a late model Chevy pick-up that was carefully doing the speed limit, and floored it, trying to make it through the turn at VA 168. Once past 168 he’d be clear most of the way to base.

    Unfortunately, as he approached the light it turned yellow. He figured he had time so he floored it but the car instead decelerated, the electric motor dropping to idle as the brakes automatically slid him to a controlled stop.

    Oh, yeah, Adar tech was good for some things! The pick-up blew past him, still doing a stately 45 miles per hour. He hoped the old fart got a ticket.

    The bright purple Chevy Neon that had been on Bill’s bumper suddenly pulled out, the light having changed to red, and sped through the intersection causing a flurry of honks but, fortunately, no accidents. Speaking of Adar. Worst drivers in the world.

    Christ. Could this day get any worse?

    It wasn’t really a florist’s shop. It was a shop that supplied flowers for corporations and hotels. The company had no store-front, just a back door through the loading area. And the people that worked in the company were much more accustomed to the occasional street person wandering in and looking for a handout than fourteen year-old girls with some alien pet.

    “Can I help you?” the young man with his arms full of arrangements asked, curiously. He couldn’t help but stare at the thing on her shoulder; as he watched it moved from one side to the other, the green eyes glittering in interest at the bustle in the room.

    “I’m looking for Mr. Miller,” Mimi said, politely.

    “He’s over there,” the man said, gesturing with his chin since his hands were full. “Go on in.”

    The room was more or less unadorned and looked more like a half-finished basement than a florist’s. White wooden tables were heaped with flowers while several workers in eclectic attire assembled arrangements. About half were females but there was as much long hair amongst the men working on the flowers as there was with the women. Most of the men working in the shop were in shorts, as were a couple of the women; it was hot and the only breath of cold air came as a man exited a huge walk-in refrigeration room, his arms filled with colorful orchids.

    Miller had his back to the entrance and was peacefully snipping the bottom of some iris stems when Mimi cleared her throat.

    “Hello, Mr. Miller,” Mimi said, wondering if the former SEAL would recognize her.

    Miller clearly was puzzled by the young lady who had spoken to him, but after a moment he placed the thing on her shoulder.

    “Mimi,” the SEAL said, grinning. “What a pleasant surprise. It’s been, what? Five years? You’ve grown. And Tuffy’s…”

    “Changed,” Mimi said, grinning. “All the ET people got really excited when that happened. Only one of them got it right, though. I was talking to him one day in school and just sort of thought that I’d gotten over the whole stuffed animal thing. And he looked really…dumb that way. The next day…whole new Tuffy.”

    “You’re here on a trip?” Miller asked, puzzled. He was wearing a loud Hawaiian shirt, open most of the way down chest a chest covered in graying hair, and a pair of cut-off desert camo BDU shorts. “In town for school or something? Why San Diego of all places?”

    “I’m not here on a school trip,” Mimi replied. “I came looking for you. We have to go to Newport News and see Dr. Weaver.”

    “What’s Bill want?” Miller asked, gruffly, turning back to his irises.

    “He didn’t want anything, but there’s something he needs,” Mimi said. “You, me and Tuffy. Tuffy told me. And we’re going.”

    “Oh, we are, are we?” Miller asked, turning back around. “I’m out of that game. You get older, you get slower. There’s a time to reap and a time to sow, all that stuff. In my case, there’s a time to kill and a time to heal. So if you and Tuffy have to do something, you go, girl. I’m going to keep making floral arrangements.”

    “If you don’t go…” Mimi paused and looked around the crowded room. “Can you take a break or something, we have to talk.”

    “Okay, okay,” Miller sighed. “Bob! Going on break. I don’t know how long I’ll be. That okay?”

    “Sure, Chief,” the younger man called back. “Try to get those arrangements done by four, though.”

    The coffee shop was considerably cooler than the floral factory. It was still early morning and the tall buildings on either side provided shade from the sun. For that matter, San Diego rarely got hot during the early fall. Only when the Santa Annas blew down from the mountains did the temperature get much above seventy-five.

    Miller set his mocha down and leaned back in the chair, considering the young lady who had dragged him away from work.

    “You came all the way out here on your own?” Miller asked, surprised.

    “It’s not hard,” Mimi said. “There’s gates all the way to San Diego, then I took a taxi.”

    “Most of our customers can’t find the shop,” Miller mused. “The boss prefers it that way.”

    “Tuffy knew where to find you,” Mimi said, shrugging. “He told me he’d been keeping track of you.”

    “That’s nice to know,” Miller said, dryly. “So, what’s so important that you want me to go to Newport News.”

    “They’ve finished the ship,” Mimi said, carefully. “It’s still covert and I’m not going to blow that for them. But Tuffy says that I have to be on it, with him, when it leaves. They’ve completed the…shakedown cruises. The next launch is going to be out…. Tuffy says that we, you, me, him, have to be on the ship. I don’t know why and I don’t know if he’s being cagey or he can’t really explain why. I know that part of the reason has to do with…causality. That’s about as much as I understood. Basically, he’s saying that the ship is probably going to fail, and fail big, if we, we three, don’t go along.”

    “Look, you can’t just walk up to something like that and say ‘we’re coming along, okay?’” Miller said, blowing out his cheeks. “The security’s going to be…a mile deep. And the entire crew, and that includes the civilians, are already going to be chosen. That’s even assuming that I’m willing to go.”

    “You’ll go,” Mimi said. “You’ll go because if you don’t the mission’s going to fail. And if the mission fails, it will probably mean the Dreen back. And this time we’ll lose. Plus Dr. Weaver will die on the mission and he’s your friend.”

    “Friends die,” Miller said, his jaw working. “One of the reason that I peacefully make flower arrangements these days is because I’ve seen lots of friends die. I don’t particularly want to meet more people who are probably going to die. Which is what going on something like that would mean. Even if we could convince somebody that we had to go along, at which we have a chance in hell.”

    “You need to call Admiral Townsend and get a meeting, today,” Mimi said.

    “He’s somebody you can just call, and he’s briefed on the mission. He can get ahold of Dr. Weaver. And Dr. Weaver can get us on the mission.”

    “You seem to know a hell of a lot for a fourteen year-old,” Miller said, blowing out again, this time angrily. “Greg Townsend…yeah, he’d take my call. But getting us on the mission…?”

    “He can get us in touch with Dr. Weaver,” Mimi said. “That’s all we need.”

    “Okay, okay,” the former chief said, shaking his head. “I guess it’s time to call in some favors. And Greg Townsend does owe me. Big time.”

    Bill parked the Electra in his designated slot and walked quickly towards the massive concrete building that guarded the upgraded sub-pens. Newport News had gotten out of the active sub business almost two decades before, when the full weight of the post-Cold War conditions had hit the Navy. Subsequent to that event, the base had mostly been used for “decomming” subs, turning them into razor blades in other words.

    Most of the subs that were going to be turned into razor blades had been turned when the Navy finally won the battle for the first warp ship. The battle had long term consequences that were clear to the admirals. Weaver was pretty sure that with the data they’d gather from use it was possible to make another warp drive, albeit perhaps not as neat as the “little black box.”

    Eventually, the earth would need a star fleet, especially if the Dreen ever used warp space to attack. The service that got in on the ground floor was pretty certain to be the eventual “space service.” Navy was navy, wet or in space. And that was one of the many arguments that the admirals, often disbelieving the words that came out of their mouths, made.

    However, the Navy was the right service for a space fleet. The Air Force, which had argued that it had much more experience with three dimensional combat than the Navy, was based around small systems with short mission times. There was a degree of complexity in creating, and especially running, a ship that was orders of magnitude away from being, say, a squadron or wing commander. There were human complexities that simply didn’t occur in the Air Force when you packed a huge number of humans into a small space and then told them they had to get along or else.

    So the Navy had whole-heartedly offered Newport News when the new boat was under discussion. Out of their own pocket, drawing on funds detailed for other bases and ship maintenance, they had upgraded the facilities to be as “state-of-the-art” as they could, even before the decision was made. The Air Force had pointed out that, unlike Dreamland, there was no way that a ship taking off from Newport News, by day or night, could remain undetected. The Navy had pointed out that the boat was to be based on a submarine. All it had to do was submerge, get far enough offshore, make sure there wasn’t anything in view via sonar, and then take off from there.

    In the final event, Newport News, a quiet little seaport on Chesapeake Bay, had become the world’s first starport. Stranger things had happened, but not many.

    The outer door to the guard facility was easy enough to pass; all he had to do was wave his card at the reader and the door opened. Beyond he was in the “blast” room. Weaver had been consulted on the design. The room wouldn’t quite stop a nuke, but it would stop anything else. There was a single door out of the room. It was designed around a bank vault, unmarked and with a keypad next to it.

    He swiped his security card passed the reader and punched in his code then went in as the powered door opened. This revealed another room. On the left hand side was a window of aliglass.

    “Weaver,” Bill said, holding up his ID to the guard. The guard’s name was Johnson, Bill remembered. They’d chatted one time in the breakroom. If Johnson recognized him, it wasn’t apparent.

    Johnson looked carefully at the ID then consulted a list.

    “Please enter your keycode,” the guard said in a monotone, still staring at Weaver as if he was a suspected terrorist.

    Bill swiped his card again and punched in a different code. That door led to a small room, windowless, with a video camera over the far door and a laser to the left. The laser swept over him, doing a retinal and surface temperature scan. The room was a “mantrap.” The inner door was interlocked in such a way as it couldn’t open until the outer door had closed.

    “Weaver, William, Lieutenant Commander, Astrogation,” a robotic voice intoned. Then the inner door opened.

    Bill had once done a short stint as a consultant to the NSA. Getting into the National Security Agency involved showing your card to a guard and then walking in. He wasn’t sure if this set-up was over-kill or if the NSA had lousy security. But, surely, there was somewhere in-between?

    As soon as he got through the final portal he turned left down the corridor and stopped to check a computer terminal. The meeting he was supposed to be at, in two minutes, was in Secure Four, a high-security auditorium. When they’d first started work on the 4144, meetings were getting so turned around that they’d installed this system to keep track. They still got shifted from time to time, so checking it had become habit.

    The system showed that the meeting was still on time and in the same place, but there was a peripheral note keyed to him saying that he had been cancelled as a briefer. He was supposed to report to call a secure extension instead.

    “What the…?”

    Bill flopped into his office chair and punched in the extension, wondering who would answer.

    “3326.”

    “Weaver,” he said, as calmly as he could.

    “Commander Weaver, this is Admiral Townsend,” the voice said. “I’m the base commander at Norfolk. A blast from the past apparently needs to talk to you. Now.” The admiral did not sound happy.

    “Sir…” Bill started to protest and then stopped. If Townsend was saying they needed to meet, now, it was something serious. “Where?”

    “My office, as soon as you can,” the admiral said. “You know how to find it?”

    “Yes, sir,” Bill replied. “I’ll be there in about… well it’s going to take at least forty-five minutes.”

    “See you in one hour.” The phone clicked off.

    Maulk. He had to drive back to Norfolk!

    When Bill reached the admiral’s office he was surprised as hell to see Chief Miller, in a Hawaiian shirt of all things, waiting in the room. Not to mention Mimi and Tuffy.

    “Good to see you,” Bill said, puzzled but pleased. “Long time, Chief.”

    “You can trip down memory lane later,” Townsend replied. “Apparently our security isn’t as tight as we would have liked.”

    “I don’t think that you can really say that, sir,” Miller replied, unhappily.

    “There’s no real way to tell how Tuffy got the information.”

    “Go ahead and explain, young lady,” the admiral said, leaning back in his chair.

    “Tuffy says that we, that is Mr. Miller, myself and Tuffy, have to go along with you on the ship,” Mimi said, calmly. “You have a warp ship, converted from a submarine, docked at Newport News. Naval Construction Contract 4144. You’re leaving in about a week. Chief Miller needs to be outfitted with a Wyvern Five. That’s why we had to meet today; he’ll need to get started tomorrow.”

    “Just like that?” Bill asked, amused. “Does Tuffy say why?”

    “Not…really,” Mimi said, showing the first sign of agitation. “Usually, we communicate with…concepts, not really words. I just realize that I’ve known something all along. But this time, it’s like I can’t understand what I know. There’s math in there, that’s mostly what it is. Very high end math, further than I’ve gone. Maybe further than you’ve gone, Dr. Weaver. But it’s locked up in causality and…chaos. The concept is just very big. I think what he’s trying to say, although he says I’m wrong, that it’s more, is that if we don’t go along, and stay with the missions in the future, the universe is going to end. Not the earth, the universe. I get a sort of feeling like a bubble popping and then… Nothing.”

    “Oh,” Bill replied, blinking. “Does he explain why? In a way that you can understand?”

    “I think it’s more like something tied to probability,” Mimi said, shrugging.

    “I can’t make head or tails of it, really. But he’s definite. We have to go along.”

    “Okay,” Bill said, shrugging. “You’re in.”

    “Just like that?” Admiral Townsend asked, aghast. “The entire team has already been chosen. And they have been training for the last year.”

    “Admiral, whatever Tuffy is, he’s never been one to joke around,” Bill replied. “And if he says that these three have to come along, they have to come along. My recommendation, sir, and I will gladly put it in writing, is that they be assigned as crew.”

    “Okay, I’ll get started on the paperwork,” the admiral said, looking over at the former chief, “There are days, Todd, when I wish you’d just left me in that damned jungle.”

    Mimi and Tuffy had been invited to stay with the admiral for the evening. While Weaver would have preferred to repair to the bar for the discussion with Miller, that was out of the question. So the two of them found themselves in a secure room with nary a beer in sight.

    “So you got your ship?” Miller asked, taking a sip of coffee. It was Navy coffee, at least, so it wasn’t exactly bad.

    “The United States now has a warp ship,” Bill said. “You wanna hear?”

    “Go ahead,” Miller said, leaning back.

    “I figured out a way to get the little black box to work,” Bill said. “The Navy built a space ship around an old Ohio. In two days we’re lifting off for the first deep space mission. We’ve tested it in the system, but we’ve never even gotten to the heliopause. This time we’re going to other worlds. You in?”

    “Like I’m going to settle for just that,” Miller grunted. “I want access to the details. The thing is, I don’t know why that furball wants me on this trip, so I don’t know what I need to know. And neither do you or Bob Townsend. So I need access to all of it.”

    “That’s gonna be tough,” Bill admitted. “The security level on some of this stuff is cut-your-throat-after-reading. And in case you hadn’t noticed,” Bill added, waving at his gold leaves.

    “I’ll admit I’m having a hard time with that,” Miller said. “Who the grapp was stupid enough to give you a commission?”

    “More a concession to reality than anything,” Bill said, shrugging. “Lots of stuff works the Navy way for this. How to pack people into a ship and keep them fed, watered, aired and sane. How to run multiple complex systems. One big difference…”

    “It ain’t water,” Miller said, leaning back.

    “It ain’t indeed,” Bill said, grinning. “It ain’t even underwater. Space has damned few reference points, stuff that you don’t find on earth. Vacuum. Stars. You can think of them as rocks and shoals, but there’s a fundamental difference between brushing too close to a reef and brushing too close to a sun.”

    “Heh,” Miller said, grinning back. “You run aground in a star…”

    “And it’s a bad thing,” Bill said, nodding. “But then there’s gravitational effects, which are active when the boat is in normal space and… There’s a billion things that Naval officers, no matter how well trained, aren’t prepared for. So we’ve got a CO and XO who are, in order, a former fighter pilot and a bubblehead and then there’s me. Columbia was going through the merger mania that started after the Adar Commerce Bill and they kept yanking me around to different departments and off the ship project. So I convinced the right people that what the boat desperately needed was an astrogation officer. Someone with fundamental knowledge not only of astronomy but of the way that the drive worked, how to handle gravitational effects…”

    “Too bad you’re not the commander,” Miller said, shaking his head. “Wouldn’t that be a hoot.”

    “It’s a command slot,” Weaver replied. “I’m in line for command. Third officer in line.”

    “Jesus,” Miller said, his eyes widening. “Now that is grapping nuts!”

    “I’ve been on two cruises as wet-navy navigator,” Bill replied, calmly. “Six month deployments. One in a carrier and one in a sub. I aced the Navy Nuclear Power Training course. I’ve been to Surface Warfare School, Underwater Warfare School and I did Submarine Officer’s Advanced Course and Command and General Staff College. I am a commissioned officer in the United States Navy and I’m damned well doing the job.”

    “Sorry, sir,” Miller said, frowning. “I guess we’ve both been through changes,” he added, waving at his clothes.

    “The point being, that while I’m an unusual lieutenant commander I am, nonetheless, a lieutenant commander. I’ll call some people but I can’t guarantee that you’re going to be given ‘full access.’”

    “Figure it out,” Miller growled. “And you’re going to need to think about it for Mimi, too. But I definitely want to know how things work on this damned trip. I don’t know how I’m going to save the universe or whatever, but if I gotta I gotta.”

    “You sure?” Bill said, wrinkling his brow. “I mean, there’s things about this tub I wish I didn’t know. You’re going to puke when you see the navigation system.”

    “And all of it’s built by the lowest bidder?” the Chief grumped.

    “Lowest bidder, hell,” Bill said, chuckling. “Some of it was built by me in my garage while suffering from sleep deprivation. I could wish the lowest bidder had gotten it that right.”

    “I just hope you got all the physics right this time,” Miller said with a grin.

    “What the maulk does that mean, Chief? I always get the physics right.”

    “Well, after things cooled down for us I read up on some of that particle physics stuff you were throwing around on that mission. And you told me that muons were made of two quarks. I remember it like it was yesterday. But muons ain’t…”

    “Naw, Chief. I’m sure I didn’t say that,” Bill said sheepishly and took a sip from his coffee cup. “Muons are fundamental particles. Are you sure I didn’t say that mesons are made of two quarks?”

    “No sir. You said muons. And according to wikipedia.com muons ain’t made of quarks.” Miller grinned tight lipped. A few years as a navy officer hadn’t changed his friend’s slow southern drawl a bit and hearing it brought back memories for Miller. After all, Miller thought, with Bill the word “naw” had two syllables.

    “When exactly did I tell you that Chief? Hell, I wouldn’t make such a fundamental mistake…not under any normal circumstance I can think of.” Weaver scratched at his head and shrugged as he tried to remember the conversations they’d had from, what was it, eight or nine years ago.

    “It was right after the spike throwin’ boys rushed us…”

    “Holy maulk, Chief. There was big green monsters from outer space tryin’ to grappin’ eat us for all I knew and you’re bitching cause I told you that muons were made of quarks?” Bill wasn’t sure if he should laugh or try to kick Miller’s ass. Come to think of it, laugh was probably the better choice.

    “Hell sir, I’m just glad you figured out how to turn the safety off on that pistol.” Miller winked and tried not to giggle coffee across the table at his old friend.

    “You think the way I handled a pistol was something wait til you see what I can do with a submarine!” Bill said with a chuckle.