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confirmation on what we were doing.
"That's the best we've got Tab. Sorry. I love you too," I told her. Then we
each went about our separate tasks.
I went to my simulation system and I started mapping out warp fields
containing large masses in the flat space of the warp bubble and stresses on
the system due to slow impacts on the outer bubble. We could warp from point
to point with these things but real-time steering was a bitch because you
couldn't see out of the Van den Broeck bubble. Then I remembered my old
Star Trek: TNG
. Anytime the Borg would attack, you would modulate the
Enterprise
's protective shields. That's it! Modulate the damn Van
Den Broeck bubble. It was so simple a child could have done it! I laughed when
I thought that. Isn't that what McCoy told Kirk when he learned how to put
Spock's brain back in?
Sara's lights-off lights-on method would work. I would set up a function
generator to drive the outer bubble on and off every few microseconds. I would
add a half wave phase shift to that switching signal and use it to drive the
sample frequency of the high-speed video cameras we had in the lab. So, the
video cameras and the outer bubble would be completely out of phase with one
another. When the bubble was on the camera would be between video frames. When
the bubble was off the camera would take a frame. Now the big question would
be where to put the camera and how to connect it. Oh, connect it to what you
ask? Hold your horses, I'm getting to that.
Annie and Calvin rushed in pushing a roll-around cart loaded with notebooks
full of blueprints and facilities drawings.
"Great guys, thanks. Annie, find me a top-level drawing of the entire
facility, preferably, one with some dimensions on there also. Calvin, find out
where there are outside video cameras with the best view of the outside world.
Then have somebody take these three cameras here and swap them out. Mount them
however you can, but get me that video signal down here, ASAP. Also, get me a
global positioning system mounted up there and route that data to me here.
Figure out how. We have about twenty minutes."
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Calvin rushed off with the three high-speed cameras. Annie began flipping
frantically through the books. "Annie, I'll be right back. I've got to see Jim
a sec." I told her. I ran two doors down the hall to the main lab where I was
just in time to overhear Jim shouting.
"Owwch! Goddamnit all to hell!" He let a crescent wrench slip and fall on his
fingers.
"Jim, you all right?" I asked, any other time I would've -chuckled.
"Yeah."
"How's progress here?"
"I'm ready to fire it up and test it. You got the control algorithm ready?"
"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 as a
spaceship and weapon. "Where are the it 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
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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, [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]