THE ARGUS PROJECT
14: Forward Top Speed
"It's smaller than I imagined. How much fuel can it hold?"
The flight-deck commander of the E.S.S. William Jefferson stood next to Argus, and consulted the datapanel in his own Fleet uniform.
"The ship's drive uses ionized deuterium pellets plus antimatter-hydrogen micro-pellets, that are fired by electromagnetic cannon into the reactor force-field... and the result comes out the main booster-rocket with an output efficiency of near one hundred percent. Damn near the most perfect propulsion-system in the universe. We're all damned impressed here... sir."
The flight-deck commander stepped back to make way for the Kansler and the flagship's First Admiral Sergei York.
Here in space, with only soldiers and officers, the Kansler used no hologram presence. Or, Argus suspected, holding Venix hostage on Earth had made the Kansler more confident. Even so, as Argus had come to detest the man, he tried to concentrate on his mission. Perhaps understanding this, the Kansler kept himself more in the background than usual, and let the other officers talk for him.
York seemed a little pasty and out of shape next to the Kansler - most likely due to prolonged spaceflight, which took an inevitable toll on Earth-born bodies. York's eyes were prematurely aged, and scars dented his shiny, balding forehead where he had plugged into consoles far too many times.
"Colonel Clarke," said the admiral, saluting the tall, hulking cyborg, "welcome on board. We're honored to finally have you here among us. Your personal ship has been worked over like you couldn't imagine, to finish on time. All is set for your first test flight."
Argus walked past them all, and gazed into the hangar ceiling from which the ship was being lowered toward him. It really was rather small. The cockpit section at the front, similar to his simulation capsule, took up almost one-fifth of the ship's total volume. The rest was all armor-plating, sleek flat surfaces, massive rear boosters and ominous-looking gunports.
And the whole ship's armor plating was painted white, with a garish red stripe running from nose to rear. On the top of the craft, intersecting the red stripe, was painted the seal of the Fleet and a red eagle silhouette stretching its wings across the seal...
another "brilliant" design touch from the Kansler. Argus found this choice of color odd - all other military ships, including the flagship wherein they stood, came in dull black stealth-paint.
This little ship would stand out like a bright, flying sports car in any ordinary optic telescope. Flying this crazy thing must be like boxing Ali-style, Argus thought spontaneously: teasing the opponent to try and hit you, while letting your guard down.
Two feet above the hangar floor, the ship stopped; Argus opened the side hatch and got into his pilot-seat.
"Nav?"
"Navbutler here," the familiar voice from the simulations said rapidly. "This is Terran Fleet craft F-3020, all systems ready for real-space test flight one."
"Right...."
At the pilot's com-link request, the hangar was evacuated. Yellow warning lamps flashed everywhere. Dozens of crewmen in spacesuits scrambled out, and in a minute all atmosphere was pumped out of the hall. The rotation of the hangar section slowed down to a halt, so that the artificial gravity shut down. The floor below the suspended craft opened, slid away, and exposed black space outside.
Argus could glimpse the stars - and in the distance, the far side of the Moon facing the flagship. An accident now would not hit Earth, or not that hard, he thought, but he wasn't too sure about those living on the Moon...
"Argus to Control, requesting flight release for F-3020 Flight One."
"Yes, Argus, prepare for freefall. Moorings away."
The giant crane arms opened, and the white ship floated freely on the verge of the open hangar entrance.
"Argus to Control, do you recommend auto or manual takeoff?"
The Kansler's voice sounded over the Control com-link: "Recommend a slow manual exit. Slow and steady, Argus."
The cyborg felt his hands and feet tremble ever so little, as he moved them to activate the engines and force the retro-thrusters open. The ship turned around its center, the nose pointed out into open space, the rear boosters aimed at a blast-pad in the "ceiling". Gently, Argus nudged the ship outside, and let it float a few hundred meters.
In the rearview display, he saw the flagship recede - slowly, for it was almost 400 meters long. From outside, this dreadnought showed nothing of its insides; the outer hull was an almost featureless dark-gray block of armor, shielding the 200-man crew against radiation, enemy attacks and the strain of G-forces.
And here he was, for real this time, in bottomless space. Argus was not used to weightlessness and his small ship could not hold a centrifuge for simulation of gravity.
"Relax your limbs," Navbutler suggested. "You are suffering a common psychological reaction to freefall."
"I'm cool. I'm so cool my butt freezes to the seat."
"Control to Argus, you ready to initiate the first test?"
The list of test missions appeared on the control display.
"Yeah, yeah, I mean yes, Control. Initiating first test... course plotted... so-and-so many degrees off the ecliptic, target star: Alpha Centauri. If the Jovians are watching us now, they're in for a surprise..."
His ship felt very responsive and light. Argus noted that the control servo could be set as slow or fast as he wanted. If he just set off and kept accelerating, would the flagship be able to stop him? He could blast off and never return. Then again, what business had he on Alpha Centauri, without Venix? He prepared the antimatter reactor, and could feel a tingling of excitement grow in his limbs. Argus double-checked all the reactor and rocket-booster readings, and told Control that he was ready.
"Argus, engage prime booster, acceleration rate at 1 to 30 G, absolutely no higher."
"Yes. Engaging..."
It was strange to risk one's life with an untried ship, knowing that it wasn't flesh and blood that would get killed if it blew up. What was he supposed to feel? Risking an expensive investment? The pride of the Fleet? His life, his duty to "Mother Earth"? He could only think of one risk that mattered right then: if he failed, Venix would be alone again.
Slowly, he stepped on the throttle lever and the large booster awakened. The rocket vibrations could be felt through the cockpit, despite the vibro-dampers canceling most of them out with counterwaves. Argus felt the G-force press him back into his padded seat - but that was all. No rush of blood to or from his brain - for not a drop of blood flowed through him, just some lubricant and coolant.
He stepped harder, pushing the acceleration to 5, then 10 G. Still he felt clear-headed, but heavier. The stars in the black sky, being so incredibly distant, did not move at all.
But... a warning signal came from the radar panel. Thousands of kilometers ahead, objects ranging in size from 1 meter to 1 mile were crossing the ship's path.
"Alert - incoming small asteroid cluster." Navbutler activated the response menu.
SELECT DEFENSE MEASURES:
"Zero! Three! Four! Five!"
The hours spent in simulation training with Navbutler paid off; cyborg and computer program used their private shorthand jargon. Immediately, the shield appeared in the forward view. The Leydenfrost shield looked to him like two shimmering thin plumes of ejected smoke, spreading out ahead then outward like two vast transparent umbrellas.
Normal human eyes could not discern the shield without artificial aid. The ship radar indicated that the ship passed through the outer part of the asteroid cluster; smaller particles were annihilated as they collided with the shield's ultra-thin spray of antimatter ions.
At this speed and acceleration, even a grain of space dust could punch a hole in the craft's armor plating.
In the next second, the electromagnetic repulsion field powered up as Argus had ordered - the plume of the Leydenfrost shield was caught up in the field, shot out much further outward, and faded out of Argus's view. The radar showed the larger objects, only a second away from collision, and Argus fired the proton cannon, twice.
For the first time, he could actually see how fast he was flying. The first asteroid to get hit, 1,000 kilometers ahead, exploded in a bright ball of white-hot gas and fragments. In a fraction of a second, the expanding cloud of gas engulfed the ship - and even though the fireball thinned out to almost nothing, the shield sparked and flickered, as particles were forced away or collided with the antimatter ions. Just as quickly, the fireworks around the ship ceased, and the cloud was gone, scattered into nothing.
The ship was still accelerating at 10 G. Argus looked back, and he could not see the vast flagship anymore. Behind him, the Moon and Earth had receded into two small balls, illuminated by an ever-so-slowly shrinking Sun. The view ahead was empty, except for the stars of the Milky Way and the bright Alpha Centauri straight ahead.
"Status?" he asked.
"Acceptable," Navbutler replied. "Suggest slight increase in acceleration?"
Argus just nodded, and carefully pushed the acceleration toward 20 times Earth's gravity. Now he was really getting to feel uncomfortable with the pressure of acceleration. This, he imagined, must be what it felt like for those unfortunate gas-miners in Jupiter's atmosphere, who occasionally were dragged down by freak storms, then crushed by gravity and pressure in the darker depths.
The vibrations from the rocket booster ceased; the countermeasure had tuned itself perfectly. Minutes passed... or was it hours? His eyesight focus began to blur, and his eyes felt like they didn't quite fit into their sockets.
"Cyborg... status?" he asked in a strained voice.
"Maintain muscle strain to counter G-forces, Argus."
"And what if... I don't strain against... it?"
"Scenario: your structure will start to flatten into your pilot-seat, which will also become deformed around you. It might become necessary to cut you loose from the seat upon return to flagship."
A vague sense of physical fatigue was starting to set in, and he couldn't quite tell if it was a ghost reflex or a genuine warning that his batteries ran low. Argus kept fighting the G-forces and blurring eyesight. And his head was still clear, only a little light.
His sense of time was starting to feel slightly off-kilter: at merely a fraction of the speed of light, the minute effects of time dilation affected his hyper-sharp senses.
The light from outside the ship seemed just a hundredth of a degree warped; the radio and laser signals from the now so distant flagship became fainter, but played faster - just enough so he noticed. A low-level warning came up on his internal eye-display.
CAUTION: BODY TEMP RISING. PRESSURE IMBALANCE IN INTERNAL COOLANT.
At his strained command, the ship began to feed him energy directly through his skin, by exposing it to low-temperature ultraviolet light. The receptors in the ink-black "uniform" skin soaked up the power and replenished him; he thought he could sense the energy flowing into the superconductor rings in his abdomen.
"H o w. . . f a r. . . t o. . . f l a g s h i p. . . o r b i t?"
"One million six hundred thousand kilometers and increasing. Our current course is now completely undetermined by the Sun's gravity. If we continue this course, the ship's fuel supply will be insufficient for successful turnaround. Navbutler strongly, strongly recommends: begin deceleration test and subsequent return to flagship in a lunar orbit. Please decelerate with great, great care."
"O k a y. . . h e r e . . . g o e s. . ."
He slowly, gently lowered, then killed the booster output. They were in freefall, still heading for another star at breathtaking speed - and weightless again. Argus again could move his limbs with his former ease. He rotated the ship so that it fell "backwards", and ignited the booster again with what he thought was modest force - a mistake, him grown used to thinking in percentages instead of absolute force.
And the absolute braking force hit him like a freight train. Less than 0.01 percentage of deceleration caused the ship to vibrate and rattle wildly; the vibro-dampers were too slow to catch up. Argus could feel the G-forces literally pulling at his face and eyeballs, as if someone was trying to pry his eyes out of their sockets. He shut his eyes as hard as he could, and decelerated still harder.
When the accumulated braking force was reaching 10 G he asked for reactor status, and feared the answer.
"Reactor core is barely stable. Pressure support, dampers and stabilizers at maximum. Extreme caution recommended."
The pilot obeyed Navbutler's voice of reason, and released some more foot pressure from the booster throttle; deceleration sank to 7 G, and the vibrations felt less likely to tear the ship apart. All time-dilation effects were gone.
"Control to F-3020 Flight One. Request status report!"
"Status hunky-dory, Control. Prepare to dock. I think I pushed this sports vehicle as far as it can go."
"Yes, Colonel. Are you ready for the next test?"
"As ready as I'll ever get."
Just about 72 hours had elapsed since he last saw Venix, in Old Copenhagen. The counter in the corner of his vision counted the lost days, hours, seconds and microseconds, as he had programmed it...
0. LASER SIGHT
1. STANDARD LASER, 5-10,000 C
2. GAMMA LASER, 10-100,000 C
(WARNING! SLOW FIRING RATE)
3. LEYDENFROST SHIELD EMITTER
(CANNOT DEFLECT LARGE DEBRIS)
4. MAGNETIC REPULSION FIELD (LIMITED USE)
5. PROTON CANNON
6. ANTIMATTER ION CANNON
(DANGER! TARGET MUST BE OUT OF SAFETY RANGE 50,000 KM)
7. INFLATABLE HEAT SHIELD
(RECOMM: ATMOSPHERIC RE-ENTRY)
8. ALUMINIUM BUBBLE DECOYS (LIMITED SUPPLY)
9. GUIDED MISSILES (LEFT: 2. RECOMM: LARGE TARGETS)
10. ELECTROMAGNETIC PULSE
(WARNING: MAY DISABLE CRAFT)
11. DEUTERIUM BOMB (LEFT: 0)
12. SELF-DESTRUCT (NOT AUTHORIZED)
CONTINUED OVERHEATING WILL DECREASE EFFICIENCY, CAUSE INTERNAL INJURY.
ADJUST CABIN TEMP BY -50.
CAUTION: INTERNAL POWER SUPPLY BELOW 20%.
SUGGEST DIRECT FEED FROM SHIP.
THE ARGUS PROJECT INTERNET EDITION (c)A.R.Yngve 1999, 2000, 2004. All rights reserved. May not be copied without permission.
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