Troy Rising 1 - Live Free or Die (44 page)

“How much are we going to get
paid
for it?” the Chief Financial Officer asked, still bemused.

“I think the standard rate is cost plus eight percent,” Tyler said, looking at SpaceCom.
“Which is going to be about one tenth the materials price. But the asteroid was just
sitting there. However, I am not, not, NOT, going to play the usual accounting games you
guys insist upon. I'll show you my books, I'm not going to charge for overhead or any of
the usual crap. But I'm also not going to employ an army of accountants. I'll give you a
price and show you why and if you don't want it, you don't have to buy it.”

“There are going to be screams to high heaven over this,” the general said. “I want it. My
God
,
do I want it.
Explaining
it is going to be tough. And explaining why we're just paying you for it rather than
putting it out to competitive bid.”

“Nobody else in the solar system could make it,” Tyler said, shrugging. “I own SAPL.”

“Nobody else in the solar system would have the
balls
to make it,” the Boeing CEO said, shaking his head.

“Fitting it out is going to employ every defense contractor on
Earth
,” Tyler said, looking at the reps at the table. “There's plenty of graft to pass around.
Frankly, I don't think the US can handle the whole thing on its own. Oh, the majority.
Even with the devastation from Horvath attacks, we've still got the largest economy and
the largest military on earth. But we're definitely going to need partners on this. And
that, gentlemen, ladies, is all I've got for you.
Troy
. The shell, assuming no more major issues, will be formed in about seven months. It will,
however, take some time to cool. Then we can
really
get cracking. Oh, yeah, one more thing, general.”

“What?” SpaceCom said.

“I
own
this thing,” Tyler said. “And I can still make more money off it by cutting it up than
selling it to you. So the contract is going to
stipulate
that the
name
remains the
same
. Anybody who tries to name this after some unknown congressman is going to get a hundred
terawatts of personal indignation straight up their keister.”

***

“Okay,” the CFO said, after the meeting. “I get the
Troy
. And I'll admit, it's very cool and as a former New Yorker having something like that in
the sky will be... comforting.”

“Agreed,” Tyler said, sitting back in his chair.

“And the VDA project is, I'd guess, the new mirror.”

“The Variable Distributed Array,” Tyler said. “Any time it's a mirror, it's Dr. Foster.”

“Ruby?”

“Pass,” Tyler said, sighing. "I hate talking about anything I don't
know
will work.
Troy
is far enough advanced we're pretty sure it will work out. Or that we'll be able to work
out the bugs. Really, really, really big bugs, but workable.

“Last but not least,” the CFO said. “You want us to secure a
billion credit
loan from the Glatun? For
Troy
?”

“No,” Tyler said. “Their government's not going to let me borrow money for defense
systems. I'm working that end. All I need
you
to do is the paperwork. What it's for... ? That's sort of complicated. But we're going to
need
a lot
more mirrors...”

“Okay,” Tyler said, as he stepped off the shuttle. “I just told SpaceCom and my CFO and my
CEO and everybody else in the 'black' world that we can pump an exawatt, I think, of power
and manage it.”

“Petawatts, surely,” Dr. Foster said.

“Peta, exa, wattever,” Tyler said. “Tell me we can do it.”

“We can do it,” Dr. Foster said. “Probably.”

“I hate this job,” Tyler said, banging his head on the hatch coaming. “Ow!”

“Don't,” Bryan said, clapping him on the back. “This is what you came to see, right? If we
can pump a petawatt?”

“Yes,” Tyler said. “So...”

“So, first I explain how magnificent I am,” Bryan said, leading him into a conference
room. This was a converted Rangora ship, rechristened the
Lava Lamp
, which had been refitted for the deep-space science projects involved in the VDA. Most of
the materials for the VDA could only be built in space or with Glatun technology. And
Tyler wasn't interested in most people knowing he was working on a new BDL. The Horvath
bombardments had gotten people looking at the sky nervously. And he still wasn't a big
hero to the news media. Having a bigger and better laser should be taken as a good thing.
Somehow, though, people always started making Snidely Whiplash noises.

“Explain,” Tyler said.

“The VDA wasn't going to work without Ruby,” Dr. Foster said. “No standard material could,
consistently, support a petawatt of power hitting them. And the VDA, unlike the VSA, had
to be capable of
maintaining
maximum fire of at least a petawatt, preferably one point five, for up to thirty minutes.”

“So how magnificent are you?” Tyler asked.

“Not all that magnificent,” Dr. Foster said. “I had to go to the Glatun.”

“I saw the charges,” Tyler said. He still refused to think in terms of exchange rates,
even though those were getting better.

“We needed three things from the Glatun,” Dr. Foster said. “We needed superconductors,
piezoelectics and help in large artificial sapphire production.”

“And... ?”

“All three were considered standard industrial processes,” Bryan said. “So they didn't
fall under military hardware restrictions. So we have all three.”

“Excellent,” Tyler said.

“We can produce the sapphires using all earth tech,” Dr. Foster said, reaching down and
setting what looked like a large magnifying glass on the table. “Those we could produce
before. The problem was, they were hugely expensive and a couple of feet across was the
best we could do.”

“And now?” Tyler said, picking up the artificial sapphire. It was lighter than it looked.

“If we did those assembly line style,” Dr. Foster said, “that would cost about a buck.”

“Damn,” Tyler said, his eyes wide. “Right in there with glass.”

“Yep,” Bryan said, grinning. “Really easy once we got the kinks out. And we can make them,
more or less, any size. I mean, any size we can physically handle. And shapes. Pretty much
any shape.”

“Okay,” Tyler said, setting the sapphire down. “Superconductors.”

“Superconductors and piezoelectrics,” Dr. Foster said. “They're connected.”

“Piezoelectrics are... they convert heat to electrical power across different... Damn.”

“You were getting there,” Dr. Foster said. “Across a potential range.”

“If you've got heat on one side and cold on the other you produce current,” Tyler said.

“Right,” Dr. Foster said. “Earth piezoelectrics need a very high potential and the output
is low. They also don't really cool the system. They need cool to get current. Glatun
piezoelectrics don't need as much potential and have their own, inherent, potential...”

“Inherent potential?” Tyler said.

“You want the math?” Dr. Foster said.

“Please, no!” Tyler said, holding up his hands in dismay. “I'll take your word for it!”

“Bottom-line, pump in heat, any heat over about negative fifteen Celsius, and you get
current,” Dr. Foster said. “And very efficient output. It's part of their ship tech we
hadn't realized we were missing. It makes power-plants much more efficient and keeps ships
from overheating.”

“Which we need to distribute,” Tyler said. “Go on.”

“So,” Dr. Foster said, bringing up a schematic. "The VDA mirror. Ninety-six separate small
mirrors in an array. Layer of optically damned near
perfect
sapphire. And by damned near I'm talking parts per billion of contamination. Like... six
parts per billion. Thin layer of palladium reflector. Palladium's the only thing that's
going to take the energy and is reflective enough. Backing of Glatun superconductor to
transfer the heat from the palladium. That way the waste heat automatically gets
distributed. Then three
thousand
lines of piezoelectric wrapped conductors leading to the cryogenic cooling unit. Which
leads, in turn, to a shielded cooling array of superconductor, again, that can dump the
heat into space, we think, fast enough. For it to work in bursts of up to thirty minutes
at least.

“The system doesn't quite power itself. That would violate the second law of
thermodynamics. But it's
very
efficient. Oh, the stabilization is so tight you can use the beam to shave with. Tighter,
actually. Accuracy of three millimeters at six light seconds.”

“Awesome,” Tyler said. “Sounds like it's a bitch to build.”

“Well,” Bryan said, shrugging. “How many are we going to
need
?”

“About...” Tyler thought about it and shrugged in turn. “About three hundred and
eighty-two to start. And we're probably going to need a bigger, tougher system so start
wrapping your brain around it.”

“You're joking,” Dr. Foster said. “For what?”

“Compartmentalized,” Tyler said. “But there is a new need as of last month. So, when do we
find out if it works.”

“Uh...” Dr. Foster said, his mouth still open. “Uhm... right this way? Three hundred?
Really?”

“Really.”

***

“Asteroid 152536,” Dr. Foster said, proudly. “It's about the same mass as the original
Icarus.”

“It took us six months to melt the Icarus,” Tyler said. “How long?”

“You asked about an asteroid shattering kaboom on Icarus,” Bryan said, grinning. “Behold
the power of this
fully operational
VDA! Chuck!”

“Yes, sir,” the technician said, grinning.

“Open fire!”

“Takes a few minutes,” Chuck said. “We've got to get all the mirrors repointed,
permissions for retargeting...”

“Got it,” Tyler said. “I've done this a few times.”

***

“Okay,” Chuck said. “The BDA mirrors are online.”

“Lase it,” Tyler said.

He wasn't sure what he was expecting. From the gasps of astonishment in the room nobody
else was expecting the asteroid to blast apart into splinters.

“Holy hell,” Dr. Foster said, his mouth dropping again. “It wasn't supposed to do
that
.”

“I think you got it, Tex,” Tyler said, chuckling. “Asteroid shattering kaboom indeed. I'd
guess it had some volatiles that hadn't been detected. And I hope the VDA was
way
back.”

“Far enough,” Dr. Foster said. “Holy hell. Uh...”

“Think it works,” Tyler said with a chuckle.

“We don't really know, though,” Dr. Foster said. “I mean...”

“Oh, it's
working
,” Chuck said. “Temperatures are still nominal. I mean, the asteroid is gone but that's no
reason to stop the test.”

“The fact that we're taking sixty percent of the VLA
is
,” Tyler said. “No, we need to get it fully tested, but since it apparently works, let's
test it on something useful. I doubt it's going to do that to
Troy
. But it is a
Very
Dangerous Array.”

***

“The asteroid we're constructing
Troy
from is fairly oblong,” Nathan said. “We thought we could work with that. We've been
lasing the ends and trying to get them to melt. But even with a wide BDA array and seven
VSAs, we can't get the ends to heat up properly. We need a more focused system. Does the
Very Dangerous Array
work
?”

“As far as we've tested it, it works like a charm,” Bryan said. “But what I'm wondering is
why
he
knows about the VDA and
I
didn't know about
Troy
? And, by the way,
holy hell, Tyler
! Are you a
complete
megalomaniac?!”

“Why does
everyone
jump straight to megalomania when this project gets mentioned?” Tyler asked. “It's a
perfectly reasonable application of physics and thermodynamics. And it will, let me add,
be able to hold the gate against
anything
the Horvath can conceivably throw through. While protecting the VLA from attack. Well, the
critical components. With a VDA set back at a light second, firing into a sapphire
collimeter that then retransmits the power through the walls to the firing ports, the
enemy won't have a good target. They can get the supplying VDAÑ
VDAs
, mind you, there's going to be more than oneÑwith missiles but by the time the missiles
reach them the launchers are going to be gutted.”

“It's a shield and spear in one,” Bryan said. “What about the missiles?”

“The VDA can be split,” Tyler said. “Targeting those missiles is going to be a bitch. But
it's easier when they're first launched. Anything hostile that comes through the gate, we
shred. Anything. They start launching missiles, we use a portion of the power to engage
the missiles. Split the VDA beam into a dozen, a hundred, separate collimaters and we can
take out most missile spreads. It will be a tactical decision whether to hit the ships or
the missiles first. But generally, I'd think the missiles. The ships aren't going anywhere
fast. And they're not going to take out
Troy
.”

“Anyway,” Nathan said. “We need to melt the 'wings' to get the asteroid to form into a
sphere before we do the full melt and balloon. The question is, strangely, is the VDA too
powerful?”

“Dialable,” Dr. Foster said. “We can take the full power and
spread
it if that's necessary. Not a lot, mind you.”

“We don't want a lot,” Nathan said. “How long to get it here?”

“It's on the way,” Bryan said. “About two days.”

“I hate waiting,” Tyler said with a sigh.

“Get used to it,” Bryan and Nathan chorused.

***

“Think we need to spread the beam,” Tyler said.

The petawatt and a half of power pumping through the VDA was gouging a huge line through
the exterior of the asteroid and leaving behind a trail of debris. Mostly gaseous iron and
nickel with an admixture of other even
more
valuable metals.

“Yeah,” Nathan said, happily. “I guess.”

The VDA controls were so refined he was controlling it by drawing a stylus across the
image of the asteroid on a touch screen.

“Hey, look,” he said. “I wrote my name!”

“Spread the
beam
, Nathan,” Tyler said.