Confederation -- 9

Chapter 9

I had two items on my agenda. First, I wanted to gather a fighting crew for the new FTL and possibly some women crew members for all three ships. The second thing I needed to do was locate a scientist, preferably a medical doctor capable of research or a biologist, who could help me figure out why the Pug-bears' brain-enhancing symbionts were not growing correctly on Earth. The last I'd heard, no one had encountered an intelligent Pug-bear for over two years.

By the end of the second day of our return to Earth, the Sunnys, aided by some of the Marines, had the gun mount prepared on the bow-deflection plate of the newly captured ship. At the same time, another crew had been busy detaching the gun from one of our waist mounts.

I hated to weaken my ship's offensive capability in that way, but I felt about as confident as you could get that we weren't going to have another space battle anytime soon. I'd won my first space conflict handily, but then I'd been fighting shuttle-craft that were more lightly armed. Our two remaining anti-matter cannons were far more potent than the shuttle-craft plasma projectors and the smaller anti-matter guns. Another advantage was the connection of the weapons to our ship's power rather than relying on battery power; they'd shoot until the ship failed.

Despite having discussed the weapons at some length with Frazzle, I was still ignorant of their true capabilities and limitations. Like all the Sunnys, he was reluctant to discuss or think about anything relating to violence, and apparently, weapon technology fell under that category.

All of this was in the back of my mind while I was playing with Michael and Rowan. She was getting to the point where she could sit upright without falling over, and we were engaged in a kind of tickle game with a stuffed bear. As I poked it into her tummy, both she and Michael laughed.

The inoffensive bear was grabbed and immediately conveyed to her mouth. She wasn't yet teething, but she drooled all over its ear. Michael thought that was funny, also.

The bear reminded me of our enemies. For about the hundredth time, I regretted calling our main enemies Pug-bears in the panic-stricken moment when I realized that we were about to be rushed by a large number of them that we'd encountered in a Nebraska Air Force hanger.

The Sunnys called them "Masters," but that didn't sit well with me. I wasn't going to give them that degree of respect. I reluctantly concluded, once again, that I'd continue with the Pug-bear designation.

I sighed and stood up. I'd have to go and try to coerce Frazzle into talking about the anti-matter technology. If there were any chance the guns would fail or do something unexpected, I figured that I'd be better off knowing about it in advance.

Liz had been watching our playtime with a pleased expression that turned to concern when she saw my change of attitude.

"What is it? I know you too well, Dec. You've got some problem on your mind, and you're trying to figure out how to handle it."

I smiled and shook my head. There was no way I could put anything over on her. She was too perceptive.

"Take over with the kids, Dear. I'm going to talk to Frazzle about anti-matter. I've got some questions for him," I responded.

She moved over to the children just in time to cushion Rowan's head as she toppled over backward. "Go easy on him, Dec. You know how he gets upset about weapons."

"I will. I'm going to try and keep it on a technical basis, so maybe he won't freeze up on me," I said, going out the door of our cabin.

A few moments later, I came through into the bridge. Frazzle wasn't there, but it turned out that he'd gone into the cafeteria with Red to get something to snack on.

I went through the transporter to the cafeteria. When the door opened, the two of them jumped as if they were guilty. They'd been snuggling and making out, or whatever Sunnys called it. I was stricken with a bit of guilt myself. I hadn't intended to break up their personal time since they had little of it due to their duties.

Frazzle spent almost all of his time at the ship controls. He was also what I'd taken to calling our chief science officer since he was the most theoretically oriented of all of our Sunnys. Many of the newly rescued Sunnys were technically adept, but Frazzle seemed to have their respect, and they almost always deferred to him on ship maintenance.

As I've mentioned, his wife, Red, spent a lot of time babysitting for us. Since Liz and I were nearly always planning or meeting with the Marines or Kasm's people, that meant that she and Frazzle didn't have the extended togetherness that I'd learned was normal for newly married Sunny couples.

I turned to go back, resolving to wait until they came back into the bridge, but Frazzle called out to me, "Dec! Wait. It okay. We want to talk to you."

I caught an undercurrent of concern from both of them simultaneously, and it halted me instantly.

"What is it, Frazzle? I didn't mean to interrupt you two. You don't get enough time alone anyway," I said.

Red let out a series of whistling sounds that I'd learned was their laughter, then recovered herself and said, "We get enough time. Dats what we wanted to tell you."

Frazzle looked at the floor, and I could swear that he was embarrassed. "Dec. We having a baby."

I was both relieved and concerned. "Will Red be okay on the ship, or do we need to get back to Earth or somewhere?" All I could think of was that maybe she'd need some special environment or something.

He answered in the negative. "No, it be no problem. Sunnys lays eggs, and dey don't hatch for many days. The babies are strong, too, so no problem for us. We just worried that your babies need care and now ours too."

"I'm very happy for both of you. Don't worry about my children. Michael's old enough to require less care, only watching to ensure he doesn't get in trouble and Liz and I can take care of Rowan. So, anyway, it shouldn't be a problem. We've been very grateful to Red for watching our children. It was very helpful, but she doesn't need to worry about it." I paused, "When will you have your baby...uh, egg... whatever?"

That was awkward, I thought. Fortunately, both the Sunnys and the Sim-tigers were socially robust and nearly impossible to insult.

Red laughed again and responded, "We have de egg in a few days now. The baby have to be kept warm for many days in egg before it ready to come out."

Frazzle added, "We got incubator fixed in cabin, so egg will be warm."

This was news, but it wasn't the reason I'd come, and my mind turned back to the anti-matter gun. Frazzle saw my change of expression and asked, "Whats you want to talk about, Dec?"

"I don't want to upset either of you, but I need some information about anti-matter," I answered, trying to ease into the conversation.

Frazzle let his shoulders droop, and I knew he was upset, but Red suddenly gave him a hard shove. "Get over dat!" she said. "You and me both know dat there be plenty of need for the shooters. Tell Dec what he need to know."

Frazzle sort of shook himself and then asked, "What's you want to know. I can talk about the technology, an I tries not to think about the use."

I considered how best to ask. "What I want to know is a simple explanation of how they work and what could go wrong with them unexpectedly. I don't want to be surprised at a critical moment."

He seemed to be thinking it over, so I added, "I'd also like to know about their limitations and true capabilities. I feel like I've been lucky so far, and I need to know more."

He drew a breath and began to explain, "Making de anti-matter particles normally takes much energy, but we cheats. The weapon creates a field that gathers positively charged virtual particles from the sub-field of space –"

Here I interrupted, "What's that mean?"

He continued, "You call it de quantum plenum. It's full of particles of all sorts coming and going, so there plenty of anti-particles to grab with the weapon field. The power of the weapon, the little power packs for the hand weapons, and the ship power for the big gun first are used to grab these particles. All sizes of guns work the same. Just the smaller ones can't grab as much particles."

He paused for breath, and I interrupted again, "What happens to the particles once this field captures them?"

He smiled, a closed lip tightening of his cheek muscles, and looked aside at Red. She nodded her head.

"Dat a good question, and it's the next thing that the power pack does. It powers a circular field that uses the strong magnet force. The positive particles pulled from the virtual plenum become real here and are trapped in the circle field. When the shoot button is pushed, the field opens, and the particles, whoosh –" waving his hand wildly, "fly out. The direction tube (by which I thought he meant the barrel) has magnetic field that keeps the particles in the tube and away from the sides. That field also makes the particles to go faster. It uses electric force to make them accelerate to close to light speed. An you know what happens when anti-particles hit regular matter. Fswhoosh!" He threw both paws up in a gesture intended to represent the resulting annihilation.

"Okay. That sort of explains how the things work," I said, thinking about what he'd just told me. "What can go wrong with the system? Does it wear out or break?"

"De direction tube and the place where the circle field is can sometimes get erode by leaking particles. Dis happen most when the power pack is low and the magnetic field not strong enough. So, we put limiter on the weapon. It won't work if not enough power. The handheld ones have flashing red light when power packs get too low. But this not a problem for the big shooter attached to ship-power. It not run out of shots, and power is enough to keep erosion very low."

He scratched his nose and then continued slowly, "De only problem you have with the big ones is that regular atoms in air or space dust get dissolved and thin anti-matter pulse down. If too much dust or try to shoot through too much air, the pulse gets used up and no damage to the target happen. Same happens to small guns if try to shoot too far."

"Frazzle, I've always thought that anti-matter reacting with ordinary matter would create an explosion. Why doesn't that happen?"

"The shooters project a long burst of particles. Not much hit at once, though very fast. Difference like dripping water on dirt compared to dumping whole bucket at once on dirt pile. Best I can 'splain," he shrugged in a very human-like gesture.

Our, or maybe I should say, my grasp of physics wasn't up to much more than this anyway, so I went on to my next question, "How far and how fast do the big ship cannons shoot?"

"De direction tube on the big ones use lot of energy with each pulse. By time the pulse reach the end of tube, it going nearly light speed. That gives very fast shot. Distance determined by matter in between like I 'splain. Only thing is shooting at long, long-distance, pulse take a while to get there, so target can move," he answered, waving his finger in the air with an attitude of admonition.

"Okay, so keep the targets fairly close. The atmosphere must not be too much of a problem for the big gun. It had no problem burning a wide path through the middle of the Pug-bears position from space."

"Dat's correct. It more a problem for handheld weapons. They not nearly as powerful. But when we shooted Boulder to get the Pugs, I boosted power in the gun, so circle magnetic field built up much more particles than normal. Can't do that much, and it take some time. Try too often, and erode becomes a problem," he answered.

I judged that I'd gotten about as much information as I could understand. "Thank you! I'm going to talk to Rudy. You two continue where you left off."

They laughed as I turned to the transporter. I was still smiling when I came back onto the bridge.