FENRIR: Chapter 22

[seawasp]

Stephanie doesn't know there's plotting and scheming...

 

Chapter 22: Challenges and Concerns

Time to Launch: 550 days

     Busy busy day ahead, Stephanie thought, with a combination of anticipation and leashed tension. And all on me.

     York Dobyns was still in Washington with the President and probably half of the FORT representatives. His last communication had been a typically breezy panic-inducer: "Yep, you're on your own, Steph. Time for you to fly without training wings. It'll be fine, what could go wrong?"

     I will kick him for that last bit. She wasn't actually superstitious, but there wasn't a geek on the planet that didn't know that you never asked "what could go wrong?"

     Focus. Just a day like any other. Her first meeting was with the newly selected captain and executive officer for Carpathia – Chinese and American, respectively. She'd only been able to skim their files, but Rear Admiral Hàorán Lín's service record was impressive and he had a long, long list of skills, some of them surprising in a career Chinese military man, and Commodore Robinson sounded equally well qualified. As a bonus, each spoke the other's native language, ensuring communication.

     After that it's daily review with inspection, hopefully getting past all the main shock supports. She continued reviewing the schedule as she approached the small conference room set aside for her first meeting.

Oh, that doesn't sound good. Despite the sound-dampening material on the conference room door, she was hearing voices from inside, and they didn't sound happy.

     "—South China Sea!" Benjamin Robinson finished, glaring at Hàorán Lín. The Chinese pick for the Captain of Carpathia was returning the glare, with interest. Their gazes flicked towards her, but then returned to each other.

     "Would you care for a list of the offenses your people have committed, Commodore Robinson?"

     Stephanie didn't need to hear any more. The two people she had come here to meet were already at each others' throats.

     But would they even listen to her? She was a civilian, younger than either of them by a long shot, without even the bulky and even-tempered presence of Dr. Dobyns to back her up.

Robinson was rising towards another explosion as Lin loudly enumerated military and diplomatic offenses of the United States. Stephanie doubted they'd actually come to blows, but if this wasn't stopped, one or both of them would say something irreparable. The loud, hostile voices hammered at her – something she had never liked even as a child, and something usually alien to academia. But she had to do something about it.

Fly without training wings. How?

How would the President handle this?

Her brain instantly told her one thing: President Jeanne Sacco would not stand there frozen and wondering what to do.

A part of her said well, duh, but she's the President!

To which another part of her replied, partly with anger and partly with awed realization, and I'm the Director.

"Gentlemen," she said.

Neither Rear Admiral Lin nor Commodore Robinson took their eyes off each other. With a half-dreaming feeling of standing outside herself, expecting her voice to crack like a frightened girl's, she drew in her breath. "GENTLEMEN!"

To her surprise – and by their wide-eyed, instantaneous attention – the single word was a whipcrack of sound, cold and focused with furious precision. Her heart was hammering doubletime, but now that she had their attention she had to keep it, force them to focus on her. "Would you care to explain this scene?"

"Doctor Bronson," Lin said, voice now a more mellow bass – though retaining an edge of anger. "We were having a … difference of opinion. Begun by the Commodore, I should add."

"That is an interesting way to put it, Rear Admiral," Johnson said between his teeth. "I would –"

"Enough." Stephanie said, then when it appeared the two still might not stop, she shouted it. "Enough!" she snapped, and slammed her briefcase flat to the table; the impact echoed like a gunshot, and Stephanie said a silent prayer that she hadn't just trashed her laptop.

She met both their gazes. "Admiral Lin, let me correct you. For purposes of this meeting I am Director Bronson. That means, gentlemen, that I am your boss."

The two men looked at her with expressions that combined a worried understanding with instinctive disbelief.

"Sit down," she said, and waited until the two men had done so. She remained standing, gaining some advantage of height to glare down at them. "You may think I am 'Director' as a sort of publicity stunt. Honestly? I thought that way at first. But the President was not joking, and I am the Director of this project, and if the two of you can't get along, one – or both – of you are off this project."

"You can't just remove us!" Lin said incredulously.

"I can and I will, Admiral," she said, shivering inside at the enormity of what she was saying. This guy was handpicked by, like, two governments. If I kick him off it'll be a nightmare.

But it would be way, way worse to have a captain that couldn't work with the crew. "That goes for you too, Commodore," she said, making sure that Lin understood she was playing no favorites. "This ship will have major crew positions filled by people from a dozen countries, gentlemen. They'll all have political issues with each other, a lot of them justified.

"You will leave those issues here on Earth," she said, rapping her knuckles on the table for emphasis. "I don't care what China did, or the United States, or the UK, or Japan, or anyone. I don't give a shit about which side is right or wrong or if there isn't any right or wrong side. The two of you were chosen because you're supposed to be top-flight professionals. Act like it."

The two men looked at each other.

"Now, why don't we start this meeting over, as though none of us had ever met? Admiral Lin, I've heard wonderful things about you. Welcome to Carpathia."

Lin blinked, then rose, bowed, and extended a hand. "Thank you, Director Bronson. I see that I had not heard nearly enough of you."

"Commodore Robinson, I also reviewed your very impressive record. Welcome to Carpathia."

Robinson also stood and shook her hand. "Thank you, ma'am. Glad to be here."

"Admiral Lin has been chosen to be the Captain of Carpathia," Stephanie went on. "Admiral, allow me to introduce your executive officer, Commodore Benjamin Robinson."

The two faced each other, bowed, and shook hands. "Commodore," Lin said. "Admiral," Robinson replied.

There was a moment of silence, then Lin inhaled sharply and spoke. "You were not, by chance, a pilot as well?"

"As a matter of fact, I was. Super Hornets, mainly, though I've flown 'em all."

"Indeed. I've always envied the pilots." Lin tapped his eyes. "Never quite good enough for that."

Robinson nodded. "That's a shame. Know a lot of people like that. Still, looks like you'll get to fly something a little bigger now." He took a breath of his own. "Apologies for earlier."

"It was not entirely one sided. Accepted. And, Director Bronson, apologies to you. I believe we both wish to remain with the project and can promise you no more such outbursts."

Oh thank GOD. "That's excellent. Now, let's go over just what it is the two of you will be commanding, and how we expect that to work with the … interesting … composition of our crew."

Lin and Robinson nodded, and looked up with interest as she threw the first slide up.

*****

That went… well. Stephanie shook her head a bit in amazement. I never expected… well, to find out that I could be that cold.

She realized, though, that it was exactly that – an iron-hard dispassion – that had gotten through to the two highest officers of Carpathia. Despite being terrified inside, she hadn't let them see it, and that – combined with her driving home the fact that she did in fact outrank them here – had made them take her seriously. I can do this. I mean, I don't believe it, but now I… guess I kind of do. Is this what every big boss has to figure out?

She supposed it was. The trick to being a good big boss was probably figuring out the right times to come down hard, so that you only had to do it once or twice, instead of just being a hardass all the time and pissing everyone off. Hope I can figure out that balance. I'll have to ask Jeanne about it.

She half-giggled, a little gasp of amusement, realizing that she was thinking casually of talking to the President.

For a moment, Stephanie stopped, momentarily looking back… was it only months? … to the grad student sitting in a lab, checking images. A part of her wished she could be back there, with nothing more earthshaking on her mind than whether she might see a new supernova or asteroid on the screen, and how she was going to finish her thesis.

But then, we wouldn't have seen Fenrir; we wouldn't know, finally, that we weren't alone in the universe.

And Stephanie Bronson would have been just one more astronomer, still asking that question and never knowing the answer.

Feeling both a thrill of awe and a glow of hope that she really could do this, she pushed open the door to the next meeting – this in a larger conference room with large screens for those attending remotely.

Heads turned, there were smiles, nods… but not as many smiles as she expected. Peter Flint, in particular, looked grave.

"All right, everyone. We're all busy so let's try to get through the review quickly." She sat down, nodded to the camera to greet all the remote attendees. "Pete, you look like you have something for us?"

The older man gave a wry smile. "Not what you're hoping for, I'm afraid. You know we received the main supports for the drive shocks… well, me and my Bells finished going over 'em and I'm sad to say that out of ten ordered, half don't meet specs."

Half? She heard the mutter around the room. "That is bad. We need eight, as I understand it."

"Well," Werner said reluctantly, "she could operate on four, but that's reducing the safety margin quite a bit. Not to a critical point, but the idea of having eight was that if we did lose one, we could shift to a four-shaft configuration. We have no backup option if we use four to start with."

"I don't think any of us like those words, 'no backup option,'" Stephanie said. "York, have you spoken to the manufacturers? Can we get good replacements in time?"

"Kenji Taisou of Mitsuda Metalworks says he thinks so, and that he'll personally oversee all the work. He doesn't know what went wrong but something like this is a huge embarrassment and you can bet they'll be devoting every effort to making the next delivery perfect. It's going to be expensive, though –"

"If they guarantee they'll all be good, just pay them," Stephanie said flatly. "As long as you think they are good for it."

"They're supposed to be the best. They haven't had a failure like this in… well, as far as I can see, ever. Not to say it's ridiculous – manufacturing solid bars of metal a hundred meters long and a couple thick that will be taking nuclear impacts is no joke – but it's definitely not normal to have that level of failure, and they're motivated as hell to fix it."

"All right. What does this do to the schedule?"

Werner passed his hand over his bald head, ruffling hair that was no longer present. "We can reshuffle some work. We have four supports, so we can still start on the drive shock assembly as soon as the springs start arriving, next week, and if that goes all right, the main hull components can be attached. We're already building up the earthworks to support all of that. So… I think we can keep to schedule, if we don't have any more major problems."

Thank God. There was slack built into the schedule – even with the hard deadline looming, no one believed there wouldn't be any schedule creep – but she begrudged every hour they lost. The worst possible outcome would be to successfully complete construction… too late to help Fenrir.

A thought occurred to her then – one she really didn't like. Better remember to ask York later. "All right, what's next? Charlotte, what's the status on antimatter supply?"

"Excellent," Dr. Goddard replied, her smile helping lighten the previously tense atmosphere. "We just passed one microgram for the first time in history a few days ago; average production has been 22.3 nanograms per day from all sites combined over the last 50 days. We're storing it in three separate locations and working on additional storage receptacles, to ensure that no disaster can deprive us of a majority of our production."

"That's great!" Stephanie couldn't keep the relief out of her voice. "How is work coming on the drive-related designs?" she asked, turning back to York.

"Doctor Crane's work indicates that we could make miniature Orion-style drives for maneuver jets as well," York Dobyns replied, "but I have to say I recommend we don't go that route. It's got a certain appeal – higher energy density, less fuel mass, more powerful maneuvers – but the main drive's experimental enough. I think we should stick with tried, true, conventional maneuvering thrusters."

"With all those advantages, why?"

"Complexity. We'd need the same feed mechanisms, antimatter charge insertion, et cetera, but they'd have to be significantly smaller all the way down, and that could introduce other problems. Maybe more importantly, the maneuver drives will be on the main hull, which means detonating nuclear charges – small, but still nuclear – a lot closer to the living and working areas."

Stephanie nodded, took a breath. "I think I concur. Have your people check it over, but unless you come up with a really compelling reason otherwise, let's go with conventional maneuver thrusters." She looked to Dr. Filipek, who'd joined by remote. "Eva, what about the drive charges themselves?"

"Good and not-so-good, but not terrible, news," Eva said with a half-smile. "MatterPrint's definitely mastered the printing of the charges; they did a run this week using the actual materials and everything looks good on the three sizes they did."

"What's the not-good news?"

Eva glanced at York, who sighed. "They don't think there's any way to make onboard printers for the drive system, not in time and sufficiently tested and reliable. So most of the drive charges will have to be manufactured before launch," York said. "But that's not terrible news because they do think they can put one system on board that we can use to build the charges and maybe other small components to spec, and the space we were setting aside for the charge printers can be repurposed for charge storage at different sizes. Basically think of one of those old change machines with the pennies, dimes, nickels, and quarters in different tubes, only a lot bigger and smarter."

"We're working on the best tradeoff between the complexity and the number of different drive charge sizes," Werner added. "But it will still be very flexible and Carpathia will be able to accelerate at different rates as we wish."

Privately, Stephanie actually thought this was a better setup; the MatterPrint 3D printers were still cutting-edge, and she knew how often cutting-edge stuff failed. One attraction of Carpathia's overall design was that a lot of it was technology that had been already known in the 1950s; they were just adding twenty-first-century bells and whistles.

"Anything else? The detonation plugs?"

"Still in the design and testing phase," Eva replied. "No significant problems seen, though, so we expect to have a working test design in about a month and a half to two months."

"Live test?" asked York.

"Not the first ones, of course, but once we've satisfied ourselves there, we will have to do a live test. Probably several, to verify what theory tells us. The Director will have to decide the testing schedule," she went on, "so, Dr. Bronson, you should confer with us soon. I assume those will be performed underground."

For an instant she hesitated, as her brain finally decoded the innocuous phrasing. They're talking about nuclear tests. I'm going to be green-lighting nukes! "Er, yes, Dr. Filipek, I'll schedule that with you and I think the President and anyone else who should be in on it. York?"

"I'll get it set up. Probably need people from NNSA and Defense, and the other nations will want observers in, at least."

They touched on a few more subject areas, but nothing of nearly the same import.

"All right, thank you, everyone. We'll meet again next week, same time?"

This … wasn't too bad. But those shafts… She gestured, and York followed her out of the conference room.

"What is it, Steph? You look worried."

"I am worried, about a lot of things. I will be until we get Carpathia off the ground. But yes. I thought of something and I really don't like what I came up with, so I want you to tell me I'm nuts, so I can stop worrying about it."

York's eyes crinkled at the corners, though his lips hid their smile. "I certainly will not call the Director 'nuts,' because we need a nice, sane Director. What's this scary thought you've had?"

"Well, we know that the real reason for Carpathia is that everyone wants to get their hands on the Fens' technology; the rescue mission, which is what you and I and a lot of our friends want the real mission to be, isn't really that important to the governments."

"Unfortunately true, yes. But we've already had those thoughts, so…?"

"So it occurred to me… York, is it possible that the governments might decide to do things to slow up the assembly of Carpathia, so that we just can't quite make the rescue window, but can still launch to recover Fenrir after she hooks around the Sun?"

York Dobyns stopped so suddenly that Steph stumbled, bringing herself to a halt. For a moment he was quiet.

"It's the main supports that got you thinking that way, isn't it?"

"Yes," she admitted. "I mean, I don't know that much about metal casting or grinding or whatever – though I'm learning more about everything these days – but fifty percent failure rate seemed really… off to me. But this is a unique project, and I guess when you're doing crazy stuff, you expect failures. Right?"

York's lips tightened, and she felt the knot in her gut tighten. "Yes," he said slowly, "but…"

After another moment, he shook his head. "But no, fifty percent's way out on the curve. Four, five standard deviations out. Sorry, Steph," York said, voice as grim as his face. "I can't tell you you're nuts. Some people – even in our own government – might think of exactly that."

"Then what do we do?"

"Watch," York said. "If this is the only really bad failure, well, it's bad luck. Even companies have bad luck. Might even have a couple bad luck events. But you know the old saying."

She did. "Once is happenstance. Twice is coincidence."

"But the third time," York continued, "the third time?

"That's enemy action."

 

That's certainly the way to bet...