Warp speed

Tabitha always seemed to have a knack of entering a room when you were talking about her. She looked troubled.

'What is it, Colonel?' I poked at her. She didn't snap back with her usual wit and repartee. Something wasn't right.

'It . . . it's terrible,' she said. 'Colorado has been destroyed.'

'What?' resounded uniformly from the three of us.

'Which part?' I asked.

'All of it! Turn on the TV,' Tabitha said.

We turned on the idiot box and on all the channels was the catastrophe. Some of the talking heads were calling it an extinction level event like the one that had caused the demise of the dinosaurs. Eyewitnesses had claimed that—there were no eyewitnesses. They were all dead. Roughly fifty million people were estimated dead. The President was to make a statement soon. In the meantime, various astronomers were suggesting that the recent meteor strike in Florida was a precursor to the Colorado Catastrophe.

Tabitha, Jim, 'Becca, and I all knew that this theory must be right on the money, but not at all what the astronomers had in mind.

Obviously it was a warp weapon. The warp weapon struck somewhere near Boulder, Colorado. The total destruct radius was several hundred miles. The satellite photos could only look at the dust and smoke plume, it was too thick for even infrared to see through. Centroiding on the plume put the center of impact at Boulder. Strategically this was a well-placed hit. Multiple military and civilian infrastructures were eradicated, literally wiped from the face of the Earth. Cheyenne, Wyoming, just north of the Colorado-Wyoming border was well within the total destruct zone. Military bases further south of Denver were also taken out. Strategic Space Command had taken a deadly blow. Even further out than the total destruction zone there was still tremendous damage. The plume would wreak havoc on communications with the Midwest for weeks to come. Who knew what it would do to the global weather patterns? And on top of that, how do you mourn for so many people. You can't initially—all you can do is watch and be in shock for a while. Unless, you can do something about it—then you focus and act! There might be other states out there in great danger and we had to think about them, instead of Colorado.

'If the President's going to make a statement, then he probably doesn't know that this could be some sort of preemptive strike,' I said.

'I've put in a call and someone is trying to get a message through to him, Anson. Right now that isn't easy,' Tabitha replied still in a sad tone of voice.

'Doc, you can't think that they have already built a warp missile, do you?' Jim asked. From his tone of voice I could tell that he had 'turtled-up' and was ready to take whatever punches he had to until we figured out a strategy to fight back with. Good boy.

'It adds up,' I remarked. 'They could have been working on this thing from the beginning. Johnny Cache must have been giving them data and blueprints and reports from the first day. We've got to find out if there were any ships up at the time of the incident.'

'Already ahead of you, Anson,' Tabitha laid some large printouts on the table. 'A friend of mine that I roomed with in undergraduate flight training works for an agency on the Beltway. He just secure-faxed me these documents and satellite photos. An unannounced launch of a manned Chinese spacecraft took place yesterday. The location of the spacecraft at the time of the impact in Colorado was almost three hundred kilometers directly over Boulder.'

'Damnit Jim. It looks like they did better on the guidance calculations than we did. Unless it was a mistake?' I glanced around the room and got the impression that nobody believed the accident theory. 'Then are we all in agreement that we think this was deliberate?

'Anson, I can't see it any other way.' Jim pulled at his lower lip.

'Uh . . . what is the lift capacity of the Chinese rocket?' Rebecca asked.

'Why?' I wanted to know just where was she headed with that?

'Well,' she began, 'could it carry two of them?' You could have heard a pin drop for about three seconds. Then Colonel Tabitha Ames marched to the door. She stuck her head out and began barking orders to several of the noncoms. Then she turned to our crew.

'Anne Marie, Sara, Al, I need to see you three now!' They came running up to her.

'What's up, Mom?'

'You three go find the lift capacity of the recent Chinese manned launch vehicles. Al, determine how many ECC's and warp generators could be put in one. Sara, work with Al. Annie, find out how many of these rockets the Chinese have and how long it takes to prep one for flight. I need that info yesterday.'

'Yes, Colonel.' Anne Marie snapped a salute and bugged out. Al and Sara followed.

Tabitha turned back to us, 'Anson, you and Jim find us a way to detect those damn things before they get off the ground. 'Becca, you up to earning your keep?'

'I feel strong enough to wrestle a Gundark!' She smiled but none of us laughed.

'Good. Let's you and me figure out how soon before we could get another Zephram built.'

'Okay!' 'Becca responded.

'Hey hold on a minute,' Jim said. 'We don't have to build another Zephram. A missile that weighs one kilogram moving near the speed of light would do just about as much damage. Remember that the kinetic energy transferred is one half mass times velocity squared. In this case velocity is orders of magnitude more than mass. So, the mass isn't a big factor.'

I butted in. 'We could build basketball sized missiles perhaps. We just have to reconfigure the geometry of the warp coils. God, I hope the Chinese haven't thought of that. Someone tell the girls to plan to that design. Jim and I will work it out later. First, we need to build a detector. Come on, Jim.' We made a break for the door and were off to find a whiteboard somewhere.