Dark Matter (60 page)

The noise became punishing as the aircraft hurtled along the runway, gaining speed like a runaway train.  John was trying to concentrate.  He had only done this in simulation before, never for real. 
Today is about as real as it could ever get..
.  He went through the checklist methodically, fully aware that if everything was not done just right it could malfunction and blow up in the most dramatic and fatal way imaginable.  The checklist was a simple sheet of paper laminated in plastic.  It swung gently from the drawing pin that had been used to suspend it at eye level so John could work on the screen without having to bob his head up and down.  As he looked at the drawing pin, he couldn't help thinking about the proverb about the loss of a nail.  He shook his head and returned to the matter at hand, priming Longbow.

Longbow was the culmination of a huge amount of work by a lot of very dedicated people.  Most did not know at the time what they were working on.  Some guessed, but kept it to themselves.  It, and Constellation, had made all projects, civilian and military, including the Manhattan Project and the Moon Landing seem small and straightforward by comparison.  Longbow was a simple concept, but fiendishly complex in its execution.  Longbow was a sixty barrelled Gatling gun. 

Like its predecessors, the multi-barrel arrangement was to provide each barrel time to cool down after firing.  Longbow however had taken this to new extremes.  Each barrel was like a rail-gun, a longitudinal electromagnetic chamber used to accelerate objects within the barrel to extreme velocities.  However, instead of electromagnetism, Longbow used Deeth particles to accelerate its projectiles.  The projectiles, shaped like a normal shell were constructed of Gold, Iron, and Carbon Buckyballs.  Extreme velocities in Longbow's terms meant a quarter the speed of light, or around seventy-five thousand kilometres a second.  Even with the super smooth bore in the barrels, they had to be cooled to five degrees Kelvin, or around two hundred and seventy degrees below freezing point.  During firing, the barrel would heat up to around thirteen hundred degrees Celsius and although each barrel was cooled with liquid nitrogen, it still required having sixty barrels to avoid it seizing.

The shells that Longbow fires are necessarily smaller than the bore of the barrels.  The firing barrel is fed by a shell carriage system that uses an electromagnetic rail system.  This is timed into the firing mechanism so that when the barrel has opened sufficiently to allow the front of the shell in, the shell starts to load.  The “firing pin,” another electromagnetic rail, continues to move the shell into the barrel so that the end of the shell arrives in the barrel as the barrel is fully aligned.  In this way the rotating barrels do not have to stop, or even slow down, for the next shell to be loaded.  For practical use, the only limit on the firing rate of Longbow is the rate at which the barrels could be cooled, rather than shells loaded.

The Sentinel R1, call sign Phoenix, lifted into the air as it reached its take off speed.  The pilot, a senior aviator with over twenty years’ experience flying military birds, kept the power on as it began its steep ascent.  He was used to maiden flights, he was after all one of the test pilots for the Royal Air Force, but he had never taken a test flight into harm’s way before.
First time for everything
, he thought as he checked his gauges to ensure, as far as was possible, that Phoenix was behaving herself.  Fuel was his main concern.  Phoenix was a thirsty bird who drank like an over exercised dog on a hot day.  The R1 was based on a commercial bird that was designed to fly efficiently in straight lines, the R1 military variant having been redesigned to fly in large circles high over a battlefield, again efficiently.  Phoenix however was expected to engage an enemy aircraft.  This would likely entail a dogfight, with the Phoenix having to climb and dive, changing direction, anything to both engage the enemy aircraft and at the same time avoid coming under fire itself.  In terms of fuel usage, it was the highest cost a fixed wing aircraft would ever have to pay.

19:14
              10 November  [19:14  10 November GMT]

Phoenix,  15,000 ft. above the North Atlantic.

John was now two thirds of the way through his checklist.  It was looking good.  The monitoring program was reporting that each component was in operational shape, now he could move onto the system testing.  This would involve test firing the weapon.  He reported this to the mission controller, seated to his left, so that she could ascertain when it would be safe to fire the weapon. 
Safe to others that is.
  As they had no operational radar aboard they had to rely upon the aircraft's sister, another R1, which had now joined them at a distance, to ensure that there were no ships in their path across the Atlantic.  Communications had also been established with a Royal Naval vessel using a towed array sonar to look for submarines.  They weren't expecting any, they had been warned off, but they didn't want to take any chances.  The shells would be passing through the ocean and embedding themselves in the bedrock of the ocean floor.  Nothing in-between would survive the encounter.

The mission controller received the green light from her communications officer to proceed and she informed John and the Pilot.  The pressure on the fuselage changed as the pilot brought Phoenix down to five thousand feet for the test fire.  John got a thumbs up from the mission controller.  He angled Longbow down fifteen degrees and crossed his fingers as he pushed the fire button to initiate a three second burst.  The Phoenix immediately pitched to the right, the wing dropping like a stone.  The pilot screamed as he wrestled with the controls. 

'What the fuck was that?'  The pilot had never experienced anything like that before; it had felt like his starboard wing had fallen off for an instant.

'Sorry.'  John replied meekly, keenly aware that it had been Longbow that had caused the aircraft to roll radically like that.  'It seems that the stabilisers aren't compensating for the screw effect one hundred per cent.'

'No shit.'  The pilot was not impressed with this civilian. 
This lunatic will get us killed unless we are very lucky.

John put Longbow into standby and walked forward with the mission controller into the cockpit.  The sweat on the pilot's brow immediately testified as to how serious the roll had been. 

'Don't do that again.'  The pilot said.

'Sorry but I'm afraid I'm going to have to.  The stabilisers are at maximum and the only way to improve them would mean landing and stripping them apart.'  John replied.

'Isn't there anything else we could do?'  The mission controller didn't want this to turn into a,
you can't do this, oh yes I can
, argument.  There had to be a way forward.  The mission had to succeed.

'OK.' the pilot said, his breathing slowing as he calmed down, 'Keep the bursts short and give me a three, two, one, fire, when you initiate the weapon.  I'll do what I can to compensate.  Let's do a couple of practice runs.' 
I just hope the wing doesn't fall off with all the stress.

Although he was somewhat ready for it this time, it still came as a shock, as if someone had yanked his control stick sharply whilst he was holding it.  Phoenix rolled again, but less this time and recovery was quicker.  They tried again and found another improvement.  Two more attempts and the pilot was almost becoming comfortable with it. 

'Let's try for a longer burst this time.  Give it five seconds.'  The pilot called to John and the mission controller.

The pilot was holding on for the five count when the stall indicator went off, screaming at him. 

'What now!'  He was about to call cease-fire when the time lapsed anyway.  He handed over to his co-pilot and headed back to talk to them.

'We went into a stall there, what the hell was that about?'  The pilot was just about ready to see John out of the aircraft, personally and at five thousand feet above a very cold ocean.

He flipped on the view screen for the on-board data recorder and reviewed the telemetry.  The news was not good.  Each time the gun was fired it not only caused a radical roll, but it also slowed the Phoenix considerably.  He hadn't noticed it before because he had been more concerned with keeping the aircraft level than watching the airspeed indicator.

'Looks like four seconds is going to be the maximum fire time, unless we want to get very wet.'

The mission controller nodded grimly.  'Four seconds it is then Captain.' 

John sighed. 
It wasn't supposed to be this way.
  He sighed again and then started to worry about what problems they might encounter with Constellation. 
If four-second bursts are all we can do, then four-second bursts will have to do.
He would have liked a lot longer; especially as they had no idea how heavily armed the Sunarr vessel would prove to be. 
Perhaps I can hit it with lots of four-second bursts,
he thought optimistically.

T
hey were tracking the Sunarr ship over the North-West Atlantic.  It had left New York and had passed over Newfoundland, climbing as it went; they estimated that they would intercept it over Greenland in just under two hours from now.

18:30
              10 November  [18:30  10 November GMT]

Unity Headquarters, England.

The reports were coming in now thick and fast.  They had been successful in some areas and less so in others.  In every case where the organised inmates had managed to disable the power plant, the Unity forces were able to break through the protective dome.  It was not easy.  Even with the power neutralised the structure of the domes was still incredibly strong.  It took concentrated artillery fire to penetrate it; other means such as shaped explosive charges had no impact at all.  However, once they managed to breach the dome, they were universally successful, albeit at varying levels of cost in terms of Unity and civilian lives lost.

The domes where the power plant were not incapacitated were a different matter however.  Nothing they had would even remotely touch them.  In the end, it was the Sunarr who defeated themselves.  Recalled by the survey ship, they opened a portal in the dome to make good their escape.  Some made it, others did not.  Brought down by a barrage of artillery shells, the scout vessels were only lightly armoured and totally out gunned.  Troops were sent into the domes, the Sunarr soldiers fought to the last. 

General Charles Beaconsfield read the reports with satisfaction.  They were winning the battle for the mines but too many of the scout vessels were getting away.  Getting away with their precious cargoes of Gold.  Charlie picked up the line to his counterpart in the US.

'Sam, its Charlie.  I guess you are seeing the same situation developing that I am.'

'They are heading for the main vessel.  Is Longbow active?'  Sam replied.

'Longbow is airborne as we speak and on an intercept course over Greenland.  If Longbow is successful we will need troops on the ground to secure it.'

'I have the 3
rd
US Unity Airborne on standby.  Maybe you could rustle up some from your side of the pond.'

'I have the 7
th
and 9
th
UK Unity Combined standing by.  Time to get them both going, don't you think?'

'Roger that.'  Sam turned to his commanders and gave them the order.  ‘The 3rd are on their way.'

'As are the 7
th
and 9
th
.  How's the situation otherwise?'  Charlie inquired.

'It’s under control.  The Sunarr won't quit, so we have had to put in more troops to flush them out.  Unfortunately, they seem to be holding their positions and executing their hostages, so I am putting in as many forces as possible.  How's things with you?'

'We have a similar picture.  They fight extremely well, but they lack tactics.  In two instances, we started controlled fires and they popped out straight away.  However in most cases the civilians are too close to the Sunarr to permit that.'

'So it all hangs on Longbow then?'  Sam said.

'I don't like having our fates in the hands of a civilian either, especially one who has suffered from suicidal depression, likes the drink a bit too much and seems to think himself better than others, but we have to remember that he has delivered when it counts.'

18:17
              10 November  [21:17  10 November GMT]

Phoenix, 11,000 ft. above Greenland.

They could see them gathering now.  They were still about ten minutes away from them, but the radar reported the unmistakable arrangement of many small craft around one much larger.  The small craft were disappearing off the radar screen after closing in on the large craft; they realised that they must be docking with it.  They were still within the earth's atmosphere, the smaller craft presumably not capable of space flight.  If they were aware of their approach, they showed no signs of it.  Less than five minutes away now and there were only six Sunarr craft left to dock. 

Unity had informed them that ground troops were on their way to give support.  They were not on radar yet and had to be some way off.  John hadn't considered the need for ground troops.  He hadn't given much thought to the mission at all.  He had, truth be told, been studiously avoiding thinking about the realities of the mission altogether.  He kept the objective in mind though. 
Stopping the Sunarr leaving with the gold and if possible stopping the Sunarr from leaving altogether.
  The fact that he was aboard what had become the world's most expensive aeroplane, at the control of the world's most powerful and technically advanced weapon, wasn't lost on him.  He just tried not thinking about it.  He had never killed anyone before.  Apart from a few brawls when he was younger, he had never had any time for violence believing it to be the refuge of the inarticulate. 
Now I am here, in control of a massive weapon and about to unleash it against...well, not people.  They are Aliens and they had planned to exterminate him and the rest of humanity.