“Maybe. I’ll tell him that you’d like that.”
“It’s been a long time.”
“Yes,” Toman sighed. “It has.”
* * *
At midday, it was dark and raining fiercely, and Captain Kaethan Ishida had his sunglasses firmly stashed in his belt pouch. On a sunny day, the chalk white dunes of the Fort Hilliard Firing Range almost glowed with heat and blinding light. The sands blew over the landscape from the forty kilometers of the Alabaster Coast that stretched along the ocean to the west. Soldiers of the Alabaster Guard wore dark sunglasses as unofficial trademarks of their unit, though the glasses were absolutely necessary equipment for when the skies were clear. This would hardly be a problem today, but at least on a clear day you could actually see the firing range.
“Almost ready, Kaethan.”
Kaethan didn’t respond to the warning, but instead kept looking out into the rain from their concrete reinforced bunker. Judging from past experience, Walter Rice would be “almost ready,” typing madly on his computer, for another couple minutes. And their past experience stretched as far back as elementary school. There was no hurry.
A brief surge of rainfall caused a light spray to splatter through the slit window that stretched the entire forward length of their bunker. The captain turned his face away, shielding his green eyes. His short, jet-black hair had dried quickly after his sprint from his vehicle to the bunker, but would remain damp as long as he stayed where he was. The cool spray was refreshing to Kaethan, who had begun to grow weary of the heat wave that the Telville area had been experiencing lately.
The bunker that the two men were in was small and brightly lit. Kaethan was dressed in a dark metal-blue uniform of very light fabric, with black boots and belt. Platinum circlets, pinned to his shoulder flares, identified his rank. The lights overhead highlighted his sharp Mediterranean facial features and complexion, though his brooding Asian eyes always broke the categorization. Walter was dressed in gray slacks and a designer white shirt that he had just purchased that day. His long, wavy brown hair reached his shoulders, though it was neatly combed and kept. The short beard that he sported caused him to scratch his chin and neck constantly. Although of ordinary features, this no way detracted from his rugged good looks. Bare concrete walls enclosed them, gray and smooth except for numerous cracks and cement patches that marred the surface. A fine white dust covered everything, though it was more from the sand outside than from the deterioration of the concrete. A large but simple computer panel was embedded into the rear wall, black and not activated. Walter had all he needed in his briefcase of a computer that he had opened on the extremely large table that dominated the center of the small room.
“Have you ever tried your baby in a rain like this?” Kaethan asked, lazily.
“My laser will work fine,” Walter returned, “just as long as the wind doesn’t pick up.”
“The wind?” Kaethan turned in curiosity.
A cool breeze from the west had picked up off the ocean just as the rain began to pour, slanting the raindrops with mild fifteen kilometer per hour gusts. Kaethan couldn’t figure out, however, how the wind would be a problem.
“Don’t tell anyone, but we tested out our tracking radar during the last hurricane.” Walter had stopped typing momentarily as he confided in his friend. “If a strong gust created a localized swirl, our radar sometimes registered it as an incoming missile.”
“You’re kidding.”
“Yes, but it was a concern.”
As Walter happily returned to his typing, Kaethan sighed and turned back to the slit window. Just the two of them were in this bunker, orchestrating this demonstration. Fifty meters to their right, closer to the ocean, several faces peered back at him from another bunker. The local aldermen would probably have a poor show today through this rain. He suspected that they’d hear the artillery boom a few times, then afterwards they’d be shown the radar tracks. If they wanted, they’d be driven to ground zero to investigate the area for recent impacts.
Somewhere out there in the rain, however, was a modified mining utility Hauler with a multiphase array radar and an industrial strength battlelaser whose job was to make sure no shell survived long enough to impact the ground. Many cities on Delas had purchased the Haulers for use as APC’s, but with an additional mini-fission core installed, it could power a very impressive laser system. There was a great deal of interest in these ongoing tests.
“Ready,” Walter announced, then hit one more key and looked up.
“Are you sure?”
“Yes.”
“It’s still taking three minutes getting that crystal up to speed, isn’t it?”
“I told you, I’m sure we can reduce that.”
Kaethan glared at Walter with narrow eyes for a moment, then picked up his headset from a chair next to him. Captain Ishida had been given this assignment for the sole reason that its lead engineer, Walter Rice, was a personal friend of his from long ago. It was either that, or nobody else in the Alabaster Guard wanted to waste their weekends at the firing range. Either way, he was still unsure of the wisdom of that decision. As much as they were enjoying working together, Walter might not have been taking this task as seriously as he should. Of course, Kaethan told himself, Walter had never taken anything very seriously, and yet he always did get straight A’s. That had earned him an off-planet university scholarship at Angelrath, which had separated them for the past eight years.
Little had changed in either of them since they had last seen each other, Kaethan believed. Although in a business suit now, Walter’s curly, long, light brown hair still made Kaethan see him as the beach bum that he had always been. His eternal one-day growth of beard just added to the effect. If he truly did shave every morning, then Kaethan thought that he might want to do it again at midday. To be tall, handsome, and relaxed had been Walter’s quest in life since before college, and he had largely succeeded if judged by the reaction of those he valued most, women. Walter’s and Kaethan’s basic physiques had changed little, but at six-foot one, Walter was now a good six inches taller than Kaethan was.
The rain outside was beginning to slacken now, but the captain wasn’t going to wait any longer. After a quick wave of warning towards the other bunker, Kaethan activated his headgear and pulled the microphone down to his mouth.
“Hey, Rick.”
“Ready, Captain?” Corporal Rick Shaller sounded excited, as he always did before firing his howitzers.
“All set. Give me one round over the target.”
“On-the-wayyy.”
Kaethan’s earphones squelched out as Rick’s microphone was overloaded by the fire. Out of habit, he mentally counted the seconds before the sound wave passed over the bunker. The dull boom finally hit as he reached twelve, followed almost instantly by a flash of blue light that lit up the sky and a loud explosion from high above.
“One down!” Walter exclaimed.
“Ready for the next test?” Kaethan confirmed.
“All set.”
“Okay, Rick. Bracket her with three rounds.”
“Fire Plan Two, on the way.”
This time, as the shells neared the target, Kaethan knelt on a chair so that he could see up into the sky. His view was hindered by the thick concrete overhang, but he was able to discern three separate beams tracking, and holding on their targets. After three rapid explosions from overhead, the beams stopped.
In fact, he knew that it was only one laser beam, being redirected by a rapidly spinning crystal onto multiple targets. In Walter’s theory, this weapon could not be overwhelmed since it didn’t track targets, rather it determined what arcs contained a threat and fired its laser as the crystal spun through that arc. In Kaethan’s reality, they found in test fires that the laser lost coherence as the crystal heated up. Despite a myriad of cooling techniques, a sustained barrage would give the system problems. Also, a shell protected with modern composite alloy, or reflective armor, could get through. But unless Walter was given an expensive fusion chamber to power his toys, this was the best anyone could do.
Fire Plan Three utilized all six guns of the Alabaster Guard Artillery, Alpha Company. Six shells were engaged simultaneously by the laser and destroyed midflight, although one shell survived noticeably longer than the others did. Walter shrugged it off, not thinking it was worth the bother to investigate.
The last test scheduled for the day was a full test of all six guns firing three times at different azimuths, driven with different explosive charges. The effect was that all eighteen rounds would be impacting at the same time. Even Walter left his console to see this spectacle.