The Course of Empire(158)
In truth, Aille did not know what to think. His ears waggled with baffled-indecision. It was one thing to hear a proposal this radical and quite another to see it brought into reality. He realized now he had not really understood Aguilera's idea, when the human had first described it. The ship looked so—misshapen, even ludicrous.
Chul sensed his unease. "It will work, I think, Subcommandant. There is no way to know until it is put to the test, of course, but if we can get close enough to the Ekhat ships, those tank guns should be able to do a lot of damage."
"Even in a star's photosphere," Aille murmured. It was not so much a question, or a protest, as a simple expression of wonder.
"It should work," Aguilera said forcefully. "We'll be armed with DU sabot rounds. Each one is fifteen kilos' worth of uranium driven by liquid propellant. The penetrators will be traveling more than a mile a second. We'll lose the outer layers in the heat, but enough should be left to punch holes in the Ekhat ships and wreak havoc inside. If nothing else, I'm thinking the sabot rounds should damage the Ekhat ships enough to let the sun's own heat do the rest. Those forcefields are essentially the same as yours—that's what Nath and Chul tell me—and they won't work all that well once the structural integrity of the hulls starts to weaken."
* * *
Later in the solar cycle, Aille convened a panel of Jao engineers recalled from bunkers to inspect the vessels. They looked askance at the Terran experts attending, but listened to Aguilera's ideas.
Most were skeptical, but agreed the tolerances and stress ratios were within the realm of achievability. It was estimated they had enough time available to outfit fourteen submarines, as well as the human crews needed to staff them. Pilots, though, were another matter. Humans had no real experience in flying spacecraft, even in ideal conditions much less the conditions that would exist within the sun's photosphere. So, although most of the crews would consist of humans, the pilots would need to be Jao.
Oppuk had taken the most experienced ones with him to lie in wait for the Ekhat. Thus far, Chul had only been able to find eight pilots skilled enough for the task—nine, counting Aille himself. Wrot suggested they recruit retired combat veterans who had made their homes on Terra, then volunteered to track them down.
"It must be soon," Aille told him. "Flow accelerates with every twitch of my skin. Do you feel it? They will come through in a few solar cycles, no more."
Sober-agreement stiffened Wrot's lines, then the old soldier disappeared into the base's comm center to reach out to all his old contacts.
* * *
Between the work of assembling the crews for the submarines and the sudden crisis in Texas, Kralik had gotten hardly any sleep for longer than he could remember.
Caitlin found him in the comm center, just having finished a discussion with Major General Abbott, the commander of the Central Division. She touched his cheek with fingers like silk. "My God. You look half-dead."
"We'll all be dead if we're not ready before they open that framepoint," he said, but his own hand reached up to take hers. Her fingers were long and slim.
"You're off duty, mister," she said, "as of now."
With that, she dragged him back to his quarters where she fed him a ham sandwich, then closed the curtains and told him to lie down.
"I don't have time," he said wearily. "None of us do."
"You're not Jao," she said, "so you can't get by with a few hours of halfhearted dormancy like they do. You have to get some real sleep if you want to be any use when you launch."
She stifled his protests with a hand over his mouth and more-or-less forced him onto the cot. Then, after positioning a pillow behind his buzzing head, she stretched out beside him, pulling his arms around her.
She felt wonderful in his arms, her skin fragrant with scented soap, her hair like satin against his cheek. He closed his eyes, feeling as though he were sinking into a thick black fog. "Just a few minutes then," he murmured.
"Forget about that. You'll sleep as much as you need." She nestled against him. Her neck, her cheek, her throat, all were cool fire, and he recognized the scent she wore, juniper, like the high forests of New Mexico he'd roamed in his youth. "Forget everything, but here and now."
He tried to summon a suave leer. Clark Gable style.
"If that's supposed to be a leer," she chuckled, "you really need to get some sleep. I've had squirrels ogle me more lustily than that."
"S'just my nat'ral gentlemanliness. Your broken arm, y'know. I wouldn't feel right . . ."