John Ringo - Voyage 02 - Vorpal Blade (with Travis S. Taylor) (ARC)

353 Pages·2016·1.25 MB·English

by  Ringo John

Vorpal Blade

Advance Reader Copy
Unproofed

John Ringo &Travis S. Taylor
JOIN THE INAUGURAL BALL

Behold the Vorpal Blade: humanity's first FTL ship, cobbled together with
alien technology and the kind of engineering intuition, grit and ingenuity that
only humans can provide. Crewed by the best and brightest…warrior nerds.
Commanded by smart-mouthing, gun-toting, swashbuckling…scientists. Given
teeth with a special ops contingent that can simultaneously obliterate alien
monstrosities and save extraterrestrial civilizations precisely because they can
tell the difference between a fermion and a boson.
Cover Art by Kurt Miller
First printing, September 2007
ISBN-13: 978-A1-4165-2129-7
ISBN-10: A1-4165-2129-1
Copyright© 2007
CONTENTS
Dedication
1
A Plate of XXXX@ vhysw a7msyulh kreeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeer
rrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrku with a Side of Muons.
Please
2
Welcome to the Space Marines, Please Keep Your Hands and Feet Away From the Monsters
3
Old Friends, Same Problems
4
Fear the Pink
5
The SSBN Blage
6
Rule Thirty-Two: Never Trust an Adar with Acronyms
7
Rule Thirty-Three: Never Let a Fighter Pilot Drive
8
Taste the Soprano
9
We're HOW FAR Off Course?
10
Interesting is a Word with So Many Connotations
11
Turn Right and Straight On . .
12
There's One In Every Unit
13
Semper Fi Ad Astra
14
Excursions and Alarums
15
Many MANY Connotations
16
Under Pressure
17
Is That Like Space Cadet?
18
You Don't Have To Be Faster Than the Lion
19
Never Talk About Romantic Plans
20
Gargala-WHAT?
21
It's NOT Two-Gun Mojo. It's NOT
22
Good Vibrations
23
A Voice as Stern as Conscience
24
"From the Forest Moon of 61 Cygni Alpha Five" Doesn't Scan
25
The Frumious Neenion
26
Define "Demon"
27
You Want Us to What?
28
The Lady She's a Mother
29
Now You Think of That
30
Okay, So Sometimes It Is Two-Gun Mojo
31
Could Be Worse, Could Have Been Us
32
Is This a Good Time to Panic?
33
We Got Bandits!
34
Beachhead
35
Stand My Ground
Stand my ground, I won't give in no more denying, I've got to face it won't close my eyes and hide the
truth inside if I don't make it, someone else will stand my ground. " Stand My Ground" Within
Temptation
36
This One Time Off Cygnus Alpha . .
Epilogue
Heart of a Dragon
Afterword
On Writing Science Fiction
On the Particle Physics in This Work of Fiction
Fermions:
Bosons:
Dedication
To Bob Heinlein, Andre Norton, Doc Smith, Isaac Asimov, AE van Vogt and all the rest of the greats
who sparked a young man's imagination.
And to Jim Baen, for giving us both the chance to pay it forward.

Last As Always:
For Captain Tamara Long, USAF
Born: 12 May 1979
Died: 23 March 2003, Afghanistan
You fly with the angels now.
1
A Plate of XXXX@ vhysw a7msyulh kreeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeer
rrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrku
with a Side of Muons. Please.
"You think I should hit the order again?" Bill said, looking over at the
kitchen. Service in Adar restaurants was proverbially slow but this was
ridiculous. He and Sal had sent in their orders over thirty minutes ago and still
they didn't even have their drinks.
Lieutenant Commander William "Doc" Weaver, RN, Ph.D., wasn't really
happy about the lunch anyway. He'd known Sal Weinstein back when they both
worked for Columbia Defense so when Sal called and asked if he was doing
anything for lunch, he'd thought it was just a social call. He should have guessed
that Sal, whom he hadn't spoken to in two years, wasn't going to drive down to
Norfolk to chat.
"Won't work," Sal said, shrugging. "But go ahead if it makes you happy.
Now, about the server . . ."
Bill flipped open the menu and hit the entry for glangi with extra melaegl
sauce. The thing didn't even flash. He'd already ordered with this menu. One
menu, one order. No tickee, no laundry.
"It's a damned Microsoft Vavala server with some code thrown on top," Bill
replied, hitting the entry again. The restaurant wasn't particularly crowded and
now he knew why. Some of the Adar had started to catch on that humans didn't
take four hours for lunch. Clearly the family unit running this place were right
out of the Glass.
"We've got top Adar working on it," Sal argued. "Top Adar."
"You've got Fazglim and Dulaul," Bill said, not looking up. "Who are the
only Adar I've ever met who fall into the description of credit-whores. And
neither one of them knows diddly maulk about server tech. Fazglim's a natural
processes philo and Dulaul is a micro-actions philo. So you're telling me you've
got the best server on the market because you happen to have a tame biologist
and quantum physicist who are willing to sign off on it. It's an MS Vav, which is
one of the buggiest one servers in the world, with code from Col-Gomo
programming thrown on top. And that makes it buggier. Come on, Sal, don't try
to snow me. I know Adar tech. I work with it every damned day."
The problem was, since the opening of the Looking Glasses, the whole world,
and especially Wall Street, had gone nuts over Adar. Adar tech was light years
ahead of human, but it wasn't magic. And a lot of stuff that was sold as being
"Adar technology" was anything but. The Adar had been a philosophical race
when they encountered humans. Which meant they were about as resistant to
marketing as Native Americans to disease. So more and more of them were
emigrating to Earth where "everything was prettier." And, by and large, they
could command immense salaries because if a company had an Adar, even if the
male, female or transfer neuter was the training equivalent of a janitor, they
could say they had an Adar working on their technology.
Bill had fallen for that scam exactly once, an "Adar-tech" shampoo substitute.
Basically, it was a comb you were supposed to use in the shower to wash your
hair. Guaranteed to do miraculous things for your entire head region.
He was still trying to grow the hair back.
He had to admit that there was some great stuff out there that was derived
from real Adar technology. Forget brushing your teeth, all you had to do was
pop a Nanobrush ™ capsule, crunch it in your teeth and not only did your teeth
turn lily-white but you didn't have to worry about halitosis for twelve hours.
Then there was the entire electronic tech revolution. . . .
"Wait, got a call," Sal said, holding up his hand to the back of his head.
"Yeah, Joe, Sal . . . That's great man . . ."
Implants, though . . . Jeeze. Back when they were the "killer app," Doc had
thought BlackBerry was a pain in the ass. The only way you could tell the
difference between a raving street-guy and a raving corporate attorney was the
quality of clothing and that one had a flashing blue thing in his ear. But since
implants had hit the market, people really did hear voices. Now you couldn't tell
the difference at all.
Of course, he was wearing a VeriNthal ear piece, which gave him pretty
much the same look as an implant wearer. But you could at least see the damned
earring.
He hit the menu again and was amazed to see an Adar exit the door to the
restaurant's kitchens, bearing a massive platter.
That was the other thing about Adar cooking. The Adar approached their two
daily meals with religious reverence. The most undertrained neuter home-cook
had more passion for cuisine than a cordon bleu chef. Each meal had to be both
satisfying and a work of art. They were worse than the Japanese about it.
So while Bill would have been perfectly satisfied with a platter of glangi
noodles, what he got instead was a half a dozen dishes. Condiments, sides, little