Alien Enigma Read Online Free PDF Page A

sir. They'll be aboard. It took the overflow power produced by the quantum drive of the C class ships, plus our upgrades, to make both of them really effective. I don't know if Wannstead thought of it in those terms or not, but our intelligence spooks say his own ships carry weapons. I'm sure they aren't like anything we've put on this baby, though. Or will have by the time you take it out." His grin widened, then died. "I guess there's no reason other countries couldn't have upgraded their ships the same way as us, but I doubt anyone has weapons of the same caliber as ours unless they've hit on the drive modifications we have."
    "Good deal!" Keane's big frame stretched upright. He kept a straight face at the engineer's remarks. Jergens didn't need to know that when he received his initial briefing the same subject had come up. Russia and Brazil had indeed been modifying and weaponizing their ships for the last twenty years, and China almost that long. Navy Intelligence had a pretty good picture of the situation. Nor did he have the need to know just yet that some of the spooks in the intelligence services thought one of those nations was responsible for Wannstead's missing ships. "I want every damned advantage I can get."
    "Well, how about this?" He pointed to the cargo bay on the schematic. "I understand you won't be taking colonists so you'll have extra cargo capacity. Whatever you choose to stow there is up to you."
    "As it stands now, we'll be taking Marines and enough supplies to stay out for a long time. Funny how the drive works, isn't it? It can't be made smaller according to Wannstead, so after it's installed there's enough power there to make the ship pretty near as big as you care to. Makes it nice for colonization but also good for other reasons, huh?"
    "Damned straight. Do you want see the ship now?"
    "You bet!"
    "It's in the hanger. Let me call for transportation."
    "Fine." He nodded to the other two techs. "Thanks, guys. Lead on, Mr. Jergens."
    "Hang loose," Jergens said a few minutes later as Keane fitted his body into the passenger seat beside him. With his big frame, it left little room to spare. Once they were underway and out of hearing of the original driver he glanced over at the Captain. "I couldn't say anything in there. Those two aren't cleared for it, and it's not in the schematics, but there's one more innovation that's really and truly new. It's a spinoff from ...well, never mind from what. But it's similar in concept to the Earth's magnetosphere, which protects the Earth from radiation, except this baby will surround the whole ship, about a hundred meters out-and it's about million times stronger when it's on full power."
    "The ship already has adequate radiation protection Mr. Jergens-I don't understand the big deal."
    "Well ...it's not just for normal radiation protection, sir. We've finagled a shield of sorts, a plasma magnetospheric shield, or PMS, for your ship-but it's not installed yet. Sorry about the acronym-one of the DARPA guys named it that after the Secretary of the Navy kept complaining about 'needing some protection' to complement the ship's weapons." Jergens tried to attempt a nerdy smile but Captain Keane didn't seem to appreciate the joke.
    "So what exactly can this shield do for us?" asked Keane.
    "Sorry sir, I'll get to the point. It will stop a laser beam or plasma pulses ...in fact almost anything that's not solid matter, and your meteor shield should take care of objects that aren't too large, like rail gun slugs for instance. It's been enhanced, too, and it has been tested. No one we know has anything like this."
    "Very interesting. That ought to prove useful, but with all this new equipment and weapons I can see now we're going to be doing a hell of a lot of training on the way out if we have to leave soon."
    Jergens shrugged, causing the golf cart to weave a moment before he corrected. "There's the hanger. It's the largest building on the site. We prepared it beforehand,