Chapter 26

September 17, 2161
JSS Friedensbringer

The Friedensbringer twitched and jerked as Winston Scarver aligned the ‘gun’ with his intended target. The NSS Naha will emerge from behind the planet Mars soon and it will be his. “Vhy do you vant that ship so bad Winston?” asked Nadia, an Eastern Bloc whore he picked up on Luna Prime.

“Because his bitch commands it. I want him to understand what you lose when you fuck with Winston Scarver. I spent years building this enterprise...”

“Three years,” Nadia said. “Und it vas built on bribes and graft.”

“You can get out and walk,” he snapped as he attempted to line up his shot. “Which G has a view of the target?” he called on his radio. Scarver found out that he needed eyes on target. He can guess using radar, but at these great distances he relies on the whale boats seeing where the shot went. He opened the door and prepared to generate the field. It was hard to keep in mind that his projectile was not moving. Once it hit the “Dislocation Field” (that’s the name Nadia came up with) the projectile stopped while the universe continued to move in a relative way on a specific course, and it was Scarver’s job to put the projectile in the correct position so the target would collide with the motionless projectile. The projectile was completely motionless, and the universe moved at two million miles per hour past it.

“G2 has eyes on target.”

“Where are the rest?” demanded Scarver.

“Dunno, they should have been here before me, I had an inverter breakdown.”

“Are you sure you sent the letter to Clark?” asked Winston Scarver.

“Da! I sent letter demanding he cede his position as president and you vill not bomb Mars.”

The side panel of the Friedensbringer opened. It was originally a door that was used to ferry injured patients onto the hospital ship, but Winston Scarver has changed its use. The Dislocation Field Generator was simplicity in itself. To use it, he swung the field generator out, and it shined a field onto a piece of felt covered slate. An angled tube of PVC pipe was bolted to the generator’s stand and all he had to do was shove a ball down the tube. The ball came out of the tube and hit the field on the piece of slate and immediately it was receding at nearly two million miles per hour.

“Here we go,” said Winston. He put a steel ball in the tube and then, with a wooden dowel, he shoved the ball down the tube. It emerged from the other end of the tube and touched the slate and disappeared. “Anything?” he yelled into the radio.

“No, I think you hit Mars ... yeah ... you were high and to the right by a couple of feet.”

“Shit.” Winston had a control panel that allowed him to adjust the position of the Friedensbringer. You couldn’t adjust the aim of the Dislocation Field Generator, you had to reposition the field generator. It was the universe that guided the projectile, not the gun.