Chapter 35: A Lesson in Geometry

Robert immediately began hitting a few of the panels. “Isaac, get the system up. Once its up, load standard. Leonard, we’ll want standard military power on all rings.”

“Not going to full power?” Leonard asked.

“We shouldn’t need to overload the rings and rails at this time,” Robert said.

I jumped into the command chair. “AI, give me a trio of transports as our target. Have them running in convoy.”

I powered up the command chair and used the controls to bring up a holographic display showing an imaginary star system. We were drifting along near an asteroid watching three round cylinder shaped ships move slowly toward a nearby planet.

“Target identified,” a very human voice said from the speakers.

“Sa’arm transports,” a crusty human voice responded. “They don’t appear to have detected us.”

“Who?” I heard Casey asked.

“Simulated responses,” I said quickly. “Now be quiet while we run the simulation.”

“Give me the port rail gun. We’ll take each one in order. Load and fire as you bear,” I commanded.

“Helm releasing control to weapons,” a simulated crew voice said.

“We’ll be rotating ten degrees to the right for the first shot,” a female voice said. I recognized it as belonging to Kelsey White.

“Call the shot Ensign,” I commanded.

“Isaac, get the gun loaded,” Robert shouted. “Leonard, we have a fluctuation in ring seven and a harmonic building in the rail just past ring nine.”

“What?” Leonard said. “I thought this was going to be a simple run through.”

“That is simple,” I said. “The AI is good, but somehow it never gets all the rings balanced when you first power up. That’s why we have human techs. Just feel the imbalance and stabilize it.”

“Captain?” Raccoon asked. “How do you know?”

“I have been studying a bit of everything,” I said. “Its my job to be ready.”

“Projectile loaded. Its off center by eighteen millimeters, that is one eight millimeters,” Isaac said.

“Harmonic dampened. We appear to have a bad coil, it will need to be replaced after five shots,” Leonard said.

“I’ll get the damage control bots fabricating a replacement,” Robert said. “Signaling ready to fire.”

In the viewscreens in front of the three men we could see the projectile vanish as it shot to the right at incredible speed. “Shot away,” Robert said. “Get the next round loaded.”

“Loading,” Isaac said as his hands began to dance on the lit panels in front of him.

“We had an overload in a tertiary coil in the thirteenth loop,” Leonard said. “It should have no effect on efficiency.”

“Loading complete, but the projectile is off center by forty millimeters. Shall I reload?” Isaac said.

“It’s within tolerance. Leonard can you compensate for the position?” Robert said.

“I can try,” Leonard said. His hands were moving to his right as he began sliding his fingers across a couple of the panels.

“Wow,” I heard Casey said. “This is intense.”

The lights in the room dimmed. We could see the image of a projectile vanish to the right as the simulator continued the exercise.

“That’s number two. Let’s get three loaded,” Robert said. “Isaac, calm down and take your time.”

“No new problems,” Leonard said.

Robert looked down and cursed. “We missed. AI, how much deflection did we get on that shot?”

“Last projectile loaded. It’s centered to five millimeters,” Isaac said.

“Coils have charged. We will need five minutes after this firing to recharge the primary capacitors,” Leonard said.

“What?” Chris said. “We only get three shots?”

“Signalling loaded,” Robert said. This time the projectile vanished down the tracks the instant he finished speaking.

The lights went out. “Simulation terminated,” the AI said. “Compiling results.”

“Robert?” I asked.

“I already know we missed the second shot. It came out with a deflection of a tenth of a degree,” Robert said.

“A tenth?” Raccoon said. “How can a tenth of a degree matter?”

“AI what was the range of the second shot?” I asked.

“Just under five hundred thousand kilometers,” the AI said.

“Why ask that?” Raccoon asked.

I looked at the chamber we were in. “AI? How long is the viewscreen setup?”

“The viewscreens show a twenty meter segment of the rail gun track. This is identical to the setup in an actual rail gun control room,” The AI said.

“Can you clear the screen to just show a white field and then show a straight line with distance markings?” I asked.

“Meters?” the AI asked.

“Yes, but with smaller markings every decimeter,” I said.

“A what?” Chris asked.

“Every ten centimeters there should be a mark,” I said. “Just to help see what I’m going to demonstrate.”

The view screen turned white. A black line then appeared about a third of the way up the screen. Large cross marks indicated each meter. I noticed that there were no numbers.

“So we have a line that is about twenty meters?” Isaac asked. “How is this important?”

“Robert,” I asked. “What was the deflection again?”

“One tenth of a degree,” Robert said.

I stood up and walked over to the controls. I then headed to the left until I was near the edge of the viewscreen.

“I guess we have to do some basic geometry lessons,” I said.

“Why?” Leonard asked.

“So people understand. First, Robert, explain why we had that deflection on the shot. Should it have happened?” I said

Robert nodded and then turned his chair around so that all of the rail gun crew could look at him. He was about to speak when a female voice cut in. “Hey, can I join? I think this is important to me.”

“Kelsey? Where are you?” I asked.

“I went to look at my weapons station in the bridge simulator. The AI linked me in to the simulation. Overall it went well, the loading was quick and I could have fired all three times, but I’m trying to figure out why my second shot missed by almost nine hundred kilometers.”

“Nine hundred?” Raccoon asked.

“Come to the rail gun simulation room,” I said. “I was about to give a brief lesson in angles.”