9
ALEXANDER COCHRANE WALKED toward Djemma’s desk with a sense of foreboding far beyond anything he could recall. For seventeen months, Cochrane had been toiling to construct a directed-energy weapon of incredible power.
This weapon would use superconducting magnets, like those Cochrane had designed for the Large Hadron Collider what seemed like several lifetimes ago. It would accelerate and fire various charged particles at almost the speed of light in a tight beam that could be rapidly “painted” over a target, destroying electronics, computers, and other circuitry.
If tuned correctly, the weapon could act like a giant microwave beam, heating organic matter, cooking its targets from the inside out, setting them afire, even if they took cover behind steel-and-concrete walls.
Through the skies, Cochrane’s weapon could shoot down attacking aircraft at ranges of two hundred miles or more, or it could wipe out approaching armies by sweeping back and forth across the battlefield like a garden hose aimed at approaching ants.
At its ultimate level of development, Cochrane’s weapon could destroy a city, not like an atomic bomb, not with fiery heat or explosive force, but with precision, cutting here and there like a surgeon’s scalpel, turning one block after another into a wasteland.
It could kill the occupants or leave them alive, at Cochrane’s — or Djemma’s — choosing. But even if tuned to destroy electronics and systems only, it could render a city uninhabitable by destroying all modern technology within it in a matter of seconds. Without computers, phones, an electrical grid, or running water, today’s modern, integrated city would become a land of anarchy or a ghost town shortly after Cochrane — or Djemma — set his sights on it.
But to do all that, the weapon had to work, and so far the results were inconclusive.
“I told you it needs more testing,” Cochrane stammered.
“This was supposed to be the final test,” Djemma said.
“What happened to the boat?”
“You mean the ship,” Djemma corrected.
“Ship, boat,” Cochrane said, “same thing to me,”
“Your lack of precision bothers me,” Djemma replied, with an undertone to his words. “A ninety-thousand-ton vessel is not a boat.”
“What happened to the ship?” Cochrane asked, sick and tired of Djemma’s condescending attitude. The man acted as if he were asking Cochrane to build a television set or assemble a computer from prefabricated parts.
“The Kinjara Maru has gone down to… what do you Americans call it? Ah, yes, Mr. Davy Jones’s locker.”
“And the cargo?” he asked. Nothing would improve without this cargo.
“One hundred metric tons of titanium-doped YBCO,” Djemma said. “Removed as per your request.”
Cochrane breathed a sigh of relief. “Well, that’s good news.”
“No!” Djemma snapped, slamming his riding crop on the desk. “Good news would have meant your promises to me were kept. Good news would have been to hear that your weapon worked as you said it would, completely disabling the ship and killing all the crew instantly. As it was, the ship continued under power, and there were survivors, who we had to deal with.”
Cochrane had grown used to Djemma’s moodiness but was stunned by the sudden anger. He jumped at the snap of the crop. Still, his self-confidence was not shaken.
“So what?” he said finally.
“So, our men were exposed,” Djemma said. “A group of Americans tried to interfere. We have now attracted the wrong kind of attention. All thanks to you and your lack of precision.”
Cochrane shifted in his chair. His sense of discomfort would have turned into outright fear were it not for one simple fact. Even though Djemma could have him killed with the snap of his fingers, he never would as long as he needed and wanted the weapon to work.
So far, Cochrane had covered his bases well, everything from insisting his disappearance be made to look like a kidnapping — so he could go back to the industrial world someday — to the way he’d gone about constructing Djemma’s weapon.
He’d done all the development work himself, drawn up the plans and supervised the efforts on-site. He’d made himself so integral to the project that Djemma could do little to threaten him, unless he wished to abandon the hope of finishing it and possessing the final version of the weapon.
Remembering this, Cochrane spoke with renewed confidence.
“All systems take time to fine-tune,” he insisted. “Do you think they build the supercolliders from scratch and then just flip the switch and watch them go? Of course not. There are months and months of tests and calibration before they run even the most basic experiment.”
“You’ve had months,” Djemma said pointedly. “And I don’t want any more experiments. The next test will be full-scale.”
“The weapon isn’t ready,” Cochrane insisted.