Winter World (The Long Winter #1)(40)

After a moment, Charlotte nods. “Yes. I agree. It would give me a big head start. By the time we got there, we could be ready to have a productive dialogue.”

“Or be ready to destroy it,” Grigory says. “That’s what’s in third set of drones, yes? Weapons?”

All eyes turn to me. “That’s right. The first drone will observe. The second will communicate. And if that’s unsuccessful, we probe its defenses. By the time we reach the artifact, we need to be ready to talk or fight. Additionally, this will let us know what we’re dealing with now—whether it’s friendly or aggressive—and we can let Earth know far sooner than expected. We’re still a lot closer to Earth than we will be when we reach the artifact.”

The group falls silent. I think they’ve realized the genius of the plan Harry, Emma, and I have put together. The addition of the Janus fleet is a vast improvement on NASA’s original mission, shaving months off the timeline of determining what the artifact is. It occurs to me now why NASA didn’t designate a mission commander. This is the reason—this meeting. NASA wanted friction. They wanted all these brilliant people to sit in a room and argue—without a clear leader who could end debate and just decide things summarily. This mission is primarily about the research we’re doing, not fast command decisions. They wanted every person to have a specialty and to have a chance to voice their ideas and opinions. That’s how good plans are improved.

“How would it work?” Min asks. “The weapons?”

“We’re designing a rail gun,” Harry replies.

Charlotte grimaces. “I thought a gun wouldn’t work in space.”

Grigory sounds annoyed. “Gun will work in space.”

“Without oxygen?” Charlotte asks.

“Yes,” Grigory snaps. “And a rail gun is nothing like regular gun anyway.”

Harry’s voice is calm and matter-of-fact. “A gun—a conventional gun with a hard projectile and gunpowder as propulsion—will indeed fire in space. The rounds contain their own oxidizer—a chemical that triggers the explosion of the gunpowder and forces the projectile outward, along a path created by a barrel. The reaction doesn’t need any outside oxygen. The main difference in firing a gun in space will be the smoke, which will emerge from the projectile’s exit point at the tip of the barrel.

“But in our case, there won’t be any gunpowder or oxidizer or expanding gas of any kind needed. A rail gun is different in mechanism, though we still use a projectile in a barrel pointed at our target. The barrel in a rail gun has two rails that are magnetized using massive amounts of electricity. The electromagnetic current running down the rails pushes the object out the barrel at extremely high velocity—much, much faster than any explosive round can achieve.”

“What’s the target?” Grigory asks.

“We’d shoot six rail gun rounds concurrently, close grouping,” I reply.

“Center mass?” Grigory asks.

“No. The outer edge.”

The Russian engineer smiles. “You want a piece of it.”

“To study, yes. We feel the priority is learning what it’s made of. That will tell us more about how to… neutralize it and any other artifacts.”

After a long silence, Min asks, “Is there more?”

“That’s all we’ve got at the moment,” I reply.

“I like it,” Min says.

“As do I,” Grigory adds.

Charlotte nods. “Me too.”

“Same,” Lina says.

All eyes drift over to Izumi. “This is all outside my expertise. I’m here to keep you all alive and performing well. It would seem that this plan does that very well. I am for it.”

I motion to Harry and Emma. “We still have a lot of work to do on our end with the design, and then we’ve got some construction challenges. I think maybe we could be done in two weeks? Three?”

I shift my gaze to Emma. She’s been silent throughout the meeting, for good reason: she knew what Harry and I were presenting. She helped formulate the plan. And she’s essential to executing it. Harry and I are good with design, but when it comes to building the drones, she runs circles around us.

“Definitely,” she says. “Two weeks’ build time is doable based on the prelim designs.”

I address Lina. “We’ll need a lot of help with the software.”

“No problem. I’ve already got a good head start on some autonomous drone systems. But I need the specifics.” She turns to Charlotte. “Protocols for the comms, to start with.”

“I have the basics mapped out. I can clean it up and have it to you in a few days.”

“Great. And Min, I’m going to need those navigation parameters pretty soon too.”

“Nav is the easy part,” Min says. “We need to know how much propulsion power we’ve got, and range—those are the tricky variables.”

“We agree,” I say. “I feel like we need a working group between our team,” I point to Emma and Harry, “and Grigory and Min. We need to figure out what we have to work with and what we’re willing to use up on this first drone launch.”

Nods all around.

I inhale. “Look, the next two weeks are going to be rough. We’ll be working around the clock. There’ll be a lot of back-and-forth among all of us. But it will be worth it. We’ll find out where the artifact is. The status of the Fornax. And most importantly, we could achieve our mission objective months ahead of schedule. All that’s left is to get it done.”