Family Law 3: Secrets in the Stars Read Online Free Page B

We know they have some sort of gravity manipulation. Perhaps it doesn't really provide any advantage in a missile. You can harden things like electronics far easier than protecting living things. Perhaps what they use on the ships takes a great deal of power. It occurred to me they may only manage the perceived acceleration in limited areas of those big ships. We just don't know yet," Jeremiah concluded.
    "Don't forget the missiles that they fail-safed had a weird spectrum too. They appeared to be pure fusion weapons instead of using a fission kernel," Gordon said.
    Jeremiah opened his mouth and then shut it. Frowned and then looked serious, not animated. "Don't quote me, but there are rumors some humans have that tech too, but it is closely held," Jeremiah said.
    "What do you mean, closely held ?" Gordon demanded. "Pure fusion weapons would be a huge advantage if they were cheaper. Why would anybody hide them or refrain from marketing them?"
    "Look, it's hard for me to tell this again. I told this to a friend once and he stopped doing things with me and labeled me a nutcase, but my grandfather told me this big story when I was a kid. Do you know the orbital hab Home used to be in LEO, not out at L2? It was alone then. They didn't have the two added companion habs they do now, doing a halo dance around the same center."
    "Yeah, I've heard of Home. Very exclusive and expensive. Picky about who they let in. They have some kind of a weird government too. But what would they have to do with exotic weapons? Space stations are just about impossible to defend. The first thing they do in any conflict is evacuate the damn things," Gordon insisted.
    "Yes, but you research it and you'll find nobody has screwed around with Home or its allies for the last hundred years. It used to be under USNA law before they rebelled and went independent. Look up the history," Jeremiah told Gordon. "The USNA actually surrendered to them back in the day. They obviously could not occupy them with only a couple thousand population but they demanded concessions and got them. The thing is my grandfather told me that after they got their independence they had some tech China tried to steal. This was back when China was as big as it ever got, one country from Korea clear west to India. They hijacked a Home ship and took it back to China. Probably to tear it apart and reverse engineer it."
    "What kind of tech are you talking about?" Gordon pressed.
    "My grandfather was USNA military," Jeremiah said. "He said Home ships accelerated faster than a human could survive. Just like the Caterpillars. That's what the Chinese wanted. The Chinese snatched this ship off dock at the ISSII. The old ISS they retired and was bought and rebuilt for a private hab. Well, when they took it back to Earth the Home people bombarded the main Chinese spaceport out in the Gobi Desert to destroy the ship.
    "The thing is, grandpa said it was a pure fusion weapon. Something on the high side of two hundred megatons with no fallout. He said at the time it was a state secret and freaked all the brass out. If you doubt it go look at the public satellite maps. The crater is still there. I didn't believe it either when I was about eight years old. I was a skeptical little snot, but my granddad called it up on the web and showed me the crater and then older maps showing the spaceport there when I questioned him."
    "The crater shows from orbit?" Gordon asked, skeptical. "They haven't filled it back in?"
    "Gordon, it was about six kilometers across and a kilometer deep. How much would that cost to fill back up? And to what purpose when you have plenty of unused desert all around it?" Jeremiah asked.
    "So you believe this, and that nobody has duplicated the tech since then?" Gordon asked, warily.
    "I believed my grandfather, after seeing the evidence on the web. And I'm not quite as afraid to tell the story again, because when we get back I'll be so rich now I won't have to worry if you or anybody