Chapter Twenty-Nine – Successfully Participated

Chapter Twenty-Nine – Successfully Participated

“The era of participating trophies is over!

Now, now is the era of participation demerits!”

–Gerard “the Teacher” Teach, During the 2029 Capital Riots

***

“So, give it to me straight,” I said as we slipped into an elevator. “How hard is this gonna be?”

Grasshopper raised a hand to rub at her chin. Her other set crossed and another set of hands settled on her hips. “This is probably significantly more complicated than you expect it to be, Catherine.”

“Uh-huh,” I said. “But you’re good at making this kind of thing simple, aren’t you? So simple away, please.”

Grasshopper giggled faintly before nodding. “I’ll do what I can. First, let’s start at ground zero of the project. We’re going to need a wide open space regardless of which method we pick for the delivery.”

“We have options?” Sam-O-Ray asked.

“Oh, yes. There’s more than one way to skin a cat. No offence meant!”

“None taken?”

Grasshopper started to gesture as she spoke. It was a wonder her arms weren’t clacking against each other. “So, my personal favourite method would be a very large gun. Something that can put a small payload out into orbit. Any sufficiently large cannon could probably manage it, but ideally we’d use something that doesn’t use an explosive propellant.”

“Like a railgun?” Rac asked.

“Oh, very well done!” Grasshopper said. She idly reached into one of the many little pockets on her armour and tugged out a small roll of paper. It was wax paper, covered in hundreds of little stickers. She fumbled with it for a moment before finding a sticker of a raccoon. It was promptly pressed onto Rac’s chest, like a medal on a general. “A railgun,” she continued. “Would be a very effective way of propelling something at the speeds we need, but it might also limit what we can send up.”

“And a normal big gun?” I asked.

“Also doable. But that’ll be a lot of firepower. Lots of smoke, a larger, louder explosion. We can forget any amount of subtlety unless we build around that issue. It also means housing and working with heavy explosives, which is somewhat more dangerous.”

Sam-O-Ray hummed. “A normal rocket? Not as reusable, but it could be relatively cheap. It’s propellant in a tube. Basically a single-use cannon that just burns longer.”

“That’s a slight oversimplification of rocketry,” Grasshopper said.

“Yeah, I know. I do have some background in engineering,” Sam-O-Ray said. He grinned huge. “Got a Masters in it. Not rocket-science, mind, but I get the basic principles.”

“Oh, forgive me,” Grasshopper said. “But yes, rockets are a viable idea, I just find them somewhat wasteful. In any case, once we’ve decided a way to get into orbit, we need to find a way to go from orbit to Phobos.”

I frowned. “Can’t we just shoot it from here?” I asked.

That got me some looks.

“Yeah, I know the planet’s spinning and shit, so we’ll have to wait for, like, the right window, but… what?”

Grasshopper peeled off another sticker and pressed it onto my chest. I looked down until my chin was buried in my neck to read it. ‘You Tried!’ it read in glitter-covered script.

“We could bolo it,” Sam-O-Ray suggested.

“Oh! That would be very interesting!” Grasshopper said. She clapped two sets of arms.

“Bolo?” Rac repeated.

Grasshopper nodded. “A bolo is an ancient weapon of sorts. It’s made of a rope or cord with two or occasionally three weights on the end. Some have even more! A bolo would be thrown so that the weights spin around, and when they strike something, the weights make the cords wrap around whatever they’ve hit.”

“Okay… you want to bolo the moon?” Rac asked.

“Oh, not quite. In terms of space-travel, a bolo-system is essentially a somewhat stationary device in orbit that has weights and counter balances. An object flies in close, gets hooked on, then whipped out into the distance. It’s a fantastic way of transferring energy to something in a close orbit so that it’s flung out into a further one.”