No other surface ship besides the Zumwalt had a power system that could generate and, more important, store the tremendous amounts of electricity required for the electromagnetic push that was the essence of the rail gun’s design. This was why the Navy had lost its original excitement over the rail-gun program once the Zumwalt class had ended. Even with a design tailored for the new weapon, the Navy’s models projected that each firing of the rail gun would require stealing energy from other systems onboard, including the ship’s propulsion.

“We are all too aware of that problem with the old defense-industrial complex,” she said. “So what are you doing about it?”

“We’re approaching it through both tactics and reengineering,” said Simmons, trying to shift his tone so that she wouldn’t think he was making excuses. “Tactically, the plan is to use the power drain to our advantage, so to speak, by building drift into the anti-detection protocols. The key is not to get boxed in again, as you put it, but to disappear in the expanse of the ocean. On the reengineering side, we’re getting good results from the new energy-dense liquid-based battery being built for the ship. It’s giving us added power beyond what the original design in the nineties envisioned. We’ve been assigned a specialist in liquid-based batteries, a woman from the University of Wisconsin. Frankly, there’s a lot riding on her expertise.”

He paused to look directly at her.

“But the answer, Admiral, is that the rail gun is power hungry. My concern is that if things do not go according to plan, we will be stuck with only bad options.”

“Captain,” she said, stressing his rank. “That’s the thing you learn as you move from an executive-officer role to that of command. It’s never about choosing the best option; it’s about choosing the least bad of the bad options.”

She paused to let her lesson sink in. Simmons thought about that day at Pearl Harbor. She hadn’t needed to pass on that particular nugget of wisdom.

“Captain, I believe in you. And I believe in what this bastard child of a ship might accomplish. Risks that were once unacceptable to us are now the price of doing business.” Her eyes grew dark, and Simmons saw the warrior side come out of the old war-college president. “I need you to get this ship ready, because I need you to kill things out there, as many as you can, as fast as you can. I need the Directorate to feel something new: fear. You will make them feel that fear, Captain. Understood?”

The door to the small conference room shut with a soft sigh and everyone in the room felt the pressure change. The naval officers there pinched their noses and exhaled to clear their ears, while the civilian scientists kept trying to swallow.

This secure space was a new design, built to defeat Directorate’s eavesdropping and network attack. The original Tank, the Joint Chiefs’ situation room, had been thought completely secure right up until the moment it was discovered that it had been compromised by hardware bought by a U.S. defense contractor on the cheap from a Florida subcontractor that turned out to be a shell company run by two college kids who were just reselling chips from a Chinese vendor. Everyone called these new chambers the Box, though the design was actually a box within a box. Between the two nanoparticle-infused sets of walls was a fluid that circulated at high speed in order to diffuse any signals or transmissions going in or out. Rumor had it the fluid was radioactive.

“Okay, then, let’s dispense with the formalities; none of us want to sit in the Box any longer than we have to,” said Admiral Raj Putnam, head of Naval Intelligence.

Links, sitting next to Darling, took his cue. “It starts in Beijing, sir. I was finishing up my assignment to the embassy — I was actually at my going-away party on my last night there. There was a Russian officer, a lifer in Beijing, whom I’d gotten to know, and he was helpful to me from time to time.”

“You mean you got shitfaced with him a few times and he was running you?” said Admiral Putnam.

“No, sir, I know the game,” said Links. “I’m not chipped, but you can check my viz and other records. That ties back to the party. As you know, everyone is either chipped or recording with derm mikes or viz or what have you. So I assumed there was no way he would say anything interesting.”

“Yes, I’ve reviewed the viz from the party myself,” said Admiral Putnam. “He didn’t.”

Links shot a look of disbelief at Darling. In the moment of silence, the womblike sound of the fluid pumping around the room seemed to intensify. Then Links cleared his throat and continued.

“It’s the context that makes our conversation interesting. As you saw, we were talking about Star Trek, the old television and film series. I’d talked about a lot of things with Sechin, but never science fiction. Usually he just gave me gossip on the Directorate’s internal politics or upcoming promotions, that kind of thing. So this stuck in my mind,” said Links. “Sechin explained how proud he was that one of the characters, Chekov, was named after this Russian scientist, Pavel Cherenkov. Honestly, Admiral, I figured he was just drunk. Then yesterday, after hearing about what happened to the USS John Warner, it clicked.”

Links wondered how old the admiral was. He wore his gray hair shaved to the skull, like most of the population of the Pentagon, some kind of show of commitment to the war effort. The admiral had smooth, unblemished skin but a nose like a moon rock. He might be old enough to have watched the first wave of Star Trek movies.

“So how does Mr. Links’s sci-fi drinking tales square with what you saw?” said Admiral Putnam to Darling.

“I believe it relates to how they targeted our undersea assets,” said Darling. “There were no Directorate submarines or surface ships in our area of operations other than the target we engaged. Nor were there any aircraft. We owned that box. Or so we thought.”

Darling chewed his bottom lip in evident frustration. “To answer your question, though, we need to give some context, which Dr. Shaw from NASA is best situated to provide.”

He turned to the man seated at his left. Shaw did not look the part of a scientist, being tall and wiry with a swimmer’s broad shoulders. He also wore an expensive suit, flashy, in the 1930s-style now back in fashion. And to cap it, he had his slender, rose-tinted viz glasses perched on his head, almost like a tiara. The intended effect, whatever it was, was lost on the admiral.

Shaw stood and began to speak as a projection appeared behind him. The content failed to match the vibe he gave off.

“When a photon exits a vacuum and enters a dielectric medium at a speed greater than the phase velocity of light, a wonderful result occurs, which proved to be key to science’s understanding of everything from the nature of black holes to the stars. Let us begin with the mathematical foundations.”

As Shaw scribbled out an equation that was projected on the wall of the Box, Admiral Putnam turned to the two officers and said, “Gentlemen, I don’t have time for a dissertation defense; we have a war to win. How does this link to Cherenkov and the subs?”

“He’s coming to it, sir,” Links responded. “Dr. Shaw, perhaps the metaphor you used to explain this to us might be more helpful now than the math.”

“Ah yes,” said Dr. Shaw. “You are familiar with what happens when an aircraft breaks the sound barrier by traveling faster than the speed of sound: A sonic boom trails behind it. Cherenkov radiation is that, in a sense, playing out at the electron level. What we know as light speed is possible only in a vacuum. When light travels through different mediums, such as water, it is slowed down by the matter in those mediums. Thus, it is possible for charged particles to travel faster than light through those surroundings. These particles, however, are still interacting with the same medium, exciting the molecules in it to release photons that pile up behind. Thus, the boom is a sort of cone traveling behind the subatomic particles. In nuclear reactors, which I understand you are interested in, the particles move away at higher speeds than light does, giving the wonderful blue glow you might be familiar with. That is Cherenkov radiation.”