“That’s it,” shouted Martin, and Jack heard him grunt once more as he shifted the rivet gun into place over the next join hole.

* * *

“I have to say it, Colonel, it looks good.” Martin said, not looking up from his computer. The colonel had come to join them. They were behind schedule, the need to ship the advanced material components from North Dakota, and to do so discreetly, was hampering their efforts. But today was hopefully going to be a good day.

“Give me the details, Martin, if you don’t mind.” asked the colonel, looking over Martin’s shoulder at the screen.

“Well, Colonel, we have locked in the shell casing and I have been scanning it with the ultrasound for the last four hours. We have two small air gaps which I need to fix, but with minor adjustments I am confident we have our design.”

“And we can use the existing outer casing?”

Jack spoke up, “Just as you see it, Colonel, we have managed to use the outer casing and the standard heat shielding from the original missile armor. All we needed to do was change the mounting slightly to account for the sandwich of superconductor between them.”

Barrett nodded. They were close, but he had to balance the need for expediency with the need for accuracy. He needed to know if it worked. Screw it, he thought.

“Captain, Doctor, time to check if this thing works. I know we’ve checked the superconductor against the laser before, but I need to know this structure will work under pressure.” he looked at them both; Jack seemed skeptical, but Martin was grinning. Barrett prompted them, “Well, gentlemen?”

They sprang into action. OK, the man wants to destroy $200,000 of titanium, who were they to argue.

Both the modified missile casing and their deuterium fluoride laser were ungainly devices, but they soon had them facing off against each other, locked in place, the big chemical laser powering up.

“Are we ready, gentlemen?” said Martin, as they all donned their dark glasses and arranged themselves behind the mobile, polarized Plexiglas shielding, itself thoroughly out of sight of the actual laser.

“Ready.” said Captain Toranssen.

“OK,” said Martin, “activating laser.” the humming from the already warm laser grew suddenly louder, and then its terrific green beam lanced at the big nose cone across the room. The twang and snap of the titanium casing came just fifteen seconds later, and the laser started to hammer at the thinner, impossibly black superconducting layer beneath.

“Just to reiterate, gentlemen,” said Martin over the loud thrum of the laser and the hiss and creak of the missile shielding heating up, “let’s remember that our target time is forty-five seconds under the much more powerful attack of the satellites’ defensive laser. That means it needs to be able to withstand this lesser attack for about six minutes.”