Star Man 1: Star Bourne

by I. G. Roberts

  Conti was nodding as I said all this, clearly understanding the points I was trying to make and even agreeing with me about them.

  She said, “You are right of course, we were stupid. We should’ve foreseen this possibility and taken steps to protect ourselves.”

  I said to her, “Please, don’t beat yourself up over this. At worst, you made a simple mistake, trusting your processes for identification a little too much. That doesn’t make you stupid, I know you are not. Always remember, anyone can be corrupted, absolutely everyone has a price. It may be money, the welfare of someone they care about, it could be something else I can’t think of right now. You already know there is some corruption within the Federation, you were investigating that as part of your mission. When you finally make your way home, you can take further steps to find out what really happened.”

  Conti thanked me, then she and Anne rose to leave. As Conti turned towards the door, Anne caught my attention and mouthed the words ‘Thank You’ as she smiled. They let themselves out of the office while I returned to my solo musings.

  FEDERATION BOUND

  As expected, we down jumped into the next system still at the same velocity we were carrying when we first entered jump-space in the previous system. I immediately ordered the helmsman to make course to the next jump point and take us to maximum acceleration. We needed to be as far away from the jump point as possible before the pirate followed us through. The course was already plotted by navigation before we exited the jump corridor so the helm immediately turned and started ramping up the acceleration to try and clear the immediate vicinity before our pursuing pirate could emerge, if he did emerge.

  I held a forlorn hope he would give up when we escaped the last system but of course I could not account for his stubbornness or his stupidity. I also told the tactical rating to bring the shields up but he simply replied he’d already done so. I smiled at him and told him well done, feeling an acknowledgment of his initiative would be well received. The look on the all bridge crew’s faces told me it was. As I ordered the course change, the sensor operator began scanning the system, looking for possibly hostile ships or for that matter, even friendly ones, but as time passed, nothing at all showed up. It seemed the system was completely empty. He did so without me needing to order it. I found myself feeling very pleased, this crew was finally starting to get it, they were starting to understand what I expected of them, to foresee the orders they knew I would be most likely to give. I hoped my leadership style would not cause them any problems with that in the future.

  Once we were on our way, with everyone settling in, my mind started to idly wander down various paths, the direction mostly governed by curiosity. Out of curiosity, I asked the crew on the bridge to explain to me what would be likely to happen to a ship if she entered a jump point while still carrying too much velocity. I found their reply to actually be quite reassuring. They told me the Federation had done a lot of research into jump points, jump space and ways of traveling between the stars over the years. Apparently, there were ongoing efforts to increase the entry speed above the current stated maximum but there had only ever been very limited success along those lines. Scientists were also investigating alternative means of traveling between the stars but nobody really expected much from those efforts, not in the short term. They tried various ways of improving the jump engines, using better control techniques and a whole host of other technologies and methods in an attempt to increase the maximum entry velocity without a huge amount of success. There had over the years been some incremental increases of the maximum jump entry velocity but all of those increases added together only added up to about one percent of the original established maximum. To me, it seemed the Federation scientists were relying on a flawed theory that they used to predict the physics behind interstellar jumps, jump points and perhaps jump space itself.

  The bridge crew told me if a ship was traveling too fast when she entered the jump point, one of three things had always taken place. Those three things were that it simply did not enter jump space, it disappeared never to be seen again, or it might turn up at the target system in some random location, somewhere along the exit vector. The crew told me that to their knowledge, this last only occurred in about five percent of the tests and in all those cases the entry velocity was only a few percent higher than the acknowledged maximum. They also told me in a vast majority of cases, the high velocity resulted in the ship simply not entering jump.

  From the data the bridge crew were able to show me, I quickly came to the conclusion that the specific outcomes seemed to be related to the actual velocity of entry. At velocities only a few percent over the maximum, it seemed the ship would be able to make it to the next system but it would probably be in an unpredictable location within the system though the location would always be somewhere along the exit vector. The real risk here was the ship might re-enter space in a location occupied by another solid body. At velocities above that, up to about twenty percent above the maximum entry velocity, they were simply never seen again. Finally, if they were traveling at more than twenty percent above the maximum entry velocity, they simply did not enter jump but continued on past the jump point instead. As far as the Destiny’s crew were aware, the scientists who studied this phenomenon didn’t really understand why these effects happened. Thankfully, most of the higher speed tests were carried out using automated probes so very few people were ever actually put at risk.

  The engineer and scientist in me began to ponder everything the bridge crew told me about jumps and I began to theorise the reasons for this situation. I theorised, mostly to myself that a ship did not materialise instantaneously at its destination when it exited jump. I thought perhaps this meant if a ship was traveling too fast on jump exit, the jump point could possibly stretch out along the exit vector till the ship was finally able to materialise, thus it would appear at some seemingly random location along its intended exit vector. This meant the ships that disappeared completely may be found somewhere along that same exit vector but so far away they would never be able to make it back to their intended destination in any kind of reasonable time frame, possibly even running out of fuel before they could. The ships that were traveling too fast to be able to enter jump were, I thought probably through the jump point and out the other side before they could establish the jump field enough to actually enter jump. I thought perhaps it would be interesting to discuss my thinking with someone who was a little more familiar with jump physics. I wondered if I would ever have an opportunity to have a conversation such as this.

  If the pirates entered the jump point at a speed allowing them to reappear in this system, and given our need to turn quite sharply on jump exit, we really only needed about one and a half hours’ head start before they would be too far out of position to have any reasonable chance of intercepting us before we could enter jump again even if we were not accelerating as hard as we were in the last system. If we could escape this system, we were expecting a high likelihood of being able to obtain help from the Federation Navy in the next, at least we were hoping for some help when we reached there.

  I’d just settled into my chair intending to contemplate our next move when I received a call from engineering asking me if I could come down to talk to them. They apparently had a problem they needed to discuss with me. I agreed and rose to make my way to the engineering spaces. As I exited the bridge on my way toward engineering, two Troopers attached themselves to me as escorts. Clearly, Shasi had not lifted that particular requirement yet. When I thought about it, I realised that really, her decision was a good one, it simply made sense. We had a ship full of prisoners, some of whom were being allowed out of confinement to work on ship repairs and other tasks under supervision. Admittedly, none of the prisoners who were being allowed to work were causing any kind of trouble. On a number of occasions, they’d even disciplined members of their own group who looked like they may be about to do something that could cause the rest of them problems. My two
biggest concerns with those prisoners were associated with the need for us to find enough work to keep them occupied, and keeping the guards from becoming too complacent. Still, we’d had the escape and attempted takeover of the ship by escapees from the brig so the precaution was a good one. There were simply too many people on the ship who we didn’t know well enough to trust.

  When we arrived in Engineering the lead rating came over to me to talk about the problem they were monitoring for a little while and had now decided I should be made aware of. He told me bluntly we were becoming critically short of reaction mass. I asked him to define critically short for me. He replied that if we maintained our current acceleration curves all the way to the next jump point, we would be able to enter jump but would not have enough reaction mass to make it to the station in the next system or dock there if we somehow did. He told me we’d lost quite a lot of our reserves when the mines damaged the ship and there simply hadn’t been any opportunities to replenish our stocks since then. He told me, normally we would not have had as much time on full acceleration so we were experiencing a far higher usage rate than could really be sustained for very much longer. He continued on, explaining there is a sweet spot where the ship can accelerate quite hard but not be using anywhere near as much reaction mass. Unfortunately, at the moment, we were significantly exceeding that sweet spot out of necessity and were consequently consuming our remaining reaction mass at an unsustainable rate. He told me that other than the shortage of reaction mass we were fine. He said the main drives were purring along with everything working perfectly.

  “OK,” I said, “Thank you for telling me this. I will see what we can do to reduce our consumption of reaction mass. I assume we can do things like reduce our acceleration or perhaps even shut off the thrust from the mains completely. Whatever else happens, if he chases us into the next system we are probably going to need to fight him there, unless the Federation Navy has a suitable warship conveniently close enough to keep him off our backs. This is the type of information I need to be able to work out our options. You are to continue to monitor the reaction mass consumption and let me know how we go. If we are still using it too quickly, let me know immediately so I can try to make the necessary changes. Also, could you let me know the most efficient throttle settings for us to use so I can make an attempt to begin reducing our consumption immediately please. For now, I will leave you to your work, call me if you think of anything else, or if you need anything.”

  With that, I turned on my heel and made my way back towards the bridge as quickly as I could. I really did not feel very comfortable at all being away from there for very long at all right then, not with us being pursued across the system by this pirate the way we were. When I reached the bridge, I called Anne, asking her to come to the bridge to help me with planning for the balance of our trip home. While I was still waiting for her, Engineering contacted me with the throttle settings we should use to improve our consumption of reaction mass. I immediately ordered the helm to reduce the throttles to use those settings. Of course, this would reduce our acceleration a little but I reasoned I could probably make up for it somewhere else. While I had these different throttle settings in mind, I also asked the navigation people to factor the new acceleration values into their calculations. We had a fluid situation with unforeseen changes occurring and we really needed to keep on top of it. I needed to understand if and when the pirate would be able to catch up with us.

  When Anne arrived, I told her what I’d done so far and why. I then asked her if she had any suggestions for other ways we might be able to reduce the consumption of reaction mass. She suggested to me we may be able to reduce the throttle settings a little further, which would of course reduce the usage or, better yet, she asked if we could cut the mains entirely, not accelerating at all, just coast till we needed to decelerate for jump entry at the other end. That idea seemed to me to be a particularly good one if we could pull it off. I turned to Navigation and asked them to set up a rolling calculation to define how much we could reduce acceleration and still stay ahead of the pirate if he maintained his pursuit. I told them to assume he would appear at the jump point carrying the maximum safe jump velocity and estimate when they think he might emerge given those constraints.

  The Navigation department set to work on their task while I sat with Anne discussing our options. The conversation was a free flowing one, really intended to bring different ideas out for us to look at in more detail later. I explained how I would prefer we did not have a need to fight the pirates at all while we were alone in this system. I was really hoping the Federation Navy might be close enough to come to our assistance when we reached the next system. She agreed with me this would be the best we could hope for. She told me if we could at least make the next system, if FNS Destiny was too badly damaged to remain viable, many of the crew and passengers would have a chance to be able in escape in the life pods and the Navy should be able to arrive in time to drive the pirates off and pick up the survivors. Of course, we both acknowledged this would be our worst case scenario and we were both taking the position we would hope for the best but plan for the worst. I also wanted to be planning for a situation where we were able to escape the pirates relatively unscathed but without enough reaction mass to make it to the station and dock safely.

  I thought, maybe somebody would be able to ferry us enough reaction mass to be able to complete the trip but I didn’t think we could bank on that, not till we arrived in the next system and were able to understand the situation there. Of course, I still had to deal with the fact I would almost certainly be arrested by the authorities when we arrived but in the scheme of things, being arrested seemed to only be a minor problem for me just then. It was also a problem I’d already accepted as a likely consequence for my recent actions. I hoped the authorities would not be targeting the crew as well as me when we arrived and FNS Destiny was once again under their control. I knew by now, FNS Destiny was about six weeks overdue so I expected the Federation Navy would be keeping an eye out for her. Apparently, another Deep Space Explorer vessel disappeared not long before Destiny departed on her current cruise and unless she’d turned up since, no one knew what happened to her.

  We were in the system for well over three hours, actually, closer to four, when the pirate finally appeared behind us at the jump point. I have to admit, if nothing else, he was a persistent bastard, he was clearly not planning to give up on us any time soon. I wondered why he was being so persistent, what was it we had that he wanted? Was he after revenge for us destroying his friends or did he think something was on FNS Destiny that he felt a burning need to recover or was he just too damn stubborn to give up, I wasn’t quite sure which of these reasons it was. I found myself struggling to understand his dogged determination or what was motivating him to catch or destroy us. I must have said all of that aloud because Anne looked in my direction, her eyes dancing with amusement as she laughed before telling me she would definitely have to agree with me on that one.

  The pirate seemed to pick us up on his sensors about ten minutes after entering the system. To us, it looked like he turned on a pursuit course and began accelerating as hard as he could in an attempt to overhaul us as soon as he pinpointed our location. It seems he wanted to catch us before we reached the next jump point. Now we had him, we could begin making accurate predictions about when and if he would be able to catch us.

  By this stage, our rate of acceleration had just begun to drop off slightly due to the impact of the relativistic effects but we were still pulling away from the pursuing pirate at a very respectable rate. We’d of course expected this to happen. It would be some little time before he would even be able to match velocity with us let alone surpass it and by then, according to the navigators, it would be too late for him to reach a point close enough to us to fire weapons at us for more than a couple of minutes. I thought to myself what a huge shame it was we’d lost such a lot of our reaction mass reserves when the ship was damaged by the mine
s. I idly wondered if we might have been able to top up from the pirate we were looting but of course, it was too late now for us to worry about that. I simply didn’t know it might be required, my inexperience as a ship commander was showing, I’d made a mistake. It would have made life so much easier for us if we had more reaction mass now. Of course there was no point complaining about it, not now. As my mother used to say, ‘there was no use crying over spilt milk’. All we could really do was to try and make it into the next system all the time hoping someone was close enough and tough enough to convince the pirate to back off and let us go. Of course this was always going to be our best case scenario and it was not a scenario I dared believe likely.

  Now the Navigation Department had all the data they needed for the pirate’s location, speed and acceleration, they were able to begin making some more accurate predictions about his capabilities relative to ours. After they completed their analysis, they told me he could not possibly catch us now if we maintained our planned acceleration profile. I then set them a new problem. I asked them to calculate when we could cut acceleration and coast till we needed to decelerate for the next jump so we could preserve as much reaction mass as possible. I told them to assume I would start a linear reduction of thrust when relativistic effects reduced our acceleration by twenty percent and I was happy for him to be in range to target us with his weapons say one or two minutes before we were in a position to jump. Of course I reminded them the pirates acceleration would also begin to drop off at some point as his speed started to reach what I termed as relativistic velocities. Of course we could not predict precisely at what point this would happen simply because we did not have his at rest mass, or his ships thrust figures as a baseline but we could make some educated guesses based on his performance since this pursuit began. I hoped to once again escape the system before he could cause us any damage with his weapons. It was a risk but I had no choice but to take it given our low reserves of reaction mass.