Aeolus Investigations Set 2: Too Cool To Lose: The Continuing Evolution of Lexi Stevens

by Robert E Colfax

  “There are always worse things,” Geena agreed pragmatically. “I think that life is about finding yourself. It’s an ongoing journey. You’re definitely doing that.”

  “What if I don’t like what I find at the end of the journey, Geena?”

  “What if you do?”

  Ron laughed. “Lexi, it’s simple. You’re a magnet for trouble. I don’t think that’s going to change anytime soon. We’re all happy to be your partners.”

  “Still,” Geena said, “I’m right. Finding the kidnap victims on Hepca did, just barely, fall into the category of insurance investigation. Going in to get them out, not so much. Nothing we’ve done since then does either. You’re turning us into secret agents. Don’t get me wrong. It’s a wild ride and it’s fun. But, just saying.”

  Lexi smiled. “Yes, I know. I expect any day now Ron will start introducing himself as ‘Samue, Ron Samue’ and drinking vodka martinis. Seriously, though, as the situation now stands, we only have three courses of action we can take. We can be the investigators we were hired to be, get out of here, drop the Ostrieachians off and report back to Jis; job done.”

  Ron said, “The Accord is certain to lose Ostrieachia to the pirates if we make that choice.”

  “I know,” Lexi said. “Give me a break. I’m being all-inclusive. We can destroy the entire base and save Ostrieachia for the immediate future, killing six hundred innocent people in the process because there is no way to get them out of there ahead of time. I can’t vote for that. I don’t believe any of us would.”

  Geena nodded at her, smiling, finishing Lexi’s thought, “Or we can gamble that we can save the hostages, neutralize the base and maybe, just maybe, save Ostrieachia at the same time.”

  “Hey, just for the record, I like vodka martinis as much as the next spy,” Ron stated. “I’ll admit, I prefer mine stirred, not shaken.” He paused a moment. “Not that I can tell any difference.”

  Lexi shook her head while she smiled at him. “So, are we still all agreed? The game is poker, or maybe canasta. At any rate, our cards have been dealt. Are we going for the gamble? Or do we fold?”

  “Lexi, we’re pulling together a sound plan, but realistically no one has ever tried anything like this,” Geena said, not realizing she was paraphrasing a line from a movie.

  Lexi recognized it and responded appropriately, “That's why it’s going to work.”

  Ron, also catching the reference, leaned back and clasped his hands behind his head. “It’s going to take more than just upgrading the hyper-generator, Neo. The base is not sitting on pure granite. It’s a fissile blend of granite and something very much like the carbonite alloy used in hull metal. I’ve never heard of hull metal occurring naturally, but space is big. Anyway, we need to get the section of the base we liberate through hyper without shattering it. Turbulence is going to be hellish. So assuming we can get there more or less in one piece, what do we do with it once we make it to Ostrieachia?”

  Lexi shrugged. “I’m going to be tied up for the next few days working on the generator and the dampeners. The hyper-drive is underpowered for what we’re going to be asking it to do, so that’s next on my list. Let me know what you come up with. There’s something else you should know. It’s probably just another indication that Unity is hyper security conscious. All of Unity’s data is encrypted, no surprise there, but the base language of the encryption is Ritue, leaving us no clue as to who they really are. As far as Urania can tell, they’re all speaking Ritue as well. We’re not picking up any signs of any other language being spoken.”

  Several days later, Lexi joined Ron and Geena in the office, “It’s going to work,” she announced. “We can do it.”

  “No, Lexi,” Geena said, “we’ve checked and re-checked. There’s no way that base is going to survive the trip from Ostrieachia’s hyper-limit to Ostrieachia through n-space. It lacks sufficient structural integrity and is simply going to crumble when the n-space drive kicks in. Nor is the drive powerful enough to overcome the flight decks inertia. We aren’t going to able to uncouple the flight deck and park it in orbit, either. It will begin a catastrophic reentry immediately. To keep it in one piece, we’re going to need to pop out of hyper practically inside of Ostrieachia’s upper atmosphere. Urania says she can do it with the upgraded generator.” She paused. “Then we crash into an ocean.”

  Lexi shook her head while examining the calculations on their wall pertaining to the structural integrity of a hundred-thousand-ton saucer of granite. Both of them, probably with Urania’s help, were juggling math they had no understanding of a year ago. “Everybody dies on reentry in that scenario,” she said. “What’s keeping us from coming out of hyper before we reach Ostrieachia’s hyper-limit? Never mind. I think I see the problem. We can’t take a thick enough chunk of the base to keep the stress of transitioning into and then out of hyperspace from cracking the disk in a dozen or more places. The turbulence in hyper is going to set some of those pieces moving on slightly different vectors. Gravitational attraction between the chunks will grind everything to a pulp as they collide. Everybody dies in that scenario too.”

  “We’re not going to let anybody die,” Ron stated. “We’re not going to be having them sunbathing on the flight deck. There are four military-grade troop transports parked overhead, each with a carrying capacity of one-hundred-eighty marines. With the three of us and the one Ostrieachian pilot, we have enough pilots to fly all of them if we need to. Even if we ride it out on the transports, we won’t have to worry about lack of life-support on the flight deck itself. I don’t want to abandon all of that hardware, though. The Ostrieachians are going to need it to defend their planet.”

  “I’m afraid we have another job for you, Lexi,” Geena said. “Urania’s atmospheric thrusters can’t support nearly that much mass. Unless you think of something better, we’re going to need an anti-gravity field to lighten the load. You’ve talked about the possibility of developing that technology before. We need it now. If you can make it work, when we reach Ostrieachia, we aren’t so much going to be crashing. As Buzz and Woody say in the movie, we’re going to be ‘falling with style.’”

  Chapter 17

  Dampeners

  Redesigning the dampeners turned out to be Lexi’s most challenging task, right up there with the effort of inventing the handheld ray-guns they dubbed Zappers. Dampeners, like most Accord technology, hadn’t changed in thousands of years. They were one of those ubiquitous components installed on every starship, designed primarily to mute the turbulence of travel through hyperspace. In general, larger ships just had more than smaller ships. They could burn out through the stress of normal use. Urania lost a few when she plunged into Saturn’s atmosphere to refuel the day after the team recovered the Rose of Light on their first job together. All of hers were replaced as part of the remodel last year, but those were just new components, not a new technology. Ships always carried replacements. Lexi spent an entire three days just thinking about how to approach the problem without making any progress. Which was bad. If she couldn’t come up with improvements, they wouldn’t be able to lift off from the planet. The drive would rip them apart.

  Dampeners are heavy-duty units attached throughout the ship’s crawl space and attic to the struts that support the hull plating. Most ships had redundant, overlapping coverage, although there really wasn’t a good reason for that. Urania was no exception. Lexi had to admit to herself that the existing design did the job well enough, smoothing out the inevitable turbulence induced in a ship thrusting its way through hyperspace. Hyperspace wasn’t even part of the equation, they dampened shaking whenever the ship experienced it by strengthening the hull. How exactly do they do that?

  It was a question she hadn’t asked before. She took the rubrics regarding starship systems so she knew enough to build them from scratch. She understood what they did. Maybe I need a different perspective. “Urania, would you explain to me how dampeners work?”

  “I’d be happy to, of cours
e. But don’t you already know how they work?”

  Lexi laughed, somewhat ruefully. “I know how everything on this ship works. You taught me, remember? The fact is, almost everything on this ship, other than Ron’s coffee, can be improved. I try not to think about that too much because I’m afraid it would drive me nuts. Say, for instance, I upgrade our hyper-drive. That’s something that’s been at the periphery of my thoughts. How much good would that actually do us? How often do we need to get somewhere a day or two sooner than we can currently? Would it make any of us happier, or more comfortable, overall? You’re already among the fastest ships in space. I could easily drive myself batty thinking about all of the things I could be tinkering with. I’m afraid I’m already a little nuts. I was kind of manic working on the Zappers, you know. I told you when we first started with the rubrics how I wound up with hundreds of ideas swirling around in my head, all yelling at me to pick them. I have to prioritize and one of the factors I have to take into account is how much each one interests me.”

  Urania was quiet for a moment. She finally said, “What does that have to do with dampeners?”

  Lexi shook her head, saying, “The ones we have are good enough for everyday use. They’re no different than what is on any other ship. I know they can be improved, but I don’t have any bright ideas on how to do it. I don’t know, maybe I burned out working on the hyper-generator redesign. For whatever reason, I don’t know where to start on this. I need help.”

  “OK,” Urania said. “Did you know you think better when you’re holding a cup of coffee? I’ve noticed it on several occasions. You walk around, you pause, you sip at it, and you think. Go get yourself some. When you get back, Professor Urania will start her lecture.”

  By the time Lexi returned, chewing on the remains of a small pastry, with a large travel mug of coffee in her hand, Urania had a diagram of a dampener on the board. Lexi looked at it, took a deep breath followed by a sip of coffee, and said, “I’m ready.”

  Professor Urania began her lecture. “What you’re looking at on the board is a dampener. All a dampener does is make the hull of a ship sturdier. The heavier, and the denser, an object is, the less prone it is to vibration. That much is simple physics.

  Physically, each unit is shaped like a sausage approximately the size of your forearm. They’re powered by the ship’s reactor just like everything else. We have one-hundred-thirty of them installed on the interior of the hull. Technically, simply installing additional units, we have sixteen spares, would improve the dampening effect. The problem with that is we run up against the law of diminishing returns fairly quickly. Frankly, due to the redundancy factor of having so many of the units powered up, we’re already facing that to a certain degree.”

  She exploded the view on the board to show the interior components of the unit and how they interconnected. Urania would have smiled if she could as she noticed Lexi sip her coffee. Humans weren’t as complicated as they liked to believe. She could well believe Lexi was a little nuts. They were all lucky she wasn’t a raving lunatic. The Wraixain educator they had on board was used to inscribe knowledge held in each rubric directly into a biological brain. No one had ever made such intensive use of it and lived. No one except Lexi. Urania knew she was still wracked with guilt over the people she killed and even more so the people who died because she couldn’t save them. She was dealing with all of that. Jis Boc Seckan, the one person who would know, told them privately that while Lexi was still working through some major issues, they didn’t need to worry about her.

  All three of them still worried about her. Since it was hard to hide things from a woman developing both empathic and telepathic abilities, Lexi knew they worried about her. Whether that helped or hindered the situation none of them knew.

  Urania continued her lecture. “A dampener is complicated, consisting of nineteen discrete components. It makes the ship seem less prone to vibration without using artificial gravity.”

  Lexi nodded, “Because if it used gravity, it couldn’t be turned on in conjunction with the hyper-drive.”

  “Exactly. Before you came along, no one could miniaturize gravity generators into discrete units. Any using gravity was a bad idea. This component I highlighted yellow restricts it to affecting specific materials. If you held an active one, it wouldn’t hurt you. For that matter, if my hull was aluminum it would strengthen it. They’re all designed specifically for hull-metal. Believe it or not, our little friend the dampener is one of the most significant assemblies of any starship. It alters the fundamental characteristics of matter.”

  Lexi got a far-away look in her eyes. Without being aware of it, she took another sip of coffee. “Yes, it does, doesn’t it? That’s impressive. Would you explain what each of the nineteen parts do? If math is involved, go ahead and put up the formulas as you go. And how about projecting a three-dimensional model in the center of the lab?”

  Lexi stopped her twice, questioning the formulas, making her go back and explain a second time. Each time, Urania explained from a slightly different angle. Lexi nodded and let her continue. The funny thing, and they both realized it, was Lexi already understood this at least as well as Urania did. Urania realized that Lexi tended to think of systems in toto, Urania was breaking this down to the component level. She had seen Lexi take that approach before, as she had with the hyper-drive. Maybe the woman was getting overwhelmed. A lot rode on her doing what no one else, on this ship or anywhere else, could do.

  The two of them spent over three hours discussing the current design. At one point, Lexi smiled and said, “I’m out of coffee. Excuse me for a couple of minutes, please.”

  Eventually, Urania said, “That’s all I’ve got. Any questions?”

  Lexi was silent for so long, if Urania didn’t see she was deep in thought, it could have been considered rude. Finally, Lexi said, “Dampeners should be integral to the hull plating. Why aren’t they?”

  “I don’t have an answer for that,” Urania said. “They need power to work. That would be a lot of conduits. Not only that, my hull is solid. I would think you would need something more like the scales on a fish. That might result in weak spots. Since no one builds ships that way, I don’t know. Even if it’s feasible, I don’t think it’s a viable solution to our issue. We don’t have the means to rebuild my hull.”

  “I haven’t spoken about it before, Urania, because I don’t want to offend anybody,” Lexi confessed. “You’re describing a symptom of what I’ve been mentally calling the ‘Accord disease.’ The disease is characterized by technical and social stagnation. An almost complete lack of innovation. I imagine that once they determined ships needed dampeners this is what they came up with. Add-ons. If anyone in the history of the Accord thought of doing it differently, they may have received minor academic notice but no one stepped up to implement the change. Like I said earlier, the existing dampeners are good enough. Why change them? Except we now know they’re not. Would you mind running through, again, a high-level overview of what the components do?”

  Lexi didn’t interrupt this time. She wasn’t even paying that much attention, just letting Urania’s voice wash over her. This time when Urania finished, Lexi stood silently for several minutes, looking at the gigantic, holographic model of a dampener in the middle of her lab. Finally, she said, “I’m an idiot.”

  When she didn’t say anything else, Urania said, “I seriously doubt that. Tell me.”

  “We redesigned our shields once and we still can’t fire the primaries through them.”

  “True. It’s a problem every ship has. I thought we were discussing dampeners. Not my underwear.” When Lexi designed the new shields, based on the technology of a captured shield node taken from a pirate ship, Ron named them ‘Panties,’ an acronym for Phase Aligned Norp’ret Technology Interstitial Energy Shields. Sadly, his name stuck.

  Lexi, after a sip of coffee, smiled and said, “Shields and dampeners. They’re the same thing. Or at least they can be. You may be going comma
ndo soon. I think I’ve had enough coffee for the morning.”

  Urania replied, “Ah, it’s already early afternoon. I think it’s your turn to explain.”

  “Dampeners, in effect, harden the hull. They do just the opposite of Zappers, which rip matter apart. Dampeners enhance the structural integrity of matter. If we enhance it enough, what happens when we’re hit by a missile, an energy beam, or even a particle beam?”

  Urania’s voice sounded tentative. “We shrug it off? You’re suggesting we shouldn’t need shields?”

  “Damn right.” She paused and looked at her coffee mug. “I’m going to take the rest of the day off. I need to work out in the gym and I may shoot some bad guys in the simulator. I think we’ll watch Apollo 13 before dinner tonight. The Ostrieachians might like it. I imagine that, unlike most of the video content, they’ll understand it.”

  She paused, looking at the interactive boards around her lab. “Tomorrow we start designing a new type of unit. One that will provide us e-shields we can fire our weapons through, wall shields supporting the cloaking technology of your Panties and dampeners that will damn near eliminate the effects of turbulence. After all, they’re the same thing. Thank you for your help, dear.”