by M. J. Konkel
“The reactor is still up,” Dr. Z noted.
“Wait, the backup computer is coming online now,” Morgan said. “Thrusters are still hot. I’ll have control again in a few seconds and can get us out of here.”
“No, don’t. Cool the thruster. Just keep the steering thrusters ready,” I saw through my goggles that our ship was slowly tumbling. We were also drifting toward the destroyer. “They think we’re dead. Let’s let them believe that for a while.”
Enceladus stabbed at the controls in front of her. “I can’t fire the torpedoes. It appears the launch tube was damaged. I only have the cannon.”
“I could go pull them out and send them out through the hatch,” Drummer suggested.
“No, that will take too long and you could only get one through at a time,” I said.
“Shit! Another bolt, and they’ll blow us to the cosmos,” Enceladus shouted.
“Orlov won’t let that happen,” I said. “Another bolt might incinerate us. And he would be fine with that, but the tantalum in our engine is too valuable for him to just let it become scattered atoms.”
“We can’t just sit here forever,” Enceladus pointed out. “They’ll send a tug out to tow us in before long.”
“Morgan, is the wormhole generator powered up?” I asked.
“Capacitors are charged. Super-cooling the Einstein-Rosen coils now. We’re not at the L2 point yet though,” Morgan replied. “It’ll take thirty seconds for the coils to be ready. I don’t have coordinates entered though.”
“Doesn’t matter.” I zoomed in on the position of the Andromeda Galaxy. “Damn!” We were on the wrong side of the destroyer.
“We can’t jump while still in a gravity well. Can we?” Enceladus asked.
“No.” I shook my head. Not on the slope of a gravity well. “Morgan, transfer over controls for the wormhole generator to my seat.”
“Done,” Morgan replied after a few seconds.
“You’re gonna take us and that destroyer out together.” Drummer seemed resigned to it.
“Yeah,” I mumbled. “And this will be more certain of taking them out than the torpedoes. Morgan, on my mark hit the thrusters to shoot us past them and rotate us to face them as you do. Get as close to them as you dare.”
“What’re we doing?” Enceladus asked.
“I used to be on that ship. I know it.” I pointed at the destroyer I saw through the goggles on my head. Those not wearing goggles saw it on the front screen. “If we are close, they can’t shoot at us. Their turrets are designed that way so some idiot doesn’t blow holes in their own ship. They will have to scramble fighters, but we won’t give them enough time for that.”
I watched as our ship slowly tumbled and the destroyer got larger. It quickly became a monstrous wall. A bay opened to one side, and a tug jetted out. It rotated, and little thrusters sent it in our direction.
“Enceladus, take out that tug now,” I ordered.
I saw the cannon swing around, and then a plasma bolt shot out. An explosion flashed on the front of the tug.
“Morgan, thrusters now,” I ordered.
I peered at the destroyer as we skimmed past its surface. With the goggles on, I felt as if I could almost reach up, and my hand would brush against the plating on the destroyer’s surface.
I glanced back at the tug. It still drifted, slowly tumbling, toward where we would have been had we not engaged the thrusters.
The edge of the destroyer appeared, and then we were past it.
“Rotate us toward the destroyer now,” I shouted.
I saw the nose of our craft swing toward the destroyer. Soon the cannons would be firing at us again.
I looked for Andromeda. I couldn’t see it. It was hidden by the destroyer. That was the direction I wanted us to be pointing.
I pressed the button to activate the wormhole generator.
A purple ring flashed in front of us and streaked away. Then a brilliant flash shone like a new-born star for a few seconds. As the light faded, I saw the faint smudge that was the Andromeda Galaxy appear once again.
Only a fragment of the destroyer remained in front of us, slowly drifting away. Sparks flashed off the end of the splintered fragment, a minor explosion near the sparking, and then the slowly tumbling fragment went dark.
There were likely still survivors aboard the fragment, but we didn’t have the capacity or the time to take on prisoners. The Imperial Pride would have to pick them up. None of those in the tail section that was left would have heard our conversation with Captain Orlov. My family would be safe.
“Yeah! Woohoo!” Drummer shouted. “Either the afterlife looks just like regular life, or we’re still alive!”
I slipped off the goggles.
“I can’t believe we did it,” Enceladus murmured. “We took out a destroyer.”
“I don’t understand,” I muttered. “How did we survive? Not that I’m complaining, but I was sure the explosion was going to destroy us along with them.”
“It seems the wormhole had started to form, but it just wasn’t stable,” Dr. Z explained. “The destroyer was 3.4 million klicks away when the wormhole finally collapsed on it, and it blew up. This is most interesting. I wonder.”
“Do all the wondering you want, Doctor. We now have a weapon we can use against their ships,” Drummer exclaimed.
“It won’t work again,” I said.
“Wha… what?” Drummer stuttered. “Of course, it will. All we have to do is what … what you just did. ”
“We would have to be closer than two klicks from another ship,” I said.
“And the other destroyer will have detected the polarized Lorimer burst by now,” Morgan added.
“And with the missing destroyer, I’m sure the captain of the other destroyer has figured out by now what we’ve done,” I said. “He won’t let us get that close. And when he reports back what happened here, the other Spit ships will know too. We’ll likely never get a chance to get that close to one of their ships again.”
“Shit!” Drummer swore.
“Still, this will slow the Spits down,” Enceladus said.
“Man, they’re going to be scrambling to try to figure out who we are,” Drummer said. “We stole this ship, and we stole a big shipment of tantalum from them. And now we blew up one of their destroyers.”
“Be glad they don’t know who we are,” I said. “Otherwise, none of our families, friends, or even villages would be safe.”
“Orders, Captain?” Morgan asked.
I noticed no one sniggered. “Let’s get the hell out of here. Plot a trajectory to get us back on course for the L2 point. Bottom thrusters so we have a little gravity again.”
Chapter 30
After leaving Rubis and one demolished Spit destroyer behind, we visited Nuevo Comienzo and Hermoso. Both worlds invited us to their surfaces to speak directly with their leaders. We declined both times. We had no idea if the Spits had planted the same lies on these two worlds, so we weren’t taking chances. Besides, our ship had possibly sustained damage to its plates from the plasma bolt hit we took above Rubis. We didn’t want to risk descending through an atmosphere more than once before it was inspected. At each world we delivered our warning, sent files from the safety of a high orbit, and then moved on.
We then set course back for Dominica in the Pavonis system. It was a week-long journey from Hermoso, and we were running low on supplies by the time we approached the system. If the Pavonis system had been much farther, we would have been forced to dig into the few old Spit meals we had not discarded the first time we were on Dominica. I think we were all ready to go on a fast first. Drummer had gone so far as to offer to go outside the ship and push if it would get us to Dominica faster.
We entered about a hundred thousand klicks above the planet, and Morgan made a few thruster burns to settle us into a tight orbit.
We didn’t have to wait long before a message was beamed up to us.
“Spacecraft above Dominica, p
lease identify yourself. Are you Spitnik, or are you friend? Repeat …”
I wondered how a Spitnik craft would respond to that.
“This is Marla’s Revenge,” I responded. “And we are looking for a safe harbor where we can get some repairs done.”
“Welcome back, friends,” the radio voice replied. “I have the Speaker of the Assembly on another line. She has been waiting since shortly after you arrived in our system, and she has news she wants to personally convey to you.”
“Hello, Alexardo,” the Speaker greeted me. “The universe is a large and dangerous place, and you have been gone a long time. I hope your endeavors have been fruitful, and all of your crew are well.”
“Hello, Speaker. We are fine,” I replied.
“That is fantastic! With the gifts you have left us, I hope we are at the beginning of a long and thriving relationship between our peoples.”
“Me too. Has there been progress on the wormhole generators, Speaker?” I asked.
“Right to the point. That’s what I like about you, Alexardo,” the Speaker chuckled. “I wish for you to call me Avalon.”
“Alright, Avalon,” I said. “What is this news you want us to hear?”
“You have arrived on a momentous day for our people,” Avalon replied. “A historic day. It gives me goosebumps just thinking about it.” She chuckled. “I guess I’m a little more long-winded than you, Alexardo. To the point, yesterday the Avenger, our first craft equipped with a wormhole generator, jumped out of our system. About twelve hours ago, it returned and reported complete success with all of its systems. We are now a star-crossing people.”
“That is great news,” I agreed. “I’m afraid we won’t be able to supply more of the tantalum though. Does your world have any reserves of the metal?”
“Actually, we’ve run into difficulty enriching what you left us,” Avalon admitted. “I am reading this off the status report to get it right. They say the two isotopes of tantalum are so similar in density, making separation of the isotopes mostly unsuccessful with only 35 grams obtained of the 90% purity needed so far. We’ve had to resort to the superatom formula directly for the Einstein-Rosen coils. Our chemists figured out how to make it in larger batches and our engineers had to make a few modifications to the coils to make them work, but they now have their first successful test.”
“Wow! That is tremendous news. Can you share your designs with us?” I asked. “We would like to take these designs to other worlds of the Alliance.”
“Certainly!” Avalon exclaimed. “I would love to hear more about this Alliance of ours though. But first come down and take some shore leave. Your timing is perfect. BigBoy, the gas giant close to the sun, leaves a trail of gas that is ionized by our star. Dominica passes through that tail every nineteen days. And on those nights, the skies of our entire planet glow with the most beautiful auroras.”
“We would enjoy that,” I said. “We have not felt any gravity for a few weeks now. But …”
“Yes?”
“Well, who names a planet BigBoy?”
Avalon laughed. “I guess that would be Dominic, the AI who founded our world. He had a strange sense of humor.”
“Say, we are also desperately low on supplies,” I said. “We would especially like more of that fine rumbread you supplied us with last time.”
“I’m sure that we can spare some of our rumbread and any other supplies you need. I will have one of our experts talk to you about landing instructions,” Avalon said, “But first I have a couple seated next to me who would like to spend a little time with you before you leave again.”
“Greetings there, everyone. I am so excited for you all to return. Morgan. Is he there with you?” the new voice asked.
I glanced at Morgan and saw tears had formed in the corners of his eyes.
“Hello, Mrs. De Navrio,” I said. “Yes, Morgan is here, but he is a bit overwhelmed at the mo --”
“Hello, Momma,” Morgan interjected.
I felt pretty good at that moment. I had finally kept a promise.
I felt upbeat for the first time in … well, my whole life. We now we had the ability to make interstellar ships, although none of the worlds we visited seemed to have the capability to make ships in space the size of Spitnik’s destroyers. Maybe that would change. Or maybe we could overwhelm the Spits in sheer numbers of smaller crafts. And we had a bonafide alliance, worlds united in their opposition to the boots of the Spitniks. The tide had definitely turned in the war against the Spits, and we would drown them.
The night sky was all that Speaker Avalon had promised and more. I lay back on a reclining deck chair and stared upward at the lights while sipping on some type of local drink that was making me feel pretty darn good.
My mind wandered back to how I had been so miserable in a Spitnik uniform. If I had a gram of courage back then, perhaps I would have taken my life. No, I realized. I had taken the more courageous route and fought through that depression. Even though I couldn’t see how at the time, I had hoped for a better day.
Then the hatred I had felt. It was like a fire inside that drove me to want to kill. It was a deep abyss on the road to hell, and it almost consumed me entirely.
Marla had seen something in me. Drummer and Enceladus had befriended me, and Morgan almost looked up to me. And somehow I found my way out of that abyss. They had pulled me out.
I was finally free of all that negativity. No, I didn’t suddenly find a love for the Spits. It’s just that there was now more in my life. More inside of me.
The aurora’s shimmering lights seemed to be almost close enough overhead that if I stuck up my hand, my fingers would have been coated in the stream. Shimmering greens, pinks and blues. A wondrous sight.
Soft music from a string orchestra wafted over us. Was that arranged just for us? I would have to ask later, but it didn’t matter at the moment.
I commented on how the blues of the aurora matched the color of Enceladus’s eyes. I think she liked that. She leaned from her chair toward me, and I think she was going to whisper something in my ear. Or maybe she was even about to kiss me. Ooh, how I had waited oh so long for that. But you know me. I couldn’t keep my big mouth shut and said something stupid. And that was the end of the magic for the night.
~~ The End ~~
Author Notes on the Science of the Fiction
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Thank you and ROCKet ON!
******************************
Before any of you ask, yes, there will be more books in this storyline.
During the writing of this story, I tried to keep Trite’s universe to be as realistic a portrayal of the real universe as possible.
Sure, we don’t know if wormholes are real or not. It’s worth noting that Einstein himself proposed their possible existence, and they are now known as Einstein-Rosen bridges. But even if they are possible, they are certainly not as described by me. Mine were merely convenient for the fiction.
I would like to note that I didn’t choose at random the velocity of the moving wormholes. The velocity of 630 km per second is our measured velocity relative to the cosmic microwave background (CMB). Another way to think of this is this is the velocity of our galaxy relative to the average of all of the cosmos. Yeah, our galaxy is really moving through space pretty darn fast.
Bahram is described as tidally-locked to its gas giant, meaning the same side of Bahram always faces toward Dosei in exactly the same way that our moon always shows the same face toward Earth. Given sufficient time, any two close celestial bo
dies will tidally lock. The key determinants to what constitutes sufficient time are the mass of each body, the distance apart, and the amount of time that has passed. So, for instance with our own moon, the Moon has become tidally locked to the Earth, but Earth (because of its greater mass) has not yet locked to the moon. The Earth’s rotation has slowed down over its long history, but it is worth noting there is not enough time left before the sun balloons to a red giant for the Earth to slow down to match the lunar orbit.
Life on a tidally-locked moon would have some interesting effects. These moons still rotate on their axes, but the rotation matches the revolution around the planet. Therefore, the length of one day-night cycle is determined by how long it takes for the moon to go around the planet. Our moon has 14 days of day and 14 days of night. The dark side of the Moon is, in fact, lit up half the time. While a moon could have a day comparable to Earth’s 24-hour day (or even shorter), most will have longer days. Some considerably longer, like our own moon. On such a world, the long days and long nights would likely lead to very hot days and very cold nights, especially at any location not close to the moderating effects of large bodies of water.
As a moon revolves around its planet, the local star (or sun) will rise and set. Stars will come out, and different constellations will be visible at different times of the year as the planet revolves around the star.
For the most part, a gas giant will not budge in the skies of its moons. A little wobble is possible if the moon’s orbit is eccentric. But one side of the moon will never see the giant, and one side will always see it and in the same place.
However, note that although the gas giant is always in the same place, it is not always totally visible. Just like our moon goes through phases, so will the gas giant. But the phases would be in sync with the length of the day. For example, if the full gas giant was seen at dawn at a particular location on the moon, the full gas giant would always be seen at dawn at that location. Although the whole side of the moon that sees the full gas giant would see it as full at the same time, the time of the light cycle would be different. So a quarter of the way around the moon, the full gas giant is seen, it is straight overhead, and it is midnight. Another quarter of the way around and it is at starset (and on the opposite horizon from the setting star). By the way, these same effects (phases of the Earth in this case) would be seen from future lunar colonies.
