“Right. It ignites into a plasma and powers a fusion engine. The fusion engine provides enough power to spin up the drive that wrinkles a wedge of spacetime.”
“All that energy used for nothing.”
“Nothing? I wouldn’t say that. We use it to travel between stars!”
“But the amount of energy used is enormous. You run out every 20 light years! No wonder you have so few settled worlds.”
The discussion of their propulsion system had elicited a tremendous amount of discussion amongst the men about their two civilizations and their use of technology. Efren had finally accepted that although he’d been lucky enough to stumble onto an alternate universe of star farers, they seemed to be way behind in star travel technology. It alternately amused him as well as made him anxious.
“Hand me that other flimsy,” Efren said, pointing.
Tann pulled the forward shield deflector system maintenance flimsy onto the console surface. Efren traced some of the energy conduit pathways, asking Tann to translate the schematic for him. It was slow going because of the delays and miscommunications he had to deal with. But he finally managed enough understanding of the circuitry to announce his findings.
“Darreth, you can vary the energy flow to the engine any time you need to, right?”
“Of course.”
“Good. Can you tune the sublight engine output to 9050 gigajoules?”
“That high? The sublight engine’s nominal output is only 8000 gigajoules.”
“That’s how high it needs to be to pry open the end of the conduit. You won’t need the wedge engine at all.”
Rehl worked on the calculation. “How long does it need to be at that level?”
“Eight point three seconds, then power down to two hundred seventy gigajoules for the rest of the time.”
“We’ll have one point five three seconds to spare before the failsafe will kick in and shut off the engine. Otherwise, you can be sure we’ll be dead in space.”
“Then we need to make sure the computer will provide the cutoff…. I can’t believe this primitive ship had everything needed to not only find the conduit, but to enter it, and yet no one’s ever done this before,” Efren stated.
Tann was looking out the port side window, trying to discern if that cargo ship they’d detected several hours ago during a routine sensor sweep was still there. Darreth was suspicious of it because it was trailing them off the ecliptic. That alone was a highly unusual maneuver for that type of vessel. He couldn’t see a thing against the background stars. “Frucking Consort,” he whispered to himself.
Both Joll and Thal continued to tail the shuttle after sending their report back to Raxi’s office. Their orders still stood. Continue to follow the shuttle, then wrinkle a wedge directly after them. Raxi wanted to make sure Inandra knew he was completing his end of the deal. They would send a report directly to her when they reached Andakar space. Although the ship was far off the ecliptic, they both assumed it was headed to Andakar anyway.
Joll continued to watch his display while Thal worked on the computations. One moment the shuttle was there, the next it seemed to wink out of existence without so much as a warning. In fact, the only indication the ship had done anything was that it had accelerated only slightly before it simply disappeared.
“What the…,” Joll exclaimed. He commanded several other sensors to zoom in to the coordinates of the suddenly missing shuttle. When none of them showed him what he wanted, he replayed the last five seconds of sensor data. It was exactly as the visual field sensor had indicated. The shuttle simply disappeared.
“Thal, we have a problem.”
Thal looked up from his calculation display. Joll pressed an icon to display what he had recorded on Thal’s nav screen.
“That’s impossible,” Thal said. He was well aware an entire series of events had to take place before a wedge could be created. An intense magnetic field was always generated. The engine’s plasma resonance chamber always emitted a bright visual and microwave flare, and several other sensors would have indicated a huge energy surge. In addition, a graviton pulse would have been recorded. None of those events had taken place. They saw only a focused beam of neutronic plasma emitted from the forward deflector array, acceleration at extreme sublight speed for eighty-eight microseconds, then the shuttle simply disappeared.
“The boss is not going to like this,” Joll told Thal.
“Well, at least the sensor log proves we didn’t just lose them.”
“It worked!” Rehl exclaimed.
“Of course it worked,” Efren said, matter-of-factly.
“How long will we be in the conduit?” Darreth asked.
“According to your system map, the star you call Eratil is 1639 local AU from our entry point. In approximately sixteen hours the conduit will empty us into that star’s north polar magnetic field.”
“Sixteen hours? That’s all?” Rehl asked.
Efren shrugged his shoulders and nodded. “I assume the engine shut down to nominal at the proper time?”
Rehl looked down at his display again. “With six microseconds to spare.”
“Good, the sublight engines are all you need to keep the ship moving through the conduit. The ship will be ‘flowing’ through it, as it were.”
“With a minimal amount of energy use,” Darreth noted out loud. He looked at Rehl. “Do you have any idea what this means? This is going to change star flight forever. No more reliance on endless supplies of Tetra-G. Just a neutronic beam from the deflector to pry open the conduit, a super high burst from the sublight engines, then throttle back to a ridiculously low level of output until we dump out at the other end.”
“We still don’t know why that filter circuit was ever designed into the sensor array,” Rehl offered.
Tann stood up and rested his forearms across the back of Rehl’s compression chair. “Maybe the Consort really thought that was a phantom signal. Maybe they had no idea what it was.”
Naylon chimed in this time. “Or maybe they really did know that naturally occurring warp conduits exist, but wanted everyone to be totally reliant on their production of Tetra-G. After all, where is the only production facility? On Triton. In the Sol system. They have total control over star flight.”
Darreth didn’t say it out loud. Well, they still have control over production but they don’t have total control anymore.
Chapter 38
Yarosay Bex, shift manager at Andakar’s primary navigation control space station, was alerted just before lunch. Yarosay turned to the traffic controlwoman seated along the main floor of the large room. There were twelve men and women on duty this shift. Each sat in front of a large screen, watching as computers logged and tracked traffic from all across the solar system. Their task was to be the human eyes to supplement the automated logs.
Anta Garruti was one of two young women watching her screen. Her specific duty was to watch for objects not coming from the ecliptic. Comets, stray asteroids and other cosmic debris were always being sucked into Eratil’s gravity well and could vector in from any trajectory. She monitored such objects before they could become a nuisance or a danger to normal traffic.
Yarosay looked at the readout. “This doesn’t look right.”
“That’s why I called you over. There was a weird delta band tachyon surge just before the object came into sensor range.”
As they continued to monitor the readout, a transponder code suddenly appeared on the screen. “That’s a ship,” Yarosay exclaimed.
“And it’s way outside the starlanes,” Anta noted.
“Indeed it is,” Yarosay said, gathering himself. It wouldn’t do for a manager to seem in a dither. “Designation?”
Anta pressed a glowing strip on the dark surface of the panel in front of her to connect the readout to the ship registry database. There was an immediate match. “It’s the Andakar Navigator.”
“So, it’s the errant Lieutenant Commander.” Yarosay had received the alert fro
m the Guardian space station’s Captain of the Guard the day after the shuttle missed its landing on Agica Prime. A quick check determined that Lieutenant Commander Takaramyus, along with a companion had gone missing.
“I’ll place the call to the officer of the day onboard the Guardian. They’ll take care of this. In the meantime, let that ship know we’re aware of its presence,” he told her.
Two officers stood behind the thick transparent barrier at landing deck C aboard the Guardian. They were Squadron Master Yoon Wakanabe and space station Manager General Anz Tlor. Once the ship was powered down, the officers waited for them to exit the shuttle and come through the airlock into their area.
“Am I glad to be here,” Tann exclaimed heavily once he was off the ship.
“Me, too,” Naylon said under his breath.
After being contacted by navigation control for approach instructions, Rehl had contacted the Guardian officer of the day and told him who he had on board. But Naylon was quite anxious about what was next. There had been much discussion about his rescuers’ fates. When Darreth and Rehl saw Tlor and Wakanabe waiting as they disembarked, they were sure they were in serious trouble. After all, Darreth had defied a direct order and left Andakar. Rehl was in as much legal trouble as well for being his accomplice for obtaining the ship and filing a false flight plan. Neither expected to see Siloy, along with two lawyers standing next to the two officers. Darreth knew one of the lawyers and recognized the other one only in passing. It was completely unexpected seeing them there since he had no idea word had gotten to the ground so quickly about their return. How his father had managed to get two of the finest provincial lawyers to accompany him so quickly was the big question in Darreth’s mind.
The first thing Siloy did was to grab his son Tann and hug him as tightly as he could. He wiped away several tears after he let go. “Are you all right? What is this thing?” He said as he pulled himself away.
Tann told him a communications and tracking device had been attached to both he and Naylon by aliens but that was about as far as he got before his father grabbed him again and hugged him even harder.
“We’re going to need a surgeon to remove these things,” Naylon told Siloy.
“Who are you?” Wakanabe asked Efren. He noted right away that Efren wore a military uniform of some sort.
Efren knew he was being spoken to and recognized an officer when he saw one. He snapped to attention and gave a salute. Darreth had already let him know they would most likely be greeted by at least one higher-ranking person.
Darreth responded for him. “He’s soldat Efren Llarena of the Cortés Libre. He’s the reason why Rehl and I got Naylon and Tann back alive.”
“Soldat?”
“A soldier. He’s in his people’s military. He only speaks Empire Spanish.”
“What’s Empire Spanish?” Wakanabe asked.
“This is Empire Spanish.” He gave Efren a recap of the people who had greeted them, introduced him to his father, and told him they would be taken to the mess hall shortly. They were all in desperate need of a good meal.
Everyone around the four men and Tann were astonished to hear them speaking a language not spoken on Andakar or any Inhab for that matter. Siloy was sure he had never heard his son speak that language either.
Darreth watched everyone’s reactions then switched back to Lingua. “I’ll explain in a few minutes, sir, but first,” he said to the captain, “what charges have been brought against Rehl and me.”
“You’ll both find out shortly. The adjutant is waiting for you to be cleared.”
Clearance was granted in due time, whereupon they were all escorted into an interior room for questioning. A small meal was brought in for each of them since they didn’t end up in the mess hall after all.
“You have a lot of explaining to do, son,” Siloy said gravely to his son, after they had finished eating.
The two lawyers were already preparing a case for their defense and were there to record everything they said.
“For the record,” the captain began, “you, Lieutenant Commander James-Po have been charged with disobedience of a lawful order. You deliberately jumped off the planet against a direct order. In addition, Lieutenant Commander Takaramyus, you’ve been charged with the theft of corporate property. The deliberate filing of a false flight plan is secondary.”
Both Darreth and Rehl looked at each other with a grin on their faces. They both knew that when this inquiry was over, there would be a few more important things to discuss other than these charges.
Efren had been sitting silently next to him. It had been at Darreth’s request since there was no one other than their tiny group of four who would be able to help him understand anything that was going on.
Darreth cleared his throat. “I think it’s much more important for all of you to understand who this man is to my left. Once Lieutenant Commander Takaramyus and I have finished explaining everything, it will become very clear we did what we did for the purpose of planetary security. In addition, I intend to bring charges of attempted murder against our planetary director, conspiracy to murder, and treason to the planetary interests of Andakar.”
A deafening silence rippled through the room.
The ensuing rapid-fire discussion lasted three and a half hours, with breaks for the bathroom and for translations both to and for Efren. Everyone present felt exhausted.
“I move to drop all charges,” Manager General Tlor blurted out. Even so, he could barely believe half of what had been told. The facts of the matter would be accepted as long as those who had been involved in spying on the planetary director’s office would come forward and present their evidence. He had already motioned to make sure all of them would have immunity from this point forward before they even uttered a single word about it to authorities. More than the accusation that Inandra Alarr was working directly against Andakar’s interests, along with the attempted murder of one of his officers, was their guest from Rylerra, or Déstica as it had been dubbed in Empire Spanish. What were they to do with the man? For the time being, no one had a clue; the implication of an alternate dimension had thrown everyone into a whirlwind.
Tlor was in a bit of a quandary about Rylerra’s planetary director, Rish Illigan. Could he trust him? Was he in cahoots with Alarr? There was no way to know for sure. He himself was already on board with Siloy, having been briefed a week ago about Inandra and her malevolent intentions. These added accusations sealed it for him. Whatever reservation he might have had about what role he was to play in gaining independence for Andakar had melted away hours ago. He had clearly allied himself with the correct side.
The angle Darreth had presented about Zelin Raxi and his relationship with Alarr was troublesome. Manager Raxi was clearly a man they couldn’t trust. Andakar had no jurisdiction to detain or extradite anyone from Rylerra. And although corporate law extended to all its Citizens, it was slightly different than Andakar’s due to the different interests that existed there.
While Manager General Tlor mulled over his own quandary, Siloy realized he had one of his own. “Our, uh, guest needs to learn Lingua as quickly as he can. I’m sure his version of the language is quite different from the Spanish that’s spoken on our side, for lack of a better phrase, so unfortunately a translation device is most likely going to be of limited use or out of the question. It is certainly not going to be a pleasant experience for him since we don’t have this Pelinex RNA drug, nor will we ever have such a drug. Nonetheless, it is extraordinarily important that he be questioned further.”
Darreth responded right away. “If you want to question him, there are four of us here who can translate for him. That should be a lot quicker than waiting for him to learn our language. Even so, he’ll have to learn Lingua no matter what. He’s certainly not going back.”
“But,” Darreth continued. “It’s far more important that the non-military people in this room,” he looked at all four of the lawyers, “be held accountable for anything th
at’s been said so far.”
“Agreed,” Siloy said. “As of this minute all of your notes are sealed.” He looked at the lawyers. “Nothing on any vidPAD that’s been recorded will leave this station. You are not to discuss these issues with anyone.”
There was an immediate protest from one of the captain’s adjutants, but it was quickly quashed.
Siloy looked at his two lawyers. “You will be paid for your time. But as you can see, this information is far more important to be kept from the public until which time we can determine the actual threat to our planet, and discover who’s really involved.”
Siloy held out his hand to each of them, palm up. Each of the lawyers pressed an icon on their vidPAD screens and a small flat disc came out of the side. Each was handed to Siloy. Effectively, Siloy had the only transcript of the proceedings. He slid them over to Tlor.
Tlor looked at him. “These will be kept safe,” he said, his face unsympathetic to the look of protest the lawyers still had on theirs.
Chapter 39
Siloy, Darreth, Rehl and Squadron Master Wakanabe sat in the Manager General’s plush office. Naylon and Tann had already been sent planetside hours earlier after the Telkan tracking devices were removed. The five men had just finished discussing a very grave issue: that of arresting the planetary director.
“Unless we get Naylon’s discussion group members to talk, we won’t be able to hold her for very long,” Darreth offered.
“I’m more concerned with what Consortium authorities on Earth are going to do. Word will reach there in only a couple of weeks if we succeed,” Wakanabe responded.
The Manager General leaned back in his chair. A slight grin crossed his face. “No need to agit. I have a plan. It’s going to involve a lot of people, but I can trust them to carry out my request even though they’re not military.”
The Rylerran Gateway Page 38
