by Guerin Zand
“Ten, maybe fifteen.”
“You can’t even be serious, Roger?” I started, and I would have gone on, but Roger didn’t give me the chance.
“Guerin, perhaps this is something we should discuss privately. If you would have Trixy escorted from the room, I’d like to discuss this further.”
I nodded and called in the security detail. “Put her back in the brig, guys. You can get her something to eat and drink if you want, but don’t let her loose.”
“Dad, don’t you think the brig is a little harsh for our guest?”
“Who said I considered that crazy woman a guest? She’ll be fine in the brig for now. Hell, it’s a few steps up from that shithole she calls a bar.” I waived the security team on, indicating to them that they should ignore Maria.
Once Trixy was gone, Roger’s hologram turned its focus on me and asked, “Why are you so opposed to Trixy’s offer, Guerin?”
“What do you think we have to gain by taking her up on her offer, Roger? Sure, maybe we find this planet a little sooner, but even when we find this colony, what good does that information do us?”
“Guerin, for one, if we knew the location of the planet, we could do detailed scans and put together a database of those living in the colony. A database we could later use to check against when we do our security screenings.”
“That would only help us find future agents. It would do nothing to solve our current problem of finding possible agents already here, Roger.”
“No, you’re right about that, but do we just ignore this human colony then?”
“But what can we actually do about this colony, Roger?” Steve finally joined in. “If there are tens of thousands of humans in Trogan space, a rescue of that size is out of the question. Even if we could rescue them all, then what would we do with them? Any or all of them could end up working for the Trogans, so we certainly couldn’t just return them to the Terran worlds or Earth.”
“That’s exactly my point, Steve.” It was nice to finally have an ally on the subject. “Even this ‘rescue’ of Trixy’s ‘family’ could just be a ruse to get even more Trogan agents out of Trogan space. I just don’t trust this woman.”
“Come on, Guerin.” Roger seemed to be taken Trixy’s offer seriously. “You trust Froshjen, don’t you?”
“Well, yea, to an extent. But you know he has a different agenda than we do. I’m sure he has some sort of deal on the side with Trixy. I’m just surprised that you're not considering the risks of our escalating things with the Trogans, Roger.”
“Well, right now, Guerin, we still have the protection of the Trogans being quarantined by the Collective. Even still, they’ve managed to get agents out and we’re having to deal with that, aren’t we?”
“Yes, but what are you suggesting we do about that?”
“If we take Trixy up on her offer, we can start keeping an eye on what’s happening on this colony. We could sneak in a few agents of our own possibly.”
“Yea, if you could find someone stupid enough to do that, and don’t everyone start looking at me. I’m not that stupid.” There was a bit of laughter among the group. I think a lot of them didn’t believe me. “I’m assuming you have a plan, Roger, because I don’t”
“We could take Trixy up on her offer. You and Steve could take your ships out there and do some reconnaissance. Using the immobilization fields, how risky would a rescue actually be?”
“You need to remember, Roger, that the immobilization fields are tuned to a specific species. In this case, that would be humans as well as Trogans, which would make our teams susceptible to the effects as well. We can focus the fields to a small area, but we don’t even know how scattered these family members are in the colony. How do we even find her family members to start with? Let’s face it, Roger. We would have to take that planet and secure it for some amount of time. Even with two cruisers, that’s not going to be easy, if even possible.”
“Ok, Guerin. I’ll bite. How could we go about taking control of the entire planet, if that’s what’s needed?”
“Well, right of the top of my head, the easiest way would be to move the planet out of Trogan space.”
“Are you serious, Dad? That’s somehow easier than sending in enough troops to secure the planet?”
“Well, moving the planet isn’t exactly that hard. From what I saw in the archives on Hell, I think that’s how Hell came about. The ladies said their old master created Hell, but from what I was able to decipher, I think what he did was move a dead planet into the habitable zone of a star that had no other planets. I guess you’d call it extreme terraforming.”
“And that’s not that hard?” Maria wasn’t buying it. I don’t think anyone else was either.
“It’s just a matter of opening a portal large enough to move a planet, Maria.” I smiled like any idiot should have been able to figure that out. I mean, I did, right? “With the power that two or three of those Collective Dyson spheres can generate, that should do it.”
“I only know of two such spheres, Guerin?”
“There are a lot more, Steve. Just because they haven’t told us about them, that doesn’t mean they don’t exist. There’s another one relatively close, I guess you could say, that we could use along with the two we already know about. Remember, I said a long time ago, I think that the Collective would be rated as a type 4 on the Kardashev scale. A group capable of harnessing the power of the universe can surely move a single planet around without too much effort.”
“Ok, Guerin. I guess it’s my turn to ask.” Katie was smiling. She always enjoyed my stupid ideas. “So, what’s the hard part then?”
“To start with, Katie, we have to get the Collective to help us. That might be the most difficult part, but then there’s another catch.”
“And what’s that, Dad?”
“Not killing every living thing on the planet your moving, obviously.” I smiled. “See, if we just wanted to move it, we would open a portal and the planet would just shoot out the other side and maintain its velocity unless acted on by some other force. There’s more than enough empty space out here that you could pick an exit point and orientation that would let the planet just sail on, undisturbed, pretty much forever. But without a star to orbit, it wouldn’t be long before everything simply died. If it were a dead planet with only self-contained habitats, say like our moon, you could probably get away with that. But, what if there was a moon, or maybe more than one, around the planet? The gravitational effects of those bodies would be gone and who knows what sort of disasters that would cause. Earthquakes, super volcanos, floods, that old apocalypse syndrome. What about the effect on any other planets in that system after you move the planet?”
“If Hell was placed in orbit around another star, couldn’t we do that as well?”
“It’s not that simple, Katie.” Senri decided to take that question. “If the planet had a viable ecosystem, then to maintain that system’s fragile balance you’d have to find a star nearly identical to its original. Even if the visible as well as invisible radiation spectrums were close enough, you’d have the issue of the stars mass, and needing to change the planets relative velocity to enter an acceptable orbit. Those sorts of acceleration forces placed on a planet could do more damage than anything else. Remember, even if the stars were exactly the same, you’d still need to adjust the planets velocity to place it in a proper orbit.”
“Why?” Kelly asked. “If the stars were an exact match, wouldn’t you just have to place and orient the exit portal to inject the planet into the correct orbit?”
“Portal mechanics are tricky.”
“No shit, Dad?”
I ignored my daughter’s comment and continued. “While we can change the direction of an object traveling through a portal by orienting the exit correctly, the relative velocity of an object to the portal exit/entrance remains unchanged. That’s why when we use a portal to move a person or object from one site to another, we compensate for the differences in
the relative velocities of those two points in space by continuously moving the absolute position of the portal’s entrance and exit. A portal’s entrance and exit have an absolute velocity. When we move a ship between two points in space, this isn't’ necessary. We open the entrance portal directly in front of us in a fixed point in space along our current flight path. The exit portal is fixed as well, and we come out at the same absolute velocity that we entered. That’s why we don’t exit directly into a planet’s orbit from a portal. We have to adjust our velocity after exiting the portal to achieve orbit. This requires a lot less energy then if we were to move the exit portal continuously. These energy requirements go up exponentially with the size of the portal opening, so you can imagine the increase in energy needed for a portal for a human to walk through to one needed to transit a planet. For a ship, like a Collective shuttle or our cruisers, we can generate the energy needed for a couple of fixed portals to transport something the size of the ship, but nowhere near the amount of energy we’d need to move those open portals. And if—”
“Ok, Guerin. We get the picture.” Roger raised his hands in defeat. “It’s just not practical to try moving the planet.”
“Yea, that’s the simple answer, I guess. But right off the top of my head, that was the first thing that came to me, Roger.”
“During that rather lengthy discussion on how to move a planet, did you happen to come up with any other ideas?” Roger asked sarcastically.
“Well, maybe, but come on. Y’all have to admit, moving a planet would be really cool.”
“As cool as that does sound, Dad, would you mind telling us what one of your other ideas might be? And, could you please just start with the simple version?” Maria was annoyed for some reason, but since annoying my daughter was in my job description, I didn’t really care.
“Well, like I said, moving a planet is a rather simple idea. It’s just the matter of actually doing it that makes it so complicated.”
“ARGGHH!” Yea, Maria was definitely getting annoyed. “We all know you’re against taking Trixy up on her offer, Dad, but could you just answer the question?”
“Ok. We can quarantine the planet within Trogan space.”
“But we’d need the Collective to do that for us, right? Why are you wasting our time with these stupid ideas, Dad? Don’t you have something practical that we could do?” Maria hadn’t even given me a chance to respond before giving me shit.
“First off, Maria, my ideas aren’t stupid. Even if my ideas were stupid, I seem to be the only one coming up with any. Besides, we wouldn’t need the Collective’s help. So there!” I stuck my tongue out at Maria.
Roger perked up. I think the earlier discussion made a few of the attendees a little drowsy. “Alright, so how do we do it, Guerin?”
“We go back to Hell and have my ladies whip us up a planetary defense system like the one that protects Hell.”
“What does that consist of, exactly?” Roger was waiting for the catch, but there really wasn’t one.
“Well, the simple answer is, not much. We’d need about two hundred small satellites. The actual number would depend on the planet’s size. They’re each about the size of a softball. Then we need three small platforms placed at the planet’s Lagrange points L2, L4, and L5. They would generate the cloaking field and the portals needed to remove any ships that managed to enter the quarantine zone. I’d have to check with my girls, but I’d say we could get it built in three months or so.”
“Are there any problems with doing this, Guerin?”
“If the planet’s inhabitants are not self-sufficient, we’d have to be the ones to bring them supplies. We’d still don’t know how many Trogans are on the planet, or human agents. We’d have to deal with them still. Essentially, we’d be annexing the planet from the Trogan empire. I’m pretty sure that would be seen as an act of war. But, other than that, it’s totally doable.”
“But why do we need to take the entire planet, Dad? If we only need to rescue say fifteen people, couldn’t we do that with a series of raids on a few specific locations?”
“I think your father is right, Maria.” Katie started explaining to my daughter. “We don’t know where these people we need to rescue are located. Exactly how many raids would we need to plan? Do you think the Trogans won’t respond by sending reinforcements after the first raid? And what would happen to the other humans on the planet after those raids if we were successful? Would you be fine with just leaving them to suffer the consequences of our actions?”
“Ok, ok. I guess my father has a point then. We can’t just go there and rescue a few people. We’d just be making a bigger problem for those we left behind, and I agree, it’s not worth it just to save us a little time finding the planet. Although my father does have a plan to isolate the planet, the question really is, do we want to do this?”
I looked at my daughter and shrugged my shoulder. “I don’t know, Maria. My first instinct is to drop it. We can search for the planet in our own time. On the other hand, Roger does have a point. We currently do have the Collective’s quarantine still protecting us for the most part. If we think that at some point we’d have to make this move, then now may be as good a time as any.”
Roger was smiling. I think he missed this sort of action since he’d been assigned as the Collective’s ambassador on Earth. This sort of stuff was really his specialty, not mine. Sure, I came up with the stupid ideas when we needed one but figuring out the details of an operation like this was really best done by Roger. I could tell by the look on his face what he wanted to do.
“Why don’t you start to make preparations for this contingency, Guerin. If we decide not to go through with it, then what’s the harm. There’s still a lot to think about here, but I’d like to know that we’re ready if we decide to isolate the planet. We are going to have to convince Trixy to tell us where the planet is before we can decide if any of this is even possible. Without any reconnaissance beforehand, we have to say no to her proposal. Even after the reconnaissance, we might still have to say no.”
Chapter 7
Back to Hell
“Seriously, Dad, move the planet?” Maria looked at me like I was crazy or something. Our meeting had ended, and I was heading up to the lounge for a drink. Maria had decided to tag along and harass me a little more. “What were you thinking? Do you just come up with that sort of bullshit to see what kind of reaction you’ll get?”
“It’s not bullshit. We could do it if we took the time to figure out all the details. It might take a century or two, but what the hell. It’s not like it’s impossible. Moving a planet is definitely one of the things on my bucket list. Besides, is an open act of war supposed to be a better solution?”
“It’s not like we’re the ones starting things with the Trogans.” I couldn’t believe my daughter was ok with what the team had decided on. “Are you going to let Trixy out of the brig?”
We entered the lounge and I headed for the bar. I fixed us both a drink. “Why don’t you handle Trixy? I really don’t like that woman.”
“I would have thought the two of you would have hit it off.” Maria smiled as she took a sip of her wine.
“Right. You do know that the problem with our little plan is getting her to tell us where this planet is before we attempt to rescue her family. Someone is going to have to convince her that we’ll keep up our end of the bargain if she’ll give us the planet’s location first. I doubt she’ll believe me.”
“I doubt that too. I’ll handle Trixy.” Actually, the idea of my daughter hanging out with that psycho didn’t exactly thrill me, but it was better than me having to deal with her. “What should I tell her?”
“Tell her we can’t go in blind and attempt a rescue. We need to do some reconnaissance first and work out the details. We’re going to have to know where we can find her family members, so I guess we’ll have to take her with us. Maybe if the new ship is ready, you can take her and a small crew and check it out?”
&
nbsp; “You mean you're giving me the new ship?” Maria seemed to brighten up at the thought.
“NO! I’m just letting you borrow it.” For some reason the image of a pink starship crossed my mind. I shook my head trying to rid it of that image to no avail.
I hadn’t actually figured out just what we were going to do with the new ship. With its limited crew capacity, we couldn’t carry a couple of squads of Rangers like onboard the Ryvius. I was thinking it would be most useful as a reconnaissance platform or a small commuter. The cargo room was limited as well and was barely large enough to carry the crew essentials. I started thinking that we could probably use a few of these smaller craft to free up the Ryvius and Discovery from some of the more mundane duties. We were constantly pulling our only two ships from patrol and escort duties to run errands like taking me to Trinix to meet with Froshjen and Trixy. That was a waste of the ship’s capabilities and personnel.
The new Zand lightning class ships could be crewed by a single person if needed, as could the Ryvius, or they could comfortably carry a crew/passenger complement of four. We could actually use more Zand cruiser class ships like the Ryvius and Discovery, but I’d have to get the Collective to build them for us, and that probably wasn’t going to happen. The lightning class was a much smaller design mainly because that was as big as the manufacturing facilities on Hell could handle. They were also a lot less powerful and thus less capable. To get the size down on the lightning class, we had to reduce the power requirements.
The biggest factor in the size of a starship design using Collective technology was the size of the required powerplant. For a cruiser class design like the Ryvius, the power plant was capable of opening two inter-space portals large enough to transport a ship of its size, or it could open a single larger portal that we could use transport our massive cargo ships through. For the lightning class, I had decided it would only need to create a single portal for the ship itself. That meant it couldn’t be used for escort duties to provide portals for the cargo caravans. It also meant that it couldn’t carry a crew large enough to perform smuggling interdictions and boarding operations. They still included the Terran designed star drives for shorter duration trips. The star drive was significantly more power efficient than opening portals for relatively short distance travel.
