Koban

by Stephen W Bennett

  “I don’t think we have one,” Maggi said. “Those trucks won’t do us much good even if they leave them alone. The dome will roast in summer, and freeze in winter. We’ll have to cut holes in the upper dome to let air blow inside for summer, wood smoke out in winter, and those same holes will pass wolfbats and skeeters year round. I’ll bet the rippers would find a way to climb up to them.”

  Thad had some encouragement. “We don’t have skeeters in the winter.” He smiled.

  “Gee, that sure eases my mind a lot,” was her dry reply. “How the hell can we find an alternate power source if they find those hidden bottles? Burn wood to make steam for turning a turbine?”

  “Mam, you could tap into the tachyon energy in either of the two Trap Fields. A steam driven generator would be inefficient.”

  It was Jake’s voice. He had heard a rhetorical question but provided a serious answer.

  “What? Tet, did you hear Jake too?” Maggi asked, not certain if the AI’s reply had been on the general Link.

  “I did Maggi. Jake, we know we have those trapped tachyons, but we’re on a planet. How can we get energy out of them in a gravity well without destabilizing the Traps? We certainly can’t form a Jump Hole where we are. We’d risk planetary catastrophe if we even try. We keep tachyon power generators off of planets and moons and out of gravity wells for a good reason.”

  “Sir, it is true that the most efficient and maximum energy outputs are obtained by forming an event horizon, then using the intense gravity field to extract energy as controlled amounts of matter is delivered. Or the alternative is to permit faster than light tachyons to tunnel out into Normal Space, where the speed of light is an upper limit, forcing them to shed energy as they decay, which also can be used for power generation.”

  “Yes, So?” It sounded like Jake was confirming what they all knew. “We can’t form an event horizon here, even if the fields could be kept stable. We’d bite off a big chunk of the planet before it rotated into Tachyon Space.”

  “Yes Sir, you are correct that an event horizon can only be formed stably when done away from an interfering strong gravity field. As you observed, attempting to form such an event horizon on a planet would risk its destruction.”

  “It is...” Jake had started to say more, but Mirikami spoke over him thinking he had finished.

  “That’s…, uh. Sorry Jake, I interrupted you. Please continue.” Not that an AI cared about apologies or politeness, but the habit came automatically to people.

  “Yes Sir,” Jake resumed unperturbed. “It is possible to draw electricity from Trap field emitters directly when the field they built contracts rather than dissipating by being switched off. If the contracting field holds one or more tachyons it can receive additional energy from them as the field starts to contract.

  “It is how the emitters are designed, to use energy feedback from the fields to keep a Trap active if there is a sudden power loss. The emitters can deliver electricity continuously by this inefficient method until the tachyon energy is gone, or the field detunes enough to release the tachyons it holds, and completes its collapse.”

  This time Mirikami waited as the AI took a symbolic electronic breath.

  “This rarely used process can provide enough power to restart the magnetic confinement field of a fusion bottle on a ship if both bottles have been powered down. It is an emergency procedure, but it is also safe to use within a gravity well if the Trap field generation and tachyon capture was previously done outside of a gravity well. There is no event horizon formed, and it is completely safe even if the field is allowed to collapse to release the tachyons. The energy conversion factor is extremely low, which is why this method is not used for power generation on planets.”

  “The Chief once described this virtually never-used bottle restart, but I was preoccupied at the time. How poor is the energy conversion from the contracting Trap field?”

  “Sir, it is on the order of point zero zero two and point zero zero five percent of the energy generated by a comparable sized space based power plant system with an event horizon. The efficiency depends partly on how heavy duty the wiring to the emitters is, partly on emitter feedback design, and primarily on the energy of the tachyons captured.”

  “That’s a terrible conversion ratio, but you said we can still draw enough current to initiate a fusion bottle’s magnetic confinement field. How does that start up power requirement compare to the normal output of the bottle after controlled and sustained fusion starts?”

  Jake’s answer sounded less than useful. “A fusion bottle’s brief startup energy is many times the normal power output of the bottle. It must be delivered in a spike, which is needed for only one or two milliseconds to initiate magnetic confinement and self-sustaining fusion.”

  That was a letdown, since they weren’t going to have any bottles to restart if the Krall discovered their subterfuge. However, it was a reply Mirikami had expected, “Unfortunately Jake, we need a continuous output of at least the normal power level of a fusion bottle. Not just a millisecond spike.”

  “Yes Sir, I was describing the startup requirement for a fusion bottle. A few millisecond spike of high current is all that is required for a startup. However that startup level of power can be delivered longer than for one or two milliseconds.”

  This was taking too long. With a sigh, Mirikami asked “For how many milliseconds can that spike of power are delivered Jake?” Jake’s proclivity for trivia was taking them off track from the problem they needed to address, long-term power.

  The AI’s answer was a bit cryptic, at least to a Spacer like Mirikami.

  “Sir, it would be approximately two point three times ten to the fourteenth milliseconds for the tachyon held in either the primary Trap or the secondary Trap.”

  “OK. Thank you Jake.” Mirikami was ready to move on.

  “Wait!” Dillon said. “Ten to the what power?”

  “Sir, it is ten to the fourteenth power.”

  “OK, it’s a big number Dillon. But it’s still only milliseconds.”

  Dillon laughed. “Tet, you asked him for the number of milliseconds. Jake, please tell everyone approximately how many years that so called big spike of energy could be delivered?”

  “Yes Sir. It would be about four thousand eighty nine Earth standard years.”

  “Really?” Mirikami was shocked. Power generation used Jump Holes and tachyons, but nobody used the low efficiency method Jake outlined to get power from them.

  Noreen excitedly asked, “We still have two of those energetic tachyons trapped, right?”

  “Yes Mam.”

  Mirikami still wasn’t ready to accept it as a real possibility. “Over four thousand years, Jake? On one single tachyon, delivering many multiples of the power of our fusion bottle’s normal output? I don’t see how that can be correct.” Obviously, he questioned the numbers.

  “Sir,” Jake explained, in an AI’s equivalent of trivia heaven, “the Traps were tuned for the maximum energy tachyons they could capture. The two we have each have the energy equivalent in our universe to form an event horizon with the radius of a black hole having the mass of a red dwarf star. The documentation I have referenced says that, when forming a Jump Hole, if those massive objects did not instantly and naturally rotate through an unseen spatial dimension it would be too disruptive to form them near any inhabited solar system. With the large mass equivalent rotated entirely into Tachyon Space, their intense gravitation leaks only weakly into our universe. Even that weak leakage is extremely intense and can be used for power generation.”

  Jake continued, “Using the Trap field contraction method under consideration, it is possible to extract a nearly infinitesimal part of the total energy involved through the weakly coupled Trap field into our universe. Most of the tachyon’s energy will go into a sort of quantum evaporation in Tachyon Space, where the documentation says it will gradually decay into weaker tachyons. Those tachyons escape the Trap field because it is not tuned fo
r their lower energy. The evaporation will happen even if we do not extract energy, and that has been underway since the two tachyons were caught.”

  “Put the Chief in our groups Link.”.

  As soon as he was on, Mirikami explained to Haveram what he wanted him to do.

  “Captain,” the Chief answered uncertainly, “I was taught the principle of restarting a bottle this way in training, but normally you would simply use the second bottle to do that. I have never rewired emitters to feed into a bottle for a restart but we do have an emergency procedure for that.

  “What you are asking for Sir is steady emitter current to replace a bottle. I don’t know how to do that, or to regulate it or convert it to the various power needs of the ship. However, if it can be done, I’ll bet we have people in the dome that do know how. There are four power plant electrical engineers, and a couple of physics people. We now have a bunch of Jump engineers from the other Drive Room crews. How about I invite them here to look things over?”

  “Do it Chief. I know you are tired from the bottle moving today, but this is top priority, an all-nighter. Pop pills if you have to, but we will be on batteries by tomorrow morning. The Krall might visit us at first light to kill both of our fusion bottles.”

  “Yes Sir, I’m heading for the dome soon as I get some gun hands to go with me in the dark. We have several trucks parked outside and Jake to keep watch for us.”

  “Right. Be careful but be fast.”

  To the other committee members he told them, “You five can’t do anything tonight and I need you fresh in the morning, so get some sleep. I’ll be in the Drive Room with the Chief and our guests all night.”

  At first light all twenty-nine remaining trucks were swarming to the ships with people still aboard, and there were four men with .50 caliber rifles laying on pallets held aloft by haulers, ready to take down any rhinolo that came near the tarmac.

  The truck drivers and gunners had all enjoyed fresh rhinolo steak for an early breakfast. The old bull tasted a bit gamey, but it was a luxury after hundreds of frozen military rations. They couldn’t wait for lunch and a promised second steak.

  Running out from the east entrance, just behind the first trucks departing from there, the K’Tal and four warriors ran in their typical less-than maximum but more-than a trot pace towards the Flight of Fancy.

  Mirikami was watching for them from the hold, having suspected that Telour would send them here first. They were as ready for this as they could be in a single long night. They had borrowed additional batteries from another ship, charged and ready to extend the power needed for lights and tools, once the bottle destruction Krall team moved to the next ship.

  “Heads up, they’re crossing over now,” He advised Chief Haveram on the Link. The team that had worked all night in the Drive Room with him was safely on upper decks. They had no tattoos and were at a higher risk of random violence from the Krall.

  The K’Tal led the warriors up the ramp, and without more than a glance at Mirikami’s solid black tattoo, went directly to the Drive control room where the two fusion bottles sat making cooling sounds. Both had just been shut down by the Chief. They were already on battery power.

  Internal ears were deployed by all five Krall, as the K’Tal apparently instructed them. It removed a device from its chest belt, which Mirikami, who had followed them inside, initially thought was a Katusha. However, he noticed that it had a circular bell mouth, not oval, and different controls on the handle.

  The K’Tal seemed a bit awkward with the control buttons, using a single talon tip. Mirikami recalled that this was reputed to be a tool made by the Raspani for their own digits, before they devolved into a Krall meat animal. The gadget had a striking similarity to the Katusha, a tool said to have been made by the Olt’kitapi. The Katusha also had some odd quantum connection to the tattoo marks it made.

  Telour had told him this Raspani tool could make a hole through anything, which might also indicate it would employ some weird quantum effect.

  The K’Tal spoke its first words in broken Standard, looking at Mirikami. “Power modules dead now? If alive it is bad, and we go to kill all humans on ship.”

  The Chief spoke up, “I shut them both down before you entered the ship. It is hot inside, but the magnetic field is off, and the plasma was vented.”

  In response, the K’Tal suddenly turned to face the closest fusion bottle, and aimed downward from the near side top edge through the center of the casing. He seemed to press a button, but there was no sound. At first Mirikami didn’t see anything but a brief shimmer in the air from the device to the bottle’s casing. Then he noticed that there was a spray of gas starting to shoot from a circular spot on the casing.

  The K’Tal stepped to the side and watched as the white gaseous spray ended, and revealed a perfectly round hole just over an inch across in the outer casing.

  The K’Tal must have spoken to the warriors, because one of them stepped next to the K’Tal, who watched as the warrior also fumbled with the tool’s controls. Satisfied, the K’Tal pointed to a new place two feet away from the first hole. The warrior pointed, pressed, and a shimmer in the air followed by another spray of gassy material came out of another hole.

  The other three warriors, one at a time repeated this so that there were five holes made before they finished. The last hole was made from the far side of the bottle’s housing, and the last warrior, a shorter female by her coloring, used a lesser downward angle. Mirikami jumped back more when a spray of grey-white material jetted out of a hole in the housing near the floor on his side, the beam, or whatever it was, having passed completely through the bottle and had continued through the deck.

  Next, they each repeated the Swiss cheese process on the second fusion bottle.

  The K’Tal, who had never given his name, said after they finished, “One warrior to do this to every ship, and to engines. If humans do not turn off power, they are killed by warriors.”

  That risk had been assumed as a given, and each Captain was standing by on their ship to ensure power was either already off now, or would be off as soon as the last passenger was evacuated. Turned off sooner if a Krall headed their way before they had finished.

  By noon, every ship had been evacuated, and shortly after that, there were thirty-seven more completely dead hulks on the cluttered tarmac.

  And lady luck was with them. None of the long dead replacement bottles, which were doubly dead now, had been detected under the freshly polished or painted housing covers. That part of the plan had worked like a charm, to save four units out of the seventy-four to be destroyed.

  One detail the busy humans had overlooked was the lone shuttle from the Fancy, sitting on the ramp, because it wasn’t considered a “ship.” A warrior walked up to the outside of the shuttle and put a dozen holes in the engine section. The small fusion bottle, for electrical power, was in idle but not shut off. They were lucky that the random holes the oblivious warrior made missed it, but only because it was mounted well forward from the reaction engine. There was some toxic fuel leaked, but the little ship’s computer automatically closed shutoff valves. Unfortunately, the shuttle fusion bottles were only slightly better than the small truck units were.

  Mirikami told the other committee members that the shuttle oversight was his fault for not having it stowed away in its snug little hold. The warrior that killed the shuttle probably did so simply because it was on the tarmac in plain sight. He didn’t look for the other stowed shuttle still in its hold on the Fancy. There were probably one or two stowed on each of the eighteen other passenger transports, and probably a small launch on each of the cargo ships.

  Superb on the battlefield, Krall warriors were rather dim witted on average, particularly when it came to thinking about the implication of why there was only one human shuttle found when there were many big human ships to carry others.

  As soon as the Krall had left the Flight of Fancy, the four electrical engineers, two physicists, and two Jump En
gineers from other ships converged in the control room of the Drive section. They joined Chief Haveram and his three “Drive Rats,” Macy, John, and Andy. It wasn’t packed, but it was close quarters for thirteen people, over twice the people the room was designed to accommodate.

  Mirikami still felt like an observing outsider on his own ship, as he had much of the night when the technical jargon had flown from all of the participants, engineers, scientists, and technical specialists. The discussions sometimes getting confused as the different backgrounds and terminology of the various participants had to be sorted out. However, it had been sorted.

  The Chief and his “Rats” had been running heavier cables in parallel with the originals from the emitter antennas much of the night, passing them through tight crawlways and cable runs through bulkheads. The new power line ends and the extra slack lay hidden behind wall panels in the Drive Room, out of sight of the Krall.

  The new heavier lines were ready to be connected. The physics people had helped build some temporary circuits to convert the direct current from the emitters into the alternating current the ship’s power distribution system expected.

  The Electrical Engineers had learned about the existing current regulators and step down transformers in the ship’s power distribution system, and they could use those to reduce the input from circuits the physics people had rigged, and thought they could provide a proper regulated current and voltage to repower the ship. If some of the parts from the seventy-four destroyed bottles could be salvaged, better DC to AC circuits would soon replace those that the scientists had jury-rigged.

  Running power lines to nearby ships would also be possible, since there was far more energy available than the Fancy would ever need. For now, they were only tapping into a single set of emitters for the secondary Trap. After the Krall pulled out, they could work on power from the second set of emitters.

  A Link from Nory Walters told them when the dome power died even as they were making the first connections on the Fancy, prior to testing the system.