Jack's habit of always renaming his ship prior to each mission had come to an abrupt end as the new AI had a distinct personal sense of identity and refused to accept name changes. He supposed he was lucky the upgrade had not occurred on the previous mission, when he had flown the ship under the name Diaper Rash.
The avatar was a recent addition. Honey Dipper had decided Ricky needed a crew, and so the AI adopted what it assumed would be a suitably compatible persona based on Ricky Valen's psychological profile. The result was standing next to him by the view port. Honey, as he had taken to calling her, and she was most definitely a 'her,' was a five foot, seven inch, petite brunet android with a southern drawl and an acid wit. She was not human, but it would take an x-ray to tell for certain.
"Hey Honey... are the sensors telling us anymore?"
"Cap'n, they are telling us plenty—just not a lot of it is making any sense."
"Thoughts as to what to do? Do we just sit here or should we try to open our own hyperfield bubble?"
"First, I respectfully point out, you'ns being the captain and all, that we are standing... not sitting." She smiled as she said this. Ricky started to make a smart retort but she continued before he could get the first of several choice words out. "I would not recommend taking any action. I suspect we are in some type of extra-dimensional space."
"What does that mean for us mere mortals? Does it mean the laws of physics as we know them are no longer applicable or some such?"
"The laws won't necessarily vary but their prominence may become secondary to other extra-dimensional interactions we are unfamiliar with. Gravity might pull at you but be totally counteracted by false vacuum interactions or the like. The point is... the hyperfield bubble that is enveloping us at the current moment is probably the only thing that is allowing our systems to function. We probably just have to ride this one out."
"I hate waiting."
"Poor Cap'n."
Chapter Five: War Games...
Cat, Ben, and Sassi found themselves following Captain Running Stream to the ship's bridge. It seemed their status had changed. Cat was not completely sure why; but it granted them increased access to the ship so she wasn't complaining. To be sure, they were still slaves, but Running Stream seemed to be going out of his way to explain the various features and systems on the ship.
The tour of an alien's ship would normally have been fascinating for the GCP's newest admiral but at the moment it took a real effort to pay attention. Cat was still processing the last sight they had seen before leaving the beach habitat. The captain had directed their attention to the transparent ceiling of the ocean biosphere. The shimmer of a hyperfield forming had been unmistakeable.
The scientist in Cat had wondered at the effect of a massive gravitational well on a hyperfield, especially with regards to trans-dimensional perturbations. It was apparent from the view through the dome that the Bluefin had latched onto a massive asteroid. Cat's suspicions were confirmed when Ken Kirkland's pinnace covertly docked to the Modos ship and began feeding her telemetry.
The asteroid was a heavy iron-nickel brute that was likely going to be used as some type of passive shielding. Sure enough the Bluefinreoriented itself to point the 'shield' toward the massive black hole and began to move towards the event horizon of Sagittarius A. The Schwarzschild radius, which defined the event horizon—the point at which light could no longer escape the gravity well of the object—was a function of its mass. For the Earth this radius was about the size of a peanut. For a system like Sagittarius A, the radius was on the order of thirty kilometers.
Cat was well aware that the Schwarzschild radius of an object represented the ability of its mass to cause curvature in space and time. How this would interact with a hyperfield was problematic. Black holes rotated at very high rates of speed. In theory, if the approach vector to the black hole was at an angle of 54.74 degrees to the axis of its rotation—the so-called 'magic spin angle'—then, directionally dependent interactions could be expected to occur.
Cat was starting to suspect that this hyperfield jump would be like no other she had ever experienced. As the ship entered the hyperfield bubble the universe literally changed. A violet undulating florescent aurora filled the sky, and much to Cat's surprise... it stayed.
Her commlink to both Ken Kirkland and Ricky Valen remained intact but all three had lost contact with Admiral Faragon and the GCP. She was just beginning to digest the importance of this last realization when the Bearephant coughed in a very human gesture to get her attention.
"You are still seeing the transit aurora in your mind's eye aren't you?" the Modos captain said.
"Guilty as charged," Cat admitted. They entered what could only be described as a pneumatic elevator. It reminded Cat of the old-style shuttle tubes one saw in period movies depicting customers in their cars at banks exchanging notes and checks with the tellers. Air pressure moved the shuttle between various points along the tube.
Running Stream snorted in what Cat would come to know as a Bearephant laugh. "My symbiote nearly soiled himself the first time he saw the transit aurora... I trust your reaction was more cerebral?"
"I have a doctorate in hyperfield dynamics so the physics behind a jump this near a gravimetric event horizon intrigues me."
The Bearephant roared and rocked back and forth. Again, Cat was concerned she may have angered him.
"We share more than I imagined," Running Stream said with an unmistakable sense of glee in his voice. "I too hold advance degrees in physics and engineering."
"And now you run a slaver?" Ben asked with just a hint of scorn in his voice.
The Bearephant turned his head to look at the D'lralu. Cat would have sworn she saw a bemused twinkle in his eye before he answered.
"Ah, well, life takes us by unexpected currents and eddies upon occasion... does it not?" Turning back to Cat, he continued, "Sometimes an evil act falls victim to a greater good."
The door to the bridge opened.
***
Commander Ken Kirkland watched the holographic display in front of his command chair on the pinnace's minuscule bridge. The GCP Esperance was a small ship. Pinnaces typically were. But she was state of the art.
Her AI was the best Human/Heshe hybrid technology mankind and their allies could create. She had a power plant based on a highly refined D'lralu design that outclassed even the Yorktown in terms of output efficiency. She boasted an active nanite armor and shielding that made her both hard to hit and robust should she take a hit. While her offensive weaponry was somewhat limited she could still pack a punch with a powerful Wakefield plasma accelerator rated at 18 TeraJoules. She was the result of countless refinements based on the GCP's encounter with the KayBees last year.
Right now she was attached to the outer skin of the Bluefin slaver like a remora attached to a shark. Completely hidden by her cloaking technology, Ken had no fear whatsoever of discovery. His commlink was actively feeding him information from both Cat and Ben onboard the Modos ship. This information was routed by the Esperance's AI into the holographic display in front of him. What they saw... he saw. What they heard... he heard.
Right now he could not believe what he was seeing and hearing.
The screen was showing a scene from the Bluefin's bridge. The captain of the Bluefin was explaining to Cat the physics behind a trans-dimensional jump. She had been curious about the need for the asteroid which was being used as a massive ablative shield. Cat, like Ken, would have assumed hyperfield shielding would have been all that was necessary.
Running Stream explained that as the barrier between universes was crossed the laws that governed each universe became unpredictable. This meant a properly tuned hyperfield shield was hard to maintain for the briefest of seconds. The iron-nickel asteroid provided a necessary redundant source of shielding. In an emergency a ship could jump without it, but it was an unnecessary risk.
Ken wanted to ask about the aurora surrounding the ship but he was a silent observer. Instea
d he sent a flash query to Cat's encounter unit. She already knew the answer but she confirmed it in the form of her own question.
"This delightful pyrotechnic display that we are privileged to witness... I assume it is an interaction between stray radiation emitted by your ship, the surrounding hyperfield bubble, and the local trans-dimensional Higgs field?"
Running Stream turned to look at her and raised an eyebrow. "Impressive. It took our theoretical physicists years to make that determination. You simply look at it and immediately know what it is."
"Don't encourage her," Ben said dryly. "She's brilliant and gets positively hard to live with when she's reminded too often."
Cat smiled and patted the large six-legged dog beside her. "There, there... you're a good boy—even if you're little slow on the pickup every now and then."
"See what I mean," the D'lralu said as he swatted her hand away.
The Modos captain rocked back and forth in silent laughter.
Sassi took that moment to interject a question of his own. "Hyper jumps are virtually instantaneous. This jump has lasted for quite a while now. If I may ask... Why the difference?"
"Ah," Captain Running Stream said with a flourish. "Theda is a function of the mass differential between the gravitational wells on each side of the jump. The event horizon on the other side is three times the size of your Sagittarius A."
"I see," Sassi said. "Then I would expect we will be coming out of the jump in just under four minutes."
The Bearephant looked at the Ashkelon Moth. He seemed to be trying to decide if he was serious. Finally he said "Navigator, how long before we emerge from transit?"
A smaller Bearephant with tan colored fur answered from a workstation in the rear of the bridge. "Unknown, Captain. I can attempt to calculate if you would like?"
"Unnecessary, Lieutenant. Please explain why you did not run the numbers earlier?"
"The calculations are rarely done because it requires a knowledge of the exact distance to the event horizon at the time of jump, and the calculations typically takes too long. In most cases we've arrived at the destination before the calculation can be completed."
"Very good, Lieutenant. And what do you think of our young friend's prediction that we will come out of transit in four minutes?"
The tan Bearephant rocked in his seat. As he began to vocally respond the colors filtering into the bridge from the exterior view screens changed from violet to black.
Captain Running Stream quickly checked the ship's AI. "Bluefin: Report time between Lieutenant Sassi's prediction and emergence to normal space?"
"Four minutes and thirty six seconds," came the sterile synthetic response.
Sassi's low frequency antenna undulated in agitation.
Cat turned to the Ashkelon. "Why are you upset Lieutenant Sassi?"
"I hate being wrong."
"Wrong?" Captain Running Stream said with a bemused smile.
Both Sassi's high and low frequency antennas drooped. "I applied a second level heuristic to estimate a quick solution, but still I was off by a full 20 percent."
Captain Running Stream filled the large bridge with such a loud laughter that Cat had to dial down the acoustic sensitivity of her ears.
Ken fumbled with the controls of his holographic display for exactly the same reason. While he was doing this something on the sensor display caught his eye.
"Cat," he said over their covert commlink. "We have multiple bogeys jumping in... 0.1 AU out... thirty or more."
Ben who also heard the message began to scan the bridge of the Modos ship for a sensor station that could confirm what both Ken Kirkland and Ricky Valen were now reporting.
Cat spotted it first. "Captain, is that an alarm flashing on that station off to the left?"
Running Stream went silent as he saw the flashing strobe on the sensor console. Turning to take his command chair he yelled into the air...
"Bluefin! Sound the Alert! Battle Stations!"
***
Ricky Valen watched in silence as events unfolded around him. The good news was they were no longer in hyper-dimensional... or hyper- whatever... space. The bad news was, he had no idea where they were. None of the star systems were familiar to the navigational database and Honey admitted that even the Heshe had not explored trans-dimensional universes.
To add to the general confusion, several dozen starships had suddenly jumped into this region of space and it sure looked like they were planning on giving the Bluefin a hard time. His shuttle was fully cloaked and even if he was detected, given the advanced Heshe tech on board, he was likely a match for anything these newcomers could dish out. That said, he was not especially anxious to test the hypothesis.
"Honey, give me an assessment. Are we in danger?"
The synthetic brunet ran her hands over the console in front of her. Ricky was at a loss as to why—considering she was the ship's avatar and therefore already in possession of all the relevant sensor data.
"Of the thirty-one ships that have entered the system, only one poses a serious threat. Most of the vessels have minimal shielding and limited kinetic weapons. The larger ship seems to be a mothership of sorts. It has a massive fusion reactor that I conservatively estimate is capable of producing something in excess of four petaJoules."
"You said 'Peta' not 'Tera'?"
"That is correct, 10 to the 15th Joules."
"That is pretty powerful," Ricky mused. "I wonder what they do with that much energy?"
"Pretty much anything they want to," the diminutive android said.
***
Cat's mind went on high alert. Having been privy the sensor data being received by both Ken's pinnace and Ricky Valen's Honey Dipper, she was immediately aware of the massive destructive potential of the opposing fleet. What she didn't know was this fleet's intentions.
Silently she instructed her internal Heshe AI, Cal, to do an assessment of the Bluefin’s bridge. She needed to know that she could take control of this ship if it became critical to their survival. Microscopic nanites fluttered from her finger tips and stationed themselves where they could monitor each critical station. In addition, they relayed to Cat's AI every keystroke and command entered within their view. In short order Cal, and therefore Cat, had a reasonably good approximation of bridge security codes and operating procedures.
She watched Captain Running Stream as he quietly moved about his bridge. He was both calm and efficient. In other circumstances she would have admired his professionalism. He turned and saw her staring at him. He smiled and winked. Apparently some gestures transcended species.
"These are war games. My hatch-mates are testing my readiness to defend myself."
"And are you ready?" Cat asked with more than just idle curiosity.
"Our shields are more than a match for any..."
KABOOM!
The floor dropped out from beneath them. The bridge heaved and the crew was tossed like rag dolls across the room. Someone yelled "They're attacking!"
Instinctively Cat snatched the Bearephant Captain as he flew by, while at the same time grabbing for a console. Her Heshe enhanced muscles had no trouble managing his two hundred kilo mass. Sparks from overloaded systems showered over the now smoke-filled room. The lighting was completely erratic and threatened to fail completely. People were scrambling to reach controls but the constant buffeting made the task nearly impossible.
"Rotate the ship!" Cat yelled.
"What!" Running Stream yelled back as he struggled to regain his feet.
"Damn it, Captain!" Cat grabbed his arm and pointed towards the front of the ship. "Get that massive rock you are holding between us and that big guy firing on this ship, and do it while you still have a ship!"
Chapter Six: An Unexpected Battle...
A second series of blasts hit the Bluefin and it was clear this was no practice battle. The ship was taking serious damage. Cat had no idea how long a ship like this could take this type of pounding. The Modos crew was too slow. They
were scattered about the battered bridge struggling to regain their stations.
Cat vaulted the railing and dove into the vacant navigation pit. Her hands flew at impossible speed as she brought the crippled ship about. The ablative shield that was the iron-nickel asteroid they had used during the trans-dimensional transit was now between them and the largest of the attacking ships. The artificial gravity fully reasserted itself and the ship seemed to stabilize. Even so, it was clear that they were bleeding atmosphere.
Exploration Page 4
