HADRON Chaos

by Stephen Arseneault

  Mace frowned. “Sixteen hours?”

  Liam pushed an image of the star system to the wall display. “This one is here, the second out here, and the last all the way back over here. Opposite sides of the star from these two.”

  Johnny chuckled. “Not like we have anything else to do right now.”

  The inhabited planet, along with the remaining three, showed quantities of standard minerals.

  Mace sat with his arms crossed. “Take us back to that planet. I want to inspect where the wreckage of that ship went down. Maybe we can learn something from it.”

  The Rogers slowed as it dropped into the atmosphere. Ten minutes later, she hovered a kilometer above the crash site. An expansive desert. Sensors showed a forty-eight degree temperature.

  Johnny said, “That’s like one-twenty Fahrenheit. Balmy.”

  Mace said as he stood. “We’re in our gear. Won’t feel a thing. Mr. Hobbs, take us down to that largest chunk.”

  Mace opened a comm. “Jane, since you’re our senior technical person today, round up Jenny and meet us at the ramp.”

  Mace turned. “Mr. Crawford, your shift starts now.”

  Jordan nodded. As the ramp lowered, the four Humans descended. Johnny took two big steps and jumped onto the sand. He immediately began to sink. Mace reached out a hand, pulling him back onto the base of the ramp.

  Jane laughed. “What was that all about?”

  Johnny grinned. “Just wanted to be the first Human on this planet. Was gonna claim it for Derwood.”

  Jane shook her head. “Brother… you’re gonna be the first dead Human on this planet.”

  “And it’s already occupied,” added Mace. “No Derwood. Mr. Mallot, can you give us some ground readings for this area? Johnny just started to sink.”

  Humphrey replied, “I’m showing a pocket of low density to your right. Stay left and it should be solid enough.”

  The foursome walked the fifty meters to a piece of the downed alien craft.

  Jane said, “Not very big, was it?”

  “About the size of our shuttles,” said Mace. “Which reminds me… when we get back, let’s see if we can put the micro-wormhole generators on at least one of ours. This is the second time we could have used it as a backup to make a jump.”

  Johnny said, “Excellent idea.”

  Jenny looked over a piece of hull, kicking it with her boot. “Definitely metallic.”

  She reached down, lifting the meter-long piece in her hand. “Heavy too. Suit says this piece is almost four hundred kilos.”

  Jane said, “I’ve got components over here. Looks like a whole mess of coils.”

  Mace walked over. “What are the chances any would work?”

  Jane shook her head. “Slim to none that we’d have a match. I’ll take some samples and see what they test out to be at Gnaga’s workbench.”

  Johnny said, “I got part of a dead alien over here. At least I think that’s what it is.”

  Jenny walked over. “Ha! That’s a plant, you doofus. Here’s the pot it was growing in.”

  Johnny scowled. “Who takes a plant with them on a fighter ship?”

  Jenny looked up at the Rogers. “If I recall, you brought two dogs.”

  Johnny returned a half smile. “Noted.”

  Mace climbed up on a twenty-meter-long section. “Anybody think this is the barrel of the weapon they shot at us?”

  Jane walked over. “Could be.”

  Mace opened a comm. “Mr. Crawford, have Mr. Humphrey check the data for anything toxic or radioactive. If it’s clean, send the shuttle down with a grappler and let’s move this stuff into the docking bay. No sense in us sitting out here exposed when we can investigate from in there.”

  Jordan replied, “Expect a shuttle down there in about two minutes, Mr. Hardy.”

  Johnny smacked Mace on the shoulder. “I like that. You’re using your noggin.”

  Half an hour passed before the major pieces of the destroyed craft had been collected.

  Mace stood in the docking bay. “Wish we could get this back to the team. I’d like to know how to shield against that weapon.”

  Jane said, “It melted through that gatrellium and the internal decking. Which reminds me, we’re gonna have to patch the gatrellium skin before we can jump anywhere. I remember you telling me about that first test shuttle at Divinia.”

  Johnny nodded. “It disintegrated when it hit the wormhole. Good call.”

  Jane pointed. “Pick up that box of parts and follow me.”

  Johnny reached down. Is that all I am to you? A delivery boy?”

  Jane replied as she walked away, “On this planet, yes.”

  Johnny followed Jane with the box.

  Mace made his way back to the bridge. “Mr. Mallot, find us a deep hole in that ocean. Mr. Hobbs, take us there. We’re gonna sit for a while, see if those aliens that attacked us come back.”

  The next two days were spent at nine hundred meters below the surface. A small sensor array was floated above, keeping watch on the heavens. Mace took a walk to Gnaga’s lab.

  Jane looked up as he walked in. “I think we’re ready for another try. I’ve tested a half dozen of the coils from that wreckage. One is close, but I’m getting some odd readings from it. Once on and fully active, a resonant wave starts to build in it. After a minute it seems to take over, changing the inductance. I’m no electronics whiz, but from what I do know it shouldn’t do that.”

  Mace smiled. “I’m surprised you actually know any of this stuff.”

  Jane replied, “Gnaga was insistent on explaining everything he did. And he liked to quiz me about it afterward. I guess some of it stuck. Anyway, I’d like to swap out coils and then give the generator another try.”

  Mace nodded as he opened a comm. “Mr. Hobbs, take us up to where we can open a wormhole. We have another test to run.”

  Jane and Mace walked to the generator room as the Rogers surfaced and headed back to space. The coils were exchanged and the circuit box holding it again secured.

  “That should do it.”

  Mace opened a comm. “Mr. Hobbs … give it a try.”

  As Mace and Jane watched on a holo-display, the sensors showed a tiny fracture in space-time taking place. High-fives were exchanged.

  “Mrs. Tretcher, I promote you to chief engineer.”

  Jane laughed. “I think we got way lucky on this one.”

  Humphrey came over the comm. “Mr. Hardy, we have a problem.”

  “What is it, Mr. Mallot?”

  Humphrey pushed the data he was looking at to Mace’s display. “Normally the wormhole is opened at a fixed point a kilometer in front of the ship. For whatever reason, that point has begun to move.”

  “Move? What do you mean?”

  “The point is bouncing from the one kilometer mark… in to only a few meters away from our hull, and then back out to maybe a thousand kilometers.”

  “Can you scan the other side to see what’s happening there? Is the other end opening to where it should?”

  Humphrey ran a quick scan. “It appears to be.”

  “Mr. Hobbs, open a wormhole to Divinia. Let’s have Jasper send us the right part. I’d rather not chance us going through there.”

  A new portal was opened.

  Jasper’s image came up on the comm. “How goes the search?”

  “Cut short. We need some assistance. We were attacked and the wormhole generator took a hit. We were able to repair it but it doesn’t seem stable. Would appreciate you opening a return portal for us. I’m sending over the coordinates.”

  Jasper nodded. “Give me a sec and I’ll have it open for you. You say you were attacked?”

  Mace pushed a video stream of the short fight over the comm. “Two ships popped in and started shooting. The world we’re at is inhabited, but they seem to be at the medieval stage of civilization. We think these ships were from another species who’s watching them. In the video, you can see we shot one of them down. The debris from i
t came down in a desert. The second ship jumped through a portal to elsewhere.”

  Jasper said, “Wormhole should be opening near you now.”

  Liam came over the comm. “We have it, Mr. Hardy. Taking us home now.”

  As the Rogers slipped through to Divinia, Mace continued, “Anyway, we collected the ship debris from the desert. Jane used a part to repair our generator and here we are. And please remind me never to go out without a tech aboard who’s trained at repairing things. We got lucky this time that Jane knew just enough to rescue us. Otherwise we’d have been stuck there until you came looking for us. Oh, and have Jeff meet us at the dock. We have some new stuff for him to play with. I believe we have one of the weapons they used to puncture our hull, and it looks to be intact.”

  Jasper laughed. “I’m not your messenger boy. Call Jeff yourself.”

  Mace shook his head. “Sorry. Not sure why I asked.”

  A comm was opened to Jeff Moskowitz. “Hey, Doc. We’ve got some new hardware for you to look at. It’s a weapon that penetrated our hull and cut through a deck.”

  Jeff replied, “I’ll add it to our list of things to do.”

  “Any luck with the green energy wave?”

  Jeff sighed. “Five attempts and no output. We may have to do a reset and start from the beginning. Were you able to find any resources?”

  Mace frowned. “Not much. We did find an inhabited planet. I’d place them at medieval on the development scale—wagons and whatnot. And we did manage to get attacked. We downed one of the two attackers and collected the debris for you to analyze. Oh, and they managed to trash our wormhole generator with a shot from their weapons. Jane replace a coil and we made a comm to Jasper to open us another portal because ours was unstable.”

  “How was it unstable?”

  Mace shrugged. “Not sure how to describe it other than to say once it was open it kept moving around. We didn’t want to chance coming through it so we had Jasper open us another.”

  Jeff tilted his head. “Moving around? Explain.”

  Mace pulled up data from the ship’s archive. “Here, see for yourself. It was oscillating, going from no more than a meter from the hull out to about nine hundred kilometers and back. We sent through a comm, but I wasn’t about to take us through there.”

  Jeff rubbed his chin. “That shouldn’t be possible. How’d this happen again?”

  “Jane swapped out a coil. We didn’t have one that would work, so she scavenged one from the downed wreckage. She pointed out some strange behavior to me before she installed it. But neither of us knew what we were looking at. I figured your guys might be interested in whatever the cause was.”

  Jeff nodded. “Very. I’ll have Mr. Klept look into it. He’s struggling at the moment, as so much of what we’re attempting with the quantum wave technology is based on mathematical formulas and theory. Gnaga’s genius is much more in the applied realm. I’ll have him look over the weapon too. He’ll enjoy the break.”

  Mace walked onto the bridge of the Organ Cave, where Jasper was sitting. “What’cha hanging out up here for?”

  Jasper replied, “Duties on the planet have been fulfilled. Was just running replays of that fight out there on my display. Looking for any ship tactics that seemed to give an edge. I lost a quarter of my new ships in that fight, and I’d like to nail down why.”

  “Shouldn’t your military planners be looking that over?”

  Jasper closed the display. “They are. I just like to keep in the mix if I can. Tell me about your encounter.”

  Mace gestured toward the main holo-display. “Put the video feed up on the big board.”

  As the main holo-display came to life, Mace said, “This is where they came in, I’d say using wormholes, since they came out of nowhere. We took our first hit about here. And the second here. This one penetrated to the generator room and smoked a coil. Hans took one of the fighters out and the other fled. That’s about it. Oh, and I passed the debris from the downed ship off to Jeff for eval. I think it has a complete gun we might be able to take apart.”

  Jasper stood. “Come on, let’s go round up a team to work on that.”

  Mace laughed. “Didn’t know a king could get so bored.”

  Jasper shrugged as they walked. “We have all these things going on, but they’re mostly way above my ability to deal with directly. I have administrators who take care of most of my day-to-day tasks of running these species. That leaves me with time to coordinate efforts up here. Only problem is, most of the work up here is beyond what I’m capable of. I can’t re-engineer a quantum wave… whatever that thing does. All I can do is stand over their shoulders and ask dumb questions.”

  Mace chuckled. “I have the same issue. I watched Jane test and replace that coil, and frankly, other than soldering it in place, I was lost on what she was trying to describe to me.”

  Jasper nodded. “That’s why I’ve been trying to educate myself ever since I took over here. I don’t like people knowing so much more than me that I look like a fool when those subjects come up. I’ve been trying to wrap my head around all this field theory stuff for a week now, and sometimes I feel like I know less than I knew before.”

  Mace patted Jasper on the shoulder as they walked into a room that held the downed ship parts. “I know exactly how you feel. This is the gun over here. At least that’s what I think it is.”

  Jasper gave the twenty-meter section a quick look-over. “I’d say that’s what it is, too. Let’s get this moved down to the labs.”

  A comm was placed and the debris moved. Mace and Jasper hopped a shuttle down to the surface, and were soon in the same engineering complex that held Jeff and the others.

  Mace followed Jasper into a room as three of his engineers joined them. “Boys, they’ll be bringing some ship parts through those doors in a couple minutes. On one of the larger parts is what looks like a barrel for a weapon. I want you to take it apart and tell me what it does. Can it be recreated? Can it be scaled up? All the usual stuff.”

  The engineers nodded. “We’ll do our best, Your Highness.”

  The parts came in and the Targarian engineers got to work.

  Mace found a chair and sat. “I was just thinking. If this weapon works, we could use it to keep any gatrellium ships from jumping. We had to patch our hull before coming through. Thanks, by the way, for providing those kits. Montak’s guys were able to get out and do that patching in short order.”

  Jasper took off his helmet, laying it to one side. “I lie awake some nights wondering how we made it this far.”

  Mace laughed. “Don’t get me started on that. We’ve had more than one too many fights that have somehow gone our way. Take that last one. I thought you were dead meat the way you charged in there.”

  Jasper replied, “What I can’t figure out is why Stark didn’t command his ships to go after me. Wouldn’t have been that difficult. They knew which ship I was on.”

  Mace nodded. “Stark plays a mysterious game, that’s for sure. He’s had ample opportunity to kill us both. I’m not sure why he hasn’t. We’ve screwed up his plans several times now.”

  “Well… we haven’t really gone after him either. Maybe he looks at us as a viable alternative to him if something were to go wrong. He knows we both care more about Earth than ourselves. I think he does, too.”

  One of the engineers said, “Sire, we have the compartment open.”

  Jasper stood. “Let’s have a look at our new prize.”

  The engineers poked and prodded for several minutes, discussing in Targarian what it was they were seeing.

  Jasper asked, “Well?”

  One of the engineers replied, “I am sorry, Your Highness. It appears to be an antenna and not a weapon.”

  Jasper scowled. “Not the news we were looking for.”

  A second engineer said, “It appears to be attached to a wormhole generator.”

  Mace asked, “Are you sure? That’s way too small for what those ships came through.”r />
  The engineer pointed. “It’s a similar setup to ours. I would agree, though. It is too small for use in transport. Perhaps it’s for communications?”

  Jasper patted the engineer on the back. “You boys keep digging. Let me know what you find.”

  Jasper turned. “You hungry?”

  Mace nodded. “I could eat.”

  Jasper gestured toward the door. “We’ll come back after. It’ll give them a chance to get a handle on it without us hovering over them.”

  The two men left the lab.

  Chapter 7

  *

  A comm came in from Jasper’s engineers. “Sire, we must apologize. It appears the components we were evaluating earlier were indeed part of a weapon. We believe—”

  Jasper replied, “Hold on. We’ll be right there.”

  Mace finished his beverage before rising to follow the Targarian king.

  “What’d we find?”

  The lead engineer said, “This section is indeed an antenna. It takes the wormhole created by this generator and broadcasts it.”

  Mace asked, “Wait, are you saying the damage we took was from a wormhole?”

  “We reviewed the damage to the Rogers. It’s consistent with what we believe we have here. A wormhole was generated and then pushed through your hull.”

  Mace turned. “This could be huge.”

  Jasper rubbed his chin. “If true, how would it be possible to stop such a weapon?”

  Mace crossed his arms. “Maybe it’s not. They form a wormhole away from a ship and then move it into it. We need to find out how that’s done. It would be like having the ultimate weapon. No hull or shield or field is going to stop that.”

  Jasper shook his head. “Well, something stopped it. Otherwise it would’ve gone all the way through.”

  The engineer said, “Perhaps the interaction with matter is what ended the threat.”

  Mace asked, “Are you saying every time it hit something physical it got weaker?”

  The engineer nodded. “That might be one explanation. Without proper testing we won’t know.”

  Jasper said, “Sounds like we may be wanting to add layers to our hulls.”

  Mace replied, “I say we build one of these and get started with testing it out. This could be something we would also add to our microwave cannon stations.”