by T. J. Jones
“She’s a dream, Danny boy. One I hope I don’t wake up from for a long time. Hey listen, I had a question about the quantum tunneling drive. We were getting ready to activate it during a training simulation and it made the computer fritz out. Something fierce. It force aborted the training simulation all together.”
Danny seemed puzzled. “That’s odd. The computational processing power of the Odyssey should far exceed the requirements needed for that. We saw to that exclusively.”
“So it should have been able to continue the simulated activation then?”
Danny shrugged. “In theory.”
Adrian deadpanned. “These are not confidence boosting responses, little brother.”
“Until your captain gives the order and the quantum entanglement field is harmonized with the warp field, all we have is a theory. A theory we feel very confident in.”
“Well, just remember it’s your big brother testing this one out. I’d prefer not to sprinkle myself across the cosmos.”
“Your concern is appreciated, but unrequired. The ship will be fine.”
Adrian sighed and raked a hand through his hair. “I hope so, Danny boy.”
“Do you require my input for any other service issues?”
He waved his brother off. “Nah, I think we can handle it from here.”
“Good luck, Adrian.”
“Thanks, Danny. Take care of the farm while I’m gone.”
Danny nodded, but Adrian knew he had no desire to return to the farm to help his father as a ranch hand. He belonged to the stars as much as Adrian did. It is why they had left together for the academy when they had. To remove any chance of a family conflict becoming a likelihood. It was good to see that Danny was adjusting nicely to his new home with the Kaku Institute.
The screen winked back to the stars and the view of space from their orientation in dry dock.
He logged out of his console and drifted back to his quarters for the night. Tomorrow was going to be a very long and exciting day, so he wanted to make sure he would get as much rest as he possibly could to ensure they would succeed with their mission tomorrow. Assuming the QT drive did not just spontaneously transport them in an unknown galaxy. The thought gave him a cold chill that raced down his spine uncomfortably.
“Whew…someone’s dancing on my grave,” he mused.
“I don’t understand. Are you not dead? Unless we are all dead now? Have we somehow mass expired?” Jarod Tiaahl asked him, having caught up with him in the corridors.
“Huh? How did you? Where did you come from?” Adrian asked fighting off sounding like a fool.
“I was on my way back from the gym when I heard your mental musing. What does that phrase mean?”
“Huh? Oh! About the grave?”
Jarod nodded innocently.
“Well, see on Earth there’s a saying. When you get a cold chill, it means you are feeling someone walking across your grave. It is a harmless expression. No one is actually dead. It’s more just a silly, grim, and dark way of describing the feeling.”
“I see. And what is the feeling?”
“Well, usually it’s a dark and foreboding one.”
“Hence, the euphemism with burial sites.”
“Yep.”
“I see.”
Adrian paused at his room while Jarod continued to his. “See ya at first shift tomorrow.”
Jarod nodded. “Good night, Commander.”
Chapter Five
The time was thirteen hundred hours and the ship was preparing to push off from Star base One and begin her voyage. The coronation ceremony had gone smoothly enough. Sure there were a handful of sharp looks cast between Lara and Admiral Shorn, but otherwise it was about as routine as anything else. Adrian settled into his seat next to the captain. He was still riding a bit of a high seeing his friend Admiral Howell one last time before they departed. The rest of the crew were at their stations, and the Star base umbilical corridor had been disconnected as the ship began to make final preparations for its departure.
A glass of half chai tea half milk sat firmly in its retainer on the end of his armrest. The captain had a steaming cup of black coffee in a metal mug in hers. The two smells were blending creating an odd aroma that was almost as stimulating as the caffeine inside the respective drinks. Adrian glanced down at his tablet. All the major departments were in the process of conducting their last minute checks before step off. As the final red department went green, he turned to the captain and gave her a nod.
“We’re all set, ma’am.”
She turned forward to Lt. Vail at the helm. “Ms. Vail. One-quarter subluminal drive, heading of Nine Three Point Five. When we’ve cleared the Starbase, set a course for Wolf Three Five Nine, maximum warp for coordinates Two Six Three mark One Eight Zero.”
“The memorial marker?” Adrian asked recognizing the location. He had taken a cruise out there when he was on leave. The captain nodded.
“It seemed like a good place to start. We’ll make our jump to Deep Space One from there.”
“Course plotted, ma’am.”
“Initiate,” Garrett, ordered.
The massive cruiser’s subluminal engines powered up to one quarter and began to push the ship away from the station on the designated heading. The bridge crew cheered jovially. Adrian settled into his chair and closed his eyes for a moment. He could feel a slight thrum in the deck as the subluminal drives were ramping up. The inertial dampening field was top notch. He could barely tell they were moving.
“Rides smooth as silk,” he said with a grin to the captain.
“Not as rough as those bulky carriers, eh?”
He shook his head. “No, ma’am. They built this one with all the amenities.”
“Nearing the edge of the Star base’s No Warp zone. Passing out of it in Three…Two…One.”
The warp drive spun up as it came online at full power, compressing the space in front of the ship as it stretched out space behind it. The resulting static effect made the ship look as though it was stretching out forever before the rear end caught up in a flash. From inside the bridge, everything warped and compressed into a singular focal point before them.
“Warp engines online at full power and holding. We are under way, ma’am,” Lt. Vail reported.
Adrian could not help himself. This really was the best ship he had ever served on, he knew what he wanted now. He wanted to be captain of this ship. He was not usually a man of dreams or ambitions. He had always just allowed himself to move with the flow. This was the first time he had ever wanted something for himself.
“Time until we reach the Battle of Arcturus Memorial?”
“Two hours, ma’am.”
Captain Garrett nodded, lifted her coffee out of the holder and stood up. “I’ll be in my office if anyone needs me. Commander Rain, you have the bridge.”
Adrian nodded and watched her leave. The doors shut and she disappeared inside. He sat in his own chair dumbly for a moment. The bridge was his. The ship was his. He stood up and resettled in her chair. His first time in total command. He could so get used to this. The remainder of the trip was uneventful. That did not take the shine off the moment for him.
Lt. Vail notified the captain they had arrived in the system before reaching the monument. Adrian guided them to a decent enough point to view the memorial while still keeping them in line with the next heading change.
Many of the crew were taking screen shots from the main screen and saving the images. The captain emerged from her office and everyone straightened themselves out. She took a seat back in her own chair, and Adrian greeted her with a nod.
“Shall we?”
“We shall.” She turned back to Lt. Vail. “Ms. Vail, lay in a course for Star base One. In addition, spool up the quantum tunneling drive. I want to see what this thing can do.”
“Course plotted. On your mark, ma’am.”
“Initiate.”
Space compressed and turned blue. Then the wave shift
ed to white as the ship went beyond super luminal speeds with the QT drive spun up. Things seemed to be going well at first until the computer chimed several alert alarms. “Caution: unexplained power surge in engineering. Approaching safety threshold.” Everyone exchanged concerned looks. The warning replayed. “Alert: vessel’s velocity approaching theoretical limits.”
“Lt. Vail, cut power to the QT drive.”
“Confirmed, QT drive powered down.”
The drive was still active. Adrian checked his readouts. “We’re bleeding off speed, but we’re still traveling. Stopping on a dime won’t be possible.”
The Odyssey was ripping through space at speeds only admissible by a quantum tunnel. It was slowing down, and the tunnel effect would degrade, dropping them out back into normal space and time. The ship was going far faster than they’d expected. Lt. Vail was typing at her console furiously, trying to get a grip on the situation and the ship. She glanced back to the captain and Adrian. “We’ve overshot our destination.”
The captain looked extremely concerned now and slightly angry. “By how much?”
Vail shook her head. “Unknown. Our speed is incalculable and thus, our exit trajectory is difficult to pin down. I can say this confidently; we won’t be in known space when we emerge from the quantum tunnel.”
Adrian and Lara exchanged another set of looks, this time concerned etched on both of their faces. “Looks like we won’t be in Kansas anymore when this twister ends.”
Lara looked confused.
“It’s an old book reference. The Wizard of Oz? My mom loved it. Made me read it and watch vids of it as a kid. Not those new holo remakes or anything. This was old school twentieth-century stuff.”
Lara nodded. “I’ll have to check it out later.”
They both turned back to the screen. Space was wave shifting from white back to blue, and then shortly after back to the black void. A sputtering torrent of florescent neon green particles flushed off the hull of the ship, dissipating into the obsidian black of space. The engines loudly powered down completely.
“Bridge, this is engineering. What the hell is going on up there?”
Lara hit her comm device to reply. “Garrett here. We were hoping you could tell us that.”
When the chief engineer spoke again, they could hear fire suppression equipment and response teams working in the background. “I don’t know. One minute the quantum tunneling drive is spinning up, and the next minute it is going haywire and sucking down power from all the systems. I had to yank the connection and force stop the warp core to cancel the effect. Then I fired up the core back up and destabilized the quantum tunnel effect and our warp field to drop us back in normal space.”
Adrian leaned close to Lara. “Make sure we put her in for a medal for that.”
Lara nodded looking a little lost in the tech talk. “Whatever you did, it seemed to work. So what’s the damage?”
“All of it?” Chief Axoi’s voice replied sounding a little overwhelmed. “The QT drive is offline and I don’t want to risk firing it up until I’ve torn it apart and had a look at it. Nothing the Kaku Institute sent me highlighted this thing acting the way it just did. Our warp core is also down. Forcing it to destabilize the field the way I did caused a feedback into the system that put a lot of stress on the internal power grid. It is going to take some time to bring that back online. In the meantime, the best I can give you is subluminal drives.”
“I want that warp core back up yesterday, Ms. Axoi.”
The long pause before Tia spoke again was uncomfortable. “Ok, I can give you Warp 4 in an hour. But not an iota more than that. We’ll risk overloading the core and causing a containment field breach.”
Lara nodded. “That’ll do, chief. Keep me apprised.”
Adrian sighed and rubbed his temples. “Well, at least we’re at full power. We could have lost that too.”
Lara turned to him and gave him a stern look. “Be careful not to say that too loudly.”
“Oh, believe me; I’m knocking on wood here.”
“I see no wood on this bridge,” Jarod Tiaahl said leaning down to speak to them.
“It’s just an expression, Mr. Tiaahl,” Lara replied with a forced smile. He nodded satisfied with the reply and went back to his station.
Lara folded her arms and sat back thoughtfully. “We can’t use our warp engines and using our subluminal is going to get us nowhere fast. Our sensor grids have solid pickup. We may as well do a survey of where we are. Ms. Vail, begin conducting full sensor sweeps of each quadrant. We may as well collect what we can while we are here. Ms. Hunter I want you to comb over the data. Figure out just where we fell out of the quantum tunnel. ”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Mr. Kaine, launch a survey probe and send a coded distress signal back to the Alliance.”
Solamen did a rough bit of calculating. “Ma’am, it would take nearly a century for them to receive that signal.”
“Then we best send it now, huh?”
He paused then nodded, “Yes, ma’am. Probe launched.”
“Probably won’t be a bad idea to launch the scouts too. If you were looking to collect as much data on the area as you can, they would certainly help. The new Hornets come with a high-frequency resonance sensor. It’s got a pretty solid range and pickup.”
Lara smiled and nodded. “Good call. Lt. Cmdr. Zezai, this is Captain Garrett.”
In the fighter squadron bay, things were not as chaotic as engineering. Ben glanced up from his desk and tapped his comm device. “Zezai here. What can I do for you, Captain?”
“I need you to launch your scouts and put them in a wide search pattern. We’re in black water and we need to see all we can.”
Ben smiled. “Understood, Captain. I’ll have them sortie ASAP.” He stood up in a flurry and walked out to the flight line. “Alright, folks! Listen up! I need my recon birds in the air ASAP. We are in black water and we need some eyes out there. Coordinate your flight routes and scans with the helm of the ship.”
The recon pilots all nodded and tossed on their helmets. He stood back as everyone began to hustle about and get the fighters ready to go airborne. Funny how just a few words could turn this hangar into a zone of chaos like anywhere else on the ship.
Back on the bridge, Adrian folded his hands together and thought about their situation. The initial sensor sweep scans would take a few moments. Normally they would have the data back instantly, but since they were data mining, the computer was prioritizing all power for scan resolutions. Results analysis would have to wait. The captain was fine with that and went back to her office to write a report. Adrian remained behind on the bridge to keep an eye on things.
Vail’s console chirped. “Recon fighters are in the Odyssey’s airspace. Coordination data scan search pattern.”
“Very good, Lt. Keep me updated Trident.”
It took some time for all the data to come in and compile from all the scans. At about an hour past the accident, Lt. Axoi reported she had gotten the warp core suitable enough to give them Warp 4 for short periods. That gave them some mobile flexibility. Mary Jo was furiously cataloging all the sensor records and doing a damned good job of it too.
He was still waiting for her report when Lt. Axoi paged him over the comm system. “Commander Rain, this is Lt. Axoi. Can you come down here and have a look at this? I think you’ll want to see it.”
“On my way.” He stood up and glanced around the bridge for who would have the watch. “Lt. Tiaahl, you’ve got the bridge. If anything comes up, let the captain know. I’ll be down in Engineering.”
The Tenaen nodded, logged off his console and rounded to the command chair, an ensign assuming his position behind him. With that sorted, Adrian got in the lift and rode it down to engineering.
Docent Vay stood firmly in his command center of the Holy White Empire command vessel Truth and Jubilation. His officers worked in a purposeful manner around him minding their stations, tending their reports
, and performing their jobs as expected to. Therefore, when the computer detected a quantum anomaly of significant magnitude several sectors away, his sensor officer reported it with haste.
“Docent. Sensors have detected an unusual reading three sectors away.”
The docent looked from his elevated position down his nose at the low caste Glayan. “Report,” he commanded sharply, letting the tinge of disgust ease past his lips.
“Your Holiness,” the sensor operator said, prostrating himself before the docent, as all low castes were meant to do. “Sensors detected a quantum anomaly. The magnitude suggests it’s artificial.”
The docent’s cranial arch lifted. “Define artificial,” he ordered.
The Glayan sensor tech shifted nervously. “The readings suggest that it is an unnatural quantum anomaly. Given its location, it would be a strongly supported hypothesis to assume that it was created by sentient beings.”
The docent was trembling with rage. This was impossible and unacceptable. “That region of space is subjugated space. No beings in that region have been authorized technology of that capability! Recheck your readings and run a diagnostic of your sensor suite. If the anomaly is still present, we will go investigate closer. I’ll not waste this battlegroup’s time chasing down phantom readings.”
The Glayan sensor tech was sweating nervously and bowed profusely. “Y-yes, Docent Vay.” He about-faced and went back to work frantically. Tacent Cor, the docent’s second in command approached him and knelt before speaking. The docent gestured him to rise. “Speak.”
“You Holiness. Perhaps we should investigate the Glayan’s claims regardless. There’s been no activity in this sector yet, and if the subjugated have mastered trans-sector travel, that could pose a threat to our Empire.”
The docent continued to look at his second, silently regarding the more level-headed of the two. His nictating membranes on his eyes flicked closed then back again. His antennae twitched as he sighed.
“Very well. Do it. I’ll not watch the roots of demise growing under my watch.”
