Fool's Gold (The Wandering Engineer)

by Hechtl, Chris

  "No, she's nice, but not usable for us. Oh she can help out in logistics, but I can't see much use for her," he sighed. “We're fully fueled now.”

  Harris looked thoughtful. "What about a water spray?" he asked looking mischievous. Irons sucked in a breath then blew it out in an explosive guffaw.

  Dan looked surprised then laughed as well. "I like it! But having her as a fire ship is risky. Her crew wouldn't go for it," he shrugged. Irons nodded.

  "We could work out a computer control, maybe a whisker laser?" Harris asked. Irons shook his head.

  "For it to work we'd have to be on a different vector, That would put us here." He picked up a tablet and quickly sketched out the plan. The table's holographic projector changed to show a plot.

  "We'd have to be either here or here, and if we were too close we could be caught by the spray or seen by the enemy. If we're behind or on opposition vectors, above or below, then we'd have problems with possible signal interception."

  "Also trying to coordinate that scheme over several light minutes invites defeat in detail lieutenant," Firefly interjected. Harris looked deflated.

  "Still, it is something to keep in mind. We might figure something out. Try gaming it out and give me a report in the morning." He looked over to Harris who nodded.

  “I wonder if you could do a water mine or missile?” Janice asked sounding amused. Harris and Dan looked at her. “You know, toss it out in front of the enemy and blow it up on command. Spray the contents toward their flight path.” She used her hands to pantomime what she was trying to explain.

  “It'd have to be a lot of water. Otherwise all it would do would be make for a pretty light show, maybe blind some of their passives for a couple minutes,” Dan said dismissing the idea.

  “Lidar attenuates in water right? The shift is caused cause the water acts as a prism. Could we use that? Or maybe add a chemical dye to help with that?” Harris asked, rubbing his chin.

  "Another late night session," Dan muttered looking over to Harris then he grinned. "You know, I really shouldn't complain, as tired as I am, I'm having the time of my life." He grinned.

  Harris nodded looking up. "I wouldn't swap with anyone in the universe," he grinned as well then chuckled.

  "Me neither" Janice said as she looked thoughtful. “Despite the impending potential of doom hanging over our collective heads.”

  “You would bring that up.”

  "How is Doc doing?" Irons asked.

  "See for yourself," Sprite replied pulling up the feed. "She's got an assembly line going with doctor Standish and her staff." He studied the image. The sickbay was arranged with a series of beds. At each station a doctor or RN and or robot with assistant nursing staff were there working on a different body part or implant. He smiled as he saw a pair of elves working on the eye implants.

  "She's good. She recognized that they are better at micro manipulation and she delegated it," Sprite reported. He nodded. An elf was working on audio implants while a robot prepped a tray of materials.

  "We've got enough for the remaining crew of each ship and the salvage teams. She's actually running the salvage teams through now since they will have to be back on their feet tomorrow," Sprite reported. He nodded. “The crew that volunteer for naval duty are getting the full treatment. Otherwise they get the basics. Clean them up, flush out the junk, add a civilian grade implant and make any repairs needed.”

  "Right. They can use Forth's method, lock the implants down and start training with them later. After the swelling goes down." He nodded and signed off.

  "The lounge is a hit," Sprite informed him as he showered the next morning.

  "It is?" he asked. “It took them long enough to discover it.”

  “What can I say?” Sprite asked amused. “You fleshies take way too much time processing data.”

  “Cute.”

  "I've even visited it. Nice," Sprite said. After a moment of quiet as he scrubbed she gave in. "All right, I know you’re not into the whole socializing thing, but it is not bad. The basic lounge is set up as a clubhouse bar," Sprite started to send him still images but he waved them off.

  "That's fine. Let them get used to it. Any problems?" he asked.

  "A few, believe it or not, we had a virtual fight. I was rather amused by it," Sprite reported. "Shelby and the Bosun are on it," she admitted.

  “Okay.”

  "Right. I still think it's funny that you organics drink a holographic drink, or eat a virtual meal and think it is real," Sprite teased.

  He chuckled. "Just goes to show, tech isn't all it's cracked up to be. Setting that up was a neat thing, but probably one of the more stupid things to do," he laughed as he dried off.

  "How so?" Sprite asked curious.

  "Well, history shows that it made some people dependent on it. You go into a VR situation and it alters your brain chemistry, endorphins, etc. A direct feed on the nervous system is just asking for trouble with a dependent personality. Throw in problems in the real world and the fantasy world becomes more and more appealing," he sighed.

  "Understood. Something else for use to watch out for. You’re not the most chipper guy in the morning you know that?" Sprite said. He smirked.

  "That's what you get for rubbing my nose into the idea of a VR pub before I've had my coffee," he shot back.

  "I'll try to remember that," Sprite said dryly. He smiled.

  "Admiral do you have anything that could help?" Logan asked. Maya was docked and taking on supplies. Logan had stopped by for a face to face report. He'd been focused on training the salvage team and coordinating the logistic efforts so he hadn't had the time for a face to face until now.

  "What do you mean?" Irons asked.

  "Well, you did point out that you were on the weapons development board and did the specs for the Resolution class... did you work on anything else we might be able to use?" Logan asked.

  Shelby sat there giving each man a curious look. Her sculpted eyebrow rose in amused query as she propped her head up with her hand, index finger pointing up to the eyebrow. "Well Admiral?" she asked.

  "Careful," Defender and Sprite both said. He grimaced.

  "No miracle weapons. We don't have the time or tech to do anything useful," he shrugged. "The Resolution class is one of the simpler things I oversaw, the whole modular design initiative."

  He shrugged at Shelby's look. "Back in the early days, we were building each ship class so it could only use parts built specifically for it. The MDI initiative was set to change that. To make it so we can use parts and weapons for any ship." He waved her concerned look away.

  "Oh general stuff really, gravity plates, life support and many other systems are standard across the board. Having a different special design for each ship class was silly and wasteful," he said distastefully then shrugged.

  "Some things are class specific, but we focused on general purpose things and designed them to be plug and play adaptable. That way you could plug them in and they would adapt to the system they were in from their firmware, cutting down on the teething stages of building a ship and testing it," he smiled.

  "It also let us play with logistics a bit, allowing us to siphon off parts for various projects if one was swamped, or pull parts from a scrapped ship for another. The theory was sound, getting it through the politicians and lobby firms was a nightmare." He shook his head.

  "I remember when they tried to push matter transmission. Do you remember that Admiral?" Logan asked amused. The Admiral gave him a mock glower.

  "You would bring that up," he chuckled then gave Shelby and his audience a sheepish smile.

  "One of our more prominent board members, an Admiral on his last tour with a cozy job lined up at a weapons research firm tried to force the board to accept matter transmitters." He shook his head as some of the class oohed and ahed. "It sounds great in theory, transmit a person across a system, or a bomb right onto a planet right?" He looked around then shook his head. "Okay for you to understand the problems
I'm going to have to lecture a bit," he smiled

  "There are three known ways to transmit data through subspace. The first is passive, receiving force emissions through detectors. By using antigrav or a wedge emitter you light off a signal that can be detected in a star system. With me so far?" Several nodded. "Right, well if you have an artificial field then you can manipulate it to transmit data in pulses. On, off on, off." Sprite pulled up a holo and projected the on, off pulses. "It's good in theory, but if the transmitter is in a cluttered system with objects between the transmitter and receiver then forget it. The signals wash out. I'm afraid force detection is a bit overrated." He shook his head.

  "Now the next is tachyons. Fusion and for that matter fission and antimatter plants emit tachyons and neutrinos. Also when an object travels with its wedge and shields up, it bounces tachyons off it and into the void."

  "The problem with tachyons is that they degrade, and they are unreliable. They are difficult to form into a stream of data, and artificial tachyons degrade quickly when loaded with data." He gave the holo demonstration a look then sighed.

  "The last is the ansible. I believe some of you have heard of that right?" He looked around.

  "Why did they put it on the planet?" Shelby asked. He grimaced. "If the enemy wanted only to destroy it, perhaps the planet would have been spared..." He shook his head and she stopped.

  "Don't believe it. The Xenos would have flattened the planet or shattered it either way. The ansible just made it simpler." He scowled bleakly for a moment then shook it off with difficulty. "An ansible uses split muon particles. One particle on either side." He held his hands apart. The holo behind him projected the split, then separated.

  "Now a force change on one's spin direction instantly effects the other no matter how far apart they are." One particle vibrated and the other instantly did as well. "Now the tricky part was getting them from one place to another," he sighed

  "We would leave one half of a pair on one side, then transport the other half to another location. The problem is you had to make sure it couldn't touch anything or it would rapidly degrade or self destruct... or bond to the other material."

  He motioned to the holo as each scenario played out... "So getting it to another world was imperative. A planet has only three motions to worry about, orbital, spin, and quakes. We can compensate for all of them. In a moving craft it's, well, let's just say it's a lot harder." He shrugged as several chuckled.

  "Now back to the matter transmission idea, see they had this idea to set up a receiver on planets, or use the existing ansible linkage then transmit people or goods from one point to another." He shook his head. "There are several problems with this, technical, moral, and legal. Let’s look at the basic theory." He turned to the projector.

  "The idea was to copy a person, then send them to another receiver where a replicator would then take the data and make a new body. Now in making the copy you run into three problems. Two are the Heisenberg uncertainty principle. In layman's terms it states you can know an atoms precise location, or it's relevant data, not both." A few looked confused at that then shrugged it off. “Now that alone makes it a show stopper." He explained. "The other problem is in making the copy you destroy the original." Several people sucked in their breaths. He nodded.

  "Right, so you destroy your body then send its data to another replicator that makes you a new one right? Well that opens up a legal cans of worms. First you're now a clone. So that violates the Federation Constitution on several points." He shook his head. "Then there is the whole degradation problem of clones, they copy the original at that specific time period. It's biological clock is set to that time and it degrades at the same rate as the original or faster. If there is an error in copying... then it gets nasty fast." He shook his head again.

  "One of the ideas was to take tissue samples from a person and use that to clone a body, and just transmit their neural pathways from one body to another." He tapped his head. “Another would be to transmit the mind but put it into a android body.” He shook his head.

  "Fortunately congress got wind of this and they banned the technology," he smiled. "The Admiral tried to get a military use exemption, using the tech to transmit bombs or nanites." He shook his head. Shelby laughed suddenly.

  "I see where this is going. If you have to set up a receiver why not just set the bomb up in the first place right?" she asked.

  He nodded. "Got it. It's silly to spend nearly a billion fed credits to set up a receiver just to send a bomb." He shook his head. "The silly idea was the last nail in the Admiral's coffin. He was forcibly retired after he tried to force the issue," he shook his head.

  "Now we digressed a bit but did get a glimpse at FTL tech. We had a couple of other methods like hyper relay com buoys and dispatch boats, but I won’t get into them now, they aren't relevant. Let's take another looks at Firefly's communications net and see if we can cover any questions you may have..."

  "Admiral, I was wondering about the ansibles you mentioned. If you had them in your time, why did you also need couriers? Or the mail bag?" the perplexed student smiled tentatively at him. He chuckled. He'd been peppered with the odd question from time to time over the past few weeks. They had about ten days left of his original estimate.

  "Well, first off the ansible isn't as great as most people would like to think. It has a limited bandwidth, a limited life span, and there was a lot of messages flying around." He pulled up a stock communications tree.

  "As you can see, half of the available bandwidth was reserved for government and military use. The other half of available bandwidth was sold when available. Usually the major media conglomerates or a corporation would snap the excess bandwidth up.

  But there is a problem with that. The bandwidth may not be to a destination of your choice. Each ansible only communicated with its partner installation. So if let's say you wanted a message to Agnosta from Earth, but the only bandwidth available was to Proxima Centauri..."

  Several of the students began to nod. "That is why we still had mail bags and courier vessels for non essential communications," he waved. "Any ship in port, civilian or military could bid to transport a mail bag. Mail bags were transferred from one point to another. Sometimes it took a year to cross the Federation." He shook his head in wry thought.

  "How did it work?" Shelby asked.

  "Well, a communications corporation would assemble mail in packets, then poll ships for their destinations, flight paths, and approximate transit time. If one was going to or close to a destination the company would pay them to carry the data or package. Once they got to their next port they would transmit or drop off the packages to the corps local offices. Any messages with that destination in it's header would be delivered. Anything else would be added to the outbound queue for the next ship," he shrugged.

  "Couldn't anyone read the mail?" Shelby asked, brows knotted in thought.

  "No. Oh they could see the destination header, transmission source, and priority, but the contents were encrypted with a public key only the destination could use," he said. "Physical packages could be intercepted of course but they had their own insurance and such." He made a brushing off motion.

  "Why would a ship transport the messages? It seems like a hassle." He turned to a young man up in the back.

  "Well, every ship wanted to maximize its profits. Hauling data to somewhere you’re going to anyway let them do that," he shrugged. "That is why freighters also carried packages or people, whatever it took to turn a profit."

  He shrugged. "We can discuss the economic benefits and detractions later," he waved. The holo tree disappeared to be replaced with a schematic of Firefly's communication net. "Now, let's get back to the subject. Firefly has...?" he pointed to Shelby.

  "Whisker lasers, Masers, and a tachyon beam for long range communications, and microwave and IR lasers for short ranged communications." She nodded to herself. He nodded.

  "Good, and they are used for...?" he turned to another s
tudent who looked startled then gulped.

  "Um, the long range systems are for inner system communications between ships or installations. I suppose the microwave and IR are for small craft and EVA?" he looked confused. Irons nodded.

  "Also for ships close to one another who do not want to broadcast their position. To do that they use...?" he pointed to another student.

  "A whisker laser or localized transmission. It is a narrow beam that transmits data between sources with a minimum chance of being detected," she smiled.

  "I see someone has some experience. Good. The operative word there is minimum, there is always a chance someone could get a read. A whisker laser has too much bounce or you don't know the exact location of your target. Or someone has a recon drone in between that can intercept the transmission. That is why we drill and keep transmissions to a minimum while in combat situations," he explained. Shelby nodded. "Broadcast transmissions are used to communicate in a large area, Why don't we explore

  that a little..."

  "Admiral the classes are starting to show promise. They don't have the education of the conscripts during the war, but they are improving rapidly," Firefly's AI pulsed. The Admiral looked around the busy CIC bridge and nodded. The AI was transmitting on his private link, so of course none of the crew could hear it. He studied a nearby yeoman for a moment then nodded once more.

  "That they are. They are pretty rough around the edges, but they are eager and determined. Those qualities are important." He watched as Shelby corrected the tac watch softly.

  "They learn, and they aren't afraid of making a mistake or admitting it," Sprite added her comments. "Most of them lack initiative though, or did. They are starting to come out of their shells," the AI finished.

  "That's because they never had access to systems and information like this. No one in the past seven hundred years has had this sort of access. To some it is overwhelming," Firefly commented. "Still, it feels good to have a crew again. Once we get them up to snuff they will run rings around any other ship." The AI sounded smug. The Admiral chuckled. "Give us a month and those pirates won't stand a chance Admiral," Firefly concluded.