Stars & Empire: 10 Galactic Tales

by Jay Allan

  Bernoulli made a face, not even attempting to hide his feelings. “And? I have not hidden my feelings about the Empire before.”

  “Well try now. You’re an Imperial officer, remember?” Jefferson rolled his eyes and turned back to the spanner. “Maybe if you try hard enough, you won’t get kicked out of the Fleet like you did at CERN.”

  “Friend, that was completely different.” Bernoulli typed in a few test commands into the terminal and watched with bored satisfaction as the positive results pinged back as expected.

  “And how is that? You just told me two days ago that speaking your mind has always gotten you into trouble. Even at CERN. Didn’t they fire you when you insulted the director?”

  Bernoulli snorted. “I insulted the director by being smarter than him.”

  The other man winced as his hand got caught at a pinch point between two conduits. “Well just try not to let the Captain think that you’re smarter than him.”

  A distant rumble interrupted him. The walls shook.

  “What was that?” Jefferson looked up at the ceiling, then over at the engineering command console where the chief engineer had stood up suddenly.

  Another rumble, this one nearer.

  And then a violent explosion that knocked them all off their feet.

  -o0o-

  When Bernoulli came to, all hell had broken loose in engineering. Acrid smoke filled the air and he could hardly understand a thing through all the shouting and klaxons.

  “What happened, friend?” He reached up to Jefferson, who had stooped to offer a hand.

  “Don’t know. Big explosion.”

  Bernoulli managed a wry smile. “Clearly.” He jogged over to the command station where the chief engineer was alternating between barking out orders to his engineers and shouting into the comm, presumably to the bridge.

  “No, sir! Gravitics are out! Main engine offline! Auxiliary power only … no, no, sir, not enough to power all weapons—we’ve got barely enough for life support and a the railguns … yes, sir, understood.”

  The chief engineer pointed at Jefferson and Bernoulli and shouted. “Get your asses back to gravitics and get me some maneuverability.”

  Bernoulli nodded, and said, “yes, but sir, isn’t Lieutenant Barker head of the gravitics team?”

  Commander Weatherly didn’t skip a beat. “Yes, he is, but he was on deck fifty realigning the auxiliary internal gravitic generator. And deck fifty is no longer there.” He pointed back to the gravitic drive. “Go!”

  Bernoulli hesitated—the first time in his memory that he’d recently done so. Jefferson’s mouth hung open. “Gone? Where did it go?”

  Weatherly was looking back down at his console, frantically studying the damage readouts of the main engine. “November Clan. They hit us in a surprise attack, the rebel bastards. Must have gotten wind of our upcoming mission and decided to attack us when our pants were down. Now move!”

  The November Clan? Attack a brand new, massively powerful Imperial Cruiser in orbit of one of the central Corsican Empire planets? Even they weren’t that brazen, were they?

  The pluming, acrid smoke began to dissipate as the fire suppression system kicked into gear, and Commander Weatherly turned to give orders to other engineers running in from the various wings of engineering. Bernoulli saw one woman struggling to limp to the exit, her head and shoulder a burned, bloody, sticky mess.

  It had been years since he’d seen violence and blood like this. More years than he liked to count. But the memory of it all spurred him to action.

  “Come, friend. We’ve got engines to fix.” He pulled a shell-shocked Ensign Jefferson along with him to the gravitic drive.

  -o0o-

  The engines were a mess, of course. But he’d seen worse. He’d seen gravitic generators back at CERN so mangled that no one ever thought they were reparable. But he’d always done it. He lived gravitics. He breathed it. When you write a dissertation on it, you have to.

  “Friend. Stabilize the field emitters while I take the main generator offline.”

  “Ok,” said Jefferson, still vague and distant. The man was clearly not prepared for action. Neither was Bernoulli, but at least he was able to focus on the engines—his specialty. More explosions roared in the background and they could hear the pounding of weapons on the hull.

  In the background, he could hear the harried activity of the rest of the engineering crew—struggling to contain the fire in the conventional drive wing, fighting with the main engine to not go into overload, flurrying over the various subsystems that no one ever worries about until they malfunction—artificial deck gravity, lighting, air. Without those, work on the gravitics was hopeless. Turning around, Bernoulli realized grimly that no one was rushing to help them, mainly because there were only a dozen or so engineers in the vast room.

  The rest must be on other decks.

  How many of the other decks were lost?

  He shook the thought from his mind and focused on his engines.

  “There. Now modulate the frequencies randomly until they find a resonance.”

  Jefferson snapped his head up. “What?”

  “Just do it.”

  “Random?” Jefferson was shaking his head.

  Bernoulli manipulated the generator controls, almost as if he were massaging them, he thought. Almost like the bare shoulders of a beautiful woman.

  “Yes, random. It was my dissertation, you know. Random modulations converge on the resonance solution faster than computed ones. At least, that was chapter forty-two of the dissertation.”

  Jefferson shook his head. “How is that even possible?”

  “It’s just another Bernoulli equation, friend. Now do it.”

  His head still shaking, Jefferson did as Bernoulli said, and within a few seconds, the frequencies had settled onto the resonance. The man’s mouth hung open in shock, and Bernoulli nodded. “Now, take the emitters offline.”

  “Offli—” Jefferson began, but thought better of arguing and did as he was told.

  On the outside of Bernoulli’s periphery, he heard the Commander shout into the comm. “No, sir! No gravitics yet … a shift? Are you kidding me, Captain? I can’t even give you gravitic maneuverability, much less a gravitic shift out of the system. I … no, sir … no, sir … I understand, sir, but…” Bernoulli couldn’t hear what the Captain was saying, but Commander Weatherly looked put out. “Sir, I understand you need weapons, but main power is still down. If I had ten minutes without November Clan fire giving me more headaches, I could give you something … no, sir, the only way to get to the other side of the planet is chemical thrusters at this point.” Weatherly sighed. “Yes, sir. I don’t have high hopes for that plan, sir, but you’re the Captain. Engineering out.”

  Weatherly shouted over to them. “All power to weapons. Even life support and gravitics. Cut the engines, boys!”

  And Bernoulli understood what he needed to do.

  “Friend, align the emitters into this configuration I’m entering into the console now.” He typed it in, throwing in every beautiful exponent, array, and confluent hypergeometric series he’d worked on for so long. After a few seconds, he smiled. There it was.

  Chapter fifty. The last section of his dissertation.

  The final Bernoulli equation in the damned book he’d toiled on all those months.

  “What the hell is that, Bernoulli?”

  “It’s another Bernoulli equation. Just do it. Align the emitters.”

  “Another one?”

  “Yes. This is the sixty-first Bernoulli equation, if you’re wondering. But my favorite is still the first, which I do hope Commander Takato will come to see. But for now, this one will do.” He glanced at the clock on the wall. “Please hurry, friend. I fear our time is short.”

  With a sigh and pursed lips, Jefferson’s hands danced over the emitter controls, and within a minute they were ready. Bernoulli checked the capacitor banks and the plasma flow control, and nodded his approval.


  Satisfied everything was as good as it was going to get, he turned to the chief engineer. “Commander Weatherly, I have a solution to your problem.”

  Weatherly looked up from his console. “You can get our main power back online?”

  “No, sir, sadly not.”

  Weatherly looked back down. “Then don’t interrupt me. If we don’t within another minute, we’re dead.”

  Bernoulli strode over to the command console. “We can shift to the other side of the planet.”

  Weatherly paused, and looked up again. “What?”

  “We can shift to the other side of the planet. It will take the November ships several minutes to determine our position, and at least ten more to catch up to us, and in the meantime our main power is back online, and our weapons, and, POW!” He smacked a fist into his other palm.

  Weatherly shook his head. “Impossible. You can’t shift anywhere in your current gravity well. The nearest place you can grav shift to is another gravity well at least a lightyear away.”

  “No, sir, not impossible, just difficult. It will drain our caps completely. We won’t shift again for another day or more. But we’ll be alive.”

  Weatherly swore under his breath. “Ensign, I don’t have time for any shit here. This is real. We’re dead in a few minutes unless we get main power back.”

  Another series of explosions sounded from the distant hull, as if to underscore his point.

  “Sir, this is my life. I know gravitics more than I know women, which is a very great deal, I assure you. It’ll work.”

  Commander Weatherly jabbed his finger in the direction of the hull, which sounded with more deadly impacts from November Clan weaponry. “Ensign, is this a joke to you? We’re dead in the water. Stop wasting my time. Intra-gravity well shifting is impossible. Done. End of discussion.”

  “No, sir, not the end. That was chapter one of my dissertation. Bernoulli equation number two. Intra-gravity well shifting is not only possibly, but potentially quite easy.”

  Weatherly scanned Bernoulli’s face, as if looking for deception, or ineptitude, or delusions of grandeur—for all the other man knew, Bernoulli had all three. But at least for now the Commander bought it. He tapped the comm. “Captain, I can give you one gravitic shift to the other side of the planet, which will give us all the time we need to recharge weapons batteries. And yes, I can confirm that, regardless of how implausible it sounds.” He looked back at Bernoulli and muttered, “if you’re wrong, we’re all dead anyway, Ensign.”

  “When?” came the Captain’s blustery voice.

  “When?” asked Weatherly.

  “Now,” said Bernoulli.

  “Now, sir,” repeated Weatherly.

  Bernoulli overheard the Captain shout at the navigation station. “Calculate a shift to the other side of the planet, and initiate! Now!”

  -o0o-

  Bernoulli ran back to the gravitic console and monitored the emitters. Jefferson stood back and clenched his fists repeatedly as if preparing to be blown up at any moment. Or preparing to pound Bernoulli’s face.

  The emitter’s power level’s spiked. The navigation officer had entered the calculations, and the drive spun to life.

  A flash, and everyone shielded their eyes. The plasma injectors had apparently overloaded, Bernoulli thought, but too late to be worried about that. The drive had all the plasma it needed.

  “Bernoulli, what the hell—” began Commander Weatherly.

  “It’s all right, sir. Look.” He pointed to the capacitor bank indicators. All zero. Drained of every joule of energy.

  Weatherly ran back to his command console. A small crowd of engineers had gathered to see what the Commander was doing. He tapped a few commands into the console, then looked up in amazement.

  “Impossible.”

  “Sir?” Bernoulli grinned.

  Weatherly studied the console, then snapped into action, pointing at the gathered onlookers. “Folks, we’ve got ten minutes to squeeze every last drop of power out of these engines and redirect them to the weapons, or we’re fried. Ensign Bernoulli here, and his second Bernoulli equation have given us a second chance, it appears. We’re on the far side of Peleo, and the enemy has no idea where we are.”

  Bernoulli raised his hand, “Uh, sir, technically it was the sixty-first Bernoulli equation. The second one merely set the theoretical framework. The sixty-first was the one we actually used to—”

  “Shut it, Ensign.” Weatherly pointed to the power plant on the rear wall. “Pull one of those other Bernoulli equations out of your ass and fix my fusion drive. Move!”

  -o0o-

  He stood at attention. Or, as near to attention as he could. In truth, Alessandro Timoteo Bernoulli could hardly pay attention to one thing more than a few seconds, unless it were a gravitic field equation, or a gorgeous woman. The curves of both gave him a tingle, and at the moment he was focused on those of Commander Takato, who was pinning the medal on his puffed-out chest.

  Several hundred officers, all assembled on the fighter deck, began clapping enthusiastically as Captain Tonks finished his speech and Commander Takato finished pinning the medal and looked up to shake his hand.

  The crowd cheered again. From the end of the line of senior officers facing the crowd, Commander Weatherly called out, “You saved the day with your second Bernoulli equation, Ensign, or your sixty-first, or whatever the hell it was,” the crowd’s clapping and cheering had given way to light laughter. “But you never told us what the first Bernoulli equation was.”

  Ensign Bernoulli turned to Weatherly in delight. “May I?”

  Commander Weatherly waved his hand toward the Captain, who shrugged indifferently. For someone whose ass was just saved by one of his ensigns, he sure didn’t think much of Bernoulli, still.

  He turned back to Commander Takato, who was still shaking his hand. “The first Bernoulli equation. I started to give it to you earlier.”

  He looked at the crowd. In the first row, Ensign Jefferson, his roommate, started urgently shaking his half-bald head, mouthing the words, don’t you dare.

  “And here it is in full. You, plus me, equals ecstasy, baby!”

  The crowd fell into an uncomfortable silence. Commander Takato turned beet red. Bernoulli grinned. Captain Tonks, his loose jowls shaking almost imperceptibly, cleared his throat and turned back to the microphone.

  “Well, uh, thank you, again, uh, Ensign. I’m sure you’ll be quite a, um, valuable officer during this tour of the Indomitable.” He sucked in his massive belly and prepared to dismiss the assembled crowd.

  Bernoulli turned back to Commander Takato, giving her a sly, knowing grin. “You now, I may not have a dickidoo, like our fearless Captain, but I’d be honored if you’d accompany me on our next shore leave.”

  Takato hesitated. “Dickidoo?” She looked at her insignia on her shoulder, thinking he meant the little tassals hanging down, indicating her rank.

  “Yes, my love. His belly is so large, it sticks out more than his dicky do.”

  The crowd started to murmur. Ensign Jefferson put his head into his hands.

  Captain Tonks turned as red as Commander Takato had just moments before, and reached up to hold the microphone close to his mouth.

  “Dismissed.”

  -o0o-

  10 years later

  Lieutenant Alessandro Bernoulli leaned back in his chair and tapped the whiteboard, where he’d listed out all one hundred and thirteen Bernoulli equations. “And that, friend, is how I managed to serve in the Imperial fleet for a grand total of two days.” He grinned at the fighter pilot still staring at the chessboard between them. “Not counting my time in the academy, of course. But since I already had the diplomas, and of course due to my incontestably brilliant brain, they let me through in two years.”

  Lieutenant Mercer nodded absentmindedly. “Uh huh. Sure, buddy.” His finger brushed up against his remaining rook, hesitated, then withdrew.

  Earlier that day, they’d met in the Phoen
ix’s mess hall for an early morning game. Mercer had lost so badly that he had impetuously challenged the engineer to another rematch that night, and this time was taking so long with his moves that Bernoulli had managed to list out every single Bernoulli equation on his whiteboard and had started to give the history of each, starting with the Bernoulli equation number one: U + M*I = X^C, baby.

  “And? Did she ever take you up on it?” Mercer asked distantly, as if not fully concentrating on the conversation. He reached back to the rook, and then withdrew his hand again.

  “Friend. I hope you are kidding. This is Bernoulli equation number five. So simple it requires no mathematical symbols, and still you do not remember?”

  Mercer looked up at the board, towards number five. The only thing next to the number was a small chalk sketch of a little mushroom cloud.

  Bernoulli continued, “Of course she went out with me. Equation number five: Make a big enough first impression, like explosion,” he said, tapping the little sketch with a piece of chalk, “and they will think about you constantly, and will not say no when you ask. Closely related to equation six, which says: He who lives with his balls hanging out gets the most women in the end.” He tapped the number six, beside which was another mushroom cloud, this one upside-down, resembling male genitalia.

  “Hmm … Mm hmh … yeah, not sure I believe you, buddy,” was all Mercer could say as he studied the chessboard, and moved the queen three squares to the right.

  “Oh, friend. Oh, friend. Really?” Bernoulli shook his head slowly, clicked his tongue, and stood up. “Well, it was a fun night, but I need to at least get an hour or two of sleep before morning. Bernoulli equation one hundred and fourteen beckons to me,” he said, tapping the blank space beside the number ‘114’ on the chalkboard.

  Mercer grabbed the piece and moved it back. “Wait. My mistake. I meant to move it here.” He pushed it three spaces in the opposite direction.

  Bernoulli kept shaking his head. “Still checkmate. Goodnight, friend.”

  He walked back into his bedroom and the door slid shut behind him.

  “Dammit,” Jake muttered, and stalked from the room. He wasn’t sure if his new friend was full of it or not, but the man could play chess—he’d give him that.