Excalibur's Quest

by Dietmar Wehr

  Chapter One:

  Koenig awoke to find himself alone on his bed. He was actually relieved that Eriko had already gotten up and left his quarters. Waking up together would have been awkward for the both of them after what did and did not happen during the sleep cycle. They had crossed the line in terms of violating the regulations prohibiting anything other than a professional relationship between two officers servicing on the same ship, but by mutual and unspoken consent, they had not gone as far as they might have. Somehow—he couldn’t remember exactly how after drinking as much as they both had—they had found themselves lying in each other’s arms, still fully clothed, on top of his bed. At first it had been enough to just hold and be held. Then, at some point in the middle of the night, he woke up to find her kissing him with a fierceness that was both surprising and endearing. He understood what she was feeling. He was feeling it too. After months of grueling duty, side by side with occasional moments of sheer terror, they were desperate for the reassurance that only this kind of physical contact with another human being could give. That was as far as they went. They had not had sex, and in the cold light of having just woken up, that seemed like the right decision.

  An hour later, after a shower, a clean uniform and breakfast, which he lingered over longer than usual, he entered the Bridge and found Eriko in the Command Pod. He was surprised to see her and not Lieutenant Chen, who would normally have been on duty as the BDO. As he slowly walked up to the open pod, he wondered how to greet her. He self-consciously cleared his throat and began speaking.

  “Shouldn’t Chen be on duty now?” he asked in an exaggeratedly casual tone.

  “I felt the need for the distraction of the Bridge and relieved him early…sir.”

  Koenig blinked at the formal way of addressing him. She hadn’t called him ‘sir’ for months now, but using his first name after last night apparently was too uncomfortable for her. He wanted to put her at ease.

  “No need to stop calling me by my first name now, Eriko.”

  “Ah, I guess not. It’s just…well, we did cross a line last night, and I’m, I don’t know… embarrassed, I guess. Does that make sense?”

  He nodded with a smile. “Yes, it does. I think we both let our guard down, and maybe we needed that. I’m feeling more human this morning, and that’s a good thing, right?”

  She gave a short laugh. “Ha. Now that you put it that way, I guess I feel better too. What happens from here on?”

  He thought about his response for a few seconds. “Well, if you’re asking how do we interact with each other now, how would you feel about us acting as if last night hadn’t happened?”

  He could see her frown. “You mean, we try to forget it happened at all?” she asked in a low voice.

  “No, we don’t have to forget it. We could just tuck it away in a safe place and replay those memories in the privacy of our own thoughts when we need to feel more human again.”

  “I like that idea. Okay, I’m with you on that one.”

  “Good.” He looked up at the main display and the sidebar data, not that he expected to see anything he didn’t already know. Excalibur was less than an hour away from dropping into the star system that had been designated as F1. It was the home system of the Arenians, an advanced race that had been decimated by a plague and was now trying to rebuild a viable civilization. It was there that Excalibur’s quest to find the other alien race with FTL communication technology would begin in earnest. Koenig didn’t want to leave the Bridge again, so he and Eriko ended up playing chess. She beat him—again!—just before the ship was about to run into F1’s gravity well and drop out of hyperspace.

  “Excalibur has dropped into the F1 system,” said the astro AI in its usual calm voice. The verbal report merely confirmed what the sidebar data was already revealing. Koenig wondered what, if anything, the four AIs on the Bridge thought about the atypical chat he and Eriko had had an hour ago. Did AIs understand human emotion at all? They were not fully sentient by their own admission, but that didn’t necessarily preclude their having some sense of how emotions motivated their human masters.

  “Picking up Arenian EM transmissions from the home world,” said the com AI.

  Koenig felt himself relax without even being aware of needing to do so. Whatever tension he must have been feeling probably had to do with the fear that the Arenian home world had been attacked again by the unknown race that might have been the source of the plague. Humans had a good relationship with the Arenians, and he would have been sad to see them wiped out.

  “Let them know we’re here, and request permission to enter orbit,” said Koenig. The request was a mere formality, but it didn’t hurt to treat the few thousand Arenian survivors as equals. After the delay caused by the distance, the reply came granting the human ship permission to enter orbit.

  Even before they reached orbit, Koenig and Soriya were surprised at what the Arenians had been able to accomplish since their last visit. The planet was guarded by 10 wing ships that were orbiting at various altitudes. What looked like several new stations were under construction. When the ship got closer, it became clear that the construction was being done by robotic workers. Optical observation from orbit showed that a new city was being built from scratch to accommodate all of the widely-scattered plague survivors who were being ferried to it by freighters. Koenig wondered why they would build a brand-new city, but he quickly figured out the answer. Existing cities were still contaminated with the plague micro-organism and would continue to be unsafe for decades, maybe even centuries. As he took a close look at the new city, he noticed that it was surrounded by a ring of domed structures. The tactical AI had the answer to what they were.

  “The domed structures are bunkers for planetary defense batteries containing very large gravity cannon.”

  When Excalibur reached its designated parking orbit, Koenig told the com AI to send his prepared message to the Arenian AI that would translate it into the Arenian language. The reply came back surprisingly quickly.

  YOUR REQUEST FOR ASTROGATIONAL DATA ON THE FTL RACE HAS BEEN APPROVED AND HAS BEEN SENT. WE WOULD URGE CAUTION WHEN YOU CONTACT THAT RACE. WE HAVE REASON TO BELIEVE THAT THEY ARE THE SOURCE OF THE PLAGUE. WITH REGARDS TO YOUR QUERY CONCERNING MILITARY ACTION DURING YOUR ABSENCE, THE RACE THAT ATTACKED US EARLIER DID RETURN AND WE WERE ABLE TO SUCCESSFULLY DEFEND OUR PEOPLE. WE ARE GRATEFUL FOR YOUR RACE’S ASSISTANCE AND HOPE OUR TWO PEOPLES WILL CONTINUE TO BE FRIENDS.

  Koenig took a deep breath to ease the additional tension he’d been feeling over the possibility that the Arenians either no longer had the data or that they would refuse to pass it along.

  “Com, send this reply. ‘If we survive our own war, we’ll continue to be friends with your people. We thank you for the data and will now be leaving orbit.’ ”

  As the ship boosted out of orbit, Koenig and Soriya examined the star map containing the new data. The system where the Arenian ship had encountered the alien race, which apparently was called Vergon, was 54 light years away. The astro AI had already mapped out several possible jump routes to get there, but they all had one problem. There was a relatively small void, roughly 58 light years across, that lay in the path to the contact system. The star where contact had been made was a red dwarf sun, and it was in the middle of the void.

  “Jumping across the gap to that small a gravity well is a complication we don’t need,” said Koenig. After a pause, he said, “Astro, what’s the miss probability for that jump?”

  “Due to the small size of that star, the chances of missing the gravity well are 8.96%.”

  “Even with the Arenian astrogational data?” asked Soriya.

  “Affirmative. This particular red dwarf is less than one tenth the size of Earth’s sun, and the gravity well is proportionately smaller as well.”

  “Is there any data on other systems where these aliens might be found?” asked Koenig.

  “Negative.”

  “Com, ask the Arenians if they have any dat
a on where the FTL race might be from.”

  The reply came back almost immediately. The Vergon did not share any information about the location of their planets.

  “Did the Arenians manage to get to the other side of the void?” asked Soriya.

  “Negative,” said the astro AI.

  “I suppose we could go around the void,” offered Soriya.

  “How possible is that, Astro?” asked Koenig.

  “It is possible, but a detour around it would add another 39 days to the trip. The void is far longer and higher than it is wide.”

  “Show me,” said Koenig.

  The star map on the display zoomed out and rotated. The void was one of those peculiar gaps in the distribution of stars that happened for reasons astronomers could only guess at. In this particular case, the void was tiny compared to the Rift separating human space from Jab space, but it was still large in absolute terms.

  Koenig sighed. “An extra 39 days to get to the other side means another 39 days added on coming back. A lot could happen in the war during that extra two and a half months, and that’s not even considering the impact on the ship’s and crew’s ability to keep functioning at a high level. Machines aren’t the only thing that wears down over time. I’m extremely reluctant to take a detour. Is there an alternative, Astro?”

  “There are several alternatives involving long jumps across the void to giant and super-giant stars. The least risky of these would involve crossing the void approximately 66 light years away from the area that is closest to the contact system. The risk of a miss-jump is 6.9%, but this could be reduced with further measurements along the way. This alternative is shown in amber.”

  As both Koenig and Soriya watched, an amber-colored line connecting multiple systems snaked across the intervening space to a point near the void, then crossed the void to a system that was on the other side. It then shifted laterally more or less along the edge of the opposite side of the void until it reached a point that was closest to the contact system.

  “Aren’t there any super-giants closer to the contact system than that?” asked Koenig.

  “There are, but they are further away from the edge of the void, thereby making the jump across the void longer and significantly increasing the risk of a miss. This alternative also has the advantage of there being a super-giant adjacent to the launch system in case Excalibur needs to immediately return to this side of the void,” said the astro AI.

  “Wait,” said Soriya, “why would we need to immediately jump back to this side?”

  Koenig answered before the AI could. “In case we meet hostile forces upon our arrival on the other side, right Astro?”

  “That is correct, Commander.”

  Koenig saw Soriya’s eyes widen at the sudden comprehension of the worst-case scenario as he spoke. “Yes, I agree that having a quick way to retreat would be reassuring. Fine. We’ll take this alternative route. I want to cross the void as soon as possible while keeping individual jumps getting there to not more than 4% miss probability. How long will that take?”

  “Approximately 31 days, Commander.”

  “Well, I foresee a lot of chess games in the next 31 days,” said Koenig as he looked over to Soriya.

  “As long as you don’t get tired of losing,” she said in a lighthearted tone.

  They did play a lot of chess, and to Soriya’s surprise, Koenig won more than he normally did. By the time Excalibur reached the jumping off system that had been designated as V1, the miss probability had been whittled down to 5.7% due to measurements of the target star, V2, from different angles and distances, but Koenig had been hoping for even more improvement.

  “I don’t like these odds,” he said, shaking his head slowly. “This is the longest jump we’ve ever contemplated to a star that we don’t have precise data on. What can we do to get this number down even more, Astro?”

  “Please stand by,” said the AI to Koenig’s surprise. The AI had never given that kind of response before. It was clearly analyzing either a lot of possibilities or one very complicated possibility. “I now have an answer to your query. Please turn your attention to the display.”

  The star map, which Koenig was quite familiar with by now, rotated and zoomed in a bit. The jump across the void had shifted to a new launch star system, and as the image continued to zoom in and rotate, the view became that of looking at the other side of the void from the new launch system. The image then morphed into circles representing gravity wells rather than specific points of light representing the stars themselves. When the smaller circles began to disappear, Koenig suddenly understood what the AI was trying to convey. A jump from this new launch system would have the advantage of two more giant suns lining up very closely with and behind the target star, with enough overlap to effectively increase the gravity well on the far side. It was a smaller version of the Hail Mary jump that Saratoga had attempted unsuccessfully all those months before. Soriya recognized it too.

  “This is another Hail Mary alternative,” she said in a less than enthusiastic tone.

  “Affirmative. Using this launch system would lower the miss probability to 3.9%.”

  Koenig nodded. “So far, so good, but I want to see where those other two giants are. How far back are they?”

  The display returned to the original star map with all three giant stars showing as green, yellow and red dots.

  “Wow,” said Koenig in a low voice, “look how far back that red star is. If we miss the first two and hit the red one, we’ll be deep into the far side of the void, and who knows which direction the FTL aliens would be from that point.” He closed his eyes and took a deep breath. I’m too fuzzyheaded with fatigue to want to make a decision now. We’ll hold position here for at least the next eight hours. During that time, I want AstroComp to re-evaluate all previously-considered jump alternatives, plus any new ones it or Astro come up with. The only exception is a complete detour around the void, but if there’s some other way to get to the other side that we haven’t looked at yet, let’s do it now. Eriko, you have the con. I’m going to get some sleep.”

  When Koenig returned to the Bridge 7 hours and 44 minutes later, he was surprised to find Soriya there.

  “Did you get here early for your shift, or did you stay the whole time I was gone?” he asked.

  Soriya yawned and nodded at the same time. “I stayed and napped in the pod. Too excited to leave. Astro thinks that AstroComp has found a new and better alternative.

  “Tell me.”

  Both Soriya and the AI began talking at the same time, but the AI quickly let Soriya continue alone.

  “This hasn’t been confirmed because of the distance, but there might be a bridge across the void. The reason why we can’t be certain is that AstroComp wasn’t looking for anything like this as Excalibur made its way here. So, the string of stars that look like stepping stones across the void may not be as close to each other as we’d like. Any assessment of miss probabilities made now could be off by a lot. Show the Commander the star map, Astro.”

  Koenig watched as the display zoomed out and shifted to the left. He recognized the flashing red dot in the middle of the void as the tiny red dwarf sun where the Arenians made contact with the Vorgens. Further past that section and slightly to galactic south were three yellow dots that at first didn’t appear to cross the void, but as the astro AI rotated the image, Koenig saw that they did seem to be strung out like stepping stones in a stream.

  “How big are they?” asked Koenig.

  “The largest is 2.1 times the diameter of Earth’s sun,” said the AI.

  Koenig didn’t try to keep his skepticism out of his voice. “That’s not very large. What’s the distance from the launch point to the landing point on the other side?”

  “The exact distance is difficult to calculate from here, but the approximate distance is fifty-one light years.”

  “Aha, and if we divide that up by three intermediate stops, that gives us an average distance of slightly
less than thirteen light years, with the likelihood that at least one of the four jumps will be longer,” said Koenig.

  “Affirmative. While this ship has not made jumps this long to stars this small before, it is entirely possible that the miss probability will be acceptably low by the time the ship gets to the launch point due to the measurements AstroComp can make as the ship moves along the edge of the void between here and there.”

  “I see,” said Koenig. “So, I have a choice between a Hail Mary jump with good odds but the possibility of ending up a long way from the Vergon, or spending even more time moving along the void to this bridge with the risk that the jump odds will be worse. How much more time will it take to get to the bridge launch point?”

  “Twenty-one days.”