Alicia Jones 3: New Frontier

by D. L. Harrison

  I thought about it for a second, then moved to get out. Kristi just looked at me and followed outside of her door.

  I smiled, “I thought you’d argue with me.”

  She replied, “Only if you went alone. I followed you into space battles, did you think I’d stop you from dealing with a jumper, and an accident.”

  I snickered, she had a good point.

  We heard the others get out and follow as we walked between the card toward the scene. Outside of some strange looks by the other drivers, no one stopped us until we got up to the police barricade.

  The officer said firmly in a strong New York accent, “Go back to your car ma’am, everything is in hand.”

  I looked up and saw the jumper on top of the six story building, standing on the edge with who I assumed was his wife, in a headlock. I could also see the car crushed against the telephone pole. I wasn’t exactly a hero, but I was here and had the technology to help.

  I shook my head, “I can help.”

  The officer looked me up and down with a doubtful look, until his eyes reached back up to my face, perhaps seeing it for the first time, and he froze a moment. Then he noticed the people behind me.

  He still looked unsure, “How exactly can you help?”

  I smiled, “Gravity.”

  Kristi coughed to hide a laugh. I had to admit it wasn’t much of an explanation.

  “I mean, I have a device that can create gravity fields, it isn’t in the open market yet but it is available to law enforcement. Don’t you guys have them yet?”

  He frowned, “It’s part of the riot gear, how would that help here?”

  I shook my head, “It can do a lot more than just make people feel heavier.”

  Maybe I’d have to talk to someone in charge and educate them about what they now had access too. This thing could move a tractor trailer off the side of the road easily, much less a jumper on the edge of a roof. For that matter, during a police pursuit it could lift a car a few inches off the road. There were so many uses and I wasn’t even thinking that hard about it.

  Figuring that asking forgiveness was better than permission, I took my mine out.

  “Al, get those people down, and subdue the man so he can’t hurt the woman.”

  The last thing I wanted was for the man to snap his wife’s neck when he realized he could no longer throw her off a building.

  The ball disappeared from my hand and shot up into the sky. The roof was too far away for the field to work, way further than fifty feet up, but then the gravity ball could fly itself up there. I really needed a better name for my invention…

  The crowd gave a gasp of horror as the unhappy couple were pulled right off the roof, and the man’s arms were pulled to his sides. Perhaps I should have specified to Al how it should be done, that poor woman must be terrified.

  The gasps gave way to sounds of confusion as the couple did not fall to their deaths, but floated down sedately toward a couple of police officers in the middle of the street.

  I shrugged sheepishly, “I can use it to pry open the car too. It’s capable of subtlety but also brute force.”

  He gave me a look of speculation, “A person could fly with one of those things.”

  I laughed, “Yes, they could. They could also make a car fly, if I can ever get approval for public sales we’ll finally get those flying cars they’ve been promising for the last hundred years or so.”

  Obviously mine didn’t count, it was actually a spaceship. The good thing about using artificial gravity for flying cars was that they wouldn’t be able to exceed light speed. I wasn’t sure that kind of power would be good in the general public’s hands. It would only take one suicidal nut deciding he wants to take the world with him or her to do it, or some kind of crazy terrorist. Granted, safety protocols were involved, but someone determined enough could probably find a way.

  The cop laughed and his voice was a little wistful, “That would be something.”

  Nora said without a trace of condescension, “It will come, when we first discovered the technology it took years before it was commonplace on Tressia.”

  The emergency vehicle finally made it, and I did wind up assisting them in getting the doors off. It was probably better this way anyway, let a medical professional decide if it was safe for the occupants to move or not. There was no danger of the vehicle exploding after all, without gasoline that simply didn’t happen anymore.

  Regardless, our little side trip made us late for the show, so we decided to go dancing after all…

  Chapter 9

  Kristi joined me in my workspace with a smile on her face, she looked excited.

  I looked up at her and waited, and her smile grew wider.

  She said in anticipation, “Want to watch me blow something up?”

  I laughed, “Sure.”

  Instead of sharing the feed on my overlay, she put it on the wall screen. It was probably just in our heads, but somehow that made it more real, and shared, than watching the same feed internally.

  She said breathlessly, “So, I’ve got one built. It draws the equivalent energy of a large scale fusion reactor instead of the smaller ones we have locally attached. It’s about thirty times more powerful, and the effective range has almost doubled. I’ll send you exact numbers later. The truth is, this isn’t much of a test, outside being able to fire it. The shield missile has no chance of survival if hit. Hell, the attack shuttles, battle cruisers, all of it, including the test ship which has shields twice as strong as anything else we have won’t take more than one hit to be vaporized.”

  She made a face, “Still, it will show it can aim, fire, and not blow itself up. I also have a number of normal missiles out there, just for target practice against incoming attacks. Ready?”

  “Fire away,” I said bemused by her excitement. Not that I blamed her, who didn’t like to watch stuff explode?

  Kristi nodded and muttered under her breath, I assumed she was giving commands to her A.I. Kristi paused to let the suspense build up for a few more seconds, and we watched the gun fire from both the perspective of the missile, and the laboratory ship. The shield around the missile didn’t even slow the pulse of energy down, the shield missile just blew up.

  A few more whispered instructions and I saw ten missiles start approaching the lab ship. With the new shields they weren’t even a threat if the plasma cannon missed, so I wasn’t worried about losing the lab ship. However, it didn’t miss.

  The plasma cannon fired ten shots in just over three seconds, and vaporized the attacking missiles. It was… impressive. I couldn’t help but worry that our offensive capability had far outstripped our defensive capability, though I knew I had the ability to change that. It gave me second thoughts despite the fact our shields were still more than good enough to defend against any non-Earth ship. Eventually, the new tech would get out, and then whoever shot first would be the winner. I was still against building a huge juggernaut of a ship, but updated shields were starting to look a lot more reasonable.

  It shouldn’t be hard, if I built it right not only would the two shields stack, but they would resonate and reinforce each other, making them more than double the strength. Even then, it may only absorb one shot at a time, if two of the new plasma cannons hit at the same time the shields wouldn’t be able to regenerate fast enough. Of course, the final question was, would I be able to get the board to pay for it. Essentially it would take twice as many of the EM and anti-mass rods per ship. The fact that it would line my pockets and wasn’t necessary against what the rest of the galaxy had would weigh against it. They would only be necessary against our new tech, which wasn’t a threat to us, yet, and already doubled our current shield strength which was considerable.

  I decide it was a political battle I’d lose, especially considering the cuts I’d already seen. It would be hard enough to get the rest of the upgrades approved. Though, of all of it the power converters would be the only real additional cost, the rest of it would just be mat
erial cost, which was ridiculously low considering we were using asteroids for that. I made some notes about a new possible shield configuration and saved them in the maybe someday pile…

  “That… was impressive. How many you think on the ship?”

  Kristi smiled, “We can power thousands of course, but practically because of hull space, we can double the number. Maybe triple on the command ship and carrier. So, sixteen on the battle cruisers, and twenty-four on the carriers and command ships.”

  I nodded, “Can you update the design, and then implement it? I think we’ll have a new ship design by the time the wormhole drive is done tomorrow, if it works. Do you think the attack shuttles, and Shield missiles, have a place with this new ship?”

  Obviously the anti-FTL missiles would stay.

  Kristi shrugged, “For now. I’d say stop building them, and carriers. They do have a place because they still have an edge over the rest of the galaxy. Until we lose that edge, and they catch up, they’ll still be quite effective. Should we update emplacements and platforms with the new stuff too?”

  I frowned, “Maybe the platforms, at least the ships and platforms can get out of the solar system if something goes wrong with the singularity. Shit.”

  Kristi raised an eyebrow.

  I didn’t curse often, or ever really, except when I’ve been extremely stupid and thick headed.

  “What happens if our new ships are defending Earth, and one of them are destroyed in near orbit.”

  Kristi frowned, “Oops?”

  I snickered. Oops sorry, destroyed our planet. My bad… didn’t think of that. Talk about an understatement.

  “I’ll finish the black hole drive, but we need to figure out the answer to that before we even consider rolling this out.”

  Kristi shrugged, “We need to figure out how we can turn it off. Once that’s solved we can set up strict shutdown protocols if the ship is about to buy it, same as what we do with the fusion reactors.”

  “You know, we’ve just been assuming it would be that destructive. For all we know the dark energy would collapse with the singularity, or perhaps be reabsorbed in that spot and not explode outward. That actually makes more sense if you think about it, dark energy isn’t really energy like plasma, it’s more like gravity. Last I checked, gravity doesn’t explode. All we really know about dark energy is that it’s attracted by black holes.

  “Of course, even if that’s the case it would still be bad to turn it off normally, but only for the ship the dark energy would come in contact with. I think we should find out, but I don’t want to risk the battle cruiser. I’m going to build a small shuttle with the singularity device system and very little else… and give it a try.”

  The design only took a few minutes, I just had to take our current lab design and shrink it enough to fit inside a shuttle. Truth be told, all I really did was tell Al to do that and then checked and approved his solution. I was even able to build it out there on the big lab ship in the landing bay, since it was a fully functional battle cruiser with its own fabrication equipment. It would only take a day to build, and be finished around the same time as the wormhole device.

  Kristi frowned, “Anything else?”

  I shrugged, “I don’t think so. Once we prove it’s safe and we have a wormhole drive, if it is and we do I mean. We update the carriers, command ships, battle cruisers, and platforms with the new dark energy reactor, plasma cannons, and wormhole drives if we get approval. Everything else stays the same.”

  Kristi frowned, “If we get approval?”

  I nodded, “Now that we aren’t in danger of imminent destruction, the countries of Earth have started pinching pennies. Our blank check has been filled out, so to speak. Regardless, we will update our command ship either way, we own that one, and we own the ship out here. Worst case, we own the two most powerful ships in the known galaxy for a while. Not bad for two young blondes with doctorates.

  Kristi giggled…

  The Nairan. Another update came in about the world that reached space but wasn’t interstellar yet, about five thousand light years rimward. No surprises, they were humanoid. On average they were shorter by about five inches, the tallest male generally around five foot seven, and the shortest female around four foot five. There were shorter and taller people than that of course, but those were the more common numbers.

  They had golden skin, and were hairless. There was some debate about that, it might be cultural. Their heads were a bit less oval and more rounded, with eyes set a bit further apart, and they had longer necks. The people in charge of reviewing and gathering data managed to get access to their version of the internet, sort of. They could only see what others were looking at in the data stream. They also had the television and radio, though there wasn’t a full translation yet of their language.

  The probes had also found another two worlds.

  The first was uninhabitable, with cities crumbling. Looks like that world didn’t get past their entrance to the atomic age. Maybe in a few thousand years we could move in, if the tattered remains of the populace couldn’t hold on.

  The second world was actually more exciting news than the update about the Nairan’s world. We found a planet that was marginally inhabitable, and most importantly was unlikely to evolve its own higher life forms. There is some smaller life in the oceans, and some sparse plant life along with insects, but no animals at all.

  The good news was the atmosphere was breathable according to the sensor readings, and most of the oxygen was suspected to come from kelp like plants in the oceans, which was over four fifths of the planet. The land masses were generally small, relatively, small island chains dotted around the planet. The board was calling for an expedition to do a real survey, and see if this could be our first colony planet, there was still a lot to learn before we could be sure.

  It was also only five and a half thousand light years away, although on a much different vector from the Nairan world, so it was less than a day to get there. I got the itch to be one of the ones to go, and this time I decided to scratch. This place was worth seeing.

  I contacted Sergei who was on his command ship, and had him pick out twenty of his ships to go on a cruise. I also told him I’d be coming to take my own look, but he was in command and I’d stay out of his way. It should be fun.

  We were about halfway there when the time came to test the wormhole drive, and to test shutting off a dark energy reactor. I supposed it was my turn for show and tell. I locked the door, just in case.

  “Kristi, come take a look at this.”

  She came over, “What’s up?”

  “Testing the wormhole drive.”

  Kristi tilted her head as I brought up the view in front of the ship.

  “Okay Al, turn it on.”

  Al said, “Activating.”

  For the first two seconds nothing seemed to be happening, then we saw a point of darkness in space, which we could only see because of the sensors. The lab ship was in the void above the galaxy and it was already dark there. It grew larger, then seemed to stabilize at four feet in diameter circle. I realized I’d been holding my breath and started breathing again.

  Kristi sighed in disgust, “You know, I should have known. I’m ashamed to admit I expected the pretty exploding lights like on deep space nine, or the blue stuff on Stargate… Something, other than just a hole.”

  I giggled, which morphed into a hearty laugh.

  I asked as innocently as possible when I caught my breath, “I could add something to the overlay, would that help? There is radiation, I could have Al show it as a pretty color pattern.”

  Kristi glared at me for kicking her while she was down, “Isn’t that thing a little small to fit the ship through?”

  I nodded, “Of course. Al, send in the probe.”

  A probe shot into the inky spot that looked as boring as a hole in space.

  A moment later Al reported, “Receiving telemetry, probe travelled twelve thousand five hundred and fifty-tw
o light years.”

  Kristi asked, “Why so small?”

  I frowned, “There are a lot of variables. Size is the easiest, it will be the size of the gravity imprint we generate. How far away and direction will come from many other variables, including power levels and how long we feed it various types of particle energy. I’m not watching it all, it’s going to take a lot of openings and closings to figure out how size effects the power requirements for distance, and other factors for direction. Al, go ahead and run through the tests and see if what I lined out is enough for calibration.”

  Kristi nodded, “My presentation was better.”

  “How so?” I raised an eyebrow.

  She grinned impishly, “Mine had explosions,” and there was definitely an implied duh at the end of her sentence.

  I smiled, “Well, stick around, I’m not done yet. Of course, we aren’t exactly hoping for an explosion here.”

  I switched the view to the shuttle on split screen. There were Shield missiles all around it, at various distances. The test shuttle was also extremely far from our battle cruiser, a few light years farther into the void. The shuttle already had the dark energy reactor on for hours, so it had a lot of dark energy built up by now. The second view had the inside of the reactor with the micro-singularity enhanced to see it.

  “Al, turn off the gravity emitters in the shuttle please, shut down the dark energy reactor.”

  The black hole just collapsed, like a bubble popping. Nothing happened, it was decidedly anticlimactic.

  A second later Kristi sighed, “This is boring, it isn’t doing anything at all. At least the black hole was a…”

  The shuttle exploded in an expanding ball of fire and gases. After waiting a few seconds and verifying nothing happened to the missiles did I relax and sit back a bit in my chair.

  I turned to Kristi with a smirk, “You were saying?”

  Kristi was speechless, so I ordered, “Analysis please Al.”

  Al replied, “I think it was the ship moving slightly. Even at all stop there is some movement. While the black hole is active, it drags the dark energy along with it, contains it relative to the sides of the reactor. I believe if the shuttle had been stationary, the dark energy would have eventually dissipated without harm. The delay was because the ship moved slightly, but the dark energy didn’t, when it encountered the walls of the reactor, it overcame the forces holding matter together, releasing a nuclear explosion.”