She strode into the small suite and the door slid silently shut behind her. The room was sparsely accommodated but she made her way to the single built-in seat against one of the bulkheads and plopped down onto it.
“You look like you fell into the main engines,” Pearce said with a smile.
She cocked her head as was her wont and then shrugged. “Not much difference crawling underneath the decks trying to lay cable and fix the QCOM.”
“And how’s that coming?”
“It’s not,” Jula pouted, alarming Pearce. “The cabling is all done, but we don’t have the right heavy metals required to produce some of the specialized controls on the PCB boards needed to repair the QCOM. Venano says we need a Class II Supply Depot at the least to pick up the supplies needed to produce them, so our only option will be to repair when we reach our destination. And at that point we might as well just buy the parts themselves. I wanted to tell you in person.”
Pearce sat forward and cursed. Then he brought up the closest Omega safehouse on his VIA and pondered his next course of action. Without a working QCOM, he had no way to inform the Director or the Confederation of what had just happened. Five days was an eternity in this situation, but the nearest Omega safehouse was only about half a standard day’s travel. From there, he could link directly to the Omega mainframe and make a full report.
He knocked the Captain and requested an audio comm. “Found something already?” Lillywhite’s voice said inside his head.
“Captain, apparently the QCOM is down for the count until we make port. We can’t afford to wait that long so I’m sending you new coordinates to the nearest secure comm station. Make the course correction as soon as possible.”
There was a pause and then a short laugh. “You have got to be kidding me.”
“Not at all Captain. I presume the Nightingale is still rated for atmospheric entry?”
“Shit, it’s been years since we’ve had her in atmo, but she still rates as of her last inspection. You sure this is a good idea? I’ve heard some nasty stuff about this place.”
It’s all true, thought Pearce. Aloud he replied, “It’s not as bad as you’ve heard, and we’ll be in and out in under an hour, Captain. It’s imperative to the safety of the entire known galaxy that we get this information out as soon as possible.”
Lillywhite acknowledged and closed the connection. Jula looked on from her seat, bemused. “Going to the amusement park?”
“Something like that.” He stood and walked a few steps to stand near the door. “Look, Jula, you’ve done absolutely amazing work, even before I arrived on the Scorpio. You’ve handled yourself better than some soldiers I’ve served with would have. And now you deserve some well-earned rest,” he motioned towards the door. “And,” he said, giving her an exaggerated once-over and a smile. “Maybe a shower.”
Jula rose from her seat and slowly sauntered over towards Pearce, her own roguish smile setting off a sudden electric surge within him.
“I’ll pass on the rest,” she said softly as she stopped just in front of him, and his VIA suddenly received a consent knock, full duplex. Surprised but definitely interested, he hastily confirmed it, and she threw her arms around Pearce’s neck, pulling his face and lips down into hers for a quick and passionate kiss. Pulling away, she glanced up at him with hypnotizing purple-green eyes and smiled coyly again, tendrils of her arousal transmitted instantaneously to Pearce over the nexus now opening between them. “But I’ll take that shower.”
Pearce was suddenly no longer tired.
***
Hours later they laid intertwined in postcoital stupor on the cramped crash bunk, which was most definitely not designed for two people. The smart material did its best to conform to the mass of arms and legs lying atop it, but it was designed to cradle a single person during high-g burns and could only expand so far, forcing Jula to lay mostly on top of Pearce. Not that either one was complaining, nor was it the first time they’d had to force themselves into a spot made for one person recently.
They had spent several minutes kissing and tearing clothes off each other before Jula had led Pearce to his cabin’s tiny shower. As the ultra-fine mist quickly soaked their naked bodies they let their passions perambulate until eventually Jula realized there was no way to scrub clean with Pearce taking up the available free space. So she kicked him out, albeit briefly, while she cleaned up and then yanked him back into the cramped stall.
Later they had retreated to the bunk and tried to make a bed out of it, but it wasn’t long before they tried the deck, the bulkheads, and anything else with leverage in the small suite.
Pearce had done a fair share of playing the field in his younger days, but his extracurricular activities had slowed considerably as he rose in rank within the SSG. Joining Omega had given him slightly more opportunities to purge his pent-up hormones, sometimes even as part of the job. But the vast majority of those experiences were just casual flings, purely biological in nature. It had been a long time since he had engaged in fully VIA-linked sex.
After being reacquainted with the practice after years of absence, he had to marvel once again how technology had fundamentally transformed a basic human action into something transcendent. VIA-augmented sex came in many flavors, from simple unspoken communication to one-way visual sharing to full duplex totality.
With synching, as it was commonly known, every physical sensation, sight, and unspoken thought was conveyed to the other partner and felt as real as if your own brain and body was experiencing it. At the fullest intensity of the sharing, it was like a fugue state sans the amnesia, where two people literally merged into one and became something more.
It was incredibly overwhelming, and so each partner had the ability to dampen or strengthen the overall effect. Sexual prowess was no longer just about physicality but also the constant pull and tug of this mind-altering euphoria, and Jula was truly superb at “riding the sync”.
Now as they came down from the high of hours of syncing, he had a private moment to think about what had just happened and consider the circumstances. As if still connected to his mind, Jula quietly spoke as she haphazardly played with Pearce’s chest hair.
“I know this is a bit crazy. I know it’s a trope; people having sex just after a traumatic experience and everything. I don’t care. I’ve had tons of sex for frivolous reasons in the past.” She looked up at him from where her head rested on his chest. “You saved my life, at least three separate times, and all because you believed in me. In my skill and knowledge. Enough to bring me on that trip. That’s more respect than most guys I’ve dated ever gave.” Another smile. “Plus, your kinda hot, Mr. Not-Buxton.”
Pearce laughed in return. “Kinda?”
Minutes later they were both asleep.
***
It was Meson that woke them, with a priority knock to Pearce’s VIA. Pearce snapped instantly awake, his own innate sense of time telling him that he had slept for a little over eight hours just as his chrono appeared on his OHUD to confirm it. He answered the knock and Meson’s slightly giddy voice was instantly on the call. “I’ve got something.”
They quickly dressed and made their way to the bridge, where Meson had been pouring over the gravimetrics data for nearly twenty-four hours without pause. He looked up at them as they entered through the entrance with a childlike exuberance plastered on his face. Pearce hoped the news lived up to the enthusiasm on display.
The rest of the bridge crew gathered around the center nav console once again as Meson brought up a series of charts and raw data points on the holo-projector. There wasn’t much to do in A-Space and they all became a rapt audience for the young scientist.
“You’re off the hook,” Meson said while thrusting a finger towards Jula. “There’s no way the PAN could have ever prevented this.”
Meson paused, but Jula didn’t reply and one look at Pearce standing with crossed arms was enough to get him to realize his dramatic effect wasn’t working.
> “Right. So we really got lucky with the gravi data from the PAN’s debug system. The PAN Array has the most advanced gravimetric sensors ever built outside of large scale planetary installations. Having it running debug during the attack allowed us to capture data at a sensitivity that would normally not be possible. With that data, I was able to come up with a hypothesis of what they are doing.”
Meson zoomed in on one of the more busy looking charts on the holo and continued. “It was clear upon analyzing the non-binary nature of the gravitational wave emergence that there was anomalous rapid growth in the readings that was inconsistent with the transition…”
Pearce held up a hand. “Doc. Short and sweet.”
Chagrined, Meson thought for a moment. “Right, the abstract then. My working hypothesis is that the perpetrators have devised a way to use gravitational waves to curve a region of space-time around a vessel in such a way that the vessel is completely isolated from the universe. They emit these curved waves equally in all directions, creating a bubble of space that the ship sits within. Outside of this bubble, the ship disappears…in fact it doesn’t technically exist at all. Similar to passing the event horizon of a black hole, but far safer. Inside the bubble, all of the normal laws of the universe apply. And by increasing the gravitational waves in a specific direction, they can stretch that bubble out into a teardrop shape, causing the external space-time to compress on the bubble unevenly and propel the ship at speeds no longer constrained by general relativity. This allows relative motion that seemingly breaks all normal laws of physics.”
There was silence for a moment on the bridge. Pilosni was naturally the first to speak up. “Sounds like the same damned thing as the flash drive to me.”
Meson closed his eyes for a moment, seemingly in frustration. Then the complex graphs and tables disappeared from the holo projector and were replaced by a crude rocket ship floating above a flat 2-dimensional plane. “They couldn’t be more different. Allow me to illustrate. Here we have a ship sitting in normal space-time, represented by the rectangle here. Now, let’s look at that ship using Alcubierre Drive.” In front of the ship, the plane dipped down and squeezed together. Behind the ship, the plane rose up and expanded. It was the prototypical illustration of A-Drive in action that every kid memorized in school.
Meson continued. “The ship still sits within normal space-time. The Drive compresses space-time ahead of the ship and expands it behind, allowing for FTL speeds along a linear path. The larger the total compression and expansion, the faster the ship travels. The ship remains observable to the universe, albeit with the usual relative time delays and blue-shifts. And the ship can observe as well.”
The A-Drive illustration disappeared. “Now, with this gravity wave drive, the ship pushes out a bubble of gravitational waves.” The flat plane ballooned to surround the ship, with animated squiggly lines emanated from the craft itself. “Rather than sitting in normal space-time, it is sitting within this bubble, completely isolated from space-time. It is unobservable to the universe, and neither is there any indication of the bubble itself. Anything inside the bubble also cannot observe the outside universe.”
The Captain cleared his throat before interjecting. “That seems like a significant drawback. I wouldn’t want to fly a ship blind.”
Meson nodded his head. “In some respects, it certainly would be. But the benefits far outweigh them. For example, a ship in such a bubble would be completely invulnerable. Weapons, asteroids, hell even planets and suns would have no effect whatsoever on the ship. You would technically travel directly through such things. No need to navigate around stellar objects, other than making sure you don’t collapse the bubble while inside them.”
He motioned towards the holo again. “Aside from such novelties, unlike with the A-Drive, you can travel omni-directionally. Propulsion, so to speak, comes from extending the bubble outside of the sphere in any direction you want.” The bubble surrounding the ship pushed out from the side of the ship, then moved around to the front, rear, top, and several other directions. “Whichever direction the bubble extends, the ship instantly accelerates in that direction as space-time pushes on the uneven extension with massive force. If no waves are extended past the bubble, the ship sits completely still in relative space-time, regardless of its actual speed prior to engaging the system.”
The holo zoomed out, showing the little ship zipping along the opposite direction of the gravity wave protrusion. The motion was unnatural to watch; there were no curves or arcs, just instantaneous directional changes. “As you can see, you can effectively travel in all sorts of ways that defy the laws of physics. Right angle turns, instantaneous reversals. There is no concept of the conservation of momentum. You can literally stop on a dime. And when you collapse the bubble, turn the drive off…you continue on with all of the relative speed and energy you had before you engaged it.”
Pearce was imagining the tactical possibilities in his mind. This would be a massive advance in interstellar warfare even without the ability to bypass the PAN system.
“And here is the kicker,” Meson continued as the holo changed again to now show two ships, one with the traditional A-Space drive and the other with the gravity wave drive. “The theoretical energy requirement to go faster grows exponentially with Alcubierre metrics. In realistic terms there is a hard limit to how fast you can go, because the design of the ship’s capacitors simply becomes too monstrously large to feasibly do it. We’ve pretty much reached peak FTL speed with the A-Drive with current technology.”
The A-Drive ship began to accelerate along the holo as Meson continued. “But with this type of gravitational wave drive, energy requirements would grow linearly, while relative speed itself grows exponentially. For every small step outside of the bubble, you get a massive return on the investment of energy. Even a very small protrusion would move the ship at speeds far surpassing the fastest A-Drive ships.” As the A-Drive ship pondered on, the other craft suddenly blazed past it with blinding speed.
Pearce’s heart was literally racing at this point. This would fundamentally change everything about modern warfare. If an enemy fleet of these ships existed they could wipe out the entire Confederation combined Fleet. Indeed, it would change everything about modern space travel. With the types of speeds that were seemingly possible with this tech, human expansion would accelerate dramatically. The fringe colonies would be suddenly as accessible as the core. Trips that would take days or weeks would take minutes, or seconds.
A few of the others were asking some questions to Meson now. Venano took a turn. “So why did the Alesshia flash-in if it was using this new drive system?”
“Remember, you maintain all of the same speed and energy when you exit the bubble as when you enter it. So if a ship was already using its Alcubierre drive and then engaged the gravity drive, it would emerge at the same FTL velocity when it was turned off. That’s what happened at New Shanghai…as soon as the bubble collapsed, the PAN system detected the ship and immediately sent the shutdown override code. The PAN worked perfectly, once it could actually detect the ship.”
Dewey raised his hand as if in a classroom lecture, before realizing his error and awkwardly lowering it. “But why? If you have this crazy new FTL tech, why drop a ship out of FTL like they did and destroy an entire colony?”
Pearce uncrossed his arms and approached the holo display, gripping the edge and staring intently at the image of the gravity drive craft. “Because kid, someone is trying to start a war. They want everyone to think that the Independent Worlds are an imminent threat. That all of our defenses are useless, and that the only option is an all-out attack. And it’s working. Brass is mobilizing the fleets, preparing a massive assault. Once they launch, it will be all over save for picking from the spoils.”
He pushed off from the holo table and smiled. “But we’re going to stop them.”
***
Pearce caught up with Meson in the ship’s cafeteria a little later. He wanted to sp
eak to the scientist without anyone else around. He quickly dialed up a savory tasting chicken imitation and took the tray from the auto-chef once it was ready a few moments later. He placed it on the table across from Mason and greeted him warmly.
“So Meson, you’ve done amazing work, especially under the circumstances. I’m going to be including all of your data and conclusions in my report to my superiors. They are probably going to want to bring you on board temporarily as the preeminent expert in this area. Who knows, maybe even something permanent. The type of money they usually throw around, you could end up very wealthy as even a consultant on this type of tech.”
Meson’s eyes lit up. “Really?”
“It’s possible. Just understanding the technology itself would already make you pretty invaluable. But if you were able to come up with a way of tracking this type of ship, you’d be a bona-fide hero.”
Meson stroked his facial hair with his thumb and middle finger for a moment. “The PAN system already has the advanced gravimetrics to detect the ships when they exit the bubble. If we installed the same types of high-end sensors on other ships and stations they should also be able to do so.”
“Whether or not they are capable of detecting a partially exposed ship is another question. That would be crucial because as I mentioned they would be totally blind themselves while the bubble if fully engaged, so I would imagine that tactically they would need to frequently phase-in to be of any use.”
“Could you do it?” Pearce prodded.
The scientist threw up one hand while he shoveled a loaded fork full of food into his mouth. “Buxton, I have no idea,” he said in between chews. “We’re talking about something that I would have told you was science fiction a few days ago. The closest working theory was dated over half a millennia ago and was derided as fantasy.” He continued gulping down forkfuls of food, taking short pauses to swallow.
“Even if we could detect this type of ship, with the speeds they are theoretically capable of would it even be worth it? A ship like this could beat the fastest A-Drive racer available today to its destination and just be waiting for it for days! By the time you detect it, it could be on the other side of the star system.”
Impact Event (Dargo Pearce Chronicles #1) Page 16
