by Bob Blanton
“Correct, but the fusion reactors are coupled with them, and if you destroy the antimatter reactor, the fusion reactor will be destroyed by the power feedback.”
“Then I suggest you surrender.”
“What are your terms?” Commodore Warlmag asked.
“Unconditional!”
“That is not acceptable!” Commodore Warlmag yelled.
“You have fifty seconds before they finish destroying the last antimatter reactor,” Marc said. He had quietly signaled Catie’s team to slow down to allow time for the negotiations.
“We are ready to assault the carriers,” Admiral Michaels said, cutting into the communication as Marc had instructed.
“Thank you, Admiral. Please proceed,” Marc said. “Thirty seconds.”
“Alright, we surrender,” Commodore Warlmag said.
“Admiral, we have their surrender; please hold off hostilities for the next minute,” Marc ordered. “Commodore, I need you to make your DIs subordinate to mine. ADI, please send him the security code.”
“Done, Captain,” ADI said.
“Your code has been transmitted to our DIs,” Commodore Warlmag said.
“I have control of the DIs,” ADI said.
“Admiral Michaels, we have completed the surrender; please take control of the enemy forces.”
“Yes, sir!”
◆ ◆ ◆
“We did it!” Catie yelled as she received confirmation of the surrender.
“Oh, thank god,” Kay said. “Someone come and get us!”
“An Oryx is two minutes out,” ADI said. “Would you like some music?”
“Please!” Catie answered for everyone.
“You do realize that since ADI is talking to us, we must have survived all the EMPs from the missiles, and they must not have tried a super EMP on us. We could have let her fly these things,” Jason said.
“That’s not true,” Catie said. “She’s talking over the quantum relay, my normal comm is fried.”
“Oh, you’re right, so is mine. I guess that means that all our control circuits are fried as well,” Jason said.
“Yep, the only things that are working are the manual controls.”
“I guess that makes me feel better. They are going to start cutting us out as soon as we’re on the Oryx.”
“They’d better,” Kay said, “or I’m turning this plasma cannon back on!”
“There are four crews prepared to cut you out as soon as you’re on board,” ADI said.
“Thank god,” Catie said.
“And I believe they have a bottle of your uncle’s finest scotch with them,” ADI said.
“Good old Uncle Blake, you can always count on him,” Catie said.
“You are sharing?” Kay asked.
“Of course, I’m only allowed one finger,” Catie said.
“Two fingers for this occasion,” ADI said.
◆ ◆ ◆
“Report,” Admiral Michaels said as they all gathered in the briefing rooms of their respective carriers and established a 3-D link to the briefing room on the Sakira.
“We lost one hundred twenty Hyraxes in the last encounter, forty pilots were killed, thirty have serious injuries, and forty have minor injuries,” Blake said. “We have three hundred Paraxean pilots that we captured, one hundred of them have serious injuries.”
“Can we send their injured back to their carriers?” Admiral Michaels asked.
“Yes, Admiral,” Dr. Metra said. “I’ve spoken with their doctor, and they have the capacity to handle them.”
“What’s the state of their carriers?” Admiral Michaels asked.
“They are effecting repairs now; the last storm of slugs tore up their flight bays and blocked their ability to launch. They have eight hundred Foxes between them; the rest are floating junk in the space around them,” Fred said. “Their gravity drives and engines are operable, no issues with life support, but one of them has two decks that are open to space.”
“What’s the status of the battleship?” Marc asked.
“The damage control team is working to stabilize the power and clean up after the three destroyed reactors. It’s quite a mess in there.”
“ADI, what’s the situation with their DIs?” Marc asked.
“The DIs have recognized the surrender, and are now subordinate to me,” ADI said. “I am reviewing their code to make sure there are no viruses or hidden routines. With the code we have from their previous viruses, I should be able to detect any that are hidden in the code.”
“I’m especially concerned with those Foxes,” Marc said.
“I understand, Captain. Cer Fred is removing the control electronics from them.”
“That’s right,” Fred said. “My guys are pulling them out; we’ll replace as many as we can with our own, but the priority is to remove them.”
“Okay,” Marc said, “then tomorrow, I’m going to announce to the UN that hostilities have ceased and we have the Paraxeans’ surrender.”
“I can’t tell you how proud we are of all of you,” Samantha said. “We can’t wait until you all get home.”
“We’ll be heading your way as soon as we’ve cleaned up,” Blake said. “Do you know what you want to do with the Paraxeans?”
“I’m waiting until I talk with the UN,” Marc said. “Does anyone have an idea?”
“We could put them on Mars,” Catie suggested.
“Possibly,” Marc said. “We’ll have to see what options we have.”
“We have several hundred that are receiving medical treatment,” Admiral Michaels said. “Should we put the others into stasis?”
“If Dr. Metra thinks it’s safe,” Marc said. “We don’t really have the resources to deal with ten thousand prisoners.”
“We’ll take care of it,” the admiral said. “We’ll be a couple of weeks at least getting things straightened out.”
“Are we finished?” Marc asked.
“Unless you have something else,” the admiral said.
“Just one thing. Catie, I’m sending your guy out there. He’s been working on the gravity drives and has a few experiments he needs to do outside the gravity well. He should be there in two days.”
“He is not my guy!” Catie yelled.
“Well, nobody else will claim him,” Marc said. “I think you’re stuck with him.”
“I’ve never even met him,” Catie said.
“Then it’s high time you do,” Marc said. “He’ll be there in two days. I’m sure you’ll be interested in the experiments.”
“Whatever,” Catie said, tired of fighting her father’s joke.
◆ ◆ ◆
That night, there was a huge party on both carriers as they cleared one of the flight bays on each one to make room for everyone to attend. Catie and the other nine Odin’s Fist pilots were the guests of honor and had to make time to attend both parties. There was a quiet memorial at the beginning to remember the pilots who had lost their lives, but once they had been given a respectful moment of silence, everyone was ready to let their hair down and kick up their heels.
By the end of the evening, Catie couldn’t remember how many times she had danced, or how many drinks she had had. She was so exhausted, both physically and emotionally, that she actually slept for seventeen hours straight.
“Hey, Sleepyhead,” Liz said when Catie finally emerged from her bed.
“You should get up and get dressed, your guy’s going to be here in two hours.”
“He is not my guy!”
“I know that; you know that, but does anyone else know?” Liz asked.
“They would if you and Daddy would quit calling him my guy.”
“I’m sure your father will take that into consideration.”
“UHHH!” Catie screamed as she headed to the shower.
Chapter 31
Oops!
“Hello, I’m Jonathan McDowell,” Catie’s guy said, introducing himself. They were meeting in Liz’s ready room.
/> “Catie McCormack,” Catie said. “I’m pleased to meet you.”
“Here are the experiments I want to run,” Dr. McDowell said. “You know this would have gone a lot faster if you guys had given me a gravity drive to work with right away.”
“I’m sure it would have,” Catie said, “but we didn’t think we needed to be in a big hurry. And the results from the scientists that replicated the technology with just an occasional hint from ADI were actually better than the original technology.”
“That’s interesting,” Dr. McDowell said. “I hope I’ll also exceed expectations. What do you think of these experiments?”
“They look pretty logical,” Catie said. “I’m really not that familiar with the theory on gravimetric drives.”
“Oh, ADI implied you were an expert,” Dr. McDowell said.
“I did not,” ADI told Catie, “I just said that you were very insightful when it came to technology.”
“Well, I’m sure she was just being complimentary,” Catie said, “but what are your experiments trying to prove?”
“I’m not necessarily trying to prove anything yet; I’m just trying to see what happens when you vary the parameters associated with the drive. Basically, I want to get a better characterization of how it responds as you vary the parameters. I’m hoping to improve their efficiency as well as increase the multiplier.”
“Increase the multiplier?”
“Yes, even with four-hundred thousand to one, you have to be within fifty AU of our sun to have enough gravity to overcome the losses in the drive. If I increase the multiplier, then you’ll be able to accelerate faster at a greater distance. If I increase the efficiency, then you’ll be able to start accelerating at a greater distance, and as you know, just a small amount of constant acceleration eventually gets you moving fast.”
“That makes sense. So you have this assembly with four gravity drives in it, and you’re going to vary the harmonics and power levels to see how the drive efficiency and multiplier vary.”
“That’s basically it,” Dr. McDowell said. “Can we go out tomorrow to do the test?”
“Of course,” Catie said. “We have the Oryx that you came in with the drive package in it and all your instruments. I’ll fly you to where you want to go, and you can run the experiments. It looks like it will take about six hours, then I’ll just fly us straight back to Delphi Station.”
“That would be great. Once I have the results, I want to get back to my lab as soon as possible.”
◆ ◆ ◆
The next day Catie was reading through the data on the survey of the Paraxean asteroid while Dr. McDowell ran his experiments. She had flown him out to 50 AUs from the sun and helped him push his test package out of the Oryx. Then she’d positioned the Oryx five thousand kilometers from the package so he could run his experiments with minimum interference from the electronics on the Oryx or its mass.
She was barely registering his comments as he ran the various experiments. Occasionally she’d look up to see what had happened with the drive package after he commented about starting one of the tests. Sometimes the test unit developed an acceleration, and sometimes it was just sitting dead still.
“Damn, that didn’t do anything,” Dr. McDowell said. “I would have expected at least a power spike, but nothing.”
Catie looked up and checked the sensor reading for the drive package. It registered all zeros as if the package wasn’t there. She turned to the optical scan display and saw nothing. She ran the video backward until she could see the package sitting there, then she ran it forward. When Jonathan sent the signal to start the experiment, there was a small flash of light, then the package disappeared.
“I don’t understand this,” Dr. McDowell said. “I’m not getting any reading from the package at all. Did the instruments fail?”
“It’s not there,” Catie said.
“Of course it’s there,” Dr. McDowell said. “Did it move?”
“No, it disappeared.”
“Come on, you’re not paying attention; it must have moved beyond our sensor range,” Jonathan said. “But I’m surprised it moved at all; I didn’t see any change in the power reading.”
“Look, it’s not there,” Catie said.
“I said it must have moved!”
“Watch the video!”
Catie rewound the video to just before the last test began, then she played it at slow speed. The video showed the drive package overlaid with all the sensor readings. When the sensor showed Jonathan applying the harmonics to the drive, there was a brief reading showing the drives powering up, then the reading dropped to zero, and the package disappeared.
“Oops, that wasn’t supposed to happen,” Dr. McDowell said. “Did it blow up?”
“No, the sensors don’t show any power spikes,” Catie said. “They show you energizing the engines, applying the harmonics, then all the readings drop to zero, and the drive package disappears.”
“I wonder where it went?”
“I think we need to rethink these experiments,” Catie said. “We definitely need to figure out where it went.”
“Damn, that harmonic setting definitely doesn’t do what I expected,” Dr. McDowell said.
Afterword
Thanks for reading Delphi Alliance!
I hope you’ve enjoyed the fifth book in the Delphi in Space series. If you would like to join my newsletter group, click here, Delphi in Space News. The newsletter provides interesting science facts for SciFi fans, book recommendations based on books I truly loved reading, and notification of when the next book in my series is available.
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The story will continue in Delphi Federation Spring 2020.
Acknowledgments
It is impossible to say how much I am indebted to my beta readers and copy editors. Without them, you would not be able to read my books due to all the grammar and spelling errors. I have always subscribed to Andrew Jackson’s opinion that “It is a damn poor mind that can think of only one way to spell a word.”
So special thanks to:
My copy editor Ann Clark, who also happens to be my wife.
My beta reader and editor, Theresa Holmes.
My beta reader and cheerleader, Roger Blanton, who happens to be my brother.
