Nopileos: A novel from the X-Universe: (X4: Foundations Edition 2018) (X Series)

by Helge T. Kautz

  Elena watched the spectacle with growing amazement. To her, the whole thing looked like a ritual, or no—like a indigenous dance. “What are you doing there?”

  Nopileos hissed, came to her, and nudged her in the side. The Teladi carefully directed Elena to the places where she had just gotten her strange notions and gestured for her to stamp her feet. “And?”

  Elena, who didn’t have the slightest idea what Nopileos was getting at, did it, shrugged her shoulders, and asked, “Nopi, what’s this supposed to mean?”

  “Now again, there.”

  Elena let her saurian friend steer her to another spot. “Stomp?”

  “Yes! Please, Elena!”

  The astronaut obeyed. “Will you explain it to me now?”

  “The path, there’s a path here, you can’t see it but you can feel it!” Elation resonated in Nopileos’s voice.

  Elena was skeptical. “You’re sure? And you can somehow, well, feel it?” Then again, she thought the saurians might have a special tactile sense in their clawed feet that enabled them to recognize subtle differences in soil texture. It was certainly no coincidence that they preferred door switches and other operational controls at foot level.

  “But yes, oh sister. Come with me, I’ll guide you!” With these words, Nopileos grabbed the Earth woman’s hand and pulled it behind her.

  Chapter 34

  Stardust. Ice crystals of silver, raindrops of gold.

  Stardust. Diamonds that glint just like bright suns so old.

  Stardust. Thousands of worlds in the visage of space.

  Stardust. The day and the night will forever unite.

  “The Stardust Symphony”

  Four tazuras until the Argon One had to return to her home sector. If everything went according to plan, this time frame would be sufficient for another six to eight tests.

  The next two test jumps followed the exact same scheme as the first one. Each time the AP Providence vanished from the gravidar at the appointed time, but never appeared at the intended point, but instead always between the dimensional anchors of a nearby jumpgate. Siobhan fostered the assumption that the jump unit really worked very well in principle, but that the instructions fed to it could not be adjusted with sufficient precision using the available resources. Instead of the ship reappearing at the previously calculated point, it was literally attracted to the singularity inside a jumpgate and spit out through the gate itself. The data in the test ship’s onboard computer fully supported her assumption.

  “You have to imagine it like this, Colonel,” Siobhan said. She had left the science station and was on the giant bridge of the Argon One to await the arrival of the AP Providence after the last test jump—and meanwhile, to talk with Danna. Busy activity prevailed all everywhere on the command deck, officers executed formal and militarily rigid routines and procedures, and everyone met Danna with great respect. “The dimensional anchors—that is, the outriggers—of a jumpgate form a tunnel that theoretically extends infinitely. Theoretically a jumpgate can therefore be connected with any other one, anywhere in the universe. There’s just one limitation: the further the destination jumpgate, the more precisely it must be adjusted. The accuracy reaches to infinity. That is the real difficulty.”

  “But the gateless jumpdrive is based on a different principle?”

  “Yes and no. The jump unit tries to create the gate and tunnel at the same time, and indeed, virtually. Because that will require enormous energy, both can only be maintained for a picosezura. The ship must be through in this timeframe, otherwise it will cause a catastrophe.

  Ban Danna remembered the reports Kyle Brennan had made about the jump with the Earth X shuttle. The shuttle itself had indeed arrived in the Community of Planets—with an enormous gravitational wave and a beacon of Cherenkov radiation-but at least reasonably intact. The jump unit of the X shuttle, however, had been severed during the jump or immediately before and apparently remained back in sector Earth. Not much later, the jump unit from Elena Kho’s USC Getsu Fune failed: instead of an emergency jump back to Earth, the ship had come out in the middle of Argon Prime’s atmosphere and crashed. “You know the records about Captain Brennan and the X shuttle?” Danna asked. Siobhan nodded vigorously.

  “Yes, of course. Brennan’s ship had inadvertently aligned itself with the dimensional anchors of a distant gate because the jump unit was too imprecisely adjusted. Exactly that also happened here.

  Danna looked at the large, tactical 2D projection that went right through the middle of the bridge and schematically depicted a considerable portion of the inner Argon sectors. A series of widely distributed, shining white dots signaled the positions of the Argon capital ships in Federation territory. The data were fairly accurate, even though the greatest part of the displayed information didn’t stem from direct observation or gravidar sounding, but instead was updated to the latest status every few mizuras via messenger drone from the fleet command. Danna involuntarily thought of Elena, who was probably already far away from these inner sectors—far beyond the messenger drones’ guidance systems. Unreachable.

  “Colonel? Are you trying to make yourself invisible again? Or me, by not listening?

  “Excuse me, Doctor. So adjustment is the problem. Brennan’s ship had to struggle with it just as ours does now. When will you have that under control?”

  Siobhan shorted derisively. “Not before the NQG invariance is solved, and that will take jazuras. But I’ve already said that. The best we can do so far is strictly and exclusively direct the jumpship at distant jumpgates. That way we’ll cheat the odds.”

  “At the price of freedom of choice,” said Danna. A small, thoughtful pause arose.

  Siobhan, who considered Danna’s objection to be purely rhetorical, and her own conclusion inevitable, was already thinking several steps ahead. “The Goner and the Teladi have their fingers in Project Providence, right, Colonel?” Danna nodded, and Siobhan continued. “Well, they’ll receive the license for jump technology as contractually stipulated. A partial jump drive. If we get the gateless jump technology under control in a couple jazuras, the lizards will look pretty stupid. I mean, even stupider than they already do.”

  “And only Argon Prime will possess the technology. Not bad, doctor!” Danna’s eyes flashed approvingly. Sometimes he liked her pragmatic style. “But,” he raised the concern, “that doesn’t really help our current problem with jumping.”

  “I see it differently. It solves it: the problem is removed through argumentation!” Siobhan indicated with a wink.

  “Nice euphemism for rationalizing something away,” Danna grinned. “We still need more data before we build the unit at scale. A few hundred—more like thousand—test jumps someday even manned.”

  Siobhan twitched her shoulders. “That already begins with the next jump. Only Major Seldon and me.”

  Danna looked at the scientist in surprise. “You don’t think that’s too dangerous?”

  “Dangerous? No.” Siobhan stepped up to the tremendous, round window and gazed spellbound at a small white dot far out in space, coming closer under a blazing deceleration burn; it was, as she knew, the AP Providence, returning from their last unmanned test flight. “It’s no more dangerous than a completely normal gate transit, except that the probability of coming out at the intended target point is insignificantly higher with a gate.” She estimated that there was a fifteen percent probability that the partial jump drive would not reach the targeted gate, but instead another. And that wasn’t exactly a broken leg!

  Shortly after completing the preliminary assessment of the data brought by the test ship as well as the jump unit through the unmanned jump, Siobhan and Major Seldon boarded the converted diplomatic ship. Normally this would have been the prerogative and duty of Commander Borman, but she was currently at the Goner temple, engaged in another important task, and was therefore not on board the Argon One.

  The interior of the AP Providence was very spacious and exceptionally luxurious. The pilo
ts chairs in the cockpit were not just simple, foam-covered hard plastic shells, as usual on military vessels, but had a dark blue, ventilated fabric cover that one might have expected in the control center of a private yacht. Equally noble were the walls of the cockpit, which were covered with a fabric of the same hue, one which every few finger widths, the rust-red emblem of the Argon Federation repeated itself. The rounded indicators and displays were matte purple, eye friendly, and glare free; the unobtrusive, gender-neutral voice of the particularly intelligent onboard computer spoke with extreme courtesy.

  Siobhan had of course seen the interior of the ship many times before and was no longer distracted by the lush accouterments. “Was a diplomatic ship before, right?” Major Seldon asked casually. The pilot had just checked the integrity of the outer hull with his own eyes and now dropped into the pilot’s chair. The seat whirred forward automatically on the smoothly running, recessed rails.

  Siobhan looked at the current energy flow diagram of the jump unit. “I guess so.”

  “Hm. Have you programmed the Delta Gate of Herron’s Nebula as the target? And are we going to arrive there?”

  “With a probability of seventy-five percent, Major.”

  “Very good. Then we can get going. Are you ready?” The major looked around; when Siobhan nodded, he tapped on a sensor field. The converters ran with a hum, and the tiny moment in which their stomachs twisted informed the Argons that the inertial compensators and the Podkletnov units had been activated. The retaining clips released, the ship was transported without digression to the Argon One’s launch tunnel. Moments later, the AP Providence was received by space, cold as ever, and the conventional drive ignited to establish a safe distance from the capital ship. Siobhan didn’t really believe the necessity existed, but she wanted to be completely certain.

  “Countdown is running. Four mizuras to reach the entry point,” the computer said. “Dr. Norman, Major Seldon, please confirm the operating parameters of the jump unit.” Unbidden, data fields immediately opened above the consoles. At almost the same time, Siobhan and Seldon wiped the projections away again: from the time they entered the cockpit, they had done nothing but check the jumpdrive!

  “Yes. Confirm,” Siobhan replied.

  “Confirmation,” Seldon also said. He raised his thumb and smiled at Siobhan.

  “Four mizuras until we reach the entry point,” the computer said after a while. The Argon One had already fallen far behind. There were no stations and absolutely no space traffic within a radius of one hundredth of a light-sezura, according to gravidar.

  “Two mizuras until we reach the entry point. Dr. Norman, Dr. Seldon, please issue approval for the jump unit.” This time no unexpected video fields sprang up. Siobhan and Seldon confirmed, and tense silence dominated again.

  “Eighteen sezuras until we reach the entry point. Jump unit nominally activated.”

  The generator in the belly of the ship rumbled, raising its frequency to a murmur, finally whistling an intense, almost inaudible sound that bubbled through the ship as a physically tangible vibration. A bright, swirling ring of blue energy formed just in front of the cockpit, causing the metal glass panes to darken. Siobhan’s stomach grew slightly queasy as threads of distorted space geometry seized her body—but of course she expected that.

  “Ship has reached the entry point. All values nominal.”

  As the blueish whirls slowly faded and the gravidar returned to normal again, the computer said “Arrived at sector Herron’s Nebula.”

  “See, Major? The probability calculations are our friend.” Siobhan used some virtual switches to send a messenger drone back to Argon One by conventional means. The onboard computer loaded the relevant data into the memory of the tiny spacecraft and sent it on its way. The drone disappeared with rapid acceleration through the jumpgate in which the AP Providence had just materialized.

  “Just as I wanted,” Seldon laughed. “Deepest congratulations, Doctor!” He checked a few indicators. “Nine mizuras until the converters are recharged. Should I go out and look at the ship from the outside?”

  Siobhan clicked her tongue. “What for? Are there any instructions to take the ship apart after every jump and then solder it back together?”

  “No,” Seldon answered, who was amused by Siobhan’s occasional bursts of sarcasm. “I just wanted to see if my spacesuit is still airtight.”

  “Very nice, Major. I’d prefer it if you helped me with the system check of the jump unit.”

  Eight mizuras later, Siobhan and the major had checked the jump unit as thoroughly was as possible within the limited time and onboard resources. Everything looked very good; in fact, the adjustment settings for the jump unit had changed a bit, but the onboard computer had managed to correct this on its own, so that Siobhan hadn’t needed to intervene.

  Major Seldon initiated the jump sequence at Siobhan’s signal. Again, the computer began its obligatory countdown, the generator rumbled in the bowels of the small ship, establishing the jump field.

  “Ship has reached the entry point,” the computer announced again. It said nothing about nominal values this time. “Destination error. Arrived at sector Black Hole Sun.”

  “What—” Seldon managed to get out before the blue energy storm of the jump field was replaced by a red firestorm that caught the ship and whirled it away like a dry leaf in a hurricane. Siobhan screamed as the hoop of a jumpgate passed threateningly close to the cockpit window. The computer sounded the collision alarm and raised the shields.

  Plunging backwards, the AP Providence fell toward one of the outriggers of the gate. Reaction control thrusters flared on both sides of the cockpit, but their pale glow was almost completely drowned out by the inferno outside. Major Seldon clung desperately to the control rods, but despite the relatively low slight mass of the ship, he was unable to avert the looming impact.

  The ship crashed with an ear-splitting noise into the right outrigger of the jump gate. A jolt went through Siobhan, as for a moment the inertial compensators halted because the acceleration absorbers couldn’t absorb the maximum inertial forces. The scientist felt picked up by a titan’s fist, but before the next jolt could throw her through the window like a ragdoll, the compensators resumed operation. Artificial gravity made her fall abruptly back into the chair, where she hit her tailbone painfully on the armrest.

  Something outside scraped against the AP Providence’s outer hull with a bloodcurdling screech, rocking it to its foundations. Only when the metal glass of the cockpit screen momentarily became slightly more transparent did Siobhan realize that the ship had been brought to a relative standstill by the impact. The still-burning firestorm pressed it against the outrigger and slowly slid it do to the outer edge of the jumpgate’s hoop. White-hot sparks sprayed as the dimensional anchor plowed through the test ship’s shields with brute force.

  “A nova!” Siobhan screamed. “Major, we have to get down from the anchor!” Perhaps the shields would withstand the onslaught of the supernova for a while, if the ship adjusted to the shock front instead of resisting it. But the shield generators would fail in a couple of mizuras at most, if the outrigger continued to pass right through the shields!

  Seldon realized this, too. He lit the AP Providence’s main engine and pushed it to full throttle. The hoop of the gate jumped up and slid sideways against the ship. Tongues of flame surged up and the shield generators’ capacity gauge dropped to sixty-two, then immediately to fourteen percent. Siobhan felt that she was screaming.

  Then the ship slid excruciatingly beyond the flat edge of the dimensional anchor, tipping and falling headfirst into infinity, propelled by a gigantic, flaming tidal wave like a piece of cosmic flotsam. The tumbling jumpgate was far behind and moments later was devoured in a sea of flames.

  The generators’ capacity slowly climbed back up; endlessly tough, but reassuringly steady. Seldon cut off the main engine and left it to the onboard computer to stabilize the ship with the help of the gyroscope and contr
ol thrusters as it spun and tumbled around all axes.

  “Chikisho,” he gasped. “Crap! Where did we come out? What the hell is that?”

  The image presented by the rear camera was frightening: a blazing corona of glowing red fled from the swirling, white canker in its center, which had once been a sun. Immeasurable streams of ultra-hot gas were thrown out into space, consuming everything that stood in their way.

  “That,” Siobhan whispered, shaken, “is the remains of Black Hole Sun.”

  All color drained from Major Seldon’s face. For sezuras he struggled for words, until he finally slammed his fists helplessly on the console. A few warning lights came on and were immediately reset by the onboard computer. “What are the converters doing?” Seldon asked in a hoarse voice. “How long before we can jump?”

  “Bad news or good news first?”

  Seldon looked at the Argon without comprehension, eventually shaking his head. “Bad.”

  “Fourteen stazuras to the jump. Our—”

  “How much?” Seldon interrupted. “Fourteen stazuras?”

  “Yes, our shields are drawing almost all generated energy. The good news is, they’ll hold.”

  Mizuras passed while Seldon prepared a camera drone with a petrified expression. Just a while ago he had wanted to inspect the ship from the outside with a space suit. That almost seemed to him not simply a few moments back, but already part of a distant, unreal past. “Explain it to me,” he said, as the drone was spit into space from the ejection tube. He was under no false notions as to how long the unprotected miniature spaceship would survive outside. “Here we have one of the New Sectors, classified as harmless on the military maps. Black Hole Sun is—how old? Nine hundred million jazuras? A G2 main sequence star. That can’t simply go nova. Explain that to me!”

  “You’d better tell me what you see on the gravidar,” Siobhan replied, without responding to the pilot’s question. Although instrument’s display was almost completely covered by a white, flowing veil that constantly changed its shape, some blips stood out conspicuously from the chaos.