by Chris Hechtl
"Okay, so …"
-~~~///^\~~~-
Rear Admiral Walter Draven shook his head as he watched the SEALs work out on the beach. As an officer he was expected to meet minimum PT standards. But as a SEAL he was expected to do more. SEALs were held to a higher standard, even those who were technically above field work.
He'd thought that as a flag officer he'd just slot right in and take over. Many senior officers from Bek were doing that across the sector. Apparently, it wasn't as easy as he'd thought. SpecOps had always been a tight community. You had to prove you could hang. He hadn't gone through BUD/s, nor had he finished his implants or security clearances. That was a problem.
He'd always prided himself in his trident. Sure he hadn't been trained as an actual SEAL in Bek, they had no such program, but he had spent decades in the SpecOps community. He'd thought he'd earned it. Apparently, though that wasn't good enough for some in the reborn Federation.
He didn't like the scuttlebutt going on behind his back. The only thing he could do was to endure it and find ways to prove himself. It wasn't easy though.
He'd started out as a Marine before switching to ONI and SpecOps as a junior officer. There he'd found his niche. He'd enjoyed proving how tough he was to the “soft” ship handlers in the fleet. Now he felt like a damn piker, and he hated that feeling.
He'd accepted limited implants in order to get the anti-geriatric treatments. In order to get his full flag officer implants, he needed an A.I. He was a bit leery about sharing his body. It was after all his, so he hadn't come to a decision on that. The Bekian transplants had clued him in on tricks to get around and delay the requirement.
Lemans’ forced retirement example loomed heavily in his thinking though. He wasn't sure how long he could hold out before he had to fish or cut bait. He wasn't doing much more than paperwork for the time being. He'd honestly thought they'd have him do more. He regretted not having orders cut for him to go to Agnosta. He could have overseen the SEAL training there and could have avoided the A.I. thing a bit longer.
He huffed as he jogged up the beach. Younger more fitter Marines and SEALs jogged past him, saying hello, but he trudged on.
Yup, maybe he should consider getting back on a ship he thought as he avoided some kicked sand.
-~~~///^\~~~-
Admiral Irons scowled at Yorgi as he read the latest ONI hot wash. Ensign Puller hadn't pulled any punches on his debrief. All of his responses had read as open and aboveboard. That was the good news.
The bad was that there were tens of thousands of other El Dorado sleepers, some of them yard dogs. Tracking them down was going to be tough for ONI but it had to be done.
The good news was that Ensign Puller had confirmed El Dorado was in Sigma. The bad was that the ensign hadn't been a bridge officer, so he hadn't been privy to her location in Sigma. But they had at least confirmed the battle moon was in Sigma.
They'd also gotten their first look at what the pirates were using it for. It wasn't good. According to the ensign, the pirates had partially repaired the battle moon, turning it into a base. They'd even gotten her shipyard online. Most of his information was sketchy from there though.
"They are en route to us. We'll have to do an in-depth debrief here of each of them as well as the Horathian control officer. If we have to do a mine strip of her, do it. But that's still a last resort," the admiral stated.
Yorgi nodded and made a note on his tablet.
"What about the sleepers? Are you moving forward with a court-martial?" Fletcher asked.
"That's up to TJAG. I'll read the recommendations," the admiral stated. He turned to Monty. "Getting packed?"
"Yes, sir."
"We need you in Sigma sooner rather than later apparently to track this damn thing down. As soon as Phil is here and you've finished handing off everything, I want your ass moving."
"Aye aye, Admiral."
The admiral turned to Yorgi. "The hot wash focused on El Dorado. What did they have on Horath?"
"Quite a bit including some security codes and information we can use …"
-~~~///^\~~~-
In hyperspace to Triang
Governor Randall smiled to his wife as they made the final preparations for stasis. They and the kids were going into stasis for each leg in hyperspace of their journey. The crew would wake him from stasis a few days before their arrival.
Bringing the family had been a calculated risk. It would show his family to the constituents of other worlds, but it meant he had fewer staff to bring along. That hopefully wouldn't bite him in the ass.
The good news was that the field had been narrowed to four. He needed to hit as many voting worlds with the largest populations as he could and make a positive impression with them as well as with the interstellar media.
So yeah, no pressure he thought as the cover to his pod sealed with a soft hushing sound and sleep overtook him.
Chapter 15
"Mister President, thank you for agreeing to see me," Professor Gwildor said as he waddled into the room with an extended hand.
The admiral smiled and rose to meet the small man. They shook hands and then sat down across from one another. "Technically, we should be doing this over some beers and pretzels," the admiral said. He'd had the smart furniture altered to fit the dwarven professor.
The professor grinned. "I'm game if you are," he said.
"Hell, it's five o'clock somewhere," the admiral said, sending a signal to his staff to get them some beer. He was aware of the professor's chuckle of amusement at his antics.
Once they had their beer and pretzels, they settled in. "I don't know how long you've scheduled me for. I know your time is valuable, sir," the professor said.
"Believe it or not, I knew this discussion would take a bit of time, so I cleared a good chunk of it," the admiral said as he took a sip of the beer and then set the stein down. "It is weird; I haven't had a good tech debate for a while. Now I'm on my third and ironically about gate tech in less than a year."
"Third?"
"Third, but with someone who understands the tech better than the layman I had to explain it to," the admiral said as he picked up his stein again and saluted the professor with it. "So, you titled your project a cosmic key?"
"Yes," Gwildor said with a mischievous grin of appreciation. "I take it you are a fan?"
"I've always been a fan of scientific progress and of engineering projects," the admiral admitted. "I take it you figured out who one of your anonymous donors was?"
The dwarf stared at him, goggling for a moment before he remembered himself and coughed into his fist. "Ahem, that is no," he said. "Truly?" he asked, looking up again.
The admiral merely smiled.
"I see," the professor said. "I thought you were against it?"
"Against scientific study? No, Professor. I believe some avenues are dangerous and need proper structure and monitoring, yours included. But no, I don't stand in the way of it."
"Then why the resistance in funding? Or even getting us a science ship?"
"I've spoken about both at length, Professor. Part of the reason is that we have a war on. But I've offered avenues for you and your colleagues to follow should you choose to do so."
The professor grunted.
"But I admit I do have specific problems with your grand project. Some of them I'd like to address now," he said.
The professor set his stein down and spread his hands. "Fire away, I love a great debate!"
"All right, first problem I see," the admiral said, accessing a list on his HUD. "You believe you can send a portal to another world how again? A gate requires a hole on both ends."
"Yes yes, but I believe we can use the resonance frequencies unique to each world to lock onto it. Once I have finished that, we can lock into a world and portal to it. Simple!" the little man said, spreading his hands apart.
"When people say that to an engineer, we tend to get rather wary," the admiral said with narrowed eyes. "And
I have heard you speak about resonance frequencies, but I'm afraid I haven't seen it in any scientific literature to date. I am guessing this is something you are working on?"
"Yes, yes."
"A hypothesis?"
"A theory," the professor stated.
"But an unproven one?"
"The math proves out," the professor said testily.
"Ah. So, you have a paper study, no actual scientific basis for this theory. So, again, a hypothesis until you have a proof."
"Well, if you could free up funds, I'd have that proof!"
"Would you, Professor?"
"Just because we haven't found something yet doesn't mean it isn't there," the professor said with a sniff. Irons wasn't someone he could dazzle with equations and bright ideas he realized. The president had been involved in the stargate program and had been around R&D for decades.
"And it doesn't mean it is," the admiral retorted. The professor's eyes widened. "By the way, I love your nova hypothesis. I truly do, and I believe we can look into that eventually. You are on to something with collecting that energy."
"Well, thank you!" the little professor said, slapping his knee as his eyes twinkled. He grinned but the grin slipped after a moment. "I sense a but coming," he said warily.
The admiral snorted. "There is. You stated that power was the primary problem with building a man-sized gate. That isn't true, Professor. Power was never a problem with a Pico wormhole. It was the scale of the components and the gravitational interactions with the gate and with the planet it is on," he said with a shake of his head. "Trust me, I read the papers, I know. The shielding alone interferes with the gate tuning."
"Ah, well, I was planning on phase shifting components and using energy state computing to deal with the scale issue. The gravitational interaction issues will work themselves out along the way."
"Professor, do you have any experience with either of those technologies? There are technological reasons we don't use them much, you know," the admiral stated.
"I believe I have the means to overcome them," the professor stated stiffly as the admiral snacked on a pretzel.
The admiral chased the salty snack down with a sip of beer and then snorted.
"I envy your confidence," the admiral stated dryly. "Speaking from an engineer's perspective, you know, the person who actually makes the dreamer's mad scheme possible," he indicated the professor. The professor smiled and chuckled as he bobbed a nod. "I can tell you I've seen and dabbled in both technologies. What you are proposing is incredibly difficult."
"If it was easy, it would have been done long ago!"
"True. Professor, in order for you to phase shift tech, you have to have tech to anchor it here. And it has to interface with that tech, correct?"
"Well … yes." He squirmed a little. He privately admitted the admiral knew his shit. He had been having trouble finding a way to make that part work as he'd planned.
"And energy state computing requires a physical anchor. The projector has to be here. You have to then plug the computer into an interface somewhere along the way. Quite possibly in more than one place. Otherwise, it is a glorified light show that does nothing."
The professor's brows knit as he puzzled it out.
"Take my word for it, we've been playing with these tech ideas for centuries before the Xeno war. Again, we couldn't see a way to make it work. Not in the way you want."
The professor's brows knit and then smoothed as he caught on. "The Lemnos data?" he asked slyly.
"Some of it. Unfortunately, the Xeno Wraith virus corrupted some of the data. We've got some but not all of it. And we're still sorting out what is recoverable and what isn't."
"Ah. If I could see this …"
"Professor, you can apply for a security clearance. ONI would evaluate you. But you'd have to accept implants and would be barred from using the work or talking about it publicly."
"And I can't accept that!" the professor said, throwing his hands up in the air in exasperation.
"Then I'm sorry, but you can't have access to the information," the admiral stated flatly. "We're at an impasse there."
"So, I need to reinvent the wheel? Is that it?"
"Sometimes redundancy is the only way for someone to learn something really can't be done. Occasionally, they pick up some new tech or refine our knowledge base along the way."
"True. I really should focus on my own ideas and not be prejudiced by other's failures."
"I will say you want the phase tech and energy tech for what, size?"
"Scale yes."
"You could achieve the same results for quite a lot less with real world physical components. Components you can monitor, diagnose, and repair."
"True, but the scale! The idea is to make this portable!"
"And did you consider the weapon implications, Professor?"
The professor's eyes went wide and then he scowled blackly. "Trust a military man to see the potential of everything to be turned into a weapon!"
The admiral spread his hands apart. "I didn't invent fire, Professor, but someone turned it into a weapon. The same for many technologies."
The professor's eyes turned crafty. "Like your experience with the nova bomb? Twisting someone else’s work to destructive means?"
The admiral hesitated and then nodded. "We were already using gravity weapons, Professor, and we had the means to manipulate and destroy a star before I found a way to make it into a single weapon. I'm not proud of being the person who created a weapon that was used to destroy inhabited star systems. We were desperate and …," he shrugged. "We're getting a bit off topic," he said.
The professor nodded.
"I will point out that not everyone is as noble as you are, Professor. Unfortunately, there are people who'd love to get their hands on this for various reasons. Terrorists could destroy worlds with it."
The professor hesitated and then nodded once.
"Which makes me hope your security is up-to-date," the admiral sighed. "I may need to talk to some people about it."
"But you said the tech isn't viable!"
"Not as it is, you've got a house of cards built on unproven hypothesis and pet theories. But that doesn't mean that there aren’t nuggets in your work others can exploit."
"Pah!" the professor said but he didn't sound so sure.
"Professor, I'll give you full access to the Lemnos files, plus a facility, plus access to scientific research and naval sensor data, and even everything I've got on gate tech. Everything from my personal files," the admiral said. The professor's eyes lit. "But," the admiral said, raising a finger in warning, "you'll only get them in a secure facility, with, as I mentioned, full security implants. And I can give you first-hand experience with gate tech. What you are doing could improve it drastically. I'm all for things being more efficient. I still do not believe in building a man-sized or man-portable gate, but I can see where you can put your talents to great use if you compromise."
"And give you the government control of my work?"
"You aren't going to get anywhere other than as a reputation as a nut and crank in the physics community on your own, Professor. Not for quite a few years. I'm giving you an opportunity to see if all of your pet theories can work out. It's up to you to take it or leave it."
The professor harrumphed a few times as he eyed the admiral with a gimlet eye. Finally he grunted. "Can I take some time to think about it?"
The admiral nodded. "Take as long as you need, Professor. We've got the time."
"Thank you," the professor replied with a nod of respect.
Chapter 16
B-95a3
Captain Blake Sheldon of the North Hampton light cruiser Danford was on the bridge when communications reported an omni distress signal. Being on picket duty in the empty star system was lonely and boring but it was an important job. Finding a distraction was nice. But there was something to be said about how it was better than to be bored than hit with something … interesting.
"Who?"
"Sir, it's Kittyhawk. They dropped out of hyper one light year out and are on a ballistic course here," the comm rating reported. "We're trying to get a lock on the signal now."
"Ah, hot damn!" the captain grinned as he turned to his ship's A.I. Well, Danny Boy, let the Admiralty know the lost has been found. Then we need nav to plot their course and speed based on this information. We'll need to send a ship to pull the crew I suppose and then do something about salvaging the ship maybe …
-~~~///^\~~~-
Dead Drop
Lieutenant General Archie Pendeckle nodded in approval as he strode from his shuttle to the command vehicle. The landings had gone smoothly despite resistance and the weather. Colonel Bear's Fifth Division was taking the brunt of the combat at the moment. Theodore's people were spread out in the outback and were mostly facing last-ditch defenses or harassing attacks.
Lieutenant Colonel Aberdy's First Division had swept the islands and was busy sweeping the coastline around the cities. Really, three divisions were a bit much for the job. He regretted allowing the troop transports to return to Protodon and eventually Agnosta to get the army divisions moving. If he'd kept more than the one command ship, he could have sent a division to Garth to support Valenko.
The enemy really lacked proper leadership and logistics on Dead Drop. The military that was there had been set up to control the population not fight an insurgency. They hadn't planned for an orbital assault or a prolonged insurgency. He had noted that they were beginning to run out of material and people quickly. A lot of that had to do with the personnel who'd come before them. They'd done a lot of the heavy lifting in breaking the enemy's back.
He wanted to meet this Lieutenant Red soon. He'd heard good things about the mutt and fully planned to endorse a promotion to captain JG as soon as he got the paperwork.