The solution of both problems was the stasis field, a branch of gravitic technology. A stasis field created what was, in effect, an event horizon around the ship, encapsulating a “time bubble” that allowed the ship to subjectively experience its RST timespace. This not only canceled the dimensional scaling effects, but also protected against the wormhole’s extreme tidal forces. By preserving the RST timespace, the stasis field reduced the period of extreme gravity shear to near the Planck time, enabling the travelers to survive it. (An alternate explanation held that stasis fields scaled the electroweak force so that ordinary matter acquired the tensile strength needed to resist the shear forces. Although supportable by an adaptation of the color confinement principle of quantum chromo-dynamics, the encyclopedia said this theory was not widely accepted.)
The final piece of the puzzle was the cosmic manifold: a 2-dimensional membrane vibrating in the N-dimensional overspace. Cosmic manifolds grew out of M-theory, an ancient fore-runner of the GUT that was wrong but led to this useful insight. The formal description was a mess but the key was that wormhole trajectories followed cosmic manifolds in predictable ways. It was by mapping manifolds that wormhole travel became more than a blind jump into the abyss.
Taken together, it all worked. A ship in a statis field could safely traverse a wormhole along a manifold, the pseudo-velocity being related to the ratio of the virtual mass of the drive to the ship’s rest mass; a higher ratio made the wormhole go deeper—some said straighter—and took less time.
Of course, there were limitations. A detailed understanding of them required tensor calculus, which Kris understood only vaguely, and hypergonic fractal geometry, which she didn’t understand at all. But she grasped the practical aspects well enough. One was that not all pseudo-velocities in a wormhole were permitted; they were constrained by the allowed vibrational modes of the manifold it was on. These modes, called manifold phase layers—usually just phase layers—were quantized, just as the electron states of an atom were quantized and for the same reason, so the only way to go “faster” was to have a drive “big” enough to jump to the next deeper phase layer.
Another limitation was that getting in and out of a wormhole was not a simple matter. The act of accessing or exiting a wormhole was called translation (usually ‘drop translation’ in, and ‘lift translation’ out), and the virtual mass units required was known as the translation potential. A ship could only create or leave a wormhole if it’s mass rating was greater than the translation potential.
To drop translate, it was beneficial to use the gravity well of a star or other massive body to lower the translation potential, but there was a problem: the efficacy of a stasis field was not unlimited—it depended on the ship’s mass rating. Above a certain limit, gravity shear would defeat the stasis field, destroying the ship. So while using a gravity well helped a ship translate, the gravity gradient of the well also increased gravity shear and a ship that translated too close to a massive body, where the gradient was too steep, risked destruction.
Once in the wormhole, translating out was, in principle, just a matter of reversing the gravitic polarity. But a ship had to be careful not to fall deeper into the destination well than its gravitic systems could handle. At some point, the attraction of the ship’s virtual mass and the mass of the primary at the wormhole’s terminus would overcome the gravitic system’s antigravity potential and the doomed ship then raced to impact.
Finally, no adjustments to course or velocity could be made from inside a wormhole. If you’d screwed up, there was no way to tell before the end—probably the end in all senses of the word.
All these factors limited where a ship could translate. The boundary between the allowed and denied regions was called Fraser’s Limit (named for the woman who derived it, not the ship captain who proved it by ignoring it), and it depended on the gravity gradient, the local mass distribution represented as sets of gravity isoclines known as ‘Teller rings,’ and the ship’s virtual mass rating.
Calculating Fraser’s Limit was the critical part of hyperlight travel. It was handled by a branch of mathematics called jump convolution and it was here that Kris nearly gave up. Jump convolution was based on something called C-star algebra, a weird topological algebra with strange non-abelian operators that defied normal description.
Having successfully dodged tensor calculus and hypergonic fractal geometry, C-star algebra finally reduced Kris to tears. Written out, it was pure gibberish. For months, she tried futilely to understand it but when she’d finally resolved to give it up, she figured out the navigation text’s plotting module. C-star algebra suddenly made sense. Seen holographically, the operators became real: changing shape, touching and melding, stretching and splitting. The discovery made her happy for weeks—she could finally do the problems in the navigation text. Trench never did figure out why she was so cheerful.
One of the first advanced problems was the calculation of an optimum transit. For any given ship mass, drive rating (in virtual mass units), and destination, there was an optimum phase layer that gave the shortest time for the least energy. When she finally mastered it, Kris was amazed, then delighted, then piqued to discover that for any optimum transit, most of the ugly stuff went to zero, and the answer was available from a few well-behaved C-star transforms.
Of course, an optimum transit could never be realized—something called phase noise bled off energy and prevented it—but the optimum transit was almost always a good approximation. And if you could visualize the operators properly, you could do it in your head.
* * *
“Anyway,” Kris finished, “that’s as far as I got.” She waved her stylus at the holo volume. “I think this here is fucked up.” She indicated a family of transits. “The numbers keep coming up weird—I must’ve got a couple of routes crossed or somethin’.” Her voice slurred, sliding into a lank drawl as she talked. It was an inflection he hadn’t heard from her before.
“You alright?”
“Fragged out some.” The slaver slang jarred his ears. “It’s chill. I’ll stretch.” She shook some thick waves of hair out of her face, pushed them ineffectually back toward the nape of her neck. “I think the nodes are jake, though.”
“Well, that’s the most important part,” he said helpfully.
“Can’t remember too good no more,” she muttered, ignoring him. “Had all this shit in Trench’s box. I suppose you guys blew that all to hell.”
“ ‘Fraid so.”
“Wish you hadn’t done that.”
“Couldn’t be helped.”
“Yeah.” She leaned her head back, rubbed at her eyes as if trying to scrub an image from them. “Say, since I did all this for you, can I ask you a question?”
“Sure.”
“How’d you guys punch us outta the wormhole? That’s supposed to be impossible.”
Huron leaned back and crossed his arms. “Supposed to be,” he agreed.
“Secret shit, huh?”
“Some of it. Why do you want to know?”
She gave her head a little toss. “Bugs me is all.” She gestured at the screen. “Look, this is all secret shit, too. Wanna trade? Secret for secret? I went first.”
Huron hid a smile behind his hand. “Fine. I’ll play. We dropped a quantum black hole on you.”
Kris turned and squinted at him. “You what?”
Huron let the smile out. “You can bundle a quantum black hole—a tiny one, say five or six ship masses—and sort of leave it in someone’s way. In phase space, a quantum black hole is as close to a delta function as you can get.” A looked of puzzlement clouded her face. “You know, an impulse—a pure spike. Infinite amplitude and zero width. Anyway, it interdicts all the possible phases of the manifold it’s on. Can’t form a wormhole then.”
Frowning, Kris shook her head. “Nah. That’s fine for bunging the path ahead of time. But if somebody’s already phasing on that manifold, you can’t do it. Exclusion principle says so.”
“Well, yes and no,” Huron said coyly. She gave him a dirty look and he went on. “You can’t place it on the manifold, but you can drop it real close—zero width, remember? And under certain circumstances, which I can’t discuss, the QBH can be made to go inflationary. That creates a local N-space discontinuity and any wormhole nearby gets pinched off. It’s not that the two ever coexist—it’s that you violate the boundary conditions necessary to have a wormhole in the first place.”
Kris rubbed the tense pain spot between her eyes. “Wait a sec. How’d you get lift then? If you just pinch it off, don’tcha violate topological conservation?”
“When the QBH goes inflationary, it sort of pulls the ship along with it. There’s a coupling mechanism that bleeds energy across to give you the lift potential. We call it bubble up.”
“Fuck me.” Kris blinked and then shook her head. “Who the hell thought all this up?”
“I’m afraid I can’t say.”
“Figures.” She turned back to the screen. “What else ya wanna know about this?”
“It looks good to me, Kris.”
“Then can we bag it? I’d like to lay down.”
“Sure.” He reached over her shoulder, batched the files and started to close the applications. As he typed the necessary commands, he looked her over. She did look worn out. She’d been as fresh as daisy when they started—bright; enthusiastic even. What had happened? Shock finally setting in? Too much racquetball? Adrenalin suddenly wearing off? He verified the files and cleared the display, then something unsettling occurred to him. He asked suddenly: “Kris, how did you keep all this data in a slaver’s system without them knowing about it?”
“Tagged it on the core files,” she answered muzzily. “Built a deinterleaver into the purge command. Used a control code token to run it.”
“They never checked the core integrity? They never did a search for system tampering?”
Kris laughed—a dry hateful sound. “Are you fucked? Check the system—that’s jag. They steal this shit. They wouldn’t know a diagnostic if one pissed in their beer.”
“So you learned to hack the OS too?”
Kris put her head down and rubbed her temples. “Yeah. The shit comes with manuals, y’know—they just don’t read ‘em. They don’t purge tutorials neither.”
“Why?”
“Why what?”
“Why did you go to all this trouble?”
Kris looked up at so savagely he almost took a step back. “Are you just fuck’n dense? I was trying to kill ‘em!”
“How were you going to do that?”
She rolled her eyes at his painful imbecility. “If I coulda tweaked the jump convolver, I could’ve gotten ‘em in some real pretty shit, now couldn’t I?”
“And yourself.”
Kris looked disgusted. “BFD. I wasn’t goin’ nowhere. If I coulda killed that jag motherfucker with my bare hands, I woulda.” That brought Huron up straight. “But you guys jumped me on that.” She sank back in the chair. “Shit, my head hurts.”
Huron took out his xel, poked at it, frowning. “I’ll get you something. Get some rest, Kris.”
“Yeah, fine. Okay.” She stood unsteadily. “Don’t know what the fuck is wrong with me.”
“Stress,” Huron said. He helped her to the door; called for a yeoman. Sharply.
One came at the double. “Problem, sir?”
Huron handed Kris over. “No, she’s just tired. Take her back to her quarters, please.”
“Not sickbay?”
“No. Not sickbay.”
“Yessir.”
“Thank you, McKenna.” The female yeoman lead Kris away.
* * *
Huron went to sickbay himself, got the strongest analgesic he could find, scribbled some directions on the coded envelop and put it in a message tube. It would be waiting for her when she got to her berth. He returned to his cabin, called up the data files and studied Kris’s handiwork.
Damned impressive. It laid out all the major routes, the favored efficiencies, frequency of use, supply depots, nodes—the works. If it checked out, they could shut down the slave trade in this sector. If it wasn’t too impressive. Slavers liked to play games, but he’d never heard of them trying anything this sophisticated.
Quickly, he wrote a report, bundled Kris’s files with it and linked it off to the captain’s system with an urgent eyes-only tag. Ten minutes after he sent it, his secure line beeped. He keyed it up and Captain RyKirt’s face appeared.
“That’s one hell of a report, Huron,” he announced without preamble.
“Yes sir.”
“Is she straight?”
“I believe so, sir.”
“I don’t have to tell you what would happen if we ran with this and it turned out to be a plant.”
No, he didn’t. Huron sobered distinctly. “No, sir. Didn’t Quillan clear her?”
RyKirt paused uncharacteristically. “Well, yes and no.”
“Sir?”
“Medical Director Quillan found nothing concrete. But he has some serious reservations about Ms. Kennakris.”
“Her condition is hardly surprising, sir. She was a captive for eight years. And she did kill Anton Trench rather personally.”
“Both of which head the list of Quillan’s reservations. She doesn’t remember killing Trench, you know. Thinks Cardinovich did him.”
“Yes sir. I know that.” Huron realized he was standing at attention before a display. He relaxed and looked down at his boot tips.
“She also thinks she was born on Parson’s Acre and we know that’s not true—her father’s immigration records state she was two when he moved there. That at least looks solid, but we have no records of Nathan P. Kennakris prior to that. She doesn’t know her mother’s name and she gave two different dates of birth without realizing it.”
“Is that surprising, sir? I mean considering everything. Her father was a drunk and he did kill himself. I’m not sure what Quillan’s neuroses-du-jour is, but don’t we owe her a little slack?”
“Neuroses-du-jour, Lieutenant?” RyKirt cracked an entirely unpleasant smile. “I know your opinions of Quillan, Huron—and of his profession in general. And I know his opinions of you. That’s not my problem. This is my problem.” He waved a hardcopy of Huron’s report. “Damn good story: eight years a slave, abandoned, obscure past. Real tearjerker packed with just the kind of info we’ve never been able to get. Just the kind of thing to cook up and stuff into a nice pretty girl.”
Nice? Huron recalled Kris’s look of a few minutes ago. Not exactly. “May I ask what you’re planning, sir?”
“Nothing.” RyKirt dropped the hardcopy on his desk. “Nothing further. I put it on the flash net to SIG and they’ll see that the Admiral gets it. Hopefully SIG can corroborate at least some of it.”
“You think d’Harra’s a trap?”
“It had occurred to me. It damn well better have occurred to you too.”
Huron chewed the inside of his lip. Of course it had. How much did he believe in Kris? Thinking it over, he decided he believed in her a lot.
“She’s straight, sir. She might be wrong—but she’s clean.”
“You really believe that?”
“Yes I do, sir.”
RyKirt tapped his fingers in agitation. “Well, it’s academic at this point, in any case. We can’t reach Shariati—she’s in too deep—and we couldn’t do anything with all these people aboard even if we could.”
“When will she arrive?”
“Plan says 0400 GAT. She’ll have to burn it. That only gives her about an hour to deploy before they show up—if they aren’t there already.”
Huron continued to study his boots.
“Comm lag’s about six hours to d’Harra,” RyKirt mentioned offhandedly. “Don’t wait up.”
Like hell. Show me someone who’ll sleep tonight.
“Yessir.”
“Good evening, Lieutenant.”
“Good evening, sir.” The screen b
lanked and stared at him with a dull silver-purple eye.
* * *
Kris arrived at her quarters with her headache growing steadily worse, found the packet Huron sent and gulped the medication without water. Mariwen watched her worriedly. “What happened?”
“Nothing,” Kris croaked.
“Pardon me, but bullshit.”
Kris crawled into her bunk. “He asked me questions. I drew him pictures.”
Mariwen frowned. If she said anything else, sleep blanked it.
Kris slept and dreamed. Dreamed of Trench. Trench was coming for her in the cabin they shared. She wore a silly little white dress—the kind of dress her dad had made her wear on Sundays back on Parson’s Acre. Trench wore black preacher’s cloth. He looked very proud of himself.
She curled up against the head of the bed, willing herself into invisibility. Trench was not fooled—Trench could see in the dark. His hands reached out and grabbed her.
She fought. Trench liked it when she fought. He laughed.
She got an arm free, started tearing at his face with her nails. They ripped his skin easily; blood ran down her fingers.
Trench laughed. His hands began to rape her.
She reached for his throat. Her fingers sunk into it like it was warm butter. She ripped and his throat came out—shreds of putrid, rotten flesh giving way as though he were already dead and decomposing. Blood splashed into her eyes, stinging. His rent esophagus dangled, drooling. She started to go blind.
Still Trench laughed—still his hands raped.
Why is he laughing? He can’t laugh with his vocal chords ripped out!
Kris started to scream. Trench’s hands clamped tighter. He began hitting her.
“Shut up! Shut up! Shutupwakeup! Wake up! Wake up!”
Kris lurched awake, screaming. Mariwen’s hands were viced around her biceps. Someone was slapping her.
“Ow! Fuck! Stop it! Lemme go. Stop it!”
Mariwen released her and caught the offending hand. “That’s enough. Enough!” She pushed the hand away. Kris realized she was on the floor with Mariwen sitting on her. Mariwen didn’t look so good. Other women circled them in the dim red glow of the deadlights.
The Loralynn Kennakris series Boxed Set Page 7