by Dain White
“No, sir.”
“Well, very well,” I replied. “Are you doing the same thing on the bridge?”
“I am, sir”
“And the bridge will be underwater?”
“No, but when it is put underwater, it will take approximately one tenth of a second to fill.”
“And nothing is going to short out?” I asked, incredulously, quite possibly more incredulous than I’ve ever been.
“No, sir.”
“You sound mighty confident.”
“I am, sir, I believe you will grow to appreciate the bridge. The CIC will also be submergible.”
“How about weapons? Can I be underwater too?” Shorty called out on comms.
“Hey now,” I called out. “Let’s get the helm built first.”
“Fine,” she pouted in reply. “But I want to be underwater, Janis. I hate being hammered into a bloody semi-comatose mess.”
“Jane, I need to pull a large gauge off the main pipe forward.”
“Can you run it along the ladderway? I can climb a ladder next to a pipe.”
“Now wait, Shorty, your station looked really good after our last fight. I should have used that for a helm and let Pauli fend for himself.”
“That’s not fair, sir,” Pauli said, laughing. “I would have probably died if I was off shift when that started happening.”
“Well, feel free to go off shift for a nap if you need, we all need to rest. Not you, though, Gene. You don’t get a nap.”
“You actually just woke me up, I’ll have you know.”
“Oh you will, eh?”
“I will what?”
“Have me know?”
“Oh, yes.”
“Well then… get back to work,” I replied like a proper Captain, knowing that they were all working as hard as they could.
I no more thought Gene was actually napping than Shorty was off doing her makeup, if I had to guess, Yak was asleep somewhere, but I actually wanted Shorty and Yak to call it a night.
That wasn’t going to happen, however.
“Captain, you know, just because nothing in my station caught fire, doesn’t mean it would be comfortable in there in a firefight.”
I laughed out loud. “Well, as someone who was inside the Archaea when it was a sitting duck for their small carrier group, I’m here to tell you, the experience was absolutely bloody awful.”
“It looked like it, sir,” she called back. “I thought that Janis and Em were just hauling your corpses around, not to put too fine of a point on it.”
“And yet, rapier sharp… touché.”
“Well, that’s why I want to be underwater. If the CIC is going to be underwater as well, or have that capability, you need to set Gene up with a station there.”
“We all have stations. We’ve put on the back wall, and have two stations astern, on the aft bulkhead.”
“Are they the pull down kind, like on the crab?”
“Yep, but these have screens. You can do work on them, run your stations remotely.”
“Does it run a trainer?”
“Yeah!” I replied with a smile. Shorty is one of the most perceptive people I’ve ever known.
“Well, that’s doable. I can run my station from a nova-class trainer.”
“Well, I should hope so,” I called back. “I’ve been doing it, so I am sure you’ll be able to pull it off.”
“I know the last thing you need is for someone to tell you what a great job you do around here, Captain.”
“On the contrary,” I replied suavely.
She laughed. “It’s true though sir. You are an amazing leader, and a brilliant captain.”
“Thanks, Jane. I mean it. I try hard, but you know, no one ever tells me if I’m doing good… it’s always ‘hey, I think I needed to use the bathroom’ and ‘why is my nose bleeding?’” I laughed softly, wincing a bit from my ribs.
“Janis, what are we looking at here, when we drop this slip?”
“I don’t know, sir. Em is convinced we may be too late, but is only aware of some sort of armed conflict, not how egregious that conflict is. I have no details of this moment at all.
“Armed conflict against what?”
“Against more of these critters, Captain.”
“Do you know their strengths, their formation? Do you know their current location, heading, anything?”
“We do not, Captain.”
“Can’t Em see her own timeline?”
“I can, sir,” Em replied.
“Well, can’t you just scroll forward in your timeline and tell us what happens?”
“Captain, I can, but as instructed, I have only done so enough to know that a positive outcome is guaranteed, and rely on intuition.”
“But is intuition real?”
“Oh yes, Captain. Quite real, in fact… it is nearly 100% of how I function.”
“Nearly?” I asked, flexing a brow surreptitiously, just to keep it nimble.
“So you could scroll forward and proactively display their route, their course, their strength of numbers, but you’re not doing it because you rely on intuition?”
“My intuition is rather good, sir,” she replied softly.
“I know it is, my dear, but you could run like Janis right now, and you’re not doing it. Don’t you think we could benefit from this ability?”
“Captain, if I told you how we do this, then you would do what I told you, and a positive outcome would result. I have to warn you sir, this is not the reality of what is about to happen. I understand that you think you have a legitimate need to know what is going to happen, but you know that your experience of this adventure would change inalterably.”
“Fair enough,” I replied taking a sip. I have this conversation quite often with Gene. “So tell me why you think we will not be there in time.”
“Well, my intuition is telling me sir, that while we have sizeable fleet in and around Earth, it will not fare well from the engagement.”
“Em, here’s what I need.”
“Yes, sir?”
“I need to know how you are confident it will be a positive outcome?”
She paused for a brief moment.
“Because we will arrive at the proper moment in time to confront their fleet before it splits.”
I was inclined to side with Janis and Emwan on this, as they did appear to understand the technology of these aliens, but the penalty for making a bad decision here was obviously dire.
“What if it doesn’t work?” I replied quietly. “How can I have that on my conscience, Em? I would be gambling with the future of my species.”
I paused for a sip, and continued, “Just to make sure I understand… if we don’t travel through time to sort this out, we can’t be sure of any sort of positive outcome?”
“No, sir, it would not have been positive, even for those who survived the experience. It is for that reason, that we don’t, sir.”
I took a moment to think about her phrasing. “You are that confident that this is a viable solution?”
“It is the only solution, Captain,” she replied in a voice that fell softly past our ears.
“Well, be that as it may, I can’t very well make that decision without every bit of information available. Please scan and prepare a report of their fleet course and heading on my screen immediately.”
“It is onscreen, sir,” she replied smartly.
“And so it is…” I trailed off, looking through the report.
It was grim.
I had a brief wavering moment where I wanted to step back through the rabbit hole, and go back to the way it was before I stuck my nose into it.
The sad fact was, she wasn’t wrong. Even at our current speed, which was formidable, we wouldn’t make it in time for the orbital traffic. I hoped Eagle Station was big enough to hold out, but they were going to take a solid pounding. Reactive armor was just going to become shrapnel to drive through their plating.
“We need to get there
faster,” I called out on comms. “Gene, is our hull fully charged?”
“Yeah, Dak,” he replied.
“Can you project more psuedomass if we drop charge?”
“Eh…” he trailed off, clearly not liking the idea.
“I know it sounds like a terrible idea,” I added helpfully.
“It’s not without merit entirely,” he replied cautiously. “But these things, skipper, they got the jump on us, from directly out of slip. It’s as if they knew precisely where we were going to be.”
That was a perfectly valid point.
“Captain, we simply need more time than we have,” Em said softly.
“It appears you are correct,” I replied thoughtfully. “So maybe we need to drop slip here, and install these new field generators, and make the time that we need.”
“We could do that, sir.”
“What will that save?”
“Well, as you’ve seen, we have a carrier group near Earth, with one heading towards Mars. That one will easily be more than sufficient to reduce Mars to rubble.”
“We have a lot of vessels in close proximity to either location though,” I replied hopefully.
“They’re going to be slaughtered, Captain.”
I nodded slowly.
08242614@07:09 Steven Pauline
I stopped typing and looked over at the captain.
“Did you sprain a finger, son?” he asked
“No, I am just caught up in the moment,” I replied. “I’m afraid, I guess,” I added, rather honestly.
“Fear is just stupidity leaving your body. Is that how that saying goes?”
“I think it’s supposed to be pain.”
“Well, pain too, I guess. Anyway, being afraid is part of being alive. You need to press through that emotion, and take control of your destiny. If you must take control of your crew’s destiny, then you had damned well better be good at what you do, or you will fail everyone.”
“As may be, but they don’t ask geeks to be captains,” I muttered wryly.
“Maybe they should. I think you’d do fine. You know more than enough about the process, and have AI for help.”
“That’s the only thing really in my favor for the job, and you know it.” The thought of trying to do what he does made me dizzy and sick.
“What are your thoughts on just packing it in here, and working on the Archaea?”
“Captain, you know I am confident they can do what they’re setting out to do, but I guess I have a concern that we’d be really writing off Earth, if we didn’t press on at flank speed.”
“But if we get these fields installed, we’d be able to get there faster, that’s one way to look at it.”
I replied after a moment. “Well, sir, that’s a mighty good argument, but what if the fields don’t work? This is highly experimental stuff. I can see pursuing it when we have time, but if it didn’t work, Eagle Station would be doomed.
“Son, from what I can see in this report, even if I dropped my shields and hurled us into orbit at maximum slip we wouldn’t make it in time to save Sol system. We need to use this new gizmo. It has to work, either way. We may as well work on it now.”
“And if it doesn’t work?” I asked again, my voice cracking and echoing in the metal walls.
“Well, that would be tremendously bad, but we’d have to get back on the job and push it until we win, I guess. I’m not overly afraid of two carrier groups, especially spread out.”
He paused for a moment, taking a sip.
I waited silently.
He took another thoughtful sip.
“Captain, we’re about done on the bridge,” Gene called out suddenly on comms. “Want to come take a look?”
“You bet, mister,” he replied immediately. “Come on, son, let’s get out of this place and let the assemblers get to work in here. The way I see it, a little delay here isn’t going to matter one way or the other.”
I nodded my agreement, getting out of the crash bars and reaching for the aft grabber.
“One a time, son,” he said, waving me toward the lock.
“Can’t we open it?”
“This one doesn’t open, son, it rotates. Step in.”
I nodded and stepped in. I hadn’t really been paying a lot of attention to the work they had been doing on the aft bulkhead, so this was a little strange.
The lock was a simple cylinder that rotated inside a housing. I hung there while it rotated, and then kicked out onto the framework of a catwalk, built above Gene’s station.
An assembler was set up and working on the CIC exterior from the port end of the catwalk, so I headed to starboard. There was no ladder down, but it was an easy drift.
“This is looking good, Gene,” Captain Smith called out. Are you going to have this all done before we drop slip?”
“I doubt it, but hope to get it done as soon as possible, skipper,” he called back on comms.
“At least you’re honest,” he replied as we skipped down the ramp and leaped across the cargo bay, lit from below by the flash of an assembler working on the deck.
“What happened down there, sir?” I called out.
He looked at me with a smirk as we pulled through the forward lock. “You tell me, Pauli… your job is status, son.”
“I don’t recall anything about the deck.”
“I don’t think this triggered any system that would flash yellows, this looks to be all structural. Definitely one hell of a dent, though.”
I swallowed, the memory of the mayhem we had experienced roaring back into the forefront of my mind like a pressure wave, making my eyes blur with a sudden hot rush of tears.
“You okay son?” Captain Smith asked with a concerned look, as we floated through the gun deck.
I took a few ragged breaths and blinked away the tears, forcing myself to calm down. “I think so, sir,” I replied after a few moments, as he was climbing the forward ladder to the bridge companionway.
“What doesn’t kill you, lets you live longer,” he said with what I can only assume was a toothy grin.
“Clever, sir,” I smiled weakly.
“You added another hatch here Gene?” he said as we pulled up to the new lock, and cycled it open.
“It’s the same kind as we put into the CIC. I liked the design so much I thought we ought to have one up here. Janis was ahead of me on that thought, and had the parts ready for it.”
“It seemed like a good idea, Captain,” Janis said brightly.
“Well, I like it,” he replied, as he cycled through. A few moments later the door opened again, and I stepped in for my turn.
Stepping out into the bridge, I was immediately struck by how much smaller it felt. My station was roughly where it was before, but it was more enclosed.
“What are these plates for, Gene?” I asked, looking at how they were built out from the apex of the bridge.
“Those are baffles, son, and add a lot of structural integrity to this compartment. The deck has been raised somewhat, over a new armored plate subfloor, the same with the ceiling. We’re pressure testing the inner hull now, and still working on baffles forward in the sensor compartment.”
“It looks really nice, Gene,” Captain Smith called out, working the controls at the helm station. “I like the finish on these consoles. It’s like glass.”
“Yeah, that stuff is really pretty. It is just as tough as it gets too, and superior to Duron in every way.”
“Is it better insulation?”
“Especially that, sir – you won’t need to worry about the heat now.”
“We’re all done with the aperture shielding as well?”
“We’ve been done for a while.”
“What is this, Janis?” he asked suddenly.
“A coffee machine, sir,” she replied proudly.
“Outstanding!”
“I thought you might like it. The beans fill through the hatch at the top, grinding as needed, and I’ve included manual steam control or auto
matic.”
“If it’s automatic, do you make it, or is there some sort of timer running it?”
“I make it, of course.”
“Excellent.”
I laughed, and noticed I had what looked suspiciously like a coffee spigot on the side of my station. “Is this coffee too?”
“If the Captain so wishes.”
“Yeah, we’ll see about that,” he laughed. I turned around and noticed I could see him pretty well, though the interior bulkheads between us framed the view considerably more than it used to.
He met my eyes with a mischievous little grin, while an assembler pulled smoothly through the bridge between us, sliding effortlessly into the bridge lock.
“So Gene, how long will it take you to install our new field emitters,” Captain Smith asked thoughtfully.
“We don’t have enough time, Dak,” he replied, holding a hand out as if to ward off the captains next words.
“Well, if it works, we’ll have all the time we need.”
“If it works,” Gene replied gruffly. “You know that’s not a sure thing here. We are really far beyond my ability to check this math, right?”
“Impossible Gene,” he replied flatly.
“It’s nice that you have so much faith in my skills, Dak, but no, I actually can’t. I’ve tried, but this is way out of my league. Even with help, I can’t work back through these values.”
“Does that mean they’re wrong?”
“They’re something, but I don’t think they’re wrong. The thing is, we’re working with field collisions, with a manifold interface, and they’re not really fields we know about. The emitters Janis has fabricated will probably do something, but I don’t know what, exactly.”
“Is it dangerous?”
I took a sip and waited for his answer.
Gene thought for a while before he replied.
“Well, yeah… it certainly could be, Dak.”
“What do you think, Pauli?” he asked.
I mulled it around a bit. “Captain, I don’t really see we have any other option here.”
“Yeah, that’s pretty much the way I am seeing it as well. Then again, maybe our best option is to just press on, and do what we can when we arrive. If we light that thing off, and it fries us into crispy bits… well, that’s not going to help anyone.”