“The rounded end of the tube shape of the hulls makes forming smooth event horizons less complicated. The new ships can Jump directly from the surface of a planet, provided they land with a Jump energy tachyon already in one or more of their traps. By the way, we’ll employ three independent Trap fields for redundancy, since we don’t have reaction mass thrusters on these ships. We are working on a new arrival technique that even the cautious Olt’kitapi overlooked. Can’t say yet if it will work or not.
“Both our warships and commercial vessels will have the same stealth coatings, with radiation seals around airlocks and any external portals, to block potential leakage of Debilitater radiation into their interiors.”
He added a caveat, “The commercial vessel production line can be converted to warship production in under a month, since they use the same hull. What goes inside them requires a vastly different equipment configuration of course, a military grade AI system, and more weapons ports added to the hull.”
He explained what the fourth ship production line would produce. “On the final major production line, we’ll build scaled down tubular scout ships for military use, which can be used as diplomatic couriers, or for personal transport, with or without weapons. They can carry up to twenty people, luggage, and their food supplies, or fewer troops in armor with weapons and supplies. With reduced T-cubed travel times, inflight consumables and comfort isn’t a great need, for short one to three day trips in most cases.
“We didn’t see any advantage to not using the same stealth coating on all of those too, regardless of mission. The cost in materials, computer controls, and tachyon powered energy need is slight, compared to the total cost of construction. We estimate that old clanships can be phased out and salvaged over time, to defray the necessity of mining for as much metal as needed. We won’t allow Haven or Koban to be ravaged for materials, as the Krall did every world they controlled. There are asteroid mining companies in startup phase, modeled after those in Human Space, and partly automated. We have some equipment purchases lined up, via Chief Haveram, who found what we want via backroom deals, with Hub mining companies, who value profits over an arbitrary trade embargo.”
Tet had a question, “I already knew the capacity of the full sized ships matched what a clanship holds, but I haven’t been involved with these smaller craft. What else can they carry? Humans won’t be the only users.”
“As I said, one Scout class can carry up to twenty passengers if human, twenty-five if Prada, five comfortably if Torki, eight if Raspani, and about fifteen if Krall’tapi. T-cubed travel should greatly reduce the discomfort of being dry for the Torki for such short periods. There will be species specific, self-contained sanitary modules, such as a water mist and recovery system module for the Torki, and smaller versions for Scouts. The Raspani needed a larger volume in their kitchen module, for their low energy density grass based feed stocks.” With a slight look of discomfort, he added, “Plus, extra processing for all of their bulk wastes in the sanitation module.”
“We also will test the Scout class ships for the intensity of tachyon wakes they produce when at T-cubed speed. Our own tachyon wave detectors, and probably the Empire’s, sense the wakes, or the disruptions in the lowest energy bands of nearly infinite velocity tachyons, when massive objects pass through them. These low mass scout ships ought to produce less of a wake. They might not be detectable by us, or the Empire, even at higher levels of travel. At least not with the detectors that we have now. With a slight reduction in crews, there’s room for multiple one-meter radius Nova II’s inside a Scout class, provided we reserve a single safe space for the launch area, for the small Jump Hole they form. That would probably make it a ten-person combat ship, if humans were the crew. Nothing says twelve Prada, or a couple of Torki, three Raspani, or six Krall’tapi can’t fly something like that. They want to participate in the defense of the Federation, and with these craft they can learn how to fight without risking a full sized ship and a large crew.”
Mirikami agreed. “That’s something I’ll take to the full council even before production starts. I’m sure the other species will want to customize controls and specific features for their use.”
“They should be easy for any of our species to operate. There will be better AI’s in these small ships than on the standard shuttle models you bought from the PU navy for your recent drone tests. Chief Haveram has found another Hub world, Pittsburg II actually, who will build them for us. These are very good systems, like those used in our old clanships. Tet, you saving them from Dismantler destruction has made them willing to skirt the embargo that the PU’s House and Senate placed on us in trade with Hub worlds. The intent was to block our buying of technology from Hub Worlds unless we share our technology with them. Parliament was able to override President Strickland’s veto of that act, but Pittsburg II has conveniently created a loophole that allows a Hub licensed corporate entity to buy them, and then sell them to Rim worlds. Those independent governments are not bound by the PU embargo.”
“Max, will these small Scout ships be able to conduct long term missions? I’m thinking of sending them into Empire Space if they can do that without detection. Smaller crews of course, so they can carry extra provisions.”
“I suppose so. The courier versions and personal transports will have a configurable Smart Plastic interior, with seating for mixed species traveling together, and lockers containing the seat padding for each anatomy type. No pads for the Torki of course.” He smiled at hard-shelled Coldar, squatting next to him on a rigid carapace support.
“What about the military scout version? That’s the one I’m talking about.”
“The dedicated intense combat versions won’t have the same multi species configurable interior, because only a Kobani can fight with them effectively and expect to survive. If it carried fewer people, it has room for more consumables.”
“OK, such decisions will have to be made after some of the ships exist and we’ve used them, and we can probably get resupply in Empire space from species that I think are willing to secretly be our allies. But you touched on one of my questions. Will the new scouts allow Kobani to operate them closer to our physical limits? We removed the limits the Olt’kitapi installed on clanships, to prevent reckless or careless Krall from causing their own death and equipment damage, unless they did it deliberately. For example, they couldn’t Jump into a moon or a planet, or accelerate and turn as hard as we can tolerate. Even so, we found that even a clanship couldn’t produce forces, in some maneuvers, which exceeded our ability to endure the stress. In straight-line maximum acceleration yes, they could kill some of us. But maneuverability stress from rapid turns was less than what we could tolerate, and the ships physically couldn’t do what we wanted. Will the new Scout class perform better?”
“Not just the Scouts, Tet. The new full sized ships will too, with their ability to reach into third level Tachyon Space for the most energetic tachyons. They can outperform a clanship in every respect, using the superior inertial compensation available only at higher energy levels, because the clanships were not designed to use T-cubed energy tachyons. We’re only limited by what the Kobani inside the ship can physically endure, after the new inertial compensation is applied.
“Most of us can endure ten to eleven positive residual gravities applied from the back in a semi reclined position, and still remain conscious to send commands to an AI via our Comtaps. At eight or nine Gs, we can physically make limited controlled movements with flight or weapons controls. These are the internal residual G-forces of course, the uncompensated inertial effects. These are vastly lower stresses than the higher actual G-forces that are in effect outside of our spacecraft.
“Only the ship performance has increased, however, not our ability to endure greater residual forces inside. That stays the same, and we simply compensate better to retain the same physical capability we have now. Whatever accelerations you can tolerate today when in combat, it will feel the same to you inside
the new ships.
“To outside onlookers, you’ll become a greater whirling dervish than before, one that can’t be matched by any other organically controlled spacecraft we expect to encounter. Don’t think for a second you will be able to outfly an AI controlled missile that doesn’t risk a blackout or brain damage. On first contact, if that AI performs calculations based on assumptions of your ship’s expected maneuver limits to keep those inside alive, you might escape a few times that way. At least until they adjust their software parameters, and blow your ass to bits.”
“Please note that I said positive Gs. It’s easier to use our armor’s pressure suit lining and our Kobani muscle contraction techniques to force blood to stay in our brains, and keep conscious longer. We can’t do as well with negative Gs, to prevent blood from pooling in our heads. We’ll blackout at four negative Gs, or perhaps the proper term is ‘redout,’ because our faces will turn red from the blood forced into our head. At six negative Gs for a minute, I suspect few of us would survive, and then we’d likely have suffered brain damage.”
“Max, you described Kobani tolerances. Other species want to get into the fight this time.”
Born smiled and nodded. “The AIs are smart enough to adjust for non Kobani pilots or passengers, but for Kobani combat operations, they shouldn’t even be aboard.”
“Is this new G-force protection equal to what the Dismantlers can do with people inside them? I ask, because Huwayla once completely protected a Krall’tapi pilot from a near collision with my ship, which left those of us on the Mark briefly unconscious. We had the normal clanship inertial compensation for ourselves, so clearly a Krall’tapi, who is less sturdy than a Krall, was better protected than we were because he wasn’t even stunned.” He paused and touched his lip in thought, as he dredged old memories from his wolfbat memory matrix.
“I hadn’t considered it before, but the Krall that were holding him prisoner were badly battered from that same near collision, and rendered unconscious. We encountered a number of Guardians with broken limbs and one of them, inside the control room with Pilton, had lost an arm. Yet Pilton himself, the weakest and most fragile of anyone aboard Huwayla was completely unharmed. At least until a Krall bored a three-inch Q-rupter hole through his guts.”
Max looked puzzled. “Tet, the level of inertial compensation on our new ships isn’t vastly more effective than that of a clanship. It’s surely better than what the Empire ships can do for their crews, but not by an order of magnitude for us.” Mirikami’s raised eyebrow looked as if he was about to ask a question.
Born explained. “Our inertial compensation improvement isn’t ten times better than what we have now, which is what I mean by an order of magnitude. Any Krall would be killed by the maximum forces allowed inside our new ships, which should only stun a typical Kobani. Therefore, a Krall’tapi certainly couldn’t survive either. From your recollection, you say the Krall’tapi apparently wasn’t even hurt, yet the Krall were extremely banged up. We must be missing something the Dismantler did to protect that Krall’tapi, which we can’t do for ourselves.”
Mirikami nodded, tapping his lower lip. “At least we know who to ask, don't we? I can probably reach one of the Dismantlers right now.”
He called on a general circuit, to reach whichever ship was free to talk to him. The Dismantlers had been deeply involved with speaking to the surviving Olt’kitapi on Canji Dol, instructing them on their lost history, bringing them up to date on events in the galaxy outside of the Empire, describing the millennia since the Olt’kitapi civilization had fallen. The ships preferred not to be interrupted while speaking with their creators, so the decision was made that they would take turns, with one of them always remaining disengaged, available for communication with their friends in the Federation. Remela responded this time.
“Hello, friend Tet. How are you today?”
“Hello Remela, I’m fine.” Out of courtesy, he added, “There are others included in this link with me, interested in your response to what I wish to ask you. I have questions that just one of you, based on her direct involvement could answer from experience, but Huwayla is now gone. Let me explain the background story first. The Federation is building a new class of Jump ships, and we intend to incorporate some of the technology your creators built into you. We’re using similar rounded ends for our hull design, with many Trap field emitters installed in the skin.
“My first question will require me to explain how my first actual contact with your sister ship, Huwayla, occurred. It was nearly a disaster, and I want to talk about what happened when we collided.”
“Friend Tet, my sisters and I know the details of that initial meeting. Huwayla shared all of her memories with us, as we all share our experiences periodically, at least when our minds are as healthy as they are now. Is it an aspect of that near mutual destruction, which she prevented, that you wish to discuss with me today?”
Mirikami looked around the room, wearing a perplexed expression. “Huwayla prevented our collision? But we apparently did strike her, at least hard enough that it rendered those of us in the Mark unconscious, and from later evidence, we know it badly injured some of the Krall inside her. What did she do to mitigate what happened inside her? We obviously suffered some sort of severe impact.”
“You, and the guests within Huwayla, except the pilot, suffered unavoidable trauma, which she regretted, but she took steps to reduce it from the catastrophe that was about to occur. The pilot was protected by a field cone of local inertial cancelation, similar to what you humans use for certain extreme recoil projectile weapons, which otherwise produces a severe backwards kick. She used something different for you and your ship.
“Huwayla detected that your ship was going to do what humans call intersect with her, where your ship’s mass would emerge into Normal Space, partly within the coordinates where her mass existed. She had to take action to preserve your lives, and the lives within her.”
Mirikami blinked, in confusion. “Wait. You mean she sensed we were coming, and took action to prevent a fatal intersect?”
“Yes. She later believed your inaccurate Jump was a result of incomplete and hurried measurements of the destination coordinates. Although your ship, the Mark of Koban, also possessed a significant closing velocity within Normal Space, so even if you had emerged from Tachyon Space clear of her hull, you would still have suffered a very destructive impact with Huwayla in Normal Space. She was required to execute two different and independent emergency procedures, without time to warn anyone of what was about to occur. In subsequent communications between you and her, she learned why you took such a great risk, and she was extremely thankful that you disrupted the deceptive and harmful mission that the untrustworthy Pildon had instructed her to perform.”
Mirikami and the others in the room with him, who were sharing this discussion in receive mode, seemed equally bewildered by this incomprehensible revelation.
“Remela I don't know how she could know the Mark was coming, we were on the far side of the Pittsburg II solar system, over a light hour away. She couldn’t know what our destination coordinates were, which we selected in a rush, or that they would fatally intersect with her. She shouldn’t have had time to do anything about the situation, considering our in-system Jump covered that distance in vastly less time than light could travel.
“Yet you’re saying she made us miss her in some fashion? Did she also do something to counter our Normal Space closing velocity after we emerged? We suffered a kind of impact shock instantly on White Out, which rendered all aboard unconscious. I know that when I regained my senses, that my ship was being held in direct and tight contact with her hull, motionless and without any drift. Yet neither of us had suffered visible collision damage.”
“Yes, to both questions, friend Tet. She avoided the intersect, and halted your forward motion. Any of us would have taken the same actions she did under those circumstances, because of the extremely short advanced warning received. She had to a
ct quickly, and it was fortunate that none of you were killed. What would you have done differently?”
Mirikami smiled and shrugged, purely for the benefit of those in the room with him. “Well, for my part I’d have killed us all in a flash of intense light, since I don't see any way a collision that I didn’t know would happen could have been avoided. How did she manage to do that? How did she get an advanced warning that I was about to exit where she was? That transition happens nearly instantaneously for such a short Jump.”
“She knew because of the reflected time reversal wave, sensed through tachyons linked to another alternate Universe, where time flows in the reverse direction from that of this Universe. The brief but intense low energy tachyon wave passed mere seconds before the destructive event, leaving only those seconds to alter the causation event.”
Mirikami, his mouth partly open at this presumably erudite explanation, looked to his advisers for a technical translation, seeking terms a Spacer like himself might comprehend. What he saw, were the equivalent expressions from the human and alien scientists he had expected to simplify her explanation.
Absent anyone leaping forward to explain this to him, Mirikami went back to the source. “Remela, I wasn’t aware there is such a thing as a time reversal wave involving tachyons, or that there was another Universe where time flows backwards from the arrow of time we sense in our Universe.”
“Oh, yes,” she assured him. “Such alternate Universes were one of the many mathematical discoveries of the Olt’kitapi, but having only minor physical applications to our space. It is how we Dismantlers, and the Olt’kitapi via their mind enhancers, can sense the effects of the deaths of large numbers of intelligent living creatures in our Universe. Within our Universe a large-scale event, which causes the deaths of millions of minds, has an effect on certain low energy tachyons that are quantum entangled with aspects of the minds of living intelligent creatures. Many of these deaths, happening close together in spacetime, triggers a wave, or a pulse, of altered low energy tachyons. That pulse is reflected by an interaction with the boundary of the time reversed alternate Universe. We can sense that time reversed reflected wave shortly before the cause that creates it occurs in our Universe. In short, we know it is coming, in what you term a premonition.
Koban 6: Conflict and Empire Page 8