by David Smith
Crash gently eased power into the reaction drive and thrusters, lifting Tiger away from the small, rocky world. As Dave turned the view-screen to look back at the receding planet, another asteroid smashed into the dark side of the planet, a white-hot glowing dot leaving a streak of glowing ionized atmospheric gases in it’s wake.
Even larger than the one that had nearly obliterated Tiger’s away team, this impact sent a huge plume of rock and ice into the atmosphere. The mushroom cloud began slowly spreading a long vapour trail that would eventually circumnavigate the globe, bringing rain, precious liquid water on the parched lighter side of the tiny world.
Tiger accelerated smoothly and steadily, and after a final look at the far distant planet, Dave changed the main screen to a view from a forward looking camera. The all-pervading blackness was an unwelcome sight after spending a week around the brown dwarf-star they’d named Seven-ball and its single major planet, Yin-yang.
Most of the rest of the Bridge staff were far too busy to worry about such things, making sure their own area of the ships performance was running smoothly. Chief Benoit was manning the main Science Station in Lieutenant-Commander O’Mara’s absence and reported on preliminary sensor readings. “LOAVES are still absent, sir. Judging from data gathered on the way in we won’t encounter any significant density of dust until we get about ten AU’s out. It would probably be best to engage the warp-drive before then if we can.”
Crash added “We’re clear of Yin-yang’s gravity well sir, ready to engage warp-drive on your command.”
Dave called Engineering again. “Last chance saloon Commander. Are we ready to go to warp?”
“As ready as we’ll ever be sir: I’ve got Deng and Jonsen monitoring the drive and Ezquerra and DuVall are watching the power systems. If anything thing starts to go pear-shaped, you’ll know about it straight away” came the Engineer’s reply.
“Thank you Commander. Ok Helm, engage!”
“Aye sir!” said Crash and powered up the drive.
The view-screen remained impenetrably black. “Did it work?” asked Dave.
Crash checked his display and then changed a few settings before re-checking and saying “Er….. Yeah?”
Benoit was also still head down at his display and explained the situation. “We still don’t have any navigational reference points sir, so it’s not possible to judge our speed with any degree of accuracy.”
Benoit brought up a different set of readings before continuing. “I can’t tell you how fast we’re moving but I can tell you that the density of the warp-field is ….. wow! …. Exceptional! Much more dense than we thought, but it’s still stable. I’m not sure but I reckon we’ll be setting all sorts of speed records here.”
“Really??” said Dave, completely taken aback.
“Uh …. Yeah. Just checking the stress levels on the navigational deflector, which are ….. wow! Enormous! In fact it might be a good idea to wind the warp-drive down a little: we’re ploughing through a thick cloud of dust and LOAVES at such a rate of knots I’m not sure the deflector can take it.”
Crash shrugged and said, “I ain’t got a clue how fast we’re travelling. I’ll cut back the power …. say ….. ten percent?”
“Make it twenty, actually no, make it thirty percent; we’re really shifting” replied Benoit.
He did a quick calculation, but started shaking his head and tried again, before mumbling “That can’t be right!”
“What’s up Benoit?” asked Dave.
“Um … not really sure. I can’t get the numbers to stack up. We know the approximate density of the dust cloud, so I figured the power being consumed by the navigational deflector would be proportional to the mass it’s having to push aside. If I divide that by the density figure for the cloud it should give us an approximate velocity in real-space. It should work, but I keep getting stupid numbers” said the Chief, scratching his head.
“Like what?” asked Dave, his curiosity piqued.
“Well even with Crash having wound down the drive I’m getting and estimated speed of around twelve hundred times the speed of light. That’s faster than any “Constitution” class vessel has ever gone before, but the energy output of the warp-core shouldn’t allow for anything like that sort of speed” shrugged the Chief.
Dave didn’t know what to make of it. “Crash, how fast would you assume we’re travelling?”
“Well, warp-core power output to the engines is running at around forty percent. In normal circumstances that would equate to something like warp-factor six. About two hundred times the speed of light?”
“How can we tell?” Dave asked both of them.
Benoit called Ensign David down in the Stellar Cartography Suite and after a brief conversation came up with a solution of sorts. “I’ve asked Ensign David to set the gravity detectors to monitor the major values we can detect once per minute. The gravity detectors are rubbish at indicating direction, but if can gather a really big data sample, we can crunch the numbers with some confidence. We should be able to support one hypothesis or the other with reasonable confidence.”
Dave thought about it “Well, we need to do something. At warp six it’ll take us about a year to cover the same distance that the probes did, and we know they still didn’t reach open space. If Crash’s figure is right we need to find some way to beef up the deflectors so we can at least get up to warp eight or hopefully nine.”
Benoit grinned. “Yeah, but if my figure is right we’ll get as far as the probes did in about a week. Wouldn’t that be something??”
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Three days later, Dave was back on the Bridge.
Crash, ASBeau and Lieutenant Ezquerra had managed to strengthen and stabilize the output of the navigational deflector by configuring the deflector shields to mesh with them to provide reinforcement.
Crash had then recalibrated everything he could think of and was still unconvinced they weren’t travelling any faster than was usual for a ship of Tigers size. His best guess was that they were travelling at around warp-factor eight, more than five hundred times the speed of light. The strain on the deflector was enormous and as a precaution they’d installed power relays with much higher ratings in the circuits. To date the system had coped with the vast volumes of dust it was sweeping aside without drama.
Sat in the Captain’s chair, Dave took a call from Lieutenant-Commander O’Mara.
“Hey Aisling, how’re you feeling?” he asked. The Science Officer had only been released from Sick-bay yesterday after her misadventures on Yin-yang.
“Not gonna lie, I feel like I’ve been hit by a truck. Which then stopped and reversed over me a couple of times for good measure. I have felt worse, but only after St Patrick’s day back home in Dublin” she replied, sounding like she was in considerable pain.
“What happened then?”
“Oh, nothing serious. The year I left home to go to the Academy, my friends and family all gathered for my last St Patrick’s Day at home. It was epic. By eight in the evening our local pub had run out of Guinness, and by ten all the whiskey had gone too. It all gets a bit sketchy after that. I just remember coming around two days later with the headache from hell, covered in vomit and with a big dried-out turd in my pants.”
“Ewww. Too much information.”
“I was just glad it was my own turd. My cousin Siobhan …… “
Dave didn’t really want to know any more and quickly interrupted her “So if you’re still feeling that bad why don’t you take another couple of days off and relax in your quarters?”
“Ah, well, if I’m honest, I was going a bit stir-crazy in my quarters. When Ensign David called to ask about the statistical analysis of the data from the gravity sensors, I thought I’d take the opportunity to get a change of scenery. I popped up to see how it was all going and it’s all got very exciting!” she said, sounding much more bubbly and alert as she did.
“So what’s your thinking on the speed conundrum?”
/> “Well, that’s the amazing bit. When Crash tweaked the shields and upped the drive output to what he thought would be around warp eight, we got a logarithmic increase in the rate of the change of angular velocity of the gravity readings we’re taking as our reference markers! And we’ve cross-referenced that with the power consumption rate of the deflectors against the measured density of the particulates in the dust cloud to confirm our findings!” she squeaked in evident delight.
“That’s lovely Aisling, but could you say that again more slowly, and try it in English this time?” said Dave. Tiger’s Science Officer was brilliant, but she sometimes forgot that not everyone was a scientist.
She cleared her throat and took a deep breath before trying again. “The data we’ve been recording over the past few days has been totally consistent with the change of power output that Crash, ASBeau and Ezquerra were able to get from the warp-drive.”
“We’ve been taking multiple readings from gravity sensors to the three biggest masses we know of, and averaging them out to judge where we are in relation to those masses. Because of the distances involved it’s not much more than an indication. It’s certainly not good enough to navigate by, but the data we’ve been getting is much, much more consistent than we expected when we started.”
“When the boys had adjusted the deflectors, they increased power output to the warp-drive slowly, just to be on the safe side and make sure we didn’t get any unexpected problems. Crash took two hours to crank the warp-drive output up from warp six to warp eight, and while he did that our readings increased too. Our figures showed a consistent logarithmic progression that indicates our warp-field is now working to a fourth-power scale rather than the third-power scale that warp-drives normally work to.”
“That means that when Crash thought we were at warp six, and our equivalent speed in real-space should have been around two hundred times the speed of light, we were actually moving at over a thousand times the speed of light. Which is exactly in-line with the calculations Chief Benoit made from the stress on the navigational deflector.”
“Are you certain??” said Dave, still a little unsure himself.
“Pretty damned sure, sir!” she giggled.
“So we really are the fastest ship in the fleet?”
“Yes!! But that’s not the best of it!!! Over the next two days, gravity readings indicated a speed of near to thirteen hundred times the speed of light, and now that Crash has got us up to warp eight, our gravity indicated speed has risen to around four thousand times the speed of light!!” She could barely conceal the excitement in her voice.
“WHAT?!?!” said Dave.
“AWESOME Isn’t it!!!!” she squealed.
“But that means ….. “ Dave did some hasty mental arithmetic “ ….. we’ll cover the same distance even the fastest probes did but in half the time! In a heavy cruiser?!?!”
“Amazing or what??” said O’Mara with child-like excitement in her voice. “We’re moving faster than any Starship’s ever gone before. We’re clocking velocities that nobody in known space has ever managed before. Fastest ship in the fleet and fastest ship in ANY fleet!!!”
“Good grief! We’re not even going at maximum speed! This could revolutionise ….. well …… everything!!! The Federation can explore and expand …… “ Dave’s mind was racing, the possibilities afforded by such rapid travel opening whole new vistas for humanity.
A tiny voice in the back of his head sounded a warning note, and he remembered to ask O’Mara the other relevant question: “So why is this happening?”
He could almost hear O’Mara deflate on the other end of the comm-link. “Well, I’m not going to lie: I don’t have a clue. Not the foggiest. Completely in the dark about that.”
She sighed “We’ve been working on it, but we can’t get our heads around it. It’s a problem in n-dimensional field theory that’ll take a better head than mine to solve.”
“So there’s no way we can sort out why, we just have to trust the fact that it does and use it with blind faith?” said Dave, disappointed.
O’Mara sounded just as disappointed. “That’s about the size of it for the present. We’ll keep working on it, but we’re getting nowhere fast at the moment. I was so desperate I was actually thinking of asking Susan …… “
Dave thought about it. “Well she does have access to the thought patterns of some brilliant scientists.”
“Yeah, fat lot of good that did us when she landed us here in the first place!” snorted O’Mara.
“A good point, well made. But we could just ask her opinion? There’s no harm in that is there?” pleaded Dave.
“I suppose not, but I’m inclined to treat what she says with a tonne of salt. I would say “a pinch” of salt, but that just doesn’t seem to encompass how much I distrust her” said the Science Officer.
“Well, I don’t see there’s any harm in gathering an opinion. Have a go, and if you don’t like what she says, just ignore it. In the meantime, things will get interesting for us in ….. about a week’s time. That’s when we’ll reach the point the probes had got to. After that we’re in new territory. I don’t suppose you’ve had any further inspiration with regard to the size of this dust cloud?” asked Dave hopefully.
“Sorry sir, we’re still none the wiser” she said with another sigh. “We still can’t see through the cloud, so we can’t pick up any useful point of reference. I really don’t think we’ll know until we actually come to the edge. If I had to guess, based on dust clouds we know of, our estimate of this clouds location and a gut feeling about the way it moves, I’d say about one to two hundred light years. That would mean that at worst we’d be out of here in about two weeks, but that’s not a theory. It’s just a hunch.”
“Ok, thanks Aisling. Keep me posted, but don’t over-do it. You’re not well, and I don’t want to jeopardise your recovery. I’ll go down to Engineering with Commander Romanov, discuss the situation with Susan and send you anything interesting she comes up with. Hollins out.”
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Down on the Engineering Deck, Dave gathered Olga Romanov, Lieutenant Jonsen and Chief Deng in the Engineers Office before approaching Susan.
They’d been as shocked as Dave had by O’Mara’s estimate of their velocity, as they’d been monitoring the engines carefully and hadn’t seen any unusual strain on the engines and drive systems, or the power output of the core itself.
“Surely that can’t be right??” argued Romanov. “We’d surely have noticed some extra power being drawn by the field coils or an unusual plasma flux if we’re generating such an intense field?”
“I don’t know. O’Mara sent me a formula based on her gravity observations, and a couple of notes, but I’m no warp-field theorist. That’s why I think we need to speak to Susan about it. If nothing else, she should be able to look at it from a theoretical perspective rather than our desperate-clutching-at-straws perspective.”
Romanov shrugged “As long as we don’t take her word for it, I guess I’m happy. I just can’t let go of the fact that she got us here in the first place.”
They trooped out of the office and down to the main deck where Ensign ARSE and PO Park met them. Dave explained the situation and wasn’t surprised when Park said “But it was her incorrect theory that got us into this mess to start with!!”
He was also unsurprised when ARSE’s MS Doors software stalled and left the Android frozen with its eyes glazed over in blue.
“Good morning, Susan. I trust you’ve been watching our progress via the Navigation Computer?” Dave began.
“I have indeed Commander, with quite some interest” replied the computer.
“I presume from that statement that you’re aware that our apparent speed has raised several important questions?”
“I am aware and have already begun to speculate as to the likely cause.”
Dave was uneasy with concept of the self-programming computer, as it raised ethical questions about whether such
a being was “alive”. His experience with Tiger’s resident experimental computer had done nothing to reduce his discomfort. At times, Susan was disconcertingly lucid and the same matrix of brain engrams that made her (theoretically) brilliant had also made her (absolutely) difficult, vain, arrogant, rude, contrary, argumentative, condescending ….. It was a very long and very human list of adjectives.
“Have you employed particular personality engrams in your speculation?”
“Several, Commander Hollins. The primary protagonist is obviously Dr Chandrakar, possibly the greatest expert ever in n-dimensional geometry. I’ve also employed the mathematicians Dr Torrens and Dr Dahlgren.” As if sensing their unease, she then added “I have excluded Dr Vincenzi, the psychologist this time. I’ve extrapolated thoughts from several other warp-field physicists and engineers to achieve a consensus opinion instead.”
“So do you have any idea why we seem to be travelling much faster than current theory would consider possible?” asked Dave.
“Without hard data, I cannot provide a definitive answer, but there are several valid theories I have been exploring. The thought processes of Dr Chandrakar see this as a problem in five-dimensions, and have attempted to follow that avenue first. However, the other engrams primary concern seemed to be that Dr Chandrakar is, frankly, a bit of a dick. They are leaning towards an issue with co-axial warp-fields.”
There were groans from the assembled engineers.
“Look, I can’t help the way I’m programmed. If you put two scientists in a room, you’ll get eight different opinions about everything. That’s just the way scientists are ….. Bloody Humans!!! It’s at times like this I wish I was just a frickin’ abacus …. “ grumbled the computer.
Dave held up a hand to silence the Engineers and then tried again.
“So either way, the likely source of the issue is the new Tana coils? They’re either creating a co-axial effect in the warp-field or warping five dimensions rather than four?”