To Touch the Stars (Founding of the Federation Book 2)

by Chris Hechtl

  “Well, what I was getting at was, we don't need propulsion right now. Or the hyperdrive itself. According to Jeff the lead hyperdrive tech, it isn't even being used much. As long as we keep it idle to keep the bubble formed we're golden,” she said.

  “So we can step them down?” the captain asked carefully. “To idle levels you are saying?”

  The chief engineer nodded cautiously. “And conserve power. Something tells me we'll need it. We have no idea how long this bridge is,” the chief warned.

  “Make it so,” the captain ordered. “And reinforce the emitters the best you can,” he ordered with a grimace. There was actually little they could do for the emitters. If one failed they would know it a half second before the ship was destroyed.

  “On it,” the chief replied, jotting out a note to Jeff the tech.

  “Back to the exit. I want answers,” the captain said mildly, looking at the navigator and the fin. He turned to Brock the senior sensor officer. “You three work together on getting a feel for this bridge. Probe it, see if there is a weak spot we can exploit to get out,” he said.

  “We will. But, Captain, we have all we can do to keep the ship away from the reefs,” the navigator warned.

  “Reefs?” the captain asked, raising an eyebrow.

  “Shadow masses,” Brock replied. The skipper nodded. “Objects in real space that are projecting a shadow mass in hyper. They are like bubbles all over the place. We're constrained to this course, so it's hard to plot around them since we don't have a long lead time,” he cautioned. “Since we're moving a lot faster, they are coming at the ship at a faster rate. It's hard to keep up,” he warned.

  “And exhausting the fins,” the CMO warned. She glanced at the chief of the helm. “We've had to cut their shifts to three hours,” she warned.

  “Which is playing merry hell with the manning tables,” the XO muttered. “But I get it. We have no choice. But we only have so many hands.” His eyes cut to the dolphin's fins. “Or fins in this case,” he said.

  “Work on it. I for one do not like running into the pot of this particular rainbow. It could be a black hole, something we very much wish to avoid,” the skipper warned. The navigator winced but nodded. “There is no way to slow down?”

  “No, skipper,” the navigator said with a shake of his massive head. “Nor a way to find out how long it will last. The one piece of good news I can give you is that we're on the course we wanted to take.” He paused when the skipper grunted. “I thought one anchor was Sirius and the other was Altair,” he said, pulling up a star map. “But now I am not so sure,” he said, shaking his head. “When we get to the exit pole, we'll know it. We'll have only so much time to get out.”

  “Obviously our odometer is out. The same for the speedometer then. Do your best,” the XO said. Wally grimaced but nodded.

  The captain exhaled slowly then tugged on his shirt for a moment. “Well. I suppose we'll get there when we get there then. Keep on it,” he ordered as the meeting ended.

  -*-*-^-*-*-

  Once they realized what was going on Chief Roak worked with Isley, Taz, Jeff, and the rest of her engineers to reinforce the force emitters. Damage control was kept busy keeping the ship alive as all power was diverted to the force emitters.

  The hyperbridge phenomenon had one benefit; through a bit of trial and error during his shift, Taz Jorell found that when they dropped the hyperdrive to almost idle they remained within the bridge and thus could conserve power. That was good news to Cosmos and the other power room techs. The force emitters were drawing a tremendous amount of power, nearly too much for the EPS to handle. New control lines had to be set up along with additional redundant power lines for some of the electronics. Cosmos worked with the Chief Heart to add cooling and insulation to the wiring while Chief Roak was off shift. The chief engineer was a bit put out over their activities when she found out, but grudgingly approved of their efforts.

  Taz kept a running log on the ship's hyperdrive use and odometer. It was generally discounted, the odometer had to be wrong since it was reporting they were moving an incredible distance, quite impossible. Taz did note that their apparent speed slacked off after twenty weeks for four and a half weeks but then picked up again. The speed seemed to increase in an incremental rate the further they went along the bridge.

  Chapter 33

  When the bridge crew noticed an increase in turbulence and a change in speed, they knew something was up. Anita kept a careful sensor watch; she knew the fins needed all the lead time on a warning to change course they could get. They were constrained within the bridge so it was tricky maneuvering around mass shadows along their path.

  Forty-five weeks, nearly a full year in hyper, beyond anything any ship had ever attempted the crew was weary and ready to see the stars once again. Just about everyone was heartily sick of being trapped within the confines of the ship. Arguments and fights were picking up as temper fuses shortened. The XO did his best to alleviate the pressure, but he was a serious individual. Planning a party really for people to let loose and unwind wasn't his style.

  The current seemed endless or had up until the previous shift. Wally and Brock had worn themselves out keeping up with the constant heading changes. Now this.

  “We've got a mass shadow at our twelve o'clock on long range sensors skipper!” Anita called out, highlighting it for the navigator and fin helm team. “Distance is twenty-four AU and rapidly approaching! That's 3.6, make that 3.55 billion kilometers and closing,” she warned, her tone rising in anxiety as the mass filled her screen.

  “We can't maneuver around that!” the navigational tech yelped, shaking his head as he too saw the size of the mass. “The current ends there!” He said. “That must be the other pole!”

  “Helm, adjust course. Find a way to get us out of this,” Captain Peck ordered. “Page Mister Thompson and Pappas. I think we're going to need everyone on this one,” he said.

  “We've got less than an hour to figure it out. Work the problem, don't be the problem, people,” the captain said, voice tightening as he reminded them to maintain their decorum and professionalism.

  Over the past forty-five weeks, the bridge crew had found they could maneuver close to the edge of the bridge/current wall if they were careful. Hyperspace was bent and turbulent in that area however so they preferred the center of the stream. Now they had no choice; they had to exit.

  “Captain, let me try,” the chief navigator said, coming onto the bridge half dressed. The skipper turned to him as he made his way to the navigation station. The tech there gratefully got up and out of his senior's way.

  “We're going to have to treat this like a riptide current,” Wally said, taking the vacated seat. “Which means we have to go perpendicular to the current. Or on an angle. It's going to be an experiment,” he said.

  “Better get it right,” the captain warned. “It's getting closer,” he warned.

  Captain Peck winced as the ship bucked a bit then shivered as they tried to get into the wall and through it. Wally backed them off, then tried again, this time at a different speed and angle.

  They found through trial and error that maneuvering perpendicular to the current at a slow speed got them out. They couldn't fight the current, but they did manage to get out or were possibly thrown out in the nick of time. Once they were into the bridge wall the ride became extremely bumpy, beyond the abilities of the inertial dampeners to keep up with. “All hands, hang on! Brace!” the captain ordered, hitting the intercom button with his thumb.

  “Hyperdrive spooling down!” Jeff Anderson reported over the intercom. “We're exiting hyper … now!”

  The ship exploded back into subspace in a burst of light and intense radiation. Space unfolded around the ship as the force emitters spooled down in power. Small crystals of ice and paint flecks came off the shift, drifting about in the sudden cessation of apparent acceleration. They fled from their parent ship, moving away from it as they caught the tide of unfolding space.
>
  Slowly the view around the ship went from a fuzzy wavery mess to a crystal clear beauty. What they saw surprised them. There was a star, quite bright and near. A bit too close for comfort really, since it was quite large and powerful.

  Once they were out and back into subspace, the real work began. The captain stood down the fins with his thanks as the engineers swung into action, doing an initial assessment of the ship's critical systems. Meanwhile the sensory officer reported they were a light year and a half out from a massive star.

  It was obvious that the bridge took them where it wanted to go, which made his ship either undershot or overshot her initial jump. They were most likely off course, Captain Peck mused. They'd know by how much in a moment, he thought, watching the sweat soaked navigator work at his computer station. He turned to the sensor officer just as Mister Templeton and Mister Thompson arrived on the bridge. The captain frowned. The XO had a bandage on his head and hand, while the sensor officer had a bruise on one cheek and walked with a limp. “You two okay?” he asked.

  “Rough trip. We were on our way up when the old girl turned into a bucking bronco,” Brock said, wincing as he limped to his station. “Sickbay is overwhelmed so we decided to check in, skipper.”

  “Damn,” the captain murmured.

  “Bridge this is Doctor McDaniel. Do you happen to have two of my patients there?” Doctor McDaniel demanded over the intercom.

  The captain looked up and then hit the reply button. “We do indeed, Doctor. Do you have room for them now?” he asked.

  “Yes. If you don't mind sending them back. I told them to exercise some patience,” she replied with a weary sigh.

  “Fine,” the sensor officer replied. One hand dropped to Anita's shoulder. “You got this?” She looked up at him, nodded briefly, then back to her station. “I'm all for a bit of tender loving care,” he said, wincing as he went back to the exit.

  “Go,” the skipper ordered, nodding to the exec. Magnus scowled but then exhaled noisily. “Help him at least. Then check in on DCC,” the captain ordered. Magnus paused, then nodded again. The captain watched them go.

  He turned back to the crew, but they still didn't have much to report. Data was flowing in, cascading on the view screen too fast for him to pick out much. He waited patiently for the raw data to be processed and analyzed.

  The star was an O class, massing twenty times Sol's G class star. It also emitted intense radiation. The ship turned its sensitive cameras and sensors away from the star once they had a reading on it.

  “I don't see any handy nebulas around,” the captain said mildly. “Mister Pappas, I take it we're off course?” They had assumed that they would end up near their destination, the Gum nebula, one thousand light years out from Sol.

  “A bit, sir. Quite a bit really, but we're close to the one thousand light year marker,” Wally stated, still tapping at his controls. “The bridge must have led us off course.”

  “I see. And where are we?” The captain asked, looking from the Samoan navigator to the blond sensor tech on duty.

  “Mintaka!” Anita said, looking up with a grin.

  “Are you sure?” Captain Peck asked carefully.

  “It has to be! It's on the course we were on, 916 light years out,” Wally Pappas, the navigator said triumphantly as he looked over what the sensor officer had pulled up on the star.

  “Mass and spectral type match Mintaka, sir,” Anita, the sensor tech on duty reported. “There is a class B star that is nearby that matches as well. At least they match within variable tolerances,” she said with a qualifier.

  “Variable tolerances?”

  Anita shrugged. “We know the stars can move, sir, and it takes 916 years to get to Sol. Things change over time. Nike puts them within tolerances, sir. Barely.”

  “Apparently so,” Wally said, frowning thoughtfully as he scanned the variables. Some matched, but others were off.

  “Very well then. That is quite a ride. One I am in no hurry to repeat, but at least it got us to where we were going,” the captain rumbled.

  Excited, the crew realized they'd shaved months off their planned journey. The chatter broke out immediately as emotions found an escape valve to vent. The captain felt the tension evaporate out of the room and sat back, letting his people get it out of their system.

  “What a coincidence!” Wally said. “Can anyone believe our luck?” he said, grinning.

  “I hate coincidences. It's a little too pat for my taste,” Click'ck'a said, rolling. “But need rest,” she said, waggling her flippers. Her eyes drooped.

  “Damage report,” the captain ordered calmly, getting them back on track. His index finger tapped a control on his arm rest to bring the chief engineer up. “Damage report,” he said again.

  “Um, hi, skipper, we're getting that now,” the chief said over the intercom, sounding distracted. “Isley, finish that up. Someone get Shannon to hurry up on the PC diagnostics,” she urged.

  “Is everything okay down there, chief?” the captain asked.

  “We've got some damage to repair. I'm not going to look a gift horse in the mouth; it got us to where we wanted to go and a hell of a lot faster than we'd expected to get there. But it definitely took some doing. Crossing that wall was harsh on the systems too. We're at least thirty years ahead of schedule,” Chief Roak said over the intercom. “I'll take that any day.”

  “Yeah, it did that. And yes, definitely ahead of schedule. But what a ride!”

  “Damage control?” the captain asked.

  “We're working on it skipper. I'll have a full report for you as soon as I get it. We've got some structural issues to check on. The spars are a concern. There are some signs of buckling we need to look into deeper,” she warned. The skipper nodded. “Also, we've put a lot of wear and tear on the emitter coils, I'm worried about them. Those are something we don't carry spares for. For obvious reasons,” she said.

  Her image popped up on the main viewer. It wasn't a complimentary sight; the chief was sweaty and a bit haggard from tearing into the ship's systems. Nike put up a list of damaged systems on a screen beside the chief engineer's video. It was a long list, the captain noted. And getting longer, he recognized as new entrees were added as he scanned it.

  “So we may be stranded?” the skipper asked carefully. A few of the crew looked up in alarm. He could have kicked himself for laying that out publicly. It would be all over the ship in moments he reminded himself.

  Fortunately the chief shook her head vehemently enough to reassure the doubters. “No, but it put a hell of a strain on our systems like I said, skipper. We're still getting the surveys going. The external hull is radioactive so we're using remotes until that is cleared. We also need to refuel, so a handy comet or iceball would be nice right around now. A cool refreshing drink,” she said with a smile. He snorted in reply. “But seriously, can we maneuver into the shadow of something? That will cool us off and help us get out of the glare of that star,” the Chief asked, looking at the captain.

  “A shady spot to do some shade tree mechanical work?” the captain quipped with a half-smile. She smiled back at him. He snorted. “We shall see what we can arrange. Sensors?” He turned expectantly to the sensor watch.

  Anita Fulsom, the sensor tech on duty looked over her shoulder to him. “We're looking now, skipper.”

  “See that you do. And verify where we are,” he ordered, looking at Wally the navigator. Wally yawned but nodded in reply. “But I suppose it can wait until your next shift,” the captain rumbled in amusement. He turned to Shannon Norton, their computer tech extraordinaire and cyber security expert. She worked closely with Nike the ship's AI to make certain no viruses got into their systems. She'd fended off several attacks in Sol. She was a tiny woman, a graduate of Mars U. She had short black hair, black eyes, and black nails to go with her pale white skin. She claimed to have some Indian in her ancestry but you couldn't tell from the look of her. Maybe her gangly physique but that was it.

  �
��And make certain we're not suffering some sort of virus hallucination or something,” he ordered her. She nodded tightly.

  “We need the downtime,” Magnus said, shaking his head. Shannon pursed her thin lips, looking at the XO. “I know the fins are about done in,” Magnus said. “They could use the downtime,” he said.

  “Indeed,” Doctor McDaniel replied with an emphatic nod. “Definitely.”

  “Tell them to get as much rest as possible. We'll need them soon enough,” the skipper ordered as the meeting concluded. “I'm off. The same goes for the rest of my shift. XO, you have the helm,” he ordered.

  “The XO has the helm, aye, sir,” Magnus replied dutifully as they filed out of the wardroom and onto the bridge. “Shift change,” he announced unnecessarily. The graveyard shift was already on the bridge going over the logs with their respective counterparts they were about to relieve. They murmured quietly as the skipper and other senior officers not on duty left. After a moment of consultation one by one the other techs and officers departed. Magnus settled himself in the captain's chair, also known as the hot seat and picked up a tablet to start on the usual paperwork.

  -*-*-^-*-*-

  Brock Thompson, sensor officer of Icarus, searched their star charts to make certain of their location. The captain wasn't ready to turn back so soon; they had time he reasoned. The only spot of excitement on the shift had been when they'd found a distant rock large enough and near enough to occlude some of the local star's intense radiation. The XO had maneuvered the ship on a course to bring them to rest behind it.

  Since Wally was off shift and he was bored, Brock programmed Nike to run the star chart and plot their location. It wasn't like it mattered; both he and Wally had already recognized the star from its spectral class. What Brock was really doing was make work. Technically work Wally should be doing, he reminded himself, but the navigator could owe him one.