War of the Spheres

by B. V. Larson

  Fairweather now looked small standing next to that empty cart in Viper’s cargo hold.

  We inspected the job, and it looked pretty rushed to me. There was solder and flash-melted metals splashed all over the deck. Cables and vapor tubes ran every which way, some tight, some loose—it had been a quick and dirty installation, that much was clear.

  “Such weak connection points,” I said, running my gloved fingers over the seals. “Can this docking hardware withstand the stresses—?”

  “Yet again,” Fillmore began irritably, “your profound ignorance reveals itself, Gray. Fairweather isn’t a rocket-booster strapped onto a ground car. It’s a field generation unit. When the projectors cast a wide enough net to capture both Fairweather and Viper, the two will move in tandem—in fact, everything inside the field will move as one. There will be no sensation of motion, no G-forces or other physical stresses inside the affected zone.”

  I was beginning to get it, despite Fillmore’s snobby attitude.

  “So…” I said, “The best thing would be to place Fairweather as close to the center of Viper’s mass as possible, right?”

  Fillmore brightened. “Yes! Exactly! I’m very impressed.”

  I almost smiled, but Fillmore didn’t leave it at that.

  “You should be proud of yourself, Gray. You’ve superseded your mental limitations in this instance.” He turned to Gevan and laughed. “I feel like a man who’s just witnessed an ape driving a car.”

  “Give it a rest, Fillmore,” Gevan told him.

  The three of us climbed down into the dark innards of Fairweather, and the weird hatch sealed us in like a rubber cork which disappeared.

  “How is this thing going to work?” I asked. “Don’t we need to see where we’re going?” I felt out of place no matter where I stood.

  “It’s true,” she agreed. Hughes settled into the pilot’s seat. “We’re depending on live visual that operates to necessary specs. We can’t be jumping to a new location in space on a guess.”

  “That’s what I thought.”

  “I’ve got Gevan and Fillmore working on that now. The situation is hardly normal, Chief.”

  “That’s right, Chief,” Fillmore sneered. “We’re not just polishing a glass lens over here.” He went back to sliding virtual controls on a glowing screen and muttering to Gevan.

  “Over to you, Colonel Hughes,” Gevan said after some final adjustments.

  “Let’s give it all a proper test, shall we?” Her eyes gleamed intensely.

  “If you say so,” I said. “You’re the expert here.”

  The hangar bay outside Fairweather’s hull was already clearly visible on the broad curving screens. Hughes spread her hands over her dash and swirled a finger. A hush came over the four of us as Fairweather’s visual perspective moved outside of Viper’s hull

  Recovering, Fillmore made a bee line to the copilot’s seat, strapped in with the dashboard down and holding the sticks.

  Dr. Gevan gave a slightly disgruntled glance and went back to poring over screens and watching streams of data.

  Fillmore shot the colonel a grin and rubbed his hands together.

  “Sean, get out,” she said. “You’re sitting in Chief Gray’s place. In fact, take over Gevan’s station. You Dr. Gevan—I’d like you to personally go and round up all of our people and see that they get on board ASAP,” she ordered.

  “Yes, sir,” the old man said and promptly left.

  Fillmore’s mouth opened, and he furrowed his brow. He looked shocked and surprised.

  I smiled, finding it pleasant to get this kind of recognition at last.

  “What’s this?” he whined. “How perfectly offensive of you to say such a thing, Emily. I’ve been with this project for years.”

  He glanced from me to her and back again—twice. I didn’t say a word while the man embarrassed himself. I just watched the glossy overhead displays and waited quietly.

  “Dr. Fillmore…” she hissed through her teeth. “Get out of that chair.”

  I could tell she’d had enough of his shit for today—maybe for the whole mission. I couldn’t fault her for that. After all, he’d been heaping much of his attitude on my head.

  Fillmore pawed at the straps and flipped up the dash with a little too much force. Then he got up and flopped back down into an available seat at a sensor station.

  Hughes nodded to the vacant place of honor, which I quickly settled into. I was able to carefully straighten out my injured leg for comfort.

  Dr. Brandt had shown up with the rest of the group and had been working for a half hour on technical details. She whisked her way into the nucleus after that.

  Without asking for permission, she yanked up my burnt trouser cuff and ripped away the old smart-mesh patch. Then, she slapped a fresh patch where a chunk of meat was missing. It settled into the wound deeply and crackled like bacon as it adhered.

  “This is becoming a habit,” she pretended to complain. “What would you do if you didn’t have a personal physician aboard?”

  “Um… thank you, Jillian… and I have no idea,” I finished diplomatically. I didn’t want to tell her I would heal up pretty well without her efforts. My flesh was much more capable of recovery than a normal human’s tended to be.

  “That’s right. Keep me alive, so I can keep you alive. Deal?

  “Deal.”

  Brandt left as quickly as she’d come, and I looked after her wistfully. She was far more interesting company that the rest of these dry engineers.

  After another forty minutes or so, they pronounced that they were ready to proceed to the next step. Unfortunately, that wasn’t a green-light for launch. Not yet.

  I forced myself pay attention as they went through a very long checklist. The lighting dropped low, and more virtual screens sprang up around Emily in the pilot’s seat. I watched her work intently.

  “Strap in people,” she said. “We’re testing a new experimental subsystem. The entire ship might be affected. I suggest all hands strap in for the next ninety seconds.”

  Hughes broadcast these words ship-wide. Her digits danced over screens to initialize the module. She tapped at the glowing air in front of her face and grabbed two control pegs, one with either hand.

  “I want the field as broad as I can get it for this, Sean,” she said. “We’ve got to go big and cautious the first time.”

  “Field generation is peaking,” Fillmore said glumly from the side station.

  “We should go now,” Dr. Gevan said worriedly. “We’re cruising in near-space in manual-mode. It’s not safe to wait long.”

  After conferring with Jessup, Hughes got approval to make her test.

  “Hurry it up,” Jessup complained. “I’ve got an urgent meeting with that mining ship.”

  Hughes watched the timer she’d set up. “Shift executing in: 3… 2… 1… mark!”

  Some of Hughes’ team cried out from beyond the nucleus. Later, we found out more than a few had blacked out.

  Fillmore fell into both of these categories. After a long shriek, he wound up unconscious and folded up in a puddle of his own vomit.

  The actual journey consisted of nothing I could detect. My eyes roved over every instrument, range calculator and speed indicator.

  “We’re still orbiting the Moon,” I said.

  “Of course,” Dr. Gevan scoffed. “Did you think we’d aim for Alpha Centauri on the first test?”

  “How far did we actually go?” I asked.

  The group consulted instruments. “One hundred seventy meters!” the colonel shouted.

  “Is that confirmed?” demanded Dr. Fillmore, coughing on his puke. “Dammit, I want confirmation!”

  “Confirmed,” Dr. Gevan said.

  Fillmore sagged back on the floor, smiling.

  “Gray, you’ve just witnessed history,” Hughes said. “Do you realize that?”

  She was staring at me without blinking.

  “What the hell did we just do? I’ll never forget it
—that’s for sure.”

  She narrowed her eyes at me. “You don’t think it was a big deal, do you? Let me explain: it wasn’t the distance—we were cautious partly because we had to spread the field so broadly to include all of Viper. In fact, it’s going to take some time to fully recharge the generator’s capacitors again—we went all in the first time.”

  “I get that,” I said, but she kept on explaining.

  “The impressive thing was the fact we did it at all. Essentially, we programmed co-ordinates and transmitted this mass—both Fairweather and Viper—over a short distance. Without traversing the intervening space.”

  I thought about that for a moment. “Can we go farther?”

  “Of course. That’s the whole point—but it wasn’t the goal of this test.”

  “Right… Do you think…? Do you think, Emily, that this ship will actually be able to pass through the barrier? That we might actually escape the Sphere that surrounds our Solar System?”

  She smiled. “That’s the idea, Gray,” she said recovering. “Viper and Fairweather merged together—that’s our ticket out of jail.”

  “Are we going to try it, though? Right now?”

  Hughes blinked a few times. “I think we have to,” she said. “We can’t just do a few tests then fly home and hide. These aggressors aren’t going to give up. They’ve proven that. Going back to Earth and parking the engine there—we’d be an easy target again.”

  I nodded. I’d made the same conclusions, but I wanted to make sure she had reached them too. This was one hell of a big deal.

  Chapter 30

  Colonel Emily Hughes tested the combined ship’s little trick one more time.

  “I’m still feeling like I’m upside-down on an amusement park ride,” I observed as the science team shut down their complex engine. “Hopefully, we’ll all adapt and these effects will subside more quickly with repeated exposure.”

  “We aren’t ideally located being so far astern,” the colonel said. “I had set the field to a very wide diameter to get even just a few meters beyond the dimensions of Viper,” Hughes said. “But we did it.” Her face was glowing with excitement. “I manually leveraged us through near-space and then made a programmed jump—taking all our shared mass even further than last time. Another first! We’re making history people.”

  “I find making history very disorienting,” Dr. Gevan complained.

  “Emily, don’t get too pleased with yourself,” Fillmore said, still lying with his back on the deck. “We’ve got a lot more things to do that have never been done before.”

  I’d been fiddling with my own dash and managed to bring up an image of impending doom.

  “Fairweather’s visual resolution is impressive,” I said as I brought up the scene in detail on the central display.

  It was a close-up shot of the mining freighter Jessup had us chasing after, and it was clear the enemy ship wasn’t done creating havoc.

  Fresh arcing plumes of raw ore radiated away from the hurtling ship like a pinwheel. It was unloading more debris behind her as she flew.

  Since the last test jump, we’d gotten much closer. The range was shorter, and the entire mess was bound to hit us sooner. It looked like we were going to run smack into it.

  “Does this accurately depict our velocity and how close we are to that debris cloud,” I asked.

  “Oh shit,” Hughes said quietly and stared. “Obviously Captain Jessup and I haven’t been coordinating on the flight plan.”

  We were still watching the screen when Fillmore sat up and climbed back into his seat at last. He exhaled heavily releasing fetid breath. He stared at the rain of destruction ahead. Each minute, it writhed and bloomed larger.

  “My God, Emily. How did you get us into range of that mess again? You’re a terrible pilot!”

  Warning klaxons started to peal outside of Fairweather’s hull. Viper was on ship-wide high alert.

  We all felt the destroyer change course, but it wouldn’t be enough. Viper was hauling ass, but she dropped down the burn on her main jets and kicked up the directional jets to full.

  The new effect was like a long powerful push to the side like an endless corner was being rounded. Anyone who wasn’t strapped in did so now.

  “I’m running the numbers…” Dr. Gevan said. “This isn’t good. We’re too close!”

  “Let’s just jump one more time,” I said. “We’ll move to the side of the impact trajectory and let it fly past us.”

  “After the second jump we’ve totally drained the capacitors,” Gevan said blankly and his head sunk to his hands.

  “How long will it take us to recover enough for a modest jump—just to get clear,” Hughes asked.

  “There’s no telling, Colonel,” Gevan said sounding forlorn. We’re learning as we go.”

  “That fool Jessup has been chasing after them, which gives us even less room to maneuver,” the colonel said. “I’m not sure Viper can clear that mess on her own, not even with her engines at full power.”

  “Emily,” I said, “is this sensor data in real time?”

  “I’m afraid so.” She was absorbed in checking an algorithm on her secondary flight screen.

  “Even I can tell this doesn’t look good—Jessup is trying to flee to the side, but he’ll never make it,” I said. “Can we get a clock up to track our window of time?”

  “Oh—that’s a fantastic idea, Chief,” Fillmore said sarcastically. “Let’s get a big timer up to count down our certain doom—that’s bound to help the stress level in here.”

  “Sean…” Hughes started.

  “Calm down Dr. Fillmore,” I said. “We don’t need to obsess on it. The clock will just be there to show us how much time we have left to work on this.”

  They all looked at me. A large countdown readout appeared on the forward screen—numbers spinning. I looked over to Gevan. He nodded, shrugged and then looked blank.

  “So, tell me…how big was the field in comparison to Viper when we jumped before?”

  “Well…” Hughes started “…roughly one and three quarters of Viper’s overall length.”

  “And, am I right to think a smaller field would consume less power?”

  “Of course.”

  “I mean,” I continued, “If you could get us closer to mid-ship on Viper…”

  “Yes!” she said. I see where you’re going. If we move Fairweather to mid-ship we might get enough of a charge for a smaller field and still jump the whole compounded ship clear of that mess in time.”

  Dr. Fillmore spoke up. “It’s theoretically possible…” he admitted. “But the risk after re-locating is too great. We’ll need to re-configure everything!”

  “Then get re-configuring,” I said.

  He looked thoughtful for a moment, then he began tapping and gesturing over a control screen.

  “We’ll need an ideal location in the center of Viper’s mass…” He brought up a schematic showing Viper and Fairweather’s humped location in the aft hold. Fairweather sat in a connected pod that resembled a tumor in Viper’s belly. The whole thing had an organic look to it.

  I could see it for myself. We were just aft to Viper’s long, starboard mid-hold—separated only by a bulkhead. The problem was that Jessup had it loaded full of crap in crates and a jumble of varying containers. The far end was damned close to mid-ship, but there was no room in there for Fairweather.

  The empty troop pod was on the port side and significantly forward, but it didn’t seem possible to get there.

  “You see?” Fillmore continued. “Fairweather has to be closer to the center of the ship’s mass. Then the field’s required radius would be reduced, and the idea might be workable. We might be able to do this with half the power.”

  “But we still can’t be certain how much power we’ll need,” Gevan said.

  “Yes, that goes without saying,” Fillmore replied.

  The destroyer’s jets adjusted to a straight course once more, and we all sat a little easier
in our harnesses.

  Gevan reached out a hand and touched the schematic. “The right spot would be about… here.”

  He moved the location of Fairweather’s hump to the middle of the ship.

  “It’s just an image,” Gevan said, “but it’s also more than that—it’s a plan.”

  “I didn’t say it was doable!” Fillmore scoffed. “We’re just postulating where it would need to go!”

  “It would be a close fit,” Hughes said. “If we were able to fine tune our location, the field’s configuration would be ideally utilized. It’s like they were made for each other. If the destroyer was any bigger, it couldn’t be done at all.”

  “I say we have to try,” I said. “If I understand this, Emily, you’ve already successfully moved us through near space using manual controls.”

  Hughes shook her head. “Your idea is a good one, Gray,” she said. “If we had a few days to do it, we could probably station Fairweather amidships and transition the destroyer out of harm’s way. But…”

  “It would take too long,” Hughes insisted. “That spiraling mass of debris will hit us while we’re out there space-walking.”

  “Worse,” Fillmore said, “Viper is accelerating hard. You can’t spacewalk under two Gs of lateral force!”

  “Hold on,” I said. “We’re not talking about passing outside the outer hull, right?”

  “How else?” Hughes demanded.

  I brought up the schematic of Viper’s hull. I tapped on the troop module. “I think this area is big enough.”

  “That pod is serving as our quarters!” Dr. Gevan complained.

  “We’ll just have to sleep in one of the holds.”

  Gevan snorted in irritation.

  Dr. Fillmore leaned forward, interested. “You’re right… It certainly is big enough—with some modifications. And, right in the middle…”

  They all looked at me with new respect. At last, Gevan grunted in defeat. He couldn’t find an error in the plan, as much as he’d like to.

  “It’s a good solution, Gray,” Fillmore said. “Maybe I went too far calling you a bird-brained jock.”

  Squinting at him, I couldn’t recall having heard that particular insult from him before. I supposed he wasn’t heaping praise upon my name when I wasn’t in earshot.