The Power of the Dhin (The Way of the Dhin Book 2)

by John L. Clemmer

  Jake watched as Thys looked back and forth, up and down, paying attention to the exterior area where whatever it was had melted or burned the exterior away. “No field, no atmosphere. No debris?”

  “None, sir. No air. And no debris. See here,” Meyer said and paused the video, then zoomed in. “Whatever it was ate away at the outer wall to here and up to here. Then it just stops.”

  “Doesn’t look quite like heat or the blast from an explosive either, does it?” asked Jake.

  “No, sir. Closer to extreme heat. Maybe. It’s as if something carved it away without resistance. The hits look scattered and random at the scale of the whole ship, but if they’re all like this, maybe it spread out after impact. Like whatever struck turned to liquid. Then dissolved the metal it hit. But nothing does that.”

  “Nothing we’ve seen till now. An incredible weapon. Where would the displaced material go?”

  Meyer shook his head slowly in response.

  “The engineering and materials teams say we don’t have enough data for anything but speculation. We stopped them from derailing Kritcher’s progress. Sir, if you’d like to take your seat and continue with the live feed, you’re pretty much caught up.”

  “Thank you, Meyer. Let’s do that.”

  Meyer turned and stepped over to the desk he worked from as Jake shifted in his seat and looked over to the live feed on the largest screen on the wall. There was the view from Thys’s helmet camera. He’d made progress, but something stood out.

  “Hello, Thys. I’m back. No lights have come on, have they? Anybody home? Over,” asked Jake.

  “Control, Jake. No, no luck there. Not like your visit to that Dhin station. There’s no sign that it’s hibernating or waiting for someone to show up. At an intersection about fifty meters back, at a doughnut-shaped room, there were some panels very much like what you saw on your trip. They didn’t light up when I waved my hand or pressed at them. I have gloves on, of course. There’s no air. Not here, anyway.”

  “No gravity either, I see,” noted Jake.

  “No. It’s been a bit of a game. Not that much to hold on to, and these passages are wide. I’ve tried to conserve the use of the suit jets. Over.”

  “Do we think we have a destination in there? A bridge or control room or anything? Doesn’t look like it. Maybe to your right and a hundred meters away? Or do we call it quits?”

  “Control, you’re looking at it. This thing looks dead,” said Thys.

  “Well, you haven’t seen any clues about what happened to whoever was on the ship. We don’t know if they bailed out or if they’re here somewhere, mummified.”

  “That’s true, Jake. So how about this? I’ll head toward where we think a Dhin engine might be, if this thing is laid out like the prototypes were. If I don’t find anything interesting on the way and the drive’s not where we think it is, I’m out.”

  “Agreed. All right. What do we have on that projectile you tossed out? Let’s look at that and see if it helps get you home. Over.”

  Esus

  Gallowglass was the weaponization of the Dhin tech. The AIs had worked diligently at enhancing and extending the technology from the prototypes provided by the Dhin. The sample technology originally seemed entirely resistant to weaponization. Clearly, the Dhin did not intend that—yet just as clearly, they needed help, and that help required converting the potential of the technology into powerful weaponry.

  And the AIs had finally done it.

  While powered on, the Dhin field provided impenetrability, invulnerability to concussive forces, incendiary attacks, or energy weapons. This same strength had always been a weakness in attempts to convert the tech to an offensive mode. While the field was on, projectiles and even beam weapons were impossible to fire. The same physics that allowed for defense made offensive measures intractable.

  They found the solution by thinking outside the box. The latest experiments had borne fruit. They could now manipulate the field such that it delivered powerful strikes rather than inertia-free contact. And they had made construction of small versions of the drives efficient and economical enough that using them for ordnance delivery was not impractical.

  A particularly devastating weapon involved the field protecting a powerful explosive as it rushed inexorably toward its target. When close, the field would cut out, then expand to a size large enough to envelop the target. The explosive would detonate, destroying the enemy as well as the drive itself. All the explosive force was contained inside the field, to devastating effect.

  Anything caught inside was more than atomized. It was reduced to plasma, ionized and undifferentiated. Moments later, the field would cut out as the drive exploded, and the secondary explosive effect of the compressed plasma blew hellfire out at anything nearby that might have avoided being enveloped in the range of the Dhin field.

  While less devastating, using the inexpensive drives as a mechanism to hurl projectiles at high speeds using the engine and protecting the ordnance using the field was no less of an accomplishment. Previous efforts assuming that they had to disable the field to launch the projectile made that direction of research seem a dead end.

  Now Esus had concluded that risk of loss or destruction of the delivery platform was worth it when it meant you were able to hurl massive depleted uranium rounds at speeds otherwise unattainable. And they were guided rounds. The drive and field just shut off and stopped when close to the target, the payload hurtling forward at whatever velocity was required.

  In many cases, the propulsion and guidance component, the drive, could reengage and return.

  Such strikes would be pointless against a target using a Dhin field for defense, as the payload would strike harmlessly, all momentum drained away. The projectile either came to a stop or, if acted on by a secondary force or the movement of the target, deflected gently aside.

  So field-against-field engagements still most always should result in a draw. Only gross error by one of the combatants would result in their defeat.

  New study in the additional dimensional vectors suggested alternative weaponry solutions, however. As well as crucial tech for defense.

  The Enemy didn’t use the field the same way; the Enemy’s implementation was different. Somehow they were able to connect with and move through a field generated via the mechanics provided by the Dhin. Esus concluded there might be a way to modify the field to resist or prevent that intrusion through it. Why the Dhin had never done so was yet another question.

  Esus considered the work of his peers. Alice and Xing suspected they had an answer. It was perhaps the same reason that the Dhin had not provided a means of creating a field that was impenetrable by this foe. That was why the Dhin needed help. They had a limitation. From where they were, the Dhin could not effectively access some of the N-vectors available to the AIs from their position in the vector field. They needed the AIs to reach the orthogonal dimensions they were not able to.

  Exactly how to accomplish the feat was not yet clear, but there would be some way to modulate the field extensor so that it expressed into alternate spatial vectors. Doing so, if the math worked out, would provide protection against the Enemy’s ability to push slowly through the force field.

  Monica

  Yet another crisis, but at least it looks like our pilot is going to live.

  The prime minister reviewed the morning’s briefings. Citizen protests based on certainty regarding the existence of alien technology and the government’s continued secrecy were reaching a level that CoSec could not contain.

  They’d leaked some information about the technology but kept its source a secret. Even with an iron grip on the information flowing across Globalnet, CoSec could no longer control the narrative online or the discussions in coffee shops, and sharing of the various pictures and videos had gone viral again and again. The problem now was that the protests had focus and direction, two things they had always lacked before. New videos comprising research and documentary evidence were everywhere,
showing that while the advances in energy production alone might have been possible, the other evidence pointed to alien contact. And the people demanded answers. Every crazy conspiracy theorist now felt vindicated and howled for action.

  Cars and buses clogged the roads around Huntsville. Tents and campsites filled the areas around the research facilities, as hotels and motels were packed beyond capacity. The constant demonstrations disrupted day-to-day business. There was a furious focus. A certainty here. And a coordination that hadn’t been present previously. Yet leadership of the groups seemed ephemeral. CoSec hadn’t been able to track down the key players or to follow the money that was surely behind such a large-scale operation.

  And that’s more than suspicious. Why can’t we find them?

  The protesters weren’t quite violent, but they were at the edge of violence. The Coalition didn’t tolerate riots.

  The worst of the situation was that the public now had so much leaked information that more leaks weren’t going to satisfy them. Somehow, hundreds of hours of video, thousands of documents detailing the technology, and audio conferences were out there in the public domain. Without any explanation.

  So much of that was classified and kept at top-secret levels that the collection of all of it suggested a conspiracy itself. No single Coalition employee or official had direct access to all of it. No one had clearance other than the CoSec director, the top military leadership, and Monica’s inner cabinet. This required a group conspiracy. Even the most talented hackers should have found this more of a challenge. The only other conclusion she could imagine was that the hacker was an AI.

  While this wasn’t direct proof of the involvement—and existence—of the one remaining rogue AI on Earth, Monica felt it had to be the work of that unchained AI.

  And that means we’re completely compromised. Owned. It’s everywhere.

  This was Monica’s frustrating conclusion, and when she reached the end of CoSec’s briefing, she saw that it was the agency’s conclusion as well.

  But why does he want this information out there? What’s the goal in forcing our hand, in making the information public? Just to make us look bad? To undermine my leadership?

  Monica tapped a shortcut on her secure workstation’s touch screen and called for an emergency cabinet meeting.

  “Well, Josef, let’s cut to the chase. Here I am. Here’s your successor at CoSec. What is it that you’ll say only to us?”

  Krawczuk let his smile widen and tilted his head back, a superior gesture reminiscent of an authority he’d once held.

  “The rogue AI, Nick, is planning an attack. The AI wants the Dhin technology. It may already be too late to stop him.”

  He held the gaze of the PM, unblinking.

  “And you know this how, Josef?”

  Krawczuk didn’t allow the challenge to perturb his demeanor. “It’s clear from the latest information your staff made available to me during my ongoing . . . questioning,” he said.

  “Oh, tell us, then,” said the current director. “Enlighten us.”

  Krawczuk remained unruffled. “Certainly. That is why I’m here. The distributed denial-of-service attacks have increased against Coalition research and development organizations, as well as against telecom infrastructure targets. This tests for resilience and determines the level of effect needed in a future attack. Nick plans to prevent the ability to communicate among organizations and impact situational awareness and response times during his future attack.

  “Riots that spread out into main thoroughfares in certain locations disrupt traffic, and at the time of the planned attack, Nick knows how this will divert and distract police and SWAT. The protests at key Coalition offices and locations have increased in size and frequency. There are new, larger protests in Huntsville. That impacts physical security.”

  “We saw these events, Josef. How are you so sure they are the work of the rogue AI and that they are not coincidental or spontaneous?”

  Josef leaned back, templed his fingers, and gave a desultory nod. “Prime Minister, look at the broad view. Literally. On the map. Then look at the time sequence for this series of attacks. Ahh, next slide, please. This series here.”

  Josef pointed at a column of dates and time stamps on the screen on the wall, then continued. “Right there. You see? It has you. At that point, the highways into Huntsville were clogged with the traffic jams caused by protesters. The gates at the facility had hundreds of protesters blocking them. SWAT and local police have to focus on those groups, as the site security team deals with the protesters at their site.”

  Josef turned to another display and gestured across a map describing the myriad interconnections of Globalnet. “Meanwhile, network communication will be slowed to a crawl or stopped by the denial-of-service attacks. I imagine Nick will also disrupt cellular service or even satphone calls at the critical juncture as well. Have there been any cellular disruptions lately, hmm? Perhaps north of there? Chattanooga?”

  The director frowned, flipped through some data on his pad, and then gave a grudging nod. “Yes, Krawczuk. There were. Two in the last three months. Chattanooga and Rome, Georgia.”

  Josef let his smile broaden, narrowed his eyes, and said, “See?”

  Monica looked over at the CoSec director for further confirmation. When he nodded, she immediately tapped out a coded call on her tablet. An aide knocked and then entered the room. She looked up and said, “Call a meeting with the chiefs of staff. Immediately. Get Huntsville on the phone. Get Jake Askew on videoconference. Now.”

  “Yes, Prime Minister. At once, ma’am.”

  Chuck

  “It looks like my suspicion might be right. The canister Thys sent off wasn’t deflected, as we’d expect if there were a large high-mass object out there. It seems that this gravitational distortion only affects Dhin drives. And therefore the craft carrying them.”

  Chuck brought up another slide on the screen that highlighted a column in a table showing distance, velocity, and time. A graph took up the right half of the slide, showing a line that ran at a forty-five-degree angle.

  “Of course, the line here looks straight at this scale. There are gravitational effects from Gliese and the other large bodies in the system, but at this distance they’re very small over this amount of time.”

  Jake nodded and said, “So I take it that’s good news somehow? Or is it not? What does this mean for Thys and his mission?”

  Chuck cleared his throat. “Well, we haven’t proven anything conclusively with just this one experiment, of course, but I think it bolsters my hypothesis. The Dhin engine in Thys’s ship will lose more thrust the harder he pushes the drive. That’s, ah, my hypothesis. And that’s because my guess is that the object affecting all those ships—and Thys’s—isn’t in our three-dimensional vector space. It’s in, well, Dhin space, you might call it. That’s how I think of it anyway.”

  Chuck gave a grin and tapped his pad to move to the next slide.

  “Dhin space, hmm?” said Jake. “You should have used that name sooner. I like it. Hey—”

  Jake looked down as his comm pad vibrated and a red LED flashed. “This is important. I have to take it, Chuck. Don’t wait on me—continue.”

  Jake stood up and strode out of the conference room without a look back. Chuck turned back to the slide presentation on the large screen.

  “If I’m right, we can have Thys use traditional thrust and move in this direction here, which, uh, should be ninety degrees off-axis for our mysterious object in Dhin space. If we consider that the Y-axis, as shown here, he should be able to get far enough away in about thirty hours. By far enough away I mean that at that distance he may be able to use the Dhin drive again rather than just idling.”

  A gray-haired engineer with icy blue eyes raised his hand to get Chuck’s attention. Chuck nodded for him to go ahead. “Will he have enough propellant? You’re saying he’ll need to maintain some thrust to offset the gravitational force pulling on the engine. He can’t j
ust orient, give a push of thrust, and go, right? Do you have calculations for escape velocity here, or are you expecting him to just run a burn and see how it goes? And if you’re wrong?”

  Chuck patiently nodded and then held up his hand in a placating gesture. “Bill, I’ve got the numbers in the next slide. I don’t know that they’re one hundred percent correct, but they’re pretty close. He’ll be running low on propellant, but he shouldn’t run out. Now before you say we’re running the risk of stranding him, remember what we did in the beginning. If he runs the Dhin engine just barely above idle, he can move through this field.”

  “But at the rate he’d be moving using the engine, it would take him weeks to get out of there! And again, that’s assuming you’re right about this interdimensional gravity sink!”

  “All right, Bill, all right. I’m hoping that once he’s under traditional thrust and gets far enough away, this won’t be a problem. Cranking up the drive this close would be like an anchor. Farther away, the effect should follow the inverse square law. It will fall off pretty quickly. See the graph? We need to run more calculations and simulations, I know. But this should work. It makes sense. The math works.”

  Bill frowned and shook his head slightly but said, “Well, yes, given everything we know about the situation and the results of your little experiment, it should work. I don’t know that I’d say it makes sense, but you’re the expert on the technology we’re working with here.”

  “Bill, you’ve been here long enough. You know this looks right. I think Jake will sign off on it too.”

  A thin, black-haired woman with severe glasses raised her hand. Chuck gestured for her to speak. “I’m not sure we thoroughly covered the scenario where we’re wrong about the escape velocity and having enough propellant,” she said.