by Andrew Beery
"Lieutenant Commander Sherry Melbourne, allow me to present Captain Running Stream, formerly of the Modos Syndicate and currently our liaison to the resistance movement—the Modos Liberation Front."
"Captain," Sherry said, while extending a hand to shake. "It's a pleasure to finally meet you."
Running Stream hesitantly reached forward to take her hand. This form of interspecies touching was still somewhat strange to him. It seemed humans would shake anything that had a hand as a way of greeting.
"The pleasure is mine, Commander. Your Admiral has told me much about your people and Earth. I look forward to our peoples growing closer."
The turbo-lift swished open and the small party stepped on to the gravity plating. Sherry touched the control bar and said, "Observation One."
The trip through the station was quick, as the executive landing pad was located close to the primary conference room known as "Observation One." The turbo-lift swished open again, and Commander Melbourne ushered the others out.
Admiral Bud Faragon stood off to the side of the chamber, near the nanite-reinforced transparent aluminum observation window. He was gesturing toward the orbital shipyards and talking quietly, but with obvious passion. A Suhtian delegation was listening intently to the GCP Admiral.
The delegation included several individuals Cat had met on the Suhtian flagship, the Divine Purpose. This included two senior diplomats: Admiral Tuti and Elder Farnin. In addition, there were three other Suhtians present. Cat knew the female was Farnin's mate, a middle-aged Suhtian named Dela-Ti. The other two were a mystery. Both were young, and if Cat had to guess they would be administrative assistants with functions not unlike those of her friend Sherry. When Admiral Faragon saw them, he excused himself and walked toward Cat.
Cat smiled as she saluted one of her oldest friends. Bud Faragon returned the salute, and opted for a hug as well. It violated numerous written and unwritten rules, but Cat had become like a daughter to him.
"So, the Prodigal Daughter returns," Admiral Faragon said, with a broad grin.
"Indeed I do—and I bring friends. Admiral, allow me to present Captain Running Stream... my captor and friend."
"Sir!" Captain Running Stream saluted the admiral in a close approximation of what he had seen Cat do.
The Admiral returned his salute. "A pleasure to finally meet you, Captain... although I must admit, when your name first came across my desk this was not the meeting I envisioned."
"Our people have a saying:‘Strange days make for strange friends,’" Running Stream replied, while extending a hand to shake the one offered by the admiral. "I was sharing with Cat a few minutes ago that kidnapping her was the best thing the resistance could have done."
Admiral Faragon chuckled. "We have a similar saying... one of our greatest writers, a man named Shakespeare wrote, 'Misery acquaints a man with strange bedfellows.' I gather from her reports that targeting Admiral Kimbridge’s prison shuttle was not an accident."
Running Stream smiled as he walked with the others back toward the Suhtian delegation. "You baited a fine hook, sir! Our goal at the time was to gather intelligence that would eventually lead us to potential allies. Never did we imagine we would have such a capable ally in our midst."
"Well, I can't say I'm happy to have a problem like this land in our lap, but at least it comes with a new set of allies."
"Speaking of problems...," Cat interjected, "Mr. Zimmerman informed me just prior to leaving the Yorktown that we are expecting an incoming message from our Naanac sources."
"Indeed," Admiral Faragon agreed. "It came in a few minutes ago, right on schedule. I was going to brief everyone together in the CIC's ready room."
***
The Command Information Center (CIC) for Orbital One was the de facto electronic nerve center for the GCP. All tactical information, reports, communications, and intelligence data ultimately made it to this room. The ready room was an adjacent conference room. The term "ready room" was an archaic term that had, in the past, meant a fighter pilot's stand-by lounge. The term had been usurped by, of all things, a science fiction program in the late 20th century; the term now meant a command officer's executive conference room, usually right off the bridge of a starship.
The ready room was spacious without being huge. There was ample seating for Admiral Tuti, Elder Farnin, Dela-Ti, and their two aids, Lieutenants Khimbr and Maasin-Tuk. The Tuk designation was apparently the Suhtian equivalent of a doctorate in Applied Sciences. In addition to the Suhtian delegation, The GCP was represented by Admirals Kimbridge and Faragon as well as Commanders Kirkland and Melbourne. The sole representative from the Modos resistance was Captain Running Stream.
“The message from Naanac indicates we can expect a fully committed assault,” Faragon said, as the group was seated.
“‘Fully committed…’ What are we talking in terms of numbers?” Cat asked.
Admiral Faragon turned to look at Running Stream. The Bearephant rose and extended a trunk to point to a section of a floating three-dimensional image that hung in the middle of the conference table.
“The intel we are getting from our embedded spies on many of the occupied slave worlds is that there has been an unprecedented pullback of occupation forces… and not just on the well-established worlds. We have reports of the same thing happening on worlds that have been under Modos control for less than fifty of your years.”
Elder Farin studied the map carefully. The universe it depicted had birthed his people. He sighed and leaned back.
“How many?” he asked.“How many are coming?”
Running Stream paused before answering the elder statesman.“Conservatively we are probably talking something on the order of hundreds of thousands of ships. Entire battle divisions.”
“Good Lord,” Faragon muttered.“Once they start coming through the wormhole, they will not stop coming for months. It will be like a faucet we can’t turn off.”
Cat looked at Ken, who nodded he was ready. She stood and walked toward a clear section of floor.“Perhaps it’s a faucet we don’t need to turn off.”
At her command, Ken triggered a second holographic display. This time it was a recreation of the launch of the Suhtian starship designated 4400 from the original Suhtian home world in the Betaverse. This was the ship Cat and the others had discovered on that abandoned world. It had been built by the ancient Suhtians as part of their diaspora fleet.
"Computer, advance to time sequence to 14:23:00"
Per Cat's command, the display shifted and froze. Now a number of Modos Syndicate ships could be seen firing on the 4400.
"This is our escape from the Betaverse onboard the diaspora ship. This view is courtesy of one of the Modos fighters that was attacking us. That fighter was caught in a massive hyperfield backwash and, as a result, joined us for our jump."
Cat paused so the group could watch the battle unfold. At 14:24:18 a massive hyperfield bubble literally exploded into existence. The view from the fighter was immediately filled with a series of undulating electric-violet and -pink tendrils of light. Suddenly the holographic display ended. Cat turned to face the others.
“At that point the craft’s external sensors overloaded and shorted out… But you saw what I needed you to see.”
Admiral Faragon nodded. He understood. This was confirmed by his next statement.“The 4400 opened a transdimensional hyperjump portal without the need of a massive gravitational well. The Modos, on the other hand, have to use a single entry point near the massive black hole called SgrA. If we can master this technology, then the GCP could in theory outflank the Modos by jumping from any point to any point within the two universes.”
“I would point out,” Cat added,“that the ability to jump directly between universes must have been known to the Heshe, but for whatever reason they chose not to share that portion of their technology. There may be inherent dangers that we are not yet able to understand and/or cope with.”
Farin looked at his wife. She nodd
ed her approval, and he gestured with his trunk for Maasin-Tuk to proceed. Admiral Faragon raised an eyebrow. Farin smiled in a very human-like response to the Admiral’s unspoken question.
“When we realized the limits of your technology, we anticipated your need. As I'm sure you are aware, we developed the very technologies you observed. Doctor Maasin is an expert in these areas."
The rotund Maasin-Tuk stood and faced the two GCP admirals.“We may be in a position to help you here.”
He stepped over to where Cat was standing.“If you will permit me, Admiral?”
Cat smiled and yielded the floor to the scientist.
“Our ancestors build the diaspora fleet that brought our people from our home universe to yours."
He gestured with a small handheld device and the holographic display changed to reveal two universes linked by a wormhole. These quickly zoomed in to focus on two galaxies... one within each of the universes and linked by the same wormhole. A sheen displayed around each universe like two soap bubbles forced up between each other. Where they touched a flat membrane formed.
"This was our attempt to flee the Modos. Our engineers developed a technique for amplifying hyperfields using harmonics."
Cat looked intrigued. "The field generated was 10^27 orders of magnitude greater than anything we can produce. Nothing we have can produce a resonance chamber capable of supporting those types of field densities!"
Maasin-Tuk swayed back and forth in excitement. "You are absolutely right. There is really nothing in the universe that can contain forces on these scales. We don't even try!"
"Of course," Cat said, as understanding suddenly dawned. "Hyperfields are inherently transdimenional. You use the reflection off the‘brane’ interface between dimensions to generate your harmonic."
"The inherent stability of each dimension is more than enough to bound the field resonance," the Bearephant added with a grin.
Admiral Faragon stood and walked toward the slowly rotating display. "This is fascinating, but it doesn't answer the question posed indirectly by the Heshe. Why is this technology so dangerous the Heshe were afraid to share it with us?"
"I suspect," Maasin-Tuk said, "It might be because this technology can very well destroy both universes."
Chapter Three - Beachhead...
Cat looked at Admiral Faragon and raised an eyebrow. For his part, the older admiral turned to look at Maasin-Tuk.
"Doctor... would you care to explain that last statement?"
"The brane interfaces between dimensions are weakened by these trans-dimensional breaches. They need time to recover. Too many conduits formed in the same place too soon might cause the branes to rupture. It would be like two soap bubbles merging."
Admiral Faragon nodded. "So the universe would effectively double in size...,”
"Not necessarily, sir," Cat added. "Each universe is in an equilibrium state where each of its cosmological constants are in balance with the others to yield a stable configuration. Mixing the states of two disparate universes would be highly unlikely to yield a stable configuration."
Maasin-Tuk waved his trunk. "Even if somehow they did, the physical laws our bodies rely on to exist would change drastically. Water might freeze at room temperature. Electricity might respond differently to magnetic fields... I could go on."
"No need" Admiral Faragon said, with a grim expression on his face. "How did the Suhtian people use this technology safely before... and how did Cat's ship use it earlier this year without adverse effect?"
Elder Farin spoke up. "It was a political decision made by our ruling council. Our scientists determined the universes could withstand roughly 20,000 trans-dimensional incursions before becoming unstable. The decision was made to allow no more than twenty percent of that number to occur. The ship Admiral Kimbridge used to escape the Modos earlier this year was left behind in a disabled state because its use exceeded that safety threshold. Had we realized that hundreds of generations later a race would arrive with access to your incredible nanite repair technologies we might have taken more extreme measures to destroy the ship and its technology."
"So, we are really no better off," Cat muttered out loud. "We have access to a technology that might give us a strategic advantage in our battle with the Modos Syndicate, but we dare not use it."
Maasin-Tuk swayed back and forth in excitement. "That might not be entirely true, Admiral Kimbridge. We have had many, many years to refine our understanding of trans-dimensional hyperfield dynamics. We believe we can generate a secondary harmonic which is temporally out of phase with the first."
"Of course!" Cat yelled. "That could work!"
"Would anyone care to explain for those of us intellectually challenged?" Admiral Fargon asked dryly.
Cat smiled at her friend. "What Doctor Maasin is suggesting is that a second harmonic resonance be established that cancels out the first... essentially repairing the damage moments after it occurs. We do the same thing with noise canceling headphones."
"The system is not perfect," Maasin-Tuk added. "But it increases by several orders of magnitude the number of jumps that can be conducted safely."
***
Ricky stood in the board room of the Modos Syndicate on Naanac. The room occupied the entire south-facing side of the twenty-eighth floor of the Syndicate headquarters in the city of Harromog. The southern wall was a massive sheet of sapphire glass. Almost as hard as diamond and reinforced with a low-level force field, the one-way glass prevented light from escaping the room while allowing an unencumbered view of the ocean and black sand beaches.
Ricky found the view intoxicating. A sound across the room caught his attention and he turned back to face the others. The room was filled with Bearephants and their various personal aides. All told there were twenty-three members of the Syndicate board in the room. Well actually that number was more like twenty, Ricky mused silently. He and Honey were impersonating Admiral Rockclam and his new aide, a blue-skinned humanoid named Ordi.
The real Admiral Rockclam was sedated and under the care of Captain Takei in a GCP safe house a few kilometers away. A neural interface gave Ricky surface level access to the Admiral's memories. An edited recording of the meeting would be implanted in the Admiral's memory before he was released and allowed to wake up later in the day. He would awake with hazy memories... thinking he had actually attended the meeting after getting a little drunk the night before.
Ricky's purpose in attending the meeting had already been accomplished. Each board member, to include the chairman, was now infected with ENOs—GCP surveillance nanites. These microscopic machines were linked with quantum entangled communication nodes that were themselves tied into a cloaked WhimPy defense platform located several light years away.
One of the GCP's major tactical advantages in their battle with the Modos Syndicate was their ability to communicate instantly across interstellar distances. FTL communication was not in the Modos bag of tricks yet.
Ricky listened to the Chairman, a Modos called Snatch Bait, as he detailed the invasion strategy. In a nutshell, it was an invasion in force. Mind-numbing numbers of ships would make the transition between universes using the hyperfield conduit at SgrA. The bulk of the first several thousand ships would be lightly armored older vessels. Their sole purpose was to wear down the GCP defenses by virtue of sheer numbers. There seemed to be little concern for loss of life on these ships, as they were piloted by slave crews. To make matters worse, Ricky knew the GCP’s most powerful weapons system– the SJ missile would be unreliable this near a super massive black hole. The GCP would have very little control over the weapons and could easily destroy large numbers of their own ships with friendly fire.
Once the GCP defenses were depleted, the main invasion with the Syndicate's Conqueror-class battle cruisers would begin. These ships were formidable weapons of war, with adaptive shielding and an impressive array of beam and kinetic weapons available.
These ships would form a beachhead and prevent any remaini
ng GCP forces from getting close to the SgrA conduit. At this point the troop carriers would arrive. This was the bulk of the Syndicate forces. The standing armies from virtually every major Syndicate world had been pulled for this invasion. The size of the invasion force staggered the imagination.
The only thing that kept the Modos Syndicate from overwhelming the GCP immediately was the bottleneck caused by the need to use the transdimensional conduit to move between the two universes.
While it was true that the GCP had better technology in the form of nanites, FTL communications and, thanks to the Suthian Federation, the ability to jump between universes without the need to use the massive gravity well at SgrA, it was also true that none of these things would matter if the Syndicate managed to form a beachhead and insisted on attacking the GCP through that beachhead.
It seemed to Ricky that the only chance the GCP had of winning this war was to redefine where the war got fought. This was an opinion shared by Admirals Faragon and Kimbridge. With luck, the information supplied by the ENOs would present a solution.
A gentle tap on his shoulder got his attention. Honey, looking delectable in her blue skin and all-too-tight jumper nodded toward the chairman.
"Am I boring you, Admiral Rockclam?” Snatch Bait said, with a hint of scorn in his voice.
"Of course not, sir," Ricky answered.
"And?" the chairman prompted.
"Sir?"
Honey handed Ricky a data pad and pointed to a paragraph that was displayed midway down the page. It detailed ship deployments from his sector. It also included the line "SLAP ME"
Ricky raised an eyebrow. Honey sent a silent command to the data pad to flash the word "NOW".
Ricky took the pad and backhanded Honey across the face. He hoped it wasn't too hard, but it had to be hard enough to put on a good show. Apparently it worked, because the chairman's face now sported a broad grin.
Ricky held the pad up and looked across the room, totally ignoring the blue-skinned slave at his side.