by B. V. Larson
That became my immediate goal once I’d learned what was really going on here. I followed Abrams and swooned over every gizmo, attribute and design feature he showed us.
The tour was magnificent in any regard. I barely needed to ham it up for Abrams’ sake. The ship was sleek, unlike anything else Earth had produced. Instead of looking like a bunch of modules we’d hammered together in space, it was a single hull of planes with rounded curves joining them.
“Why is every angle gentle?” I asked. “There’s nothing boxy aboard.”
“It’s a defensive design feature,” Abrams said. “Space has no friction—or at least, very little. Nothing to run into like air or water on a planet. That normally allows designers to make sharp angles the rule, as they’re easier to manufacture.”
I glanced at Vega, but he just shrugged. I guess he knew he was out of his element when it came to starship design.
“But,” Abrams said dramatically, caressing a bulkhead with his tapered fingertips. “This is a warship. She’ll see plenty of matter and energy thrown at her hull. Like a stealthy aircraft, softer edges are harder to detect and harder to damage with particles or blasts of energy.”
I nodded thoughtfully. “I guess that makes sense. You’ve tested these theories, right—?”
“Of course I have! Extensively!” he exclaimed, instantly defensive and angry again.
“Great... Let’s see the bridge next, Doc.”
Abrams marched off, and we followed. He grumbled about being insulted and taken for a fool the whole way up the spine of the ship.
For some reason, I’d expected to find the bridge to be designed along the lines of Hammerhead, my first command. Nothing could be further from the truth. The bridge was multi-level and spherical in configuration. Padded cages, rather than true seats, were suspended here and there in front of various workstations.
“This is a marvel of modern design,” Abrams informed me.
“Sure looks like it.”
He looked at me suspiciously, correctly presuming sarcasm. I kept a blank face, and eventually he continued.
“Why arrange stations in a flat plane?” Abrams asked rhetorically. “There’s no need for such restrictions. We’ve placed seven stations strategically around the spherical bridge. What’s more, the purpose of each station is malleable. Any one of them can pull up and take over the tasks of any other. That way, if a person is injured or absent in an emergency, anyone else can take over their function.”
I nodded thoughtfully. A frown had crept over my face, however, and Vega wore the same expression.
“Doubters…” Abrams said, putting his hands on his hips. “I’m plagued by this sort of thing. All my life, it’s been a constant. You’re like animals exploring new feed and immediately disliking—”
“It tastes fine, Doc,” I said. “Please go on.”
His eyes darted back and forth between the two of us. We kept our faces neutral, not wanting to distract him further, so he went on.
“All right then... The stations are interchangeable. I imagine that in practice, certain officers will be deemed best suited to a defined group of tasks. There’s nothing preventing that arrangement. You’ve got freedom and flexibility here, not some new obstacle to worry about.”
“Are there passwords, at least, protecting critical functions?” Vega asked.
I glanced at him. I’d been about to ask the same question.
Dr. Abrams glared again. “My team isn’t made up of fools! Yes, there are permissions for each interface. A given crewman can’t pull up the helm controls from engineering, for example, without the proper login credentials.”
“From engineering?” I asked.
“Perhaps I didn’t make myself clear,” Abrams said. “Each function has a unique interface. Each interface can be accessed from anywhere aboard. This chamber—the bridge, as we’ll call it for the sake of tradition—exists to allow command personnel a single location to gather. They could do all their work from disparate locations around the ship, if they wanted to.”
Now I was alarmed. So was Vega.
“Can you work with that?” Vega asked me. “Or do we need to make changes?”
A gargling sound came out of Abrams, but he didn’t shout at us.
“I can…” I said, figuring I’d lock out remote access except in special override cases. “I can work with this. It’s not a problem.”
Abrams breathed a sigh of relief.
“Far from a problem,” he said loudly, “you’ll find it’s a dramatic advance in efficiency.”
“I’m sure I will.”
“Good… Now let’s get down to details. When you shepherd a flock of phase-ships through a rift, they’ll need to hug quite close. This ship is too small to make a rift of dramatic size. The anomaly will be small, but it will still be stable and effective.”
I frowned, thinking about it. Earth’s first starship looked good, but functionally it was starting to sound like a cut-rate affair compared to the vessels produced by our more experienced star-faring brothers.
“How close will they have to be?” I asked.
Abrams went over the numbers, and the display screens reproduced simulations. It was going to be tight. It was a good thing most of our ships were small.
In interstellar travel, ships traveled in groups. Usually a capital ship of real size opened a rift. The others following it had no star drives themselves. The smaller ships operated as screens to protect the starship, and they generally did the heavy fighting and dying. Only the biggest ships could do both tasks effectively.
The most surprising thing Abrams had managed with this vessel was a balanced combination of lean displacement, respectable weaponry, and the capacity to create a minimal rift.
“Wait a minute,” I said, “what about this ship? Can she phase-out like the ships she shepherds?”
Abrams blanched. “No, sadly. The design elements won’t allow it. A phase-ship generates a field that forms a bubble around the hull. That’s a continuous energy drain. This ship has the capacity to summon a stable, but temporary rift at a single location. The technology and the math are entirely different.”
I shrugged. “Why not just add a module to phase-out? They aren’t very big. Then our entire fleet could operate together.”
For once, Abrams didn’t get angry.
“The main problem has to do with energy and size requirements,” he said. “A phase-ship needs to be small in order to maintain a continuous effect. A true starship needs to be larger in order to generate enough power to create a stable rift all at once.”
I nodded. “Then you have done something remarkable,” I said. “This is the smallest starship I’ve ever seen. Even an Imperial destroyer is a bit larger.”
For some reason, this statement made Dr. Abrams puff up with pride.
“I’ve been saying as much for months. I’m glad you can see reality in this instance, Blake—I know it doesn’t come naturally to you.”
I forced a smile. There it was again. Even when Abrams was complimenting you, he was also insulting you at the same time. I wondered if he even realized he was doing it. My honest impression was that he had no idea how others perceived his words.
Somehow, knowing he was clueless made it easier to put up with him.
=12=
Returning to Earth, I felt triumphant. I was going into space again. The ship up there—it was marvelous. As much as Dr. Abrams bugged me, I had to admit, we all owed him our thanks. He’d created technological marvels that moved Earth far ahead in the armament race.
There were problems, of course. The greatest of these was the imminent arrival of Admiral Fex’s fleet. Had we built this wonderful light cruiser only to see it destroyed in its first action against invaders? Was it too little, too late?
I refused to entertain such thoughts of disaster and gloom today. Whatever happened, I was going into space again. It was only a matter of time. The ship was ready, even though a hundred elements weren’t quite fin
ished yet.
Admiral Vega didn’t care. He’d ordered me to assemble a crew and get them aboard the new ship as soon as possible.
“Who can I take with me?” I asked.
He shrugged. “Give me some names. I’ll get them approved. We have to move fast, however. It won’t do us any good to have a starship that’s sitting up there in dry-dock, empty and lifeless.”
“Shakedown cruise?”
“As soon as you can get her underway.”
The ship itself, I’d learned, wasn’t in orbit over Earth. If she had been, it was likely Admiral Fex would have seen it. Possibly, they’d even have destroyed her.
The new ship was in orbit over Mars, rather than Earth. We’d taken that enormous leap due to the availability of materials that could be mined easily from Mars’ moons and Mars herself. Also, we’d gambled the ship would go undetected there.
With the transmat allowing instant transport out to the vessel and back, most of our logistical problems had been defeated.
“What is the range of a transmat, anyway?” I asked Vega.
He looked at me sternly. “That’s classified, Blake.”
“Oh come on. Godwin doesn’t care about our transmat technology.”
“We don’t know what he cares about. Here’s my answer: one meter farther out than Mars. That’s how far it can go.”
I rolled my eyes, but I didn’t argue. They’d give me the command I’d dreamed of. Respect and trust were implicit in that decision, even if Godwin was still freaking everyone out.
Frowning, I had another thought. “What do you think Godwin will do when I take this ship out for a test drive? If he comes back, I mean?”
“Hopefully, he won’t be able to find you,” Vega said. “You know him better than I do. What do you think he’ll do?”
I shook my head blankly. “The guy is a mystery to me.”
“That’s what I hate about him.”
We went back to planning the ship’s maiden voyage and working up a crew roster. I put forward some names from my old crew, and they were accepted, but that was nowhere near enough people. Hammerhead had supported only a tiny complement compared to this monster. A crew roster of five hundred names had to be worked up. It was quite a task.
“I’ve got authorization for a big boost,” Vega told me as we worked through long lists of personnel.
“I could sure use it,” I told him.
“This ship can’t be entirely manned by rookies. We understand that. Unfortunately, there are precious few service people who’ve manned a spacecraft of any kind.”
“Don’t I know it…” I said, scrolling on my tablet past lists of people from various aircraft carrier groups and the like.
“What we can do is sign on a portion of the people from each phase-ship.”
I stared at him for a second. “That would be excellent—but I don’t want to disrupt the rest of our fledgling navy.”
“Right. At most, we’ll allow you one of the three shifts from each phase-ship. They’ll have to make due with two experienced crews, and one group of moonlighters.”
“Ten people from each phase-ship?” I asked.
“We can do that.”
“Great… that’ll give me nearly two hundred experienced hands. That’s a huge relief, Admiral.”
He stood up, smiling, and clasped my shoulder. “Excellent. Take a first cut at those names. I’ll meet with you again tomorrow.”
“What’s pressing?”
He shrugged. “I told them it would be no more than five from each phase-ship. I’ve got some arm-twisting to do.”
He left, and I got to work. After my own list of familiar reliables, like Samson, Dalton, Gwen and Mia, I reached for the list of phase-ship people.
Looking at the names, I realized I knew a lot of them. I’d been giving these same people private trainings for weeks.
Frowning and cocking my head to one side, I looked after Admiral Vega suspiciously. Had he planned all this? Had he cooked up a scheme that would get me into contact with the phase-ship crews all the while knowing I would draw upon them for my initial crew?
I’m not a man who generally believes in coincidences—and this was too big of one to be an accident.
“Sly bastard…” I said, moving Vega up a notch in my estimation.
“Who, me?”
My head snapped back the other way.
The office had been empty the moment before, but it did have a small private bathroom attached.
The bathroom doorway swung open and Godwin stood there. A wisp of steam followed him, like he’d just gotten finished with a shower, but he was bone-dry and dressed.
“Godwin…?” I said, shocked.
Jolted into action, I grabbed up all the documents and tablets scattered over the desk. I flipped over each tablet and shuffled the hardcopy into a rumpled pile.
“Relax,” he said, chuckling. “I know all about your starship.”
I stared at him, then glowered. “What do you want? Give me a reason not to shoot you right now.”
“Well, first off, it would be a diplomatic incident.”
“You’re a spy, not a diplomat.”
“Is there any difference? Really?”
“Yes. One is officially sanctioned and accepted. The other is free game.”
“Hmm…” he said. “Such ingratitude. Who do you think gave Abrams the tech to build that pretty ship of his? Did you really think he pulled it all out of his twisted mind? In two short years?”
I blinked, taken by surprise. I recalled then having had lingering doubts. Abrams had said he had been unable to figure out how to create a stable breach. Hell, many of the components of our original ship had been cannibalized from the Rebel Kher ship I’d brought home to Earth. To expect such advancement so quickly—it did defy logic.
“Okay,” I said. “I can believe you helped. Why the hell doesn’t Abrams remember you, then?”
“Because I don’t want him to.”
“And me?”
“You’ve been hard to control—the hardest on this world. Several times, I’ve tried to nudge you, and you’ve resisted. I decided to use different techniques with you than I’ve used with the others.”
My mouth sagged. He was giving so much away. So much was implied. He’d “nudged” people. Did that include Vega? Or Clemens? Was my grooming for this position not an accident of fate, not a plan hatched by my superiors, but rather a plot backed by aliens I barely understood?
“I can see my words are disturbing you,” Godwin said. “I apologize. Let me start again.”
“If you ‘nudge’ me, and I figure it out… I’ll kill you, Godwin.”
He blinked then. I could tell I’d troubled him. Probably that was because he knew that I meant it, and that I might be able to figure it out.
“What would you prefer the basis of our relationship to be, then?” he asked.
“An exchange of information and suggestions.”
He nodded and spread his hands. “That’s all I’ve ever wanted! The problem has always been the natural resistance of your species. You don’t trust outsiders.”
“With good reason.”
“But I’ve proven myself over and over again.”
I made a farting sound with my mouth. “You warned me about Fex even as he was actually showing up. For all I knew, you were aboard his ship when he got here. You’ve constantly advised me to surrender, all the while claiming you’re helping us to arm ourselves. Which is it?”
“There’s no conflict,” he said. “Just misperception. We want you to arm yourselves. We want to you to be victorious. But we don’t want you to fight the Rebel Kher.”
Frowning, I thought that over. Godwin came closer and took a seat across the desk from me. I stopped clutching the papers I’d been hiding and dropped them on the desk. There was no point in hiding things from this spook.
“Think of it from our point of view,” Godwin said. “You’re a project. One of many. A seed has been planted h
ere. We hope you’ll blossom and eventually grow into a great power to face the Imperials. If you fight Fex, you’ll be wrecking our work.”
I nodded slowly. “So, you council surrender, but we’re supposed to keep building in the meantime, right? What if Fex doesn’t like that? What if Fex outlaws an Earth navy?”
Godwin smiled oddly. “Let us worry about that. We’ll talk to him, the same way we talk to your people. Eventually, he’ll see reason.”
My mouth squirmed but I said nothing. He was talking in the plural now. As if Nomads were crawling out of the woodwork.
“How many Godwins are there?” I asked him. “On Earth, I mean.”
He laughed. “That’s classified.”
=13=
I reported Godwin’s visit. That didn’t make anyone happy—but at least they didn’t try to take my command away from me.
“Why didn’t your team catch him?” I asked Vega.
He glared at the desk, his hands on his hips. He was fuming.
“He was right here? That’s what you’re telling me? Right here in my damned office?”
“Yes. Check the vids. You have this area under surveillance, I’m sure.”
“We have you under surveillance. Nothing was tripped. We got no signal that time. He must know we’re on to him. He must have countermeasures.”
“Aren’t you going to bring up the recordings and—?”
He made an angry gesture, and I shut up. “Doesn’t matter,” he said. “We have an army of geeks watching it all right now, I’m sure. Maybe the problem is we were talking about classified information. The investigation team isn’t entirely cleared on the new ship—that’s a mistake.”
I nodded. “By the way, I’ve got a name for her.”
“No you don’t. She’s SCL-1. That’s her name.”
Making a derisive noise, I tossed him a tablet full of names. One was in bigger font and bold letters at the top.
“That doesn’t sell well in the sticks, Admiral. I would suggest you check out this list.”