Frontiers 07 - The Expanse

by Ryk Brown

“Turn them over,” Abby ordered, her voice calm. “Get them on their backs and remove their shirts.” She turned to the technician nearest her. “Go to the next compartment and get the med-pack.” She moved to the wall as the man left the compartment and took the med-pack for that compartment off its wall mounts. She dropped it on the floor beside the injured Takaran. As the others finished removing his shirt, she quickly opened the box, pulled out a small device, and placed it on the floor next to him. She then pulled the two leads out, stuck them onto the Takaran man’s chest, and activated the unit. “Analyzing. Analyzing,” the mechanical voice announced as she checked the man’s neck for a pulse. “Stand clear. Stand clear.” Abby pushed a button on the device. “Shocking.” The Takaran’s body twitched slightly as the device delivered a precise electrical stimulus intended to restart his heart.

  “Buistra!” Vladimir urged his engineers as they detached the REMS-pole tripod from the deck. “Move, move, move!” he added as the four of them picked up the entire apparatus in one piece and carried it across the room. Two other technicians disconnected and removed the damaged REMS-pole and tripod.

  The other jump drive technician rolled the injured Corinairan over. He gasped at the sight of the man’s charred face and hands. “Oh, God!” he said, recoiling from the sight.

  “Get his shirt off!” Abby ordered as the other technician returned with the med-pack from the next compartment.

  “Analyzing. Analyzing,” the device connected to the Takaran again instructed. “Stand clear. Stand clear.” Abby pressed the button again. “Shocking.” Again the Takaran’s body twitched.

  “Do you know what to do?” Abby asked the other technician.

  The man was already pulling the leads out of the device from the second med-pack. “I know! I know!” he exclaimed as he attached the leads to the Corinairan’s burnt chest. He activated the unit.

  “Reconnect the tripod to the deck,” Vladimir ordered as he switched on the power for the second REMS-pole using its remote. Two of the technicians scrambled to secure the feet of the tripod as the other two began moving the head of the pole into position.

  The ship shook as another chunk of the debris being pulled toward the black hole’s event horizon struck the hull of the ship. The tripod began to topple over as one of the technicians scrambled to keep it upright until it could be secured to the deck.

  Lieutenant Montgomery had his eyes fixed on the massive, half-inserted plug as it nearly fell out of its socket while the ship bounced. “It is coming out!” he cried. If it fell to the floor, the plug would be more than fifty centimeters from the socket, and the energy transfer would cease, taking the two ZPEDs out of phase and forcing them to shut down. If that happened, he doubted they would be able to get them restarted.

  “Analyzing. Analyzing,” the cardio unit attached to the injured Corinairan technician announced.

  “Come on!” the jump drive technician tending to the injured man yelled impatiently.

  “No shock indicated.”

  The jump drive technician’s face sank.

  “Analyzing. Analyzing,” Abby’s device reported. “Stand clear. Stand clear.”

  Abby pushed the button one last time.

  “Shocking,” the device reported a third time. The Takaran’s body twitched once more.

  “Analyzing. Analyzing,” the device announced. “No shock indicated. Begin resuscitation efforts.”

  “Pokkers!” Abby swore in her native tongue as she bent over the Takaran’s face.

  “The tripod is secure,” one of the technicians announced.

  “Advance the pole!” Vladimir ordered. He looked about the room, praying that the ship stayed steady. Another bounce at the wrong moment could end their efforts and, in essence, all their lives. He watched the monitor on the remote as the two technicians steadied the pole on the tripod. Vladimir adjusted the claws on the end of the pole, raising them slightly in order to line them up. His fingers ached, their tips burnt by the electrical current that had transferred through to his remote when the first REMS-pole made contact with the ZPEDs output socket. He could barely feel the controls on the remote. “Forward, slowly, slowly…” The ship bounced again as another piece of debris struck the hull. “Gospadee!” He looked around again, then checked the alignment on his screen. It was still good. “Forward,” he prodded his men on the pole.

  Abby adjusted the injured Takaran’s head, pulling his chin upward to open his airway and pressed her lips around his open mouth, blowing forcefully into his lungs. She watched as his chest rose and fell with each breath, turning her head away momentarily as she filled her own lungs with fresh air between each rescue breath. After three breaths, she moved over and began chest compressions, her arms rigid and her hands locked over one another as she rocked downward. “Start resuscitation!” she ordered the technician operating the device connected to the Corinairan man.

  “But the cardio unit said…”

  “I don’t care what it said! Start resuscitation!”

  “Yes, ma’am,” the technician responded as he moved to the head of the injured Corinairan to deliver rescue breaths.

  “Contact!” Vladimir declared as the clamps touched the plug. He squeezed the trigger on the remote’s control stick, causing the clamps at the end of the pole to close tightly on the plug. He paused as the ship violently shook again, then ordered, “Push!”

  The two technicians slid the pole forward a bit more, pushing the massive plug firmly into the ZPEDs output socket. Vladimir twisted the control stick, causing the clamp to rotate the plug, locking it in place. “It’s in!” he announced as he released the clamps. “Withdraw the pole quickly!”

  After another round of chest compressions, Abby repeated the rescue breaths once more. As she returned to the Takaran man’s chest to continue with another round of compressions, she looked over her shoulder at Vladimir as he and his team retracted the REMS-pole and shut it down.

  With both energy cells securely connected and drawing most of the idling ZPEDs power away, Vladimir and his men scrambled to quickly connect the ZPEDs to the ship’s main power grid before they ran out of time. It would take only a few minutes for the energy cells to become fully charged, after which they would no longer be pulling energy away from the ZPEDs and their transfer trunk lines. If the transfer trunk line became fully charged before they were clear, there would be more dead men lying on the deck.

  “ZPED room, Captain! Report!” Nathan’s voice called over the comm-set. His hails repeated several times but continued to go unanswered.

  The first medical team arrived and immediately relieved Abby of her resuscitative efforts. A minute later, the second medical team arrived and began their assessment of the severely burnt Corinairan man. It took them less than a minute to determine that there was nothing they could do for the man, and they joined the first team in their efforts to save the Takaran.

  Abby leaned back against the wall, slowly sliding down until she was in a sitting position on the floor, her arms wrapped around her legs as she watched the medical teams work.

  “What the hell is going on down there?” Nathan wondered.

  “I’m sure they’re busy,” Cameron said.

  “Naralena, have the med teams reported in?”

  “Only that they were on scene, sir,” Naralena answered.

  “How much time do we have until we no longer have enough propellant to get home?” Nathan asked.

  “Ten minutes, sir.”

  “Technically, if we steer a straight line for Sol, we could just do one short burn and jump along that line all the way home,” Cameron said.

  “No maneuvering? No course adjustments to steer around black holes or God knows what else?” Nathan said. “What are the odds that would work?”

  “Pretty much zero, I suppose,” Cameron agreed as she steadied herself against the force of another impact.

  “Captain, Cheng!” Vladimir called over the comms.

  “Go for Captain!” Nathan answered.


  “ZPEDs are hooked in and ready to go. Doctor Sorenson is ready to begin throttling up their output as needed.”

  “Outstanding!” Nathan exclaimed. “One percent at a time, if you please. I don’t want to run them any higher than necessary to get out of here. No use in taking any chances,” he added, looking at Cameron and smiling.

  “Da, da, da,” Vladimir answered. “Starting at one percent.”

  “Loki, channel that extra energy into the mains,” Nathan ordered.

  “Aye, sir. Channeling ZPED power into the mains.”

  “Anything?” Nathan asked. The ship shook again.

  Loki stared at his console for several seconds, waiting for an indication in the change of their rate of separation from the black hole’s event horizon. “It’s helping,” he reported with some degree of hesitation. “Barely, but it’s helping. I think it’s going to take a bit more than one percent, though.”

  Nathan looked at Cameron. “Sometimes, you just have to take a chance, Commander.”

  Cameron smiled slightly.

  “Vlad, take the ZPEDs to ten percent and stand by.”

  CHAPTER FOUR

  “Our preliminary analysis indicates that we were somehow pulled off course during our last jump by the black hole’s gravity,” Abby said. She looked about at the faces gathered around the conference table in the command briefing room.

  “How is that possible?” Nathan asked. “Our jump plot should have taken us well beyond the reach of that gravity well.”

  “Yes, you are correct; it should have,” Abby admitted.

  “Even now, we’re considerably closer to the black hole than our original jump plot would’ve taken us,” Cameron added.

  “It appears that our jump drive is somehow attracted to massive gravity wells,” Abby said. “A ship traveling in normal linear fashion would not have been affected by the black hole’s gravity well, at least not when following the course we had plotted. However, somehow, our jump drive interacts with relatively nearby gravity wells, creating an attraction… one that can literally curve our jump path toward the gravity well pulling at us.”

  “How does that work?” Nathan asked.

  “As you know, we still do not fully understand how the jump drive works.” Abby thought for a moment, in obvious frustration, not only at the task of trying to explain complex physics to laypersons, but also at the fact that she herself did not fully understand the physics involved. “Imagine you have a powerful electromagnet. An object composed of a magnetic material, if placed close enough to the electromagnet, will be pulled toward it. However, if placed a sufficient distance away, the object will be unaffected. Now, instead of a simple magnetic object, place another powerful electromagnet at the same distance. The attractive force created by both electromagnets together is enough to overcome that same distance, thus drawing the two objects together.”

  “But we’ve been around large gravity wells before,” Nathan said.

  “In comparison to even a small, stellar mass black hole like the one we just escaped, anything we have encountered previously has been insignificant. Except for one.”

  “Which was?” Nathan wondered, a little annoyed that he had to ask.

  “The Campaglia.”

  “The Campaglia was a ship, Doctor. I’m pretty sure she did not carry a significant gravity well about her,” Cameron argued.

  “The Campaglia’s ZPED was massive compared to the miniature versions we have been experimenting with. If you remember, during testing of the hybrid jump drive concept, we experienced an effect that simulated that of a massive gravity well, even at relatively low outputs.”

  “The problems with the artificial gravity plating in the decks around the mini-ZPEDs,” Vladimir added.

  “Yes. Although the devices do not actually produce gravity, they have a similar attractive effect. This is why they caused problems with our jump drive.”

  “That’s why we jumped into the middle of that battle?” Nathan asked.

  “All the evidence seems to indicate such, Captain,” Abby admitted. “The act of passing through the Campaglia’s outer shields caused our jump fields to fail. Had they not done so, we would have collided with the Campaglia at unimaginable speeds.”

  “Then we just have to avoid black holes,” Nathan said.

  “Captain, there are thousands of stellar mass black holes out there,” Lieutenant Yosef stated. “We only know the location of a handful of them.”

  “How many of those are between us and Sol?” Nathan asked.

  “None, that we know of, that is. But we didn’t know about the last one, either, and that’s the point,” Yosef said.

  “Perhaps we should be looking for them along our course?” Cameron suggested.

  “We were, sir,” the lieutenant defended. “But we’re looking forward from light years away. When a star collapses, a stellar mass black hole can form in an instant. The one that we just encountered could have formed years ago, or minutes ago.”

  “So you believe that it was the result of a collapsed star?” Cameron asked.

  “That would explain the debris,” Nathan said. “It would’ve broken up whatever planets were in orbit and sucked them in.”

  “I believe it was a system designated as B157-12087 in the fleet star catalog,” Lieutenant Yosef stated.

  “How do you know?” Nathan asked.

  “Because it’s not there, sir, and the black hole is. That singularity is right where B157-12087 should be. Now there’s just a black hole and a lot of debris.”

  Nathan took a deep breath. “So, now we have to try to avoid black holes, possibly ones that we don’t even know of.”

  “We could adjust our course in an attempt to keep as much space between us and any system that we know has the potential to form a black hole,” Abby suggested.

  “I doubt that’s going to make much of a difference,” Nathan stated.

  “Not to mention that it’s bound to take longer,” Lieutenant Yosef added.

  “We have another matter to consider, Captain,” Cameron said. “Propellant. We used more than three-quarters of it escaping the black hole. We have enough to get home as long as we keep our maneuvering, acceleration, and deceleration to a minimum. However if we run into a similar situation…”

  “We won’t have enough propellant to escape a second time,” Nathan said, finishing her sentence for her. “We need to find more propellant. We have processing facilities on board, don’t we?”

  “No, sir. They were not installed prior to departure. The systems weren’t even loaded. I guess Fleet didn’t consider that aspect of our design as a priority.”

  “Any chance we can fabricate the components needed to rig something up ourselves?”

  “Assuming you have all the specifications in your database, it is possible,” Lieutenant Montgomery stated. “However, it would take some time, probably more time than it would take to get back to Earth.”

  “Not a lot of options, here,” Nathan sighed. “How far are we from reaching the fringe?”

  “Based on the state of the core and fringe worlds of Earth at the time that the Data Ark was sealed up to protect it against the bio-digital plague, we should reach the outermost edges of the fringe in about ten to twelve jumps,” Cameron reported.

  “Maybe one of those worlds can spare some propellant,” Nathan said.

  “That’s a really big maybe, sir,” Cameron stated. “We have no idea if any of those outer worlds survived. Even if they did, are they controlled by the Jung? Do they have a compatible propellant? Are they willing to provide us with a significant amount? How are we to pay them?”

  “I get the point, Commander. It’s a long shot at best.”

  “I have another idea,” Abby said. “It won’t solve the problem, but it might extend the potential range of our current propellant stores.”

  “I’m all ears, Doctor,” Nathan said as he looked across the briefing table at her.

  “We could use the ZPEDs t
o achieve greater acceleration with smaller amounts of propellant.”

  “That might work,” Vladimir agreed, sitting forward in interest.

  “Does anyone have any objections to this idea?” Nathan asked the others in attendance. Nathan leaned back in his chair for a moment, contemplating his options as he waited for opposition from his staff. “Very well, Cheng, use the ZPEDs to get maximum thrust at minimal propellant cost.”

  “Yes, sir,” Vladimir responded.

  “Captain,” Cameron said, “we should be careful not to use up too much propellant during the rest of our journey, if possible. We will need the propellant when we reach Sol.”

  “At that point, if we’re out of propellant, I’m sure Fleet can send us a bit more to get us safely into port,” Nathan commented with a smile. “Lieutenant Yosef, while you keep an eye out for black holes and other threatening anomalies, also look for signs of civilization. Maybe we’ll get lucky and find someone willing to top us off.”

  “Yes, Captain,” Lieutenant Yosef responded.

  “Even if we make contact with another civilization,” Cameron said, “we risk using valuable propellant just making orbit to investigate.”

  “Point taken, Commander,” Nathan said. “However, it won’t cost us any propellant to keep our eyes and ears open.”

  “I’m only saying that it might not be worth the course change.”

  “We’ll make that decision if and when the time comes, Commander.”

  “Of course, sir.”

  “Lieutenant Montgomery,” Nathan said as he turned toward the Takaran lieutenant sitting at the far end of the table, “go ahead and work out the details of creating our own propellant production capabilities. I’d like to know for sure if it’s even an option. We’re still a long way from Earth. Who knows what might happen along the way?”

  * * *

  Nathan sat in his ready room, studying his daily reports. It had been two days since they had escaped the black hole at B157-12087, and after five jumps, Nathan was beginning to relax a bit. Vladimir had incorporated the additional power created by the mini-ZPEDs into the ship’s propulsion and maneuvering systems, which had improved their potential energy to maneuver the ship. Nathan still preferred to locate another source of propellant if possible. Having little room for maneuvering one’s way out of an emergency was an unpleasant position in which to be.