by Jay Allan
She rolled her eyes with dramatic flair and flopped down in her chair. “Dreadfully boring. Yesterday I had to politely educate three visiting investors on how we would not be switching to the trendy new tungsten metamat for our starship hulls due to the fact it melts in warmer planetary atmospheres. They kept getting distracted ogling my legs and—well, I won’t put you to sleep with the tiresome details of what followed.
“Although, I did meet a delicious eco-dev executive at a cocktail party later in the evening, so the day wasn’t a complete loss. We’re having dinner tomorrow night. I have high hopes.” Her eyes sparkled with deliberate playfulness. “Speaking of tall, dark and handsome, have you listened to Ethan’s newest music?”
“I have. It was surprisingly mellow. He’s getting complacent in his wealth and fame.”
“Angst and rage is for the young and poor, right? You know, you should totally stop by and see him for a quick lay before you hit space again.”
Coaxing Alex to stop working for five minutes and, heaven forbid, engage in fun had been an ongoing project of hers since university, where inventing the most clever and efficient engineering designs had competed for attention with frat parties and beach bonfires.
Of course Alex had never wanted to go to the frat parties, preferring her men brooding and intellectual; the bonfires she had been only a little more amenable to. But Kennedy was nothing if not persistent, and she had on occasion relented, even if she had usually ended up fucking with the boys rather than actually fucking any of them.
Alex worried at her lower lip while she gave a stellar impression of scrupulously studying the incoming schem flow. “Ken, it’s been eleven years. I am not going to ‘stop by for a quick lay.’”
“You’re forgetting that time you did stop by for a not-so-quick lay after Malcolm broke up with you. When was it, two years ago?”
“Two and a half years ago and I haven’t forgotten. It doesn’t count, because I was wasted…among other things.”
She twirled a long lock of hair around a finger. “All weekend?”
Alex’s eyes narrowed; it magnified the effect of the arched eyebrows above them. “Soglasen—past’ zakroi.”
Kennedy laughed but raised her hands in mock surrender. “Okay, okay, I’ll let it go—but my point still stands. I’m sure he’d be thrilled to indulge you again. He’s always had a soft spot for you.” She definitely saw a brief flash of amusement cross Alex’s expression before she tamped it down.
“And you’ve always been entirely too nosy when it comes to my sex life. Now about the field’s power requirements. You said it doesn’t like spikes. Just how much fluctuation can it tolerate, really?”
*
Siyane: Earth, Seattle
Alex took a few steps back and let her gaze run over the length of the ship.
She had spent more than three hours the previous evening working the silica-sapphire matrix into the control grid and recalibrating the power outflow, then testing and retesting the entire system—but the results were worth it. While even extensive testing couldn’t replicate real-space conditions, the sims averaged a 39.2% decrease in emission leakage with the new dampener field engaged.
Already an extremely quiet ship, presenting a sleek, subtle profile that shrugged off seeker pings like water down a sloped roof, her stealth level might now be unmatched. She wasn’t invisible to sensors, not altogether. But she would be damn close.
A self-satisfied smile grew on her lips. Part of her mind ticked through the list in her head to ensure all was as it should be, any issues had been addressed and she was prepped to fly. The other part giggled silently in pleasure at the beautiful creature which hung before her. The new f-graphene alloy muted the reflective characteristics of the hull, giving the Siyane a dangerous, sinister appearance. That suited her just fine.
Her reverie was interrupted by Charlie coming around the rear of the hull to stand beside her.
“Everything checks out. I believe you knew it would, but thanks for letting me pretend to do a little work.”
She grinned and elbowed him lightly in the side. He was right of course. She understood the intimate details of every subsystem far better than he did. But his job was making sure starships operated correctly; he had checklists for each subsystem and methodical processes to confirm their proper functioning. It was simply good practice for the ship to regularly undergo a thorough operational review—particularly after installing substantive upgrades, which she had most certainly done.
“A pleasure doing business with you, as always. No idea when I’ll be back, but I’ll let you know when I know.”
“Yes, ma’am. Safe travels.”
As soon as he had left she jogged up the extended ramp to the open airlock hatch and headed straight for the cockpit. She had earlier confirmed the food supply delivery and stored her clothes and personals below. Nothing left to do but leave.
She settled into the supple leather cockpit chair, and with a thought the HUD came to life. The Evanec screen displayed the formal communication with the spaceport’s VI interface.
EACV-7A492X to Olympic Regional Spaceport Control: Departure sequence initiation requested Bay L-19
ORSC to EACV-7A492X: Departure sequence initiated Bay L-19
The docking platform whose clamps held the ship slid toward the interior of the spaceport. It then became a lift and rose to the roof along with dozens of other lifts in the stacked rings of the facility. All departures occurred above the ceiling of the skycar airlanes, for obvious reasons.
The platform locked into position on the rooftop deck. She idled the engine and waited for the clamps to disengage.
ORSC to EACV-7A492X: Departure clearance window 12 seconds bearing N 346.48° W
EACV-7A492X to ORSC: Departure clearance window accepted
The platform rotated to the indicated bearing and the clamps retracted. The Siyane hovered for 1.4 seconds before the pulse detonation engine engaged and she was flying over Whidbey Island. Eighteen seconds later she passed into the Strait of Georgia and beyond the purview of ORS Control.
Outside a spaceport’s airspace and above two kilometers altitude, air traffic was managed by a CU under the guise of the Earth Low Atmosphere Traffic Control System. Its job in the main consisted of ensuring starships and planetary transports didn’t crash into one another. It was a task uniquely suited for the raw processing power of a centralized synthetic construct, and the CU performed it flawlessly.
She veered west. The coast receded then disappeared from the stern visual screen and the Pacific Ocean stretched out beneath her. She far outpaced the sun, and like a clock winding in reverse dawn soon turned to night.
“Alex, would you like to fly her?”
The smile breaking across her face morphed to a frown at the midway point. The viewport revealed only the stars above and moonlight reflecting in the water below. They had left the San Pacifica Regional Spaceport after breakfast, but this far out over the Pacific the sun had not yet risen. “But Dad, I can’t see anything. It’s too dark.”
“You will, moya milaya. Come sit in my lap and I’ll show you.”
She scrambled out of the passenger seat and onto his thigh in a flash, fidgeting a bit to get situated. Though she was tall for her age, her feet didn’t quite reach the floor; instead they danced an excited rhythm in the air.
“Are you ready?”
She absently tucked minimally brushed hair behind her ear and nodded. “I’m ready.”
“Okay. I’m going to send you the access code for the ship’s HUD. You won’t be able to control it right away though. I want to walk you through what each of the screens mean first.”
A tiny light in the corner of her vision signaled a new message. She zoomed it, and a question floated in the virtual space in front of her. ‘Access ship flight displays?’
She both thought and exclaimed “Yes!” Her father chuckled softly at her ear.
The world lit up around her. A wall of semitransparent scre
ens overlay the viewport. They painted a canvas of aeronautical splendor in radiant white light.
Airspeed. Altitude. Bearing. Pitch angle. Air temperature. Atmosphere pressure and air density. Radar. Engine load. Other readings whose purpose were a mystery. The screens’ relative focus and opacity responded to every shift in her gaze, then to her intentional thoughts. Secure in her father’s lap, she grinned in delight.
Her life would never be the same again.
At seven kilometers altitude she began maneuvering toward the Northeast 1 Pacific Atmosphere Corridor. Technically two corridors—one for arrivals and one for departures to avoid nasty collisions—it was one of twenty-two such passages located on the planet, spaced 4–5,000 thousand kilometers apart at 55° N, 0° and 55° S latitudes.
Nearly all starships possessed the drive energy, hull strength and shields necessary to pass through any planetary atmosphere having an escape velocity value within fifty percent greater or lesser than the habitable zone. The exceptions were dreadnoughts and capital ships, which were built and forever remained in space. But that didn’t mean it was an especially fun or comfortable experience, and the wear and tear from frequent atmosphere traversals wreaked havoc on a ship’s structure and mechanics.
The solution was the corridors: reverse shields which held back the majority of atmospheric phenomena from a cylindrical area. A series of rings made of a nickel alloy metamaterial absorber generated a plasma field between each ring to create the corridors.
On Earth the rings measured half a kilometer in diameter and stretched from an altitude of ten to two hundred sixty kilometers, well into the thermosphere. The details varied on other worlds, but every planet with a population in excess of about twenty thousand had at least one paired corridor.
It was midmorning back on the coast and traffic was brisk. She slowed and eased into the queue of vessels departing Earth.
For basic security or record-keeping purposes or perhaps merely to give a few bureaucrats something to do, a monitoring device recorded the serial number designation of every vessel to enter the corridor. If one was flagged for any of a variety of reasons—but most often due to a criminal warrant—a containment field captured it at the second ring, immobilizing it until the authorities arrived.
She’d seen it happen once or twice and found it an absurd annoyance. The system was ridiculously porous; if someone wanted to avoid capture, he or she simply wouldn’t take the corridor (except for the brainless idiots who evidently did). But thankfully there appeared to be no brainless idiots in the vicinity this morning, and in minutes she was accelerating into the rings.
Without the buffeting forces of the atmosphere fighting against her, it was a brief four minute trip. A swipe of her hand brought up the engineering controls and she initiated the transition to the WM impulse engine. Then she curled her legs underneath her and surveyed the view.
Earth’s outer atmosphere constituted a barely organized chaos of commercial and residential space stations, zero-g manufacturing facilities, satellites and military defense platforms. The cornucopia of structures sped along a dozen progressively larger concentric orbits. Up close, it made for an extraordinarily beautiful vista: sunbeams reflecting off gleaming, smooth metals streaked in the luminous glow of the lights within. A testament to the triumph of human ingenuity.
As her distance from Earth grew, however, it began to more closely resemble a swarm of ants feeding upon the discarded remnants of a meal, a dichotomy which had always amused her. The ship’s acceleration increased as the engine reached full power, and the ants soon faded into the halo cast by the sun.
She stood up and stretched. It would be four hours before she reached the Mars-Jupiter Main Asteroid Belt and was ‘allowed’ to engage the sLume drive.
Originally named the Alcubierre Oscillating Bubble Superluminal Propulsion Drive when the first working prototype had been developed nearly two hundred years earlier, a clever marketing executive had quickly coined the far more consumer-friendly term ‘sLume Drive.’
The mechanism which propelled her ship across the stars bore little similarity to the initial prototype. The ring which held open the warp bubble was now dynamically generated and consisted of exotic particles too small even en masse to be visible. The energy requirements were met in full by the He3 LEN fusion reactor thanks to the boost in negative mass provided as a byproduct of the impulse engine.
And while the first prototype had achieved a mere seventy times the speed of light, her drive was faster by a factor of thousands. Admittedly, it was a very high-end model.
The particles released by the bubble’s termination were funneled into micro-singularities so as to not destroy everything in a 0.2 AU vicinity. Still, space traffic in the Earth-Lunar-Mars conjunction was quite heavy, as the region housed greater than fifteen percent of the galactic population. Though volumes of research indicated it was perfectly safe, Alliance bureaucrats insisted on concern over the idea of billions of micro-singularities being created every day in such a congested sector—some notion about destabilizing the space-time manifold.
So superluminal drive operation by private spacecraft was forbidden inside the Main Asteroid Belt; military vessels and commercial transports naturally got a pass. And she wasted half a day on 0.1% of her trip.
Her natural instinct would normally be to work up a case of righteous indignation at the blatant capitulation to fear rather than science, but she just couldn’t muster the necessary outrage.
After all, she was home.
CHAPTER 4: Earth
Vancouver: EASC Headquarters
The members of the Earth Alliance Strategic Command Governing Board positioned themselves around the oval table. Five of them were present in the flesh, the four Regional Commanders via full-dimensional holo.
The table was a true antique, crafted for the Politburo Standing Committee headquarters in Zhongnanhai in the waning years of CCP rule. Constructed of natural Burmese Teak and lacquered in the ancient Chinese tradition, the finish now lay buried beneath multiple layers of AgInide secure conductive glass.
The table was, of course, impressively large—far larger than required for a mere nine occupants—but a more practical table would have been less grand and not befitting the importance of those who utilized it.
A late afternoon sun shone through the floor-to-ceiling windows lining the penthouse conference room. Shielding filtered the sunlight to reduce the glare without marring the view of the Pacific, seeing as the room had been placed on the western-facing side of the building specifically for its magnificent view.
General Price Alamatto waited until the door had closed behind the departing aides before turning back to the gathered Board members. “As I was saying prior to the interruption, with a minor readjustment to the Sol System construction budget we will have the funds to assemble an additional six high-orbit arrays and deploy them to the Fionava and Deucali Provinces.”
Miriam Solovy leaned forward in her chair while keeping her shoulders firmly squared. It was an assertive posture she used often to persuasive effect. “And if we supply them to Fionava and Deucali, then New Cornwall and Messium will want them as well, and probably Karelia and Nyssus, too—all on account of a mythical threat from nonexistent aliens forever on the cusp of the frontier. And indulging them will wipe out the Sol System construction budget.”
She shook her head in a terse but firm motion. “No. If those funds are truly available, better for us to use them to reinforce Earth’s outer defense web with a redundant backup power grid and install the new longer-range emission signature sensors. Added redundancy will increase security and the sensors will give us significantly earlier warning should unwelcome visitors target Earth.”
General Liam O’Connell cocked an overly bushy eyebrow in her direction. “Careful Admiral, lest someone insinuate you were advocating an ‘Earth First’ agenda.”
O’Connell was the Southwestern Regional Commander, and seemed to believe overseeing the largest regi
on in terms of kiloparsecs gave him the right to be an arrogant prick. He was incorrect, not that it stopped him.
She regarded him coolly. “I don’t particularly care what someone insinuates about me, General. I am doing no such thing, save for the irrefutable fact that both the knowledge and capabilities of the Earth Alliance are concentrated here on Earth, and we should recognize this and act accordingly.”
Alamatto cleared his throat from the head of the table. “You make a commendable and valid point, Admiral. Nevertheless, we must not appear to be Earth-centric in our decision-making. Earth has plenty enough resources on its own. We need to be cognizant of the reality that the colonies often lack our inherent means and require our protection.”
A strong Earth was a strong Alliance; she’d never understand why more people didn’t see this. She worked to protect the best interests of the entire Earth Alliance, colonies included.
Her glare was steel across the table. “Which protection we won’t be able to provide if our defense web goes down and we come under attack.”
O’Connell snorted from the safety of his holo. “Who do you think is going to attack Earth, Miriam? Seneca? They wouldn’t dare. Raiders from New Babel, or maybe some nutcases from Pandora? Be realistic. Earth is by far the most fortified, heavily defended world in settled space. No one is coming for Earth.”
Inwardly she sighed, though she was careful not to let it show. At this point the Board was in danger of becoming completely dominated by the Regional Commanders. Alamatto was too weak a leader to keep them in line and there wasn’t another faction to counterbalance them. The other three Earth-based members were too beholden to competing political benefactors to act in concert with her or Alamatto.
She was fighting a losing battle and she knew it. But so long as she held a position of any power, she would not fold. She dropped her chin and gazed slightly up and sideways at O’Connell, one eyebrow arched; the impression created was of a master disappointed in the ignorance of the student.