by M. D. Cooper
Earnest began whispering a countdown to himself, and then a moment after he reached zero, the planet’s collapse stopped and a massive explosion of light, matter, and energy flared out from its compressed core.
As Earnest predicted, compression won. After that initial explosion, the visible light all but snapped off and the pull of gravity began to increase, slowing the Intrepid’s progress.
On the scan Tanis saw that two of the AST ships had moved to pursue the Intrepid, likely intent on ensuring that the colony ship fell back into the world below. Their course put them too close to the world when the explosion occurred. The ships were pushed outward by the blast, but then, as the mass of the world collapsed into a black hole and drew matter from the dark layer, they began to fall in.
The shockwave passed over the Intrepid, sending a violent shudder through the ship.
“Will she hold?” Terrance asked.
“Earnest nodded. “She’ll hold. We don’t have the dampeners that those other ships, have, but our stacked decking was designed to handle lateral thrust.”
Tanis tightened her arm around Joe as wondered if this is how the crew felt when they passed close to Estrella de la Muerte and were hit by a solar flare. There was nothing to do but wait and pray to whatever gods or stars you believed held sway.
Sera spun the view on the main holo and some of the bridge crew gasped as several of Aurora’s moons appeared to stretch, and then disintegrated, falling back into the dark, roiling mass below. Above the Intrepid an icy moon was pulled out of its orbit and the ship altered course with a lurch avoid the debris as it crumbled and fell.
“This is amazing,” Earnest whispered.
Tanis looked at the rapt expression on Earnest’s face and shook her head. “For some definition of amazing, perhaps.”
“Oh come on!” Earnest gestured at the display. “How often do you see the death of a planet and the birth of a black hole. If they’re lucky they can stabilize it. It’s a far better source of energy than what they had.”
“If they can keep the rest of their planets in stable orbits,” Sera said. “There are already reports of earthquakes on one of their inhabited worlds and solar flares are bound to let lose across their star.”
“I never said it was going to be an enjoyable transition,” Earnest replied.
No one responded as a new vibration began beneath their feet.
“OK, are you still sure she’ll hold?” Earnest asked.
On scan, the two AST ships lost their battle and disappeared into the black hole, around which now swirled a glowing accretion disk.
Scan highlighted three other enemy ships which were also struggling to pull free of the deepening gravity well. Tanis marveled as they began to detonate nuclear warheads behind their ships in a desperate attempt to pull free.
Joe cast Tanis a worried look. “They got a lot more bang for their buck than they expected.”
The gravity well swelled, growing faster than anyone had anticipated and more of the AST fleet began to fall into it. The vibration in the Intrepid’s hull increased and the ship began to lose velocity relative to the monster growing beneath them.
She returned Joe’s concerned look, unable to find any words to voice the fear she began to feel in her heart.
The bridge crew also began to look anxious, though no one spoke, everyone attempting to focus on finding a way to improve the ship’s chances of survival.
Earnest appeared calm, just as he always did when facing some insurmountable problem. “We’re reversing the polarity of the scoop, sweeping it behind us. It will give us a bubble of reverse polarized ions to slip through.”
The captain nodded his approval and a minute later the vibration in the deck ceased and the ship began to move forward once more.
“Two hundred thousand kilometers,” someone announced with a note of nervous jubilation in their voice—and then Tanis felt everything stop.
“Wha—?” she began to ask when she saw that the ship’s clocks had jumped by eleven minutes.
“Status!” the captain called out.
Bob replied.
“Handy trick,” Joe said softly.
Reports rolled in; helm responded, scan was operational. Engines were online, the scoop team indicated the emitter was damaged, but they could repair it in a few hours. Stasis shields were down, but only needed a reset of their control systems. The ship’s position was updated on scan and everyone gasped.
“Wow, it really gave us a boost,” Sera whistled.
The blast of plasma from the fledgling black hole had flung them over fifteen million kilometers. They were nearly at the jump point and helm reported they could adjust course and be in position for FTL transition in just over an hour.
“Well that’s a rapid change in fortune,” Terrance observed.
Behind them, a large number of the AST ships were gone, but those which remained were boosting after the Intrepid in a furious attempt to catch their prey.
“Jump early,” Sera said softly.
“What?” Tanis asked.
Scan updated again, revealing so many relativistic missiles that scan could not reliably separate their signatures and simply estimated the count to be over a thousand. They were spread out like an arrow of death arching toward the Intrepid.
“Jump early. Jump as soon as you can. Jump now if you can manage it!” Sera insisted.
“She’s right,” Earnest nodded. “The dark matter maps for this entire system are useless now. No one knows where it’s safe to jump—it doesn’t matter where we do it. Once the stasis shields are up we need to go.”
“Time on stasis shields?” the captain asked.
A deep quiet settled over the bridge as everyone watched the swarm of relativistic missiles slash their way toward the Intrepid. Everyone prayed to their gods and stars that the transition would go smoothly as the time to impact and the countdown for FTL transition spun down in near unison.
Then, a minute early, Bob’s voice rang out in their minds.
“Well, here we go,” Tanis whispered to Joe.
THANK YOU
If you’ve enjoyed reading Destiny Lost, a review on Amazon.com and/or goodreads.com would be greatly appreciated.
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M. D. Cooper
WHAT’S NEXT?
While this is the final book in The Intrepid Saga, it is far from the last tale of Tanis, Sera, their ships, or their crews. The next part of the Intrepid’s journey begins in the spring of 2017 with the book New Canaan, the first of four books which will comprise The Orion War series.
Also, look for The Battle of Bollam, a novella coming after New Year’s, which follows Joe during the final chapters of Destiny Lost.
BOOKS & STORIES BY
M. D. COOPER
THE SOL DISSOLUTION
Series 1: Joseph’s Story
THE INTREPID SAGA (AEON 14)
Book 1: Outsystem
Book 2: A Path in the Darkness
Book 3: Building Victoria
Book 4: Destiny Lost
Novella: The Battle of Bollam (coming winter 2016/2017)
THE ORION WAR (AEON 14)
Book 1: New Canaan (coming Spring 2017
APENDICES
This is not a complete glossary. For a more exhaustive list of people, places, terms, timeline, and encyclopedic entries, visit www.aeon14.com
TERMS & TECHNOLOGY
This is not a complete glossary. For a more complete glossary, timeline and encyclopedic entries, visit www.aeon14.com
AI (SAI, NSAI) –
Is a term for Artificial Intelligence. AI are often also referred to as non-organic intelligence. They are broken up into two sub-groups: Sentient AI and Non-Sentient AI.
c – Represented as a lower case c in italics, this symbol stands for the speed of light and means constant. The speed of light in a vacuum is constant at 670,616,629 miles per hour. Ships rate their speed as a decimal value of c with c being 1. A ship traveling at half the speed of light will be said to be traveling at 0.50 c.
Casimir effect – The Casimir effect is a small attractive force that acts between two close parallel uncharged conducting plates. It is due to quantum vacuum fluctuations of the electromagnetic field.
CFT Shields – Carbon Fiber nano-Tube shields are created from carbon nano-tubes. These tubes are intensely strong and can also be enhanced to absorb laser energy fire and disperse it.
ChoSec – The Callisto Orbital Habitat has a security force that is larger than the TSF in size due to the need to police over three trillion humans. It is quasi-military and provides both internal as well as external security to the Cho.
CO – This is an abbreviation meaning commanding officer. It is common in all branches of the military.
CriEn – A CriEn module is a device which taps into the base energy of the universe, also known as zero-point, or vacuum energy. Unlike more common zero-point energy modules, which pull energy from artificial bubble dimensions, the CriEn module is capable of pulling energy from normal space-time, and can even do so while in the dark layer.
Cryostasis (cryogenics) – See also, ‘stasis’.
Older methods of slowing down organic aging and decay involve cryogenically freezing the organism (usually a human) through a variety of methods. The person would then be thawed through a careful process when they were awakened.
Cryostasis is risky and has a higher failure rate, but one that makes few people consider it as an option. When true stasis was discovered, it became the de-facto method of slowing organic decay over long periods.
Dark Layer – The Dark Layer is a special sub-layer of space where dark matter possesses physical form. The dark layer is also frictionless and reactionless. It is not fully understood, but it also seems to possess many of the attributes of a universal frame of reference.
Deuterium – D2 (2H) is an isotope of hydrogen where the nucleus of the atom is made up of one proton and one neutron as opposed to a single proton in regular hydrogen (protium). Deuterium is naturally occurring and is found in the oceans of planets with water and is also created by fusion in stars and brown dwarf sub stars. D2 is a stable isotope that does not decay.
Downworlder – Name the spacer Victorians use for colonists on Victoria and Tara.
Edener – Name the Victorians use for the crew and colony members of the Intrepid.
Edgeworth Kuiper Belt (EK Belt) – The EK belt is a circumstellar disk of dust, rocks, and small planetoids which extends from Neptune’s orbit to 50 AU from Sol (in humanity’s home system).
Many other star systems possess belts similar to Sol’s EK Belt and the term fell into common usage to describe the first belt beyond the last major planet in a star system.
electrostatic shields/fields – Not to be confused with a faraday cage, electrostatic shield’s technical name is static electric stasis field. By running a conductive grid of electrons through the air and holding it in place with a stasis field the shield can be tuned to hold back oxygen, but allow solid objects to pass through, or to block solid objects. Fields are used in objects such as ramscoops and energy conduits.
EMF – Electro Magnetic Fields are given off by any device using electricity that is not heavily shielded. Using sensitive equipment, it is possible to tell what type of equipment is being used, and where it is by its EMF signature. In warfare it is one of the primary ways to locate an enemy’s position.
EMP – Electro Magnetic Pulses are waves of electromagnetic energy that can disable or destroy electronic equipment. Because so many people have electronic components in their bodies, or share their minds with AI, they are susceptible to extreme damage from an EMP. Ensuring that human/machine interfaces are hardened against EMPs is of paramount importance.
FGT – The Future Generation Terraformers is a program started in 2352 with the purpose of terraforming worlds in advance of colony ships being sent to the worlds. Because terraforming of a world could take hundreds of years the FGT ships arrive and begin the process.
Once the world(s) being terraformed reached stage 3, a message was sent back to the Sol system with an ‘open’ date for the world(s) being terraformed. The GSS then handles the colony assignment.
A decade after the Destiny Ascendant left the Sol system in 3728 the FGT program was discontinued by the SolGov, making it the last FGT ship to leave. Because the FGT ships are all self-sustaining none of them came home after the program was discontinued—most of the ship’s crews had spent generations in space and had no reason to return to Sol.
After the discontinuation FGT ships continued on their primary mission of terraforming worlds, but only communicated with the GSS and only when they had worlds completed.
Fireteam – Is the smallest combat grouping of soldiers. In the TSF Marines (like the USMC) it contains four soldiers; the team leader (often doubles as the grenadier), the rifleman (acts as a scout for the team), automatic rifleman (carries a larger, fully automatic weapon), the assistant automatic rifleman (carries additional ammo).
Fission – Fission is a nuclear reaction where an atom is split apart. Fission reactions are simple to achieve with heavier, unstable elements such as Uranium or Plutonium. In closed systems with extreme heat and pressure it is possible to split atoms of much more stable elements, such as Helium. Fission of heavier elements typically produces less power and far more waste matter and radiation than Fusion.
FTL (Faster Than Light) – Refers to any mode of travel where a ship or object is able to travel faster than the speed of light (c). According to Einstein’s theory of Special Relativity nothing can travel faster than the speed of light. As of the year 4123 no technology has been devised to move a physical object faster than the speed of light.
Fusion – Fusion is a nuclear reaction where atoms of one type (Hydrogen for example) are fused into atoms of another type (Helium in the case of Hydrogen fusion). Fusion was first discovered and tested in the H-Bombs (Hydrogen bombs) of the twentieth century. Fusion reactors are also used as the most common source of ship power from roughly the twenty fourth century on.
g (gee, gees, g-force) – Represented as a lower case g in italics, this symbol stands for gravity. On earth, at sea-level, the human body experiences 1g. A human sitting in a wheeled dragster race-car will achieve 4.2gs of horizontal g-force. Arial fighter jets will impose g-forces of 7-12gs on their pilots. Humans will often lose consciousness around 10gs. Unmodified humans will suffer serious injury or death at over 50gs. Starships will often impose burns as high as 20gs and provide special couches or beds for their passengers during such maneuvers. Modified starfighter pilots can withstand g-forces as high as 70gs.
Graviton – These are small massless particles that are emitted from objects with large mass, or by special generators capable of creating them without large masses. There are also negatively charged gravitons which push instead of pull. These are used in shielding systems in the form of Gravitational Waves. The GSS Intrepid uses a new system of channeled gravitons to create the artificial gravity in the crew areas of the ship.
GSS – The Generational Space Service is a quasi-federal organization that handles the assignment of colony worlds. In some cases it also handles the construction of the colony ships.
After the discontinuation of federal support and funding for the FGT project in 3738, the GSS became self-funded, by charging for the right to gain access to a colony world. While SolGov no longer funded the GSS the government supported the GSS’s position and passed law ensuring that all colony assignment continued through the GSS.
Helium-3 – T
his is a stable, non-radioactive isotope of Helium, produced by T3 Hydrogen decay, and is used in nuclear fusion reactors. The nucleus of the Helium-3 atom contains two protons, but only one neutron as opposed to the two neutrons in regular Helium. Helium-3 Can also be created by nuclear reactions that create Lithium-4 which decays into Helium-3.
HUD – Stands for Heads Up Display. It refers to any type of display where information about surroundings and other data is directly overlaid on a person’s vision.
Hyperion Accords – These accords were drafted by Tanis and signed by the Intrepid colony leaders and the Hyperion leadership. The accords outlined the cooperative governments, regions of ownership and slow transfer of technology and power that was to take place in the Kapteyn’s Star system.
Link – Refers to an internal connection to computer networks. This connection is inside of a person and directly connects their brain to what is essentially the Internet in the fourth millennia. Methods of accessing the Link vary between retinal overlays to direct mental insertion of data.