Contingency

by Florian Nagy

  Chapter 6

  Darius walked toward his door, and it opened almost silently for him. He proceeded to step outside and turn down the hall. He was wearing a captain’s uniform for the first time. Three white, overlapping circles, arranged horizontally, symbolized his rank. They were set on the red upper half of the uniform. Unlike the other dark uniforms of the rest of the crew, the upper part of his shirt was of a pale gray color, and the two red lines were thinner.

  Darius reached the end of the hall and opened the door that took one to the next level. To reach a higher level, such as the bridge at the front of the ship on the level above, one had to either climb a single column through the center of the ship with a ladder or take an elevator. The elevators were composed of moving platforms. Because of the design of all ships to be as compact and volume efficient as possible, so as to not waste precious resources and air, the levels were not that far apart. A movable platform brought one up or down a level quickly. It could carry many persons and be used rapidly in sequence.

  Darius approached the large cabinet. The doors slid open and Darius got in. Because it connected only the lower crew deck and the middle deck, only an "engage" pad had to be pushed, and the steel alloy flew upwards. The pad stopped, and the top doors opened. Darius got out and walked past several engineering rooms and the observatory and laboratory. He wondered at this new fashion of putting small science rooms with fairly versatile equipment on every ship. The idea was that with the proper equipment at hand any anomalous or interesting artifact or material could be quickly analyzed.

  Fleet Command seemed to think that now that human ships no longer had any real physical threat, they could turn their attention to advancing the knowledge about the universe. “A noble, yet unfruitful endeavor,” Darius chucked to himself. Ships that were not fully functional research vessels with specific investigation missions rarely, if often, ever produced any findings of value. The heavy black doors of the bridge now stood in front of him. His last footfall upon the semi-hard floor in front of the overpowering doors sounded quietly, and then died out. Unlike the other white or gray doors to the department rooms, this was pitch black, with white linings. The door was set deeply into the wall.

  They designed these ships like this on purpose. They wanted to make the bridge display its wonder and might to the crew and any observer. To the majority of the human population, these doors painted the very portrait of the EIF: strength, stability, power, ambition. When looked upon, they stood as a challenge to the one witnessing them. The EIF did not only design its ships to be harsh in battle, but also to display that power.

  The bridge also added respect to the command and military contact sections of the EIF. All of the crew had the images of the heavy doors interred in their minds. Darius swiped his hand on the pad in front of the door, and the door made a deep click and began to slowly open. Darius almost laughed out loud; every time he opened a bridge door, he compared it to the time it took to open a living-compartment’s door. As the bridge doors opened, instead of opening with a zip, they made a quiet "skrinsh," like two plates of metal just slightly scraping against each other. They did not take long, the EIF would never compromise practicality for show, yet they did take a fraction of a second longer.

  Darius stepped in with both feet and inspected the room. It had two sections, one to the rear, where the communications officer and commander stood at their stations and the other to the front of the ship. There the helmsman sat in his station to the right and the systems officer to the left, and the captain in his chair would be in the middle of the floor overseeing the two. Each had various consoles they required. A general display and console box allowed the captain to make chair-side changes. Several displays around the room showed various statistics required by the personnel around them, but were also visible to anyone in the room. “EFS Vigilante” stood printed on the small plate set on the railing that was visible to anyone who walked in.

  "Captain has arrived," spoke Verne in a clear, calm voice. All heads turned and saluted the captain. He walked slowly to his chair and turned to look out the front window. The inside of the hangar bay of the Galar production facility stood a dull gray. He sat down, and the rest of the bridge crew slightly relaxed and turned to their stations. He turned his head to the pad at his right and entered a public address. The system gave a two second pause, which meant that a four note tune had played throughout the ship, giving the signal of a ship-wide bridge transmission calling for full attention. A small “ding” sound signaled the start of the audio stream.

  "Greetings, crew of the Earth Fleet Ship, Vigilante. This is Captain Darius Targen giving the final address before our immediate departure to the Tyrll colony. We have been given clearance to leave space dock. You all know the nature of our maiden voyage, so without any delay all stations will now report final readiness." The captain looked pleased as the confirmations flooded in until whole departments were fully confirmed.

  A small point of light appeared in the right of his screen, and after hovering a moment flew out a few centimeters to become rows of text.

  "Ah, a text message," he thought, as he tapped the now static box. It expanded to spill out its contents:

  Dated message to be delivered on Imperial Date: 27.06.1198; (June 27, 3987 Earth Date.)

  Sender: Admiral Gordon

  Good luck, captain.

  He smiled as he thought of the personal gesture. They were only three impersonal words, but the admiral must have taken the time to search the Vigilante’s departure time and have the message arrive to him right at that moment. But then again, he must have written this at the moment he'd passed the promotion and then went on to other matters. The admiral was a busy man, but he tried to make as much contact with the men beneath him as he could and to retain an open and friendly image. Darius credited him for that at least.

  That effect and success was what Darius wanted to recreate with his own crew. He smiled and closed the message, and the reports screen was brought back up. All stations were fully accounted for and ready. "Mr. Coban, engage primary mobility engines."

  "Yes, sir," Dejar Coban answered, and with a moment’s hesitation engaged the power flow to the engines. The nuclear powered drives started humming with the micro reactions starting to move inside the ship’s engines for the first time. The nuclear engines would be able to accurately move the ship around over small distances.

  "EFS Vigilante, you are cleared for exit through Dock Door 3," a computerized voice said through the speakers from the hangar control station. The frigate turned left to move out of its clump of ships in the E section. The large open space of the full hanger could now be seen from the front window. This view was broadcast throughout the ship for all to see. Two doors were open on the left and right of Dock Door 3 as the massive battlestation turned on its orbit around Galar.

  A cluster of docking bays could be seen off to the left of the expanse outside. The station had just come around the planet, and the sun shone brightly into the hangar, illuminating the inside with enormous beams of light that penetrated the artificially lighted environment inside. It seemed to be an overwhelming torrent of organic light that poured in from the left and right. Two large rectangles were painted over the walls to the rear in a yellowish tint.

  "When those doors ahead of us open, we're going blind," Darius chuckled to himself, and then dimmed the windows.

  "All right, Coban, punch it in. Clear the dock."

  The massive doors slowly began to open. The huge, steel alloy doors were large enough to let out two destroyer class warships at a time or even a military class cruiser that was produced at the facility. The crack that grew into a line then into a band admitted the yellow light of Galar’s sun. At first it exploded into the vast space ahead, but then concentrated into a well-defined ball as the doors opened further to allow the full view of the sun. It was relatively close, so it was not just a pinpoint of light but a lamp that cast shadows all over the dock. Side view cameras broa
dcasted the view of the whole dock to the crew.

  Ships after ships arranged in rectangles behind the Vigilante were all bathed in light. Several large ships coming in and out had one side brightly lit and the other dark, casting long shadows over the walls. The bridge was frozen at the sheer immensity of the docks, with all its angles clearly defined by the sun shining in steadily from straight ahead.

  The frigate disconnected from the docking clamp connecting it to the station’s E-59 dock. It trudged forward slowly towards the exit in front of it. A large destroyer starship moved in alongside the frigate to exit through the doors. The destroyer loomed a few times larger than the frigate, and its side turrets and platforms cast sharp angles along its hull and aft engines. The onlookers felt awe in it. The craft was like a domineering leader paving the way. It was not, however, an unpleasant sight. It was one of import, one to consider the extent and influence of the EIF.

  The destroyer fired its nuclear engines to their maximum, and its forward section cleared the docks, the engines gleaming red and orange as it pushed faster and faster. The whole ship was out of the docks and it slowed a moment as it turned right and upward. It then gained speed and flew off out of view.

  The frigate moved on to the gates in the footsteps of its precursor and turned slightly left, towards its destination. The engines were turned up and the ship left the doors. It picked up speed while the sun slid to the right of its view. The frigate briefly left its small shadow on the side of the space facility before moving away quickly.

  "Crew, we have cleared the orbital facility. We will clear industrial space in three minutes and then engage the antimatter reactor and plot a course for Tyrll. The Tyrll colony is, as you know, at the edge of Sector 08 of the Sagittarius arm of the galaxy, around the middle of the arm. It’s quite a long way from our local cluster. We will spend a little under three weeks in hyperspace," Darius reported through the communication system.

  As the empire had expanded, the colonized sections of the galaxy had to be kept under control in an orderly fashion. Although over 2,000 years ago a simple map of the Earth had sufficed, maps of tens of star systems now had to be created and arranged in a three-dimensional manner.

  Since the pre-hyperspeed era, the galaxy had been crudely charted by mankind. Its various constructions had been christened as “arms,” and its swirling shape had been coined as the galactic spiral. With the use of faster-than-light travel and the subsequent colonization of those arms had come a new level of mapping. Each arm was divided into sectors, beginning from 01, right next to the galactic core, and counting outwards to somewhere in the teens at the arm’s end. This had in turn given structure to Collective Gov, whose governors arranged themselves as seemed fit among the populated sectors of space. Each sector had come to roughly represent a political unit. The small Orion Arm housing Earth, which was the most concentrated hub of the Imperium, was made of three small sectors. Each sector was further divided into blocks. Each sector consisted of several hundred blocks. Few of these blocks, however, contained populated systems.

  The frigate turned and flew faster, clearing the battlestation and leaving the planet a smaller and smaller dot behind them."Coban; halt mobility engines."

  "Attention reaction chamber personnel. The ship has cleared Galar industrial space. You can proceed to set the direction and starting point for the jump. Engage matter–antimatter reactions when ready," Darius announced.

  "All crew get ready for the jump to hyperspace." The aft section of the ship unclamped a seal that would allow for the ejection of its antimatter exhaust. Inside the reaction chamber, the carefully protected fuel box was brought to the reaction core. An arm extended from the core and made contact with the box. The crew all worked from the control station at the front of the room. Although an antimatter leak from the small box containing more than enough of the precious fuel would rip apart the whole ship, the crew all stayed in the control room while the floor and console stations were all empty. The large reaction chamber itself and the fuel box at the opposite end of the room had no company.

  Once the arm was attached, the antimatter from the magnetic field container above started leaking it out particle by particle, and then exponentially more quickly. It created a smooth transition instead of a large burst of speed that would damage the ship because of the inertia and of the brute assault on the folds of space. The first explosions started occurring as the fuels met. The force immediately shot the frigate forward. In the blink of an eye, the planet flew far behind them, only to be shot away faster and faster until it couldn't be seen. The steady hum of the now continually increasing antimatter reactions grew into a drone only partially heard through the heavily sound-insulated walls.

  The vast majority of the crew, who had never flown at superluminal speeds before other than in their training, still were tense because they half feared the ship would blow up at the first reaction. They now flooded the windows or view screens to see the stars moving quickly by. Yet, still only very few trudged at all. Most of the stars were too far away to be seen differently from such a small change in position. Cheer and applause was now heard throughout the ship. All living compartments were empty, and the few who didn't have active shifts crowded the public hall.