Several minutes passed, and he was about to ask Marti if Kaycee got lost when she came in and sat down. Her face projected that she wasn’t happy. Profoundly.
He could tell she was figuring out how to say what was on her mind, so he watched her thoughts play out and waited for her to open the discussion.
Finally, she sighed. “I think we should go on.”
That surprised him, but he just nodded.
“Kai has suspected that the Red Wall might be backed by the STI for a while,” she said. “I don’t know if I’m ready to believe that outright, but this might prove it.”
His surprise ratcheted up several notches. “Aren’t you an STI… loyalist?”
She nodded. “Just because I am a Fellow of the Institute, it doesn’t mean I can allow myself to be blind in my faith. I’m a scientist first.”
“Do you think it’s them?”
“I hope not,” she said. Her eyes told him there was more she was leaving unsaid.
“You don’t sound even remotely convinced.”
She sat there for almost a minute before she shook her head. “I’m not, but the reasons I’m willing to consider she might be onto something have nothing to do with whether her hypothesis has merit”
“I don’t follow,” he said.
“Sorry,” she shrugged. “When Elias and I were at L4 Prime, everything just felt different. Like something had the whole place off balance.”
“Nuko told me about it. She said Elias was being stonewalled.”
She nodded. “Sort of. I know I was, but he seemed to think they were hiding something. His own work was being buried and he couldn’t even get to it himself.”
“You think that might relate to what’s happening out here?”
“Think?” She frowned. “No. It’s more of a vague feeling that something’s wrong in the Institute and this might be a different symptomatic manifestation of that core problem.”
“And a vague feeling is enough that you think it’s worth it to go on?”
She sighed. “If that was all it was, I’d say no. But based on what we know, the attacks so far aren’t circumstantial. We also know it’s likely that someone operating from a Shan Takhu based platform is carrying out the sabotage. Whether or not it is the Tahrat, it’s well beyond the current human technological level.”
“That’s a given,” he said.
“The attacks on us appear to have the same motivation as the attacks the Red Wall carried out previously. Because these require the use of STI level technology, it’s not out of line to assume that there is some degree of connection between the two groups.”
She leaned forward and put her elbows on her knees. “It’s not a good situation regardless of who it is.”
“I agree,” he said. “If the attacks are Red Wall, and this is connected, what bothers me is that it’s obvious they’re willing to kill. So far, they haven’t looked like they want to cross that line, but that doesn’t mean they won’t.”
“Exactly the point that shaped my decision,” she said. “Politics aside, I have to agree that turning back would increase the chances of the attacks escalating. It would be the same as condemning them to death.”
“And you’re not willing to do that,” he said.
She looked at him like she thought he’d just insulted her. “Yah, I think unregistered augments are dangerous, but that doesn’t justify killing them.”
“Especially if they’re volunteering to exile themselves this far from humanity.”
She nodded.
“Then we need to come up with some kind of strategy to protect ourselves against a Tahrat ship, and to guarantee that it can’t follow us to our destination.”
The lights flickered, and Ethan spun to face the console. The last of the system warning lights had turned green.
“We’re on our feet again,” Rene said over the comm.
“Then let’s make some legs,” he said. “Marti, pass the word to the Sun that we’re pushing on.”
“Message sent,” it said.
Ethan felt a sudden wave of relief. He recognized instantly it wasn’t his own.
Chapter Thirty
Ethan was late getting his meal, and he and Qara walked out of the galley carrying two trays of food and a pair of tankards. Quinn’s brews had become the drink of preference for both the crew and the plussers. Although the captain didn’t know what was involved, the handler had somehow managed to keep his supplies of beer flowing regardless of demand.
Although Ethan just wanted to sit and not think while he ate his meal, Rene waved him over to join him and three of his new team of plusser engineers.
“You are the captain, you can say no,” Qara whispered. She’d become Ethan’s shadow since he’d recruited her to be his personal alarm system. He glanced at her and shrugged.
“It would help if there was some way to be sure it’s still out there,” one engineer was saying as they walked up and set their food down in front of the two empty seats at the table.
“It’s out there,” Qara said. “I can’t hear them, but I can feel them.”
Kai twisted to look over at the engineer’s table. She was sitting all the way across the room, alone as usual. “The Tahrat Shan Che has the ability to bend visible light. You won’t see it unless they shut that off.”
“Visible light? What about gravity?” Rene asked. He didn’t raise his voice. Apparently, he was aware of her inhuman hearing.
She shrugged. “I’d bet that it can do that too, but when I drove her, nobody had the ability to see gravity waves well enough for that to matter.”
“We still can’t see in gravity,” Rene said. “It’s more like listening to sound waves. You can tell there are sounds out there, but you can’t really be sure what it is until you can classify the source.”
“They used to call the technique echolocation,” one of the engineers said. “They used it in submarines centuries ago.”
“Submarines?” Qara asked, then she smiled. “I understand, ships that sailed under the oceans of earth.” She’d apparently pulled the concept from someone’s mind.
Rene drummed a finger on the table and then looked back over at Kai. “I heard rumors that the Shan Takhu used singularities for power supplies. Is that true?”
She nodded. “Yes, I know one powers the Tacra Un. I’d assume the Tahrat uses one too. When I flew it, I wasn’t an engineer, so I didn’t think to dig into that. I just know it took a frakking unbelievable amount of power to even move.”
“I’d like to know for sure. Can we get Pruitt in on this conversation?” Rene asked.
“Just be careful what you say. We can’t trust that the comm is secure between the ships.” “We can assume they’re out there and probably have the tools to listen in on our transmissions.”
“Understood,” he said as their other engineer appeared on the nearest wall screen.
“What can I do for you, Captain?” Elias asked, looking puzzled. The dark bags under his eyes said he wasn’t sleeping any better over there than they were aboard the Dawn. Probably for the same reasons. It showed in his eyes as he scanned the room.
Ethan pointed at Rene as he took a sip of his beer and smiled.
The engineer tugged pointedly on his ear to make sure it was clear they were talking over an open comm. He waited until Elias nodded before he began. “We’re having a discussion about Shan Takhu technology. Hopefully you can help us out.”
“I’ll try,” he said, looking around at the tables behind them again.
“Do you know if the Tahrat uses a singularity as a power supply?” he asked.
“It does, why?”
“Would heavy ionization have any effect on it? Could it inhibit the power generation in any way?”
Elias shook his head. “I don’t think it would make much difference to power production since it works by bombarding the event horizon of a spinning quantum singularity with energetic particles. If anything, it might increase output.” His eyes opened wide
, and he grinned as he figured out the objective of Rene’s thinking.
“It uses a terahertz frequency electromagnetic field to maintain a steady throttle on the singularity’s spin, and the output power is determined by angular deflection of the delivery beam.” He paused and scratched his chin. “Its singularity does create an enormous gravitational field though, so high-level ion bombardment might have some effect, depending on how many particles get caught and whether they dump inward, or deflect away.”
“How big is this field?”
“Over fifty kilometers in radius,” he said. “They have to shut the power off before the ship can hangar in the Tacra Un. The two singularities interfere with each other when they’re in close proximity.”
“That’s what I thought,” Rene said. “Thanks. You’ve been helpful. I’ll give you a… status report… soon.”
“You’re obviously working on an idea,” Ethan said as the screen went dark. He was halfway through his meal already and spoke around a mouthful of food.
The engineer nodded then shrugged. “I don’t know how much good it will do, but once we enter the nebula, we might be able to track them through the wake their singularity’s field makes. It should have a distinct interaction with the elevated particle density.”
“We will enter the nebula within the next day,” Marti said through its Humanform automech. The AA had been spending a lot of time inhabiting the body to interact with the humans aboard the ship. Ethan thought it might have to do with the pheromones, but he felt too silly to ask. “The outer shock wave boundary is less than twenty light years from our present location.”
“Why can’t we see it yet?” Qara asked, twisting to look out the front windows.
“Because of the large volume of the nebula, it has a gas density only slightly above the background levels of the local region. There is already some evidence of an increase in oxygen and sulfur molecules in the surrounding region.” Marti walked to the window and pointed toward the ring of distorted stars visible above and to starboard. “If human optical capabilities were tuned toward Oxygen-three or Hydrogen-alpha emissions, it would be clearly visible as a bright red and cyan discoloration along the leading edge of the visible stellar collar.”
“I just don’t know if the nebula is dense enough to make their ship’s echo measurable,” Rene said.
“There is a filament structure a tenth of a degree off our current course,” Marti said. “It has a much higher density than the region we will pass through if we maintain our heading.”
“What effect would it have on our ships?” Ethan asked.
“It will make the nebula visible as our mass coils interact with the ionized gas,” one of the other engineers said.
“We’ll also have to increase the power to our magnetic bias shielding to protect us from the increase in radiation,” Rene added.
“It will be well within the limits of safety,” the AA added.
“If not, we can slow down and reduce the effects too,” he said. “Basically, it will be a pretty light show but not much else.”
“But only appreciably in Oxygen-three and Hydrogen-alpha spectral ranges,” Marti said.
Qara sighed in a wave of disappointment.
“If there’s minimal risk, we’ll make the heading change,” the captain said, pushing his tray back and getting up to head to the ConDeck. He needed to pass the word to Nuko. His shadow was already on her feet and he smiled as he realized she was ahead of him. As usual.
“Captain, a moment?” another of the engineers said. She was sitting along the side of the table, and although he knew her from seeing her working on the repairs with Rene, he didn’t remember her name.
“Meshawn,” Qara whispered. He winked at her, grateful for the assist.
“Yes, Meshawn?” he said, not sitting down but also not turning away.
“Would it help to have some way to stop the pursuing ship?”
“Stop it how?”
“Shut down its power?”
“Yah if we could, but how? It was eight light hours away, last I was aware,” Ethan said.
“At our current velocity that puts it about two tenths of a second behind us. It’s not that far, really.”
“I get that, so what are you proposing?”
“Dropping a small mass in their path,” she said.
“From inside our field?” Rene looked at the captain and shrugged.
She nodded. “A small mass suddenly entering normal space would become infinitely heavy and that might kick their power off.”
Rene shook his head. “I see where you’re going and theoretically it might work. The problem is that the inertial charge region of our engine coils is shaped to decelerate particles falling off the back of the ship, so they don’t create black holes.”
“Dropping a black hole in their path would certainly piss them off,” Ethan said. “But like Rene said our field is designed to keep that from happening. I don’t see how we could do it.”
She pulled a thinpad out of her thinskin from somewhere near her left breast, and Ethan blinked as he noticed that she was female. Very.
He glanced over his shoulder and Qara shrugged apologetically. He’d gotten used to the extra psychological boost she was giving him against her own pheromones, and thereby all the other plussers. So, when it slipped, he noticed doubly hard. His shadow added a layer of blush to her own reaction and stared down at the floor, concentrating in an effort to push some extra reinforcement in his direction.
Feeling a wave of relief as she blocked whatever it was that teased his beast, he leaned forward to look down at the thinpad. It had an impenetrable string of calculations on it and he shook his head. “Can you explain that in real words?”
“If we take your dropship and slide it back to the last locking position on the back container, we can phase modulate its coils to reshape the trailing edge of the field.”
“Like our speed boost trick,” Rene offered, although he didn’t look confident.
Meshawn shrugged, not understanding the reference. She slid the thinpad toward Rene and pointing at it went on, “Shaping the field like this would cause anything falling behind the ship to transition abruptly into normal space. It would hang on to enough of a mass-charge to create a transient micro-singularity. The gravity shock wave should overload their power plant and shut them down.”
“Or rip a hole in spacetime and send us into a multiverse,” Ethan said, glancing at his engineer and raising an eyebrow high enough to convey his intense skepticism.
Rene shrugged, but leaned in to scan her calculations. “A real gravity shock wave from even a small mass emerging into normal space would be astro-frakking ungodly.”
“Is that a real unit of measure?” Ethan laughed, rolling his eyes. “There’s no way they’d survive that.”
“It would also take out the ship’s cloaking field,” Kai said. She stood beside him and he hadn’t noticed her step over to the table. “It might also do some damage to its engines. But it’s unlikely that it would destroy it.”
“Running into a black hole wouldn’t destroy it?” he asked, trying to wrap his mind around the concept of a ship that powerful.
She shook her head. “Odds are they wouldn’t hit it, since I’m assuming it would be miniscule?”
“Angstrom scale,” Meshawn said. “We’d be lucky to get it within a million klick of the ship. But that might be close enough to shut them down.”
“How long would it be down?”
“Days. Maybe longer,” Kai said. “They’d have to spin up a new core.”
“What would it do to us?” Ethan asked, not liking the idea that he was considering dropping a cosmic scale bomb in their path.
Rene shook his head, picking up her thinpad and staring at the screen more closely. “I’ll have to study her math, but as long as we were pushing hard, we should be able to attenuate the shock waves. In theory.”
“You do that, and for now I’ll go as far as to say I’m willing
to take it under advisement.” Ethan looked back down at the remains of his meal and shivered as he realized he might do something this absurd.
The last swallow of beer helped. “Let’s call that Ugly Plan… Z.”
Chapter Thirty-One
“There they are,” Ammo said, whispering like they’d just snuck up on somebody doing something bad. Which in a way they had. She and Marti had been working for sixteen hours to tease a little extra resolution out of the background noise on the sensor systems. They were about to run out of the far end of the filament when she made the announcement.
Unfortunately, when they entered the filament, it might have made the Tahrat visible, but it also made them exponentially more blind than they’d been.
The heavy ionized particles of the nebula may have been dense for normal space, but it was immeasurably wispy by any real measure. The problem was that they were pushing a five-hundred-meter-wide ball of inertial charge through it at 4500 times the speed of light, the energy released as the nebula’s gas impacted their drive field lit up the X-ray end of the electromagnetic spectrum like a beacon.
To Qara’s massive disappointment, nothing was visible to the naked eye although every system on both of their ships showed the strain of the extra load. Marti and Rene both apologized for not anticipating the effect, but unless they wanted to slow down a lot more, they just had to adapt and learn to look through the optically invisible, but otherwise blindingly bright, glare.
Ammo leaned back in her seat and stretched. She’d been sitting stationary for several hours staring at the sensor display she had spread across the forward window.
“I don’t see it,” Ethan said cocking his head to the side and trying to pick the spot she was talking about out of the data.
“They’ve drifted back a bit,” she said, pointing with one hand while she slid the other over the control to zoom the image in on the pursuing ship. “They’re closer to twelve light hours behind now.”
“I wonder if that’s because of the nebula forcing them to slow down too.” Ethan said as he struggled to pick out the subtle ripples she’d seen. She’d scrolled in until the scale indicator on the display showed the image area was just over a light hour across.
Wings of Earth- Season One Page 78