Alicia Jones 3: New Frontier (5 page)

Kristi joined me in my workspace with a smile on her face,
she looked excited.

I looked up at her and waited, and her smile grew wider.

She said in anticipation, “Want to watch me blow something
up?”

I laughed, “Sure.”

Instead of sharing the feed on my overlay, she put it on the
wall screen.  It was probably just in our heads, but somehow that made it
more real, and shared, than watching the same feed internally.

She said breathlessly, “So, I’ve got one built.  It
draws the equivalent energy of a large scale fusion reactor instead of the
smaller ones we have locally attached.  It’s about thirty times more
powerful, and the effective range has almost doubled.  I’ll send you exact
numbers later.  The truth is, this isn’t much of a test, outside being
able to fire it.  The shield missile has no chance of survival if
hit.  Hell, the attack shuttles, battle cruisers, all of it, including the
test ship which has shields twice as strong as anything else we have won’t take
more than one hit to be vaporized.”

She made a face, “Still, it will show it can aim, fire, and
not blow itself up.  I also have a number of normal missiles out there,
just for target practice against incoming attacks.  Ready?”

“Fire away,” I said bemused by her excitement.  Not
that I blamed her, who didn’t like to watch stuff explode?

Kristi nodded and muttered under her breath, I assumed she
was giving commands to her A.I.  Kristi paused to let the suspense build
up for a few more seconds, and we watched the gun fire from both the
perspective of the missile, and the laboratory ship.  The shield around
the missile didn’t even slow the pulse of energy down, the shield missile just
blew up.

A few more whispered instructions and I saw ten missiles
start approaching the lab ship.  With the new shields they weren’t even a
threat if the plasma cannon missed, so I wasn’t worried about losing the lab
ship.  However, it didn’t miss.

The plasma cannon fired ten shots in just over three
seconds, and vaporized the attacking missiles.  It was… impressive. 
I couldn’t help but worry that our offensive capability had far outstripped our
defensive capability, though I knew I had the ability to change that.  It
gave me second thoughts despite the fact our shields were still more than good
enough to defend against any non-Earth ship.  Eventually, the new tech
would get out, and then whoever shot first would be the winner.  I was
still against building a huge juggernaut of a ship, but updated shields were
starting to look a lot more reasonable. 

It shouldn’t be hard, if I built it right not only would the
two shields stack, but they would resonate and reinforce each other, making
them more than double the strength.  Even then, it may only absorb one
shot at a time, if two of the new plasma cannons hit at the same time the
shields wouldn’t be able to regenerate fast enough.  Of course, the final
question was, would I be able to get the board to pay for it.  Essentially
it would take twice as many of the EM and anti-mass rods per ship.  The
fact that it would line my pockets and wasn’t necessary against what the rest
of the galaxy had would weigh against it.  They would only be necessary
against our new tech, which wasn’t a threat to us, yet, and already doubled our
current shield strength which was considerable.

I decide it was a political battle I’d lose, especially
considering the cuts I’d already seen.  It would be hard enough to get the
rest of the upgrades approved.  Though, of all of it the power converters
would be the only real additional cost, the rest of it would just be material
cost, which was ridiculously low considering we were using asteroids for
that.  I made some notes about a new possible shield configuration and
saved them in the maybe someday pile…

“That… was impressive.  How many you think on the
ship?”

Kristi smiled, “We can power thousands of course, but
practically because of hull space, we can double the number.  Maybe triple
on the command ship and carrier.  So, sixteen on the battle cruisers, and
twenty-four on the carriers and command ships.”

I nodded, “Can you update the design, and then implement
it?  I think we’ll have a new ship design by the time the wormhole drive
is done tomorrow, if it works.  Do you think the attack shuttles, and
Shield missiles, have a place with this new ship?”

Obviously the anti-FTL missiles would stay.

Kristi shrugged, “For now.  I’d say stop building them,
and carriers.  They do have a place because they still have an edge over
the rest of the galaxy.  Until we lose that edge, and they catch up,
they’ll still be quite effective.  Should we update emplacements and
platforms with the new stuff too?”

I frowned, “Maybe the platforms, at least the ships and
platforms can get out of the solar system if something goes wrong with the
singularity.  Shit.”

Kristi raised an eyebrow. 

I didn’t curse often, or ever really, except when I’ve been
extremely stupid and thick headed.

“What happens if our new ships are defending Earth, and one
of them are destroyed in near orbit.”

Kristi frowned, “Oops?”

I snickered.  Oops sorry, destroyed our planet. 
My bad… didn’t think of that.  Talk about an understatement.

“I’ll finish the black hole drive, but we need to figure out
the answer to that before we even consider rolling this out.”

Kristi shrugged, “We need to figure out how we can turn it off. 
Once that’s solved we can set up strict shutdown protocols if the ship is about
to buy it, same as what we do with the fusion reactors.”

“You
know,
we’ve just been assuming
it would be that destructive.  For all we know the dark energy would
collapse with the singularity, or perhaps be reabsorbed in that spot and not
explode outward.  That actually makes more sense if you think about it,
dark energy isn’t really energy like plasma, it’s more like gravity.  Last
I checked, gravity doesn’t explode.  All we really know about dark energy
is that it’s attracted by black holes.

“Of course, even if that’s the case it would still be bad to
turn it off normally, but only for the ship the dark energy would come in contact
with.  I think we should find out, but I don’t want to risk the battle
cruiser.  I’m going to build a small shuttle with the singularity device
system and very little else… and give it a try.”

The design only took a few minutes, I just had to take our
current lab design and shrink it enough to fit inside a shuttle.  Truth be
told, all I really did was tell Al to do that and then checked and approved his
solution.  I was even able to build it out there on the big lab ship in
the landing bay, since it was a fully functional battle cruiser with its own
fabrication equipment.  It would only take a day to build, and be finished
around the same time as the wormhole device.

Kristi frowned, “Anything else?”

I shrugged, “I don’t think so.  Once we prove it’s safe
and we have a wormhole drive, if it is and we do I mean.  We update the
carriers, command ships, battle cruisers, and platforms with the new dark
energy reactor, plasma cannons, and wormhole drives if we get approval. 
Everything else stays the same.”

Kristi frowned, “If we get approval?”

I nodded, “Now that we aren’t in danger of imminent
destruction, the countries of Earth have started pinching pennies.  Our
blank check has been filled out, so to speak.  Regardless, we will update
our command ship either way, we own that one, and we own the ship out
here.  Worst case, we own the two most powerful ships in the known galaxy
for a while.  Not bad for two young blondes with doctorates.

Kristi giggled…

The Nairan.  Another update came in about the world that
reached space but wasn’t interstellar yet, about five thousand light years
rimward.  No surprises, they were humanoid.  On average they were
shorter by about five inches, the tallest male generally around five foot
seven, and the shortest female around four foot five.  There were shorter
and taller people than that of course, but those were the more common numbers.

They had golden skin, and were hairless.  There was
some debate about that, it might be cultural.  Their heads were a bit less
oval and more rounded, with eyes set a bit further apart, and they had longer
necks.  The people in charge of reviewing and gathering data managed to
get access to their version of the internet, sort of.  They could only see
what others were looking at in the data stream.  They also had the
television and radio, though there wasn’t a full translation yet of their
language.

The probes had also found another two worlds.

The first was uninhabitable, with cities crumbling. 
Looks like that world didn’t get past their entrance to the atomic age. 
Maybe in a few thousand years we could move in, if the tattered remains of the
populace couldn’t hold on.

The second world was actually more exciting news than the
update about the Nairan’s world.  We found a planet that was marginally
inhabitable, and most importantly was unlikely to evolve its own higher life
forms.  There is some smaller life in the oceans, and some sparse plant
life along with insects, but no animals at all.

The good news was the atmosphere was breathable according to
the sensor readings, and most of the oxygen was suspected to come from kelp
like plants in the oceans, which was over four fifths of the planet.  The
land masses were generally small, relatively, small island chains dotted around
the planet.  The board was calling for an expedition to do a real survey,
and see if this could be our first colony planet, there was still a lot to
learn before we could be sure.

It was also only five and a half thousand light years away,
although on a much different vector from the Nairan world, so it was less than
a day to get there.  I got the itch to be one of the ones to go, and this
time I decided to scratch.  This place was worth seeing.

I contacted Sergei who was on his command ship, and had him
pick out twenty of his ships to go on a cruise.  I also told him I’d be
coming to take my own look, but he was in command and I’d stay out of his
way.  It should be fun.

We were about halfway there when the time came to test the
wormhole drive, and to test shutting off a dark energy reactor.  I
supposed it was my turn for show and tell.  I locked the door, just in
case.

“Kristi, come take a look at this.”

She came over, “What’s up?”

“Testing the wormhole drive.”

Kristi tilted her head as I brought up the view in front of
the ship.

“Okay Al, turn it on.”

Al said, “Activating.”

For the first two seconds nothing seemed to be happening,
then we saw a point of darkness in space, which we could only see because of
the sensors.  The lab ship was in the void above the galaxy and it was
already dark there.  It grew larger, then seemed to stabilize at four feet
in diameter circle.  I realized I’d been holding my breath and started
breathing again.

Kristi sighed in disgust, “You know, I should have
known.  I’m ashamed to admit I expected the pretty exploding lights like
on deep space nine, or the blue stuff on
Stargate
… 
Something, other than just a hole.”

I giggled, which morphed into a hearty laugh.

I asked as innocently as possible when I caught my breath,
“I could add something to the overlay, would that help?  There is
radiation, I could have Al show it as a pretty color pattern.”

Kristi glared at me for kicking her while she was down,
“Isn’t that thing a little small to fit the ship through?”

I nodded, “Of course.  Al, send in the probe.”

A probe shot into the inky spot that looked as boring as a
hole in space.

A moment later Al reported, “Receiving telemetry, probe
travelled twelve thousand five hundred and fifty-two light years.”

Kristi asked, “Why so small?”

I frowned, “There are a lot of variables.  Size is the
easiest, it will be the size of the gravity imprint we generate.  How far
away and direction will come from many other variables, including power levels
and how long we feed it various types of particle energy.  I’m not
watching it all, it’s going to take a lot of openings and closings to figure
out how size effects the power requirements for distance, and other factors for
direction.  Al, go ahead and run through the tests and see if what I lined
out is enough for calibration.”

Kristi nodded, “My presentation was better.”

“How so?” I raised an eyebrow.

She grinned impishly, “Mine had explosions,” and there was
definitely an implied
duh
at the end of her sentence.

I smiled, “Well, stick around, I’m not done yet.  Of
course, we aren’t exactly hoping for an explosion here.”

I switched the view to the shuttle on split screen. 
There were Shield missiles all around it, at various distances.  The test
shuttle was also extremely far from our battle cruiser, a few light years
farther into the void.  The shuttle already had the dark energy reactor on
for hours, so it had a lot of dark energy built up by now.  The second
view had the inside of the reactor with the micro-singularity enhanced to see
it.

“Al, turn off the gravity emitters in the shuttle please,
shut down the dark energy reactor.”

The black hole just collapsed, like a bubble popping.
 Nothing happened, it was decidedly anticlimactic.

A second later Kristi sighed, “This is boring, it isn’t
doing anything at all.  At least the black hole was a…”

The shuttle exploded in an expanding ball of fire and
gases.  After waiting a few seconds and verifying nothing happened to the
missiles did I relax and sit back a bit in my chair.

I turned to Kristi with a smirk, “You were saying?”