The Heart of Matter: Odyssey One (58 page)

Tianne nodded. “Ready the
Cerekus
to take over the comet-redirect assignment.”

“Yes, Captain.”

The
Cerekus
was quite capable of managing the mission, she reflected as the crew went about the business of the moment, but it was far from ideal for the job. The small tractor ship had gravitational-warping capabilities almost on par with the
Cerekus
, but with far better fine control. Tianne knew that the
Cerekus
would almost certainly break the comet into fragmentary pieces that they’d then have to clean up, either with gravity beams or lasers, but there was little else to do at the moment.

The major concern was how the Drasin managed to infiltrate the tractor in the first place, and whether or not they were still nearby.

Syrenne Tianne had a bad feeling that her current assignment was to be far from the straightforward matter it should have been.

BRIDGE, NACS ODYSSEY, UNCHARTED DYSON CONSTRUCT

▸“HOLY MOTHER…” THE voice trailed off before it could finish the statement, leaving Eric glad that he didn’t have to possibly reprimand one of his officers for profanity beyond acceptable limits. Particularly since he was physically stomping on the urge to spout a few choice epithets himself.

“
Odyssey
is penetrating the swarm, Captain.”

Possibly the most useless status report I’ve ever received
, Eric thought. There wasn’t a man or woman on the bridge who wasn’t fully aware of that, and likely no more than a handful on the entire ship.
And most of those are in medically induced comas.

Every screen on the ship was dedicated to one part of their penetration of the cloud swarm or another, from straight visuals to radio interferometry scans. Granted, the visual-spectrum images were pretty dull, as such things went. Mostly just blackness that was occasionally punctuated by refracted or reflected light from farther into the swarm.

More interesting was the thermal images, now far clearer, as they were much closer and had been enhanced through
constant exposure and computer adjustment. The slabs of material that made up the swarm were thousands of kilometers on a side, orbiting within a few thousand kilometers of one another in a loose, cracked shell around the star they were assuming was in the center of the structure. Within that, however, was another swarm that interlocked with the orbits of the outer shell. The general belief of the department heads was that this was done to minimize energy loss from solar collectors, a belief founded in the fact that there weren’t many reasons any of them could imagine for building such a massive structure save for energy collection.

What bothered Eric most, however, was what they could be using all that power for.

The Drasin and Priminae both have energy-generation capacity so far beyond Earth’s that it’s almost staggering. What could they possibly need to chain up an entire star system to power?

As they glided, silent and blacked out, through the outer swarm of the Dyson Cloud, it became clear that the inner swarm was radiating noticeably more heat. The structure of the mega construct was amazingly complex, interlocking orbits dancing with a precision that Eric couldn’t hope to understand, even with computer aid, and he was far from a slouch on the mathematics side of things. This was a construct that used complex formulas to balance a tangled set of interactions that made the three-body problem look like grade school arithmetic.

“The inner swarm is counter-rotating, relative to the outer, sir,” Waters spoke up softly, his voice holding a touch of awed reverence for what he was seeing.

“I see it, Ensign.” Eric nodded. “That’s why we caught occasional flashes of sunlight from the outside.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Aim us for one of the cracks in the inner shell,” Eric said. “Thrusters only.”

“Aye, Captain. Thrusters only.”

While the complexities of building a mega construct such as he was seeing were beyond him, Eric was quite capable of computing orbital trajectories in his head without using his fingers and toes to remember the numbers. On thrusters alone, they could just redirect their course enough to catch one of the rotating gaps, if they began firing as quickly as possible.

If they missed that window, they’d have to light off their CM systems to make the needed maneuvers, and that was one thing that Eric had no intention of doing. CM systems affected local space-time to reduce the relative mass of any object within their reach and, as such, would be visible to any sophisticated gravity sensors for a significant range.

Even old-school accelerometers would pick up a CM field powering up, and Eric was pretty damned sure that whatever the systems in use by this structure were…They were considerably more advanced than accelerometers.

He wouldn’t have been surprised in the least if the
Odyssey
were already being tracked by gravity sensors, in fact. While on ballistic trajectories, however, the chances that such a track would be brought to anyone’s attention were slim to none. Space was far from empty, and despite how large the
Odyssey
was in human terms, its mass was essentially insignificant in gravity terms. As long as they kept course corrections to an absolute minimum, and didn’t show a collision trajectory, Eric was reasonably confident that the
Odyssey
wouldn’t trip any automated red flags.

On EM sensors, the
Odyssey
was blacked out, completely invisible against the background spectrum of the area. Even
active scans would be lost in the scanner absorbing settings of the camplates.

So they were running silent and deep again, only this time Eric knew that they were sailing right through an enemy harbor. Which, actually, made a fool of the concept of “deep.” They were about as shallow as it was possible to be, given the imposing slabs of construct orbiting all around them.

And all we have to do is cruise right through and try to avoid hitting any mines before we can break clear
, Eric thought darkly as he flipped through the results of the multitude of scans the
Odyssey
was in the process of making.

Even without their active sensors and sails, the
Odyssey
was still an exploration and science ship at its heart. She had more instrumentation per square foot than anything else that had ever been built by man, all predicated on her originally assigned mission.

If we survive this, the raw data alone will be worth the cost of every space program on Earth since the Moon Race.

The ship shuddered lightly as the thrusters puffed, altering their course just slightly. Eric hoped that the changes wouldn’t be enough to flag them for a closer look on any gravity sensors, but he suspected that wouldn’t happen.

This has to be an incredibly complex system to track. Every one of those plates will affect orbital mechanics within the cloud. Minor ballistics changes must be commonplace and hopefully hard enough to predict that they won’t even notice.

That was the theory, anyway.

Whether the practice would bear out the theory was something that they were about to prove, but Eric was confident enough that he didn’t even have to wipe away the sweat from his face.

Well, it’s either the confidence or the air-conditioning.

PRIMINAE VESSEL CEREKUS
Ranquil System

▸TIANNE CHECKED THE calculations for the maneuver against her notes. “Status?”

“
Cerekus
stands ready to begin, Captain.”

“Excellent. Engage the gravity beams.”

“Yes, Captain.”

A low hum filled the air in the big ship, caused by the increased power draw from the
Cerekus
’s big twin cores. Tianne watched as the computer showed the gravity warping of space-time envelop the comet, firming up slowly as they tried to grab it rather than crush it or accidentally yank it into a collision course with the
Cerekus
.

“It is breaking up, Captain.”

“Just keep the pieces within the gravity depression.”

“Yes, Captain.”

The work was slow, painstakingly so, and the forces involved were immense, but slowly, the big ship managed to get its grip on the comet. It was taking twice as long as the tractor would have been able to manage it in, but they were getting it done, and that would have to be enough.

So long as that mass of ice and rock does not impact Ranquil, I will consider this a success.

Pacing the comet and gathering it in their gravity beam was only the first step, however; the second began when they applied power to the ship’s drives and began to pull the rock back from the path it was on. Once that happened, then the stress of the move would surely shatter the remaining chunks of the comet into shards that could potentially escape their field and continue on course.

So long as they got the biggest pieces, that would be fine, though she was well aware that the odds of putting the crumbled chunks into any sort of stable mining orbit would now be all but impossible. The
Cerekus
didn’t have the deft touch of the tractor, so the best they could hope for now would probably be scattering the pieces of ice and rock across the orbit of one of the system’s gas giants.

A planet the size of Deus would make short work sweeping the pieces from the skies over Ranquil, which was a solid second prize in Tianne’s opinion.

“Apply reverse power,” she ordered, “gently.”

“Yes, Captain.”

The
Cerekus
rumbled low, a feeling felt deep down in the bones by the crew as the big ship began to slowly reverse power and pull at the comet body.

RANQUIL SYSTEM