© Copyright 2007 by silli_artie@hotmail.com
This work may not be reposted or redistributed without the prior
express written permission of the author.
A work of fiction, meant for adults. Read something else if you are
not an adult, or are offended by stories with sexual content. Then
again, if all you’re looking for is in-out, in-out, in-out, you
should probably read something else. I welcome constructive comments.
Enjoy.
Cepmod II
Eliza let us know the Cep interface was waiting for us in the galley to discuss our shakedown (sorry, they refer to it as a validation run). When Kay and I entered the galley, we were greeted not by Saba, but an androgenous bluish creature about five feet tall. Bik (the name it gave itself) would be our interface for the validation run. Our secondary hold was temporarily home to a cluster of Cep and their equipment (Eliza told me later on there were 18 of them).
The first two days of the run would be nominal checkout and cal, during which it was very important for us to run through the familiarization and training sims they’d supplied. A Cep tug/support ship would take us to a testing area well out of the ecliptic plane, where they’d proceed with checkout of systems they couldn’t do in the orbital environment. While all systems had been static tested, there were of course plenty of opportunities for interactions. Yeah, the real world tends to do that... Once the basics such as shields, sublight engines, sensor and effector networks were shaken down, we’d do the initial work on primary and secondary FTL. Then we’d lose the tug and start test runs. They were particularly interested in the command interfaces, and the secondary FTL; we’d be spending a good bit of time on that. We spent some time reviewing the proposed schedule on our tablets. Yeah, lots of time for me on command interfaces. Lots of sensor time as well.
Time for the tour!
Good grief, there was barely enough room for the three of us in the engine room! Well, the three of us fit, but if we’d invited Tundi and Donna back, it would have been real crowded! I linked into Eliza and reviewed diagrams as we went; I hoped Kay was doing the same. The primary FTL took up a little more room than the entire systems package had before, and the secondary was comparatively enormous. Sensor/actuators integrated in, defensive systems, very nicely done. Enough redundancy to make me feel safe, but not enough to make me feel gouged.
Bik agreed that they still needed to clean up cabling to the sensors added to internal systems, but that wouldn’t be a big deal. I brought up data from some of the sensors -- I was going to have fun! A side-channel started with some of the Cep who were still doing software for some of the sensors. Yeah, we’ll work it out as we go.
We’ve two bays side by side, ahead of the engine room. Bay 1 held our shuttles. We spent a few minutes reviewing changes to them. Either could now outrun a lot of starships. We didn’t look into Bay 2, as it held the Cep and their gear. We ducked into the core; more gear there. One rack was tagged “command interface augmentation.” Hmmm...
Up to the bridge, to begin our shakedown. (Sorry, validation, or was it verification? Some times the Cep can get picky.)
Very interesting... The bridge looked pretty much as it had before.
Except...
The control surfaces looked crisper, cleaner. My command chair looked almost exactly like Kay’s, except, once again, it had a feeling of more precision. When I queried my links and overlaid ship systems on what I was seeing, it became clear -- my chair was now loaded with equipment! Loads of gear connecting back through that “command interface augmentation” rack in the core.
I walked over and sat in my new chair.
It felt different -- and even as I sat in it, it adapted to me, reclining partially, more like the support I’d had on Museum. I went with it and linked in.
So difficult to describe -- the speed and clarity I’d felt while linked with my tablet and the other gear on Museum, that was just a taste. Everything was so clear, so crisp. I had access to so much. I ... I started flowing with it more, but pulled back, maintaining a separation between my “self” and the ship. I did something to solidify that boundary, and felt supporting structures form around “me,” adapting to the ship, and to Eliza. The connection between us was so much greater than it had been in the past! And it was more of a frame when I was in it, securing me while I was linked.
I popped out of the link, looking around as my chair raised to a normal seated position again. Kay and Bik had barely moved; that acceleration effect of being linked once more.
Kay settled into her seat, smiling. My info overlays showed that the seat Bik was taking had a large amount of technology integrated into what was a normal-looking back. Temporary interfaces was how they were described.
I dropped back into the link, my world expanding as the link established. Bik, Eliza, and I waited for Kay to join us, and slowed to her pace. After a very short period, I established a separate stream for Kay.
We were ready to depart the Cep orbital. Bik would command, and the tug would take us out of the ecliptic to where we could commence shakedown of the thruster and metric sublight drives. Bik suggested we start the training/familiarization sims while that was going on.
I dove into the sims.
I popped out of the sims for a break; Kay had prodded me a while earlier to break for something to eat. Between the time I’d replied, and actually popped out, only a few minutes passed for her. I got a lot more done.
Or I tried to.
I stepped around a small swarm of Cep reworking something behind an access panel in the short hallway (query: integration and synchronization node for sensor/effector systems).
Kay and Donna were in the galley.
“Something wrong? Do you need some time with Tundi to relax?” Kay asked, concerned.
Donna got up; Eliza had already started the galley preparing my meal, and Donna was getting it for me. I signaled my thanks to them both.
“No, just frustrated. We’ll get there.”
“Oh, why?” Kay asked, pausing between bites.
Donna brought me a steaming dish that looked to be stroganoff over noodles. Looked and smelled delicious.
I paused, shutting down links, closing my eyes and slowly breathing in the aroma. Steamy warmth of the stroganoff, scents of the dish Kay was eating, and a trace of Donna’s spiciness. That’s it, exhale slowly, another slow breath. Switch gears.
I opened my eyes, smiling again, and picked up a fork. My mouth was watering.
“Can we help?” Kay asked again.
I put a hand on hers. “Comm lag, and they’re trying to figure it out.”
She frowned. “Bik mentioned something about the drives?”
I nodded. The stroganoff was delicious! “I’ve been going through their sims,” blowing on another bite to cool it.
“At a ferocious pace, from what I understand,” Kay offered.
I nodded. “They keep slapping my hands -- no, you can’t have that yet! Not until we check it out! So I move on, do more sims.” I sighed, then continued. “Your colleague was in a bit of a hurry on the drives... When we get to that point, the sequence for transitioning to the secondary FTL is to engage the primary, and once we’re in the primary’s target brane, wait a preset time before engaging the secondary. I politely asked why, and what determined the wait time? I got rote responses back -- procedure is to wait so long before engaging the secondary. Yah, but why? Procedure is ... I hit a little silver wall. So I went off and ran the primary drive model through my own sims, and now I understand why -- and I’m sure Klaus doesn’t. He’s ... I can bring up the math if you want, I’ve sent summaries to the Cep and to Klaus. The way he makes the initial transition sets off an enormous ringing transient, sort of a phase wobble, that guess what, takes a while to dampen out once we get to the target brane. I’ve suggested a fix that not only eliminates the transient, but also cuts the transition energy budget by twelve to eighteen percent. I’ve also come close to telling them I’m not going to ride with the primary FTL as it is -- the transient isn’t actively damped, and I can envision circumstances under which ...” Holy shit -- I linked back in for a moment, ran a quickie, and sent the results off to the Cep, and to Klaus. “Yah, not safe. There’s a narrow but possible set of circumstances where it will break into sustained oscillation, and the result is technically known as ‘not pretty.’ Got to fix it.”
I shook my head and went on eating.
A light red wine went very nicely with the stroganoff.
When we were just about done, Kay put her utensils down for a moment. From the look on her face, she was linking in.
She took a breath, sighed, and leaned over to give me a peck on the cheek.
I had a comm from Klaus. Most apologetic, now agreeing with my analysis and proposal. He also told the Cep to give me carte blanche on the drive systems!
“Well, that’s a pleasant surprise!” I told Kay, taking another sip of wine.
She nodded, smiling. She was drinking what smelled like a Riesling. “I just had a short chat with Klaus. Let me tell you, initially he was ... hopping mad, you’d say. But the last set of results you sent him fixed that. He reviewed things, and you know the result.”
“Hope we can still work together,” I mused. “His ideas are quite novel and interesting.”
“You should tell him that! Right now, I expect he’s feeling quite wounded.”
I nodded. “Yah, after a monkey fresh from the trees pokes holes in his latest design...” I linked in, composed, and sent him a conciliatory message, also sending a copy to Kay.
She smiled, raising her wine glass to me. “Very noble -- thank you.”
“Hey, it’s that perspective thing again,” I suggested.
After dinner, I was uncomfortable; I needed to move around, and we didn’t have the room. Kay and Eliza saved the day by suggesting the Cep take the opportunity to check out the shuttle systems. That cleared the shuttle bay! I moved, danced, chanted, and exercised, and didn’t link into ship systems once! And afterwards, I grabbed Kay, took her to our cabin, and proceeded to screw both of us senseless.
They gave us most of the sensor subsystems to play with the next day. Damn! I gave Kay and the Cep some hints on integration/display changes, particularly on integrating in our additional internal sensors. By the time I’d run through the sims they’d put together on those systems, and had a very nice exchange with Klaus on both FTL drives, it was time to break for the day once again and have dinner.
I let Kay know I’d be popping out soon, but just before I did, Klaus sent me an unexpected gift -- his complete design files on the drives, warts and all!
Both drones joined Kay and me for dinner, which we had picnic-style in the emptied shuttle bay; the Cep were shaking down the shuttle’s FTL, a sized-down version of our primary FTL, using them as testbeds to check out my drive mods. I took a quick peek -- they’d instrumented those drives enough to be able to sense the phase wobble, and easily measure the effect my mods had.
Tundi was pouting -- I was ignoring her, and she needed me. So I went off with her for the night, with Donna keeping Kay company.
I was slow in getting to the bridge the next morning, but didn’t mind at all; time being held is time well spent. And I convinced myself I’d be more recharged to dive into the fun awaiting me.
A long missive from Klaus analyzing the primary FTL checkout using the shuttles. I’d been right; the added instrumentation clearly showed the transient and resulting phase wobble. Reconfiguring with my mods eliminated that problem, and shaved transition energy a shade under eighteen percent -- Klaus and the Cep were really happy, as this made it one of the most efficient FTLs on the market -- we were going to clean up, and I do mean we, as I was listed as one of the developers, and would receive a cut of the take.
The Cep spent most of the day screwing around with this and that. I’d gone through all the sims I could until they turned over the drive systems to us.
I dove into the secondary FTL models. Far more complex, my simulation tools weren’t quite up to it in all cases. That required a lot of work and rethinking.
Damn, that barrier I’d put up, separating “me” from “them” was really turning out to be a barrier. It slowed things down.
I recast parts of it, eliminating that artificial barrier.
Damn, what a difference! The secondary FTL was a very complex beastie. I’d done about as much as I could with the analytical tools in one day; I needed to let the information percolate. I also had a slew of questions which needed actual data to resolve.
A note from Kay telling me I needed to shower before dinner -- I stank!
Well, when I popped out, I didn’t notice anything... I did take a long, hot shower, and moved around in the spray a good bit. I felt sort of cramped, or compressed.
When I made it to the galley, Kay greeted me with, “Applause for the drive changes, and for working so well with Klaus, and a kick in the ass for slowing us down!”
“What now?” I asked, fetching my own dinner from the galley.
“Don’t you know?” she accused. “Something to do with your interfaces, all of a sudden they want to rework things from the core out. The only information I’ve been able to get out of them is they didn’t expect to have to do it for many months -- does that make sense to you?”
I shook my head, and slipstreamed a link as I sat down to eat. Yah, they wanted to swap out part of the augmentation box in the core, and some modules in my chair. What can you get done by tomorrow “morning” (funny how we keep to those schedules even though we were floating way outside the system ecliptic), and what can we do, say at a rendezvous after a short checkout run on the primary FTL?
Ah, that rejiggered their plans. We could do that.
“We’re leaving on schedule tomorrow morning,” I told Kay.
She raised an eyebrow. “We are? Now what!”
Had I really gotten her bent out of shape? “We agreed to modify the refit schedule. They’re going to do part of it overnight, and the rest after our first tests of the primary FTL. They’re retrofitted the primary into their own ships, and are going to deliver the replacement modules as part of their shakedown. Oh, does the deal we have with the shipyard extend to the new primary? I would think not, but I’m no expert on these matters.”
“Something you’re not expert on,” she snapped back. “...Actually, it’s a good question. I’ll check on that.”
She practically bolted from the galley after she finished eating! I checked status after I finished, and cleaned up the counters in the galley. Kay was back on the bridge running sims!
I was thoroughly confused. Luckily, Tundi came to my rescue, dragging me back to her cabin for the night. She soon had me in a very weird but pleasurable space, my body responding to her with little input from my brain. Very intense!
The next morning, we met on the bridge. My chair looked to be the same, but my links told me much of it had been swapped out overnight. Kay smiled and we exchanged a hug, but it felt forced.
We settled in. I didn’t notice much of a change in the way things felt or acted to me, maybe a little smoother. When I thought about it, Eliza popped in and let me know that the newer interfaces were far more efficient from where she looked at things. Okay, that’s an improvement then.
We worked with the sublight drives, thruster and metric, and the sensor platform. The drives worked, not much to tell about them. The sensor platform was very slick.
What’s more important, it got Kay and I working closely again. I’m so much faster, being integrated so tightly. She’d be thinking about a sensor configuration, and I’d bring it up. She’d contemplate refinements, and I’d run with those. It took a while, but we worked it out so all she had to do was think about sensor configuration or data, and I’d make it happen. Oh, I’d make it happen by handing off subtasks to Eliza and to ship systems directly, but I felt as if I was adding value in the process...
We bid the support ship adieu, and finally got to try the primary FTL ourselves. Bik chose the destination, and I took it from there. Smooth and efficient, what can I say? We collected a lot of data for me to munch on at my leisure, dropping in and out of FTL, testing, practicing.
I took a break; the Cep wanted to work on my chair, and Kay wanted to get more time running things, particularly handling the primary FTL. Fine, I’ll unwind for a bit.
Donna and Tundi jumped me in the hallway. What a way to go!
Kay laughed at me when Tundi and Donna dragged me into the galley for dinner, but she gave me a big hug. Bik joined us after we’d eaten. In the morning, we’d make a short jump to a nearby (well, near by for our primary FTL) system and rendezvous with a Cep ship for upgraded assemblies. Uh oh... But I was surprised and relieved when he told us the process would take under an hour. After that, the plan was to make some test jumps on the primary, and then the secondary. We were getting close!
Kay said she needed to be held -- an invitation in anyone’s book. Curled up in bed later, she started to explain. She’d been upset with me ... because of a lot of things. I was showing such talent, such skill (and, I interpreted, showing her up)... the Cep evidently told her we couldn’t move to the next stage of testing until she finished a minimal set of sims, that’s what she’d been doing last night, and they were still hard for her, another area where I’d passed her.
I held her and told her I was still a monkey fresh from the trees, just one with a different perspective, so I was seeing things that others hadn’t spotted. I still needed, and respected, her help and guidance.
So she provided the guidance we both needed, and suckled me to sleep in her arms afterwards.
The short jumps and the retrofit went without a hitch. We were working with Cep. My linkage felt a lot tighter, faster. Eliza reported it was the same from her end. I felt there was another step I could take in structuring things, but it wasn’t evident just yet.
The secondary FTL is quite a beast. Complex, and things have to happen in just the right sequence, things involving the expenditure of very large amounts of energy, to transfer our little ship from one FTL brane to another.
The Cep wanted me to be running things when we did the first transition to secondary, and so did Kay. I was linked in pretty deep when we did it, awash in data. We had some tweaks to make, and we made them, making a series of transitions in and out of the secondary, back to ordinary space, and then back and forth from ordinary space to the primary to the secondary, back to primary, and back to ordinary space again.
I popped out of my links, as the Cep wanted to rummage around fairly extensively.
“How was that?” I asked Kay, who had a very interesting look on her face.
She shook her head. “I’m going to take it after lunch -- you’ll see.”
We had a snack. The Cep bugged me once; we agreed a minor change, and they went back to it.
Bik announced we were ready to go again.
“Want me linked in?” I asked Kay.
She shook her head. “I specifically do not want you linked in.”
Okay, I can do that, too.
She went to the bridge, and Tundi grabbed me, taking us to my cabin.
Instead of being linked to ship systems, I was attached to a very comforting nipple, holding Tundi as she held me. There’s a sort of slip/squeeze sensation dropping in and out of the primary.
The secondary was something else -- everything took on a weird orangish-pink cast, and I had a very strange sensation all over, prickly, electric. Kay didn’t want me linking in, so I asked Tundi, and she told me we were running at about thirty percent of max on the secondary. Thinking about it, there had been some notes about “anomalous effects” in the secondary, effects which increased with the effective “speed.”
“Ask Kay to take it up to 70% for a few seconds,” I told Tundi.
That orangish-pink cast became very sharp, and I felt as if someone were twisting me, from the inside out. Thankfully, the sensation went away as we dropped back to the earlier, softer glow.
I relaxed into Tundi again as we made a number of transitions, finally dropping into normal space.
Tundi squeezed me and whispered, “Kay wants you on the bridge.”
I sighed and took a deep breath, enjoying where I was for a few more seconds, then moving to get up.
“Thank you,” I told Tundi as we dressed.
She hugged me. “Thank you -- I enjoy that too, you know!”
Bik was on the bridge along with Kay. She shook her head as I came in.
“What?” I asked.
“What did you think of that?” she asked.
I smiled. “I think I have some interesting issues to sift through. I’m not sure how you get it to do that...”
She chuckled. “Right... They” she nodded to Bik, and by implication, the Cep, “don’t have a clue, and neither do I.”
I sat on the edge of my chair, but didn’t lean back to join with it. “What’s the plan, then? You can handle it okay?”
She raised an eyebrow. “Oh, I can handle it, and so can Eliza, it’s certified for AI, but I’ll leave it to you. You’re a much better match for that beast!”
The current plan was to use a local asteroid field for a little bit of work with sensor/effector systems -- target practice, then take the ship back to the Cep orbital where they’d clean it up some, and after that, we’d be on our own! Did we have any issues we needed addressed? I suggested live time in the shuttles. Yes, we’d do that from the orbital while the main ship was being touched up. That’s fine.
“Okay, get to work!” Kay told me.
I smiled and leaned back, linking in once more.
We had some fun, working and practicing with those systems. Then it was nav time, plotting a course back to the Cep orbital using the primary FTL, a short burst on the secondary, back to the primary, dropping back to normal space and coming in on the metric drive.
The number of lightyears we’d cross in a matter of a few objective hours was staggering. The amount of matter totally converted to energy to make the transition to secondary was equally staggering; we did recover over 60% of that making the transition back.
I played with the secondary a bit, watching the data pour in, to try and understand those anomalous effects, or at least what modulated them. Fascinating... I didn’t have a clue, yet, what was going on! What a great puzzle!
We got back to the orbital. Cep once again swarmed the ship. We did our runs in the shuttles, checking them out. Fast, but so primitive feeling compared to the deep linkages I had on the ship!
We had an interesting meeting with Saba and Bik. Business was very good! The Cep were preparing and leasing out test ships so customers could validate the claims we were making for the primary. They expected the first one to come in with a retrofit order for a few hundred ships! They were still interested in my analysis of the secondary, and any changes I had to suggest on it. I told them we’d accumulated some good datasets; perhaps they would be adequate to get me started in studying some interesting issues. We might need to visit Klaus and confer with him on this. Shouldn’t be too hard, given what the secondary could do!
They also obliquely asked about the other work I’d done, if that could be made available. They were also enjoying very good business in running drive simulations for others, including some competitors. We told ‘em we’d think about it.
They also swapped out some more of the augmentation and interface gear -- and filed an additional certification for me, for composite-class operation. Kay was shocked to hear that, and I didn’t fully understand it, other than it had to do with me being linked to the ship.
Ship full of fuel, pockets full of cash (or the functional equivalent), what do we want to do?
Kay suggested a system half a day’s travel (on the secondary) away where we could play and think. She wanted to do a lot more work integrating and practicing, particularly defensive work.
“That’s what I like about you, you’re an optimist!” I told her.
She gave me the raised eyebrow look.
“You think we’ll live long enough to fight back!”
She laughed. “Let’s go cause some trouble.”
“I like that!” I agreed, leaning back in my chair and telling Eliza to take us out to the jump point.
Tweak and Hack
We spent a couple of months rethinking and reworking. We saw a lot, did a lot.
I found a new way of working, or a new vice, or both. I didn’t mind, and neither did Tundi. Kay didn’t go for it for more than an hour or so at a time, at least during the day; she needed to get things done.
When I wanted to think long and hard on something, such as the issues with the secondary, I’d curl up in Tundi’s arms. We’d curl up, she’d hold me, and I’d link into ship and Eliza. Oh, from either my cabin or hers, I didn’t have access to all the systems I did if I was on the bridge, and my bandwidth was reduced, but if I was doing theoretical things as opposed to operational, that was fine.
I found the issues with the secondary, those “anomalous effects.” Part of it was a side-effect of the drive, a fascinating aspect of how this Universe started, but part of it was a plain old energy leak. Well, maybe not so plain, as it involved some pretty elaborate mathematics. Part of it we could address, but for other parts, we had to go back to the Cep orbital to get some critical assemblies refabricated. Two trips, actually, one to give them the revisions, and then return a week later when they’d gotten things fabricated and tested.
Except that Kay had that return trip pushed back a month. We’d come back for the new gear when I was scheduled to do a colloquium on Museum about the Treatise! Okay, so what do we do in the meantime?
She’d lined up some work, actual paying work for us, making use of our ship’s sensor capabilities.
We did our data collection run through an interesting star formation. Kay had arranged to deliver the data at an orbital a few days travel from the target. Bright gal, Kay -- we showed our customers the data and made some suggestions as to what they really wanted. We’d spent some time analyzing things waiting for them to show, and had come to our own conclusions as to what they were after, and what kind of data they needed. They agreed, and we made another trip, gratis, capturing even more data.
Then it was back to the Cep orbital for new gear, and for me to talk. Three days for the installation, and three days for the colloquium.
And it was fun! I could tell starting out that some of them (of the twelve total) thought I was a fraud. Some hoped I was a fraud. Others were curious, hoping to see bloodshed, and one I think came in suspecting that I was the actual deal, and had done all this rat shit.
In a certain sense, it was the same ritual of passage a freshly minted Ph.D gets the first time they do a colloquium, a certain number of participants out to shoot the poor bastard down. My approach to those situations was to know my stuff cold, not to screw around, don’t play games, and don’t put up with shit. Here’s the work I did, here’s the results. I was on solid ground with respect to what I’d done, but ignorant as to the vast history of the area as it had developed on other systems, and I told them exactly that.
One bastard, think it was the first morning, rattled on and on, not even speaking in the common language, wheezing on and on about something, and when he finally rolled to a stop, the Museum AI that was doing the translating, told us, “He has found no errors in your work so far but is offended by your existence.” Talk about hoots and catcalls! It was all I could do to maintain a straight face. When we returned from lunch, my tablet, and I think the tablets of the other participants had a formally worded note from the Museum that the work I’d done had been certified by the Museum; I’d performed it while a resident, and it had been tracked and verified. Okay, so what?
In an informal session involving the ceremonial consumption of beverages that evening, we got on to the subject of new things, and I was put on the spot on my involvement with this new really efficient FTL everyone was talking about. I quickly caught on that some of them were waiting for me to take a swipe at Klaus. I respectfully declined, once more giving my little talk about perspective, and part of the value I offered was coming into all this with a fresh perspective, and yes, questioning some of the things they held as axiomatic.
Another questioned my involvement with such a notorious con artist as Kay. I smiled and told them that Kay was charming, witty, sensuous, and most likely listening to every word that was being said... More laughter...
The third morning, the last morning, one asked if I’d care to look at a design and comment on it. Sure, why not? I like working without a net...
What made the dance delicate is that I didn’t want to show my entire hand, which in this case was the common form I’d evolved for dealing with these things. I put up the design equations as given, and started pushing them around, talking about the benefits of the ancient technique of dimensional analysis in examining systems, and figuring out what they’re about.
Some were paying more attention than others; I got called on a transform I used, and had to spend a few minutes sketching it out, and yes, it was a fairly general technique and one I find useful in this line of work (whaddya mean you haven’t seen it before remaining unsaid).
With the thing in a fairly malleable intermediate form, I opined as to its qualities, and compared it to a family of forms in the Treatise which could be pushed into similar forms.
Next?
The chap who didn’t like my existence grumbled about not believing a certain kernel actually went to zero, so I spent some time on that one. When I finished, running a little into lunch, he looked at me and gave a short grunt.
Fine, lunch!
During lunch one of the others mentioned to me quietly that the grunt I’d received was very high praise. He was willing to tolerate me.
He was willing to do a bit more than that after lunch, when I was asked if I could simulate the drive we’d been discussing. I smiled. Should have seen that one coming from quite a distance! I pointed out the usual places where “standard” simulation tools fell apart, and then ran the design on a set of my intermediate tools. Can we look at a particular region with more resolution? Sure... This is the set of sim tools the Cep have? Yup. You did those? Yup. Are you going to release the source? Nope. Why not? Because I screwed up! I’d done that under contract to the Cep! I had to twist arms to get them to offer the stuff commercially -- they wanted to keep it to themselves!
Other minor questions, and we wrapped it up. Some of them wanted me to write up the transform families I’d used. Fairly specialized stuff, but okay, I’ll look at that.
I met Kay for dinner on an island resort; reminded me of Tahiti, overwater bungalow, making love to the sounds of the surf, except we had two moons over the water.
Cleaning up the next morning (closer to lunch time, really), I asked her, “When will I find out if I passed?”
She smirked. “Are you worried?”
I chuckled. “Nah. Felt like a thesis defense, or that first trial-of-fire colloquium, though -- am I right?”
She nodded as she tried to get dressed. I sat on the edge of the sleeping pad and pulled her closer, a nipple at just the right height. She held me. “I hope you didn’t mind. Klaus and the others practically insisted we do it, to get you the formal recognition you deserve.”
I pulled back for a moment. “Being held is better.” I gave her other side equal time.
“I agree,” she whispered, and pushed me to my back.
We picked up the ship a few hours later. We did a quick check on the secondary, and it was much, much better! We didn’t get color fringes until we were at about 75% of max. We returned to the Cep orbital to give them the good news and some data dumps.
Kay managed to wheedle Klaus’s itinerary out of someone; we caught up with him in a few days. He was still in passably mammalian form, so we gave him a lift, demonstrating the revised primary and secondary drives. We talked about drive design, and some of the issues remaining with the secondary. I think he was envious of the data collection capability we had.
He was also envious of our drones -- he spent time with Donna, and with Kay. Tundi stayed with me.
We dropped him at a star system a fair ways out of the way. We stuck around for a little while. I remarked to him that I was surprised; the place seemed way too bureaucratic and stuck up for him. He smiled, and linking privately, told me they had more money than sense, and needed to be taught a lesson, and we were welcome to stick around and help -- it should be a lot of fun.
I suggested what we really needed was a reliable form of near-instantaneous communication, something smaller than a house. He mused in agreement. I suggested something like that would be good to have, to carry with you, if all of a sudden things started getting warm and you needed a change of climate... He agreed, but didn’t think he’d need it -- this one was going to be like [equivalent of shearing sheep]. We laughed and parted ways.
“He should call himself Harold Hill,” I told Kay as we waited for departure clearance from the orbital.
“Oh?” she queried.
“A musical from my world -- it’s in our library.”
“He really does have a heart of gold,” she told me.
“Yeah? Where did he get it?” I asked, momentarily disabling inertial dampers and accelerating us away from the orbital, as we’d finally gotten our departure clearance. She squealed and said she’d get me for that later. Promises, promises!
We spent a few days working systems. I got to practice transitions a lot. We also reworked automated (and semi-automated) threat responses, throwing a lot more variability and plain old monkey nastiness into things.
Kay even found another paying job for us, taking a bunch of diplomats to a very quiet negotiating session and back. The negotiations took place at a winter resort; Kay and I took the three member negotiating team down in one of our shuttles. The resort was breathtaking. I also learned a new vice -- furs. Luckily, Kay responded to them as well as I did.
After the negotiations ended (without success, but not a failure either, talks would continue), we swung by to check on Klaus. He didn’t need rescuing, yet. He was still polishing his blades, preparing for the shearing.
Kay decided it was time we cleaned up our own paperwork, so she scheduled our recert.
Recert
Recertification is handled by independent entities, sort of like smog or safety checks for cars in states like California or Massachusetts. Part of the process is a visual inspection, and part is a performance test. We were dealing with an old, established firm; the branch we were using was headed up by a pair of fine folks who were somewhere between velociraptor and emu, more a velociraptor with feathers and proto-feathers. As a race, they’d been bouncing between the stars for a few millennia.
I’ll call our pair Fred and Joe. We’d given them the records of our little ship beforehand; built by a first-class house, then gutted and rebuilt by the Cep. They spent a while going through the ship, pulling the occasional access panel, using remote-viewing instruments on other areas, running diagnostics. They made approving comments on the original design and on the Cep work, clean and efficient.
Fred did more of the physical digging. Joe was no slouch when it came to internals and operational details. He zeroed in pretty quickly on some nonstandard sections of defensive and drive systems. What’s this all about, he asked me quite pointedly.
I brought up the mathematical models, showing them how the stuff that raised their interest essentially put high-order modulation on the drive fields. They weren’t familiar with the forms I brought up -- well, that’s because I just came up with them. Basic drive operation is unchanged; we add some high-order wobbles is all. I recast drive ops back into a more traditional form, showing them the changes. Okay, so why the wobbles? I smiled and told them it was a defensive measure. Joe gave me a toothy smile; similar to what I’d done with the Spider drive, he asked? Yes, except a lot nastier, we hoped. Both Fred and Joe liked that.
We spent a while going over the secondary FTL drive; they’d heard rumors of it, but hadn’t had the opportunity to actually poke at one. I took them through basic operation. Yeah, Klaus, one of Kay’s colleagues came up with it, and the Cep built it. Very slick, next year’s state of the art. Kay tossed in that I’d come in and made some significant changes to it, and to the primary.
They signed off the inspection part. Over dinner (all of us omnivores, we devoured many plates of nicely prepared ribs), we discussed the next phase. They’d pick a route, and we’d stop along the way to check out other aspects of ship operation. What class were we going for? 3J? That class requires a composite-certified pilot, and thanks to the Cep, I had the composite certifications.
Kay told them, “3E” with a very straight face.
I thought they were going to fall out of their seats from laughing so hard. Fred started choking on a chunk of meat, and Joe had to pound on his back for a bit.
3E? Really? Yes, really.
Okay, they agreed to do 3E, but they’d really like to find out what that secondary drive could do. We agreed we could do that along the way.
Okay, see you in the morning, and we’ll get underway; figure four or five days.
Back at our ship, we ran checklists and talked strategy before heading off to bed. Kay was highly amused. I did my best, then she got a nipple in my mouth, and it was all over.
When Fred and Joe arrived, they jacked their gear into ship’s diagnostic ports, and we reviewed the plan. They gave us an initial destination, which we had to reach within a certain time to make 3E. Once we reached that destination, they had some short hops to areas where we could test other systems.
We proposed running that first part under 3J (composite) control, and tossing in a side-trip among the short hops to test the secondary FTL. They liked that idea. When we got back to our earlier proposed routing, Kay would take over, and pilot the rest of the run under 3E rules. Sounded good to them. Whenever we were ready to depart.
Well, Joe had to spend some time reconfiguring his gear -- our systems were giving him (flooding him with) too much information! Yah, he’d noticed all those sensors when he’d reviewed things earlier, just not completely thought through how much data they were capable of dumping on him.
We went to the bridge. I sat command, with Joe next to me, Fred and Kay behind us. I settled into my command frame, linking deeply, slipstreaming. I signaled departure checklists complete and waited for Joe to give me the go-ahead.
Joe linked in, but was at least a factor of ten slower than the me-Eliza-ship composite. We left the orbital, moved outsystem, and made our first FTL transition. Joe made rude noises, commenting on the low utilization we were putting on the primary FTL to make our 3E time.
The usual checkride stuff; they threw (simulated) failures and problems at us, and we handled them. Donna’s trim size and small hands were put to use once again.
Having lunch in an orbital above a world renowned for its volcanic activity, they tossed out a suggestion for our secondary FTL test. I was linked with Eliza, and suggested a destination about ten times that distance. Fine with them, not even a raised eyebrow, pass the salt, please.
The secondary FTL really should be handled by a composite. Oh, Eliza could run it, and so could Kay with Eliza’s help. But to really make it sing took a composite. And I really wanted to practice the transitions between primary and secondary FTL more.
I tried a different approach, linking much deeper than I usually did, moving to composite, particularly for the transitions. That gave us (the composite) much finer control. I had the feeling that I could simplify the transition to secondary FTL, reducing or eliminating even more of the transition delay from the primary, but it was going to take more thinking and modeling.
Fred and Joe were much impressed.
On the return trip, I pushed the secondary much harder, to about 85%, giving everything around us a pinkish cast. Fred and Joe were really impressed.
But doing that, especially running the transitions, meant long periods operating as a composite, which took a lot out of me. Once we’d docked, I let everyone else leave the bridge ahead of me. I ducked to our quarters, and let Tundi grab me. She complained that I’d been ignoring her, all the time squeezing me to her. She had to recharge me before she could wipe me out again.
I spent a lot of time with Tundi while Kay ran the remainder of our recert.
Our final dinner; we’d passed, of course. Fred mentioned that they saw few ships with our capabilities. Is that the good news? We knew they also did reconstruction work, and saw a few ships that way... Joe passed along a contact, hinting that we should look up the individual very soon; they needed us. Oh, and all we had to do was ask, and they’d file recerts for us for anything up to 3J, the only restriction was that I had to be command for 3G or above.
We thanked them and headed back to our ship.
“What’s the deal they’re pushing?” I asked Kay, holding her close as we stood inside the lock.
“Mmm,” she hummed as I rubbed her back. “Not sure, probably a courier run. That system is two days out on the primary, though -- why don’t we sleep on it?”
We went to the bridge and had Eliza take us out. Once we transitioned to FTL, we left things to Eliza and retired to our cabin, joined from time to time by the drones.
Taxi Service
One of those nondescript offices in an orbital, nondescript but hinting at solid finances, given the location, security, and level of furnishings. The gent before us was tarsier-like, large eyes, graying on top, long, nimble, nervous fingers.
Yes, hmmm, he’d received a communication suggesting we and our ship could be of use, if we were interested. They were interested in a ship, small, inconspicuous, and very fast. Were we interested?
Doing what, Kay wanted to know? Where, when?
Our host smelled something like nutmeg. Short visits to a series of orbitals, quickly once started, he informed us. Nervous, distracted, high-strung? Nothing to go by, hard to tell. This could be quite nominal behaviour for him.
How many, where?
Between twenty and twenty five locations. Speed and discretion paramount.
Where? Doing what?
Delivering information, could we start, soon?
I was getting exasperated. We need a list of locations. Do you have a proposed route?
Our host presented us with the list. 23 locations, scattered over an enormous range! And the proposed route! Think Fort Lauderdale, San Diego, Miami, Laguna Beach -- crisscrossing the country. No wonder he wanted a fast ship!
What are we carrying? Kay wanted to know. From the tone of her voice, she seemed to have an idea.
Him and three others. Were we interested?
Kay and I huddled, looking at the list. His responses were highly non-responsive. We were still linked to Eliza. Let’s look at these locations in a FTL-projected sense; how do they group in the major FTL projective geometries? Over any number of well-known drives, still two widely separated groups. I suggested a grouping, bouncing back and forth. Kay altered it a bit.
We proposed that to our host. No, we had to visit the first one on his list first, that’s where the others were. Other than that, our sequence was acceptable, any sequence was acceptable. Speed was essential, and discretion.
The deal had a weird feel to it. It was like doing cities on both east and west coasts, bouncing back and forth across the continent.
Kay quoted an enormous price for the deal, with half of it for the last four locations.
Accepted, with a substantial bonus if we completed the lot in six days! We should start now, and please call him George!
Wait a minute -- what are we transporting? I wasn’t sure.
George grinned. Information, very valuable information. Can we go? Now?
Kay and I looked at each other. Quick check on our private channel. Eliza was receiving priority refueling -- paid for by the orbital! Supplies we needed were being delivered as quickly as possible.
Let’s go, got yourself a ship!
That pleased George no end!
As we were about to leave, a reptilian came in and handed George a small package. He opened it and looked briefly.
Weird -- looked like a stack of the ID cards used to identify ships. I’d watched ours put in place, in a fancy enclosure which was part of Eliza. Supposedly highly secure and one shot -- the card was activated on insertion, and was destroyed when you removed it.
But having a stack of them didn’t make sense. Must be something else, like for his race’s version of Solitaire or something. Memory cards ... Tarsier porn recordings?
He smiled and thanked his assistant, telling her (hard to tell sexes with reptilians, at least it is for me) he hoped to be back within a week, and she knew what to do if he wasn’t.
That’s damn encouraging! The price Kay quoted was sounding lower all the time!
Heading to the ship, George gave me more encouragement. “No flight plans, none,” wagging a very long finger at me. Smelled like musty nutmeg. Was carrying one small bag.
“As you wish,” I acknowledged. Flight plans were a courtesy -- space is damn big, and nobody really cared if you filed plans or not. They were useful mainly to insurance companies, divorce lawyers, and next of kin.
George looked over the guest cabins, the larger one, then the smaller. “Eh, I’ll take this one; they’ll use the other. It will do.” He turned to me. “Take me to the core.”
I gave Kay the traditional raised-eyebrow glance -- she smiled and nodded, and linked for me to do it.
I led us to the AI core. You get to it via a deliberately inconspicuous route.
He took out the package I’d seen earlier and looked through it. He took out a card. Yes, it was a ship ID card, from a package full of them!
“This,” he handed it to me, “Is a replacement for the one you have now.”
Kay took that one.
He handed me the package. “Use one of these for each destination. It doesn’t matter which you use, just use a different one for each. And vary the hull patterns, eh?”
Is this legal? I linked to Kay. This was like being handed a stack of fake identities, and more.
For them, it is, she linked back.
When would be the best time to switch? I queried Eliza.
Any time before we drop back to sub-light, she replied.
I handed the package to Kay. “I’ll let you handle this -- any time before we drop back to sub-light.”
“I’ll do it,” she acknowledged, “And take care of the hull.”
Back to the bridge, I settled into my command chair, feeling it wrap around me as I linked in.
“Ready to go,” I announced.
I had Eliza take us out on the metric drive.
Our first stop was a little over three hours out on the primary FTL; easy, or it should be.
I was focused, on edge. We made the transition to FTL; Kay swapped out the ID card shortly after. Anybody (or anything) trying to track us, now or after the fact, was going to have a hard time -- unless they knew the ID info on those cards already. Hmmm -- interesting point -- were we advertising our arrival by using those? Have to guess we were!
We dropped to sublight close to our destination. We were identified, and given routing to an orbital, brought right in to a docking bay. Eliza took us in; I watched sensors.
We docked, and three short gray chaps joined us. George greeted them and showed them to their cabin. Each had a small bag, plus one for George.
We departed quickly. I prepared for our first long jump. Metric drive to the jump point, kick in the primary FTL, riding it and transitioning to the secondary. George said speed was important -- I was going to push the secondary to 90%.
Nominal but nerve-wracking, guiding and watching. Kay did the card swap and hull painting again. We popped out and were directed to a smaller orbital around the 5th planet. Dock, and our gang was met by an honor guard who led them off for a few minutes. We barely had time to take on fuel before they returned and we were on our way again.
Rinse and repeat.
On the third one, I tried my revised approach with the secondary drive. Rather than kicking in the primary, completing the transition and stabilizing in the primary brane, then kicking in the secondary, I made use of the transition. We waited for the primary to stabilize, as there was essentially an overshoot in that initial transition. Why not make use of that overshoot to bring in the secondary FTL? Should save not only energy, but time. And with me operating as a composite, even a few seconds objective time waiting was a long time just waiting for a long time!
It took a composite to do it, riding our drive systems through the transition regions, overlapping them, but damn, it worked, and worked well. Saved an enormous amount of energy, and a lot of my time as a composite. To the rest of them, the normal transition effects were smoother and less intense. A winner all around! Yeah, right now it took a composite to pull it off, but I’d bet it could be automated, with enough analysis put into it. A job for later.
We completed seven. It took about half an hour on the metric drive to get to the jump point. Kay conferred with Eliza and Tundi, and told George that I needed a break, eight hours at least. She recommended running for that period on primary FTL, then going to secondary when I returned. George understood and agreed. Once we made the FTL transition, I turned things over to Eliza and Kay.
Tundi met me in the corridor and took me to our cabin. I let go, giving myself to her.
Hours later, rested and refreshed, I met Kay in the corridor as I headed back to the bridge.
“We’ve decided a new schedule, with regular breaks for you. We need you at your peak,” she told me.
I agreed, nodding. A thought -- “The three -- they’re carrying keys...”
Kay smiled, but shook her head. “Almost -- they are the keys.”
“Just the three, or George, too?”
“The three -- George is the safety.”
“What?”
“To make sure we don’t try anything, they don’t try anything.”
“And if we did?”
Kay smiled and shrugged her shoulders. “Back to the bridge -- back to work.”
Don’t like those kind of smiles. We hugged and kissed briefly.
When I walked onto the bridge, George smiled. “Better?”
“Yes, thank you,” I replied as I settled in my chair again, linking deeply. Milliseconds, objective time, hours for me, transitioning to the secondary, driving us on.
Made sense now -- the IDs ships used, the insurance certificates -- they were signed using a descendant of what I’d known as public key cryptography. Related, the way Edison’s incandescent light is related to voltage tunable semiconductor laser diodes. Had those been invented by the time I’d left Earth? Doesn’t matter.
Even in advanced societies and technologies, in cryptosystems, it’s the keys (and key functions, the transforms) that are important. Periodically, it’s good to introduce new keys and more secure transform boxes. I guessed that’s what we were doing, transporting new material to different sites.
And of course there were those who would be interested in intercepting the new material, and those who would be interested in delaying the introduction of new material for as long as possible.
If you had the new material, you could make your own certificates, or some folks would be scared you could, which might be just as useful. And if you had old certificates which would be made obsolete, such as forged ones, or some which would be difficult to legitimately renew or replace, delaying the introduction of the new material was definitely in your economic interest.
Which put a big fat target on us, and on any others distributing the new stuff.
The good news, space is big. The bad news, we probably had a finite set of delivery points. Once interested parties figured that new data was being distributed, and how, they could start watching. And we were using those weird-ass IDs, which were either random, a tip-off, or both.
At the next one, mixups at the orbital with supplies and fueling. Didn’t cost us a lot of time, but got George hacked off. Fine. I let Kay and Eliza take us from yet another orbital to the jump point, not linking in until we got close.
The crystal-clear senses of the composite, crystal clear and lightning fast. Initiating transition to primary FTL, energy transfer to field generators, fields ramping nominally, approaching crossover ... <ping!> What the hell was that? Crossover and overshoot, cancel the secondary, ramp down secondaries, stabilize in primary FTL brane, take us out, transition back to sub-light ... <ping!> There it is again!
Traveling at about 0.85c in empty interstellar space, Eliza and I analyzing that damn <ping!> -- what the hell was that? Where did it come from? Didn’t see any suspicious energy expenditures. What’s it’s signature? Bring up other instruments, other data around the events.
Oho -- whatever it is, it generated a very nice pulse as we transitioned in and out of “normal” space, generating a pulse that should be eminently trackable. Yeah, just like the thing that got me into this mess in the first place! Should be able to locate the source of that wavefront from a fair distance. Not light years, but certainly within a few diameters of the average stellar system. And if not used for location, it sure as hell tells someone we’re coming or going!
So how the hell do we find this thing? Hmmm... That mixup on the orbital was a fucking ruse, misdirection! What did we take on, back on the orbital? Just fuel -- and that was in shielded storage tanks. Looking at the <ping!> more, yeah, had to be outside the hull -- if it was inside, the artificial gravity, inertial containment, and protective fields would screw it up. So, something on the hull. Where, and how do we find it?
Slowed to a crawl, less than 0.1C, and released a probe to help us scan the exterior. Dropped a note to Kay that Eliza and I were checking out things, nothing to worry about -- yet. Hardly a second had passed before we started the transition to FTL (and bailed).
Where would I put something, if I was going to put something on our hull? Plenty of bulges. Hah! Did they know we have a polychromic hull? Display shifting random patterns on the hull and see what the probe spots.
That did it -- two new bulges near the tail of the ship, nicely blended into where fins met the body, but they didn’t change color.
Hmmm, are they inside our defensive shields, or outside? Should be outside to propagate the pulse. Okay, should be able to pry ‘em off. But do we want to? Time to caucus.
I opened my eyes, unlinking. George and Kay were looking at me, concerned. I was still slipstreaming, keeping some links open. Kay was trying to pick through what Eliza and I had been doing, but I hadn’t summarized it, and she hadn’t asked Eliza.
“We seem to have picked up some kind of tracker,” I told them. “It emits a pulse when we transition in or out of FTL; could be used for identification, or crude location. I say crude, as it gives our location when we made the transition, not where we went after.”
“Those bastards on the orbital...” Kay suggested.
I nodded. “Misdirection, it would seem. The question is -- do we leave them alone, or get rid of them? I’m for getting rid of them.”
The way George’s forehead wrinkled and rolled was fascinating to watch. “Can the devices be analyzed once removed?”
I smiled. “Not if I had designed them,” Kay suggested. “But we can try,” she added. She looked to me.
I brought up a holo of the ship and indicated where they were, bringing up data from the one probe we had outside.
She linked in and had Eliza drop another probe outside the ship. After doing a few passive scans of the area, she started with a low-power scan.
And we were rewarded by pair of bright flares as our suspicious bumps vaporized. The shields on the probes protected them, and ship’s shields protected us, but the image sensors on the close-in probe were damaged.
We had Eliza bring the probes back inside and secure them; we’d have Tundi or Donna swap out the image sensors later.
“Suggestion for the remaining stops?” I offered.
George looked quite glum. Kay raised an eyebrow.
“I suggest we have Eliza randomly pick a destination from the remaining locations. When we finish with that one, have her pick the next. That way we’re not following a preset itinerary.” And nobody, at least none of us, would know where we were going next. I looked to George. “Are there locations we could visit that are dummies.”
His frown turned to an interesting smirk. “Already on the list.”
I had to chuckle. ‘Okay... Are we agreed on destinations, Eliza selecting at random?”
Kay looked to George.
George frowned again, frowned and scowled with his whole face. Even his ears scowled, which was an interesting trick. “Agreed. I do not like this.”
Kay nodded. “I think that makes it unanimous.”
George turned his head and looked at her, raising an eyebrow. “Hmpf.” He went back to his seat.
I leaned back into my command couch. Eliza had a new destination picked. “Next stop, what is it? EK47?”
Linked in, light and loose at first, as Eliza ran checklists and set us up for primary and secondary FTL transitions. I signaled the others, linked in deep to form the composite once more, and got us underway.
If someone was disappointed that we scraped their telltales off our hull, they didn’t let us know about it. Watching and more... We used different IDs on each randomly chosen leg, doing things quickly, hopping back and forth, those helped. But the number of target systems was limited -- even with the misleading entries. And for each of those systems, physics determined the jump points for FTL entry and exit, a small, finite number. Not quite shooting fish in a barrel, or setting up snipers by a mountain pass... And certain drive systems preferred certain routings. Distribution of planetary and stellar masses, that kind of thing. That’s what got the Spiders, a bright boy spotted likely choke points when that drive system was in use.
Still, moving fast, moving quietly, we might make it through the lot and live to not tell the story. Like the taxi drivers who carry the diamond merchants in Antwerp -- you don’t want to know. With any luck, there were other crews doing the same thing as us, with similarly scattered delivery points, and luck as good or better.
Our luck held. Eh -- hard work and razor’s edge attention. Had a weird feeling on 16, but nothing unusual transpired, at least nothing that we spotted.
We did the eighteenth delivery and were vectored out to the jump point. I’m linked in before we leave the orbital, but don’t go fully composite until we’re near the jump point. I made my transition to composite as Eliza finished running checklists on primary and secondary FTL. All green. Let’s go!
All that energy, twisting us out of “normal” space, or was it twisting “normal” space out of us? We’re going through the transition...
Multiple sensors reporting things going wonky. Not bad, but weird. It’s like...
Part of me has predicted the next level of wonky, and that’s what happens! The secondary is already ramping up; I bring it up faster, to hell with rate limits, and I kick it in.
Massive, massive transient, but we ride through it. We ride through it and out the other side, into our predicted/calculated secondary brane, as I watch weirdness dampen out in the drive system sensors. I have Eliza dump a message off to Kay and George that we’ve survived a hijack attempt and all is well. We recalculate and make the needed corrections. The combined transition - overshoot trick requires we recheck anyway, so no big deal. The attempt on us cost us a little bit, not a lot. We dumped a ferocious amount of energy into something, and I hope it was received in the spirit in which it was given!
I spent a few subjective days analyzing what happened, piecing it together from the data I had, thanks to our overinstrumented drive systems. Yah, someone had generalized the trap technique used on the Spider FTL drive to cover our primary FTL drive. They’d also thrown in a new wrinkle, at least that’s what the data told me. The defenses I’d put in place earlier would have gotten us through, but bringing in the secondary the way I’d done it gave them a real kick in the nuts. Should have turned the whole lot into a very energetic plasma. I refined my tricks a bit more. Hmmm, interesting...
Got a message from Kay that the entire ship shuddered and rang like a bell, with a bluish flash and then the usual pinkish glow of the secondary FTL. George and companions were very happy to still be alive.
We dropped sublight close to our destination, only about half an hour on the metric drive. I didn’t even get out of my command chair, staying lightly linked. Our guests were off-ship for maybe ten minutes. We didn’t even bother with fuel. We left for the next stop. As usual, we were given a vector to jump point. I asked for a different one. We got a different vector to a different jump point. Eliza selected our next destination. This one was close in, too close to use the secondary, about twenty hours on the primary. I signaled Kay that she had a job, and I was going to take a break!
After a while (subjectively) in primary FTL, I sensed Kay linking in, and dropped out.
I opened my eyes and sighed, rising a bit out from command. Tundi and Donna were both there, grabbing me and taking me off to our cabin. This time Tundi held me while Donna worked me over, then gave me to Tundi who rocked me to sleep sandwiched between them. Snoozed a bit more after an energetic wakeup with Tundi.
When I returned to the bridge, we’d made our stop and were cruising along on the primary FTL. My turn to take us to the secondary.
But George wanted an explanation first.
Someone had set up a trap field specifically engineered for our primary FTL and ... George interrupted, wanting to know how I could possibly tell such a thing. I told him our drive systems were highly instrumented -- that’s what let me spot the tracker earlier, remember? I’d spent the subjective equivalent of many days analyzing the data from the incident. If he or his organization was interested in purchasing a detailed technical report, we could discuss terms. No, simple explanations would suffice. Yeah, thought so. The Universe is a big place, filled with creativity. Someone had generalized the trap field technique used against the spider drive, or at least applied it to our FTL drive; it would also have been effective against a select few other FTL types. But I had also generalized and refined defensive measures, and was also using a much different transition in going to the secondary FTL, which put an enormous amount of energy at my disposal, and I’d made use of that energy, for someone else’s disposal... What do I think happened to the miscreants? Could we locate them? We might be able to locate a rapidly expanding cloud of particles, but that was my best estimate of what we could find -- if we looked hard. There was of course some chance of survivors, if they’d been running things remotely from a safe distance, which is what I’d do if I were operating a trap.
Did my defense give away enough to render that approach ineffective?
Good question. Don’t believe so, a matter of physics. And if the same thing happens again, I’d be using a slightly different strategy anyway. I recommend that I handle all further FTL transitions, with the secondary powered up whether we needed it or not -- it made a dandy flyswatter.
How about attacks against the secondary FTL? Were such attacks possible?
Hmmm... Possible, not sure -- supposedly the details of our secondary FTL were not known, but then I’d have made that assumption about the primary as well. Such an attack on the secondary would involve energy expenditures ... on the order of multiple supernovas. I’d have to think about it more, but not damn likely.
George made a face and scratched at his ribs. He wandered off.
I looked at Kay. She smiled and gave me a hug. “Did they take good care of you?”
I nodded, snuggling in. “I want you to take care of me, too.”
“Looking forward to it -- five more to go.”
I settled in, transitioned to secondary, and got us moving again.
On the razor’s edge, prepared, waiting, and nothing unusual happens. Is that the good news or the bad news?
We completed stops through n-1; one to go. We were cruising on primary. We’d need the secondary for a few hours (or the primary for many months) to get to our last stop. I was tired; I wanted to take a break and rest.
“I need to rest before this last one,” I told Kay and George, slipstreaming out of the link for a bit. “I feel like we’re wearing a big target.”
“Rest all you like,” George told me, then smirked.
“What?” I asked.
Kay started laughing.
“No,” I muttered...
George nodded. “That was the last real stop. The remaining one doesn’t matter. We can go there if you like.”
“No,” I muttered, louder, and in a much different tone of voice.
George raised an eyebrow, his smirk turning into a smile. “I agree.”
Kay spoke up. “We have completed our mission, then, ahead of schedule?”
George’s smile broadened. “Yes, we have. We have completed the mission, and survived.” He looked to me and gave me a nod, almost a bow. “And I most sincerely hope to never, ever do it again!”
I looked to Kay, who smiled.
“We return your colleagues to their homes, and then you?” I suggested.
He shrugged, from shoulders up through ears. “Back to my home. The others, their task is complete. They probably deactivated already.”
Okay, drones or something similar; they hadn’t been avid conversationalists, that’s for sure.
“I would still like a short rest,” I requested.
George nodded. “You have earned it, Captain.”
!!!
I looked to Kay, who smiled and nodded. “You have, Captain,” she agreed.
I unlinked and stood up. Got to get out of here while my head will still fit through the hatch! “Thank you. Kay, will you take over?”
“Of course.”
Out in the corridor, I let myself fall into Tundi’s arms. I was tired, but it was a good tired. She had to unwind me quite a bit, holding me, then Donna joining her in giving me a massage, then making love and holding me afterwards.
I was still a little tired when I returned to the bridge, but I felt a lot better.
Kay and I hugged and kissed. I took over, and got George home.
“What do you say to a week or so at a winter resort,” I suggested to Kay as Eliza was guiding us out to a jump point.
Kay smiled. “How about, ‘Mmmmm.....’”
I had Eliza plot the course. “That will do!”
End of Part 5
rev 2007/08/24
On to Part 6
Time of Arrival 5
By silli_artie@hotmail.com
http://www.asstr-mirror.org/files/Authors/artie/www