Vorpal Blade

10

“Well, that is interesting,” Weaver said, looking at the readings.

“Amazing,” Becker replied. “It explains so much and yet…”

“And yet,” Weaver said. “If we could publish this it would have half the astrophysics community screaming in horror. I’m trying to figure out how many theories you just turned into confetti, Dr. Becker.”

“Could someone explain in words of no more than one syllable?” the captain said. “And possibly tell me how it affects our mission?”

“Well, getting in and out of star systems is going to be hard,” Bill said. “That wasn’t just an effect we’re going to find near the bow shock. The up side is that now that we have these readings, I think I can figure out how to pilot through…”

“Mass,” Dr. Becker said. “I can see where you’re going with that, but the mass of planets is going to affect the turbulence zone.”

“Surfing,” Bill said.

“Tough,” Becker replied.

“Would someone please…” the captain said.

“It was assumed that space was flat,” Dr. Beach said, holding up a hand placatingly. “These readings indicate that beyond the gravitational effect of a star, more or less around the heliopause although that will be different for different suns, space bends sharply upwards. Oh, not compared to a planet’s well, but quite noticeably. Gravity and momentum take on completely different forms. At the juncture of those two zones there is a disturbance zone. We already experienced the effects.”

“And that’s around all suns?” the XO said, horrified. “All the way around?”

“Uh, huh,” Bill replied, forgetting for a second that he was an officer in the military and enjoying the intellectual puzzle. “A sphere around them. Around some of them it’s going to be spectacular. The really massive ones are going to have one hell of a transition zone. It’s almost like a big defense barrier around planets. I think we’re going to lose the Voyagers in about twenty more years. But I have to respectfully disagree with Dr. Becker. The main mass we have to think about is the star of each system. If we know the star’s mass, we can compute the gravity effect. Do we have any records from the transition zone around the sun?”

“Lots,” Becker said, nodding. “I’ll do a comparison and see if you are on target, Doctor.”

“These waves are broad,” Bill continued. “On the order of a half light-year for the really strong ones. If we can determine the period, well… Then it’s just a matter of surfing.”

“Catch the wave?” the captain asked.

“Probably approach the zone and drop to normal space,” Bill said, nodding. “Right when we hit the first wave. Then time the period and hit the warp. Depending on the star, we set the warp to match the periods. We’ll be skipping through a series of waves, then hitting the next one in period. The waves are probably going to give us a smidgeon of extra speed. I’ll have to compute that. But if it works it will only be about ten minutes that we’re in most transition zones. It may be rough, but not as rough as the last trip.”

“If it works,” the XO said. “And if it doesn’t?”

“Then we drop to normal space and limp home,” Bill said. “Warp to Sol’s transition zone and drive through slow.”

“How many hours?” the CO asked.

“Take us about a month to make it through,” Bill said. “How we fixed for food?”

“Permission to…” Mimi said, then paused, looking in the hatch to the conn.

“Enter the conn,” the CO said, looking over his shoulder. “Is this a social call, miss?”

“I… You’re going to try to enter the Eridani transition zone, sir,” Mimi said shyly. “I was wondering if I could… sit in. Sir.”

The captain regarded her calmly for a moment, then nodded.

“Take my seat,” the captain said, gesturing with his head. “I’ll just hold on.”

“Thank you, sir,” Mimi said, walking over and sitting in the chair.

“Where’s Tuffy?” Bill asked, not looking up from his screens.

“With Miriam,” Mimi said.

“So he’s not giving any hints about this?” Bill said. “Damn.”

“No, it’s just me, Dr. Weaver.” Mimi grinned. “Does that bother you?”

“A lot,” Bill admitted. “I would love for Tuffy to tell me I know what the hell I’m doing.”

“Can I look?” Mimi asked.

“Go ahead,” Bill said.

Mimi walked over and looked at the equations on the screen.

“The problem as I see it is that the boundary of the warped spacetime around the boat is a smooth transition while the spacetime in the disturbed region is sharply fluctuating. Is it a continuous function?”

“As far as our instruments can tell, the fluctuations are continuous but with random functionality. Perhaps it’s a period three superposition on a Henon map.” Weaver scratched his head.

“You mean it is chaotic?” Mimi raised her left eyebrow slightly.

“I think so. The gravity waves are a superposition of waves that might be described as an infinite Fourier series. But we have no clue where to start with the series.”

“You don’t have to!” Mimi was excited. She had thought of the answer and Tuffy was nowhere to be seen. “If it is period three then you only need to mimic a portion of it and then you can superimpose that on the upper right-hand corner of the Henon map to give you a description of the function.”

“Wow!” the CO said, his eyes wide at the sudden onslaught of technobabble. “Why didn’t I think of that?”

“I was thinking the same thing, sir,” Bill said, missing the sarcasm. “But then we’d need to take that function and tie it between the boundaries of inner part of the solar system to the outer part of the gravity fluctuations.”

“I think that is right. And the partial functions should be discernable with our instrumentation, right?”

“That should actually work. We can curvefit the data and then superimpose the Henon map; I like it,” Bill said, looking over his shoulder. “And that wasn’t Tuffy?”

“No,” Mimi said. “But he’s been working hard over the years teaching me. I think that will work.”

“You sure?” the CO asked. “Because, and don’t get me wrong here, it sounds like you’re just making this stuff up to confuse me.”

“Uh…” Bill said, suddenly realizing that he’d put his foot in it.

“We’re not, sir,” Mimi said, grinning. “Those were all real words.”

“I apparently need to go back to school,” Spectre said dryly. “Among other things, I have no basis on which to make a decision of my own. I have to depend utterly on your and Commander Weaver’s recommendations. That is not a position a captain wishes to be in. The worst part about it, from the POV of a captain who wants to be an admiral, is that the future space navy is going to have to have commanders who do understand what you just said. One question, though: Why couldn’t we get this information before we went through that last transition?”

“We didn’t have the data, sir,” Bill pointed out. “Until we figured out how to fit the data we have to a curve we had nothing to go on. We couldn’t have it until we reached this point. Now we do.”

“Will we have to do this every single time?” the CO asked.

“No, sir, I think Mimi is right,” Bill said, scratching his head again. “Once we’ve done it and figured out how to use our instruments to do this, we should be able to measure the needed data for the fit before we enter into the spacetime fluctuations.” Weaver smiled and felt that feeling that he always did after solving a hard problem. That feeling was different than the ones he got from successful command decisions. Both were satisfying but he had missed the problem-solving feeling quite a bit. “That means we’ll be able to write algorithms to handle it automatically. Plug in the nature of the system and the computer will tell us how to do it. Hmmm…”

“Very well, Commander Weaver,” the CO said after a moment. “Recommendations?”

“Oh,” Bill said, jerking out of his reverie and pointing to the forward viewscreen. “Warp One, sir, and point it at the star. Stop when we hit the first gravity wave. I’ll recompute based on that.”

“Pilot, make it so,” the captain said. “Miss Jones, why don’t you take my seat again?”

“Thank you, sir,” Mimi said, climbing up in the swivel chair and strapping in. She spun around so she could watch Weaver work.

The boat headed for the star for about three minutes, then everyone felt the strange disorientation of the grav transition.

“All halt,” the CO ordered.

“Dropping to normal space,” the pilot said. “All halt.”

Bill looked over at the gravitometer that had been mounted by his station and punched in the results from the last gravity wave. Now that he knew about the effect he was already considering changes to the software to automate the process, but for the time being he was going to have to do it mostly by the seat of his pants.

“Captain, permission to take the conn,” Bill said.

“Navigator has the conn,” the CO replied as another gravity wave passed.

“Oh, I just wanna die,” Miriam muttered. “Thank you, Tuffy.”

The spider sank down and wrapped the back of her neck in its legs and started to purr.

“Thank you, Tuffy.”

“Pilot, set eyeball course for the star,” Bill said. “Set for Warp Three Dot One Four Six. Initiate on my mark.”

“On course,” the pilot said, swallowing nervously. “Warp Three Dot One Four Six set.”

Bill looked at his instruments and waited.

“Three, two, one… mark!”

As the gravity wave just started to hit, the boat went into warp, hurtling forward. There was still the sick-making feeling of sudden free fall followed by lateral pressure, but it wasn’t nearly as bad as the first transition.

“Tchar,” Bill said, opening up a communicator to the engine room. “How’s the ball?”

“Holding,” Tchar replied. “I have increased the strength of the mag field so as long as we take no more than one point six Earth standard gravity laterally it should be fine.”

“Good to hear,” Bill said, watching his instruments.

“XO?” the captain asked.

“All stations report condition green,” the XO replied. “Boat is holding nominal.”

“Congratulations, Commander Weaver,” the CO said as a gentle wave passed through the boat. “It seems to be working.”

“We haven’t hit the max G yet, sir,” Bill said. “But if my calculations are right—”

“Point Three Two Four more warp,” Mimi said. “In about ten seconds.”

“You’re sure?” Bill asked.

“The wave is going to double up,” Mimi said. “That way you’ll skip right past it. At this warp… I think we’ll hold together.”

“I see the point you’re talking about,” Bill said. “Pilot… Prepare to increase to Warp Three Dot Four Seven Zero on my mark. Four, three, two, one… Mark!”

The wave was heavier than the others, but not boat-shattering. And almost immediately after, the waves fell off to nothing.

“Transition zone passed, sir,” Bill said.

“Captain has the conn,” the CO said. “Astrogation, course?”

“Head for the star?” Bill asked. “There are two known planets in the system, both gas giants. One is in close, two astronomical units out, the other at about twenty-eight AU. Recommend we simply head inward to about one AU, literally keeping an eye out for planets on the way, and park in an orbit around the sun. At that point, the science team can start scanning. We’re going to have to adjust to local movement, though.”

“That’s going to be interesting,” the XO said.

“Turns out you’re not up to be implanted by an alien monster, Hatt,” Jaenisch said as the morning formation broke up. The Marines, like everyone else, had huddled in during chill but it was time to get back to work. “We’re doing computer assisted training. Berg’s getting fitted for his Wyvern. Tomorrow is more Wyvern maintenance for most of the platoon but Berg’s going to be in the sim for the next three days, then he does a Wyvern Common Tasks test. If he passes that we’re scheduled for ten hours of team train in the sims. If you don’t, Nugget, we’re going to be doing more maintenance, so you’d better pass.”

“I usually smoke WCT,” Berg said. “Shouldn’t be an issue.”

Berg had been involved in loading the Wyverns and had seen them lining the missile compartment, but this was the first time he’d seen the manual for one.

“Jesus Christ,” he muttered, scanning the directory. Wyverns were pretty easy to get around in; they more or less mimicked normal human motion. The tough part of WCT was always the communications and sensors section. And the commo and sensors section of the manual was three times the size of the Mark Four. There was also a zero-gee section of the WCT. Basically, the WCT had been doubled in size. He set the pad down and adjusted his bodysuit. The one problem with the Wyverns, from Berg’s point of view, was that you had to wear nothing but this damned cat-suit.

“They’re a ball-buster,” Lyle whispered. “Hop in.”

Wyvern 6719 was opened up and ready for an occupant; the straps and sensors, though, were either removed or dangling in place.

The Mark V Wyvern was three meters tall. Two and a half meters of that was the “Pilot Compartment,” the big “belly” of the armor where the human rode and piloted the machine. Extending more or less from the shoulders were metallic arms capable of almost full range of motion and extending from the “hips” were relatively stubby metallic legs. Mounted on top, where a human’s head would be, was the primary sensor pod, a dome that was currently showing its standard black. Like the rest of the Mark V, it could mimic various colors and patterns. Inside the sensor dome was the sensor suite composed of not only visible light cameras but thermal imagery, lidar, radar and, in the Space Marine version, sensors to detect just about any known particle.

Along the sides of the Wyvern were pouches for spare gear or ammunition while the back held the primary ammo storage, americium reactor power system and a “bail-out bag” with the Marine’s ground-mount fighting gear.

Wyverns were entered by backing into the “belly” of the humanoid armor while the hatch opened down into a ramp. Two grab points were mounted on either side of the hatch to assist in entry. Berg turned around and grabbed the padded stanchions and in a practiced move lifted himself backwards and up into position. He slid his legs backwards to the curved calf pieces and could tell immediately that they were out of position. So were the bicep pieces. Even the foot pads were out of place.

“I’m usually pretty close to standard for one of these things,” Berg said.

“This was Harson’s,” Lyle whispered. “He was short.”

“Oh.”

Fitting the Wyvern took forever. Berg had been fitted twice before, once at his first duty station and again at FOT, but only at FOT had anyone taken the pains that Lyle did. It took nearly ten hours, a matter of adjusting the various control points that retransmitted the actions of the wearer’s whole body.

“Try the right middle finger,” Lyle said, stepping back.

Berg moved it up and down.

“Shiny. Rotate. Weapons mount. Look at the red ball.”

Berg tracked his head around to look at the light.

“Tracking,” Lyle said, as the light began to move.

“Shiny. Bite check,” Lyle said.

Berg clamped down on the bite-trigger of the Wyvern. The trigger was mounted on the right molars and required a certain degree of pressure to engage, preventing an “accidental discharge” by a casual bite. Just as special operations troopers tended to get carpal tunnel from continuously training with pistols, Wyvern operators tended to get TMJ. They also tended to talk through their teeth like Northeastern society matrons.

“Shiny. You’re done.”

“Finally,” Berg said.

“Hey, all you have to do is stand there,” Lyle said, smiling with a slight grimace.

“You okay?” Berg asked.

“Pain is weakness leaving the body,” the armorer replied. “Try stepping out.”

Berg flexed across his body while leaning forward and the control points dropped away. It wasn’t a computer generated response but a function of the way the control points were mounted. They wouldn’t break away in action — at least Berg had never heard of a case of them doing so — but with one focused “shrug” they all opened up. He stepped out, stretched, then lifted himself back into the compartment. Placing himself into the waiting control points, including sliding his hands into the gloves, he thrust backwards and was “wearing” the Wyvern again.

“Tomorrow we’ll go through the movement diagnostics,” Lyle said. “That’s it for today.”

“You take care, man,” Berg said, stepping out again and hitting the control to close the Wyvern’s belly. “Is it keyed to me, yet?”

“Tomorrow,” Lyle said. “See you at 1700.”

“All hands! All hands! Secure in quarters. Damage control parties to suits. Prepare for system entry.”

“Grapp,” Berg said. “I gotta scoot!”

“Like I said, see you at 1700.”

“Oh, joy,” Jaen said. “This is gonna be shiny as hell.”

“You gotta figure they’ve figured out how to get around that grav thing,” Onger said. The First Platoon team leader rolled into his rack and grinned. “Don’t mean I’m not sealing up.”

Berg hit the close button but left the door clear.

“Marines, this is the first sergeant,” the communicator over his head announced. “They think they’ve got the whole system entry thing fixed. It should be an easy ride. But same thing as last time; keep sealed up until the all clear. That’s all. Semper Fi.”

“Two-Gun, got any idea what ‘fixed’ means?” Jaen asked.

“Nada,” Berg admitted. “I mean, I was pretty good in high school physics and I read a lot. But that doesn’t make me an astrogator. It’s up to him.”

“Know anything about that guy?” Jaen said.

“Not a thing,” Berg admitted. “Lieutenant commander, right?”

“Yeah,” the team leader said. “Used to be a physicist. Got himself a commission just so he could be on the mission. You know that SEAL that bunks with Top?”

“I heard about him,” Berg said. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen him. No, he was down in the Wyvern bay one time, somebody said he was a SEAL.”

“He and the astrogator were in on the first gate openings,” Jaen said. “Apparently they went some pretty strange places, Dreen worlds and Mree. Cool, huh?”

“Wait,” Berg said. “He’s not Dr. William Weaver, is he?”

“You know about him?”

“Holy grapp, Jaen,” Berg said, grabbing his stubbly hair. “I can’t believe you don’t. The guy was given a Freedom Medal because they don’t give the damned Medal of Honor to civilians! That means that SEAL is Chief Warrant Officer Todd Miller and he did get the Medal! Jesus!”

“Really?” Jaen said. “Go figure.”

“Jesus, Sergeant,” Berg said. “Just Google William Weaver and start reading. It’s seriously derring-do maulk. I had no clue he was a navy officer. I mean, that guy’s one of my personal heroes.”

“Normal space drive at maximum,” the pilot said. The young man wasn’t quite sweating. “Three-zero KPS established. She will no go faster, Captain!”

“There’s a differential speed of nearly four-zero-zero kkps between E Eridani and Sol system,” Bill said. “We’re going to be screaming to catch up for about an hour.”

“Our heat is way up,” the XO inputted. “I’d say that we only have about thirty minutes more at maximum power before we’re going to have to cut power to chill.”

The problem the ship was having wasn’t going to go away. While star systems moved in a circle around the galactic center at an apparently similar rate, “apparently” was only on the basis of looking at them from a long way away. In fact, their relative rate of motion was hugely different. Just as the center of a wheel moves faster than the outer rim, relatively, stars closer to the galactic axis tended to move faster than those “outwards.” And even stars on the same relative point outwards from the center moved differently.

In the case of the jump from Sol to E Eridani, the ship was having to speed up to “catch up” to the local speeds, relative to Sol. More speed in normal space meant more power from the ardune reactor and the electrical transfer system, both of which pumped out enormous heat.

“I think we’re in too deep,” the CO said. The ship had stopped at three astronomical units from the star. “We’ll micro-jump to the edge of the system. Going this fast, relatively to the local system, we could run smack dab into a planet or a moon before we see it. Where’s that gravity wave zone, Commander?”

“About one thousand AU, sir,” Bill replied. “There should be plenty of room at about thirty AU. Farther out than that gets us into the Kuiper region and there could be literally thousands of small planetoids like Pluto floating around.”

“Set course for thirty AU out from the star towards Sol,” the CO said. “We’ll do a chill then start the adjustment over again. XO.”

“Sir.”

“Do up an SOP on that. Enter the system at a distance, slow down and chill, then get deeper in.”

“Yes, sir.”

“We learn as we go, gentlemen, we learn as we go. Commander, where’s my heading?”

“Ah, green eggs and ham,” Hattelstad said, sitting down at the table.

“Was Dr. Seuss in the Marines?” Berg asked, tearing at a strip of rubbery bacon.

“I thought you were the guy with all the answers,” Jaenisch said, sipping his coffee. The sergeant clearly wasn’t a morning person.

“What’s up for you guys today?” Berg asked, changing the subject.

“Dickbeating 101,” Jaenisch said.

“Ground simulated combat for the first four hours,” Hattelstad said. “So we’re basically in our racks playing Dreen War. Then upper body workout, then Space Marine WCT. I’m still trying to figure out the difference between a maizon and a querk.”

“One’s a waiter, the other’s a personal characteristic,” Berg quipped. “Or did you mean a meson and a quark?”

“Whatever.”