Alicia Jones 3: New Frontier (2 page)

I groaned later that day, and not in a good way.  It
was impossible.

Kristi looked over, “What’s the problem?  Oh, I
upgraded Al already.”

I frowned, I hadn’t even noticed.  I’d have to pay
attention and see how different he was now.

“It’s the smaller probes.  The large one is designed
and ready, and works flawlessly in the simulations.  It could fly up and
knock on the landing bay door without the ship’s sensors seeing a damn
thing.  The smaller probe has energy issues.  Ironically the sensors
are the most energy intensive.  I have the gravity drive at one hundredth
of a G, so it should be able to fly around, and station keep, as long as it
doesn’t enter the orbit of a planet or moon.

“The quantum communications are even less energy intensive,
just five volts to maintain the quantum frequency.  The EM shield doesn’t
take much, because the electronics are hardened, and it will have nanites to
keep them in perfect condition, degradation isn’t much of an issue for them to
keep ahead of.  But… the sensors will run for about five minutes, then it
takes fifteen to twenty to charge the capacitors back up, the solar panel can’t
keep up with the power requirements of active sensors.  That still leaves
passive, but passive sensors won’t pick up a ship in FTL unless it’s really
leaky.”

Kristi giggled, “Really leaky?  Is that the technical
term Doctor Jones?”

I growled, “Yes Doctor Wilder.  If the doohickey on the
thingy is really leaky…”

I shook my head, “I think I need a break, forget I said
that.”

Kristi snorted, “Send the design to me, I’ll take a quick
look.  Give yourself a break, it’s not like people design things to run
and last forever every day.  Even with known tech.  It would be a lot
easier with a reactor in it.”

I nodded, “But it will eventually run out of reaction
mass.  I figured at the power this takes, it would last for fifty
years.  But who would want to service tens of thousands of these little
sensors, much less into the millions a few hundred years from now when we’ve
mapped out the whole galaxy.  If I can’t figure it out, we’ll have to go
to large probes, they can FTL to a gas giant and refuel themselves.  But
who would want to pay that bill?”

 Kristi shrugged, “What if you nix this design, make it
a box where the flaps unfold, maybe a few times, all with solar cells. 
Sounds to me you just need four times the amount of solar cells as you have.”

I frowned, “But the larger it is, the more energy would need
to be used for EM shielding.  Twice the size, four times the energy.”

Kristi rolled her eyes like I’d just said coffee was black,
and asked, “Could the nanites keep up with the degradation if the solar panels
were unshielded?  Just shield the little box part for radiation.”

“Maybe, I’ll check.”

I set up the new design, it looked like the size of a kids
lunch box, against the sides the solar panels were folded twice, once unfolded
twice sideways, they would unfold again up and down.  Then I ran some
simulations.

“Huh, it will last a thousand years.”

Kristi looked over, “Just a thousand?  That’s a lot
less than forever.”

I laughed, “Yes, because the nanites will run out of spare
material to perform maintenance.  Who knows, by then we’ll have the tech
to scan the universe with our minds, and won’t need it anymore.”

Kristi snickered, “With our minds?”

I shrugged, “I told you already, I need a break, possibly
hours of sleep, let’s go eat.”

She nodded and jumped up, “On the ship?”

I shook my head, “Colorado Springs.”

We took a flight down to Earth on the sports shuttle, and
before I got out I broke a few things.

Kristi looked at me with concern, “Are you okay?”

I laughed, “Yes, I promise I’m not going nuts.  I’m
testing the nanites.  If we are to include them in the probe, we need to
make sure they work as good as they do in the simulations and get patented
before I submit my plan for looking rimward.  We’ll see if the shuttle is
fixed after dinner, run diagnostics, and check and make sure it’s working
right.”

The next week was fairly quiet.  Nothing changed, no
new systems were added to the treaty, no one attacked anyone, or as far as I
knew even stubbed a toe.  I even finally got some sleep.

The nanites proved out, and so far the AI upgrade seemed
okay, if a little annoying at times.  The new type of nanites were
patented, and we’d started to fabricate our fleet of one hundred stealth sensor
unmanned ships.  They gave me a month to get it implemented, but rather
than mess with the large fabricators building the rest of our fleet, I gave
orders for one hundred ships to build one each.  It should take a little
under two days for their ship fabricators to build one, since they were already
designed to replace Shield missiles all they needed was the new pattern.

Caroline was still working on power systems for the nanites,
but I wasn’t sure if her heart was really in it.  For now, I’d let her
just go with what she was doing though, and hope she either had an unexpected
break through, or moved to something different on her own.  I didn’t doubt
the woman was brilliant.  Her invention as it stood would already bring us
both millions if not billions, I could afford to pay her salary while she
wandered a bit before picking a new project.

Shelly was successful, but the AI system was high end, so
she was working on either making it run on slower hardware, or finding out a
way to make the faster high end computers a little cheaper.

Carmine was making slow yet sure progress on improving the
terraforming technology we had.  It wasn’t ready yet, but hopefully it
wouldn’t take too much longer, I had a feeling we were going to run across a
number of world’s that were almost but not quite compatible with human life.

Kristi, besides being my best friend, and forcing me to be
social and have fun, thank god for that, also had her own projects.  I
wasn’t sure what exactly she was working on, but I knew it was weapons
related.  She was my business partner, so I wasn’t going to butt in unless
she asked for my help.

Having everything in hand again since keeping up with the
day to day was easy, I was able to spend more time going through the black hole
scanning data and tried to make sense of it.  There was a lot there, and
it was confusingly different from anything else in our universe. 
Something about it was tickling my mind, but it still remained out of reach.

I had a feeling it would be obvious in hindsight, but
whatever it was, it was buried in so much data it could take me years to find
it.

I have to say, I was a bit nervous when the time finally
came to launch our stealthy exploration.  We couldn’t see the probes on
our ship’s sensors, but that didn’t mean no one could, did it?  Still, I
hoped they would find a suitable planet to support human life, or even just a
place to study that already had intelligent life living there.  It was
just a matter of time.

“You busy?” I asked while I turned around.

I suppressed a smile when I saw a website with a shoe sale
on her monitor.

Kristi replied, “Very, what’s up?”

I couldn’t help it, I laughed.

“Well, I think I might have figured what’s messing up this
data so much, the black hole data I mean.”

Kristi narrowed her eyes, “What’s wrong with it?”

“It’s breaking up matter too quickly.  Faster than can
even be accounted for knowing the forces involved in such a high gravity and
energy rich environment.”

Kristi looked thoughtful for a minute, “Are you sure it’s
not time dilation making it appear that way?”

I shook my head, “I thought of that, but no.  There is
nothing there, which leads me to guess based on observation.  I think it’s
vacuum energy, maybe it is a universal constant, except where black holes are
involved.  It’s almost as if the binding forces on matter are weakened, so
it gets pulled apart faster than we expect.”

Kristi sighed and shook her head in faux despair, “Dark
matter, really?”

Ugh, I hated that appellation.

“Maybe, yes.  What do you say we test it out?”

Kristi’s eyes narrowed, “How?”

“We’ll build ourselves a ship, with a series of very
powerful gravity emitters, to form a micro-singularity and contain it. 
Then we can perform tests, and see if there is any indication of a buildup of
va
… fine, dark energy.”

I felt dirty, like I’d sold my soul to the devil.

She snickered, “So a dark energy reactor?  I have some
bad sci-fi books you could borrow.”

I frowned slyly, “Of course, and we would need to build an
en
…”

She interrupted with a gasp, “Don’t you dare say it!”

“What?” I asked with faux innocence.

She said in a voice filled with horror, “Engine room,” and
then shuddered as if I’d suggested torturing kittens.  It was all I could
do not to laugh.

I shrugged, “We are just doing an experiment, who knows if
it will yield anything.  I also suggest we do testing with manufactured
black holes in the void, outside of our galaxy, that’s the only reason I
suggested building a ship.  We need our lab to be mobile.”

She rolled her eyes, “Fine, let me check out what you got
before you start the build.”

I started with a normal battle cruiser, and created an
engine room in it, just a blank space.  I rolled my eyes at myself, really
it would be more accurate to call it a lab space, but teasing Kristi was worth
it, so I labeled it as
Main Engineering
.

I designed a chamber surrounded by gravity emitters from
twelve equidistant points, forming a sphere of sorts.  Even if one or two
failed, the singularity wouldn’t.  Just in case it actual did accumulate
dark energy above the universal constant, and the singularity failed, I
couldn’t help but think the ship would fall apart, all the matter weakened and
pulled apart by the mass of exploding dark energy.

Of course, I was probably wrong, I was just guessing.

Because it was artificial, and wouldn’t have actual mass,
the gravity would be ridiculously strong, strong enough to collapse the ship,
except that it wouldn’t, because the gravity would be confined to the field
size of the emitters.  I wasn’t sure if that would change, in theory it
could capture any particles passing through, and eventually gain enough mass to
start growing, but that would take a very long time.  Still, it was a good
enough reason to justify putting it in the void.

I also created an ejection system, just in case it did start
to run out of control, so we wouldn’t lose the ship due to an experiment. 
I was rich, but I wasn’t eager to throw away millions of dollars either, due to
negligent planning.  Then with an evil grin on my face, I labeled the
containment system as the core.  I knew the phrase, eject the core, would
annoy the hell out of Kristi.

Okay, maybe I needed to grow up, but I was having fun.

I also built into the lab a great number of very sensitive
sensors.  I added the nanites and an upgraded AI as an afterthought. 
I would also launch the Shield missiles to run scans, just in case I missed
something that causes a catastrophic failure.  I couldn’t think of anything
else, so I sent the design and testing parameters over to Kristi.

It didn’t take her long, thirty seconds later she started to
laugh.

“You’re a bad friend, and an evil alien,” she said in a
mirthful voice.

A few minutes later she sent it back, “Looks good.  I
only fixed two things.”

Of course, the two differences were she relabeled the stuff
to lab, and singularity generator.  I started fabrication on one of our
personal fabricators on the asteroids we owned, it would take a few days, and
then I went to track down my vice admirals to see how things were going. 
I’d been keeping up with reports, but I hadn’t seen them face to face in a
while outside of very short conversations.

They weren’t difficult to find this time of day.  With
a quick check I saw both were on the bridge.  I wondered if I was being
selfish keeping them with me on the command ship, should they have ships of
their own?  Surely, at some point, we would need to be in three different
places at once.  Anthony with the home fleet, Sergei with the exploration
fleet going from post to post to check on his admirals, and me… wherever I
needed to be.

The truth was, I could run the fleet from my hot tub in a
bikini with Al, an aural and a visual interface in my head, and not much
else.  I’d already done something similar for a month from my jail. 
But I was a soul reader, and I liked to see people face to face, hear what is
in their soul along with what they wanted to share.  Did that make me
untrusting and nosy, or did it make me a better fleet admiral?  I got the
idea it was a little of both, I needed to give them their own ships, and then
visit them, as they would visit those under their command.

They both stood when I walked in and I waved them back down
and took a seat nearby.

Sergei asked, “What do you need ma’am?”

I smiled, “Funny you should ask that, it’s the reason I’m
here.  The reports look good, officially everything is roses, but… is
there anything either of you are concerned about?”

Sergei frowned, “There have been some problems, nothing big
enough to put anyone on report, but since the Knomen were put down the mixed
crews are letting their…. Let’s call it nationalism.  Their nationalism is
coming to light.”

I nodded, “That makes sense, the same thing is happening on
Earth to an extent.  Hopefully we’ll find a nice distraction soon, planets
to investigate.  Have the newest ships and crews had a chance to
participate in maneuvers and training?  Maybe we could make it a contest.”

Anthony asked, “A contest?”

I smiled, “Sure, bragging rights, best ship in the
fleet.  Instead of people saying the Japanese this, or the Russians that,
they’ll be saying those bastards on this ship, or that ship, need to go down
next time.  It should be good for moral, and change the gossiping and complaining
from nationality to ship, unit, and fleet.  Surely Anthony, you’d like an
opportunity to put Sergei here in his place as the best tactician.”

Sergei laughed, “That’s a good idea, it won’t erase the
problem of course, but it will help.  But are you sure Anthony’s ego can
take such a horrific loss?” he added slyly.

Anthony snorted, “In your dreams.”

I changed the subject, sure they would run with the idea
without further discussion, “I was also thinking you both needed your own
ships, a command ship for each fleet, and then of course the fleet
admiral’s.  So can you have two more command ships built out in the next
rotation?  They should all be able to interface together so we can stay in
close touch.  I have a feeling when we start finding new worlds the three
of us will have to start splitting up, for obvious reasons.  Anthony,
you’ll have to remain here, and Sergei, you’ll be busy keeping an eye on a
fleet spread out all over the place, and making in person inspections. 
You can both pick your own staffs, you can’t have mine.”

I smiled to take the sting out, but it was true. 
Currently we were sharing the bridge staff here, and they sure as hell weren’t
taking Kristi.  They didn’t have any comments, but I could tell both of
them were excited about getting their own flag vessels, like little boys on
Christmas morning.  I wisely decided not to comment on it.

I asked, “Anything else going on I should know about, or
even not know about officially but be aware of?”

Both of them shook their heads, Anthony spoke, “No Ma’am,
we’ll get on those ships, and the competition training idea right away. 
Maybe we could give out three day passes to the best ship, and give the best
unit priority for their shore leave… or something.”

“Okay, good ideas.  I have one more thing, what about
rotations.  I don’t want our people getting bored patrolling the same spot
in space all the time.  We’ll also have to keep an eye toward shore leave,
so how often does a stint last at watching over a colony world, or…”

They both exchanged looks.

Sergei said, “We’ve discussed this.  We were thinking
three month tours, after that long without a break efficiency and moral will
plummet.  We still have some things to iron out though, that’s why we
haven’t brought it up with you yet.  We were all so fired up to get the
fleets going, and make sure Earth didn’t get knocked back down to rubbing
sticks together for fire, that it hasn’t been an issue until recently. 
For some, it has been three months already.”

I asked the obvious question, “What’s to iron out?”

Anthony sighed, “I want to give the crews shore leave
together.  Some don’t have a family and will want to go out and cut lose
with their shipmates.  So that’s one out of every thirty ships will be
unavailable at any given time, a little over three percent of the fleet. 
Sergei thinks that’s too much, and we should rotate shore leave inside ships
instead.  So each ship will have one or two people missing at any one
time, but still be combat ready a hundred percent of the time.”

I nodded, “Are you all confident in the executive officer’s
ability to fight their ship?”

They both replied without hesitation, “Yes.”

“Then go with the latter, but work out the Captain’s leave
per the former, so only one out of every thirty ships doesn’t have their captain
at any one time.  Does that work?”

Sergei nodded, “Yes Ma’am, we’ll get you a leave schedule
soon.”

I nodded and stood up.  Then made my way back to my
office and work area.  I could do my work on the bridge, but I didn’t want
to give the impression I was always looking over their shoulder.