Exploration (5 page)

He was glad that the Creator was in a generous mood when this happened, because his ship was in the shadow of giant rock when they entered the jump-point. From what his ship's AI was reporting most of that asteroid had been ablated by their passage into whatever this place was.

Normally a hyperfield jump was instantaneou
s—
you left point A and arrived at point B in essentially zero time. Wherever they were now, this was not the case. In addition, there seemed to be a sense of forward motion, even acceleratio
n—
as though they were falling into a gravity well. The problem was they had been doing it for hours.

He turned to face his ship's avatar. The
Honey Dipper
had been augmented earlier in the year with top-of-the-line Heshe nanites and the associated Heshe AI to control them. Cat had cloned her systems as a way of repairing the ship when it had crash landed on a heavy world called Kepler-47b. The result was a ship with a fully sentient AI that had its own opinions and sensibilities. 

Jack's habit of always renaming his ship prior to each mission had come to an abrupt end as the new AI had a distinct personal sense of identity and refused to accept name changes. He supposed he was lucky the upgrade had not occurred on the previous mission, when he had flown the ship under the name
Diaper Rash
.

The avatar was a recent addition.
Honey Dipper
had decided Ricky needed a crew, and so the AI adopted what it assumed would be a suitably compatible persona based on Ricky Valen's psychological profile. The result was standing next to him by the view port. Honey, as he had taken to calling her, and she was most definitely a 'her,' was a five foot, seven inch, petite brunet android with a southern drawl and an acid wit. She was not human, but it would take an x-ray to tell for certain.

"Hey Honey... are the sensors telling us anymore?"

"Cap'n, they are telling us plent
y—
just not a lot of it is making any sense."

"Thoughts as to what to do? Do we just sit here or should we try to open our own hyperfield bubble?"

"First, I respectfully point out, you'ns being the captain and all, that we are standing... not sitting." She smiled as she said this. Ricky started to make a smart retort but she continued before he could get the first of several choice words out. "I would not recommend taking any action. I suspect we are in some type of extra-dimensional space."

"What does that mean for us mere mortals? Does it mean the laws of physics as we know them are no longer applicable or some such?"

"The laws won't necessarily vary but their prominence may become secondary to other extra-dimensional interactions we are unfamiliar with. Gravity might pull at you but be totally counteracted by false vacuum interactions or the like. The point is... the hyperfield bubble that is enveloping us at the current moment is probably the only thing that is allowing our systems to function. We probably just have to ride this one out."

"I hate waiting."

"Poor Cap'n."        

Cat, Ben, and Sassi found themselves following Captain Running Stream to the ship's bridge. It seemed their status had changed. Cat was not completely sure why; but it granted them increased access to the ship so she wasn't complaining. To be sure, they were still slaves, but Running Stream seemed to be going out of his way to explain the various features and systems on the ship. 

The tour of an alien's ship would normally have been fascinating for the GCP's newest admiral but at the moment it took a real effort to pay attention. Cat was still processing the last sight they had seen before leaving the beach habitat. The captain had directed their attention to the transparent ceiling of the ocean biosphere. The shimmer of a hyperfield forming had been unmistakeable.

The scientist in Cat had wondered at the effect of a massive gravitational well on a hyperfield, especially with regards to trans-dimensional perturbations. It was apparent from the view through the dome that the
Bluefin
had latched onto a massive asteroid. Cat's suspicions were confirmed when Ken Kirkland's pinnace covertly docked to the Modos ship and began feeding her telemetry.

The asteroid was a heavy iron-nickel brute that was likely going to be used as some type of passive shielding. Sure enough the
Bluefin
reoriented itself to point the 'shield' toward the massive black hole and began to move towards the event horizon of Sagittarius A.  The Schwarzschild radius, which defined the event horizo
n—
the point at which light could no longer escape the gravity well of the objec
t—
was a function of its mass. For the Earth this radius was about the size of a peanut. For a system like Sagittarius A, the radius was on the order of thirty kilometers.

Cat was well aware that the Schwarzschild radius of an object represented the ability of its mass to cause curvature in space and time. How this would interact with a hyperfield was problematic. Black holes rotated at very high rates of speed. In theory, if the approach vector to the black hole was at an angle of 54.74 degrees to the axis of its rotatio
n—
the so-called 'magic spin angle
'—
then, directionally dependent interactions could be expected to occur.

Cat was starting to suspect that this hyperfield jump would be like no other she had ever experienced. As the ship entered the hyperfield bubble the universe literally changed. A violet undulating florescent aurora filled the sky, and much to Cat's surprise...  it stayed.

Her commlink to both Ken Kirkland and Ricky Valen remained intact but all three had lost contact with Admiral Faragon and the GCP. She was just beginning to digest the importance of this last realization when the Bearephant coughed in a very human gesture to get her attention.

"You are still seeing the transit aurora in your mind's eye aren't you?" the Modos captain said.

"Guilty as charged," Cat admitted. They entered what could only be described as a pneumatic elevator.  It reminded Cat of the old-style shuttle tubes one saw in period movies depicting customers in their cars at banks exchanging notes and checks with the tellers. Air pressure moved the shuttle between various points along the tube.

Running Stream snorted in what Cat would come to know as a Bearephant laugh. "My symbiote nearly soiled himself the first time he saw the transit aurora... I trust your reaction was more cerebral?"

"I have a doctorate in hyperfield dynamics so the physics behind a jump this near a gravimetric event horizon intrigues me."

The Bearephant roared and rocked back and forth. Again, Cat was concerned she may have angered him.

"We share more than I imagined," Running Stream said with an unmistakable sense of glee in his voice. "I too hold advance degrees in physics and engineering."

"And now you run a slaver?" Ben asked with just a hint of scorn in his voice.

The Bearephant turned his head to look at the D'lralu. Cat would have sworn she saw a bemused twinkle in his eye before he answered.

"Ah, well, life takes us by unexpected currents and eddies upon occasion... does it not?" Turning back to Cat, he continued, "Sometimes an evil act falls victim to a greater good."

The door to the bridge opened.

***

Commander Ken Kirkland watched the holographic display in front of his command chair on the pinnace's minuscule bridge. The
GCP Esperance
was a small ship.  Pinnaces typically were. But she was state of the art.

Her AI was the best Human/Heshe hybrid technology mankind and their allies could create. She had a power plant based on a highly refined D'lralu design that outclassed even the
Yorktown
in terms of output efficiency. She boasted an active nanite armor and shielding that made her both hard to hit and robust should she take a hit. While her offensive weaponry was somewhat limited she could still pack a punch with a powerful Wakefield plasma accelerator rated at 18 TeraJoules. She was the result of countless refinements based on the GCP's encounter with the KayBees last year.

Right now she was attached to the outer skin of the
Bluefin
slaver like a remora attached to a shark. Completely hidden by her cloaking technology, Ken had no fear whatsoever of discovery. His commlink was actively feeding him information from both Cat and Ben onboard the Modos ship. This information was routed by the
Esperance's
AI into the holographic display in front of him. What they saw... he saw. What they heard... he heard.

Right now he could not believe what he was seeing and hearing.

The screen was showing a scene from the
Bluefin's
bridge. The captain of the
Bluefin
was explaining to Cat the physics behind a trans-dimensional jump. She had been curious about the need for the asteroid which was being used as a massive ablative shield. Cat, like Ken, would have assumed hyperfield shielding would have been all that was necessary.

Running Stream explained that as the barrier between universes was crossed the laws that governed each universe became unpredictable. This meant a properly tuned hyperfield shield was hard to maintain for the briefest of seconds. The iron-nickel asteroid provided a necessary redundant source of shielding. In an emergency a ship could jump without it, but it was an unnecessary risk.

Ken wanted to ask about the aurora surrounding the ship but he was a silent observer. Instead he sent a flash query to Cat's encounter unit. She already knew the answer but she confirmed it in the form of her own question.

"This delightful pyrotechnic display that we are privileged to witness... I assume it is an interaction between stray radiation emitted by your ship, the surrounding hyperfield bubble, and the local trans-dimensional Higgs field?"

Running Stream turned to look at her and raised an eyebrow. "Impressive. It took our theoretical physicists years to make that determination. You simply look at it and immediately know what it is."

"Don't encourage her," Ben said dryly. "She's brilliant and gets positively hard to live with when she's reminded too often."

Cat smiled and patted the large six-legged dog beside her. "There, there... you're a good bo
y—
even if you're little slow on the pickup every now and then."    

"See what I mean," the D'lralu said as he swatted her hand away.

The Modos captain rocked back and forth in silent laughter.

Sassi took that moment to interject a question of his own. "Hyper jumps are virtually instantaneous. This jump has lasted for quite a while now. If I may ask... Why the difference?"

"Ah," Captain Running Stream said with a flourish. "Theda is a function of the mass differential between the gravitational wells on each side of the jump. The event horizon on the other side is three times the size of your Sagittarius A."

"I see," Sassi said. "Then I would expect we will be coming out of the jump in just under four minutes."

The Bearephant looked at the Ashkelon Moth. He seemed to be trying to decide if he was serious. Finally he said "Navigator, how long before we emerge from transit?"

A smaller Bearephant with tan colored fur answered from a workstation in the rear of the bridge. "Unknown, Captain. I can attempt to calculate if you would like?"

"Unnecessary, Lieutenant. Please explain why you did not run the numbers earlier?"

"The calculations are rarely done because it requires a knowledge of the exact distance to the event horizon at the time of jump, and the calculations typically takes too long. In most cases we've arrived at the destination before the calculation  can be completed."

"Very good, Lieutenant. And what do you think of our young friend's prediction that we will come out of transit in four minutes?"

The tan Bearephant rocked in his seat. As he began to vocally respond the colors filtering into the bridge from the exterior view screens changed from violet to black.

Captain Running Stream quickly checked the ship's AI. "
Bluefin
: Report time between Lieutenant Sassi's prediction and emergence to normal space?"

"Four minutes and thirty six seconds," came the sterile synthetic response.

Sassi's low frequency antenna undulated in agitation.  

Cat turned to the Ashkelon. "Why are you upset Lieutenant Sassi?"

"I hate being wrong."

"Wrong?" Captain Running Stream said with a bemused smile.

Both Sassi's high and low frequency antennas drooped. "I applied a second level heuristic to estimate a quick solution, but still I was off by a full 20 percent."

Captain Running Stream filled the large bridge with such a loud laughter that Cat had to dial down the acoustic sensitivity of her ears.

Ken fumbled with the controls of his holographic display for exactly the same reason. While he was doing this something on the sensor display caught his eye.

"Cat," he said over their covert commlink. "We have multiple bogeys jumping in... 0.1 AU out... thirty or more."

Ben who also heard the message began to scan the bridge of the Modos ship for a sensor station that could confirm what both Ken Kirkland and Ricky Valen were now reporting.

Cat spotted it first. "Captain, is that an alarm flashing on that station off to the left?"

Running Stream went silent as he saw the flashing strobe on the sensor console. Turning to take his command chair he yelled into the air...

"
Bluefin
! Sound the Alert! Battle Stations!"

***

Ricky Valen watched in silence as events unfolded around him. The good news was they were no longer in hyper-dimensional... or hyper- whatever... space. The bad news was, he had no idea where they were. None of the star systems were familiar to the navigational database and Honey admitted that even the Heshe had not explored trans-dimensional universes.

To add to the general confusion, several dozen starships had suddenly jumped into this region of space and it sure looked like they were planning on giving the
Bluefin
a hard time. His shuttle was fully cloaked and even if he was detected, given the advanced Heshe tech on board, he was likely a match for anything these newcomers could dish out. That said, he was not especially anxious to test the hypothesis.