Charles Alestone sprawled in the seat of the Command console. It wasn't often these days that he got to ride the bridge of a warship, even one so dainty as Sleipnir. Technically, he was her CO, and he had the right to this chair any time he wanted it. Practically, Sandra Steel, his Executive Officer on the Table of Organization, was the captain the majority of the time.
While it wasn't quite a fiction, the sad truth was that Chuck didn't have time to captain the ship with his Naval Architect duties with Star Enterprises. For a company that didn't build ships, Chuck spent an enormous amount of time drawing blue prints and figuring out other peoples' notions of how ships went together. Installation of a jump drive or cloak almost always had some unexpected element where people had "gone off the map" of the ship's original design.
What all that really meant was that times like this, where Sleipnir was doing a survey of the Omega 3 Baxter anomaly, were precious moments when Commander Alestone got to indulge his first love, command of a warship.
His wool gathering was interrupted by the pleasant alto of the ship's computer announcing, "Warning, Radiation Hazard detected."
he looked up and discovered that the anomaly sitting almost touching distance in front of the bow. Taking a moment to compose his surprise, he said calmly, "Back us off a bit, Jennifer. No point in putting unnecessary stress on the shields."
Jennifer Wayland, the Pilot/Astrogator, started the ship into a slow reverse. "Copy that, skipper."
Five minutes later, Sandra, standing duty at the Tactical station, barked, "Incoming ship, Corsair Praefect class."
Chuck nodded, almost as if he had expected it. "Let's keep it mellow. Star and the Empire are on good terms, even if we prefer not to advertise the fact."
After the requisite courtesies, the Corsair captain asked what he was seeing, then went on his way, apparently hunting some Junker.
The scanners, including the MK II Hyperspace rig that was Sleipnir's reason for being, had been gathering data for several hours when the computer identified a pattern of flares. Chuck had missed the last routine survey, four months ago, so he turned to the Electronics/Communications officer, Jeremy Falstaff. "Was there anything like this in the last data?"
Jeremy immediately shook his head. "No way, skipper. We would have brought something like this to your attention." He turned back to his console when it pinged, then looked back Chuck. "According to the computer, we should be able to determine how long this has been going on when we get back to Star. Our hardware recognizes that there is a reduction happening in the pattern of the flares, but we don't have the right kind of software for this job."
Chuck thought on that for a second, then looked at both Sandra and Jeremy. "Do we have everything else we came for this trip?"
At their curt nods, Chuck nodded to Jennifer. "Take us home, please."
Several hours of data refinement using the base's supercomputer cluster had determined when the event, whatever it was, had happened. On 821/10/18, something had been ejected from the anomaly, and it had been massive enough that the disturbance was still vibrating through the composition of the anomaly.
The flares turned out to be emissions from some sort of "rip" that was slowly sealing itself closed. It was too small now for a ship to go through, but, if the data was being interpreted correctly, whatever the object was had been in the weight class of a destroyer.
A query sent on the daily grocery run to Freeport 1 had produced a negative response for any time on or near that date, and, Star being who they are, it wasn't as if the Bretonian or Rheinlander governments were going to give up shipping records just because a private Zoner corporation asked.
In any case, the data is proving very useful to understanding changes in the behavior of the anomaly. I just wish that I knew what the whole thing represents.
The change in the behavior of the Omega 3 Baxter anomaly got me to thinking about the Persephone and her "Singularity Drive". Upgrading Pava is going to Depend on getting a power plant that can supply a ship that big. I still don't know anyone personally that has any experience with that ship, so we aren't going to be able to get the information that way.
On the other hand, those flares have given me a couple of ideas about other places we might be able to go. If we could tap hyperspace itself, that would be ideal, but everything I have seen in current technology is about keeping hyper from eating a ship while it travels through the wormhole.
On the other hand, that wormhole is looking more and more like the next revolution in fusion power. I think I need to get out to Corinth and get a better working understanding of advanced fusion theory.
We also still need some sort of ship yard to make this work, but that will have to be a separate issue.
The arrival at Corinth was routine. The place is well situated for potentially dangerous experimentation. It has an entire quadrant of the star system to itself, and the base looks like it doesn't even notice when ion storms pass through.
I was a little bit surprised that they knew who I was out here. Apparently, some of the work that we did for parties that live out this way impressed the folks at Corinth. My guess is that someone needed repairs, and while the base did the work, they got a look at our cloak installation. I can't think of any other reason they should know who I am at the Research facility.
Anyway, my time as a junior theoretical physicist starts tomorrow morning. I really hope this works.
Well, this is just freaking dandy! Here we are, trying to get our shipping problems sorted out, just about decided the only place we can do the refit without violating the Zoner tech restrictions is the Order if we can convince them to let us use their shipyards, and it seems like the whole bloody outlands have lost their collective minds.
The Order and their antics make me wonder if there isn't some truth in the old tales about flag officers needing their common sense surgically removed before they get their flag.
It almost feels wrong to be "safe" here while this particular drama plays out, but I am not so foolish as to suffer survivor's guilt for a situation that hasn't, and may not, happen.
On to other things, there are still a number of ways that this thing could go wrong, but the initial premise that we may be able to use the hyperspace quantum tunnel as a "physical" chamber still looks promising. Here's hoping...
Looks like things have calmed down vis-à-vis the Order, at least for the moment. Gonna talk to Jake and see if, maybe when they are not feeling so... enthusiastic, if we can try to talk to them about getting their endorsement. After all, Zoners supply a large quantity of their food and a not insubstantial quantity of tech.
The local experts here in Corinth haven't spotted any faults with my theories, but they have made a couple of recommendations. The biggest one is probably the most difficult; to wit, they think we need to park Sleipnir in Omicron-85 to gather data on the black hole.
I think that they are trying to get me to do this so that they can maintain their neutrality with the Maltese. After all, Sleipnir is affiliated with Star Enterprises, not Corinth.
>snort< I've decided that, since they charged me for the lab and consulting time, if they want the data, presuming I manage to get permission to do the research, they can pay for it. Since I am already out of circulation with Star, I am just going to see if I can get the permission to do my research from the Maltese authorities and go.
After all, our own labs should be able to do everything else we need on the presumption that the gravitational survey of the black hole actually provided the data that I need, and I am going to have move this back to Star at some point.
Made a trip over to Omicron Theta today to pick up a supply of Alien Organisms. Very strange, but Corinth had no transports available, and they didn't need a large quantity for whatever experiment they were conducting.
On the out of the Omicron-74 wormhole, Sandra and Jeremy logged an excessive amount of radioactivity in the dust cloud surrounding the jump hole. There was enough of it, and it was isolated enough, that we decided to survey it after we dropped off the cargo at Corinth. Unfortunately, we have time, as the Maltese have apparently either decided to ignore our attempts to get permission or have bound us up in their version of red tape.
In any case, the radiation seems to be coming from an imperfect "seal" of the tunneling effect with Einsteinian space. It might actually be worth some study to see what we can learn about hyperspace from this anomaly.
Personal Log: 822/02/03, Omicron-74, Corinth Station
Jeremy and Sandra are either geniuses or crazy, or maybe both. Between the two of them, they have come up with a method for using Sleipnir's gunnery targeting systems as a nine dish secondary array to improve the data collection capabilities of the ship.
It is not worth a tinker's damn as far as combat capabilities since each sensor in tactical mode functions like classical radar, but it improves the general sensor array by a factor of 2.5 to 3 times by using a shotgun approach and having all of the Solaris dishes listen to each other and the main array. It will probably require that we mount a dedicated contraption involving Gravity Field Stabilizers, Optronics Arrays and Energy Field Equipment to refine the signals. I don't think that the process would work with any weapon system that doesn't have its own dedicated sensors, but, for us, it will make Sleipnir an even better research platform.
This is probably a good thing, as it seems we are going to have to do our data collection on the black hole at a distance of one star system away. If that is the case, then it is going to take at least a month, instead of the couple of days I was hoping for if we could get into Omicron-85. Instead of direct observation, we'll have to use an array technique, sampling readings and moving around to get composite data over a period of time. It's that "period of time" that is going to be wearing.
Next stop, a shopping trip to New Tokyo, then on to Colorado.
Personal Log: 822/02/04, Omega-9, Star Enterprises
This extended research mission is more stressful than I had originally expected. I very nearly got Star into an international incident by planning to take Sleipnir into House space and dock at system capitals, and three out of the four Houses at that. When Sandra realized what I was thinking, she very politely pointed my error out to me; gotta love good subordinates! Shadowcat got sent out to gather the needed supplies, since no one really notices another Serenity wandering around.
We managed to reduce the number of parts to 5 Optronics Arrays by moving them "up" the data runs to the point where the individual feeds merge. Each array could handle the input of two weapons. We are only using 5 of the Gravity Field Stabilizers, but there, it is because mounting them externally reduced the interference more than the original idea of pairing one off with each hard point. Unforuntately, we couldn't do the same thing for the Energy Field Equipment, so there are 9 of those mounted into a split circuit configuration. The primary circuit is for combat, and the alternate circuit runs through the EFE to switch over to scanner mode.
I ended up taking Sleipnir back to the base to pick up the supplies, and to catch up on admin tasks, since the paper chase never ends. After looking over the Crimson Council's response to us, there should be no problem with us doing the research from Omicron Alpha, so that is where we will head next. I just have to ensure that we keep the locals apprised of our goings on.
Well, it appears that the Crimson Council are no more than yet another batch of hormonal teenagers with the attendant machismo. It amazes me that anything ever gets done around here. Diplomacy seems to amount to ignoring anything that you don't like, or demanding things when you can take them, then whining that no one wants to play. How people with that mind set find their ways into positions of power confounds me; fighter pilots, sure, leaders of nations, wth??!
Anyway, after kicking around the need for gravitational and tidal stress data, we have decided that quantity v quality will let us take the readings off the Omega-41 primary. A neutron star doesn't produce the same Level of what we are trying to monitor, but it still generates the same Effects. It is going to take the better part of a month or two to do it, and, just in case, Sleipnir will be staying away from Leon base, but it should be routine.
All that said, I'll be giving her back to Sandra, since it is routine survey work. Orders have picked up, and there is much for me to do in the way of routine work.
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