Starbound (Lightship Chronicles) Read online

  “All systems green for the jump, Captain,” said Dobrina.

  “Thank you, XO. Mr. Cochrane, A countdown if you please,” said Maclintock.

  I checked my board one last time. Serosian had transferred jump control to my station, I had entered Lieutenant Hogan’s calculations, and Longer had the interstellar hyperdimensional drive warm. We were cruising through jump space in our own star system and preparing to enter an alternate dimension before exiting two and a half days later at a point trillions of kilometers distant, without actually traversing the space in between. It was a terrible responsibility.

  I looked down at my jump controller.

  “Five . . .” I counted down.

  “Four . . .”

  “Three . . .”

  “Two . . .”

  “One . . .”

  “Jump!” ordered the captain.

  “Jumping!” I engaged the Hoagland Drive, and colors that had never been seen filled my mind, and I found myself wondering, as I always did, if I would awaken in this life, or the next.

  The Traverse

  It seemed like days later, or seconds, I was unsure, when I came back to my senses. My mind felt like pieces of a puzzle being put back together in random order, but then suddenly there was clarity, as if some unseen hand had guided everything that made up my being back into its proper place.

  I looked over at Serosian’s station. His eyes were closed in deep meditation, as was his practice during jumps. I tried to focus on my board as the bridge crew started coming out of their joint trance.

  The Hoagland Drive was operating in perfect sync within the protective field of the same name that kept us safe. Longer had timed the sub-light HD drive activation perfectly, and we were making .88 light within a bubble of space made of our own universe/dimension. What was outside that bubble was completely unknown, and I found myself uncurious about it. As long as the Hoagland Drive and Field kept my ship safe, I was happy.

  Starbound had never done a traverse this way, with extended time in a bubble of normal space while actually traveling through another space/time dimension that existed outside of the bubble. Our previous jumps had been local enough that they could be accomplished by jumping from one point in our host system to another point in a nearby star system. But the navy had discovered some time ago that the maximum safe distance for direct system-to-system jumping was about thirty-five light-years, and thus the need for long-distance traversing technology had arisen. Fortunately, the Earth Historians had just such a technology available, and had integrated it seamlessly into the Lightships at the design stage. Valiant was most experienced at the technique, as she was the navy’s primary Survey and First Contact vessel. Impulse had also made a traverse or two before her untimely demise, but this was our first, and we aboard Starbound were proud of the opportunity.

  “Systems status,” demanded Maclintock of me.

  “All green on my board, sir,” I said.

  “Tactical,” he called.

  “Safely inside the traverse bubble, Captain,” replied Dobrina. “All tucked in for the voyage to Jenarus.”

  Maclintock nodded. “Just out of curiosity . . .” he started.

  “I’ve got the visual display coming up now, sir,” I said, having anticipated his request. We all wanted our first look at traverse space. The primary display on the front of the bridge wall showed a charcoal gray backdrop with faintly visible black ripples passing through it in regular waves. I ran through all our external views and they showed the same pattern.

  “Well, so much for that,” said Maclintock. I agreed with him. It was disappointing.

  “And once again we have humanity’s typical reaction to the miracles of the universe,” chimed in Serosian. The captain looked to him.

  “Forgive me if I’m an aesthete,” he said. Serosian shrugged.

  “It’s typical, Captain, as I said, and not unexpected. Beyond that barrier are sights no man should see, and miracles no man could describe,” said the Historian.

  Serosian’s words, spoken in all seriousness, sent an involuntary chill up my spine. Maclintock just stared at the Historian.

  “Thank you, Lieutenant Commander,” said Maclintock to me. “That’s enough for now.”

  “Aye, sir,” I said, and shut the display off, returning to a standard systems display. Maclintock stood.

  “XO, you have the con. I’ve got a couple of dozen novels to catch up on,” he said. Dobrina rose to acknowledge.

  “I have the con, aye, sir,” she said. “Enjoy your reading.”

  With that the captain was gone off the bridge. I came and stood next to Dobrina.

  “Looks like we’ll have plenty of time for fencing the next two days,” I said quietly to her.

  “Or other activities,” she deadpanned.

  “Umm. Yes, well, I’d prefer to stay focused on my fitness for the moment. It makes those ‘other activities’ even more enjoyable,” I said.

  “Speak for yourself,” she said, then headed off to do a station-by-station walkthrough. I smiled. I decided getting in plenty of both wouldn’t be a bad way to spend the next couple of days.

  Two days later, we were four minutes from exiting traverse space into the Jenarus system. I was at my duty station sweeping across my boards looking for trouble, but finding none. That made me uncomfortable. I made a quick com call down to Duane Longer.

  “How are we looking?” I asked, fishing for information.

  “All nominal, sir. The sub-light HD drive is scheduled to cut off the moment we break the bubble in the Jenarus system. The chemical impellers will activate automatically and propel us out of the jump space tunnel and into normal space. From there our only concern should be winning the bet,” he said.

  “Which you had better,” I replied. “Thanks, Duane.” Serosian chose just that moment to enter the bridge and take his station, firing up his board with a sweep of the hand. The confusing glut of shapes and colors were a complete mystery to me, and I was glad I’d never had to learn them.

  We all buckled in with one minute to go. Maclintock turned the countdown over to Jenny Hogan at Astrogation.

  “Thirty seconds,” she called on the shipwide com from her second-tier station. “All systems green. When we exit jump space we will have traveled farther than any Quantar ship in more than two centuries. We are making history.” That was something we could all be proud of.

  I looked to Dobrina, our highest-ranking Carinthian officer, but she had her eyes fixed to her board. Although we had similar duties, monitoring systems and such, I was much more engaged in the smooth running of the systems and she much more in the application of those systems to overall ship’s status. If she saw something she didn’t like, it was within her prerogative to shut that system down. I didn’t have that power, only the power to report problems and then to ride the lower ratings to get things running to her satisfaction.

  “Ten seconds,” counted down Jenny Hogan. In that short amount of time she would disengage the hyperdimensional drive and shut down our protective Hoagland Field in the same instant, “dropping” us from a bubble of space in an unknown higher dimension and back into our dimension. Then our sub-light HD drive would cut out and our chemical impellers would kick back in, reengaging our mass in a forward motion to exit the large and unusual jump space tunnel at Jenarus. Only when we had exited the tunnel would we find ourselves totally in normal space again and able to navigate normally to the system’s home planet.

  I gripped the arms of my safety couch as Hogan counted down to zero. The cerebral scattering associated with entering a jump was much different than when exiting. While all of our maneuvering actions of the ship were preprogrammed, we were not. We still needed a few seconds to reassociate ourselves to our own dimension, but it wasn’t as profound an effect, for some reason, as when we jumped out of our own dimension.

  I
was quickly on my board demanding reports. Everything looked green except . . .

  “Lieutenant Longer,” I said. “Why is the sub-light HD drive not shut down?” I watched him scramble his hands across his board.

  “Unknown, sir,” he responded.

  I unbuckled from my seat and was at the railing in a second.

  “If that drive is still engaged we could be pulled back into the jump space tunnel, mister,” I said.

  “Understood, sir. The HD drive is shut down but . . .”

  “But what, man?” I demanded.

  “It looks like residual neutrinos were generated by the full stop, sir. It kept the drive engaged for a few microseconds longer than planned, sir,” he said.

  I turned to George Layton at the helm. “Where are we, Lieutenant?”

  Layton’s hand played across his board. “Point one five three AUs further into the tunnel than expected, sir,” he said.

  “And what’s our heading?”

  “We’re not in normal space, sir, we’re in jump space, so it’s difficult to tell, but it seems we’re losing ground to the star.”

  I spun around and reported to my captain. “Our position is not as expected, Captain. We’re still in the jump space tunnel and appear to be drifting away from the exit, sir,” I said.

  “How long until the impellers can pull us out?” asked Captain Maclintock. I looked to Longer, then over to Serosian.

  “Uncertain that they can, sir,” I said honestly. “The chemical impellers are designed to work in normal space primarily, sir. We are significantly further inside the tunnel than anticipated. Excess neutrinos generated when the HD drive didn’t shut down properly appear to have displaced us from our landing point, sir.”

  Dobrina stood up from her station. “Are you saying that the gravimetric energy of the Jenarus star is pulling us deeper into the tunnel?” she said.

  “Yes, XO,” I replied. “The jump space tunnel magnifies the gravity pull of the star by a significant amount.” Maclintock looked to Serosian.

  “Can we survive if we exit the tunnel inside the envelope of the star’s corona?” he asked.

  “Very uncertain, Captain. Even with the Hoagland Field,” said the Historian.

  “Solutions?” asked Maclintock. The Historian shook his head.

  “None readily available, Captain,” he said. “The impellers aren’t strong enough to fight the pull of a star the mass of Jenarus. The jump space tunnel acts as a field magnifier for the gravity of the star. The more ground we lose to the exit point, the stronger the pull will be.”

  “What about reengaging the Hoagland FTL drive?” asked Maclintock.

  “That would actually make our situation worse. The gravitons generated by the drive spooling process would bond with those of the star, resulting again in a magnifying effect,” stated Serosian.

  “And the sub-light hyperdimensional drive?”

  “The sub-light HD drive generates neutrinos, which would cancel out the star’s gravimetric pull to a degree, but not enough to pop us out of this jump space tunnel. It’s highly unusual stellar topography,” commented Serosian.

  “Are you implying that this tunnel might be artificial?” asked Dobrina. Serosian nodded.

  “A possibility, Commander. But it would take a lot more study than we currently have time for,” he said. Maclintock stood and rubbed his face.

  “So what you’re all telling me is that we have three drives on this ship and none of them can get us out of our predicament?” he said.

  “Four, actually, sir,” I said, and instantly regretted it. Maclintock, Serosian, and Dobrina all turned their eyes on me.

  “Explain, Commander,” said Maclintock. I shuffled my feet and took in a deep breath.

  “I’ve been working with Lieutenant Longer on a hybrid drive, mixing the impellers with the sub-light HD drive. I had intended to use it only if it was required to win the bet, sir,” I said.

  “Well, that won’t happen now,” said the captain. Then he motioned Longer to come up to the command deck and join us.

  “Will this thing work, Lieutenant?” he asked. Longer’s face went a little pale, but he answered readily enough.

  “Theoretically, sir,” he said. “Essentially, it’s a KERS, Kinetic Energy Reclamation System. The electrons generated by the HD drive can be processed in such a way that they can be mixed as a plasma with the chemical propulsion fuel cells. Sort of like a hyped-up hydrazine fuel source. In our tests we achieved almost a fifty-percent boost in output from the impellers, sir. But there is a risk of . . . a more explosive result, sir.”

  The captain looked annoyed at that. “Say what you mean, Lieutenant. We don’t have time for mincing words right now.” Longer swallowed and cleared his throat.

  “There is a twenty-one percent chance the mixture will cause a burst from the mixed plasma, sir, a sort of ‘Big Bang’ of energy before the plasma flow integrates and settles down. Theoretically it should be a powerful enough burst to get us out of this jump tunnel space, just a lot more violent than the impellers in a normal mode, sir,” said Longer.

  “How long will it take to hook this thing up?” asked Maclintock. Longer looked to me and all eyes were focused in my direction again.

  “It’s already hooked into the impeller drive, sir. Just waiting on your orders to activate it, sir,” I said.

  “You hooked up something that dangerous to our propulsion systems without permission?” said Dobrina to me. Her tone was even and controlled, but underneath I could see she was fuming.

  “Only for testing, XO,” I responded.

  “Who gave you that authority?” she said, pressing.

  “With respect, XO, I don’t need your authority to implement process improvements to systems under my supervision. I only need permission to test those systems from the captain, and since we had no intention of using this device without proper testing, I’ve done nothing that I have to apologize for,” I replied.

  Maclintock stepped in then. “Enough. The system is in place. We don’t have time to test it,” he turned to the Historian. “Serosian, could you please review this thing before I light a firecracker under my own ship?”

  “I can be ready in twenty minutes,” he replied.

  “Good,” said Maclintock. “Then let’s get to it. Mr. Cochrane, you’ll either be on my report or getting a commendation from this.”

  “Yes, sir,” I said. Maclintock waved us away and we went back to our stations. I followed Serosian to his. Once he had sat down he turned to me and smiled privately.

  “I hope this works, Peter,” he said.

  I leaned in close to him and whispered, “Me, too.”

  Twenty minutes later my Historian friend reported to the captain that our hybrid drive was theoretically sound. He also reported that if we weren’t out of the jump space tunnel in twenty-seven minutes we never would be. We had all gathered around the captain’s chair for a final conference.

  “So you’re saying this hybrid drive will work?” asked Maclintock.

  “I’m saying that theoretically, it appears to be within functional safety margins,” replied Serosian. “But that doesn’t insure it will operate as theorized.”

  “And the possibility of a plasma mix burst?”

  “Higher than twenty percent, sir. But with our Hoagland Field engaged, it should be nothing more than a rough ride,” concluded the Historian.

  “XO?” asked the captain.

  “I’m against it, sir, but it seems the performance of Commander Cochrane and Lieutenant Longer in this situation has left us no alternative,” said Dobrina. That hurt.

  “Sir, I have every confidence—” Maclintock cut me off with a hand gesture.

  “I know you do.” He turned to the fifth member of our group. “Lieutenant Longer, how long until we can fire this drive up?”

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sp; Longer shifted his feet but answered. “Seven minutes to power it up, sir. Any time after that we can be ready when you give the command.” Maclintock nodded.

  “Start the engines, Mr. Longer,” commanded Maclintock. He turned back to Serosian.

  “What will actually happen when we fire that engine?”

  “Most likely the mix will result in a small bubble of HD space being created inside the jump tunnel, which will act as a medium for the mixed fuel. The resulting intermix will burst us out of the bubble, but also likely propel us more than far enough to clear the tunnel and end up back in normal space. It will be like making a mini-jump,” said Serosian.

  “Let’s do it,” replied the captain.

  We all went to our stations and Maclintock ordered a lockdown of the ship. Duane Longer reported he was ready seven minutes and ten seconds after he had started his warm-up process.

  “Reports,” demanded Maclintock.

  “All go here, sir,” I reported. Dobrina likewise gave a qualified green light, and Serosian also chimed in that we were ready. Finally Maclintock turned his attention to his chief propulsion officer.

  “On your mark, Lieutenant,” he said to Longer.

  “On my mark,” called out Longer confidently. “Five . . . four . . . three . . . two . . . one . . . mark!” He hit the hybrid drive switch and the ship shook violently, lurching from side to side in a much more radical motion than the inertial dampers usually allowed. After a few uncomfortable seconds of this, things calmed again. I brought up the main analytical display to see where we were. The display flickered off for a few seconds, and we all anxiously waited for it to come back online. When it finally did, the data showed us at 2.2 AUs from our previous position and comfortably in normal space.

  “All clear of the jump space tunnel, sir,” I reported. Maclintock unstrapped himself and stood.