January 30th, 2262. 16:43 CNS Des Moines – Main Hangar
John was a filthy mess. The hangar hadn’t been cleaned as thoroughly as the rest of the ship. As a result, a fair amount of soot and residue was left on all surfaces in the room. Including John’s power armor. During the attack the reliquary had opened and spread apart which then flung several of the armor bits that weren’t as securely stored.
That led to no shortage of cursing from John. But his work continued through the mess and cursing. The emitters were installed and tested on the armor. John had a spanner and was currently working on the zero-g harness. He needed to increase its output by about fifteen percent. He could hear the computer off to his right give an affirmative beep.
His armor updates were almost done. Unfortunately, he wasn’t going to be able to use both an EM and Kinetic shielding module. He pulled the kinetic module off and set it back on the holder in the reliquary. The armor plates and void sheath should be able to protect him against any ballistic weapons below a battle rifle or anti-material gun.
The door to the hangar opened. John didn’t pay much attention to it and continued his work. Footsteps went back and forth in the relatively large, for this ship that is, room. Eventually, they located John and walked toward him.
“There you are Captain,” Beth said as John turned to face her, “You are filthy.”
“Thank you for pointing out the obvious ensign. What’s up?”
“We’re approaching the convergence.”
John looked shocked, “Jesus, are you serious?”
Beth nodded, “The wave picked up intensity and sped us up several hours.”
John set the tools down and walked to the nearest terminal. He minimized the power armor setup screen and took a look at the navigation data. He then opened communications with the bridge.
“Rebecca, am I reading this information correctly?”
“The ship’s VI is predicting the wave is going to shift course to heading 0-4-5. Which is well off from Aquilae.”
“But directly toward Mu Arae.”
Prince then joined the conversation, “The trip to Mu Arae will take nearly twenty hours less but with way more chop.”
“Chief,” John brought engineering into the conversation, “Can the ship handle that chop?”
“Reviewing it now,” Deniz said.
“That gets us to safe waters in eight hours, sir.”
“The turbulence towards Aquilae is minimal. The VI is predicting sustained chop the whole way to Mu Arae,” Deniz said with a worried tone in his voice.
“Hell of a choice captain. Nearly two days of calm sailing or a short but possibly sketchy sailing,” Prince said.
John put a hand on the wall and stared at the floor. He didn’t know what the right answer was. Mu Arae was the ideal situation to jump into. But it came with risks, which he wasn’t sure the crew should be exposed to.
Prince decided to air his opinion, “Not that my vote matters, but I’d want to get home as quickly as possible.”
“Same,” Rebecca said, “Sooner we get back the better.”
“I’ll see what I can do about routing some more power to the shielding arrays. Not sure how much extra juice we can give them though,” Deniz said.
“Change course to Mu Arae.”
Prince accepted the answer and spoke up, “In about eight hours this wave may dwindle out. We should be able to conserve energy and avoid chop by staying on it until then.”
“Our helmsman is correct. That also means we can be more aggressive with speed to get home,” Deniz added.
“I’ll take the bridge at that point. Rebecca, please coordinate with Eileen at the top of the hour,” John said.
“Understood sir.”
John ended the communication and checked his armor’s output. The harness was updated as much as he could given the time and gear constraints. The reliquary hummed to life and drew the armor plates back into it. He ordered it to put the armor through a cleaning cycle.
Beth was looking at the device but didn’t quite understand precisely what it was. John smiled and turned to face her. He walked forward and put his hand on her shoulder.
“It’s a lot less impressive than you think it is. Just a means to transport and armor oneself.”
“I had never seen one that small. I thought the one the marines use is as big as a walk-in fridge.”
John led the two out of the hangar, “On troop transports for sure. Otherwise, most of them are like that or a bit bigger. Saves space that way. Well, I’m heading to my quarters to get some shut-eye before the party starts.”
John was about to the stairs when Beth asked, “How rough a ride will we feel?”
“Wish I could tell you. It’s going to get bumpy for sure and I think everyone is going to get a little nervy over the ride. If the ship holds together, it’d be a small price to pay to get home sooner.”
“That was my vote too. If you were wondering.”
John smiled and then turned to walk up the stairs. He walked over to his quarters and opened the door. He dropped his dirty clothes in front of his desk. The bed didn’t feel comfortable as he slid under the covers. Minutes later he was asleep.
17:43 CNS Magnificent – Admiral’s Quarters
Pan was sleeping when an urgent communication came in. He put a robe on and walked over to his desk. The camera was manually turned off before he accepted the communication.
“Admiral, apologies for waking you,” the communications officer aboard the carrier said.
“What’s happening, lieutenant?”
“One of our merchants contacted us. They were reviewing sensor data from when they were in Kepler Secondus. They were looking for the CNS Des Moines, but nothing came back as a match, so they went on with their business. When they shoved off one of their people ran the scans through again and thinks they spotted her. Cross signature was ‘fucked up’ in their words. It didn’t look or drive like a normal cruiser sir.”
“Any idea where they were going?”
“No sir. Again, it’s not a confirmation but it sure looks like it could be her. The sensor scan couldn’t be used to identify a ship, but it was similar in length to an Oslo class. Chunks of the ship are missing though. And then there are these extra structures that aren’t consistent with an Oslo class cruiser. Whoever or whatever that ship was, jumped into slip space four days ago.”
“Stale intel. Dammit.”
“It’s not all bad, sir. We’ve got it narrowed down to three systems that they likely would have jumped to. Based on how far they jumped from Lambda Bootis.”
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The screen then displayed the three systems. Pan looked at them. Two were reasonably well populated. One was not. But that one was the closest.
“Assuming it was her, can we estimate how long it would take to get to any of these systems?”
“At the time they jumped, it was Aquilae. Now it’s Mu Arae by almost two days. But the ship could be in for a choppy ride if they went there.”
“Get us to the Psi Capriconi. That’s the easiest route to get to. Aquilae is effectively an empty system so the rescue would be much more difficult.”
“Aye aye, sir.”
The communication ended. Pan stared at the screen. Commander Shephard wouldn’t take the risky short option, but he also presumably ordered the attack. This was the safest route, they had to be going there.
January 31st, 2262. 05:15 CNS Des Moines – Bridge
The ship rocked violently as another slip quake erupted off the ship’s port side. John was having serious doubts about the viability of his plan. Unfortunately, they were way past the point of no return. They were however once more in a life-or-death scenario.
“Roll the ship thirty degrees, come about to heading three-three-six,” John ordered, “Kill the engines when the wake hits us. We’re gonna surf this one for a little bit.”
“It’s not going to last much more than twenty minutes,” Lieutenant Moreland said.
“That’s twenty minutes where we’re not shaking like a motherfucker,” John said as he held on for dear life.
“Good point,” Chase said as he changed the ship's attitude.
The small wave formed off the starboard side of the ship. The Des Moines was angled just right to be swept up by the wave and propelled along it. The shaking and rocking of the ship stopped.
“Twenty minutes of calmness estimated,” John said into the ship-wide coms, “We’re working on a calmer path home.”
That of course was a lie. There was very little they could do to limit the choppiness. Under normal circumstances, the ships would divert more power to their shielding matrixes and engines. Speeding up usually helped.
It also helped to have a ship that wasn’t a rat’s fart away from falling apart. The largest bit of turbulence ripped an armor panel off from the port side. That increased the pucker factor of this trip to eleven.
“Chase, what’s the earliest we can jump into the system? And our ideal jump point?”
“Ideal jump point is six minutes of additional transit time. The earliest jump point is four more hours. Ahead of schedule, but this trip is beating the hell out of us.”
“Were you a vote for the shortcut?”
“Yes.”
John grinned, “Are you now?”
“No chance in hell, sir,” Chase laughed, “But here we are.”
“My sentiments and vote are the same,” Ana said over the coms.
“Have something for us?”
“We need more speed. I recommend we use the main engines to help us.”
“That is a big fat no,” John said immediately, “That is a really really bad idea.”
“With main engines, we’d get there…”
“The problem is heat. Our radiators are somewhere between nonexistent and hot garbage. Heat soak in slip space happens scarily fast. We nudge things too much and the ship just kinda melts down.”
“I’m pretty sure I’ve got a program that will handle the heat soak.”
John shook his head, “No. What about the thrusters? They are like an all-in-one kind of system. Booster and radiator.”
“It’s not going to give us nearly as much speed as the main engines.”
“But it will shave off a quarter of our travel time.”
“Now we’re down to three hours of travel time,” John smiled, “I know our coaster can hold together for three more hours.”
For the next hour, things were relatively calm. Another wave formed that was slightly larger than the last. Plans for utilizing the thrusters to increase their speed alongside the slip generators were put in place and a quick test showed that they would increase the ship's speed.
Unfortunately, they didn’t have sufficient cooling to let them run permanently. They were very robust though and immediately shut down before any runaway thermals could permanently damage them. John was also secretly working on a plan to engage the main drive in the event of an emergency need for speed.
Knowing their luck so far it was prudent to have that plan ready to go. But it wasn’t something he wanted to test. The dangers of the ship just roasting itself were not only very real but incredibly dangerous. The odds were far more likely that it does kill the ship than helps them get to their location more quickly.
That hour flew by. The turbulence didn’t feel as bad now that the ship was traveling ten percent quicker than it was before the waves. But it was still a bumpy ride. The crew could feel the ship rapidly change its attitude to better align it against the turbulence it was flying through.
“Chase, show me how much space we’d have left in the capacitors if we shut off our Frankenstein experiment,” John said as he stared at the read-outs.
“Done, changing course to two-niner-five.”
“Thank you and well done.”
John looked down at the screen. If they shut off the system now, they’d arrive at John’s preferred exit with their capacitors at over ninety-five percent. They were already cutting it close. And they were too deep to add additional risk on top of it. He scrubbed the thought off his mind and refocused on how they could get to their destination more safely.
“Ana,” John said as he pressed the coms button, “Would increasing the frequency of our energy drip cut the wake any?”
“What? No. I mean…”
“Check into that please and get back to us,” John said, “Chase, roll us eight degrees to starboard, heading to three-one-four.”
“On it. Sir, I’m detecting another wave. It’s coming from our port side.”
John looked at the viewscreen, “Yeah, I see it, after we crest this one roll us ninety degrees, change heading to two-five-two and up five degrees. Once we hit that use the thrusters to drive us through the wave.”
Deniz then walked onto the bridge and strapped himself into the first officer’s seat. John was curious about why his chief engineer was out of his home but didn’t mind him being there either. He looked over at the screen and he was calculating something to do with their repurposing of the plasma lances.
“Nice work Chase. Keep the thrusters going and increase power to the generators. I want as much speed as we can get.”
“Sir, the space ahead of us looks rotten,” Chase said as he shared their predicted path forward.
Ahead of them wasn’t mild wake turbulence. Hell, behind them wasn’t mild either. But in front of them, it was far worse. Slip space was churning as if it were angry at them for attempting to get home. One last ‘fuck you' from the universe.
“Fuck,” John let the swear word hang.
“You’re in luck I’m a damn good engineer,” a very proud-sounding Deniz said, “I think with this we can make a wave big enough to ride it on home.”
“Oof,” Chase said.
“We’re not going to have the energy stores to get through that roiling mess of anger,” John said pointing to the screen, “Crazy will have to do. Chase, make the ship come about but invert the generators. Keep us heading towards Mu Arae.”
“Consider it done.”
John looked down at this chair’s view screen, “Close enough. Deniz, whenever you’re ready.”
“This might be rough.”
John grinned and held down the ship-wide communications button, “Brace for impact. Going to get bumpy.”
Chase said very sarcastically and under his breath, “Like it wasn’t already…”
“I heard that lieutenant.”
“I’m sure you did Captain.”
John grinned. The grin was wiped off his face when the plasma lance was used to discharge half of the built-up slip waste through the plasma lances. The system’s safeties kicked in immediately and shut off before too much waste could be vented.
Twin plumes of the stuff were mixing with the background space. The plasma lances simply melted and were no more. A blink later and slip space changed from its normal reddish hue to flashing blue, yellow, and green. The waste was doing exactly what they predicted.
A giant explosion had gone off behind their ship. The Des Moines had already come about. They wanted the least damaged part of the ship to absorb the impacting wave. John chuckled to himself about this maneuver, they may as well try to see what else they could break on this poor ship.
The explosion had created a massive artificial wave in slip space. The wave slammed into the rear of the vessel. The ship creaked ominously as Chase sped the vessel up to get into the ideal surfing position. The shaking and rattling eventually settled down and stopped.
Two more explosions happened nearly simultaneously. No atmospheric warnings were going off, so the crew was safe for now. But John was worried about how much more damage they have just done to their stricken vessel.
“Lost a thruster and slip generator sir. It looks like we lost three small armor plates too. One of which took out the generator.”
“Lack of kinetics kinda fucked us there, eh?” John said with a laugh.
“Holy hell that was a huge explosion,” Chase said as he looked at the wave propagate out from the central location.
Where there was roiling slip space the wave crashed through it and left a preternatural calm behind it. Deniz looked about as pale as a human could be. John slapped his shoulder as he saw their new results.
“Bloody good job Chief. We’ve got clear sailing, except the jump back into real space that is.”
“I think I’m going to be sick.”
“Chase, did we really cover that much space just now?”
“Weird, that seems like we moved way too fast.”
John snickered to himself as he saw Deniz slowly get out of his seat, “That's why you’re so pale?”
“There is a damn good reason why you don’t do what we just did. That explosion just gave off the same amount of energy as Sol does in an hour. We didn’t die here because that energy gets distributed differently here.”
“Cool,” John said with a smile, “Different dimension, different rules.”
“No, not cool. Not cool at all.”
“Well, save the sensor data. I’m sure you can write a book about it,” John said sarcastically.
“You can title it ‘Largest Manmade Explosion Ever,’ I’ll even let you use the name free of charge,” Chase was also laughing.
Deniz very slowly made it to the door before he took a couple of deep breaths to help steady himself. He opened the door and walked through it. Before the door shut behind him, he turned back to the two men.
“I hate both of you.”
John laughed as the door closed. Preparations began to make the jump back into real space. In less than twenty minutes they’d be back in friendly territory. John began working out his secret preparations. He needed to ensure his crew’s safety, but selfishly he had to do the same thing for himself.
He hoped he was wrong, but the danger for him, in particular, was far from over. In less than thirty minutes they’d be in Mu Arae, minutes away, hopefully, from a friendly space station. John wore the mask of a happy-go-lucky commander nearly at the end of a deployment. Deep down John was psyching himself up for the coming attack.