As Katie and I are wont to do, we fall into a routine over the next few days. Wake up with Katie in the CO’s quarters, have breakfast and chat with Tessa over coffee after. We split up mid-morning, Katie in the starboard fab bay where most of the wiring, soldering, and board modeling equipment live, and Tessa and I head through the linking bulkheads to the materials and mechanics side of the ship. Tessa works with Atropos to narrow the space where we might find the Copernicus, while I fiddle with creating an auxiliary power supply for this chassis.
We tend to eat lunch at our workstations and break for the day to eat dinner together in the Command mess, which currently has beer and wine stocked in it. We work in our screens for hours after dinner and Tessa powers down her chassis to get more analysis work done with Atropos. Apparently, it’s outside of Tessa’s ability to process all of the inputs from the chassis and perform distributive computing while also subject to my inputs.
The next morning, Tessa barges into the state room, her chassis buzzing with excitement.
“Woah, humming bird, bit early for chassis time isn’t it?” I check my HUD. Okay, it’s 5am Astoria, not that early.
“I have your coffees at the Nav table, you need to come see this.”
I sigh and peel Katie’s arm off me as I get up. I see some sweat shorts on the way to the door and put them on. “Alright Tessa. Let’s go look.”
I can immediately see a comically large steaming mug on the edge of the table halfway across the bridge. Right next to it, is a system labeled “Sol” and on the other side of the projection is a system labeled "Proxima C”. I pick up my coffee, dunk my face in it and take a few massive gulps.
“Okay, teach me something.”
Tessa raises an eyebrow, almost rising to the bait, but thinks better of it. She set the chart into motion, and I see some artifacts pop into view with time stamps.
“This is the Galilei transmitting reports that won’t be received for years, which were intended to relay information if the ship was lost. We found traces of this EM radiation as a result of a receipt ping from the Copernicus’s shipboard ansible that the border drone slapped onto us during its “Help” action. These receipt pings are recorded by the local colony or system ansible for forensic purposes such as these. When the Sector Host went live, it downloaded these transaction records to its archive which it keeps for a few decades. It was shortly after that that Galilei stopped sending its routine messages, as indicated by Copernicus’s receipts.”
She shows the time stamps and I realize that the message frequency slowly increases over that year and a half. “Holy shit, Galilei actually found them and was approaching them under propulsor power.”
“Yes, and after Atropos and I scoured petabytes of data, we found that SH-A, sorry, Sector Host – Astoria, had independently received a ping from Copernicus before the full-comms shutdown. So now we have two vectors, 2700 ly apart, and with a colony-sized ansible aboard this ship, we should get some sort of response from the Copernicus if it is still in the area.”
I reach over and give Tessa a big ol’ smooch on the cheek. “You two are amazing. Great work ladies. Now that we have this info, we can load the shuttle and supplies and start moving toward the Kepler system. I figure we split off from there and I’ll be a distraction on Earth while you assess the Copernicus?”
“We figured that’s what direction your thoughts would head and I took the liberty of onloading the shuttle overnight.”
“Wow, okay, now the million credit question,” I take another few gulps of coffee, “how to we operate Alaris with only three people.”
“The seven-crew minimum manning was assuming full control of the ship. You will need one helmsperson, one engineer, and one person on comms to get the ship where you want it.”
“What about emergency response? Can you maneuver a standoff distance on your own?”
“Yes, but I am not currently authorized to pilot and use engineering control for the propulsors at the same time. I am also not authorized to perform weapons-related tasks without specific orders such as repel boarders during a search and rescue.”
“Wow, okay. So in a pinch, you can do basically anything. Good to know.” I turn my head to Tessa and Katie, “With Tessa having a body and Atropos having separate permissions, you three should be able to get this beauty on station with Tessa and Atropos pulling double duty if you experience any trouble.”
“Atropos has begun her upload to Alaris’ systems.”
“Warning: long-term viability of additional AI support is poor. Storage location for AI to access systems from is requested.”
“Atropos, can you set up a protocol for ships to requisition supplies to fulfill their Captain’s orders, with allotted monies per ship?”
“Account limits per ship? May I suggest 100CE and 5 million AE?”
“Oof. That’s enough CE for a whole section of a ship to be refurbished, or swapping a whole bay out. Yeah, I can see that. Thanks Atropos.”
“Working on it.” Atropos replies.
“If we’re on the subject of needs, this ship needs a shuttle. After taking a brief look at the Exchange, we should be able to farm out most of the systems and assemble them onboard, finishing construction in perhaps a month?”
“I like it. Use the ship’s budget and make sure that it has planet to ship capabilities and laser equivalent armament.” Hopefully it gives a shuttle pilot enough time to hide if they get into trouble.
You could be reading stolen content. Head to the original site for the genuine story.
“If that’s all the brainstorming and orders you must deliver. You should review the warp specs for this ship so I can properly plan supplies for this mission.”
I can take a hint to shut up and leave her alone. I plant a kiss on her cheek and teleport Tessa and I to engineering. I ask Tessa to help arrange a display layout by having her project a few screens with all the available data and monitoring systems. I ask her to arrange a visual interactive interface for the secondary power and auxiliary systems while I arrange main power with engines, thrusters, and propulsion.
The ripple drive is fascinating and utilizes miniaturized propulsors in the keel of the ship to cyclically warp the fabric of space-time with constructive interference until the ripple is deep enough to push the ship. How they get that ripple to speed up is a different set of protocols whose math is too intense for me to casually skim, so I leave that deep dive for another time.
The main propulsors use a Magitech upgrade of the engines aboard the Copernicus, but vastly improved materials and anti-matter shaping. The warp charts are less stepped, and more continuous than expected, and the distance they can safely traverse has been improved. How the hell was that managed without crunching the ship? Even enhanced materials would . . . there is a warp array in front of the ship. Huh. If timed correctly, the snap-over of space time would link with the stable warp gate in front, decreasing the load on the hull if the snap-back of space time is transferred elsewhere. But where would it go? Can force be transmitted through the aether? Raw energy can, so why not mechanical energy? Never thought I’d think of the fabric of the universe as a coil of a spring, but that is how it’s behaving in this case.
Depending on the timing, and the time it takes to traverse non-dimensional space, the resultant blow-back could speed up or slow down the ship, or the ripple could be dampened completely. Hmm. That’s another chunk of math I don’t want to do right now. In any case, the warp-coupling maneuver appears to vastly improve warp distances per power invested, as well as hull strain per lightyear. Strain per lightyear is an odd set of units.
After I spend a minute to resolve the units into a compression or expansion rate, I look at our theoretical hull limit with enchanted titansteel. Holy cow. I hadn’t realized that most of the outer hull is titan steel. This ship must have cost a fortune. Back to math, if my order of magnitude estimates are even close, this ship can out warp the System Host by almost double.
“Alaris, can you simulate a warp to Proxima Centauri?”
->/I will send the data file as soon as I finish the computations./<-
“Excellent thank you.” In the meantime, I look up the thruster data and see that Alaris has a compliment of plasma jet thrusters that I normally use, with a slightly different configuration and cone shape. Huh, I’d thought I’d dialed those in pretty well. I’m not excellent at creating and analyzing permutations, so if Andromeda found a better way, who am I to argue?
I get a ping in my HUD alerting me to the data file. It shows that the ship would be partially slowed when exiting the warp, which could easily be corrected by a gravity assist or engaging the ripple drive. Quick look at the system diagnostics and the energy load spikes to 60% before warp and dips to 25% after. Sixty percent of 6 TW is a lot of energy, but so is 25%. I blow up the ship schematic in my head and do a minute-by-minute review of pre-warp to find that a significant portion of that momentary power demand is shielding. The majority of the post-warp demand is cooling, which makes a ton of sense after pulling that kind of power through the ship. The aether batteries are also down 35%. That seems like a hard limit to our warping once again.
“Alaris, are you using an integrated Aether and Tech shield?”
“That is my preference. It keeps my shield generators cool enough to make a small emergency warp if necessary without incurring unnecessary warp sickness for the crew.”
It’s good that she’s programmed to think of all of this, and with that last detail laid bare, I’m comfortable sending my two favorite people off into space to rescue a crew without me. Except their personal safety.
>P] Kay, did you end up finding a buyer for my laser pistol designs? [<
>K] Several. One even paid to be a preferred customer. I’ll send you his info. [<
>P] Thanks! [<
“Alaris, are you currently equipped with crew armament for security teams?”
->/No crew supplies have been ordered other than normal hospitality items./<-
Katie sends me a contact for Marv’s Milky Way Frontier Supplies. Sounds shady as hell, but if his credits are good, who am I to complain? I look at his inventory and he can easily support 30 of each laser pistols and a riot armor equivalent. I look up getting some spare batteries, but his are retrofit tech that I don’t recognize. Guess I’m stopping by my lab for some spare crystals and a charging unit. Despite my complaints about spending tens of thousands of aether credits on gear, the quality is tier two advanced so I shouldn’t belly ache so much. I ask Alaris to split them evenly between forward and aft security lockers.
I pull up the location of the forward locker and start moving that way. “Tessa, can you access my combat training?”
“I’d need to upload it to my chassis, but yes. I believe I can utilize it near 80% as effectively as you.” She seems proud of that, so why not give her weapons.
“Excellent, then I’m going to need you to board the Copernicus and protect Katie if she decides to go too.” I tap the panel for the security locker and a scanning device violates my privacy.
An electronic voice says, “Welcome Admiral” and the door opens to a well organized closet.
“Take two pistols and armor in your size. Yes I know your chassis is strong and bullet resistant, but this gear will also conceal that you’re a robot. Don’t reveal your identity unless you absolutely need to.”
“I appreciate the concern, Penny, but I’ll be fine, even if I lose this chassis. Your fears are unwarranted.” She continues organizing auxiliary data for HUD display. I set up a few operation modes and pick and match data displays for each of them depending what the focus of the mission is.
I perform a quick and dirty synch of my shuttle docking UI with the Navigation panel and ask Alaris if she can replicate the approach zones and info boxes on the 3-D Nav table projection. She chirps an affirmative and it feels like I accomplished something today.
“All hands stand clear the Machinery bay, forward end.” Alaris announces.
>K] I just ordered parts for a new shuttle. ISS fittings. [<
I ping her in receipt. Makes sense to me. Really digging into the ship’s budget though. Especially when we have to reconfigure for refugees slash immigrants.
“Hey, one problem at a time Penny. We need to load your shuttle too.”
I sigh at being kept on task. I order a few consumables for my shuttle: juice, galaxy fruit, toaster strudels and coffee. Seems balanced. I order a few cots and a few dozen MRE’s just in case I pick up someone in an emergency and I have to go comms dark for some reason.
I ask Katie how long she’ll need before we head out. She tells me that most of what she has left can be done in orbit around Kepler while we wait for the shields to cool down and the Aether collectors to add whatever they can to the batteries. She does need to stop by her lab for a few things. With her few things and my few things, we decide to take the shuttle back to Aelea—the extra weight involved would tax me greatly.
Katie brings all of her specialty tools and sets them on the electronics and energies side of the maintenance bays, I leave some of my crystal projects in a bench on that side while setting up a small area for enchanting and engraving on the other side. I won’t be doing much work on this trip, so I’ll have plenty of time to make these spaces serviceable the next time around.