Once Tiff, CJ, and I arrived on the bridge, Elvis began speaking over the PA. “Captain will need to confirm travel orders before Blood Hound leave orbit. Once Captain approves, Elvis can initiate travel to suitable warp-friendly space.”
I sat in the captain’s chair and stared at the front wall where Elvis was currently displaying star charts and what I assumed were the plans for the next phase of our mission. “Elvis, before I approve any orders, I want you to take a look at some coordinates that Tiff is going to send you. Plot a course using those coordinates as the first stop, and the Level 1 planet as the second stop. I would like to know the exact travel time with approximately 24 hours in orbit around the location Tiff is sending you.” I looked at Tiff and nodded in approval for her to send the coordinates from her station which I believed was navigation. I still needed to find time for Elvis to give me a detailed summary of the stations on the bridge.
“Elvis, while you are working on that, what details can you give us about Level 1? What is the planet like? How far away is it? How long will the level last? What are the objectives?" I asked.
“Level 1 is what Captain might refer to as battle royale style competition. 100 participants will fight to be last one alive. Level is not planet, level is Red Moon of Alcara in 30 Earth days. Competition will take place on front side of moon. After 14 days sun will completely cover moon and nothing will survive. It is important that Captain get off moon before 14 days over. There are many Level 1’s, this just happens to be the one Captain received.”
“Will I be forced to kill other humans?” I asked nervously. “I didn’t sign on for that and I don’t plan on killing a human if they aren’t actively trying to kill me first.”
Tiff spoke up, “You can absorb participants into your party, you won't be required to kill anyone, but they will have to approve it; it's not something you can force them to do.”
“Okay, we will cross that bridge when we come to it. I’m assuming there will be plenty of Lacertines and other aliens to kill and hopefully humans will be spread out," I said as I walked over to CJ.
“CJ, I want you to spend time learning the ship. We have a transport ship and a rover in the cargo bay. I may need you to be familiar with those in the future.”
“Sweet! I can do that, Andy. I’ll get up to speed with everything that I can depending on how much time we have.”
Elvis spoke up, “AI secure containment approximately 11 days and 3 jumps away. Compound secured autonomously, segregated in deep space. Only one AI guardian per containment facility so no risk of collateral damage.”
“Captain, I must warn that the facility isn’t large but will still be defended by autonomous mechs and guards. Also, Tiff cannot assist inside the facility because there is a dampening field to protect against AI breach.”
Tiff walked up beside me and stared at the display screen on the front wall of the bridge. “I was afraid of this; I don’t know if you are ready for this kind of challenge, Captain,” she said.
“Did you just call me Captain?” I asked. “That really isn’t necessary, Tiff.”
“It just makes things easier. Don’t make it weird,” she replied without looking at me.
I placed my hand on her shoulder, “Look, you saved my life. What kind of friend would I be if I walked away from a chance to give you back yours? I know this will give you options, options that might not include me and The Bloodhound and this whole dungeon, but those are your choices to make, and I intend to give you the option to make them.”
“Elvis, if we do perform an EVAC of Tiff’s body and complete the mission in less than 24 hours, will we have time to get to the Alcaran Moon before Level 1 commences?”
“It will take approximately 14 days and 6 jumps to reach Red Moon of Alcara. Elvis is assuming that System AI did not populate enemy ships in open space for Level 1. We will have several hours of deep space travel between jumps so that Bloodhound can recharge warp array. If all goes well, we should reach Level 1 with 4 days to spare,” Elvis replied.
I walked back to the captain's chair and sat down. “Elvis, plot the course for the AI containment facility. We're going to get our XO’s body,” I said as I nodded at Tiff.
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There was an alarm over the ship's loudspeakers in an electronic female voice, “Attention crew, long distance Warp will proceed in 59 minutes and 52 seconds. Please prepare accordingly. Ensure that all crew members are secured in quarters or strapped into an assigned workstation for jump. Countdown will appear on relevant monitors throughout the ship.”
I looked over at Tiff after the announcement. “Is there anything I should know about these jumps?”
“Well, they can be a bit unsettling the first few times. It’s best to just experience it yourself,” she shrugged as she sat in the chair on my right.
“So, here’s the deal, I’m no astrophysicist, how exactly do warp engines work?” I asked her.
She looked over at me and began to explain as CJ walked over obviously curious as well.
“Some of the theories on Earth were getting close, the problem is that humans didn’t have the capacity to create a powerplant strong enough to produce the needed reaction yet.” She got up and walked into her quarters quickly returning with a sheet of paper.
“We need to travel a great distance in a short amount of time, right?” she asked.
“Ummm yeah, I guess,” I shrugged.
“Okay so here is the easiest way to explain what we will do," she said as she took an ink pen and drew two dots, one on each end of the paper.
“We need to get from one dot to the other. The fast way is a straight line,” she said and drew a line from one dot to the other.
“The problem is the distance is far; so far that we measure it in light years. Let's say the distance between these two dots represents 10 light years. To put that into perspective that you might understand, light travels at about 186,000 miles per hour, and a light-year is the distance that light will travel in one earth year. So about 5.9 trillion miles. In this example, we need to travel almost 60 trillion miles.”
I could tell that the look on my face told her everything she needed to know. I was no dummy but the distances she was throwing out were just mind-blowing. I knew that Earth hadn’t achieved faster-than-light travel, and I knew we weren’t even close, so I never really paid much attention to studies or theories on it.
“It’s okay,” Tiff said chuckling. “You got a technological upgrade when you got transported to this dungeon. Most of the universe has access to faster-than-light travel. Well, technically they don’t. We bend the rules a bit. Let me get back to my example.”
“We don’t need to travel the distance between the dots,” she folded the paper in two, aligning the dots on top of each other and stabbed the pen through the dots.
“Instead, we’re going to make a shortcut,” she said.
“We are going to fold space-time, joining our entry point and exit point, effectively eliminating the space between the dots. Earth's Albert Einstein called it a Minkowski Wormhole. It takes an extraordinary amount of power but can be done relatively easily with current levels of technology.”
I sat dumbfounded, “Okay, so Elvis knows how to do that and it’s not something that I have to break my brain trying to figure out! Nice!”
CJ chimed in, “This is pretty fucking nuts, Andy. We're going to go through a damn wormhole!”
Over the next 55 minutes or so we sat and talked and tried to continue acclimating ourselves to the bridge before returning to our stations. I sat in the captain’s chair with Tiff in the chair on my right and CJ in the chair on my left.
“Holy shit, it's about to happen bro!” CJ shouted as the timer went below five seconds.
I grasped the arms of my chair tightly and clenched every muscle in my body as I breathed out deeply. Elvis had helpfully changed the display on the bridge to a view right outside the ship so we could see the wormhole form.
From the front of the ship, 4 arms extended, bent at 45 degrees, and pointing forward like spider's arms. They each shot out powered beams at the same exact moment as the timer ticked down to zero. When the beams collided, a bright light pulsed, and a plasma wave exploded away from their point of contact. A dense black, completely lightless hole formed. The hole was about twice the width and height of The Bloodhound, so there was no chance of colliding with the walls of the wormhole. We slowly began to enter the warp tunnel.
It's hard to explain what I felt exactly. As soon as the bridge entered the wormhole, I felt like I had the pressure of an entire ocean on top of me. Then I immediately felt like every atom in my body had been stretched, ripped, and pieced back together. It felt like it took several minutes yet no longer that half a second at the same time. There was definitely some weird physics shit happening inside that wormhole and I didn’t have the time or the mental capacity to fully understand it right now. Oh, also I was vomiting uncontrollably and so was CJ. We were both on our hands and knees on the floor of the bridge, completely losing anything that we had put into our bodies over the last 8 hours.
Tiffany laughed. She actually fucking laughed at us…
Elvis gave a low rumbling laugh and spoke up, “Captain and CJ are Shellbacks now!”
“What the fuck is a Shellback?” I gasped.
“You become Shellback when you go through first wormhole! Big rite of passage! Captain had to experience on his own if he is going to lead crew to many victories! HaaHaaHaa!” Elvis continued laughing.
CJ was on his back, now lying in a mix of his and my own vomit. “I will find a way to kill that damn AI, I swear to you Andy, I will fucking kill it.”
By now the A-Gangers were out, beeping and cleaning trying to rid the bridge of everything we had thrown up. I got up on one knee and smiled.
For whatever reason, I had been brought to this place and joined with these people. Well, people and AIs. I was starting to feel a kinship. I felt like we were going to be able to take this thing on together. Aside from the sick feeling in my stomach from the jump, I was starting to feel something, something I hadn’t felt in a while. I was starting to feel like I belonged somewhere, and I wasn’t ready to let that go just yet.