Allison had several ports open on Bit trying to figure out exactly what options she had to get the starfighter powered up enough to get her into orbit and get communications going with the System’s Alliance or League of Sentient Races. The news was not good. She had two wormhole beacons leftover from the network expansion into League space. Both had a full supply of antimatter. The problem was she had no way of getting that antimatter into her fighter. In the actual starfighter, all of her fusion reactant was gone, and every molecule of antimatter was gone. Even her back up fusion generator had its fuel wiped out.
The fighter was otherwise one hundred percent intact. Well except for some scoring that wasn’t there when she landed. She assumed it was the crew of the George Washington poking at the fighter trying to figure out what made it tick. She was annoyed but all they did was scuff the liquid metal armor and she could fix that easily by resetting the armor’s surface. Bit had no power, even her power backups were gone, the core neural network and memory storage was intact but without power Bit was offline. Allison frowned, if she could get into space, she could launch a wormhole beacon and get it online. That would mean a new node would show up on the wormhole network and they could find her easily.
She looked towards her cockpit. The tesseract core had power in spades but she had no idea how to access it, and even if she could, she’d have no idea if she could contain it once she accessed it. She brought up the starfighter’s schematics and started looking over the power system. She stared at it for forty-five minutes finally she noticed power could be transferred from the particle beam capacitors back to the fighter. Which made sense because it was a standard tactic to pull that power to reinforce shields, but with the right tweak to the conduits she could power the antigravs. She’d have to rely on chemical thrustors to maneuver but getting off the planet would be easy. If she could find a way to charge the capacitors.
“Are you alright?”
Allison blinked a few times and looked around. She realized Agent North was speaking to her.
“Yes ma’am.”
Rebecca motioned to the spot where Allison’s AR HUD was currently projecting the power system of the starfighter.
“You were just staring off into space for almost an hour, I was wondering if your head injury was catching up to you.”
Allison shook her head.
“Nah, I heal fast… umm, oh there is that comic book... Wolverine? I’m like Wolverine, I don’t stay hurt long. And I was just looking at my starfighter’s schematics to figure out a way to get power.”
Rebecca moved closer to Bit, her eyes scanning the open ports on the starfighter.
“Do you actually know how all this works?”
Allison shook her head.
“Not all of it, just enough to keep it going if I get stuck somewhere. It’s part of basic pilot training, knowing how to make enough jury-rigged repairs to get home. Standard for anyone piloting an FTL ship. I figured out a way to get power, but I have no idea how to charge them.”
Rebecca looked over the fighter’s inner workings.
“How much power can your generators produce?”
Allison bit her lower lip.
“Fusion reactor can do 100 power units, Antimatter 1000 power units, graviton core erm I think it’s around two hundred?”
Rebecca realized she had no idea how much power a unit meant so she pressed further.
“I’m just trying to figure out what kind of scale that means compared to say our technology.”
Allison blushed.
“Oh! Oh! I know this… uh, one unit is about thirty terawatts? I think that’s what my history book said.”
Rebecca blinked a few times.
“Over their lifetime?”
Allison shook her head.
“No, power units are per minute, shields, weapons and FTL drives are hungry little monsters. I just don’t think anything on a chemical burning ship is going to give me enough power to charge the capacitors.”
Rebecca was confused.
“Chemical burning?”
Allison nodded.
“You used… erm, umm, use hydrocarbons, right?”
Rebecca nodded.
“Yes, but our carrier and the Chinese carrier are nuclear powered.”
Allison perked up.
“Nuclear? As in nuclear fusion?”
Rebecca shook her head.
“No, fission.”
Allison blinked.
“What?”
Rebecca smiled.
“Splitting atoms, we use uranium.”
Allison’s eyes went wide.
“Oh, that… is dangerous stuff. Maybe you’re sick because of that. Radiation is dangerous.”
Rebecca shook her head.
“No, it’s safe, we have dosimeters. I’m just trying to say, maybe we can charge your capacitors.”
Allison shrugged.
“We can try, I don’t need much, the antigrav plating is pretty power efficient. I shouldn’t need shields; I can use my thrustors to maneuver. I wish I had more chemical fuel.”
Rebecca looked at the propellent tanks.
“What do you use in the thirtieth century?”
Allison flicked through her AR HUD and then projected a hologram it provided the chemical structure for her fuel. Rebecca blinked at it.
“You use Xenon and that looks like… uh potassium based fuel.”
Allison nodded.
“Xenon plasma for the ion thrustors and the chemical fuel for conventional jets, backup maneuvering thrustors and scramjet engines. Usually, I don’t need any of it because the graviton core lets me move however I want.”
Rebecca nodded along.
“What is this graviton core?”
Allison bit her lower lip.
“It is like uh... umm, basically it’s powered by a tiny singularity, and the gravitational waves it generates can be directed by the core… so umm, think of a straw, you know how you suck on it and liquid moves forward, well the graviton core projects the gravity in the direction I want to move and it pulls me along, under the right conditions I can use it to reach about ninety percent the speed of light.”
Rebecca blinked in disbelief.
“So, you can harness a black hole?”
Allison giggled.
“No, well, I mean, I wouldn’t put it past Aunt Maria to figure out how to do that, it’s just a tiny singularity, black holes are collapsed stars. Not fun to navigate around, so I’m told, but you can get some real speed off of them if you use them as a slingshot. I was talking to this Silwrath pilot, he hit 99.9% the speed of light off one, cost him ten years because of relativity.”
Rebecca was intrigued now.
“Silwrath, what is that? A specialist pilot?”
Allison giggled again.
“No, they’re uh, I guess dragon people? They’re umm one of the founding members of the League of Sentient Races. A bit gruff until you get to know them.”
Rebecca nodded.
If you come across this story on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen from Royal Road. Please report it.
“How many alien species are the humans in contact with where you’re from?”
Allison did some mental math.
“It’s a lot, sorry, the System’s Alliance only has one alien member species, the Sauroids, uh, dinosaur people. The League… I don’t know how many, but it’s a lot, I just stopped counting, or caring. When it comes down to it, everyone seems the same on the inside. Though figuring out all of their customs! I do not envy our ambassador’s job.”
Allison was speaking as she worked, she’d started the process of ejecting the particle beam arrays and capacitors. The beauty of the Athena class, and her modified version was besides generators, thrustors and basic computer systems, it was completely modular, she could have railguns instead of particle beams, she was glad she didn’t, shooting slugs at near light speed and missing was panic inducing, the problem with space was stuff would keep going and going until it hit something without losing any real velocity so if she fired them and missed they could eventually hit an inhabited planet, or a ship. Rebecca kneeled down and looked up at the first particle beam emitter as Allison pulled it out.
“What are you pulling out right now?”
Allison tapped some writing on the side of the particle beam emitter.
“Mark 3, Class 4 particle beam emitter. Uh, starfighter particle beam emitter, Class 3 are anti-fighter starship, Class 2 are antiship turrets and Class 1 are basically particle beam emitters so big the barrel is the whole central core of a ship. They are our heaviest weapons. We used to use railguns but well, those take ammunition and if you miss you could hit something you don’t want to… eventually. Mine are more advanced than our standard, guess Aunt Maria wanted a beta tester.”
Rebecca pointed at two protrusions from the starfighter’s midwing.
“What kind of weapon are those?”
Allison bit her lower lip as she looked at them.
“Uh, manual says… discharge… by the Dark Mother, you’re a genius!”
Rebecca looked very confused by Allison’s response.
“Dark Mother? I’ve heard of that cult.”
Allison hopped up and started looking through the manual to the newly added energy weave, which was not as well laid out as the rest. Likely because her Aunt Maria had just developed it. She didn’t look at Rebecca as she answered her and was somewhat distracted by her manual.
“Cult? It’s like one of our main religions… And yes, there it is. Those things you pointed at are the discharge points for a new weapon my Aunt Maria just added on the last rebuild. There is an energy weave inside the liquid metal armor that absorbs incoming energy weapon fire and charges a capacitor bank that can be used to power starfighter systems, and shields, or return it as condensed electricity… they’re lightning guns but, if I can find a storm, I can use the lightning to charge the capacitors. Theoretically it’s not like I’ve tested it. Every time I’ve been hit by something I had my shields up because going into a fight without shields seems like a dumb thing to do. Ugg! If I had my shields down when I got hit by that temporal lightning, I would have just charged my ship up and avoided floating around in interstellar space!”
Rebecca was completely confused by Allison’s verbal diarrea.
“So, you don’t need us to charge the capacitors?”
Allison shook her head.
“No, I totally do. I can’t waste fuel taking off. I need antigravs, but if I can get to orbit and find a lightning storm, I can get enough power to boost my hyperwave. Can’t really open a wormhole comm, no antimatter. Hyperwaves don’t have the range without boosters but if I can give it enough power I can boost the signal. I’ll be able to use my ion drive as well because with that kind of power I can create plasma. So, I’ll have a lot more fuel I can use. This is going to work. I can get us help!”
Allison looked around and called out to some of the maintenance crew.
“I need help to move this!”
Several had been hovering nearby curious what was hiding inside the shiny black liquid metal skin of this advanced fighter plane. They had not been disappointed. With a lift that would typically be used for ordinance they managed to lower the particle beams with no issue. The next part took a few hours. With the Admiral’s permission and a lot of help power lines were run directly from the main breaker to the maintenance deck.
Allison frowned as she checked the particle beam capacitor charge a few hours after they got the power connected, they were charging slowly. The power drain was almost too much for the George Washington’s turbines. They were struggling to fill the demands of the capacitors and power the rest of the ship’s electrical grid. She’d have two or three hours of antigravity at the current charge, it had been four hours and they only had a one percent charge each. At this rate ten percent would take almost two days. The crews did not have that much time. More and more were falling sick with each passing hour. She drank her coffee. At this point she’d been awake for thirty hours including her day of training back on Eden Prime and she couldn’t sleep. Rebecca had gone to sleep and come back by this time. She looked at Allison.
“You haven’t slept yet… you should.”
Allison shook her head.
“No, I can’t everyone here is getting worse by the hour. I can’t risk sleeping.”
Rebecca looked at the capacitors.
“How is the charging going?”
Allison frowned.
“They’re at one percent. I can’t wait any longer. I’m going to put them back in and launch. I’ll have an hour or two of antigrav. It will have to be enough. It is just so frustrating!”
Rebecca blinked a few times at Allison’s loud exclamation and growl.
“From what I understand you’ve already gotten further then you thought you would, why are you frustrated?”
Allison motioned at her cockpit with the borrowed empty travel mug.
“I have a power source that I’m told has enough power to vaporize a planet, possibly even a star in my cockpit and I have no idea how to access it.”
Rebecca couldn’t hide her shock. She had shared the Admiral’s concerns about a teenager being given control of what constituted a weapon of mass destruction but to know she had access to something that could destroy a star was unthinkable.
“Your… parents let you have something like that?”
Allison was confused at first and then she shook her head.
“No, my mom would be freaking out my science team found it on my flagship. I… recovered an alien destroyer and we’re still finding things hidden away. It’s how I ended up here. It was pulsing and I had to get it away from my fleet and my home world. If I’d known it was going to hurl me Dark Mother knows where I would have kept it on my flagship and with my fleet, at least then I’d have access to their resources, but no, I decided I’d rather sacrifice myself in the whole exploding supernova relic thing… I couldn’t have known, my mom, my friends… everyone’s on Eden Prime. No, I did the only thing I could to keep everyone safe…”
Rebecca’s face softened; She was starting to realize this special forces soldier from the future really was just a teenage human girl trying to keep it together in the face of extreme circumstances. Allison shook off her brief moment of self-doubt and frustration.
“You’re right, we are further ahead than I thought we were. I’m going to keep doing what I do, adapt, overcome and win.”
Rebecca smiled.
“That’s a good motto. Now, what do you need from us?”
Allison motioned to the particle beam emitters.
“I need to get those disconnected and put back into Bit, get her on deck and then I’ll take care of the rest.”
Rebecca walked off and by the time she’d come back maintenance crews were already helping Allison reseat her particle beam emitters. Allison was clamping a liquid metal conduit from the capacitor redirect back to shields, to the main power lines. Rebecca watched her and asked a question that was bothering her.
“You keep calling your fighter, ‘Bit’, is that just a pet name you have for it?”
Allison shook her head; She wasn’t really thinking about what she was saying since she was so focused on making sure the power from the capacitors would go where she needed it.
“She, and Bit is my AI copilot. I’m hoping she has some more ideas once I can get her power.”
Rebecca stepped back.
“AI, Artificial Intelligence? Your fighter has an AI?”
Allison shook her head.
“It’s better to say, Bit has a fighter body, and it’s not my fighter… I make that mistake sometimes, Bit’s her own person, she just lets me fly her.”
Rebecca shook her head slightly, she wasn’t sure what was worse, a teenage girl having access to a planet destroying superweapon, or a sentient artificial intelligence.
“The Admiral is requesting you take someone with you so he can monitor the situation. Are you okay with that.”
Allison glanced back at Rebecca.
“It isn’t going to be a comfortable ride. I’m going to use my armor’s power for life support and there is going to be no inertial dampeners or gravity. I can’t even give Bit power. It is going to be antigravs only, I can’t even use my holo-phone’s control interface. It’s all going to be manual. I have to conserve power, and also, my energy weave has never been tested, we could end up electrocuted. I don’t want someone throwing up in my cockpit because they’re not used to low gravity.”
Rebecca looked at the fighter.
“But you didn’t have your helmet on when you landed, how were you breathing if it had no power?”
Allison blinked a few times.
“Oh, the oxygen filters are passive. I’m talking about climate control. It’s either really really cold in space, or really really hot. You don’t get many in-betweens, even in orbit.”
Rebecca quirked her head to the side.
“What do you mean cold or hot? I thought it was cold…”
Allison giggled.
“Not in a solar system, in the habitable range at least, no atmosphere means you get direct sunlight, you can get a real good sunburn not to mention all the radiation! Darkside of the planet, no sun, its cold.”
Rebecca nodded again.
“Do you have an extra flight suit… armor?”
Allison laughed.
“No, this is one of a kind. I guess the environmental suit I have could work if the Admiral is insistent, its sized for me though so… well I guess you could fit into it.”
Rebecca looked around herself. She had not signed up to visit space in her lifetime. Allison noticed her discomfort.
“It is no big deal. In the thirtieth century it’s like driving to the store. If the store was millions of miles away.”
Allison hit the command to fill liquid metal over the fighter’s open maintenance panels and opened the emergency supplies cargo unit and pulled out the environmental soft suit.
“Here you go. Just make sure… the holes are lined up right, you do not want to pee and miss.”
Allison backed away as the deck crew moved her fighter onto an elevator to get it on deck. Rebecca was still holding the soft suit and looking it over then to Allison.
“Could you, help me…”
Allison nodded. It took them fifteen minutes but soon they were ready to go. Rebecca looked down at the very thin spacesuit. It looked nothing like the suits the astronauts she’d seen wearing.
“Are you sure this will work it seems… flimsy.”
Allison nodded.
“Yes, you can spacewalk in it. I wouldn’t go into combat with it, but for a quick orbit, you’ll be fine.”
Rebecca looked at the rest of the emergency kit and noticed a very conventional looking firearm.
“You still use conventional guns?”
Allison glanced down at her survival pistol.
“Yes, mine are not standard issue, they’re… alien weapons. I was given them by my adoptive sister, Queen Aryna, or Tearyna is the actual formal way to pronounce it, just in case you meet her.”
Rebecca blinked a few times.
“You are royalty?”
Allison giggled.
“She’d like to think so, she went and made me a Duchess, and well I am a crown princess if something happens to my sister, I’ll be the Empress of Eternal Night. I left that part out, I guess I’m also the crown princess of Ratoa but let’s not get started on that mess!”
Rebecca stared at Allison.
“They must be searching for you already, how are you allowed to travel around without bodyguards?”
Allison shrugged.
“It’s not like they haven’t tried. Anyway, the faster we get up there, the faster I can drop the wormhole beacon and the faster we can get help for all these sick people. I pray to the Dark Mother my aunt can get enough nanites because I don’t think conventional medicine is going to be enough to cure the worst of it.”
The pair started up towards the flight deck.