On the main panel there was an image of the ship in 3d showing the ascension and a yellow line marking the path, all he had to do was keep the ship centered on that line which was easy with this ship.
He could’ve left it to Friday but he liked manually controlling the ship, in any case if he deviated much the system would auto-correct unless there was a problem and the AI was down.
After a minute or so he could see in the 3d graphic an horizontal red line approaching fast, the Kármán Line.
He powered off the anti-gravity engine and reduced pull on the in-planet engine; at this point the ship had more than enough power to brake the gravity well.
The view from outside Earth was incredible, it looked like there were thousands of ships travelling in and out, all following their traffic lines and recommended speed.
The ship could jump anywhere from the system once the AI did the necessary calculations but, in busy systems like Sol, there was traffic control, lanes, and a defined jump point.
The ship had just passed the ISS, a remnant from pre-empire that was kept and maintained as a museum; he had visited it once taking the shuttle from the Sol station, it was small and felt claustrophobic compared to the more spacious Empire ships.
He shifted the engines, shutting down the in-planet and powering up the in-system one, looked at his lane and saw he had a good hour or so before reaching the jump point.
“Friday, can you take care of the rest? I’d like to read a bit more about this engine modification if you don’t mind” - he asked the ship
“Sure thing Boss, do you want me to send the data to the screen in the leisure room or will you read it on the bridge?”
“Mmmmh, I’ll read it on the bridge, Ryoshi looks like she’s watching the outside and I don’t want to move her much” - he replied
“Understood” - was the ship's response, and the panels on the bridge went kind of blurry which was the sign that the AI was controlling them.
He started to read the article, luckily there was a layman version, still he tried to recall what he knew about the ship’s engines.
The ship had the standard four engines for non-military vessels. The anti-gravity was to avoid crashing, it worked like two magnetic poles repelling the planet's gravity.
The in-planet engine was a propulsion system for both travelling inside a planet and breaking that planet's gravity well, since there were planets with a dense core and high gravity it had to be powerful.
Then you had the in-system engine, it was designed to be incompatible with the in-planet so turning one on would shut down the other; this was another kind of propulsion system and it’s limit was just below light-speed; you didn’t want anything as big as a ship to travel at that speed inside a planet, you really didn’t.
And finally there was the FTL engine, the one that the researcher had made her modifications on; he recalled his teacher's explanation about how it worked.
“Imagine a three dimensional cube. Paint two dots anywhere there, they are defined by the z,x,y axis. Now imagine you could twist and turn that cube in a way so these two points look close if you look at them from a side, that is, in 2 dimensions.
“The engine creates a bubble and takes us to a higher dimension, where it shifts and twists the planes so we’re closer going back to our dimension.
“That’s a very gross oversimplification but is also the accepted and approved one for those who don’t want to take the Pandimensional Quantic Maths course
What the researcher had accomplished was adding a 9th dimensional bit on the whole formula, which was surprising because no one expected a human to grasp the concept over the 7th one, especially one that young.
There was an extract of an interview with the researcher, Jennifer Jeong. She was definitely young, with an oval face and a bit slanted but big almond eyes, her black hair wearing a ponytail.
“Could you tell us how you thought of this improvement?” - the interviewer voice asked
“Well, you know human brains are designed for pattern recognition, up to the point that some people see patterns everywhere. When I first looked at the formula it looked to me like a puzzle missing one of the centrepieces. It wasn’t until I finished the PQM (Pandimensional Quantic Maths course) that I could really see the piece itself.” - she answered.
Her galactic was heavily accented, a thing that usually happens to those who tend to use their native language more often.
“So I did the math and showed it to my supervisor, he was really surprised but still he checked it out; he sent it to other researchers to check the numbers as well but I was confident the new formula worked. We then sent a few exploration drones with my revised math and the times were as my new formula said they would, much to their surprise to be honest” - she continued - “I’m pretty sure they expected them to blow up or something” - she laughed
“Now that’s impressive, and the concept of human puzzles is sure to gain some new fans now. But sure you see the puzzle complete, don’t you?” - the interviewer inquired
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“Well, that’s the thing. This was just a centrepiece but, in my head, there are some corner pieces still missing but I can’t see yet what they are. It's like, when the puzzle has a huge part of a blue sky and you have to find the correct shade and size that fits with the others.” - she answered back, her face full of confidence.
He stopped the interview there and went to see the comments, he was curious to see what the public would say about all that.
The comments on the article were most of them jokes about the chaos it was already inflicting. Since all interstellar travel times have changed now, the logistics guild was going crazy rescheduling everything.
There were some comments like “These humans are going to destroy our efficiency by inventing stuff every now and then.”
There were also some written opinion pieces about the Emperor's foreboding so he read a few.
He knew that Earth’s conquest had been quick but on these articles he discovered that it had put an enormous strain on the Empire and they had mobilized an incredible part of their army, even awoken the Emperor 2nd in command from his deep slumber for, what they called it at that time, a stupid small planet at the end of a galaxy branch.
Well, these opinion writers were eating their words now, and were saying to look forward to more samples of humanity’s inventiveness.
There was a picture about the general, General Z’hrum. He looked like a massive squid with a falcon head. His green eyes though looked like feline, a vertical line in the middle of the pupil.
He could see 12 tentacles in the picture. Six of them were used as legs, two more resting by his side, two more crossed in front and the last two holding a pair of weapons, something that looked like a sword and a gun.
The rest of him was a head, a massive head that would hold an incredibly big brain, probably three times the size of a human’s, ending with a silver beak.
There was something like a red coat chained around the base of his head, where a neck would normally go, that dropped almost to the floor covering the middle part of his body.
But even from a picture the general emitted a dangerous aura.
He marked the article to read in depth later and made a note to read more about Earth’s conquest; they didn’t study it because the Empire didn’t consider that important, and there was way more to learn than that.
But since there was no forbidden knowledge in the Empire and rarely restricted articles, he would be able to find something out whenever he desired.
A beep called for his attention, they were close to the jump point now. In front of him the ships reaching the point would suddenly stop and then disappear from view, with the next ship advancing and doing the same.
There were a pair of massive cruisers by the sides of the jump point, probably to ensure no one did anything crazy or stupid.
He knew that, despite the shields and technology in his ship, the military vessels had the authorization codes and could remotely disable them and then completely erase him from existence.
Ryoshi was still in his lap but she was standing on two legs looking at the window.
“Jump in 30 seconds” - the ship informed him.
He closed the blinds on the window, once they started the jump it would look like they were inside a kaleidoscope and human brains couldn’t look at it for long without getting headaches so he could imagine cat brains would suffer as well.
He grabbed Ryoshi and pulled her towards his body counting the seconds. Heard the in-system engine powering down and then the buzzing of the FTL; a few seconds later he felt his stomach tumbling, they were in transit now so he released Ryoshi.
She jumped to the floor and walked a bit, it looked like she was dizzy. Then she suddenly stopped, blinked, and walked normally as if nothing had ever happened, probably the training treatment they had put on her.
He remembered he still hadn't read about that treatment, well he had a few days of free time now.
He walked to the leisure room checking the data-pad, Ryoshi in front of him.
He had already prepared for the mission but was triple-checking the steps to ensure he didn’t forget anything.
Once he arrived at the system, he would launch a beacon to indicate this was an Empire system, that beacon was also a signal booster in case he needed to request help.
Then he would start travelling towards that system star (or stars in this case) while launching the explorer drones he had previously configured. Those would detect any small moon, scan any asteroid belt for materials and do a quick check on the composition of every planet.
He would then orbit every planet and big moon and run a deep analysis to get the full composition, the system would compare that to the requirements of all the species in the Empire.
If a planet or moon was deemed habitable for a specific species it would be flagged for the colonist guild to prepare a colonization mission.
He would navigate the system for a few months, tracing and detecting everything on it. Once they had all the data of the system’s bodies and mass they could project all the orbits.
And, finally, he would sacrifice a couple drones by launching them to the star (or stars) and get some detailed information.
Before leaving the system the ship would collect some materials from any asteroid belt to replace the missing drones, approach the beacon and send all the collected information.
After finishing the checklist he left the bridge and went to the gym to exercise a bit, the ship orange lights - he had kept the original configuration, he liked it that way - were turning on and off whenever he entered or left a part of the ship.
The gym, then shower, then he was on his way to the leisure room when he saw Ryoshi looking attentively to the wall, her tail moving like crazy. All of a sudden she just jumped towards the wall, hit something with her claws and captured it with her mouth before landing.
He could barely see a brown thing there before Ryoshi had already eaten it, that might have been one of the ship infections, he wasn’t expecting it to start so soon.
He continued to the leisure room to read more about the treatment and training Ryoshi had been through.
The articles about it were really detailed. It turns out there was another species similar to cats so the Empire didn’t need much time to adapt a process they already had. They would genetically modify the cats and add instructions on their genes, a predilection for ship infections plus a more resistant stomach since some of these bugs had acid as blood.
Then it was the training to use the food and litter, that was done during the cat second week of life with a specific machine that planted the idea on their mind, they couldn't help but follow the order of being clean; even if they need to throw up they will hold it and do it only on the litter.
Nowadays, the Empire has adopted cats as the preferred infection hunter in biological or half-biological ships due to their life expectancy and the fact that a pregnant cat can give birth to up to 6 cats. They also grow quite nicely and fast their first months, and they are cute as heck (although some species have defined them as “hell’s spawn in a ball of fur”).
The day continued, and the next and the next. Transit travel was the worst part of being an explorer, thankfully now Dr. Jeong - she still hadn't finished her doctorate but she had already proved she deserved it - had improved those times.
And in transit non-military ships couldn’t receive any news or updates, they didn’t have the necessary technology to link to the UpLink Network, that was one of the reasons why explorers would first set the beacon.
He had only two days of transit left, and he was kind of nervous but so looking forward to his very first solo mission.