<Post Warp: 1 month 27 days>
“Really?” asked Takuya.
The analyst nodded, “I said it was the best candidate, and we were right,” he said as he held out the pad to the Captain.
Takuya looked down at it looking at the blurry images of the two moons in question, “Still two habitable moons? That’s got to be rare,” he said.
The analyst smiled, “We have no idea if it is or not, although habitable is a bit of a stretch for both. Certainly more habitable than Mars though, the larger moon has about 56% the gravity of Earth but its average temperature from what we are able to discern at the moment is about -50 Celsius and the atmosphere is almost entirely nitrogen without any other gasses that we can detect at this distance,” said the analyst.
“Well that’s alright, and the atmospheric pressure is about 0.6 of a Bar!” said Takuya.
The analyst nodded, “Meaning so long as you have oxygen there is no need for pressure suits, you’ll want a jacket but without the possibility of decompression colonists could simply wear breathing apparatus!” said the man.
“Let’s try to not get too excited, we still need to do a more detailed analysis,” Said Takuya.
“Right, the second moon with an atmosphere though, that one is a little crazier. The closest Sol analog would be Venus but it’s not as extreme. It’s got about 30% the gravity of Earth, and it’s atmosphere is mostly CO2 and the pressure is at 15 bar. It’s a lot closer to the gas giant and tidally locked to it so the side facing it is mostly slag, the average temperature on the opposite side about 55 Celsius,” said the analyst as he paged through the data.
“So we have a world of fire and one of ice, we know how to deal with the cold from the Martian colonization efforts, barring anything unexpected on it that’s probably the prime candidate for an outpost,” Said Takuya.
The analyst nodded, “That was my opinion as well sir, after that’s established we could try for the other,” he said, “The other moons are mostly without atmospheres and no better than Earth’s moon in terms of colonization. Although a few look like they are captured asteroids, we could mine them for hundreds of years.”
“Good, the analysis is great but focus on the data collection we can analyze data latter,” said Takuya.
“I had some down time, the sensor suite is offline at the moment,” he said.
Takuya frowned, “still?” He asked.
The man nodded.
Takuya rolled his eyes and keyed his comm.
“Ben, Megan?!” He said through it.
There was a moment of silence, “What?” came the muffled chief engineers voice.
“Why are the sensors still offline?” asked Takuya.
“Because I’m fixing them, and Ben is screwing around like usual,” said Megan.
“Yeah because getting hit with ten amps is fun,” grumbled Ben through the comm.
“I told you to check it, that was you’re fault,” said Megan.
“How long until it’s fixed?” asked Takuya cutting off the feuding mechanics, they would argue for hours like high school kids unable to admit their feelings so they were constantly at one another’s throats.
“An hour!” said Megan.
“Good,” said Takuya as he picked up the pad to continue reading the reports that were being compiled.
“An hour?” said Ben as he reached out and banged on the top of Megan’s helmet, “Why the hell did you tell him it would take an hour!”
Megan twisted off the final bolt and slid the array out from the underbelly of the ship, “Because it either takes us an hour to fix or its going to take us a month. It’s got to be one of the controllers,” said Megan as she floated up into the cavity now in the underside of the ship.
Ben pulled the sensor array towards himself and slowly spun the long cylindrical like component the size of a large desk around in front of him examining as much of it as he could through the suit and helmet.
He hated doing the EVA’s but they were always done in tandem, and all he had to do was try and not focus on the fact that they were speeding through an alien star system at close to 50 km/s.
“No damage on the array that I can see,” said Ben.
“Didn’t think so, I think one of the controllers is burned out,” Said Megan repeating herself.
Ben sighed and clipping the array in place slowly floated up into the ship next to Megan, switching on his own floodlight to look around inside what was in essence a glorified and oversized socket.
The two of them carefully scoured the different contacts and input points, whatever had been messing with the sensors had only affected them when more high power instruments like the long range cameras or laser reflectors were in use, the passive sensors had operated up until that point.
“I think I found it, connector 43,” said Ben pointing his light at the pin.
Megan leaned over and looked at it, “Looks like there was something corrosive on it, I think those bastards at the shipyards used glue to hold that thing in place!” she said.
Ben reached out and touched the contact nodding in agreement, “I guess so, although to be honest no one thought we would be using our sensor array this much, we already know quite a lot about Sol,” He said as he began to work the contact loose.
“Still not an excuse for shoddy workmanship,” said Megan.
“At least your prediction was right, this will take less than an hour,” said Ben.
“When am I not right?” asked Megan.
Ben decided not to comment on that.
Lincoln took another sip of her coffee, by this point she was past the taste of the acrid beverage, something she had worked at purely for the caffeine content of the drink.
“We need to negotiate with Janus,” said the General.
Lincoln looked up at the man from across her rather disorganized desk, “Janus?” she asked.
“The owner of the Bar on the Station,” said the General.
Lincoln frowned, “Why would we want to negotiate with a barkeeper?” she asked.
The General chuckled, “She runs the more illegal operations on the station, including the construction of smuggling ships,” said the General.
“Why hasn’t she been arrested then? If you know about her,” asked Lincoln.
“She was helpful during the war, and she keeps the criminal element under control for the most part, it also helps that she has blackmail on half of the Martian government. I honestly wouldn’t be surprised if she knows about what we are doing down here,” said the General.
“Does she have anything on you?” asked Lincoln.
The General shook his head, “No, but like I said she was helpful during the war. If we want to build an Ark she’s the only one who can do it in orbit,” Said the General.
Lincoln took another long sip of her coffee and set it back down, “She won’t sell our secrets to anyone else?” asked Lincoln.
The General shrugged, “She keeps her word, unless you cross her first,” Said the General.
“Honor among thieves?” asked Lincoln.
“More like good business practices, sell someone out and they are liable to want revenge.”
<Post Warp: 1 month 28 days>
“Wow!”
“Will you shut up?” repeated Megan, and emphasizing her point threw her pad at the back of Ben’s head.
He deftly dodged the projectile without even looking back and continued to stare at the display that was the porthole in engineering. A gas giant which had the bands of clouds like Jupiter but was tinted more towards the blue spectrum like Neptune was dominating the view.
“You’ve been staring at it all day like an idiot! Help me get these reports done!” said Megan.
Ben reached out and snatched the pad that she had thrown at him and turned around, “Come one how can you not be freaking out at this!” said Ben.
Megan shrugged, “It’s a gas giant, you’ve seen one you’ve seen them all. When we get to the moons I’ll be more excited.”
Ben sighed, “So hard to please you isn’t it,” he said.
Megan raised an eyebrow at that and looked at Ben.
“Fuck off and get your mind out of the gutter,” he growled as he positioned himself next to her and handed the pad back over.
“You’re the one who said it,” said Megan.
Ben rolled his eyes and looked back at the display, “Do any of these planets have names? Heck I’m sure the moons don’t we are going to have to name them,” He said.
“If they have names its Enduri B or something, it needs better name than that,” Said Megan.
“Any ideas?” asked Ben.
“I’m not making up the name of a planet on the spot, and I’m pretty sure we have enough gods in mythology to name them all,” said Megan.
“Roman or Greek?” asked Ben.
“Both, they are basically the same right?” said Megan.
Ben shrugged, “depends who you ask.”
“Well then what would you name it?” asked Megan.
Ben considered it for a moment, “Blue?” he said.
“Very original,” said Megan as she shoved another pad in his hands to help her with her work.
“Professor Lincoln, General, it’s so nice to see the both of you,” said Janus.
Lincoln couldn’t help but stare at the enormous woman, it was odd to see people like her nowadays what with nano-machines eliminating obesity, meaning the woman either didn’t use them or was as large as she was for a preference.
“Janus,” said the General.
She smiled and tossed a bottle with he deftly caught, “trying to butter me up already?” asked the man.
“As if you would appreciate anything that expensive, you’re an old sailor all you want is something to get you drunk,” said Janus.
The General chuckled and brining the bottle up to his lips unscrewed it and took a sip, expertly putting the cap back on not letting any of the liquid escape in the weightlessness.
“Would you like anything?” asked Janus turning to Lincoln.
“No thanks,” she said.
Janus nodded and floated down to be level with them around the small table, they were near the end of the cylinder on the Bar in one of the more private booths with partitions around it. How Janus had managed to fit inside the door Lincoln had no idea.
“Straight to the point then, does this have something to do with the little project the two of you have going down on Mars?” asked Janus.
“What project?” said Lincoln perhaps a little too quickly.
Janus glanced over at the General and smiled, “the one involving supposedly decommissioned antimatter accelerator?” She said.
“How?” asked Lincoln.
“You still have people in my ranks don’t you?” asked the General.
“Like you don’t have any in mine?” Janus shot back.
The General took another sip of his drink, “Well straight to it then, we need a ship.”
Janus nodded, “alright, what kind? Something to get past detection? If you want to sell the antimatter you’re cooking up I can smuggle that without a special ship.”
“No,” said Lincoln icily.
Janus smiled and tuned back to her, “So what kind of ship then? Something that has a penchant for breaking the laws of physics?” she asked.
“An ark,” said Lincoln.
Janus nodded apparently not fazed by what Lincoln had said, “Well alright then, I’ll have my guys design something. They will love the chance to make something that doesn’t have to fly under the radar, and the chance to make the first FTL ship from scratch? It’ll be like Christmas,” said Janus.
“What without negotiating a price Janus?” asked the General.
Janus tapped her fingers on the table, “General when do I ever do something for free? I can see more than the politicians though, if I had even one ship that could jump to another system to mine asteroids without oversight I would make back whatever I spend building your ark in a year,” said Janus.
“So you want the FTL calculations,” Said Lincoln.
Janus nodded, “Give me those and I’ll build you a frigate if you want,” she said.
Lincoln glared back at the woman for a moment and then sighed, “Fine, but I want flight data from anything you do so I can optimize my math and you don’t end up blowing yourself up.”
“I didn’t think you cared so much,” said Janus.
Lincoln rolled her eyes and slipped her feet from the moorings, the zero-g equivalent to standing up from the table, “I’d rather you didn’t create an explosion that would make anything that happened in the war look like a firecracker,” Lincoln pushed up from the table and floated away.
Janus turned to the General, “She’s fun.”
The General sighed, “I’ll have the designs to you for the Ark by the end of the day, Lincoln’s not an engineer so the drive system will probably need someone else to look it over, and I don’t want you skimping out on any of the construction, I’ll be sending you some of the better engineers under my command to help and supervise construction.”
“You don’t trust me Gerald?” asked Janus.
“Should I trust you?” he asked turning to look at the woman.
“Not usually, but I’m not going to try and pull anything over you, didn’t end too well last time,” said Janus.
The General nodded in agreement, “True, but this is important Janus, and like I told Dr. Lincoln you’re someone I can at least trust to keep the secret, going to anyone else to build the ark wouldn’t have been right. It will also stop you from having your lackeys try and hack into the military servers looking for the FTL calculations,” said the General.
“I have no idea what you are talking about,” said Janus.
“Right,” said the General.
He took another swig out of the bottle, “You serious about mining?” he asked.
Janus shrugged, “It’s a factor, but you know me, I made the Station what it is because it was the frontier, I might just need to reserve myself a seat on your Ark.”
“Make it two seats,” said the General.
Janus raised an eyebrow at the man and he laughed, “We’re both too old to go exploring, you’ve seen the videos, it’s the handsome young captain that goes off to explore and make relations with as many aliens as possible,” said the General.
“Well that would have been you back in the day,” said Janus.
“Well, the times past now. I’ll have to settle with the fact that I helped the first true explorers make it out among the stars.”
“We helped them to the stars, don’t go hogging all the credit Gerald,” said Janus.
The General frowned, “You haven’t built the damn ship yet.”
“I will, and it’s going to be my best ship to date,” said Janus.
[Charles] sat down in his new command chair and looked out over the bridge, [Tom] and [Sam] were the only familiar faces in the crew which was now close to 1900, all pure Dorvakian. Usually the grunt work on a ship like the [Singer] would be performed by a Class B variant but with the security needed for this mission even those slots had been filled by Class A’s.
The [Singer] had just left dry-dock and they were in orbit of the home world, ready to make the jump to the C1764’s system.
“What is the status of the stealth systems?” asked [Charles] turning to the new engineering officer in charge of it, the system was difficult to keep in sync and very few were trained in doing so. A quarter of the individuals in the Empire who understood its operation were a part of his crew.
The engineering officer turned in his chair, “Fully operational sir, we’ve gotten the dorsal emitters functioning within the standard specs, this is a class C species though so I doubt they would even detect us through the passive cloaking materials,” said the officer.
“What’s your name?” asked [Charles].
“[Jack] sir!” said the man.
“It’s always best to assume your enemy is more capable, underestimation is the easiest way to lose a battle,” said [Charles].
“Are we at war with a class C species sir? They don’t pose any kind of threat,” said [Jack].
[Charles] sighed and leaned back into his seat waving his hand at the officer to sit back down, it was the common mindset of Class A citizens to not consider anything a threat, and after all they were the genetically superior race, the purest form from the Seed of Life.
A brief overview of history would show that even with their genetic superiority they could still be threatened, something [Charles] had studied. The uprisings for which the [Singer] was retrofitted to combat were only the most recent example. Unfortunately many of the pure Dorvakian’s whom were raised on the home world or most of the internal Empire colonies were never taught anything but their own superiority, and it was something that [Charles] had always seen as more of a weakness than an advantage.
Then again, his unconventional views were what had gotten him stuck as the Captain of the patrol vessel, and only a stroke of luck and a particularly nasty alien threat had freed him of that dead end in life.
“All stations report ready to translate into FTL sir!” said [Tom] from his station.
“Execute” said [Charles] as he shook the thoughts from his head.
The ship barely shuddered as they slipped into subspace, and [Charles] glanced up at the window, watching as normal space slipped away and the blurry amalgamation of stars their light smeared across his eyes came into view.
“Time to the system?” asked [Charles].
“About [five hours] sir,” said [Tom].
“Alright then, [Sam] what progress have you made in the translation of the Class C species communications?” asked [Charles].
Sam frowned, “They are utilizing digital formats for information distribution within their system sent via different wavelengths of light. Using samples of this communication from our original survey I was able to interpret many of the communication protocols, they are fairly similar to the Empires ancient communication methods. I’m still working on the actual translation of the contents of messages, with more samples I should have a basic translation program within a day or so,” said [Sam].
“Good, any chance we would be able to crack encryption algorithms that might be in place?” asked [Charles].
[Sam] shook her head, “No, from what I have gleaned out of the data their encryptions standards border on the insane, some of the algorithms are comparable to our own in terms of effectiveness, they lack in efficiency but still it is impressive,” said Sam.
“Work on it, we need to get into their military systems to find the designs for the FTL system, in a direct attack to obtain military assets the Empire would destroy the objective before allowing others to obtain it. We must assume that this species being more violent then out own would have similar response, they will go down fighting if given the chance, we can’t give it to them,” said [Charles].
“No, hell no,” said Megan.
Takuya glanced over at his engineering officer, “An emphatic no? Is it that dangerous? The Yamato was designed for atmospheric maneuvers,” he said.
“Designed for and recommended are two completely different things! Sure we can do atmospheric flight, but we have hundreds of years of data on flying inside Earth and Mar’s respective atmospheres. ” said Megan. Takuya nodded in agreement, “alright then, the science techs will have to be happy with spectrographic analysis of the atmospheres around the moons.”
“Good, and tell them they’re crazy if they want to take atmospheric samples in the Yamato,” said Megan.
“Oy!” said one of the techs as he turned his console away from himself to look at the chief engineer.
“I’ll be sure to tell them,” said Takuya smiling slightly.
“If they get any more bright ideas about throwing the ship into a volcano or something come ask me first,” said Megan, and turning away from the bridge she pushed off from the deck to float back towards the end of the ship.
Entering the engineering compartment she was treated to the sight of Ben staring out the windows like before, the pale blue moon with the cold atmosphere now the predominate feature in its view.
“So what next?” he asked.
“Nothing, we can relax,” said Megan.
“Seriously?” asked Ben.
“No, where the hell are those calculations I asked for on the variances within the fusion reactor when we went FTL?” asked Megan.
“Like my analysis is going to be the right one? Let the eggheads back on Mars figure out why the hell the fusion plant went haywire, all we need to do it put it into combat mode when we jump to FTL,” said Ben.
“It is procedure,” growled Megan.
Ben sighed and picking his tablet off of the wall he casually floated it towards her, “Best I can tell is that when we are inside whatever the hell we’re calling that tunnel thing inside of FTL it bleeds through everything and matter gets messed with. We saw the large effects but I have no idea what it could be doing to normal matter not in the state of fusion,” said Ben summarizing what was on the pad.
Megan looked at the pad and then back at Ben, “If this is right then FTL might be messing with normal matter?” she asked.
Ben nodded, “We are breaking most of the laws of physics, is it that hard to believe that matter might be affected by it? So far we haven’t noticed anything but the most FTL jumps anyone has done is one, we’ll see if effects start to build up once we go back to Sol, hopefully my analysis is wrong,” said Ben.
Megan continued to read through it, the sensors monitoring the fusion reaction clearly showed that for the second or two they had been at FTL the laws of nature had almost gone out the window, becoming more suggestions than ironclad rules. Not surprising considering they had no idea what the stuff going on outside the ship during FTL was. Other sensor data included the weapons monitoring stations, all of which had registered a change in the state of the magnetic rails, something that should not have happened unless the system was powered up.
So not only was the effect on plasma but also metal, they didn’t have advanced sensors on the Yamato to look into atoms though, so for now it was speculation.
“We need to show this to the Captain,” said Megan.
“Already did, we have to jump at least one more time to get home,” said Ben.
“Hopefully it’s like radiation, you can take small dosages and the nano-machines can deal with it,” said Megan.
“But it’s not just biological matter that’s getting screwy, its every bit of matter, what if the fusion interlocks fused? Boom!” said Ben.
“Boom,” repeated Megan.
“Come on I thought you were ready!” said James.
“Screw,” Ares took a breath, “You!” he said.
James jumped up and sunk the basketball into the net, right over the head of the panting Martian.
“You’re taller than me how are you not winning?” asked James as he grabbed the ball and started to dribble it again, Ares was panting in underneath the net trying to get his breath back.
“Screw gravity!” said Ares as he slowly straightened back up, he heard several joints crack and felt his muscles straining against the gravity of Earth, he hadn’t grown up on her surface but he had evolved to survive on Earth, and there was no way in hell he was going to let James win.
SPECIFICATIONS: [Singer] (Translated values are within 0.1% of accuracy)
Length: 415.3 m / 1362.5 ft.
Height: 60.8 m / 199.4 ft.
Weight Empty: 146,020,000 kg / 321,918,995 lb.
Maximum Weight: 160,000,000 kg / 352,739,619 lb.
Max g-rating: 5
Max g-rating (dampening system): 30
Life Support: Unlimited (Crew of 2,000)
Delta V: Unlimited (5 Km/s acceleration)
Power: Antimatter reactor (10 TW)
Drive: Standard Tachyon Drive
Weapons Payload: 10,000,000 kg / 22,046,226 lb.
Weapons:
(2) 10 TW Plasma Main Guns
(100) 10 GW Plasma Point Defense guns
(10) 500 GW Ship To Ship Plasma Guns
(1) <CLASSIFIED>
Description: One of the oldest ships within the service of the Empire the [Singer] represents the fluidity and grace of the earliest ships constructed within the Home world’s ship yards. Throughout her life time she has served in many capacities, when first constructed she was the largest battleship of the fleet. In the [hundreds] of years since she has been reduced in her role due to her limited frame size and was scheduled to be decommissioned, at the beginning to the rebellions however her fluid design made her optimal for experimental cloaking technology. Retrofitted with the newest weapons and stealth technology she is still very much an antiquated ship in every other regard, she is not like most Empire battleships equipped with shield technology instead relying on her amour.