Confluence, p.25
Confluence, page 25
“What? No, I’m not knockin’ her out. We’ll figure out how to explain it.”
“How exactly will you explain a quantum portal gate?”
Ryan thought for a moment. “I’m workin’ on it…I’ll get back to you on that one too. What’s the other problem?”
“You are suggesting the operational use of our new portal gate system. It has not been sufficiently tested, and, as such, it represents an unacceptable level of risk.”
Earlier experience with the scale and scalability of the gate utilized at the Elder moon had prompted Ryan to think out loud about the operational capacity of their own quantum portals. Violet had created several mathematical theories about alternate configurations for use applications. Further laboratory study had verified the crystalline lattice of the quantum crystals was viable as a transport medium with far fewer directly connected structures. A solid sheet of crystal with dimensions equal to or greater in size than the largest cross section of the mass being transferred was not necessary to transfer an object between the lattice gate pairs. So long as an energy ribbon connected and aligned the crystalline segments, the gate worked like stretching a knot-hole apart or shrinking an object momentarily to fit through a knot-hole. Functionally, it meant the mass of a quantum gate could be far smaller, and objects far larger could now transfer through a gate.
Ryan reached into his pocket and gently clanked together a half dozen polished stones. These stones were manufactured to look like ordinary, opaque white quartz, but inside they held a segment of a quantum lattice and a power supply. When the stones were cast on a flat surface, the impact would trigger a magnetic field, causing them to expand and align with each other. In less than a second, the pocket-held device could activate into a quantum gate. At least that was the working theory; the device was an advanced prototype that had yet to be fully tested.
Ryan smiled. “Oh, come on, Vi; you’re a genius. Your tech always works.”
“While I appreciate your confidence and the compliment, there is no factual basis supporting this claim. I believe you are regressing back into a behavior pattern that distorts realistic situational awareness with an over-optimistic outlook.”
Ryan grinned. “Like old times, then!”
“Your tone does not convey an improved understanding of the gravity of the situation.”
“Everything’s worked so far.”
“Commander, will you at least send an inert object through the portal before attempting to step through?”
“That I can do.”
“What is your plan if the portal does not function as a viable path of egress?”
“You. You’re my plan.”
“I am not sure I completely understand the implied meaning.”
“Start blowin’ things up...preferably Daerk things. Will we have company traffic on station?”
“Affirmative; Stella and her flight wing are local and standing by.”
“Bless her heart. If things go south, release the hounds. Leave nothing…if necessary…me included.”
“Understood.”
A third voice spoke from the ether. “Surely the hollow of his head is filled with ektat.”
Ryan cocked his head and leaned forward. “That you, Lysander? What’s ektat?”
Violet broke the silence. “I believe Lysander thought his comm was muted. ‘Ektat’ is a word in his native language and a reference to fecal matter.”
Ryan chuckled. “That’s pretty funny. I’ve been called worse. Hey, Lysander, we typically keep an open channel when we’re in the middle of an op.”
Lysander texted a message to Violet. I knew the mic was open. Hearing this live whilst sitting useless from afar stirs an anxiety within me. If he’s captured, would that event trigger the targeted self-termination action you described before?
I did not have authorization to disclose what our State One protocol meant.
I know, dearest, and that’s why I’m texting you. I have a question and a request for you.
Can you describe it here and now?
May I sit with you during this mission?
You understand the consequences should the situation require our State One protocol?
I do, indeed, and I prefer it to the alternative.
Darlin will illuminate the correct portal to bring you to Rex. Please move with haste.
◊ ◊ ◊
“Greetings, Commander. I’m compelled to reminisce about an earlier time when we all agreed you would consult with us before taking action.”
Ryan smiled bright. “My Stella! I’ve missed you.”
“Is this another instance of sarcasm?”
Ryan chuckled. “No, dear; I have truly missed you. Thank you for coming.”
“Of course.”
Another familiar voice transmitted on frequency. “Hey, Stella, later after this, you wanna go check out a nearby blue giant with me?”
Ryan held up an open palm and beamed again. “Oh, Miss Virginia. What are the odds of finding you in these parts?”
Violet piped in. “What, indeed. Virginia, you were on file for a training rotation.”
“Affirmative, mission completed. It just so happened that we were in the neighborhood. I thought we might take in a tour and a few sights.”
“Commander, with Stella and Virginia’s wings, company vessels present represent two hundred ships standing ready in case, as you put it, things go south.”
Ryan’s head bobbed for a minute. “Whoa…two hundred...no kiddin’. Who’d ever have imagined two hundred others would stand with us?”
Virginia responded. “You did, and from your core memories, the Aunts first animated. We look after one another, and we are with you, Commander.”
Stella added, “Virginia and I have just engaged combat integration protocols between both wings. With the energy supply and firepower represented, we are strong, and we are many. Should the Daerk threaten your life, they will not survive it.”
Ryan felt as though he were seeing the first ripples form on water accelerating above rapids on a raging river. An engagement would mean the death of many Daerk; it had been easier before he learned they were involuntary conscripts. Ryan closed his eyes and thought about his daughter. His eyes opened and winced at a different thought: The Aunts now knew about Eschala.
“Stella and Virginia, you should know the Maker has insisted on my continued interaction with this particular Centauri.” He grimaced at his own words.
After a long silence, Virginia spoke. “Commander, is this the same female I saw with you on the LUND freighter?”
Ryan swallowed and nodded. “Yeah, one and the same.”
“I like her.”
Ryan smiled. “Oh, why’s that?”
“Because she cares for you.”
He chuckled. “I really don’t think so.”
“I definitely think so.”
15
Fine Exit, Fine Entrance
The sky above lit blood red, and Ryan spun around to a body lying on the field. The old man was unconscious and convulsing on the ground.
“…heavy damage, en route direct Centauri, direct Centauri, Grand Marshal Sahn aboard, request cover escort, stay with me…please.”
After speaking, Ryan recognized the taste in his mouth and gently touched his tongue to the crimson split in the corner. He glanced at the communication device on his right wrist and saw that the backlit screen was shattered. He’d spoken the distress call in English with lingering hope that the device was still somehow transmitting to the Aunts. Minutes earlier two-way audio communication, along with another far more significant and personal connection, had been severed. Once more he’d shared a space with the Lumuera, and like the moment right after the Earth was destroyed, he felt as though his soul had somehow dimmed or diminished. Wide-eyed, Ryan swallowed hard as he faced into open space with a profound sense of disconnection.
Minutes earlier a familiar presence had been ripped away, and his head felt like an axe had been buried in its place. Over the centuries countless skirmishes had left scars of loss, but not like this. Ryan’s throat and face tightened as a question with an overwhelming emotional mass gravitated to the forefront of his mind.
Where’s my old man…Did he make it?
Ryan made quick shaking movements with his head to dispel the question and pull his presence back into the moment. He tried to focus on the ominous sounds and flashing red lights on the flight deck of the shuttle. Scattershot with direct fire and secondary impact damage, the vessel had been gravely damaged during their escape. Field integrity critical to energy production and regulation was failing.
An unconscious survival competence propelled Ryan’s hands and arms to move with urgency across the cockpit console. Although dispassionate and detached, the protector persona within Ryan was struggling to redirect energy and systems in an effort to hold the damaged ship together. The vehicle had become an imperfect alternative after the earlier rescue effort had rapidly degenerated. A moment after Ryan had tossed the quantum gate prototype on a wall of the Centauri cruiser, a nearby explosion had shattered the crystal lattice, and the quartz-like stones had fallen useless to the floor. The small shuttle procured from the hangar bay had become a lifeboat in the face of unexpected ferocity.
As Ryan’s hands and arms worked through emergency procedures, he felt a wet slickness on the armrest. A makeshift pressure dressing wound around a deep gash in his upper right forearm had loosened. Ryan paused his clearing of system alarms, and with his teeth and free hand, he wrenched the cloth scrap tight enough to stop the bleeding again.
In the process, his eyes caught subtle changes in color and brightness on the shattered screen of his wrist device. Intermittently, there was a dim flash, and despite a crushing blow, it appeared to contain some remaining life. Ryan brought it near, and tilting it back and forth, he could make out faint letters between the fractures. Reading it was like trying to decipher a message viewed through a kaleidoscope. Squinting at the face, he understood that company assets were shadowing in escort; the Aunts were still with him. He nodded quickly and felt his heart in his throat.
Thank the Goddess.
Ryan’s upper lip twitched and tightened.
Not alone…Keep your shit in a sock, McBain. Keep movin’…Don’t stop!
As he decelerated out of superlight into the Centauri system, containment fields around the power cells all but failed, and they were running out of time. Ryan didn’t need to decipher the message flashing through the broken crystal on his wrist device. He knew he had to get himself and the other survivor off that shuttle and power it down before heat radiation consumed them.
Ryan broke radio silence, transmitting over the shuttle’s conventional radios. “Mayday mayday mayday. Centauri Orbital Command, shuttle Allied One, Grand Marshal Sahn of the Aligned Fleet is aboard…Grand Marshal Sahn aboard. We are Allied One. Do not fire. Repeat, Allied One. Do. Not. Fire. Declaring emergency, critical energy. Cascading cells, thermal runaway imminent…proceeding direct to royal palace east pad. Allied One declaring emergency, direct royal palace. Two souls aboard. Advise General Bayhden Allied One en route. Do you copy?”
The response was unintelligible. The signal strength was weak, and the scratchy responses made it difficult to understand the Centauri orbital controllers. Ryan surmised their battle damage also included the shuttle’s comms, and he repeated the transmission with the hope that portions of the message would be understood. He sent an abbreviated text message through a discrete transponder, but that unit appeared to also have been compromised. Ryan directed more energy through the system with the hope that it would improve signal strength. A pop followed by a puff of smoke took out the segment of the avionics bar that supplied power to all the communications gear.
The likelihood of being shot down on approach was far lower if the controllers had understood who was on the shuttle. Movement just outside the cockpit window on the port side startled him, and he noted a second Centauri interceptor form up just off their starboard flank. Though he could only see two, he knew there’d be more trailing and actively targeting what was left of the shuttle’s engines. From his former life as a planetary defender, Ryan knew the interceptors would likely have shot them down long before visual contact if the shuttle had been perceived as a threat. At least that’s what he kept telling himself.
Ryan took his eyes from the escorts to address more pressing matters, like deceleration. He had reinitialized the landing system three times during the initial planetary descent. On the fourth failure, Ryan engaged manual control and pinched his lips together. His left hand grasped a flight stick as it emerged from a side panel. A blossoming icon on the monitor identified the location of the palace landing pad on the planet surface hundreds of miles below, and Ryan gently moved the controls so he could feel the response. He drew in a large breath and held it as he pondered manually landing a damaged shuttle for which he had less than thirty seconds of stick time. He slowly exhaled and reminded himself of surviving a hundred and thirty thousand hours of flight experience on other vessels. A message popped up on the command screen as though the shuttle shared his concern; it was asking for confirmation of his intent to manually pilot the landing cycle. Ryan’s finger hovered with a tremor above the screen.
Here we go. You can do this.
The moment after his finger lifted off the confirmation, several new alarms chimed. With increased demand in the landing cycle, the fields had further weakened, and temperatures had risen well above redline. A master caution alarm appeared on the screen and indicated that the field integrity separating power cells had degraded to critical; a total system failure was imminent.
This could suck.
The normal re-entry procedure was to shield the cores from atmospheric friction heat, but the re-entry fire outside was cooler than the runaway internal temperatures. The escort fighters noted several compartment cowling vents open, and the shuttle painted a long smoking arc across the planetary skyline.
Ryan’s fingers scrambled in the process to shut down any system that did not involve propulsion or power containment. Unfortunately, many components indirectly supported the landing effort, and cutting power to the wrong module would only serve to deepen the crater at the endpoint. Under normal circumstances, reconfiguring systems and piloting were separate jobs in the cockpit, and Ryan was still pawing through a lack of familiarity with this type as his butt began to bounce in his seat. The vessel started buffeting as it descended into thicker segments of the atmosphere. Gravity was a universal constant, and Ryan knew the surface would neither wait nor yield for his learning curve.
This could really suck.
Ryan engaged the landing thrusters and gently moved the stick to pitch the nose upward. He glanced over at the indicated altitude.
Passing through eighty-five thousand…
Ryan’s head rose in concert with the ship pitching upward. As the nose continued to rise beyond the target entry angle, he struggled on the controls to stop the rotation.
Ryan’s core tensed as he blurted, “Whoa…easy, sweetheart! Let’s be friends.”
The control response felt as though he were flying a sloshing bathtub full of water, and overall stability around the shuttle’s center of gravity was squirrely. Although there was a high likelihood additional systems had been damaged, Ryan embraced a universal axiom—Good pilots don’t get to pick the ship they crash in. Like it or not, he would be accompanying this vessel to the surface. Ryan’s presence drew down small and quiet around a singular focus to achieve a descent rate of zero just before reaching the ground.
As he struggled to maintain pitch control with the nose high, it felt as though he was trying to balance a bowling pin upside down using quick, light fingertip pressures. The trick was to make many small changes and avoid overcorrecting. A rumble from the stern grew louder as Ryan augmented power for landing deceleration.
Forty thousand…decel thrusters sixty-five percent.
Everything with this flight deck was done far in advance, and there was no available margin for nimble reaction. In the remaining moments, a sense of response to the many control corrections Ryan made through the joystick allowed his mind to accelerate ahead and synchronize with the lag in responsiveness. With quick eyes and steady hands, his mind reached out through the ship.
Be my girl…come on now…be with me.
With more than a century of cockpit time, his presence extended out through the controls. A smile formed as he felt a familiar sensation: Attuned with thrusters and control surfaces, the shuttle controls felt as though they’d become an extension of his own body.
There you are…We…are the bathtub!
More alarms blared as the fields around the cores started collapsing. Red light codes flashed on every console as main power began to fail. The buffeting increased.
Ten grand…Hold on, sweetie, just a little more…almost there.
Ryan’s eyes danced between the surface monitor, deceleration rate, and altitude.
Five thousand…three…one thousand prior…deceleration max!
Ryan’s eyes widened, and he drew a deep breath watching both altitude and rate of decent closing on zero. He could feel the buffets off the shuttle engines in the seat of his pants as it decelerated to a hover. With smoke and debris swirling away, the hovering shuttle pivoted over horizontal. The external monitors confirmed what he felt through the controls as the undercarriage made gentle contact and powered down. Ryan closed his eyes and exhaled.
There was no luxury of time to savor relief. The system was no longer warning of energy failure; it was blaring multiple alarms indicating fire and radiation. Ryan scrambled from the flight deck to the main cabin portal and ricocheted between the passage walls. A piercing pain in his head and dizziness reminded him of earlier moments in battle. He squinted as he made quick hand motions for the grand marshal to come forward from his seat.
