NationStates Jolt Archive

Rampage-Mercury Warp Point, Mercury Locus

The silent mine fields floated in space, ready to come to instant readiness. Any ships appearing in the warp point would have less than a second to get off the proper identification codes before energy platforms and mines opened fire.

Twenty thousand motes of metal, all alone in the night…

An electromagnetic signature flared, and a ship burst from the warp point, it’s IFF code already broadcasting. The mines stood and watched, doing nothing, allowing the S.P.S. Weber to pass them by.

Another signature, and another, and another, ten, fifteen, thirty, sixty more signatures blazed into existence, all broadcasting the proper codes. It was a motley collection of Federation ships to be sure, but they numbered an entire Task Force, though drawn from all four Task Forces. They were all ships suffering medium damage during the Lost Americans surprise attack, and were coming to S.P.S.S. Angpilinel for repairs.

And on tractor beams behind them, a number of them towed smaller vessels, salvaged from the Lost Americans Fleet. Those vessels, along with the S.P.S. Weber, were bound for something completely other than repairs on this battlestation in the back of beyond, silently keeping watch over the planet were the first of the Khristatatans had yet to arrive.

S.P.S. Weber, Docked at S.P.S.S. Angpilinel, Mercury System, Between Orbits 5 and 6, Even with Mercury IV

Weber noticed something happening near the planet on his sensors, and he immediately replicated another copy of himself, reaching out through the sensors to observe what was happening at Mercury IV.

A new power signature blazed to life in his specialized field of view, and he realized that it was the S.P.S.S. Argus coming online. The first ADK prisoners were expected soon anyways, and the system needed to be operational by the time they were.

Mercury IV was a dry planet, with only thirty percent of its surface covered with water, but nearly a third of that water was drinkable. But that was not really what drew Weber’s attention. It was the smaller civilian style freight transports flying in close to the ground.

What are they doing? Then it hit him. Terraforming. The planet needed some fine tuning, or else dumping the Khristatatans there would be the same as sentencing them to death. Mostly food crops and survival crops, like hardwoods. Some would be landed in stages of development, while others would be landed as seeds to grow relatively freely on the mostly desert planet.

Weber watched for a while, then reabsorbed his replicant, knowing that he needed, most of all, to focus his attention on what he was doing…

Linguistics Department, Vanderbilt University, Griffin, Commonwealth of Sentient Peoples, FSP

Amanda Devlin flipped the folder closed and sighed, a sigh which turned into yawn. She rubbed her hand over her brow and yawned again. It had grown late, and she had an early class to teach in the morning.

Movement caught her attention and she looked up. Someone with purple hair and oddly purple eyes was standing in her office. “Who are you?” she demanded, slightly surprised at not hearing anyone approach, or, for that matter, open the door.

“Who I am is not important, Doctor Devlin. I have a few questions for you.”

“Look, you obviously know who I am, Miss Purple Hair, and I don’t know who you are, and frankly, I don’t care. I don’t have time for games. I have class in the morning.” Devlin stood up. “I have to go.”

“You are incorrect, Doctor.”

“What? What do you mean?”

The purple haired person smiled. “You have no class in the morning. It has been canceled for the foreseeable future, and your students have been reassigned. At noon tomorrow, two men will arrive at your house. Be ready to leave for an extended period of time.”

“What the hell are you going on about? Are you insane?”

“Not at all, Doctor. Just know that of this moment your reserve military commission has been activated, Lieutenant Colonel.”

“You can’t do that! Who are you?”

The purple haired woman smiled. “Be ready at twelve tomorrow.” She vanished.

S.P.S. Weber, Docked at S.P.S.S. Angpilinel, Mercury System, Between Orbits 5 and 6, Even with Mercury IV

Engineering Lieutenant Commander Franklin Hardy stared at the massive block of sophisticated systems at the heart of the ship, the entire reason that Weber had been created. This was the Kajali subspace drive. At least, according to Weber. It was hard to confirm, as all the intelligent computer files had been purged during his attack, leaving only hard copy and straight data files.

Of course, with the help of Doctor Devlin, Weber thought he had managed to devise a bit of translation matrix.

And so, here stood Commander Hardy before the massive block of technology that allowed the ship to outspeed light itself. He turned back to his team, and smiled wanly. “Well, let’s get started, boys and girls.” The techs clamored forward towards the engine core, each with data pads in hand, and heavy tool belts around their jumpsuits. “First we need to…”

S.P.S.S. Angpilinel, Mercury System, Between Orbits 5 and 6, Slightly behind Mercury IV

Engineering Lieutenant Commander Hardy made another note on his display, checking off the progress of his teams. It had taken Team One nearly three weeks to disassemble the entire Subspace drive system. It was most assuredly the most complex piece of machinery he had ever seen.

But then, it had to be, to tear a hole in the very fabric of space itself. Which was of course why it was so interesting. Their first task, of course, was to figure out how to make it smaller. Not so much how it worked, really, but to shrink it. A lot. Then they were going to put this smaller drive on a probe, and send it into subspace to tell them all it could, learn everything it could about subspace, its structure and forms and functions.

One thing they did know, though. It was connected to gravity, as that is how the Kajali fleet had been detected. A normal space gravitronic pulse wave had been detected and identified as an incoming Kajali subspace signature.

Hardy turned to the second report on his desk. In seven of the Lost American vessels intact missile tubes had been found. It had taken a horribly long time to explore the eight vessels brought in, but that was because they were floating tombs. Vacuum preserved bodies still floated within many of them, trapped in spaces no long airtight. Which meant all his teams had been in pressure suits the whole time. Heavy suits, to resist the radiation leakage and over all damage the ships had sustained. But seven... that would be a large enough sample set to begin investigating how they had supplied those horribly devastating off bore broadsides at had opened the engagement with Battle Fleet.

He had better go down and check them out, and see what there was to see.

S.P.S. Weber, Rampage System

All the project teams were present now, on the bridge of the S.P.S. Weber. The EI's physical avatar turned to Lieutenant Commander Hardy, and smiled. "I'm ready to run the test, Commander."

"Very well, Weber. Initiate prep sequence."

"Initiating now. Probe will be ready for launch in two minutes." To the organics on the bridge of the ship, the two minutes seemed to drag on forever. But to the EI, those two minutes, despite being filled with systems checks and final chores, were merely an eternity. Then, finally, "Ready to launch."

"Launch."

The ship shook slightly. Only minimal repairs had been effected to it, and many systems were still damaged, but... "Probe away. Accelerating now. I am bringing the subspace engines online. Jump coordinates ready and input." The running commentary continued until the last line. "Probe has entered subspace, Commander."

Now came the hard part. Had they done it correctly? Would the probe reemerge? A minute passed, then two, then three. "Weber, how long is the probe supposed to stay in subspace for?"

"Five minutes. We're just now coming up on four." The last minute passed. Weber spoke again. "Reemergence in five... four... three... two... one... now. Now. Now." The EI smiled as the probe reemerged on his third repitition of the final word. "May I move to collect the probe, Commander?"

"Go ahead, Weber."

S.P.S. Weber, Rampage System

As Weber jumped back into the Rampage system, every alarm that still functioned on the Bridge went off, and Hardy whirled to look at the display. "Oh my god..." His voice trailed away as indentifications came in. Eight Capella class and escorts. IFF code: Second Fleet. Second Fleet? I didn't know any units of Second Fleet were completed. The screen continued to resolve and he watched as eighteen more ships jumped in system, following Weber, leaving the eighty others behind at the warp point.

Then the launch platforms were jumped through, and Weber took them under tow. Over the next several hours, as Weber crept in system, the signals of the Second Fleet, Fifth Task Force, faded from view, vanishing into space. It was unclear whether they had jumped or not, but they were gone.

But then different matters took over, and the next round of tests began.

The missile blasted free of the launch tube, having accelerated at nearly twenty thousand gravities for the last few moments, then was yanked hard to the left, ripped around to starboard by a gravitational eddy, which sent the missile streaming forward as its engines came online, tearing through space at nearly fifty thousand gravities.

The tests continued. Most succeeded completely. None failed spectacularly. Perhaps, by the time construction began on Seventh Task Force, Second Fleet, the off bore missile launchers would be ready for production.

Lieutenant Commander Hardy's Office, S.P.S.S. Angpilinel, Mercury System, Between Orbits 5 and 6

Commander Hardy idly reread his report on the new missile launchers. Using the Lost Americans' gravity manipulation technology, which had been more advanced that the Federation's, he had been able to use the slightly more powerful Federation gravdrivers to boost initial missile acceleration by another two percent, but more importantly, had figured out how to send the off-bore broadsides that had nearly wiped out the Federation Fleet during the surprise attack, and would have, had it not been for some alert watch officers.

But now the Federation would possess the ability. It would be built into Seventh Task Force, he knew, and into the Seventeenth Space Battle Group, and, of course, all later ships. Fortunately.

Now that that piece of the project was out of the way, it was time for him to examine the Island States Solid State Hyperdrive brought in two days before. He had been trying to finish up the with the new designs, so he had put that off until now.

After all, it wasn't like the Xyon Project had a deadline.

Lieutenant Commander Hardy's Office, S.P.S.S. Angpilinel, Mercury System, Between Orbits 5 and 6

It was interesting, Hardy thought, that two completely unrelated chains of scientific thought would arrive at basically the same idea, though very different methods of executing it.

Both drives that his teams were examining had multi-dimensional drivers, devices that would split the fabric of reality appropriately to allow for faster than light transport. What was more interesting, though, was the way they accomplished it. The Island States drive almost literally jumped the ship it was moving, tearing a hole in real space with a concentrated hyperspace tunnel, allowing for near instant movements over relatively short distances. Whereas the Kajali drive opened a window through which the ships passed in and stayed in subspace until they reach their destination.

The Kajali drive was obviously more advanced that the Island States drive, and it appeared, more efficient as well, because it seemed to draw power from the obscene energy levels of the subspace environment in which it operated.

Which would explain the Kajali subspace warheads as well. But what if...

Hardy began to draw and work out numbers on his terminal. Connections blossomed, hours passed. Shapes and circuits were defined.

One day, Hardy, though he did not know it yet, and never would, would be considered the father of the Federation's Interstellar Star Fleet. And the day that began was this day, when he designed the Hardy Drive.

Using the gravitonic technology recently coopted from Lost Americans, he designed a drive system that drew its power through a focused tunnel of subspace, using the Kajali technology to merge that subspace with this reality. And then, using the Island States hyperdrive, combined with the gravity manipulation required for off bore broadsides, he gave it a motive element.

Focused gravity tunnels reached through c-space on his display, distorting the computer generated reality it displayed. Hardy smiled, and then yawned. It was 0600, and he had a meeting in two hours. He would use that time to prepare his presentation.

S.P.S. Weber, Rampage System

The tracking systems watched as the gravity stress built, but only Weber could actually observe the build up.

It happened far too fast for any organic to monitor. A trillionth of a second was not at all noticeable for creatures that observed things in seconds. But even the humans watching could see the effects.

And watching the horrible gravitonic stresses, they were glad they had tried this far from the stars of the Rampage system center, because if those gravitonic stress waves had touched those suns, they would have been ripped apart, and well...

That would have been a seriously bad thing for all concerned.

But the test was a success. Still more tests were required, though.

Cargo Bay 1150, S.P.S.S. Angpilinel, Mercury System, Between Orbits 5 and 6

Commander Hardy slowly walked down the line of huge drive nodes, awaiting installation in the Eighth Task Force. They were ready, finally.

The Subspace Core Taps were in another cargo bay, and would not work in the Mercury system anyways, so they were not yet turned on. Of course, it would require the fusion reactors onboard the starships to activate the taps, and the battlestation did not have that much extra power.

Of course, Hardy thought, there was no reason to power the FTL cores inside the station. It would only tempt the Demon Murphy. But they would have a task force capable of a quick response at faster than light speeds if needed.

This assignment had certainly been good for his career.