Archaea (16 page)

“Captain, I activate nodes that are in closest proximity to the system I am working on, so that I can reduce the latency of the wetnet and work more effectively. This is my standard method of operation.”

“Pauli, what does she mean by 'latency' – I thought our wetnet was the fastest network available?” I asked through a nearly impenetrable hedge of bristling brows.

“Captain, it is – but to Janis, any latency at all would be considered an impediment to the successful completion of her mission. It makes sense she would have come up with a system to reduce it as much as possible.”

“Well, it looks to me like she's sufficiently redundant, though clearly we need a secondary core.”

“Yes sir, that would definitely be something we should look at getting our hands on at some point.”

“So Pauli... How's that coming along, anyway?”

“Sorry Captain... How's 'what' coming along?”

“Our second core.”

Pauli swiveled in his seat and did his best Captain Smith impression, eyebrows and all.

*****

I had spent the last 6 hours under crazy acceleration, and my tired eyes felt like they were on fire. The mechanicals on this ship would have to make do without me mother-henning around them for 10 minutes.

“Gene, do you have any idea how hard it is going to be to find this?” Shorty asked as I kicked through the gun deck to the bridge, coffee in hand.

“Find what Shorty?” I asked the air, not immediately seeing where she was.

“The harmonic. I've worked from the bow aperture, almost to the stern phase pumps, and checked damn near every
frame.” She climbed down out of the mechanicals above me, hair in her face, dirt on her nose, and a twinkle in her eye.

“Maybe it's not fixable, Shorty.” I offered. “The Archaea is a few hundred years old. She's not some pre-fabbed modern gig you know.”

“Oh, I know – but that is what is making me think there's something we can find. I've checked all welds, all frame tensioners, I've been using your deformation mapper, and everything looks solid. I can't find any structural problems at all – everything looks solid.”

“Maybe it is solid. Maybe the harmonic isn't from stressed frames at all, Shorty. Maybe it's part of the structural design, the architecture. The Archaea is a pretty small frame for a bore like this cannon here.”

That was an understatement. The original builders of the Archaea were no doubt motivated by great need to even think of building something like this. I often wonder what that time was like, when wars raged across the outer rim. The galaxy is pretty stable these days, since everything is regulated, moderated, marketed, and conformed to corporate rule. Even the Service, as a neutral concern, was financed from contracts with gloms – everyone was. Well, except the pirates, slavers, breakaway systems, or the ubiquitous criminal element that will continue to leach from civilization until the end of time.

Actually, they probably worked for the gloms as well.

“Gene, you are making me think a bit here. This is a spatial analysis problem, really.”

“How do you mean, Shorty?” I sipped some coffee.

“Well, maybe you have a point about the structure. The geometry of the framing may just not have enough stiffness. If we could map the structure more completely, couldn't we just work the numbers and find it?”

“Work the numbers? Shorty – you know I was born with a slipstick in each hand, and there's nothing I like more than diving head first into some sort of heavy equations – but this is beyond us. We don't have enough understanding of the structure, the output, the complex interactions of the flux waves with the framework when we discharge. It's beyond us, Shorty. We'd need highly specialized equipment, custom software – we're not a dry dock, and we're not naval architects!”

“You're right about that, Gene. But what about Janis?”

“Shorty, with all due respect – Janis doesn't know enough about this topic.”

“I'll bet you she does”, said Jane, crossing her arms and staring down at me from her perch above the gun deck.

“It's just... Okay, fair enough. Who am I to judge, right? We have no idea what sort of stuff Pauli's been doing with her. Janis, can you hear me?” I am just not used to talking to thin air like this.

“Yes Gene. I have performed the spatial analysis you and Jane require.”

“You have, Janis? From what data?”

“Jane has been storing her mapped results from the deformation analysis she has been working through, and while her data isn't following a rigorous data point collection process, I am able to extrapolate results from the data she has collected thus far, and am confident to 3 decimal points that the framing between station 96 and 97 requires additional cross-deck torsion of 130 joules per radian on 2-meter centers at 35 and 235 degrees, opposing.”

“Janis, when did you start working with this data?” I asked, more out of curiosity than anything. That she was right, I had no doubt. She had a supreme confidence about her that was quite hard to discount. It's no wonder Dak is so enamored with her.

“Gene, I have been modeling the data since Shorty has started this process, as it seemed a valid use of spare cycles and I knew the results would be requested.”

“Janis, do you have enough of an understanding of the material and loading we're looking at here? This is pretty complex stuff...”

“Of course, Gene. One of my tasked priorities was to data mine all information available from the unet that had even a moderate relevance factor to the Archaea and her crew. Would you like a concise listing of the information I have collated?”

I look sideways at Shorty.

“See Gene?” Shorty socked me on the shoulder triumphantly, and kicked towards the machine shop.

“You were right, Jane...” I said to her back. She was, too. I knew that now she had a plan, it'd only be a matter of short moments in the shop to fab some purchase points, and Shorty would have this old bird tuned like a fork. Short moments... I chuckled.

I was caught off guard by another transit as I entered the bridge, and my left hand closed on space as I drifted up to the right toward the helm station, coffee canister headed straight for Dak's triple-be-damned eyebrows, as he held out his cup for a refill.

“Mighty nice of you to drop in on us Gene, and thanks for the cuppa, man. I thought I was going to have to make the trip myself.”

“It wouldn't have done you any good Dak,” I said, “the coffee was strangely missing from the canister, as usual, and you know that's a mystery of time and space you will never unravel for yourself.”

“Ah yes, the strange case of the missing coffee. You know, it's almost like it's been drunk, and no longer is there for me to drink. I think it's probably some quantum event none of us have the capability to understand. Maybe Janis does. Janis, dear. Do you know why the coffee occasionally goes dry?”

“Yes sir. Would you like a detailed analysis?”

“No thanks my sweet. It's nice that someone knows, that's all. If anyone ever asks, I will let them know you have that situation under control.”

“Very good Captain.”

By this time, I had managed to drift to the grabbers along the helm station and was sorting out the process of refilling our captain's lifeblood. Yak was intently staring at his screens like the serious kid he is, and Pauli was burning off his fingertips like the serious kid he is.

Too many serious kids on this boat.

“Captain, do you have an idea on how long this current evolution will last, before we'll need slipspace again?” Not that I anticipated a problem, of course, but I wanted to make sure to let Shorty know how long she had to pretend to fix things before we started our next slip.

“Well, we're getting close Gene. Janis has us plotted through most of the worst of this leg. We've been cooking right along – much faster than I would have done on any other nav system. She's tops in my book right now.”

That was the understatement of the year, coming from someone who makes every habit of overstatement and hyperbole – not intentionally, of course, it's just how he is.

“Any other sign of our friends out there?”  I asked as casually as I could. I've been in just enough combat to know it's not something I want to ever be in. When you're a kid, stars in your eyes and drop-sick for heroics, full of whatever stuff makes men foolish and daring, an impending fight made you scared – but once you get to my age and have memories like mine, full of the faces of friends that paid the sacrifice of a life lived too short, well, it's not that it scares me, it's more that it terrifies me.

“Nothing on track other than those villainous rocks I've been warning you against, Gene. Remember? I told you we'd have to watch our backs against the hordes of rocks hell bent on stubbornly getting between us, and where we want to go. I was right too. They're everywhere! Speaking of... Yak, that's a pretty big one there.”

“It sure is Captain, by far and away the biggest one we've seen on this leg. It's not in our way though... Do you think we should let it be?”

“I suppose for now...” he sounded like someone just stole his new toy. “Keep an eye on it though mister. You wouldn't want one like that to just leap out in front of us.”

“Will do Captain. Janis has this pretty well in hand at this point. I am not sure if I'm really adding much to the process here.”

I knew how he
felt; I had been feeling like a third-wheel for most of this trip.

“Yak, it's not that you're really adding to the process,” I offered. “It's that you are there to take away from the process if needed.”

“Absolutely Gene”, added Dak. “The best firing solutions may at time require a second thought, right? We want a good set of eyes on the process, and that's your job while the short one is... What is she doing, Gene?”

“She's trying to nail down a structural issue Janis identified, so we don't have quite as hard of a time dropping the hammer on our main gun. When I left her, she was tooling up some hardware to add some torque between some of the mid-frames .”

“Gene, should I be alarmed here? Are we talking about a flaw or a failure?”

“Neither, as best as I can tell. The designers of the boat did the best they could, and the materials they used are adequate for the task, but... well, they didn't have Janis. She used some of the stress mapping data Shorty's been generating to try and identify material stress, and identified a  section of the framing that didn't adequately support the gun.”

“Do you reckon that's from the work we've done to increase the output, Gene?”

“Oh, that definitely factors in, though I couldn't begin to tell you by how much. Janis knows, of course. I trust her calculations here.”

“As we should, really. She's clearly one on-the-ball girl, our Janis.” he said, proudly. As much as I wouldn't normally agree, I couldn't help myself. She's really outstripping any of our expectations. I couldn't imagine what kind of ship we'd have in the Archaea without her, to be honest.

By the time I kicked back through the gun deck, Shorty had everything welded up, and as much as I wouldn't want to admit it, she did a great job. Luckily for her, I couldn't stand by and watch her try to be an engineer without me, we made short work of stringing tensioners, and she even smiled at me. She's all right, for a gun geek.

*****

I had barely made it back through the gun deck to my station, and was thinking of making another brief inspection of the turret armatures.

Despite Gene's best efforts to sabotage my work and slow me down so he could show me how much I need a real engineer like him, we got everything all dialed in to Janis' spec. Janis ran another analysis and made a few specific torsion changes, but nothing much – I think she was just naturally a perfectionist. Nothing wrong with that.

A woman has to be, in a world full of sloppy men, all elbows and mass. It's amazing anything runs right.

“Jane, do you see the target designated Sierra 325?” Yak asked through my station as I started to pull myself past.

“One sec Yak... Just getting situated here.” I let go and flipped down for a perfect 3 point landing at my console.

“Yep, that's a big one Yak... gray classification though. What's up?”

“Well, I've been watching it for a while, and it's nothing I can put my fingers on... but I'm not seeing any transect from other targets with it.”

“That's not unexpected for this type of system Yak, the bigger rocks have probably cleared their orbits by now, or accreted all the impacts they're likely to get. Even in a system with this volatile of a gravity map, it's to be expected that a rock that size would be in a hole of sorts.”

“Well, that's a good point Jane. I guess there's no reason to be concerned here... It's just...”

“Yes, Yak?”

“Well, it's the size of the object that is twigging me I guess. It's massed at just about a million tons. That just seems...well, it seems strange. ”

Hot damn, he was right. I cross-checked Janis' evaluation with current gravimetrics, and I'll be damned if we didn't suddently have a situation here. Yak was going to work out fine as a targeting specialist.