A Galaxy Unknown (6 page)

"Okay, Jen. Congratulations on surviving the explosion of the Hokyuu— but how— in the hell— did you get all the way out here? We picked you up billions of kilometers from where your ship reportedly exploded."

"I got a heck of a boost when the ship went up. Then the retrorocket on the pod wouldn't fire so I just kept traveling after the main rocket cut out."

"Damn government contractors," Gloria said angrily. "Buying by the lowest bid should be outlawed on life saving equipment like emergency pods. Government contractors are almost as bad as the damn freight company owners. We shouldn't be out here without a convoy or a private escort."

"I thought this duty was voluntary, with double pay."

"Voluntary? Hah— that's a laugh. In exchange for an astronomical fee, the company committed to an outrageous delivery date on some construction supplies and equipment. Failure to deliver on time imposes a penalty larger than the total fee, so they threatened to fire anyone who refused to go, and for the first time in memory, they were true to their word. Most of the senior staff was turned out. They're probably blacklisted as well, so they'll have trouble getting another decent berth. Charley and Rebecca are the only officers from the original group. The Captain is a new hire, and I was brought over from the Vordoth's sister ship, the Kleist. I was offered my choice between a seat on the bridge, or a seat in the unemployment section of the union hall. The damn union rep sided with the ‘effing' company. I've only been with this hauler for four years but I'd have had to start over with another freight operation. There have been a dozen times when I wished I told them where they could shove this ‘effing' job, but there's no guarantee that I wouldn't wind up out here anyway if I went to another operation. So here we are, praying that we'll live long enough to collect our bonuses."

"Speaking strictly selfishly, I'm glad you're here. The captain told me that my pod's power cells were almost dead."

Gloria frowned and nodded sadly. "Too true. Even when equipped with stasis chambers, pods are only designed to last for five to seven years. If you're not picked up in that time, they figure you're space dust anyway. The power cells couldn't have lasted more than another year without a chem recharge."

Jenetta shrugged. "When I climbed into the stasis chamber, I thought my number was up. I knew that I'd been too far away from the other pods when the rescue ship arrived, and I decided that I'd rather die peacefully in my sleep than go crazy from the isolation, or starve to death when the emergency food packs ran out. I feel like I've returned from the dead— or more aptly as if I've been reborn when you consider that I've had to practically learn to move and walk again over the past two weeks. I'm looking upon this as my second life."

"Well," Gloria said, holding up what remained of her orange juice as a toast and smiling widely, "here's to second lives. May we all be forgiven for the inapt missteps of our past, and presented with new opportunities to accomplish the things that we've dreamed of doing."

Jenetta looked at Gloria strangely for a second, wondering if she knew of Jenetta's difficulties at the Academy. But she immediately realized that wasn't possible, and shook herself mentally. Grinning, she raised her coffee mug in unison and said, "Second lives," before taking a sip. After both women shared a chuckle, Jenetta said, "The captain said that I might have a tour of the ship."

"Yep, he asked me to show you around. I have to score some rack time right now, but how about 1600 hours? I'll come to your quarters."

"Great," Jenetta said enthusiastically.

"If you're looking for something to do between now and then, why don't you visit the bridge? I'm sure the captain will show you around there, not that you need showing around a bridge. I'm sure your NHSA training included everything that you're likely to find aboard the Vordoth."

"Thanks Gloria, I'll head there after breakfast."

"Okay, I'll see you at 1600, Jen."

"Til then."

A few minutes before 0700 hours Ensign Jenetta Carver entered the Vordoth's bridge, walked to the command chair, and came to attention. Captain Lentz looked up from the report he was reading on one of the chair's attached viewscreens and smiled benignly.

"Good morning, Ensign," he said. "Stand easy. How are you feeling?"

"Much better, sir," Jenetta said as she relaxed slightly. "Most of the effects of the prolonged sleep are gone. I still need some improvement in my stamina, but it's coming along."

"Good. Very good. What can I do for you today?"

"I'd like permission to look around the bridge, sir," Jenetta said, as she glanced around. The room was about ten-meters across by ten-meters deep. Three independent operator consoles towards the front of the bridge, spaced a meter apart, faced a large wall-mounted viewscreen, but only the center console was presently manned. The command chair was in the rear half of the room, and located directly behind the center console. On the larboard side of the command chair was a huge workstation in the shape of a semicircle. Several large viewscreens hung above that occupied station. A similar semicircular workstation, located on the starboard side of the bridge, was also occupied. On the rear bulkhead, facing away from the front viewscreen, were two consoles that Jen immediately recognized as fire control stations. Each had a large viewscreen of its own. The Captain was seated far enough back that he could see everyone except the weapons gunners simply by turning his head. "I'd also like to volunteer to help out in any way that I can. I thought that an extra pair of trained eyes might be of use while we're traversing this area of space."

"Your help and training would be appreciated, Ensign." Using his hands to gesture, Lentz said, "This Bridge has the standard freighter configuration. That's helm control at the center front of the bridge, with the astrogator's console to its left, and the science station console to its right. Communication is there on my right. Those two consoles behind me are the weapons stations for the phased array laser weapons; and this station to my immediate left is security. The security station is what you would call the tactical station on a warship, but since we don't plot attacks against other ships, our sensors are only used to keep our perimeter secure."

"Is your astrogator on break, sir?"

"No, we're a bit short-handed on this run; but we don't need that station manned most of the time anyway. Once my first or I lay in the course, the computer keeps us there unless it spots something in our path. The helmsman has a readout that shows any deviation from plotted course. We're not very militarily oriented here. We're basically just truck drivers," he said, smiling.

Jenetta smiled back before saying, "With a truck that's more than six kilometers long, weighing billions of tons, traveling trillions of kilometers at faster then light speeds, unprotected, through hostile territory."

"That makes it a little more— challenging, to be sure. Well— pick your poison, Ensign. Our security station is already being used to search space around us. Would you prefer to watch from the astrogator's console or the science station?"

"I'd prefer the science station for looking around. I think the sensor readouts would be better suited to spotting anything unusual."

The captain smiled and nodded. "That would be my choice as well. Carry on, Ensign," he said as he returned to the report he had been reading.

"Yes sir."

Jenetta took several minutes to wander around the bridge, glancing at the layouts of the various consoles before taking her seat at the science station. Everything looked fairly common, except that the security console included a weapons targeting module. Jenetta decided that it must be set up to function as a backup weapons station if one of the two fire control consoles against the rear bulkhead was damaged.

Like the helmsman, the crewman manning the security station only wore the rank insignia of petty officer. On a Space Command vessel, the tactical, helm, and astrogation stations would always be manned by a commissioned officer. SC vessels made no provision for a science station on the bridge, using that location for an engineering monitoring console. The science function, as defined in the Space Command operations manual, was far too complex to be properly handled by a few bridge instruments, so the science officer would perform all of his or her work duties only in a fully equipped Astrophysics Lab. The communications station on the Vordoth was likewise manned by a petty officer, while on SC ships, that post was always manned by two chief petty officers, or by a petty officer with a chief looking over his or her shoulder during the entire duty watch.

She hadn't announced it, or let her excitement show, but this was her first time on the bridge of a ship in space. She had, of course, spent innumerable hours in the bridge simulators at the Academy during command and control exercises, but this was the real deal and it took all her self-control to project a perfectly placid composure. In her three months aboard the Hokyuu, she hadn't once been invited even to tour the bridge, despite several hints to Lt. Coster and the other bridge officers that had been so obvious as to border on being formal requests. Aboard quartermaster ships, science officers are considered about as useful as screen doors for the airlocks.

Over the next five hours, Jenetta used the knowledge and skills acquired at the Academy to search space for anything out of the ordinary. The ship's ACS, or anti-collision system, had the potential to ‘see' another vessel that was hours away, even when both ships were proceeding at top speed towards one another,
if
both vessels were transmitting a proper AutoTect code, or at least by minutes when only the DeTect grid was active.

Chapter Seven

~ June 24
^th
, 2267 ~

A collision between two fully loaded passenger ships has the potential to kill tens of thousands, and, despite the vastness of space, several deadly collisions actually occurred in the decades following the development of faster than light travel. It became necessary to restrict ships to specific flight routes, times, and speeds, but as the volume of FTL travel grew, it was recognized that the system would eventually become overburdened and impossible to manage effectively. The Galactic Alliance decided that an alternate method for travel safety had to be found. Their solution was to inaugurate a multi-decade R&D project whose mission it was to discover a means of identifying other vessels that presented a danger to FTL spacefarers. The mechanics of DATFA didn't offer any solutions to the problem, so other avenues were explored. An old discipline was gloriously resurrected when physicists discovered a way to access hyperspace, although only with communication signals.

Following a full-year test of the new equipment, the Galactic Alliance Council decreed that all ships under power in GA space emit an identification signal within a specific frequency range in the newly established IDS bands for interstellar communications. Since Inter-Dimensional Spectrum signals travel at point-zero-five-one-three light-years each minute, this offered more than adequate warning to other ships. Each AutoTect signal, repeated every five minutes, gives the ship's current position, destination, course information, and a GST date/time stamp. Galactic System Time is the current time of day at the Galactic Alliance Council Center on Earth, and provides a universal time reference for astrogation in all of Galactic Alliance space. The universal reference time insures that out-of-date signals are ignored by a ship's AutoTect system, while valid signals are processed and passed on to the ACS processor. The ACS processor sorts out all the valid signals and determines which, if any, other ships pose even the remotest possible threat to the safety of the ship, then plots their position and course on a monitor located at the security or tactical station. A moderate threat causes an alarm to be sounded that the entire bridge crew can hear, and a serious threat actually shuts down the Light Speed drive, as had happened when Jenetta's life pod was spotted and plotted by the Vordoth's ACS.

Stiff penalties were established for failure to properly transmit an AutoTect signal. Sentences could range as high as life imprisonment for anyone who either deactivates the equipment or deliberately sabotages it. Even smugglers understood the value of knowing when another ship traveling faster than light is headed directly at their bow. So while they might alter their signal to mask their true identity, they nonetheless broadcast a signal when underway. That is, they did so until a decade ago, when piracy on the interstellar routes became a way of life.

Since awakening, Jenetta had learned that as law and order devolved, so had travel safety. In areas considered unsafe because of the Raider threat, ships were not only allowed to deactivate their AutoTect equipment, but actually encouraged to do so. The very information that made AutoTect so beneficial for safe travel, namely ship identification, course, and schedule, was equally useful to pirates looking to plunder unsuspecting vessels. Once again, hyperspace researchers were called upon to help advance travel safety in outer space. Although the top speeds of military warships were classified, estimates put the fastest ship speeds at three-hundred-twenty times the speed of light. The top scientists in the field of DATFA calculated that speeds one day could theoretically reach as high as eight-hundred-sixty-two times the speed of light, as improved methods of building temporal envelopes were developed, but most ship designers believed that number to be wishful speculation. A more practical limit seemed to be five-hundred-twenty-five times the speed of light. And it was assumed that even that speed wouldn't be realized for decades, if ever.

Even so, the goal of the scientists working on detecting approaching objects was to find a method of seeing something traveling on a reciprocal course at one-thousand times the speed of light, while your speed was the same, and offering sufficient warning time for both to stop, or at least get out of each other's way. They finally found it.

The incredible breakthrough wasn't intended to supplant the proven AutoTect system, but to supplement it. It would never be nearly as reliable and foolproof on its own, but until the AutoTect system could once more be universally employed, their solution provided a suitable alternative that would continue to have significant value when the original system was reinstated to everyday use. To send and receive communication signals in the IDS bands, proper equipment was necessary at both ends, but like radar, the DeTect system only required equipment at one end. Sent out on a special IDS band in the hyperspace layer closest to normal space, the end of the signal away from the transceiver actually drops back into normal space for a nanosecond, ‘sniffs' the electromagnetic properties of space there, and returns a value to the sending unit. A computer then assembles the millions of signals returned each minute.

The DeTect system provides a four-billion kilometer early warning system with a proven reliability of ninety-nine-point-two percent. At one billion kilometers, the reliability jumps to ninety-nine-point-nine-nine percent. As intended by the designers, two spaceships headed towards one another at one thousand times FTL, would have up to six-point-six seconds of warning in which they could alter course or stop until the danger was past. A ship like the Vordoth, whose top speed is only one-hundred-fifty times the speed of light, would have up to twenty-eight-point-two-one seconds to take action if the fastest ship currently in existence was headed directly for its bow on a reciprocal course. Since DeTect signals are tied into the ACS, if one or both of the helmsmen fail to take appropriate action quickly enough, the ACS will shut down their Light Drives.

* * *

Scans hadn't disclosed any sign of other vessels within DeTect range during the morning, so at noon Jenetta felt comfortable leaving the bridge to have lunch. The crewman at the security station would continue to scan until relieved. In the officer's mess, just down the corridor from the bridge, both the doctor and a man whom Jenetta assumed to be the chief engineer were already enjoying a bowl of soup when she entered with the captain.

"Ensign," Captain Lentz said as they approached the table, "this is Lieutenant Moresby, our chief engineer."

"Call me Charley," Moresby said, smiling as he stood up and offered his hand, "or ‘Chief' if you can't remember my name. I don't like to use my rank in front of my guys."

About forty-years-old and of average height, Charley had rugged good looks and a fit body. The close cut of his jet-black hair would pass a military inspection, and he looked fully capable of maintaining his authority over most crewmen under his command without the need to pull rank. Jenetta returned his smile and shook his hand with a firm grip as she said, "I'm pleased to meet you Charley. I'm Jen."

"Hi, Jen. Welcome aboard the Vordoth."

"Thanks, Charley. Hi Doc, how's the soup?"

"Delicious. Our mess attendant, Anthony, has a fine touch on the food synthesizer. He won't tell us what he does, but he always manages to make the food taste better somehow. Today's soup is Petite Marmite."

As they took seats at the table, both Jenetta and the captain ordered the soup of the day. Conversation was light as they ate but the looks passing between Charley and the doctor suggested to Jenetta that there was something more to their relationship than just shipmates and fellow officers. And Anthony's vegetable soup
was
delicious.

After lunch, Jenetta resumed scanning the surrounding space while the regular crewmen were excused in pairs by the captain to grab lunch. Just before 1600, she left to meet Lieutenant Sabella at the door to her quarters for the guided tour.

"Ready to go, Jen?" Gloria asked.

"All set."

"Okay, I'll start with the basics," she said as they turned and started down the wide, well-illuminated corridor. "Unlike the multi-megaton military transport ships used by the Space Command Quartermaster Corps, commercial freighters are not single hull designs. The military looks for better flying characteristics first, and utility second. With us, it's the reverse. Like the ancient tractor-trailers that used to ply the highways on Earth, our vessel is made up of separate sections, temporarily joined together for the trip. The main ship is like the tractor and naturally provides propulsion and directional maneuvering for the trip. Constructed like a human spine, some flexibility with the cargo section exists, but maneuverability is severely limited compared to that of ruggedly built military vessels.

"The Vordoth is almost fifty-years-old now, and most freighters her age went to the reclamation center long ago. But thanks to Charley, and several refits, she has a lot of life left in her. He says that if she's properly maintained, she'll do another fifty. We have a Benson-Sparr ellipsoidal temporal field generator mounted on the bow to produce our DATFA envelope for Light Speed travel, and the rotating larboard and starboard nacelles contain twin McCannes Solarsys II engines that provide our momentum in sub-light. We naturally have numerous deuterium acceleration thrusters within the hull for maneuvering and docking functions. The rest of the ship is devoted to command and control, crew quarters, engineering, and freight operations."

"You have a Benson-Sparr? Are they still in business? They were barely hanging on when I graduated from the Academy in ‘56."

"The Galactic Alliance Council stepped in to bail them out with a series of interest-free loans and some lucrative contracts, so they've been able to remain in business, but they're still not in the best of shape. According to the maintenance logs, it took more than a year to get the proper replacement parts the last time this ship had a serious problem with its field generator."

"Who's the big kid on the block now?" Jenetta asked.

"Allison-Wilson probably has the most dependable temporal field generator. Several of the company's ships have been retrofit with their units when it came time for a major overhaul. Our McCannes Solarsys II engines may not be the most elegant available, but they're good, dependable work engines for sub-light travel, with enough power to do the job even when we're topped off at ten kilometers of cargo."

"Let's hope that the Benson-Sparr doesn't suddenly develop a problem while we're out here."

"Our spare parts inventory includes most of the vital components, so Charley isn't too concerned. He's the best chief engineer in the company and I trust his judgment."

"That's good enough for me," Jenetta said. "What about the rest of the ship?"

"As many as four individual cargo containers are attached to a Lewiston link frame and then the link is attached to the ship, becoming an integral part once connections are complete. The containers themselves are a standard ten-meters wide by forty-meters long, but the height may vary because it doesn't affect link loading. They come in five, ten, fifteen, and twenty-meter heights, but since a twenty is the most economical size to ship when calculating volume versus cost, they make up the majority we handle. The next most popular size is the quarter-container, followed by half-containers. We see few three-quarter size. Most containers not designed to handle ore or other bulk cargo are internally divided into multiple levels and sections to protect cargo in transit from being crushed by the weight of other cargo during planetary atmospheric operations, while the ore containers are just one big reinforced box. Placed end to end when inserted into the link-sections, each link becomes one-hundred-sixty-meters wide, and increases the ship's length by twelve-meters as it's added. The extra two-meters come from the framework holding the containers. Each container has two hatches on the top, and with the container secured tightly in the link-section, we potentially have airtight access to every single container while in transit."

"Potentially?" Jenetta queried.

"Certain cargos don't lend themselves to inspection while in transit, such as ore shipments. As I said, those containers are built like one big, reinforced box. If we activate the gravity decking in the container, all you'll see will be the top of the material anyway. And if we don't activate the grav deck, the material is in suspension. It takes a pretty hardy individual to climb down into an ore shipment while the ore is in suspension, and then I don't know what you'd see. It would be like swimming in dirt and rocks."

"Is the grav plating usually turned off in the containers?"

"Yeah, to save energy. It doesn't require all that much, but when you multiply it by several thousand containers, it adds up. So most containers are no grav, no environment. It really cuts down on the stowaways."

"Stowaways?"

"Not people— vermin. Of course, the irradiation sweep should take care of that problem anyway. No freight hauler wants to be responsible for the kinds of things that happened on Earth when seagoing ships spread pestilence, vermin, and harmful non-indigenous life forms to every port they entered. Every container, except those that have been thoroughly inspected dirt-side by licensed inspectors and granted exemptions, such as for certain fresh foods, medicines, and biological products, is irradiated when it's accepted for shipment by the company. No known carbon based life form can survive the irradiation process.

"And just like all other freighters, the Vordoth itself is sterilized annually, or immediately after it completes a multi-year run. Every person, pet, and potted plant is off-loaded and the ship is irradiated from the bow to the stern. Then everyone and everything is individually decontaminated before re-boarding. At least for a few days, we're as biologically clean as the cleanest ‘clean room' in a nanotechnology research facility. The air circulation system continually scrubs the air, but it's possible to bring back something when traveling down to a planet or stopping at a space station, so as a final safeguard we regularly receive injections to protect us from all known viruses, just like the military."