Star Force: Resolution (SF89) (Star Force Origin Series) (10 page)

“Exploited a little known weakness that we had to
compensate for. The crystalline structure that gives the rigidity is linked to
a bendable polymer in a lattice that is very resistant to vibration. This gives
the paneling extended life because it reduces the range of impacts that will
fracture it on both a macroscopic and microscopic level. But…we discovered
there was one particular frequency that the crystal segments practically melted
under and we had to make a slight alteration in their alignment within the
polymer. Solved the problem, but we didn’t actually change the material any.
Just reconfigured it. I’m guessing you gave them the theoretical blueprints to
work off of and not the factory notes?”

“Guilty as charged,” Paul said, though not showing any
shame. He was actually a bit impressed, Koch thought. “I didn’t want them
copying our manufacturing facilities, only the final products, so I had them
figure out how to do it on their own.”

“Are they going to be making more of these here too?”
he asked as he picked up another component and began an equally thorough
inspection.

“Yes, but for our use. The ships they’re building will
be lizard tech.”

“Reparations?”

“Assistance,” Paul corrected, “to Clan Saber.”

“Another contract?”

“Something along those lines. We’re going to expand
the production list beyond these items in this facility and I need you to do
quality checks on the new models as they come out. If their manufacturing
origin can be determined to be anything other than a standard factory they
fail.”

“Well, these other items are good as far as I can
visually tell. Need to put them through some more rigorous tests to be sure
though.”

“Do so to your satisfaction. When one meets your
approval log it with a message tag for me as well as telling him, then he’ll
begin mass production.”

“Can never have too many spare parts,” Koch said approvingly
as he put the last item back in and stood up. “Can I have these?”

Paul nodded. “If you find any other flaws, let him
know that too.”

“Standard
comm
grid ID?”

“Yes. He’s the only lizard contact in there.”

“Should make him easy enough to find. Do you want me
to help them with the paneling problem?”

“Just give them the frequency to adjust for.”

“12,883.6 hertz. Do their translators have an
equivalent measurement?”

“
Yes
,”
Thrawn answered, having heard it in his native language.

“Alright then,” Koch said, grabbing the case. “Send
any more prototypes down the columns with Star Force’s cut of resources and
I’ll inspect them and get a report back to both of you. Anything else, Archon?”

“Not today. And thanks.”

“Always a pleasure to work with prototypes,” he said,
cracking a smile as he left and glad to get some distance from the lizards.

Thrawn waited until he was gone from the hangar before
speaking. “
My apologies for the flaw
.”

“
It’s my fault.
I didn’t know there was one that had to be compensated for
.”

“
Never the less,
it slipped by us. That should not happen
,” he said, glaring at the blue
scientist.

“
We replicated
and tested within the parameters given
,” it said without defiance. “
We should begin extraneous testing to search
for defaults on our own.
”

“
Do so from now
on
,” Thrawn said, miffed at the stench of incompetence on the threshold of
a grand new opportunity.

“
Well
,” Paul
said, throwing his arms wide and gesturing to the shipyard in which they stood.
“
All yours now. Feel free to redecorate
as you like.
”

10

February 2, 3301

Alamo System

Stellar Orbit

There were no Uriti in the system when the Preema
fleet arrived by the thousands escorting one very large cargo ship that
contained their sleeping passenger. Waiting for them instead was a small Star
Force fleet and a scattering of KoQ ships, with the remainder keeping all other
traffic within the system far away from the convoy as it redirected further out
into the high zone to an isolated area where they began unpacking the Uriti.

The transport ship started peeling off in segments,
not per some grandiose design, but being the result of explosive releases built
into the single-use transport. Inside through the gaps the new Uriti owners got
their first glimpse of the green, snake-like Barratim where it was coiled up in
a ball of flesh less than 2 miles wide that was crisscrossing itself in a
multitude of what looked like uncomfortable bends.

As the transport continued to peel away the sedative
feeds were cut off, but no signal came to wake the beast up prematurely.
Rather, the artificial gravity was cut out and the Uriti was allowed to float
in place as the ship segments were removed from around it, eventually allowing
it back into the freedom it once knew while still asleep, though a few visible
twitches were beginning to occur.

The salvageable part of the transport flew away to
safety as the nearby control ship sent its first communication, prompting a
violent lurch as the uncomfortable bends tried to right themselves and the
Uriti got caught up on its own body. It took several minutes until it regained
enough consciousness to smoothly pull itself apart and stretch out to its full
39 mile length. It was only 700 meters wide, but contained within that
apparently narrow body was enough kinetic weapons emitters to physically propel
anything around it back at an incredible rate, sending attacking ships outside
their targeting range if they managed to survive at all.

A small burst of such energy manifested from the
‘front’ end of the simple shape that had a slightly narrower tip than the
‘tail.’ That energy appeared as an emerald translucent wall that expanded out
like a nuclear blast and sent fragments of the disassembled transport ship
careening away at high speed and in small chunks, for it hit them as if the
field was itself solid, but no further outbursts came as the Uriti got itself
oriented to space again while the command ship made contact and gave it its
first orders.

It complied with the redirect, twisting around and
stretching out its length onto the new course given to it as it headed in
towards the star. With that first simple exchanging being a success, it was
immediately entered into the indoctrination program that the Sety and Trinx
Uriti had gone through upon arriving, though by now the process was somewhat
more streamlined.

Several weeks later, still without negative incident,
the
Zeus
and the escort convoy for
the Uriti came into the system along with their charges. The four Uriti
immediately took notice of the newcomer and vice versa, with the order for them
all to meet in a specific location being sent before they could try and move
out on their own. Nami moved the fastest, getting there ahead of its three
familiar siblings and considerably ahead of the newcomer, then she waited
patiently for the others to arrive.

That was a good sign, for unexpected stimuli like this
were a longtime worry of
Nefron’s
. The more he
studied the Uriti the more he began to realize just how little control over
them the Chixzon had had. Their notes and knowledge bequeathed to him through
his genetic legacy had not told the full truth…that the Uriti could easily
disobey their commands if a higher priority arose. He’d known about issues
regarding feeding and damage, but apparently boredom and joy could also supply
the basis for an override.

The fact that Nami and the others had not gone
straight for the new Uriti indicated that as long as they thought they were
going to get what they needed they would still comply, even if it was
inefficient. But what would happen if they ordered them to go different ways
without meeting up? Based off neural readings it’d be a coin flip as to whether
or not they’d side with orders or giving in to the moment, so it was absolutely
necessary to construct orders as compatible with their desires as possible to
insure they remained in control.

And with the newcomer heeding the order as well, that
meant it wasn’t just a learned obedience. Nefron was fairly sure the others
were, in fact, learning new tricks and techniques, and it was easy to lose
perspective when you had them here and were working alongside them. Some things
they simply did because they were routine, or so the theory went, and he was
glad that this one wasn’t going to be a problem and had accepted the
conflictory
order without hesitation.

When the five of them met up the ships stayed well
back, and almost immediately there was a cascade of lightning between them
traveling from the four originals to the newcomer that the Archons officially
labeled ‘
Zolom
.’ From the readings it wasn’t in pain,
and in fact its status as viewed by Nefron, troubled as it was after so long
under sedation, was improving greatly. The lightning was actually washing out
the remaining sedative from
Zolon
and sharing data at
the same time. It was more than just telepathy, but more like a direct
download, and of what no one knew for sure, but when it happened the situation
always seemed to improve.

Riley had referred to it as ‘scratching the dog’ and
whatever purpose it served was a binary one, for Nefron was fairly sure they
couldn’t summon the affect alone. As he monitored the interactions he began to
catalog the wide array of damage done to Barratim and plan out an
individualized training program to start it on the path to recovery, including
a ‘supplement’ of various rare materials that Star Force would occasionally
feed them. They could get most of the same stuff from the stars and planets in
the Preserve, but the ingots that Nefron had dispatched to another location in
the system were much more concentrated despite the fact they were only 2-meter
wide cubes of various alloys.

When two such cubes were placed he ordered Barratim to
travel to the location and consume them, again proud that the other Uriti
didn’t chase after it or go after the materials themselves. Whether it be
training or nature they were behaving themselves, and despite the inability of
Star Force to find a way to directly communication with them, Nefron was
establishing secondary and often crude means of collaboration that at least
allowed them to be able to predict one another.

Even before the order was given, two of the Uriti had
drifted out of position as far as their orders would allow closest to the
beginning of the obstacle course that he was just about to tell them to move
to. When he did finally let them go they rushed to the starting point, almost
as if they wished to show off…or perhaps show the newcomer what it was supposed
to do?

That was another interesting possibility, and while
Nefron had very few concrete answers he had a lot of research capability to
avail himself of with these five and several others planning to be moved here
as well. All of The Nine’s Uriti would be coming, plus one more from far across
the galaxy that the KoQ would be escorting along with a small Star Force contingent
that contained a control ship just in case the transport that was being built
failed and the Uriti was released prematurely.

Fortunately that hadn’t happened with this one, but
given the power these beasts possessed you couldn’t afford to take chances.

Getting the Uriti here wasn’t his problem. Learning
about them and their interactions was, with the goal of true communication not
having been abandoned. It was simply going to take longer than anyone expected,
and there was no way to guess how long it would take before they discovered or
stumbled on the means by which to get the Uriti’s attention without using the
inbred control methods.

For right now though, he had his own herd of Uriti to
study their interactions with each other, for he was certain if he could figure
out how they achieved even minimal exchanges from the others he would stand a
chance of finding a way to imitate it, so the more Uriti they could get here
chatting with each other the better.

That, and it was best to keep them out of the reach of
others’ hands, whether they be responsible ones or not.

Tennisonne watched the reaction levels closely, making
sure the 16 injector ports were functioning in a stable manner before creeping
the rates up. What he had brewing inside the kilometer-wide test facility in
Venus orbit was a dangerous beast of a machine that he’d been chasing for centuries,
but right now it seemed to be holding steady. The trickle of power coming from
it was considerable, but nowhere near even low levels of designed output. That
in itself was an achievement but not a satisfactory test. He had to reach at
least 15 terawatts and achieve a stable reaction to be able to proceed to phase
two of this project, and whenever he amped up the reaction rate is when he’d
lost it in recent decades.

But with each failure came knowledge, or at least
speculation, and he and his advanced team were at it once again with another
set of calibrations. The reason they weren’t on Earth wasn’t due to the fact
that they didn’t have room…for there was still plenty of ocean floor left to
colonize if need be…but rather the fact that if Tennisonne really screwed up,
he and this facility would go boom and take anything nearby with them.
V’kit’no’sat power generators such as this were small, some the size of half a
Sparrow
-class dropship, and they had
safety mechanisms within them that would collapse the reaction if a failure
occurred.

Tennisonne couldn’t even get a proper reaction to sustained,
let alone had the ability to control an errant one, thus this station had been
built to insure that if he spectacularly failed no one other than his research
team would die.

But there was no risk of that now, for when they
planned a test such as this the facility was evacuated and they were handling
it remotely. It was when they were in actual hardware mode and building and
tweaking the equipment that there was danger. Right now the only thing in jeopardy
of dying was the reactor itself, and if this test run got away from him in a
bad way they’d lose it and have to start all over again.

Working off of past mistakes and charting what part of
the reactions were predictable, Tennisonne tried yet another approach in order
to isolate what would and wouldn’t work, but this time the collisions of 13
solari and three other exotic particles were holding together. In the past when
the bombardment saturation escalated beyond short chain reactions there was
randomized bleed over that interfered rather than enabled the full process to
take shape and really amp up the power generation. The weaker reactions were
capable of producing power beyond what Star Force was currently capable of
yielding, but they were just tantalizing distractions while the real prize lay
so close before them.

Tennisonne hadn’t taken the bait and kept his research
on track for the big toys as far as power generation was concerned. The
V’kit’no’sat had many methods, and collection and storage was not what he was
going for here. He needed a reactor to provide continuous power that could then
be stored for release later, much like the jumpships did to charge their drives
to get enough push off of stars to attain the speeds necessary for decent
interstellar travel. If one went off of reactor power alone they’d be limping
along because reactors just couldn’t put out the juice necessary to achieve a
standard jump in the short timespan they had before diminishing gravity made
the endeavor useless.

The reaction before him was extremely complicated, but
to sum it up it was a ‘Mouse Trap’ series of very small interactions between
subatomic particles whose end result basically bled them of all potential
energy like a person taking a wet sponge and squeezing hard, then taking that
sponge and throwing it into a compactor to get every last drop out. The
resultant waste material was useless, power wise, and so inert that it bonded
easily to other particles rather than fighting with them for dominance in the
invisible subatomic realm.

That waste material was corovon, which was a very
valuable substance that Star Force mined with an aggressive appetite, but for
this reactor that was just the icing on the cake. It was the sheer power
production potential that was key here, and in order to attain a full reaction
and start having the reactor puffing out corovon dust, Tennisonne had to get
his tiny bouncing particles choreographed just right.

Today was the day he accidentally stumbled onto the
solution…or rather
a
solution. It was
crude but functional, and that was all he was going for in this prototype. The
reactor surged up to 21 terawatts for a brief .372 seconds then fell off again,
with Tennisonne immediately reviewing what alterations he’d made to trigger it
and trying to guess as to how all the subatomic particles were bouncing around,
for with such things they were too small to fully track. A lot of imagination
and guess work were needed in experimentation like this, equivalent to someone
on the other side of a wall with vision of the subject matter answering his
questions with only a ‘yes’ or a ‘no.’

Even when he succeeded Tennisonne could only guess as
to why, but so long as the machine worked he had something. In the past,
sometimes his successes weren’t for the reasons he thought and that stalled
further progress, forcing him to go back and try to find a way around his
theoretical dead end, but for today he had a solution that gave him a hugely
oversized
Nash’ti
reactor that was producing power at
rate far superior to anything Star Force had in production at present.