“Figuring out how to adjust the gravitational pull to lessen the power requirements was the easy part,” Lucas said enthusiastically. “All I had to do was stick some gravity plates on the ring sections and send a large burst of power through them. Overcoming the inertia issue was far harder. I spent over a month trying to make your idea of covering an entire ship work, but I realized that wasn’t going to happen. At least not in any reasonable amount of time. That’s when I shifted focus and looked at what the field already provided.”
Lucas tapped on the ovoid capsule with a self-satisfied grin. “That’s when this beauty came about.”
Alexander listened attentively as Lucas filled him in on what he had missed out on in the last eight months. He figured out most of what his friend was telling him from the blueprints, but those only ever told a partial story.
Even after hearing Lucas’s retelling, he had questions. “How did you test the pods?”
“Well, we used rats at first,” Lucas admitted. “More than enough of those around, even here. Stuck a few of the pods on some of the automated corvettes. After that, we moved the whole thing to Alorion and the destination to Askell, another nearby system. They were the only systems within a reasonable distance that held no real value and that nobody frequented.”
It was the right choice.
Lucas continued. “It’s a good thing that we decided to test outside of Unokane, because the first series of tests caused the star in Askell to erupt into a series of massive solar flares. The gate ship was able to scoop up the gate and escape, but we were forced to find a more stable star to test at after that.”
Alexander winced. “Krieger never mentioned that.”
Lucas rubbed the back of his neck in embarrassment. “He doesn’t know.”
“You didn’t tell him?”
“We needed the gates, and a problem like that would have made him second-guess their safety.”
Alexander groaned and pinched the bridge of his nose. “Please tell me you at least figured out how to resolve the issue?”
“Well…not exactly.”
“Hold on!” Lucas said, gesturing frantically as Alexander brought up his tablet to comm Krieger. He waited for the man to speak before deciding to fill Krieger in on the possible danger with the rings.
“I didn’t fix the issue, but I did limit the types of stars where the rings can be deployed. The chances of the rings causing a disturbance around those stars are less than one in a hundred. I know it’s not the best of odds, but it’s as safe as I could make it without going back to the drawing board. So, unless you have something to change that, I think we should keep that little issue to ourselves for now.”
Alexander sighed. “I do have something that could help.”
“I knew it!” Lucas slapped his hand on the workbench. “They told you how the gravity plates function, didn’t they?”
“How did you guess?”
Lucas shrugged. “It seemed like the only obvious answer, given that you’re working with them and have a solution to our problem. So, how do the plates work?”
Alexander filled the man in on what he learned.
“Physical material that is quantum entangled? I didn’t even think it was possible to keep quantum-linked particles from desyncing without some outside containment. This opens so many avenues of research.”
“It does,” Alexander admitted, “but we have a problem. All of the linked plates that Gravitational Solutions has built are on their rogue planetoid. The Collective is going to start destroying the transmission part of the plates soon, if they haven’t started already. We need to get the manufacturing line up and running as soon as possible so we can replace every plate in the fleet.”
“That shouldn’t be an issue,” Lucas said as he tapped on his tablet for a moment before flicking two images onto the main holo display. “The GS facility is empty. If your friends don’t plan on using it, we could build there and actually have it fulfill its original purpose once again. The other option is the storage facility where your broken ship was hidden. With the multipurpose bots, the orbital facility could be up and running much faster.”
Alexander gave it some thought. “Let’s do both. Focus on the orbital facility, and have Yi Na help with the facility deployment on the surface. I’ll send you the schematics. We also need to decide if we are keeping the plates here or moving them to another planet.”
The slightly weaker gravity of Eden’s End wouldn’t have too much effect on the output of the plates, but it was enough that people would notice. He also didn’t want all the plates in one place, because that would make them an easy target.
“Hmm,” Lucas said as he ran a search on the main computer. “There is nothing in Unokane that would work, but these three planets are nearby and have slightly higher gravity than Eden’s End. Deploying power facilities there is going to be an issue, however.”
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Alexander looked at the data and realized Lucas was right. The atmosphere on two of the worlds was so caustic that it would destroy a reactor within weeks, not to mention what it would do to the plates themselves.
The last planet was nearly molten, so it would result in the same outcome, just from a different source.
“Anything else?”
Lucas shook his head. “Not within four jumps anyway.”
That was less than ideal. He thought about it for a moment before an idea struck him. If it worked, it would only be a temporary solution, but that was fine.
“What if we just loaded a bunch of plates on a Fishbone?” Alexander asked. “We could stick it in orbit around a gas giant.”
“Would that even work?” Lucas asked.
“I don’t see why not. I would suggest placing them around the star, but I don’t know if the ship would survive for long being that close. It’s too bad we can’t use acceleration, then a simple centrifuge would be enough.”
“Neither choice is ideal,” Lucas admitted. “But deploying them around a gas giant would be far easier than trying to build something to survive being that close to the star for an extended duration.”
“All good points,” Alexander replied.
“We would need to calculate the exact distance from the gas giant to place the ships. They should be strong enough to survive since we are aiming for the same gravitational range as the plates had before. Although…” Lucas paused in thought. “If we added the energized armor, that would greatly increase the ship’s structural integrity, eliminating any worry about the vessel cracking under the tidal stresses. Their fuel would last for years as well, since they would only ever need to use their drives to make small adjustments to keep them in orbit.”
Alexander smiled. “Sounds like we have a clear winner. For now, we can just deploy Fishbone ships, but eventually I’ll design large satellites to take over those duties.”
He was about to start going into his ideas to do away with the ring gates when Four entered the workshop.
“Done already?” Alexander asked. “Did we learn anything from the prisoners?”
“Yes, and we did. With Grand Commander Thesska off chasing us, the Shican armada was led by someone less than qualified for the position. The fracturing of the armada was far greater than anyone realized. Admiral Krieger is already recalling the fleet personnel and reaching out to your allies to take advantage of the situation while there is still time.”
Alexander cursed. “Wait! I thought he wanted to hold off because of the plating issue. Do you think they have time to hit the enemy before the gravity plating fails?”
“Unlikely,” Four replied. “I would estimate that it’s already begun, but we can find out for certain if you would allow me to access the net.”
Alexander gestured to the console. Even if Four was wrong, for Krieger to change his mind so abruptly was shocking. The Admiral must have spotted some tactical opportunity that had a quickly closing window. He would ask the man about it before he departed.
Four didn’t move, but the holo flared to life with a new window, pushing everything else off to the side. The window blurred as Four scanned the net. Soon, additional windows popped out, showing news feeds and emergency reports of ships and even some stations in STO space losing gravity.
The window stopped, and Four turned to Alexander. “As you can see, the others have already begun. The issue will only accelerate from here.”
“Can we build the facilities any faster?” Lucas asked.
Four turned to Lucas. “Not with your current technology, and we cannot provide you with ours.” She paused, then nodded. “One reminded me that there might be something we can do.”
“Where is Rush anyway?” Alexander asked. “I thought he would have landed by now.”
“One is still in orbit, gathering data.”
“Data? Data for what?”
“You are already aware that the gravity plates function on a higher subspace connection?”
“Yes?” Alexander asked, wondering where she was going with the question.
Lucas was also paying rapt attention.
“What I’m sharing isn’t anything new, then. What you might not understand is that, like radio signals, subspace has its own bands. An uncountable number of bands. Your comm nodes use some of the lowest and weakest bands, while the gravity plates function on a higher and broader band. There are bands of even higher energy above that, but not even the Collective has the ability to tap into those, so we can ignore them for now. Similar to a radio, the bands of subspace have an upper and lower limit. When you made your prototype plates, you were trying to force the entire plate to occupy the same band. That’s not possible with subspace, which is why you experienced quantum drift. It’s the natural order of these subspace bands to occupy the whole spectrum.”
“Okay, but why don’t the comm nodes experience the same thing?”
“They would, if you tried to pack trillions upon trillions of particles with the same quantum signature into them,” Four replied. “The gravitational plates have the same limitation, but the higher band allows for more bandwidth, for lack of a better term. It’s why there is an upper limit to the size of gravity plates that can be manufactured.”
“Makes sense, but how does that explain why Rush is still in orbit?”
“Since each pair of plates changes depending on when it was built, as well as a host of other factors, that makes them all unique. Rush is gathering those signatures so we can forcibly make a duplicate.”
“You can do that?” Lucas asked in surprise.
Alexander was just as surprised by that statement, but he had another question. “Why not just control the process in the first place, then?”
“Why bother?” Four asked in return. “Controlling the process would require someone to monitor it constantly, and any deviation could form a connection to an existing pair, breaking that subspace connection. Letting them form organically prevents duplicate signatures from forming, since subspace is constantly changing. Recreating an existing signature will break things as well, but since we are only doing it for the transmission portion of the gravity plates, it will only disconnect that unit.”
“What’s the catch?” Alexander asked.
“It is far more complicated. You can build your normal production line, but you will also need to build a secondary production line, where every step of the process is tightly controlled. We will help you design the machines, but it will be up to you and your people to produce them.”
Alexander turned to Lucas. “If we build the normal production line on the surface, we can fast-track the orbital one for this cloning process. Four, how long do you think it will take to produce this new line?”
“Three to four weeks.”
That was less than ideal, but they didn’t have much of a choice.
Lucas headed out to prep the teams required to make the surface work happen. Meanwhile, Alexander worked with Four to implement the design changes required for the new process.
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