#
Tanlen descended the long, narrow, hot and stuffy shaft down into the drive core of the ship. Relv followed slowly, the excitement of finally seeing a drive core in real life temporarily pushing the pain from his mind.
The core was rather anticlimactic in regards to its physical size and appearance. The chamber that contained it was only just big enough for both of them to stand in without constantly touching. At its centre was a small black sphere of dark matter suspended in a green energy field. The chamber, apart from the small gantry to walk along, was also spherical and every inch of wall space was covered in radio frequency generators and high powered magnets.
“Be very careful not to touch or bump anything or we will be here for a week just realigning the magnets,” warned Tanlen as he waved his hand close to the dark matter sphere. A holographic console appeared in the air in front of him. The projector scanned him to confirm his identity and then after entering a security code he was finally able to access the drive core.
“How do you calibrate something that jumps us through subspace without travelling through subspace?” asked Relv.
“An excellent question, the answer is that you can’t. The key here is to jump such a small distance that it has virtually no physical effects except for a very small movement in space. That way even if the drive is not working accurately we only risk losing millimetres and nanoseconds of our lives. In a real jump we could end up a hundred million miles away from the intended destination if the drive calibration is out of the green zone by even a thousandth of a percent.”
Tanlen tapped away rapidly onto the holographic keypad. He could have done it all via voice command like any other computer on the ship, but when even the slightest mistake could be harmful he did not want to take any chance of the system misinterpreting him.
“There we go. It’s now set up for a one micron jump, which is the smallest jump this drive can do. Let’s head back out and power up.”
The pair made their way to the drive room and Tanlen ran Relv through the power up procedures. Before long holographic readouts were flashing along all of the consoles. They went through each reading methodically and double checked every parameter. After about forty minutes of meticulous work they were ready.
“Ok kid, here is your chance to live the dream. Disengage the safety on the dark matter unit and spin it up to speed.”
“Yes Jump Master!” chirped Relv eagerly.
Tanlen swiped away most of the smaller screens and expanded the main drive readout onto a large main screen. A waveform appeared and oscillated randomly.
“We have positive gravity wave detection!” he reported. “Start changing the spin angle. Half a degree at a time please Ensign.”
“Yes Jump Master, half degree increments.”
As Relv used his control to adjust the spin of the dark matter sphere the waveform on the main screen started to oscillate more slowly and then finally came to a standing wave pattern. As soon as it reached this point Tanlen ordered Relv to stop and lock the spin angle.
“Gravity wave locked in and steady. Good job Ensign.” Tanlen then tapped the communicator dot that was embedded into his neck. “Captain, drive room reporting. We are ready to initiate the calibration jump.”
“Acknowledged Jump Master,” replied the Captain directly to him. Then on the ships open communication network. “All stations, all stations ready for calibration jump.”
After a few moments the Captain then spoke directly to Tanlen again.
“You may now initiate your calibration jump Mr Tanlen.”
“Aye Captain!” he replied and then turned to Relv. “Initiate the jump!”
Relv triggered the drive and there was an almost imperceptible sensation of everything around him feeling as though it had gone into slow motion. In a flash it was gone and he could not be sure if it was real or he was just imagining things.
Tanlen raced around the console checking all of the readouts and comparing them to the theoretical values.
“Report please Jump Master,” requested the Captain.
“Jump complete Captain!” he replied. “I am not happy with the numbers though. I’d like time to adjust the drive core and calibrate again.”
“Are we within the safety parameters for the main jump?”
“Yes sir but...”
“You know as well as I do Mr Tanlen that we are on a tight schedule, with twenty thousand colonists on board we have very finite food, water and air supplies.”
“But Captain, she is an old drive and the safety margins don’t account for...”
“This is not a solo mission Mr Tanlen we are part of one of the biggest fleet operations ever undertaken which means they will be leaving on time with or without us. I am not going to be the one re-docking to take on more supplies and arriving a week late. Your orders are to start preparing for the main jump. The fleet leaves in less than 5 hours!”
“Yes sir!” replied Tanlen reluctantly.
“What’s wrong jump master?” he asked as he double checked the numbers.
“Look, here and here, the gravity wave anchor point and the release points are right on the edge of the safety margin. It’s all fine for the Captain to go by the book, but we are about to make a jump of several hundred light years in distance and we are going to be doing that in unison with 15 other ships, most if which are newer and a hell of a lot larger than us. If this old girl has even the slightest hiccup or fluctuation we could end up inside one of them when we land. Not to mention the fact that we are about to travel about 30 years in real time due to the subspace time dilation. We could end up weeks or months behind the others even if we do land in the right spot.”
“But the Captain gave us orders.”
“His orders were no second calibration jump and to be ready for the main jump within 5 hours. He didn’t say not to make adjustments on the drive. Now let’s go, it shouldn’t take more than a few small tweaks to allow me a good conscience to make the main jump properly.”
Relv grabbed his dynamic driver and followed Tanlen to the access ladder, but hesitated at the top while Tanlen descended. He had not even had a chance to meet the captain since joining the crew of the Abarath so he had no idea what type of man he was. Tanlen although a grumpy old spacer had already earned his respect just because of the shear amount of knowledge he seemed to have about jump drives and the fact that he was prepared to share it. Tanlen suddenly popped his head out of the access shaft with an irritated look on his face.
“What are you waiting for?” he demanded. The look on his face must have given his feelings away because Tanlen’s own expression softened and became a little more nonchalant. “Relax Ensign I have been in this game for forty five years and if the Captain knew half of the things I did without direct orders to keep this bucket of bolts meeting deadlines he’d have a heart attack. Besides if push comes to shove you can always tell him you were just following my orders. Now get your backside down into the drive core!”
Relv shrugged his shoulders and started to climb into the shaft. As he did so he had a sharp pang of pain in his lower abdomen. It was so sudden and intense that he almost lost his grip on the ladder. He stopped and tried to breathe deeply until the pain subsided. He cursed his youth as he tenderly touched the hexagonal armour plate that was forming on his lower abdomen. It was slowly getting harder, but was likely to be very painful and sensitive to certain movements for at least another week.
With the moment of pain passing he continued somewhat gingerly down the ladder. By the time he had reached the bottom Tanlen was almost finished scanning the walls of the chamber. His imbedded wrist scanner beeped and he looked carefully at the holographic readout.
“OK I’ll adjust the magnets and you do the radio frequency generators. Here are the units and these are the adjustments. Do not deviate from those in any way, and I will be checking them,” ordered Tanlen as he transmitted the data to Relv’s own imbedded forearm computer.
It took them a go
od hour of very slight and tedious adjustments, checking and rechecking. They had just a few units to double check when the communication dot in Tanlen’s neck burst to life startling them both.
“Jump Master report!” ordered the Captain.
“Preparations are on target,” lied Tanlen.
“Good then you won’t mind me inspecting the drive room before we jump,” replied the Captain.
“Looking forwards to it Captain,” he lied again. As soon as the call was over Tanlen cursed vehemently and had to physically restrain himself from throwing his dynamic driver across the drive chamber.
“He is getting too smart for his own good! I am so glad this is my last run.”
“What are we going to do now?” asked Relv anxiously. The thought of getting on a Captain’s bad side on his first ever mission made his stomach churn and his armor plate throb even more.
“You just leave that to me. I’ll be up in the drive room pulling the wool over the Captain’s eyes while you finish checking the last units down here. Once I get rid of him we can make up time on the jump prep easily enough.”
Tanlen raced back up the ladder and left Relv by himself. Relv tried to focus on what he was doing rather than the sickness and pain in his stomach. It took him another 15 minutes to make sure everything was perfect and he carefully picked up his dynamic driver and started towards the ladder. Right at that moment another sharp pain speared into his lower abdomen. This time it was more severe and he doubled over and crumpled into a foetal position on the gantry. His foot barely brushed one of the magnets, so lightly that he did not even notice it with all the pain he was in.
He lay there trying to breathe through it until it finally subsided and he was able to slowly climb the ladder. When he finally reached the top he saw Tanlen rushing about from console to console entering data and manipulating controls.
“The drive adjustments are done,” he winced and half climbed half dragged himself out of the shaft. Tanlen stopped what he was doing when he heard the strange tone in his voice and turned towards him.
“By the solar flares of Vaslus, you look terrible kid.”
“It’s just plate pain. I’ll be fine in a few minutes.”
“Good because I need you full speed on this if we are going to make the fleet jump. If we don’t jump on time and on target the Captain threatened to extend my tour by another six months.”