“Ten of our stellar years, which I think is about seven of your cycles.”
“Great shekking—”
“I do know what that word means now,” Ekatya said with a smile.
“Well, in this instance it’s entirely warranted. I think my brain just overloaded.”
“Then I hesitate to tell you the rest. Our scientists believe we’ve only penetrated the first layer of base space and that there are other layers beneath it, each of which compresses the fabric of spacetime even further. Current theory holds that if we could get into the second layer, we would reduce travel time by a factor of one million. And if we could do that, we could travel to the nearest galaxy in…let’s see…a little less than two of your cycles. The layer beneath that is theorized to be compressed by a factor of one hundred million. Getting into the third layer of base space would mean traveling between galaxies as easily as we travel from one star system to another. But we don’t know how to get there. And there’s a limitation in the first layer of base space. FTL travel is impossible.”
“Your FTL engines don’t work there?”
“No, that’s not it. The engines work, but the environment won’t allow anything faster than light speed. If an object attempts to break that speed limit, it…disappears.”
“And goes where?”
“That’s just it. We don’t know. We’ve sent probes equipped with base space transmitters, which means we should have been able to detect their transmissions from practically anywhere in the galaxy. We never heard back from them. About fifteen stellar years ago, some idiot explorer decided to prove that the scientists were lying about the speed limit, and went in there with great fanfare to ‘show the people the truth,’ as he put it. The truth turned out to be just what our scientists said it was. He was never heard from again.”
“It doesn’t sound as if he was much of a loss. On Alsea we’d call that natural culling.”
“Exactly.”
“You said three base layers. Is that it, or do they go on into infinity?”
Ekatya looked at her in admiration. “Are all Alsean warriors so scientifically literate, or just you?”
“My mother was scholar caste, remember. And I’ve always loved the stars. But thank you for the compliment.”
“You’re welcome. Anyway, you guessed correctly. We think they go on into infinity. And at some point, in one of those layers, spacetime is compressed so much that it becomes something else entirely and enables travel between universes.”
“That’s quite a theory. But even knowing how to accomplish that wouldn’t do you much good if the universe you went to didn’t have the same physical laws. Which most of them would not.”
“Right. Other universes might not even have matter. They might have antimatter instead, or nothing at all. Not places I’d want to go to.”
“Nor I. Getting back to practical application, then.” Lancer Tal pointed at the line Ekatya had drawn from Point A down to the bottom of the cone. “There must be some distance involved in this part of the journey. How does that compare to the distance you’re cutting off in normal spacetime? Or is this a supremely simplistic drawing and it doesn’t work like this at all?”
“It’s a supremely simplistic drawing. Here, let me try another one.” Ekatya erased the first sketch and drew two flat layers, one right on top of the other. On the top layer she added about fifty dots, closely packed. On the lower one she made five dots, evenly spaced across the same area.
“I think I see what you’re doing,” Lancer Tal said. “But shouldn’t there be fifty thousand dots on that top layer?”
“If I were being exact, yes, but you clearly don’t need them.”
“The dots represent adjacent points in space, yes?”
“Correct. There are fewer points in base space, but they cover the same area. Physically moving from one point to another down here doesn’t seem any different from moving from one point to another in normal space, and yet when you pop back out into normal space, you find you’ve moved a vast distance. The first drawing was a better representation of how the spacetime is compressed, but this one is a better representation of how the layers relate to one another. It’s not a matter of traveling any distance to base space. We just open a hole in normal space and drop through.”
“This might be the most fascinating conversation I’ve had in my life.” Lancer Tal’s eyes were bright with excitement.
“My astrophysics professor would have loved you. Most of us fell asleep when he talked about this.”
“Sign me up for his class.” She pointed at the drawing again. “You say you drop into base space. How do you get out of it again?”
“We drop into normal space. No, I’m not joking. You can’t think about standard orientations in this situation, because it doesn’t work that way. We literally drop, both directions. It’s as if base space pulls us in, and then normal space pulls us out again.”
“Convenient. And a little baffling.”
“If it makes you feel any better, it baffles us too. We use this method of travel every day, but we’ve never identified the forces that act on matter to pull it through. All we’ve done is rule out everything we can think of.”
“Then whatever is left is what it must be.”
“That’s the problem; there’s nothing left that we know of. So it must be an undiscovered force or set of forces. This is one of the biggest unanswered questions in all of Gaian astrophysics. If we could figure it out, we’d probably have the key to getting into the second layer.”
“It’s gratifying to know you still have unanswered questions. Makes me feel as if Alsea isn’t quite so deep in the mud after all.” Lancer Tal arched a wry eyebrow, and Ekatya remembered their discussion of the Non-Interference Act in her hospital room. How must that have sounded to someone on the other side of that law?
Probably as arrogant as a freshly minted ensign giving orders to a veteran trooper.
“If I learned anything yesterday, it’s that Alsea is most definitely not in the mud,” she said.
“Considering the source, that’s very good to hear.”
“You can consider the source far more educated now than she was when she landed in that field.”
“That has gone both ways. To the betterment of both of us, wouldn’t you agree?”
“I would, yes.” Ekatya was beginning to understand that for all of the Lancer’s skill at concealing her emotions, the truth was in her eyes. They were the one thing outside her control, and they were very expressive.
Lancer Tal examined the drawing again. “What do you use to open the passage into and out of base space?”
“It’s an extremely compressed beam of radiation, which we call pikamet radiation. It has the effect of pushing spacetime away from it, and we just follow the beam in. Which reminds me, you asked about our hullskin. The reason we need it is for travel in base space. The radiation levels there are commensurate with the compression of spacetime.”
“You mean they’re ten thousand times greater?”
“Yes. Without the hullskin, we’d all be fried practically the moment we dropped in.”
“Is your hullskin able to withstand radiation levels one million times greater?”
Ekatya shook her head. “And until we develop a different material that can, we’ll never be able to use the second layer of base space even if we could get into it.”
“Interesting. Radiation acting as a functional speed limit.” Lancer Tal looked distant for a moment, then refocused on Ekatya. “Speed limit. It makes me think…what if your probes, and that idiot explorer, blew themselves right out of the second layer of base space and into the one that connects galaxies? Or even universes? Maybe breaking the speed limit in base space means rupturing the barrier between layers.”
Ekatya could only stare at her.
“I’ve surprised you. Why?”
“Because you just learned about this concept fifteen ticks ago. How can you be coming up with theoretical extens
ions like that? It’s like a—” Ekatya stopped herself just in time. She’d been about to make a comparison that would have been perceived as insulting, and it made her realize that she was still prejudging Alseans. More specifically, she was prejudging Lancer Tal.
“Your mother must have been one Hades of a woman,” she said instead.
That earned her the largest smile she’d seen yet.
Chapter 29
The Caphenon is melting
Rarely had Tal been so reluctant to hear Continal’s voice as she was when he announced their arrival at the Caphenon. Her first real conversation with Captain Serrado had been so much more than she’d expected that having it interrupted was frustrating to the extreme. Perhaps next time she’d tell him to take the long way around.
“Here we go,” Serrado said. “The last time we came back, it hit me all over again that I’ve lost my ship. While I was in the healing center, and at your base, it was easy to forget. It’s impossible to forget when I’m looking right at it.”
“I’m sorry,” said Tal, and she meant it. Captain Serrado’s sacrifice was more than just an ethical choice. It was a profound personal loss, constantly present in the background of her emotions.
“Thank you. But it had to be done.”
The transport banked, and they both turned to the windows. When the ship came into view, Serrado gasped.
“Stars and Shippers! What happened to it?”
“I have no idea.” Tal was startled as well. The ship looked radically different, as if the outside layer was melting.
“It’s the hullskin. What in all the galaxies is doing that?” She stood up. “I need to talk to Kameha.”
“Captain, please sit down until we’ve landed.”
“Sorry.” She sat and fidgeted. “Kameha reported something happening with the hullskin yesterday, when we came to get the fighter. He took samples and ran a surface analysis, but he couldn’t get to his lab equipment and didn’t have any results by the time your people picked him up again. And Candini had the same problem with her fighter. The reason she lost her flight controls was because they were jamming up with warped and flaking hullskin. Something is seriously wrong.” She drummed her fingers on her leg, the impatience radiating off her, and was upright and striding for the door the moment the transport settled.
Tal followed, nearly bumping into her when she suddenly stopped as the door slid open.
Serrado gave her an apologetic look and held her hand toward the door. “Lancers first.”
“At least on their own transports.”
They arrived in the main cabin to find everyone staring up through the transparent ceiling at the ship.
“Captain!” Kameha leaped out of his seat and made his way to the front. “I’ve got to get into the fighter bay.”
“Why?”
“Because I have a truly unpleasant theory about what’s happening here, and to confirm it, I need to see if our other fighters have been affected.”
“And your theory is…?”
“I think this may be a new Voloth weapon.”
“I was really hoping you wouldn’t say that.” The captain ran a hand through her hair and gazed up at her ship.
“What do the other fighters have to do with it?” Candini asked.
“Because there are only two things this could be,” Kameha said. “A Voloth weapon or something on Alsea. Your fighter was fine until you flew it out of the bay. If this is something environmental, unique to Alsea, then all of the other fighters would have been exposed when we opened the bay door. They’ve been exposed all night because we couldn’t get the door closed again. If their hullskins are affected, we know where to start looking for the cause. But if they’re not…”
“Then we have a big problem on our hands,” Commander Baldassar said.
“Huge,” the captain agreed.
“Excuse me.” Lhyn raised her hand. “Non-military person here. Why would the Voloth target the hullskin? It’s not as if it’s breaking down the shielding, is it?”
No, it’s worse, Tal thought. She could already see the strategic ramifications.
“In a way, it is breaking our shielding.” Captain Serrado met her commander’s eyes, an unspoken dread passing between them. “No one can travel in base space without a functional hullskin. If this is the work of the Voloth, then they’ve found a way to cut the Protectorate off at the knees. They could make us incapable of anything faster than surfing.”
“Oh my stars.” Lhyn looked up at the ship. “This is not good.”
“No, it’s not. Chief, I still want you on the com relay. That’s critical. Candini, get up to the bay and have a look at those fighters. We can’t trust the hullskin ladder, so you’re going to have to do it the hard way. Roris, the lieutenant may need some muscle to help her get through to the fighter bay, so you and your team are going with her.”
“Yes, Captain,” said Roris.
“Commander, I want you to monitor the structural integrity readouts between our new com room and the fighter bay. Make sure they don’t have any surprises. And Xi, you’ll go with them as far as cargo bay six and see if we have functioning matter printers.” She looked back at Kameha. “Change of plans. We’re not using a ladder. What’s the best way for us to get to deck twenty-five from a ground-level airlock?”
Kameha gazed through the windows at the rounded lower part of the ship. “Aft central airlock,” he decided. “Should have the least crash damage, and it’s close to a brace shaft. If the shaft is intact, we’ll have an almost direct route to the com room.”
“Sounds good to me. Lead the way.”
At a nod from Tal, Gehrain opened up the transport door and activated the ramp. She and Serrado stayed back, watching the others file out.
“Lancer Tal, I’m not so certain you should come with us,” the captain said quietly. “Climbing a ladder directly to the airlock next to the com room is one thing. Crawling through a brace shaft in a potentially unstable area is something else.”
“What is a brace shaft?”
“Structural braces that connect opposite sides of the secondary hull. They’re hollow, so they’re also designed to be used as emergency routes through the ship in case of lift failure. I have no idea what shape this one will be in.”
“And you think I should forego my first look inside an alien ship because…it might be dangerous?”
Serrado’s stern expression melted into reluctant amusement. “Did I just make another diplomatic error?”
“Implying that the leader of the warrior caste is too afraid to take a risk? Oh, Captain, that’s a big one. But I can overlook it so long as you never mention it again.”
Next to her, Micah chuckled, but when they looked at him, he made sure his eyes were elsewhere.
“Very well. At least your uniform is more appropriate for this than the shiny one you wore last night.”
“That was my dress uniform. I was in it all day because I never had time to take it off. This is my standard uniform—much more comfortable. Practically made for climbing around alien ships, in fact.”
Serrado smiled. “Then I guess we’d better get going.”
Chapter 30
Revelations
Micah’s first impression of the Caphenon was one of cramped spaces. The airlock’s ceiling was low enough that Gehrain and Lhyn had to duck, and when they moved into the brace shaft, he wondered if Fleet screened for claustrophobics before allowing any personnel to work in engineering. It wasn’t that the shaft was too narrow; in fact, it was wide enough to allow for a landing on every deck so that a person could step off the ladder and let someone else by. But the dark, circular walls seemed to close in and press against one’s back, and when he gazed up the ladder, the perspective made the top of the shaft look as if even Commander Kameha wouldn’t be able to squeeze through. Perhaps the chief engineer had chosen his field for this reason. If all of the engineering work areas were this constricted, Kameha had an advantage over everyone else.
r /> His second impression was one of soaring elegance. When he stepped out of the brace shaft behind Tal, he understood why she’d stopped moving.
They were in a long corridor, which curved slightly as it paralleled the ship’s hull. The ceiling was higher than he’d expected, punctuated by a series of arches that wouldn’t have looked out of place in the entrance of an Alsean temple. Each arch was bracketed by pillars topped with plants that cascaded all the way to the floor, while plants of a different species grew along the curve of the arch itself, hugging it and reaching toward the ceiling.
The doors that lined the corridor were also arched, matching the architectural theme, and also bore plants across their tops. Flowering species of various colors and shapes could be seen in alcoves apparently built just for them, which bracketed large mosaics of colored tiles. The mosaics were spotlit from recessed lighting in the ceiling, while other recessed lights shone upwards, giving the space a soft, welcoming feel. Even the air was scented, a subtle, woodsy smell of leaves and mulch and blossoms. If Micah hadn’t known this was a ship, he’d have assumed it was a place of worship.
“Welcome aboard the Caphenon,” said Captain Serrado. “One of the parts of it that’s still intact, that is.”
“This is…” Tal was at a rare loss for words. “Gorgeous, Captain. I didn’t expect to find beauty here. And I hope you don’t take that the wrong way.”
“Thank you, and I don’t. Keep in mind, we don’t just work here. We live here. Life is too short to live without beauty.”
“Words for Fahla.” Tal pointed at one of the plant-covered arches. “Hydroponics?”
“Yes. Air scrubbers do a lot, but there are only so many times you can scrub carbon dioxide from the air before you eventually need to put some oxygen back into the mix. These foliage plants are better air scrubbers than anything we’ve ever invented, because they work both sides of the equation, add humidity as well, and do it all on no energy other than the lights. Plus, the leaves are edible. They’re quite tasty.”