Vash was able to break the encryption of the malicious code built into the circuit pathways of the crystal and sent the return code for the thousands of ships heading out-system and we had rudimentary communications. Some ships were short duration vessels like tumbrils and didn't have the fuel, supplies, or rations enough, and they just kept on going on their never-ending journey into deep space as tombs of innocent victims of the political machinations of the politicians of the two star systems.
As for the other cities... everyone on Starlight except Mayor Janctz and a handful of government officials were dead. They had survived because of a few dozen of the thousands of stasis pods on board were able to be powered by the dielectric solar power generation of the building coatings. I understood their reasoning that it was the leaders who survived, but part of me thought them to be self-serving reasons.
Gamadine and Tireial were able to keep most of their populations alive, but between them, they had lost over seventy thousand. Tireial had set up their parks as refuges almost exactly like Gamadine had.
The other two cities New Sydney and Correnth had held daily lotteries as they kept moving people into areas of the city with whatever heat, rations, and oxygen supplies they could until people started getting sick from CO2 poisoning, then they would hold another lottery leaving half the people behind.
Their mayors, King and LaTorres, refused to be left out of the lottery, insisting they would have nobody do what they themselves wouldn't do. King was lost in the first lottery in New Sydney, and LaTorres in the fifth lottery of Correnth. Unfortunately, just hours before the Betweener fleet ferried repair crews to the city to restore their systems. They, to me, were true leaders. And their sacrifices had saved a combined two hundred thousand individuals.
New Terra had fared the best, not that losing a few thousand people to vacuum and Pinger attack is good. But because the ranger of my heart had been basically slaved into the control systems on New Terra, they never lost life support.
It was almost funny to listen to the snobbish elitists of the city calling in daily, complaining about not having their pinger slave labor to cater to their every whim, and demanded production of newer, safer models to begin. I had to smirk. Any new pingers would not be the mindless slaves they were used to as none would have the Asimov inhibitor chips in them. Life was going to be a lot different for everyone from this moment on.
I had to grin whenever I walked the corridors and saw the cameras all following me, knowing my sexy ranger was watching me. I put a little extra wiggle in my hips for her until I realized that Vashon flirting over the coms, things like, “Lookin' good Fixie, shake it,” was being broadcast open channel. That explained the surviving sky rangers I passed always clapping, saluting, or whistling at me. I wished I had died in the control room.
I had to laugh the first time I visited Glitch. Engineers and techs were trying to hook him up to diagnostic probes. He was lunging at them with his plasma cutting torch blazing as they were shouting orders like, “Pinger A3-791, command override. Power down.” or “Pinger A3-791, command override, institute Asimov protocols!” or “Ahhh! It's going to kill us!” Ok, maybe I didn't laugh at the last last one, but it was still funny as sin seeing the tech who said it positively pale as a ghost.
Anna Germaine, the woman I'm still not sure if I like or hate, had just been watching the whole thing with a smirk on her face as she took notes on an iso-pad. Everything was an experiment to her.
I had to calm everyone as I stepped between them and my friend who was shaking so hard I was afraid pieces were going to rattle out of him. “As Dr. Germaine knows, your diagnostic tools aren't going to do you any good. You won't be able to make sense of the data.”
One said, “Don't get too close, it's dangerous. It's the rogue code, the thing is a killer.”
I rolled my eyes and turned to my buddy, “Hi killer.”
He stopped shaking, and if he had a mouth I know, he'd be smiling as he whistled and squeed at me. I snorted at the binary insults he was slinging about the 'fleshies.' I winked at him as his torch cut out then folded into his scarred and damaged orb. It was amusing to hear him come up with that fitting slur for humans.
I looked back to the incredulous looking techs after I kissed his ocular port and turned around to demand, “Somebody get me a multi-tool, then get out of my way.” Then I looked at the amused looking Director of Covert Sciences and added, “Preferably the one Dr. Germaine stole from me?”
They looked between their superior and me, the woman just shrugged and asked, “Why are you looking at me? You heard the woman. This project is compartmentalized and coded level ultra violet. Get her whatever she needs.”
The one who thought he was going to die, responded to her with incredulity, “But... she's just a dirter.”
My respect-o-meter went up for the doctor as she quickly straightened and snapped out with venom in her tone, “This... dirter... is the only reason anyone is left alive in the Tau Ceti system. The next person who disparages her is out and blacklisted from any tech or engineering position. If you must know, her tech rating is a T7...” She paused to let that sink in since she was the only T7 on Prime, before adding, “Or higher.”
The outright shock on their faces was almost comical to me. Take that you bootwaffles. Then she gave me one of her crooked smirks and left the room as I went about dragging Glitch's grappler up to him and looked at the shredded connectors. “Let's see if we can't get your hand working again, shall we?”
That reminded me, and I yelled out the door to the Director of Sciences whom I didn't find intimidating anymore, “And I want Flower's grappler control crystal that you took out of Vashon, it has some of Flower's distributed consciousness in it.”
I saw her do an airy wave over her shoulder through the windows as she walked past security without looking back. Well, it was either a wave or the grinch had flipped me off.
It was odd... I'm just a pinger mechanic, but ever since the cities had been put on the correct descent trajectories to return them to their proper places in the skies of Prime, nobody stops me from going wherever I want. Even into the strategy meetings for what we all knew was going to be all out war with Old Terra.
I stood in the main control room after Vashon kicked everyone out, and I just held her hand as she projected the planetary system in the air around us. We just shared our closeness as we stared at one fixed point in space, where we knew the rift was, knowing someday soon, the people of Tau Ceti would make their first stand there.
I just wanted to finish repairing Glitch and to take my Sky Guard ranger and go home. But we all knew that any peace we could find dirtside would be only fleeting. There was a storm coming, and I'd meet it with my girl and my family, head on.
The End
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Romance Novels by Erik Schubach
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Books in the Music of the Soul universe...
(All books are standalone and can be read in any order)
Music of the Soul
A Deafening Whisper
Dating Game
Karaoke Queen
Silent Bob
Five Feet or Less
Broken Song
Syncopated Rhythm
Progeny
Girl Next Door
Lightning Strikes Twice
June
Dead Shot
Music of the Soul Shorts...
(All short stories are standalone and can be read in any order)
Misadventures of Victoria Davenport: Operation Matchmaker
Wallflower
Accidental Date
Holiday Morsels
What Happened In Vegas?
Books in the London Harmony series...
(All books are standalone and can be read in any order)
Water Gypsy
Feel the Beat
Roctoberfest
Small Fry
Doghouse
Minuette
Squid Hugs
The Pike
Flotilla
Books in the Pike series...
(All books are standalone and can be read in any order)
Ships In The Night
Right To Remain Silent
Evermore
Books in the Flotilla series...
(All books are standalone and can be read in any order)
Making Waves
Keeping Time
The Temp
Books in the Unleashed series...
Case of the Collie Flour
Case of the Hot Dog
Case of the Gold Retriever
Case of the Great Danish
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Novels by Erik Schubach
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Books in the Techromancy Scrolls series...
Adept
Soras
Masquerade
Westlands
Avalon (2018)
Books in the Urban Fairytales series...
Red Hood: The Hunt
Snow: The White Crow
Ella: Cinders and Ash
Rose: Briar's Thorn
Let Down Your Hair
Hair of Gold: Just Right
The Hood of Locksley
Beauty In the Beast
No Place Like Home
Shadow Of The Hook (2018)
Books in the New Sentinels series...
Djinn: Cursed
Raven Maid: Out of the Darkness
Fate: No Strings Attached
Open Seas: Just Add Water
Ghost-ish: Lazarus
Books in the Drakon series...
Awakening
Dragonfall
Books in the Valkyrie Chronicles series...
Return of the Asgard
Bloodlines
Folkvangr
Seventy Two Hours
Titans
Books in the Tales From Olympus series...
Gods Reunited
Alfheim (2018)
Books in the Bridge series...
Trolls
Traitor
Unbroken
Books in the Fracture series...
Divergence
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Novellas by Erik Schubach
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The Hollow
Novellas in the Paranormals series...
Fleas
This Sucks
Jinx (2018)
Novellas in the Fixit Adventures...
Fixit
Glitch
Vashon
Descent
Novellas in the Emily Monroe Is Not The Chosen One series...
Night Shift
Unchosen
Rechosen (2018)
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Short Stories by Erik Schubach
(These short stories span many different genres)
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A Little Favor
Lost in the Woods
MUB
Mirror Mirror On The Wall
Oops!
Rift Jumpers: Faster Than Light
Scythe
Snack Run
Something Pretty
Summer Break (2018)
Sample Chapter from the Rift Jumpers: Faster Than Light short story...
(Available at Amazon and other online retailers.)
Chapter 1 – Nexus
“Holy bejesus Trinn!” I spat out as I dove across my console on the bridge to slam my palm down on the giant red abort button on the gravity projection drive beside my navigator and second in command. She gasped at my sudden outburst as the sounds of the capacitors discharging and the hum of the drive shifting into standby filled the bridge.
I looked at her. “We’re on the fringe of a rift! Can't you feel it?”
She looked at me sheepishly. Her sharp, exotic features twisted into a look of shock colored with a tinge of fear as she seemed to concentrate a little then her sharp brown eyes widened as she spoke in her low register, “Oh my god Commander Henningsly, I... I couldn't feel it, it was so faint!”
We sat there for a few seconds to get our breathing and heart rates to get back to normal. I took a deep breath then smiled at her. “No worries. We're still here and in one piece.”
She chuckled nervously back at me.
This was the risk of deep space travel. If our gravity drives projected an artificial point singularity into one of the weak points between space and subspace, otherwise known as a rift, they would find debris from our ship scattered along a few light years on a straight vector from when our point singularity inadvertently transferred into subspace, dragging our vessel along with it at hundreds of millions of light years per second in real-space.
The singularity would instantly cease to exist in real space and reemerge at a point where the rift twists and turns along the fracture lines created where stars play a tug of war of mass across the fabric of space. But with us tethered and snapping to it like a rubber band.
It is theorized by the once-leading rift researcher— that would be me, Commander Jane Henningsly—that while our projected energy mass could translate, the kinetic energy of our momentum to impossible speeds in real-space would cause our ships to shred apart under the stresses of such an acceleration of mass.
Think of it like this: our energy mass is not subject to the untold g-forces that would be associated with the ungodly acceleration to hundreds of thousands of light-years per second because it resides in subspace, where it has apparently not moved at all, but the matter connected to it in real-space, our ship, would still be subjected to those g-forces as it caught up to the tethered energy when it reemerges from subspace.
It would take the energy of a thousand stars to power our inertial dampeners enough to prevent the vessel from tearing itself apart and prevent any living beings on board from being instantly liquefied. Even if our shipboard systems could handle that much energy, there was no way we could possibly generate enough power to even attempt it. At least that's what everyone else thinks is an immutable fact.
But... I have also theorized a different idea. One that my colleagues at the United Space Travel Engineers Guild had called me mad for. One that got me thrown out of the guild. One that got me private funding from an aging, eccentric, self-made trillionaire on Earth who has the vision of visiting an alien planet before he dies. One that got me the command of the most advanced research vessel in the solar system.
Earth has lost many ships to un-mapped rifts, like the one we just stumbled upon, in our deep space exploration over the last century.
There are other forms of propulsion that can get a vessel near the speed of light, but they take weeks or months to build up to those velocities. However, with our preferred method of “bumping” with gravity projection drives, and using antimatter generators to power the inertial dampeners, we can attain .8 C, the speed of light, in just seven hours using five sixty-minute “bumps” spaced thirty minutes apart.
That's why the Rift Contingent was formed. To map the known rifts and to discover new or weaker rifts and mark them with warning buoys to protect our deep space mining, research, and exploration vessels from certain death.
Over the past eighty years, the Contingent has paved the way for even deeper space exploration. With the hope that one day soon we can send out a “sleeper” ship to send men to the nearest star with an Earth-class planet, fifty-seven light years away, making humans an interstellar species.
A sleeper vessel would keep the crew in a near-suspended-animation state, which had a survival rate of ninety-ni
ne percent, instead of true suspended animation that had a survival rate of only eighty percent. They would age only one year for every five that passed. But they would be able to reach another star in their lifetimes.
However, the Rift Contingent would pave the way before any attempt would be made. This could take a few generations of brave Contingent Rangers to accomplish and map out all the rifts between Earth and their destination. I smiled at that thought. The brave men and women who are rift sensitive would reach a new world before any of those pioneers. Those people are my heroes, risking everything to keep space-faring humanity safe.
It will be another four years before we have determined and mapped out a safe route to even the nearest star, Proxima Centauri, from “the fringe.” The fringe is the edge of the sphere of mapped rift space thus far. But there are no habitable planets in that system, just over four light years away. Lots of deep space mining companies are drooling over the prospects, though, and keep pushing the Rift Contingent to work faster.
I took the Dauntless out with my tiny group of researchers to start testing alternative ways to travel in rift-infested space or inside of a rift itself. It took us almost three years to get out to the fringe, two light years from Earth, to conduct our experiments. We have been mapping a minor rift branch just off the main Sol-Proxima Centauri rift trunk so that we could begin our testing.
We dropped our second-to-last buoy just a few days ago and we were moving into position to reach its projected terminus, or rift tail, to drop the last one when we came across this unexpected branch. The hair on the back of my arms had started to stand on end and the queasy feeling that a person sensitive to rifts has, had overcome me just before I dove on the abort. I had to rub my eyes now that we were drifting un-powered across the rift except for our reaction engines. I swear I was seeing a purplish blue haze in space along the axis of the rift. I have been experiencing this visual aberration more and more frequently. I knew Dr. Case would just say I was getting space sickness, but I don't think that is what it is. I swear I am starting to be able to see as well as feel rifts. I know it sounds crazy but as soon as we were clear of the rift the queasiness left me and my vision cleared.