Part II - Discovery, Chapter Eight

Part II - Discovery, Chapter Eight

Discovery



If aliens visit us, the outcome would be much as when Columbus landed in America, which didn't turn out well for the Native Americans.

- Stephen Hawking

EXCERPT FROM THE TERRY SMYTH SHOW, DIS-FOX CHANNEL, 2320-07-21

...and now lets hear your take on the issue, Dr. Patel, said the talk show host, turning to a man dressed in the obligatory lab coat.

CRISPR-3 is a breakthrough in gene editing, finally realizing the century-old promise of personalized medicine. Imagine going to the doctor and getting treated for cancer and genetic disorders, with a treatment that suits you exactly, with no side effects! The FDA approval of the new gene therapy techniques will usher in a new era of medical miracles.

What about critics who claim this will simply be another thing between the haves and the have-nots, and their worries about the so-called designer babies?

Dr. Patel visibly scoffed at the notion. That has been outlawed in almost every nation on Earth, and the few that havent are third-world warzones. That issue was put to bed decades ago.nove(l)bi(n.)com

Careful, I warned.

Im being careful, said Sakura.

Watch the corner, said Agrippa.

I am literally watching all the same cameras you two are, said Sakura testily. And I can split my focus twenty-nine times over. Neither of you can do that, which is why Im moving this, and you arent.

The alien fusion plant was being carefully moved into one of the chambers near HQ. It had sat on the surface for months as we disassembled the ship piece by piece and carted it into the chamber wed designated the alien room. The process was slow. Id carefully documented each and every bolt, panel and wire as we dissected the only piece of technology we had. The blank storage units were disassembled in my lab, but I had stalled on figuring out how to read them. We had no manuals and no secret alien technology libraries. The fuel tanks had been carefully drained of deuterium and tritium, every erg of power had been allowed to ground out, and there was no possible way for the fusion reactor to activate. I had deemed it safe to move the reactor, which would finally allow us to get to the engine pods slung underneath it.

Up on the surface, wed stripped every last alien artifact we could find. Wed salvaged alien foodstocks, tools, gear, entertainment equipment, personal effects, electronics of many varieties, the lasers that had defended the craft, and anything even vaguely resembling something useful. Wed even stripped away the vacuum suits from the dead aliens for analysis, and put the dead bodies in cold storage. Then I had the craft cut apart by welder wielding drones, for what was left was simple metal, except for the engines and fusion reactor.

How are the LM3 transports working, Sakura? I asked.

Like a dream, she said. The impulse engines make moving a lot easier. Treads are great for heavy work, but for precision maneuvering, being able to hover makes it a lot easier.

Good thing you got that factory online, said Agrippa. Were going to need it.

I know, Agrippa, I know. I promise, well finalize the timetables for combat drones. Your hangar is nearly dug out.

First hangar, he corrected. Well need a lot of drones to build an effective defense.

Right, said Sakura. She carefully guided the fusion reactor into a corner of the storage chamber, or as she had dubbed it, the Alien Room. The room had been broken up with large shelves extending to the ceiling, with ramps and walkways allowing access to the upper shelves. One corner of the room was bare of shelves, leaving room for the reactor and the engine pods.

Following right behind the fusion reactor was a small train of transports carrying the engine pods. Each pod was identical, and had been slung beneath the fusion reactor in a way that had made it very difficult for the drones capable of surface movement to access, so wed not been able to even peek inside until now. If I had actually gone to the surface, my android body could have fit into the access hatches that the alien mining crew had used, but the narrow hatches had been too tight for even the smallest drones that we could use up top.

Thats part of it, he said. I want you to learn and grow the way that works for you. Im going to stay with you and help you, even if that means I might have to get into fights with Mommy. You just keep up the good work in school. Understand?

I didnt understand, even a little bit. I nodded anyway. I was hungry. Can I have a snack?

He laughed. Sure, pumpkin. Lets get you a snack.

It was an exposed wire on the transport, said Sakura. Shed been investigating for several hours now. The cargo arm that was moving the engine pod escaped the whatever it was and was laying on the ground by the pod. I think it pushed current into the engine pod, and it partially activated for a brief second.

So the engine pod did this, I said. That was fascinating. For the first time since we started working on the alien craft, this was an advance that was significantly different from what we already knew. Everything else was underwhelmingly ordinary. Their computer tech was slightly more efficient than our own, although we still didnt understand their storage architecture. I suspected, however, that it was different rather than better. I also suspected that their reactor was going to be a variation on what we already understood. With any luck, we might find a more efficient design for when we started producing our own new micro-reactors. But this looked like it might be a breakthrough in engine design.

One of the biggest hurdles of space travel was the balance between speed, fuel and cargo. If you have a lot of cargo mass, the speed you can achieve with the fuel you carry is limited. If you carry more fuel, you can increase your range or you can increase your speed, but at the expense of cargo mass. The only way to shortcut this essential balance is to improve the efficiency of acceleration to fuel consumption. If you can burn less fuel to get more acceleration, you can fundamentally alter your ratios of engine to fuel to cargo.

The alien craft was oriented towards short-haul operation. I had no way of knowing how much food and water the aliens required on a daily basis. However, there was no hydroponics or food production onboard. Assuming similar consumption rates to human males at around 2,100 to 2,500 calories a day, and looking at how many empty food containers they had stored as trash, they had planned for a total trip time of three to four months.

That only made sense in two scenarios. The first scenario is that the engine pods sitting in our storage area was capable of phenomenal thrusts or relied on scientific principles we simply didnt know or understand. This would allow the aliens to travel for a month or two, stay at their destination for a short period, then travel back. I had a hard time believing that they had some magic tech that made this scenario feasible.

The second scenario was potentially far scarier for us, and the more likely. This was probably a satellite ship of some sort. There was a larger ship that this one would dock to, or sit inside of, for the larger, longer trip between stars. As a designer, I could see the benefits of having a big mothership with a huge engine and massive fuel reserves, but having smaller ships to tool around a single star system.

100,000! Woohoo! came Sakuras excited cry over the radio. Sometimes, keeping up with Sakuras current train of thought could be dizzying, seeing as she had twenty-nine of them at the same time. Id asked her about it once, and shed described it as having a central thought process, with different focuses branching off and running semi-independently while also periodically synching back with the central process. Her central process was focused on managing and integrating all of her sub-processes. In practice, that meant that she leapt from focus to focus at dizzy speeds as they integrated back in. It sounded terribly confusing to me, and often meant she made topic changes at the drop of a hat. Seeing as it worked, however, I wasnt going to complain.

100,000 of what? I asked.

Drones! Were up to 100,000 drones! I just rolled number 100,000 off the production line. Technically, we passed 100,000 awhile ago, but Ive been scrapping obsolete and inefficient drones as soon as their replacements were in service. We plateaued for about eleven days.

What does that mean in practical terms? I asked.

In practical terms, it means Im digging out entire zones of nine chambers each in a few hours now. I can bring new factories online in days, and integrate them into our production processes within days of certification. Im adding dozens of new NI-5s in factories every day to further optimize production.

If youre doing that well, when can I get my assault drones in production? asked Agrippa, not unreasonably.

The first internal security drones will be finished by the end of the day. Geez, you know how to spoil a surprise, grumbled Sakura. I have facilities ready for the assault drones to start as soon as you and Nikola finalize the design.

Nikola? asked Agrippa. He didnt even have to finish that thought. In that instant, Mark-III became priority number two. Of the two scenarios, I felt scenario two was the most likely. Id hash it out with Agrippa later, but I knew what he was going to say. It was better to plan for the worst.

As soon as were done with analyzing what happened in the Alien Room, lets work on it. I also want to finalize our coil gun emplacements and the ammo tank design.

About that you might want to replay the video feed of the incident, said Agrippa. At quarter-speed.

I did as he asked, loading up the video and playing it in slow motion. I saw the spark from the transport arm as it touched inside the pod. The arm had been holding a brace inside the pod to carry the partly disassembled engine. The spark arced into the engine and a flash of blue light pulsed from inside the alien artifact. In that moment, I could see a faint distortion as a field of some sort flashed on and back off again. At the same time, the four transports were pushed a full meter higher than they had been floating, before an invisible hand crushed them down into the ten-meter-thick steel floor.

That looks like gravity manipulation, said Sakura, clearly looking at the same feed as I was. How did I miss that?

You were looking for a cause, said Agrippa. I was looking for a weapon.

A weapon? I mentally shook my head. This wasnt a weapon, it was a malfunctioning engine. This was a powerful reactionless thrust mechanism. The aliens had figured out how to cheat the engine to fuel to cargo balance. A single fusion engine being able to push a craft that easily had triple the cargo mass, for several months, could be a game changer for us. We needed to figure out this technology, and fast.