46. Growth

• “We need that ship, the analysis of the damage is not conclusive without it.” — Hanah’s voice raised slowly up as she finished.
• “The captain won’t order him to give it up. She made that clear.” — John slopped in a chair, avoiding eye contact with his whole team.
• “But this could prove… we could send them to jail.” — she continued arguing.
• “Don’t forget, we are not here to do that. Just to make travel safer. That is our role.” — John wasn’t even sure if he tries to convince her or himself.
• “He would want those dirtbag to be hold accountable too.”
• “I will not ask him to give up his home. Like if I would ask for the ashes of his family to throw it into the river. We have to come up with something else.” — John turned around, facing the moon and stars sliding on the view screen.

Ben and Hanah took this as a sign to finish tonight’s problem solving session. Hanah scoffed into her notes and left the room with long steps. Ben nodded toward Mark who slowly turned toward the stars.

• “John, I read the papers again. And again. It will be an extremely slim chance to replicate the circumstances with another ship.”
• “Yeah, I know. Any ideas as the engine expert? After all you figured out how to shape the drive field for these luxury liners. That seemed impossible too at the time.”
• “That was different. The groundwork was done over almost a century. And I could draw on decades of practical experiments. This time, this is the first practical interaction. If, a big if, it was one.”
• “Just, try. With a structured way. Problem, situational awareness, eliminate, prove.”
• “Well, one more thing. One more academic and definitely shady paper mentioned a possible interaction between dark matter and dark energy.”
• “What is dark energy?”
• “We theorised from the late 20th century, seeing the universe growing faster and faster, that something must be behind it. As the matter only would slow the growth down. This is called the dark energy, as we have no idea what it is and how it works. At least not in practice, math models have some ideas.”
• “And how does it come to our situation now?”
• “What if, a ring detonation somehow mixes the dark matter and dark energy. And they behave similar to matter and anti-matter, annihilating each other. Maybe it causes a temporary field of some sorts.”
• “Where every molecule hits a wall at the same time?” — John’s turn to scoff. The idea outlandish as it is.
• “Well, would be interesting.” — Mark continued without acknowledging the insane nature of his thoughts — “We know with FTL we hit still some kind of friction. Originally we thought it is just the energy, but as we pump more and more into the rings, the max speed we achieve is diminishing. It may be we are pushing against the dark energy currents.”

They both looked eye to eye. A realisation usually privy for theoretical scientists best in their fields is about to hit them too.

• “So, if we could affect these currents, would revolutionise the ring drives?” — John’s engineer background took over his investigative self, curiosity over practical work.
• “It could revolutionise how we think of the universe. And yes. May bring an even safer and instantaneous travel between Earth and colonies. Would be how trains changed life after horses.”
• “Would we be able to do it with other ship than the Perseus?”
• “Maybe. How big of a budget we have to buy?”
• “How nice of you thinking of that angle… I suppose we can’t just rent a civilian transport.”
• “Well, expect the ship to be destroyed, so no, I don’t think so.”
• “Great. And we have the senator on our back.”
• “Thought only Mr. Coldman ran his mouth.” — Mark’s smiley morphed into grinning.
• “Nah, got some communication from headquarters the morning. Don’t mention it to the team yet. Now a senator is asking for a public hearing. They try to shut down the investigation by attacking the costs.”
• “The laws provide us some latitude how to use the funding.”
• “Mentioned same to the director. And he pointed out, lately the government issued a lot of decrees to handle political issues one by one. Circumventing the slow law changing process.”
• “Ah, all the time the same story. Mankind agrees laws are necessary, right after an existential crisis. Then it forgets why made those rules during the comfortable years.” — Mark rolled his eyes John thought they gonna fall out at the back of his head.
• “Indeed. I have to thread carefully here.“ — John started drafting on a new virtual notes — “We need a plan, a tight one. Then I present it to the director. He may be able to bring in partner agencies. We could use help from academic institutions on this. They could get the benefit of research boost in exchange for their funding. We need the team back.”
• “Let them rest tonight. Hanah is overworked, Ben is… I don’t know, he is an enigma as always. We start tomorrow with fresh minds.”
• “You are right. Have some good sleep yourself!”
• “Will do, my friend. Try it for yourself too. I know that face too well.”

They smiled and Mark left. John burned the midnight oil for a while. He had some inspiration, needed to put the new bullet points to paper. A digital paper this time, however his expensive real paper and pen stacked right next to him.

He felt the winds of change, the first time he preferred the digital medium. Knowing well he has to make a killer presentation.

When he finished with the storyline put on, drafted even a few slides. After a while, he drifted between his thoughts. Glanced on the air-gapped machine holding the research papers from the deep net.

His curiosity won. A moment later he searched for any variations he could think of around Alcubierre torpedoes. Weapons of mass destruction. And found some in the downloaded materials.

The deep dark net was full of contraband information. While it was not needed to be a genius to put an FTL drive onto a small body, fill the body with the heaviest elements you can find and hurl it toward something, making it a weapon still required tremendous technological skills.

The government was good at controlling the physical plants, the tech capable of creating such sophisticated sensor and tracking systems. Controlling the information proved to be rather difficult. Almost everyone knew how to make these things. But no-one had the practical tech, nor the will to build one.

At one side, the torpedoes capable of immense destruction, possible entire moons and small planets. On the other, they are incredibly unreliable machines.

The drive may push them so fast through space and time they never even contact the target. They could miss a planet from point blank range. The nanosecond timing was easier to achieve than to hit something with these things.

The Federation built them for a single purpose. The enemy who almost destroyed Earth, cradle of mankind. We needed a deterrent. If we ever find their homeworld, even their territories, we can protect ourselves. Moreover, a latent revenge seeded into a whole race could be carried out.

Then the Federation built the twelve stations around Earth. Named after the 12 signs of astrology, as they were positioned facing the same signs, lightyears away from Earth. The ultimate guardians of our home.

Then placed tens of thousands of these torpedoes on those stations. Guarded by carriers like this, the Irondome. Able to deliver the torpedoes quickly to the detected homeworld of those wretched aliens.

As almost no-one outside of the highest level admirals knew. These torpedoes could not travel far. Only a few light seconds, before their rings become inoperable and fall out of FTL harmlessly.

They are barely able to reach a moon from its planet on their own. John had only one question in his head, beyond the dilemma of revealing the manifest to the public.

Why were these things on a civilian luxury cruise ship, headed toward the colonies?

The answer may be the tipping point for him.

Read the story leading up to now:

Giant of the Stars

Fictional story of a luxury starliner’s catastrophy