Chapter 18: Lunar Lunacy II

Chapter 18: Lunar Lunacy II

Complications

Most of the things onboard Seeker seemed to be the same as before. There were a few changes though, most notably that Mia wasnt standing watches anymore, but it made little difference as she was still on the bridge a lot of the time. Mia was careful though not to give command instructions, and coursed any through the watch command duty officer.

She also commandeered Seekers smallest conference room, which happened to be on the deck below her quarters, and just two cabins over.

She had it converted to her new office and had Chief Haskell install command communications facilities. Haskell had also taken the initiative to cut through the two adjacent cabins, and cut through Mias own cabin so shed have direct access to her new office. (The occupants of the now-smaller cabins were moved to more spacious refitted cabins, the old contents of the refitted cabins moved to the now-smaller unusable ones.)

As soon as her new office was ready, Mia moved in, much to the relief of the entire bridge crew, and conducted most of her work from there. The First Ambassador was a frequent visitor, and Nick practically lived there - he found the communications facilities extremely convenient when working.

There were now guards posted at the door of her quarters and office, not really for security, but to control access to her. As a sign of the times, many senior officers preferred having personal security. Mia did not like to have any but she at least acknowledged the need for having a few guards, if just to give her office that much-needed touch of ceremony. But Silverman and Romarkin did insist she at least find an assistant.

Since there was no way around it, she chose Nick since she had him around almost all the time anyway.

Nick accepted the position of Mias Aide-de-Camp eagerly - he said it wasnt too big a change from his current work anyway, and besides, he wasnt too used to military life, and this would probably be a little better, and closer to what he was used to before being drafted. Mia joked that he probably just liked the gold-and-blue braided aiguillette that hed get to wear.

Once all of that was set, Mia started developing a routine, and she spent the remaining weeks they still had before arriving on Earth in her office, finishing up some more details before they got near Earth.

Her first meetings in her new office were spent working with Commander Devereaux, Commodore Oshiro and Marta Running-Streams people, as they got a handle on the EM Suppression Field technology. It was mostly Phase-Wave videocons but her new offices comm facilities were great.

In her latest meeting, she found out Commander Devereauxs people had quickly finished their investigation of the abandoned escort ship and carrier, boosted them into a slow course towards Titan, and had started making their way back to Seeker.

Devereauxs people had found many key components of the cruisers FTL systems were taken out, mostly the large electromagnetic generators of the engines. This rendered her engines inoperable so they'd abandoned it, along with the empty fuel carrier.

As for Titans engineers, they found these subsystems retrofitted into the drive of one of the Tiros hulks, and Martas people confirmed that their interaction caused the field effect. Martas people also concluded that there would be some kind of Cherenkov-like effect, similar to a badly tuned FTL field or maybe like their inertia converters. This might be why they called it the Curtain of Light, but they wouldnt know until they made their own prototype.

Oshiros people also found out from the captured Empire personnel that the slap-dash nature of the retrofit was problematic for its Tirosian crew. Microwave radiation burns caused by poorly assembled microwave shields affected a lot of their engineers. One of them died while they were interred because of untreated and unreported burns.

Microwave burns are similar to electrical burns - but they run deeper into tissues than normal thermal or chemical burns. They were simple to treat, actually, but with what they were dealing with at the time, not many of the affected Tirosians were able to get their burns treated even while they suffered more burns. Many died during their journey to Saturn, and a few more died while interred, mostly from infections, fluid loss or nerve damage.

The captured Tirosians readily gave up their secrets and their ships, and Martas people were able to quickly replicate the effect on a small scale. They were now in the process of building their own safer and far more compact versions. Marta herself was, in fact, unavailable for the meeting since she was concentrating on creating their own prototype EM suppression generator. There actually very few captured Tirosians, and Mia wondered why.

As for how to protect against the EM suppression fields effects, they were not successful. For now, there were no known ways of protecting against the EM field.

Mia left it to the PRC people to find out how to combat the field effects. For now, what she needed to work on was weaponry that worked inside the field.

During the Titan encounter, the things that they were able to use were rail guns, rockets and missiles, so she thought using rail guns would be a good idea.

As an older ship, Seeker still had rail guns - a total of eight individual rail guns in fact, each capable of firing projectiles at up to several thousand meters per second, giving each over 4,000 megajoules of energy, or over a kiloton of TNT. Their destructive energy was basically from the projectiles kinetic energy, but that could be increased if explosive projectiles were used.

Hermes and Constellation, like all Type-Ones and Type-Twos used more modern weaponry, but they did have at least one rail gun that fired through ten tubes, capable of firing projectiles at velocities that gave each about half the kinetic energy of Seekers. The rail guns were used to supplement their energy weapons and missiles - after all, FTL ships had enough power to generate the millions of amps needed, and the guns themselves were small enough and easily manufactured.

The ease with which rail guns could be manufactured made the humans wonder why the aliens didnt use them, which was confirmed by the alien hulks.

As for Earth fighters, they couldnt have rail guns - the energy required was just too much for the little spacecraft to produce. It was lucky Titan had several small, mothballed eighty-year-old rail launchers that had independent power, so they were able to equip some of the Shrikes. But, Okonkwo complained, where would they be able to find enough of the outdated mechanisms to outfit all their planes?

As for individual hand weapons, that was easier. Many handguns that used bullets propelled by exploding or expanding gases were still in wide use. There were none on board any of the ships, however, but it would be an easy matter to fabricate similar weapons.

The last item on their daily agenda was the problem of communicating without using radio or Phase-Wave. Except for light and laser communication, the crew of the Seeker found no other ways that worked.

So they decided to look further into laser comms.

Other than that, everything else that they tackled was mostly administrative, and they breezed through those items quickly: Mia hurried those along to keep her staff meetings down to a few hours only, so she could attend to the conferences that were still continuing - the so-called Channels A, B and C meetings.

Before the meeting broke up, though, OConnell brought up the matter of the admirals barge as their last housekeeping item.

The term admirals barge was taken from the old 20th-century maritime term for the flag officers personal boat that hed use to get ashore, or move from ship to ship. It would have been a captains gig, but since it was for Mia, and since the Seeker was the flag carrier of the fleet, naturally, theyd have an admirals barge.

And thats what she called the Mud Turtle that Mia had asked to be refitted for her use when she needed to get around. Since the Fifth Fleet would be traveling between systems most of the time, it wasnt unreasonable that theyd need a ships boat dedicated for officers to move around, hence the admirals barge.

OConnell flashed a picture on their screens.

The Barge was a Mud Turtle, like OConnell said, but it was re-done so that it now sported a radome on its roof, round Crystalline ports at the corners for laser comms, extra ports on the sides that she explained were mini-rail gun tubes, and a couple of round, stubby wings. They werent wings, actually, but the housing for maneuvering flywheels.

The ship also had a new paint job. It now sported a darker gray color than the normal gunmetal gray of Seekers shuttles and Shrike fighters, and had a narrow red trim running around its hull. The red trim wasnt just for aesthetic purposes it actually hid the piping for a spruced-up, reinforced Structural Integrity Field, or SIF.

On its port and starboard hulls near the bow, it sported two admirals sunbursts, and beside the painted sunbursts the words 01, Galileo DSC Seeker. The hull towards the stern had miniatures of the U.N. Flag, and the rear boarding hatch had the words EDF FIFTH FLEET DSC 05 SEEKER, FLAG.

We have never had captains gigs and admirals barges on any Earth spaceship. The only one that has something like that is Earthship Two. So my people had to do some research. These are authentic colors and livery for a barge.

Anyway, the Galileo is ready to go. And the reason Im showing her to you is that you might want to look her over the modifications may be useful, and you might want to retrofit the other ships in the same way.

The Galileo, Dupont mused. Where did you get the name, Capitaine OConnell?

It was suggested by the Admirals Aide-de-Camp. He says its from an old twentieth century television show. Also the name of an old Renaissance scientist.

I like it.

Mia grinned. Thank you, sir.

-----

The people living in and working on the islands were all given options to accept new government positions on the mainland or to be part of the soon-to-be embassy compound. Most jumped at the chance to stay, of course.

Admiral Silverman also had his people deploy personnel from the Seabees the Navy Engineering Corps - to the islands, and started doing what was necessary to prepare them for occupancy, and to train the would-be embassy staff. They dutifully sent reports to Mia, and she dutifully committed them to memory.

In meetings, Mia would tell the aliens that they were mostly occupied by government personnel posted there to manage them. None were native to the islands since they were abandoned during the war, but all of their new residents were very fond of the place.

The global government had started preparing the islands, she said, clearing land and putting up temporary structures for their new guests.

She explained that the weather was mostly mild throughout the year, except when there were storms or in winter of course, and the Elyrans seemed excited as they listened to her.

Ren was curious about how Mia became their duchess, so Mia went into the song and dance that she had worked out with Romarkins people.

Well, Your Highness, I am not completely sure, actually, she said. Many records were lost in the war, and families lost touch with each other. All I know is that the islands have been passed on to me because an ancestor on my mothers side was a duke, and I inherited the title and property. Truth be told, I havent been to the islands in a while, (try never, she thought) but I know how beautiful they are, and I am sure that you will enjoy your stay.

She then showed them pictures of the islands, most particularly St. Marys, which she claimed was her ancestral home (she actually got the pictures from the Cornwall Tourist Board), and talked about the features of St. Marys and the other islands, taking most of her material from the tourist brochures she was given.

To Ren and Tasha, her explanations were all proof positive of Mias credentials, and they treated her from then on as a royal peer. Taking the lead from them, the rest of the Elyrans, Dixx and Arachnians all referred to her as Lady Amelia from then on, or My Lady or Lord Captain.

Mia sighed. With everything that was happening, she now had to endure this as well. And she knew her people would start doing the same. She sighed again. Complications... Life really was full of complications...

Innovations

Over the coming days, Mias people would make headway in developing EM suppression-proof equipment, and they did their best to push innovation to the edge.

The teams did the easiest things first. In order to provide their people with communications, even if comparatively short-range, they retooled the helmets and armored headpieces of all their people and, using off-the-shelf components, put sixteen laser emitters and detectors in a silvered ring. The idea was, when the laser system was engaged, it would fire invisible, harmless message-encoded laser beams in a global pattern (they confirmed with the PRC people that the frequency of light they used was not affected by the EM suppression field). When a beam hit a detector on another helmet, that other helmet would re-transmit the message as well as transmit its wearers own message beams. In this way, the wearers would create their own real-time laser-based communication relay network. The user could even switch channels, and listen to specific people since everyone had their own encoding, or listen to everyone at the same time.

They also replicated the same concept onboard the three ships, their fighters and their shuttles, and if they received any of the encoded messages from the suits or the other ships, theyd act as repeaters as well.

One of the big things with laser communication was that the parties needed to be precisely lined up and targeted. Not with this new system. The two main limitations with their system however were that their communications could easily be intercepted and they had to have a minimum number of people to create a network and relay messages. But this shortcoming was thought a small trade-off to not having any communications at all.

The next thing that they tackled was the individual sidearms for the crew.

When Mia asked what they had come up with, she was presented with two tubes - one of them six inches long and the other about a foot and a half long.

They were based on an idea someone from Hermes had. Essentially, they were blowguns powered by super-pressured gas cartridges, allowing precisely machined metallic slugs to be propelled at around two hundred meters per second. In the prototype, there was gas enough in each cartridge to fire up to two dozen rounds, and it was a simple matter to swap out a cartridge for a fresh one, with a protective valve that allowed it to operate in vacuum.

The tubes were to be mounted to their existing weapons, and would be fired by the same trigger. They also intended to mount a low-powered laser sight so all they need do was to shine the lasers red dot on their target and fire, and theyd hit it every time (the frequency tuned to a filter in the soldiers visor, so she would be the only one to see her guns laser dot). It was an old-fashioned twenty-first century innovation, but one that had the virtue of working long-distance yet remaining impervious to the EM effect.

Mia wondered that, if lasers worked, why not make laser ray guns (Nick snickered at the term). The Hermes chief engineer explained that any beam with sufficient power to be used as an offensive weapon would just break down.

The more difficult item was the last one they tackled - equipping their small ships with rail guns.

The first thing Beths people did was to break down one of the twenty antique rail launchers that the people from Titan had installed in the Shrikes. The gun itself was easy to fabricate but their problem, as before, was the power supply. They couldnt figure out how the old launchers were able to store the necessary power to make them work. They seemed to be made from regular components, but no one could figure out the trick. That is until they cracked open one of the enormous, ancient battery cells.

Each cell had a wire made of some alloy that wasnt used much anymore due to their brittleness in vacuum. They were wound around and through an armature made from a powdery substance compacted into a cylinder in a kind of crisscross pattern no one recognized.

Through experimentation, they found the cell was actually a capacitor, able to hold an enormous charge but only for a short period, which could only discharge it all in one go, and if not discharged in, at most, a minute, was liable to explode. Used as a battery, it was a failure. That was probably why the technology wasnt used anymore and why there were no references about it available.

But for a device requiring a gigantic jolt of power, it came ready-to-order, provided, of course, one could generate the minimum power it required at the start. The capacitor that they cracked open for example, could only hold charges two hundred thousand amps up, but no less.

Another catch was it would take a second or so for it to charge enough to fire a round, even with a Shrikes or an Eagles semi-FTL engine. The rail guns rate of fire would therefore be around thirty to forty rounds per minute, at best.

Mias people were able to scrounge up enough of the compounds they needed to make batteries for just a few of their ships, but at least now they knew how to do it. When they were docked, they were sure they would be able to requisition enough raw materials.

-----

Mia also had other meetings to help her decide on the rest of her fleet. She originally thought of requisitioning four more Class J cruisers and converting them to Class J-Ones just like Seeker, but apparently, there were no others. The last one was actually in the middle of being dismantled and recycled for its metal. Seeker was, unfortunately, the last of her kind.

Mia called up Marta Running-Stream for advice, but Marta said the other Legacy ship types were too much trouble to convert, so she advised Mia to just select from the Type-Ones.

That reminded her about Hermes and Constellation. She checked on their required upgrades, but Marta said it was a fairly straightforward upgrade.

Type-Ones didnt differ much from Type-Twos - they were basically the same design, except that Type-Ones had the larger FTL engines meant for light-year velocities, and were outfitted with fewer Eagle Fighters and less Cobra shuttles. In fact, she said they already had the Type-One engines for Mias ships ready, and were just waiting for them to arrive. Once they did, Martas people could swap the engines out in a few days.

As for the new crew makeup, Mia wanted to get as many social scientists and CETI specialists as she can get, but that might not be possible. Still, though Phil didnt want to give up any of his staff, Mia felt she might be able to sweet-talk Jenn into giving up some of hers.

-----

Mia also spent a lot of time tuned in to Channel B and was fascinated by the material being discussed. It was a good idea that the briefings were reformatted. As for Channel C, after a few days, they had officially declared their work completed. They were only waiting for the Earthers referendum to ratify the treaty now. To cap their work, Mia turned over a prototype Terran-Elyran translator to the First Ambassador - one of many that the Earthers planned to use for the duration of the stay of their visitors on Earth. It was intended that the Arachnians test it out prior to their arrival.

The First Ambassador eagerly accepted the duty to test-drive the prototype, and Ren just had to giggle at his excitement.

On Channel B, the lectures went well. The last one to lecture was Jennifer. She took two whole days to lecture about the Earthers, and there were a lot of questions during and afterwards.

The lectures that the Elyrans gave also provided the Earthers with a lot of info, as did those of the Dixx, the Dravidian and the Arachnians. For example, they found that with the Elyrans, as with the Detterex, tradition and honor were important drivers for their lives. As for the Dixx, obedience to authority, and how well they were able to do so gave them their sense of fulfillment. For Dravidians, personal success was important, as was following rules. The highest honor was achieved by attaining the highest personal success yet still following the rules. As for the Arachnians and Erocii, to be part of a clan or family gave them their fulfillment, but the Erocii found the need to establish their own dynasties instead of just being part of one an equally important drive. As for the Tirosians, it was a common view in the Federation that they were cunning and ruthless, willing to do anything to get their way, but only committed to engage an enemy if they had the advantage.

The aliens didnt see it, but the new information gave Earth strategists insights on how to manage them. Jenn said that the advantage of the human psyche, at least in this particular situation, was its multifacetedness. Compared to the Federation races, humans were unusually neurotic. But that was because humans were a lot less single-minded, which allowed them to second-guess the aliens, even to the extent of anticipating their actions.

Jenn thought, given a few thousand millennia, humans would probably be the same as the Federation - set in their ways and less willing to consider new methods of doing things. But as of this moment, the Earthers were the provincials that didnt know table manners but were also the ones that werent mired yet in Federation cultural narrow-mindedness, allowing them to explore ideas and concepts that would not have even occurred to the aliens. Time would tell if Jenn was right.

For now, everyone was feeling good about the progress they were making, but the pessimist in Mia thought it couldnt last. Unfortunately, she was correct.

Several days before planetfall, a full fifteen days before the earliest expected arrival of the Empire ships, they received a message. It seemed radio signals all across the board had disappeared.