The next day I was back on the bridge.  Last night had been incredible, we’d gone for hours, and I felt deliciously sore, although that was going away quickly because of the nanites.  I had my dinner with Telidur later that evening, but I wasn’t sure if anything more than that would happen.  I wasn’t sure how I felt about the possibility of being with multiple friends.  It both resonated, and on the other hand I felt like I’d be betraying Vik, which was ridiculous of course, and came from human societal expectations.

Still, unless I had some mental breakthrough, most likely tonight would just be dinner, maybe next time?  I still wasn’t quite in the this is real mind space yet.  I knew it was real, but my psyche was arguing about it.  Humans were adaptable, but we also resisted change and didn’t like to change fast.

Another part of me wondered what kind of lover he would be.  Vik had been firm, confident, thorough, and seemed to love making me come undone under his attentions.  What would Telidur be like.  Another stray thought, what would Jillintara be like? 

Rilok?  He could go fuck his hand for all I cared.

We were still in route to Vehiri in FTL, and wouldn’t get there to unload until tomorrow.  Even then, it would be another ten hours in system.  If he went at half max acceleration, a hundred instead of two hundred gravities, it would take a little over thirteen.  My bet was on thirteen.

I spent the first two thirds of the day doing two simulations, and then Jillintara hit me with the download of the vessel’s capabilities, if not exactly how they all worked, or even how they were controlled.  I wasn’t sure why he didn’t want me to know everything, but I also wasn’t worried about it.

A lot of things wouldn’t make a difference to the case.  For instance, it took thirty seconds to pressurize the landing bay, while it took forty-five to empty it.  I did learn a few useful things.  The power cores which tapped into vacuum energy used up a hard to fabricate and expensive element in the process.  The more power that was generated at once, the higher the loss in element.  It wasn’t a direct proportion either, more of a geometric progression.  The wormhole drive cost about a thousand times the amount of energy to go four light years than the FTL drive would, but the amount of the expensive and precious element used was hundred thousand times as much.

The less energy they needed to draw from the universe, the better.  It worked for everything else too, like acceleration.  The gravity fields were twice as expensive power wise between one hundred and two hundred gravities, but the cost in element to double the power draw was over thousand times higher.  It was easy to understand why maximum velocity wouldn’t be used outside of battle, or the wormhole drive outside of a major emergency, like invasion.

More than the critical element, it also effected bonds on the molecular level, so not only did they need more element, but a large part of the main power reactor core was changed out regularly.

Long sustained use of less power, was always more efficient and cheaper than even short bursts of higher power generation.  I wondered at using such a technology, it seemed like fusion, or even fission would be more efficient.  Except, when I found out the power requirements for some of the systems, I learned it would take hundreds of fission or fusion reactors to come even close to the energy a zero point reactor could produce.  Shields, plasma weapons, drive systems, and artificial gravity all took an insane amount of energy.  Just opening a wormhole would take the power output of a sun, for a short few moments.  Fission and fusion just couldn’t do it.  The only way things would change, is if someone discovered a more energy efficient way of doing those things.

I got a little off track in my head there.

I learned that the active sensors have an effective range of about six A.U., which meant from the center of a solar system, they could see just about the whole system core.  Past six A.U. some detection was possible out to twelve A.U., but not in detail.  It could pick up mass and gravity readings, and unreliably at that. 

The effective range of subspace sensors was about five light years, and ships could be tracked in subspace both while in subspace, or in normal space.  That was very good information to have.

I found out they didn’t use probes, probably cost too much credits.  Unlike the movies, they hadn’t shrunk gravity engines appreciably.  Even the missiles were almost the size of a fighter, just without wings and the need for cockpit space.  I imagined if we were desperate, we could launch a shuttle or two, and with quantum entangled communications, we’d know everything it saw as if we were on the shuttle.  Still, I didn’t see where that would be useful, at least not for our assigned mission.

It was the final system, that was controlled from the ops board, that I didn’t even know existed which gave me an idea we could use.  The system took a ridiculous amount of energy to run, and I could see where the captain might be reluctant to use it.

“Captain?”

“Lori?”

I smirked, “I might have an idea for the mission.”

Rilok snorted, and I told myself not to kill him.  His mistrust and disregard were getting annoying.

He said, “Let’s hear it.”

I said, “Obviously, the old way isn’t working.  Whatever they’re doing, they are doing it under tight operational security.  That tells me it’s even unlikely if you come close to one of those ships, that they’ll take the bait and attack you.  Searching all the star systems are out of the question, and we can’t go to their home world and find someone important to smack around.”

Vik laughed, “Yes, that would be bad, your idea?”

“Sorry, just making a point, and you probably won’t like it, but it has the best chance of success of anything I can think of.  The only way we’ll find where they’re taking the humans, and what they’re doing, is if we wait near Sol, maybe in Alpha Centauri since it’s only four light years away.”

He frowned, “Alpha what?”

“Ah, I guess you’re A.I. doesn’t know the human name for the system.  It’s the closest system to Sol, just over four light years away.”

He said, “Alright, go on.”

“We’ll watch subspace sensors, Earth will be within the five-light year limit, and we’ll wait there until a Stolavii ship shows up and drops out of subspace.  At that point, we’ll be invisible to them since we’ll be in normal space a system away.  We wait the day it will take them to go in system, take more humans, and head back out.”

I paused for a moment, they all seemed to be following.

“When we see them enter subspace, we’ll activate our stealth systems, and jump into subspace to follow them to their destination.  They shouldn’t see us at all.  Once we know where they end up, we’ll let the big bosses know and maybe drop out for a peek?  I don’t know.  The plan does require a little luck, since the ship could be just another Stolavii ship restocking their human slave ship complement.”

He frowned, “That thing is ridiculously energy intensive, I’m not sure we can run it long enough, unless their base is close to Sol, within a day, or less than fifty light years to put it another way.”

Telidur said, “That system she named isn’t a resource or populated system for the empire.  Still, someone could see us going there.”

I shrugged, “We can use the stealth system to get there as well?”

Vik winced, it really would be expensive.

Telidur said, “That might work, it’s that system and Sol are about fifty light years away from Kaprorix.  We could pop in there, then activate stealth and no one would know which way we went.  It would only take about twelve hours in subspace to make the trip.”

Kaprorix was the home world of the saurian race in the Isyth Empire.

Vik sighed, “It might work, but we’d have to do about three resource hauls after the mission to pay for it.”

It seemed so ridiculous, that stealth would use so much energy, there had to be a more efficient way to do things, a cheaper way.  But… until I learned those three science courses, and the fabricating and design course, I might as well have been wishing on rainbows.

“I knew you wouldn’t like it, but it’s the best I could come up with.  The second option, would be to wait six hours after they get there, then just go to Sol, four light years should only take a little over an hour, and they wouldn’t be able to abort or escape from the system before we got there.  Then we can run them down, kick their ass, and find out what they know.  At least there’s a chance they’ll be one of the crews in the know.”

Vik pursed his lips, “That does have possibilities, but also pitfalls.  If we do go in and they’re caught, they’ll have hours before the battle to talk to their masters and fellow mercenaries involved in whatever is going on with all those humans.  It’s more than possible, that by the time we took them down, and then went to whatever system they’re working out of, they rest of them could clear out.

“I hate the idea of the cost, but your first idea was much better, we can trace the system they’re working out of, and take them by surprise when we drop out of subspace.  If it’s some kind of slave colony, fine, if there’s a fleet, we’ll keep an eye on them and call in for support.  Either way we’ll know, and the mission will be a success.”

Telidur said lightly, “Guess were doing a lot of hauling in our future.”

Vik nodded, “Log the plan as you both stated.  Once we unload our cargo at Vehiri, we’ll go visit our good friends at Kaprorix, stealth, and head for Alpha whatever she called it.”

“Centauri,” Jillintara chimed in helpfully.

Vik sighed, “We might be there a while, so let’s run an analysis on the system as long as we’re there.”

Rilok said, “Can do, but we won’t be able to see all of it, unless you want to use stealth even more, and skip around the outer edge of the system.  We can’t go in ourselves, or we won’t be in position to chase anyone.”

I frowned, “That’s not entirely true.  Even at full acceleration of two hundred gravities, it will take them nineteen point four hours for the round trip, plus whatever time it takes them to pick up the humans from the surface.  As long as we’re careful, we can manage to never be in a position where it will take longer than thirteen hours or so to get out.  Failing that, how are the sensors on the shuttles?  Maybe it would be more cost effective to send in a shuttle, and we can always come back for it.”

Vik asked, “Shuttle?”

“Well, I noticed there were no probes, but wouldn’t it be cheaper energy wise to put an impulse field around a small shuttle?  With Jill driving the thing and quantum communications, we’ll get immediate sensor readings like we were there in the ship.  I just don’t know what the range of a shuttle is, can it make it five A.U., turn around and come back?  If we have to leave it behind, we can always come back and pick it up later, although that would certainly blow the money saved.”

It was hard to think in those terms for me, I never worried about money, and all the science fiction books I read it wasn’t really an issue.  The drive just worked and provided power for years, or they had to scoop hydrogen or something, free gas.

Jillintara said, “It would be a lot less energy intensive of course.  The field necessary would be much smaller to cover a shuttle, than a quarter mile long space ship, thousands of times less.  It should also have the range.  It’s more than a viable idea for a mission where we don’t have to go into a star system, though I don’t imagine that comes up much.  We don’t do many system analyses in a cruiser, the scout class ships usually do those.”

Right, because they were probably cheaper to fly, and evaluating a star system had no immediate return in monetary gain.

Vik asked, “Alright, let’s use a shuttle, but Jillintara, make sure you can get it back to the ship within twelve hours at any time.”

Jillintara replied, “Yes sir.”

Vik asked, “Any other ideas?”

“Not any easy ones.  I’ll let you know if I think of anything else.”

Vik said, “But you have hard ones?”

I laughed, “Think how much easier it would be, if the empire had a sensor net to track all the enemy and neutral ships, I’m assuming there’s a way to track our own.  Of course, who would want to pay for building or deploying it?  You’d need thousands of them.”

Jillintara nodded, “All Isyth ships report their location to the data net, only the military ships can track other military ships, and not always.  We can only be tracked by central command for example, because of our mission profile, unless we put out a call for assistance.”

Vik nodded, “Maintenance would be a killer on that one too.”

I shrugged, “Maybe not with older technology, I assume fusion is still a known science?  The power requirements for sensors and FTL comms is very small, and fusion reactors can run for a very long time before they need more fuel.  Not that it isn’t still a pie in the sky idea.”

Rilok said dismissively, “Then why even mention it.”

I frowned, “Because the captain asked.”

Vik glared at Rilok, who backed down, but he’d managed to derail the mood and the bridge went back to silence.  I used the rest of my shift time to go over the two simulations and try and identify places where I should have done something different…