Operation Hammerhead - 7. Sister Sara

Saratoga

Captain Carter and his Navigator had been up all night. His desk was littered with computer pads, coffee cups, old-fashioned books and a hard copy of Sokolsky’s paper. A monitor on his wall displayed row after row of daunting equations.

His senior navigator Commander Ben Keller looked up from a computer pad sighed, and said, “Damned if I know why it works Jerry. I might as well say some magic happens here and poof. You’ve got your handy, dandy hyperspace coordinates set down to a few meters.”

Carter said, “The way he derived these equations is just astonishing. A bit of substitution here, a dash of factoring there and three quarters of the factors fall away leaving you with a simple seven dimension polynomial expression. You plug in the numbers and that’s it.”

Keller grinned and said, “A simple seven dimension polynomial expression? That would make most people’s eyes bleed.”

“We are the few, the proud: the calculus nerds. OK Jerry - what do we need to take this to the next level?”

“For the simulations that we need to run, we’ll need serious computer power.”

Carter said, “If we can figure out how to pull off micro-jumps, it will sure be worth it. Micro-jumps are just half of it. Long Jumps are every bit as promising. How many times has the enemy jumped right in the middle of one of our formations?”

Keller said, “Every time that they have, they really hurt us. We can slave the computers from the other ships in our division. Yorktown, Lexington and Enterprise all signaled that they are moored and ready but unless we get more processor power, it won’t be enough. It’ll take at least a week to run the series that we have set up.”

Carter said, “I talked to Captain Drake of the Arc Royal. He says that we are welcome to link with the computers on the ships of his division.”

Keller changed a few variables on the computer-pad and said, “We’re still coming up short. What about the Essex group?”

Carter said, “Those are the oldest ships of the class. They are down installing the latest TacCom upgrades.”

“What about the other ships? There is a hell of a lot of computer power in the task force.”

Carter said, “If we link to ships outside our class, we’ll be picking up integration problems. Only the battleships and battlecruisers have the kind of computing power that we need. Wait a minute. I’ve got an idea.”

He turned to his communications panel and said, “Connect to the Capella comm net and get me Dr. Richards of the Fleet Academy.”

There was a short delay as the connection went through and a disheveled Dr. Richards appeared on his screen. “Jerry, I’m going to have to send you a time zone conversion program. What can I do for you at oh-five hundred in the morning?”

Carter said, “Sorry Doc. My navigator and I have been working with the Sokolsky equations on the micro-jump problem, and we think that we’re on to something.”

“What can I do to help Jerry?”

“We need some heavy-duty computer power to run a series of simulations based on Sokolsky’s equations and the University’s research net is the fastest numbers cruncher in the system.”

Dr. Richards paused in thought for a moment and said, “Can do. Call us at oh-nine hundred, and we’ll be ready to link our systems.”

Carter thanked the professor and said, “Let’s get a little sleep, some food and be back on the bridge to run the simulations after breakfast.”

*          *          *

Shuttle Sierra442

When Danny woke up, his head was throbbing. He was strapped in to an acceleration couch and comfortably reclined. He was in a rather cozy passenger cabin of a shuttle and could feel that they were in zero-g. He activated the view screen and could see row after row of Alliance warships smartly holding station in the Capella Anchorage.

After carefully unfastened the belts, he got out of the couch using the hand-holds around the cabin and began making his way to the cockpit. There was a short corridor from the front of the lounge to the cockpit. There were doors on both sides of the corridor, blinking instrumentation and storage space.

At the far end of the corridor, he opened the door to the cockpit and slid into the low, crowded space and took the navigator/engineer's chair behind Tom and Crash who were sitting in the pilot and copilots seats respectively.

Tom said, “Capella Control this is Sierra442. We have cleared the anchorage and are passing the outer marker. Request permission to accelerate to .2 C per flight plan.”

“Sierra442 this is Capella control. You are go for throttle up at the outer marker. Remember to keep your running lights and transponder on at all times within the system.”

Tom keyed his mike and said, “Roger that Control. Be back tomorrow.”

He turned and said, “How are you doing Danny?”

Danny said, “Oh my God. What was in that stuff from last night?”

Tom said, “It’s called tequila.”

Crash laughed and said, “Bet you had the blue Margaritas at Marco’s place last night.”

Danny said, “They were so good you didn’t really taste the liquor.”

Crash said, “Marco has four of them: red, orange, green and blue. Blue is the strongest.”

Tom laughed and said, “We weren’t the only ones that got sauced. Rutledge and his guys were singing… I don't know what were they singing?”

Crash said, “Knowing that bunch I bet it went something like this:”

Ken was killed in Kilkenny and Claire, she did in Clare

Tip from Tipperary died out in the Derry air

O'Grady, he was eighty, though his bride was just a pup

He died upon the honeymoon when she got his Irish up

Now everybody's died, so until our tears are dried

We'll drink and drink and drink and drink, and then we'll drink some more

We'll dance and sing and fight until the early mornin’ light

Then we'll throw up, pass out, wake up and then go drinking once again

“That’s exactly what they were singing. A bit on the morbid side don’t you think?” Danny said as he settled in.

Crash said, “These fleet guys have been fighting an enemy that just keeps coming for five solid years now. They’ve all lost friends - some have even lost family. That’s the way some of them stay sane.”

“Well, there is that and the booze”, said Tom.

Danny asked, “How far to our destination?”

Tom said, “Fourteen hours there, however long we decide to stay outside and another fourteen hours back. I’ll brief you on the equipment that we’ll use outside and what we’ll be looking for.”

Crash said, “I’ll be on safety watch inside suited up and ready to give you a hand outside if anything goes wrong. In the meantime, we’ll be in range of Capella’s communication relay the whole trip. You can watch the network feeds but going online will get start getting dicey the farther out we get.”

Crash unbuckled his harness and grabbed on to a hand-grip above his chair. “Anybody care to try my Nietzsche rations?”

Tom said, “What’s that?

“If they don’t kill you, they’ll make you stronger.”

Saratoga

Moored in the Capella Anchorage with a skeleton crew, Saratoga was very much open for business. A number of key personnel had been recalled from Capella Station and her flight deck was busy launching and receiving shuttles.

Captain Carter had most of his senior staff on the bridge. To complicate matters Admiral Tanaka’s barge had just arrived. Things were beginning to happen fast, so he had to take charge.

“XO, go meet the Admiral. Brief him on what we’re doing.”

Commander Haley acknowledged his order, “Aye Sir. XO en route to the hanger deck.”

“Nav, are our simulations ready?”

Keller replied, “Aye sir. We have sixty-four convergence problems set up and ready to run. Thirty-two are micro-jumps of a few light-minutes out to a three light-months. The other thirty-two problems are long jump problems. They start at 150 light years and increase incrementally out to three hundred and fifty light years. If the Sokolsky equations work, we should have valid jump solutions to all sixty-four problems.”

Carter said, “Good. Good. Comms: how about our data links with the other ships and the university?”

Lt. Marshall replied, “All data links are hot and ready. We’re ready to go at the appointed time.”

Keller said, “Those equations will probably run all day. We might as well kick things off early if the network is ready.”

Carter said, “Make it so.”

Keller entered a few codes into the navigation console and turned the commit key. “Program Convergence-Sim is running at 0846UT. Either we’ve wasted a few days’ work of we’re about to make ourselves and Mr. Sokolsky famous.”

Once the program was off and running, Lt. Marshall said, “Permission to ask a question sir.”

“What do you want to know Lt?”

Marshall asked, “Why do you call them convergence problems?”

Carter sat down in his chair and took a sip of coffee. He then explained, “Whenever we jump, there are a huge number of variables that have to be taken into account. The mathematics is so complex that it would take an army of mathematicians several lifetimes to do the math manually. We’ve been able to reduce the equations and package the software so that allows us to do most jumps. The problems arise when the jumps are very short or very long. In micro-jumps it’s like trying to divide by a very small number: the results become very erratic. The same thing happens at the high end. The numbers don’t work, the jump equations don’t balance, and we can’t generate a useful solution.”

Commander Haley led Admiral Tanaka onto the bridge. The Admiral listened to Captain Carter’s explanation of the convergence problem. When the Captain was done, he said, “In mathematics they call it an irrational result or a singularity. If you guys have solved the problem, then you’ve made history.”

Carter said, “Welcome aboard Admiral. We can’t claim credit for the mathematics. It came from a paper written by a doctoral candidate called Sokolsky. What brings you to Sister Sara today?”

“They say no good deed goes unpunished Jerry. I’ve got your orders. Saratoga has been designated flag plot for the task force. I need to see you, your XO and Navigator in your briefing room.”

*          *          *

Shuttle Sierra442

“I’ve explored a lot of the asteroid”, Tom said as he projected images of their target onto the view screens in the lounge.

“When this system formed, like most systems planetoids formed. The gravitational dynamics of the multi-star system tore the proto-planets to bits but not before at least a few of them were big enough to differentiate. This one appears to have gotten farther along than most before it was ripped apart. Although it is shaped like a potato, you can easily see where it is layered. It was big and together long enough for gravity to separate the materials into layers. This asteroid was definitely part of a core. It’s got lots of iron and nickel practically no silicates to speak of.”

Danny asked, “Why did the miners leave it alone?”

“When mining in the system was in it hey-day, this rock was on a parabolic orbit about 150 AUs out. It’s taken it the better part of a century to come close enough in system to make it practical to work on it. It has spent so much time in the outer system that it has accreted a great deal of gas and has large ice patches. What I plan for this trip is to plant some flares and burn off the ice patches so that we can get a better look at what is there.”

Danny asked, “What then?”

Tom said, “I’ll be looking at the exposed rock to see what’s there. We’ll also be looking for fissures, holes and voids. They give us a look inside without having to drill holes or cut tunnels. We’ll probably see enough stuff on the surface that we expose to make the trip worthwhile.”

“Sounds like a plan”, Danny said. “Hey Tom: hate to change the subject, but I’ve been thinking about our gene codes. Have you talked to anybody about them?”

“No. I wouldn’t think of it without checking with you first.”

Danny sighed. “I’m thinking that we need to be cautious about who we talk too about this.”

“I agree. The whole thing makes me nervous. I’d hate to have the Gene Cops on our back.”

“It’s so weird. Wherever we go people think we’re twins or at least brothers.”

Tom looked pensive and said, “Yeah. Last night there was some drunk chick who thought that we were twins and wanted to do us both.”

Danny laughed and said, “Well, did we?”

Tom said, “She wasn’t that hot. Look- I understand that given your background, this stuff makes you really nervous. Nobody is going to chuck us out an airlock because we’re illegals, but it could hurt our careers. Let’s take investigating this slow and easy.”

“Agreed. We’ll be careful and only take action if we both agree.”

Tom said, “I can live with that. Now - this is how you set the flares…”

Saratoga

The Admiral called the meeting to order. Like a sly old fellow that he was, he gave the command staff the honey first. Crash McDonald was going to be their Commander Air Group or CAG. Carter knew that the kid they had slated for the position was a great squadron commander but was out of his depth as CAG. He would be aboard as soon as he could be collected. Now it was time for the medicine.

Admiral Tanaka and his aides met with the Saratoga’s senior staff for several hours as they discussed the fleet's distributed command structure. Admiral Bassett was in overall command aboard the Repulse. Bassett’s second in command Admiral Stewart flag was aboard the Kongo. Admiral Tanaka was responsible for the carriers and had his flag aboard the Yorktown.

All three of the Admirals played different roles within the Task Force. Bassett was specifically in command of the battleship formations and the task force overall. When the time would come to go toe to toe with the enemy, his heavy ships could either defend the task force or act as a powerful offensive force on their own.

Admiral Stewart’s cruisers and battle cruisers were specifically tasked with protecting the task force. They would lead and follow the carriers around like a small flock of heavily armed sheep dogs. Whole divisions of cruisers and destroyers would fill out their protective screen, and they all took orders from Stewart’s flagship.

Admiral Tanaka was in command of the carrier force and air operations. He would actively command the twelve fleet carriers, four light carriers and their air groups. He was also in command of the air groups aboard the Marine Assault ships, but they were all-purpose built atmospheric assault and landing craft. Combat Air Patrols, strike missions and search and rescue mission would all be run from the Yorktown.

Saratoga’s designation as flag plot required her to do the entire fleet's navigation and distribute solutions for jumps to all ships. Carter had once served as navigation instructor at the Academy and had the most experienced Navigator in the fleet in the person of Commander Keller. To pull off what they were being asked to do, they would need a lot of help.

The Task Force flag plot would require a senior navigator be on duty 24 hours a day, every day. Saratoga would need help. She would also need a major software upgrade. To handle jump solutions for the entire Task Force, they would need the same command and control software upgrades that the other flagships were running.

While all the of these issues and many others were being hammered out, at 1200 hours a team of stewards brought in a platter of sandwiches, some soups and several choices of drinks.

While they were breaking for lunch, Keller connected to the bridge computer to see how the simulation was running and was surprised to find that it was complete. He cursed when he saw that the program had stopped running.

Carter heard his navigator muttering and asked, “What’s up Ben?”

“The simulations have stopped running. I think they must have crashed or something, but I’m not seeing any diagnostic messages.”

Carter opened the program on his own computer. The program Convergence-Sim had stopped running about twenty minutes ago; well, short of its expected run time. He opened the data file and began looking at the results.

All sixty-four problems had computed solutions. He dumped the data file into the computer program called Jump-Check that tested jump coordinates and rejected invalid solutions. Before he could log off, all sixty-four sets of coordinates came back as valid.

Carter said, “It looks like those equations worked better than we thought.”

*          *          *

Shuttle Sierra442

It took the little shuttle two hours to slow down but as soon as it did, they seemed to be hanging over River's asteroid. Tom and Danny were suited up and ready to go outside as soon as Crash gave the word.

Crash’s voice crackled over their suit radios, “I’ve matched the speed and vector of Tom’s rock, and you are cleared for EVA.”

Tom said, “Roger that. I’m dumping the airlock now.”

Danny could hear the short hiss of the airlock through his suit, and then everything was quiet as the air was replaced by hard vacuum. Tom led the way outside and Danny followed slowly and deliberately negotiating hand-holds. He stepped outside the airlock and said, “Oh wow.” The stars seemed a lot closer today.

Tom said, “Yeah I feel that way every time. Crash, can you turn a floodlight toward our rock? All we’re seeing is shadow.”

The exterior floodlights came on lighting up the dusty, icy surface of the asteroid. Every so often you could see the sparkle of crystals or metal. There were vast fields of ice covering the side of the asteroid in the shadow.”

Tom looked at his instruments and said, “Solar radiation looks good. We could stay here for days if we wanted to. Dan, let's plant our flares and see what’s under that ice.”

As planned, they set out a grid of 100 flares 10 meters apart to clear a nice big patch. Work went smoothly, and they were done in about 45 minutes. Danny was impressed with the flares. They were smart devices that actually dug into the ice. Once the flares were in place, they used their suite jets to go back to the shuttle and connect a cable that recharged their batteries and replaced the air that they had expended.

Tom said, “Fire in the hole.” He transmitted the remote command for the magnesium flares to ignite and in an instant all one hundred were blazing bright blue-white. The ice was a mixture of hydrogen and carbon dioxide. As soon as it was heated it began to boil off and created something of a mini-nebula around the asteroid. As more of the ice cooked off, it expanded outwards billowing blue and red in the light of the flares and the shuttles.

Danny asked, “How long until we can go back?”

Tom said, “Unless we want to get covered in ice, we’ll have to wait here for a few minutes to let the gas dissipate.”

It only took a few minutes to begin seeing features exposed that had been hidden under the ice. Tom said, “When planets form all the heaviest materials are drawn to the core by gravity. Most of the time you never get to see a planetary core, but this whole asteroid is a big sample. Some of the stuff that we might find here may be unique.”

Danny asked, “What am I supposed to be looking for?”

Tom said, “Crystals, metallic or clear will do. Any silvery colored metals. We’ll want to take all kinds of samples. Once we get enough, we’ll take them inside, run the analyzer to see what we have and then come outside and get some more.”

Danny and Tom milled around the freshly cleared surface of the asteroid for a couple of hours. Tom collected all sorts of crystals some red ones and blue ones looked particularly interesting. He found a metallic crystalline structure that looked a lot like a flower. He was careful to mark his samples and where they came from.

When their sample containers were full they went back into the shuttle to see what they had collected.

They got out of their suits and took their sample containers to shuttles lounge. Tom set up a machine and analyzing samples of minerals and began testing their samples.

Tom had known what to look for. Most of his samples were metallic because he was specifically looking for metals in the Platinum-Osmium and Iridium group. They almost always occurred together and in the presence of nickel ore and the asteroid was loaded with it.

Of all his samples, Tom kept half and discarded the rest.

Danny hadn’t known what to look for and most of his samples ended up looking like pretty rocks. Tom commented, “Looks like you have an eye for gems.”

He ran the analyzer over one of the big white crystals Danny had collected. He said, “Diamond, industrial grade. Nice one too; worth at least ten thousand credits.”

Danny gasped.

Tom said, “That’s just a for starters.” He kept running his gear over Danny’s samples.

When he was done he said, “We must be working an old pressure column. The gems and minerals that we’ve found are all created in areas of great pressure. All of these crystals that you’ve collected are diamonds or kin to diamonds.”

Danny nearly fainted and Crash whistled.

Tom said, “These red crystals are diamonds that have Ruthenium impurities and the blue ones are diamonds with Cobalt impurities. You never see these except in space on special rocks. I’d say this paid for our trip and made a nice contribution to our respective retirement funds.”

Tom paid special attention to the Ruthenium contaminated diamonds. He ran his analyzer over it again and picked one up. He got a feel for it even in microgravity. After replacing it in the sample container he said, "This one is weird. It's a lot denser than it looks."

Crash asked, "What could that mean?"

"I don't know", Tom said. "Minerals have a characteristic called specific gravity. That's what they are supposed to weigh per a given volume of the material. Even in microgravity I can tell this rock is heavier than it should be. Ready for another load?"

Danny said, "I'm not tired. Let's go get some more."

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