DUALITY: The World of Lies (16 page)

“Shield Graze!” she agreed. “Kinny, how many
mobile engine thrusters do we have access to?”

“Commander, most have already been expelled
from the shield ring when the thermal seepage rose to levels that
threatened an anti-matter containment breach. We currently have 3
available to launch, and another 4 that are currently inaccessible
but could be transported to online launch ports in the next 20
minutes.”

“Soft-launch what's available and have those
mobile thrusters and all 5 nearprobes configured to enter the
sphere's field the moment our shields make contact.”

“Aye, Commander. Proposed shield graze course
on display.”

“Accept. Proceed at once!” she
ordered.

“As she says,” confirmed Aru. “Authorize full
all-systems authority to the Commander.”

“Aye, Captain.”

“Mei, get in the shock chamber.”

“Aye, Captain. You too,” she agreed. The shock
chambers were secured pods that protected a human from sudden
g-force acceleration, vibrational shock, radiation, electrical
discharges, and the like.

She stepped into the tall gray pod and let its
soft cushiony innards firmly envelope her. She still had a small
display window, ship control, and communications.

The Kinetic’s thrusters burned and they
hurtled themselves at a tangential angle that would cause both
bodies' respective inner layer force-shields to graze one another.
They could expect a mighty discharge. It came fast. The pod stayed
powered but the display died. She spent a minute in lonely silence,
until the pod opened and released her.

Mei bolted out of it and back to her station.
“Kinny, report!”

The holograph came back online and replayed
the maneuver for them. Again a tremendous flash filled the display
at the moment of impact. The Kinetic was treated to a massive power
surge that had momentarily overloaded 40% of the ship's systems,
many of which had still to come back online.

The central holograph sprang back to life with
a full rendering of the sphere. Eight new points within its
force-shield were highlighted.

“All probes and mobile thrusters successfully
passed between the fields. They are reporting back and functioning
normally,” System reported.

“Land 'em dammit. Get that surface materia
analyzed!” she ordered.

“Aye, Commander.”

The probes gently dotted their way over the
sphere's surface and set about their work.

“Initial analysis of surface material
composition,” began System, “shows an unknown substance of hereto
unknown composition. Fractal crystalline structure composed of
iron, carbon, borate polymers, gold, and xenon at the core of the
crystal. There is no known way to bond the elements in the
configuration we're seeing by any known process of transmutation or
nuclear fusion. The crystal fractals to 6 orders...”

“What does that mean?” Aru
interrupted.

“It means that the shape of the crystal is
repeated 6 times over as the observer zooms in
microscopically.”

To illustrate, System displayed an animation
of a large crystal, which when zoomed in on, was shown to be
composed of smaller identical crystals, and so on for six
iterations.

“Can we drill it?” he asked.

“This materia appears to be impervious to heat
and radiation. Its dense cohesive structure is extremely hard and
probably could not be penetrated by any conventional drill or laser
outfitted on the nearprobes.”

Mei didn't want to waste any more time with
analysis. “Run the drills, everything they've got. And let's see if
we can magnetically anchor those mobile thrusters to the sphere,
all three, evenly spaced along the equator.”

“Aye, Commander.”

“What are the thrusters for?” Aru asked
her.

She pretended not to know exactly. “I just
wanted to see if we could budge it, I guess. And maybe get some
sense of its mass.”

“Do you mean fly it out of the corona
alongside us?”

That had in fact been her thinking, but she'd
been too embarrassed to directly suggest such a far-fetched idea.
In retrospect though, she decided it didn't matter at this point.
Far-fetched ideas ought just be dumped right on the table in this
abject void of practical solutions.

“That might just work if we could secure
enough engine thrusters to bring it up to escape velocity if we
anchor them in somehow... God knows, that sphere is better shielded
than we are.“

That was it! Aru's comment made something
click into place in her mind. They were going about this all wrong.
The solution... it was the most radical idea she'd ever had for a
space operation, but it might just be their only hope.

“System, any luck on those drills or
thrusters?”

“Negative Commander. The drills are wearing
out with no sign of penetration. A trial burn of one of the
magnetically anchored thrusters shows it slide along the orb
causing a small precess of the axis but no change in the sphere's
vector.”

“We're going about this all wrong,” she told
Aru, then addressed System, “Kinny, give me an interactive
macro-mechanical diagram of the Kinetic on holograph.”

“Aye, Commander.”

The Kinetic, was at its simplest, a wheel. It
had a hub and five widening spokes that extended out to the inner
ring of the ship.

“Superimpose the sphere over the Kinetic to
scale,” she ordered.

The sphere image appeared to the fore of the
Kinetic's, but not in the configuration she imagined. She pulled
the sphere directly to the center of the Kinetic overlaying the hub
and about 2/3rds of each spoke.

Aru saw where she was going with this. “Those
hub spokes are segmented. System, show us the blowpoints on the
spoke segments.”

A number of markings running up the length of
the spokes popped onto the display. She highlighted a ring of
blowpoints that ran more or less flush to sphere's circumference.
The idea of segments and blowpoints was to prevent a physical
collision from sending the ship careening off, not to expel the
entire hub.

Aru told her more of what she already knew.
“Those spokes are not just structural, they are energy conduits to
the hub, the same hub that our polar energy jet runs through and
serves as the capacitor that generates our force-shield, and which
can't be generated without it. So what are you thinking here
exactly?”

“I don't know, Aru! I'm figuring this out as
we go. I guess I'm thinking we align our poles with the sphere and
do a full thrust shield ram into its field.”

“We won't survive the discharge. You saw how
that first probe vaporized.”

“Yes, but this is the Kinetic. We can absorb a
charge.” Mei thought a moment, then it hit her. “Aru, you mentioned
how the hub is a capacitor, yes?”

He read her mind, or maybe even got a step
ahead of it, and pulled up the wide view that showed the sphere's
force-field and the plasma cable that ran into it from the
photosphere.

“We don't just expel the hub; we attach the
mobile engine thrusters to it and fly it into position over the
plasma cable, to absorb the incoming power,” he said.

“Kinny, how long would our hub, if removed and
relocated to this position, cut off incoming power to the
sphere?”

“Unknown, Commander. I would estimate seven
minutes at most. I strongly suggest you do not expel the hub and
leave the Kinetic unshielded in this environment. The thermal
registers of the inner ring are already reading...”

“Shut up Kinny,” she said.

“Aye, Commander.”

She looked at Aru. He nodded and said, “We
integrate the sphere into the ship as our new hub and shield
generator.”

“You said it yourself: that thing is better
shielded than we are.”

Of course there was no guarantee they could
supply power to it or that it would work in that capacity at all.
And even if they cut off the power source, the sphere surely had a
tremendous capacitance of it own to discharge upon them. “Ok, let's
do this! Kinny, soft-launch the remaining mobile thrusters and
attach them to the hub below the blow points. Blow the hub and fly
it into position over the plasma cable. Bring the Kinetic into
polar alignment with the sphere and thrust her through the
force-shield the moment that cable is cut. Proceed at
once.”

“Aye, Commander.”

“Shock chambers!” Aru reminded her. She hugged
him hastily then nestled back into her quiet cocoon.

The pod was so cozy it gave her a false sense
of security. Kinny had the orders, and now it was just a matter of
seeing how this audacious scheme played out. The Kinetic's
electrics were going down for certain; as they would be receiving
ten times the discharge they took during the graze. So there would
be no communication or readings, just quiet waiting. This would
either work or go horribly, horribly wrong. If she were still
breathing 8 minutes from now, she would know, and if she were fried
into a black-charred crisp, she'd wouldn't.

Displays were still online. She saw the hub
break off but could not feel the vibration of it from the
stabilized shock chamber. She commed Aru. “Shields are down now
huh?”

He commed back. “This inner hull... it's
tougher than System realizes. You know that. We've flown this ship
together for over a decade.”

“The best years of my life, you scoundrel!”
she chided.

“Mine too, Mei. And I hope many more...” Aru's
com cut out. Displays cut out. Even the lights went out.

Mei was left alone with only her heat beat to
keep her company for 7 long torturous minutes. Her mind raced back
to the Arathian nation of Tropica where she was born and raised:
her school days, her martial arts instructors, her dear sweet wise
master. How could he have dared to send her, his precious darling
he had bounced upon his knee, into this mission, to place her in
such peril? This had to be of the utmost importance to them. She
knew one thing for certain: the reward she had in store for herself
would be well worth the risk. If one’s master held such power it
naturally followed that his disciple should inherit it, when her
time came.

It would mean the end of her and Aru. She felt
badly about that. She knew he loved her more than his House or even
his career. She, in turn, loved him deeply as well, especially now,
after all this. She always would, forever. She had from the moment
she had set foot on this ship to serve as navigator, and then as
first officer under the brave, intrepid, and very handsome Captain
Psyron... It was a magic love, star-crossed and eternal. The future
though, should it continue on for them, had other plans. Change was
inevitable as they each moved forward along their destined paths,
and hers was first and foremost the path to power. If only he could
see his own life that way, things could be....

The pod door popped opened. She starred
blankly out into the bridge for a moment, then literally jumped out
and sprinted to the main holograph.

Aru emerged wide eyed, looking about as if he
needed to remind himself he still existed. He smiled broadly and
joined her at the station.

“Kinny? Kinny!” she called out. There was no
holograph on display, the whole chamber seemed dead as a rock, but
the lighting was on. That was something at least.

“System! System, respond!” Aru yelled out,
only to hear his voice eerily echo from the bridge chamber
walls.

“So....” she began, “we're not dead then,
right?”

“Right,” he agreed “at least… well, I'm still
not entirely sure. But assuming we aren't, that means we made it
into the sphere's force shield and presumably are now encompassed
within it.”

“We're going to need to anchor into it somehow
to get out of here, you realize?” she said. It was a rather obvious
obstacle, but they hadn't gotten that far in their improvised plans
before carrying them out.

Aru seemed confident. “We can use an
accelerated ion drill generated from the ships main circuit if
System can fashion up a head for it. I don't care what kind of
composition that material is, it can't hold out to that. All we
need is a shallow anchor, a centimeter even, joined to the five
spoke stubs.”

Mei nodded, that sounded right.
“KINNYYYYYYYYYYYY!!!!!!!!” she yelled at the top of her lungs. It
seemed to do trick. The consoles re-lit and the holograph started
flickering.

System's voice sounded broken and off. It let
off a series of screechy machines noises through the com system,
then began to normalize.

“C-C-Captain, Commander. I am back online. The
overload shut down everything. Ship's systems will require several
more minutes to fully reconstitute.”

“Get the holograph up!” Aru
commanded.

“Negative, Captain. Holograph is still
offline. I can tell you that we are in position around the sphere.
The capacitor, our ejected hub, is still absorbing the current from
the photosphere. I cannot predict how long it will hold
out.”