Chapter 38: Chapter #37: Things That Hide in the Cracks
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POV: Arthur Sinclair
Things started moving much faster from there. Within a couple of weeks, the Pangarans had chosen a world that was also out of the range of the Goa'uld and immediately started mass-scale construction.
They quickly decided on disassembling the Ha'tak, and when we started explaining how the Ha'tak's primary reactor worked, they began planning to use the ship's main reactor to power their city.
It was a genius use of available resources, especially when those resources would have gone to waste otherwise. The Elders quickly decided to donate the Ha'tak Reactor that was sitting on Zeus' vacation fortress to Kaelastrum to be used as a primary reactor.
About a month after the attack on Pangar, a team lead by Ma'chello and myself began the work of attempting to Retrofit a Death Glider's Gravitic Pusher onto a Raptor.
The work began by cutting out the Raptor's main reactor and thrusters. Over the course of three weeks, we replaced the reactor with a pair of two Death Glider Reactors. On the outside of the ship – one on each side, and one on the top – we attached the gravitic pushers that had been removed from the Death Glider.
The whole thing was jury rigged to hell and back, but I had an intimate understanding of the technology by this point and getting the systems to work wasn't too difficult.
Whatever the thing lost in appearance, it more than made up for in capability. It flew for the first time exactly three weeks after the project began, and it flew like a bat out of hell. Raptors already had grav plating and inertial dampening tech, so the pilots didn't have to worry about blacking out. In straight out flight, the ship pulled almost 30Gs of acceleration.
That wasn't really the point of the project though. It was an attempt to combine colonial and Goa'uld tech into a single cohesive object. Our first actual project was reasonable. Our second one was not.
We would be designing a fighter-craft from scratch. One capable of equipping a Cloaking Device, a Hyperdrive (from a Tel-tak, we didn't want to risk building a new hyperdrive), a JumpDrive, and being stuffed full of as much ordinance as we could manage. All the while also being capable of fitting through a Stargate.
All together, we expected the project to take at least three years. We would need to build the colonial drive from scratch, and we hoped to be able to start producing Star League naval weaponry from scratch as well.
The main armament we expected to start using, however, were missiles. Taking advantage of the Gravitic Pusher tech, we had theorized that we could get missiles that had acceleration in the thousands of Gs, though that would mean burning out the pushers and making them unusable without significant refurbishment.
If we could start mass producing such missiles, any warship in the Inner Sphere would be completely at our mercy. Though that was still a ways off.
While the Gravitic Pushers were definitely among the simpler pieces of Goa'uld tech that we had come across, it was still very advanced. We had yet to get a proper source of Naquadah for any of our projects, which meant that we were relying on Goa'uld leftovers until we did.
It wasn't just Naquadah we were missing. Germanium, Titanium, Tylium, we totally lacked access to a massive quantity of elements. Luckily, we had access to industrial quantities of Iron and Steel, but that wouldn't last for long either.
Dendred was preparing to start evacuating as well, and we needed to start rebuilding our entire Steel industry from scratch. So, after the completion of the Raptor project, I got to work on designing an advanced harvesting device.
I originally planned to design something that would work on planetary bodies. It was Elder Callum who pointed out that we could just do asteroid mining. It was even easier now that we had access to Miniaturized Jump Drives.
The DoME had spent significant time researching ways to transport materials from one system to another. That research had resulted in the creation of a modified version of the Ryan Maneuver used by Rudolph Ryan and the Ryan Ice Cartel during the age of the Terran Alliance.
The original patent from Rudolph Ryan was for a formation of 16 jumpships; at the center of this formation, an eight cubic kilometer square chunk of material. When all the ships jumped in unison, the chunk of material would be taken along with the jump.
A DoME research team had gone back to the drawing board and generalized the equations behind the Ryan Maneuver. What they discovered was a collection of several hundred maneuvers. Their best option was what they called the Meinhardt Maneuver that was capable of taking a 28 cubic kilometer chunk of material, with a total of 10 jumpships, a significant improvement on the Ryan Maneuver.
That wasn't what we were interested in though. Many of the theoretical outcomes had been dismissed due to requiring a distance less than 25 kilometers between Jumpships, something that would have caused the destruction of both vessels.
That wasn't an issue for a colonial drive. With that in mind, we started searching for the best possible variant of the maneuver. What we found was the mathematically optimal solution to the equations. It required just six jump-capable ships, and could move anything within an area of 216 cubic kilometers.
So, I spent a month designing a zero-g harvesting rig that would be capable of autonomous harvesting of any piece of space rock.
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POV: Arthur Sinclair. Day after completion of initial harvester prototype.
Egeria sat on the other side of the round table. "I have become aware that the Lucian Syndicate is still active."
Elder James raised an eyebrow. "Still active?"
She nodded. "The System Lords responsible for administering Lucia – Uranus and Gaia – are survivors from the First Goa'uld Empire. I don't know why, but Ra seems perfectly happy to ignore the things that occur in their world."
Ma'chello raised an eyebrow. "So why bring this up?"
Egeria continued. "The Lucian Syndicate had contact with some precursor civilizations that survived Ra's rise. I never cared to contact them, but I believe you would be interested in this knowledge."
Everyone at the table immediately narrowed their eyes at her. Elder James was the first to speak. "Do you know anything about this precursor?"
She shook her head. "Nothing. I know that some faction sold something to the Lucians. Whatever that thing was, it ensured that Ra has ignored the Lucians for at least 20,000 years."
The Elders all looked between each other. "We need to make contact then."
Everyone nodded in agreement. Elder James turned to Egeria. "Thank you for bringing this to our attention."
Egeria nodded. Then Elder James turned to me. "Arthur, from now on you will be participating in combat training. At least two hours every day. You will also be taking the next week off."
I was flabbergasted. The change in subject had come completely out of nowhere. "Elder, I can't there's still so…"
Ma'chello cut me off. "Arthur, you're working even harder than I am. You look exhausted, and you've barely slept for the past two weeks."
Elder James nodded. "End of discussion."
I gaped at the people at the table like a fish. It quickly became obvious that they weren't going to take no for an answer. I swallowed and nodded. "I understand."
From there, the topic of the meeting returned to current material reports, as well as the status of the Pangaran Exodus.
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Two Days Later.
My break did not last. Just two days later all of us were gathered on the bridge of the Cobalt Eye.
As we all settled into the Zero-G environment, the AI began. "This Star System disappeared from all records approximately 500,000 years ago."
It showed us the recording. "One cycle it was there, the next it was not. Before disappearing, this section of space underwent a sudden, but very slight dimming."
Next, it started showing the movements of all the nearby star systems. "As you will see here, several stars that approach this empty section of space seem to experience unexplainable changes in momentum."
Just as it said, it brought up the expected velocities of the stars from previous recordings as well as the previously calculated velocities. Then it displayed their velocities as they travelled near a seemingly blank section of space.
It continued. "When comparing the expected stellar-patterns to those provided by Zeus' records, we see that they are an almost perfect match at a point approximately 599,000 years ago."
Arktos raised an eyebrow. "So what happened to this star?"
The AI continued. "As shown by the effect on nearby stars, it is still there. However, all light from the star is somehow being prevented from leaving."
Elder James was seemingly stunned. "How is such a thing possible?"
Just as flabbergasted, I shrugged. "It's gotta be some sort of Dyson Sphere."
Ma'chello spoke to the AI. "Well, how far away is it?"
"It is approximately 3220 Light Years away from our present location," it responded.
I nodded excitedly. "Further away than we were hoping, but definitely closer than I was expecting. We can have a ship there in just a month."
Elder James tapped his fingers beside one of the terminals. "Arthur, what's the fastest you could recharge a Jump Drive assuming we equipped the Manassas and the Cobalt Eye with Goa'uld reactors?"
I had spent some time looking into the subject with the Manassas' Engineers. "Fastest recharge from scratch would be maybe a day and a half, but we'd have to keep it to three days. You could maybe do it in two days, but it would almost certainly burn out the drive after just ten or twenty jumps."
He nodded. "And how fast could the Manassas and the Cobalt Eye get to that world with that sort of speed?"
The AI replied instantly. "Approximately 242 days for the SLS Manassas. Approximately 322 days for the SLS Cobalt Eye."
The Elder rubbed his chin. "Something to consider later then."
He turned to Arktos. "Are you willing to lend us some more ships to check it out?"
Arktos smiled. "Absolutely. I'll plan to send Six Al'kesh. I assume you all will be participating as well."
Everyone smiled. Everyone went to bed motivated that night. The next day, the teams were dispatched. It would be approximately 36 days before they arrived at their destination. The plan was for them to continue for that entire time. It would be hard on everyone involved, but all those sent on the mission were too excited to take any interest in stopping.
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Five days later, my week-long break came to an end. I couldn't deny that finally taking some time off had done wonders for everything. The first three days, I slept basically all day. After that I started rejoining the other kids my age in their regularly scheduled physical education and combat drills.
I hadn't joined them in several months now, and I had gotten both rusty and out of shape. Nonetheless, the feeling of improvement was wonderful, and the knowledge that I was developing my combat skills was exhilarating.
We weren't in a race against time at the moment. So, from that point forward, at least two hours every day would be spent on combat training, just as the Elder had commanded.
Next was something I had promised several months earlier. The first day after my break was over, I took the Stargate to Dendred where I took a flight on a Tel'tak out to Deimos.
The news wasn't great. While the ship was mostly intact, the damage was more significant than initially believed. The Jump Spinners had been damaged in the ramming, and while the Phobos class carried the supplies to make repairs it was still another few weeks away from completion.
That wasn't why I was here, and I had no doubt that I would just get in the way of any work that was done. I found my way to Deimos' computer core where Echo was already waiting for me.
"Hello." I spoke in a rather stunted Caprican. During my work on retrofitting the Raptor, I had been forced to start learning the language, alongside the Dendredan lower tongue, both of which were languages that seemed to have split off from Ancient Greek and shared a significant number of words in common.
The only display in the room provided my response. "Hello. We are ready to begin."
I smiled and nodded. "Alright then. Would it be alright if I connected both of you at once?"
"That is acceptable," came the expected reply from the monitor.
"Alright then." I immediately got to work. Proper Star League to Colonial ports had already been created and had been prepared. From my bag I pulled three separate noteputors and I hooked them together.
Next I connected both Deimos and Echo up to the device. From there, I pulled up the program that I had spent literally weeks working on. This was what had taken so long to complete.
I was unfortunately a workaholic, and with so few projects to work on, I had spent at least six hours every day of my break finishing up this code. The fact that the Cobalt Eye now had excess computational room for running tests was also a large help.
So, I pulled up the base code and began marking the parts that I would have to rewrite. I had the entire piece memorized already, so knowing what needed to be worked on wasn't that difficult.
Then I spotted something that wasn't supposed to be there. A small piece of code, specially designed to infiltrate Cylon systems, that was very much not a part of the Zoe Graystone Engram.
Even worse, it was similar to something else I had seen recently. Without saying a word, I began isolating the code just as I had done with the Cybrex systems. Luckily for me, the Cylon systems were still active and I could just disconnect a piece of ram that had the code running on it.
Just like that, my first perk activated.
First Perk Activated. Complete Knowledge: Contingency Omega Protocol (Cylon)
I took a deep breath. It was a good thing that I hadn't said anything to either Echo or Deimos. The program was currently inactive, but if anything about it was discovered by the computers it was implanted in, then it would attempt to destroy those records.
Best case in such a scenario, Echo and Deimos would both short out on the spot. Worst case, they would try to kill me.
I knew what to do from here. The code was specially designed just for the Cylon AI. Modifying the code so that it would no longer be capable of infecting a Cylon required relatively little change, and I was already making changes to the code base.
So, I continued with my work, removing certain limiters, or modifying certain others, and adding some other security into the systems.
It took only four hours to make all the necessary changes; not all that surprising since I had spent a lot of time in the past couple of months building the tools necessary to make those changes.
Finally lifting my hands from the keyboard, I cracked my knuckles and stretched my back. "Alright. I'm finished. Who wants to go first?"
The Display began. "Echo will go first."
I nodded, and with the press of a button, a software update was provided to the Centurion. With a locking noise, the Centurions limbs locked into place to prevent damage and the monoeye powered down as the update began. Less than ten seconds later, the monoeye came back online and the limbs unlocked.
I nodded and turned to the display. "Are you ready?"
There was nothing for several moments, before an almost hesitant "yes." was the reply.
Once more, I hit the enter key. The room began to shut down. This time an entire minute passed before the sound of flowing coolant returned and the display came on once more.
Before anything was said, I began. "Alright, I need you both to isolate this piece of code and delete it. Completely." I showed them my display which was covered in the assembly code for the Contingency program.
Both Echo and Deimos seemed confused for a moment; then silence engulfed the room as I waited for a reply.