The Teragoid Incident

"Chief, wake up... Chief," hissed a voice.

"God dammit," said Perez in a soft dangerous tone, "I just now got to sleep, just!"

"I know, Chief, but the OOD (Officer of the Day) wants you in Control, right now. He says there something wrong with your detector mod. He says you need to get up there right way"

"What detector mod, I didn't mod any... oh ... the ... wait, who is it?" asked Perez.

"Reagan."

"Oh, naturally. That moron. Jeebus... And if I kill you, then he'll just send someone else," said Perez, "Oh. Yeah. Pearly; don't EVER OPEN my curtain again," said Perez.

"Sorry, Chief," said Seaman Apprentice George Percival Lee, un-apologetically.

Perez blinked his eyes and the sand poured out on his cheeks.

Chief Petty Officer Randall Albert Perez , ETC/[SPC, EVA, SO] (Electronics Technician Chief/ Space qualified, Extra-Vehicular qualified, Special Operations qualified) slid open the curtain (it's just called a curtain, it's a sliding sound isolation panel) the rest of the way and dropped out of the top rack, reached in and grabbed his boots, wiping his face with the towel hanging in the C-clamp on the side. Perez shrugged on his uniform tunic and tightened the belt, put his boots over his shoulder, and staggered off to face his nemesis.

This outpost, number 127a, a small simple toroid (donut) and spindle station hung out on the edge of the Vega Cluster, about 150 light years from Terra. The station was essentially a research, weather and rescue installation to provide support to the anti-piracy patrols and scouting groups of light attack craft patrolling the sector. It was a pretty simple design: living quarters, workshops, mess, life-support on the toroid, and control, docking, engineering support, shields and minimal defense weaponry on the spindle. The drive unit detached and connected to a bulk storage unit for supply runs. Crew space was in the outermost deck of the donut, with crew berthing for the most part just being boxes stacked and bolted to the deck like LEGOs. The ring and ring connector rotated, enough to give some angular momentum to the ship/station, and to take some of the load off the artificial gravitic unit.

Outpost 127a is typical space station designed in science fiction in the 1930's and saved for posterity, just bigger. They all look the same. It had auxiliary propulsion units for position control and station keeping. It had some shields for meteorite protection. It had docking bays in the center hub, warehouses, elevators, living quarters. This outpost was oriented perpendicular to the galactic ecliptic plane. It had 4 emergence buoys along the ecliptic, equidistant at 15 light minutes. The nearest sun was some 2 light years away, an empty single sun system, no planets and a bunch of asteroids and rocks. There existed some common interstellar planetary bodies and other gases and junk around, unexplored. The station sat near a rogue planet (near being a misleading term in space) and far away from larger masses. The planet served to block approaches from a small arc, so that local traffic could be unobstructed.

Perez climbed into the inward spindle and reoriented inward, head towards the center station up and climbed up, getting lighter with every foot. After about 50 feet, he reached the transfer platform and swung into it, bare feet hitting the deck right on the mark. He stepped off into the spindle and grunted when the T+.1-normal gravity took hold. He leaned over and put his socks and boots on, and tightened the laces, then started through the airlock.

Mumble, mumble, grumble, buzz headed Zero ( a common derogatory description for officers, because the pay-grade starts with O, or zero) the Chief groused to himself. "Idiot."

The surly sailor climbed on the elevator cart, ensured the gimbals were locked in station mode and pulled the handle to traverse to Control Level. The station was almost a kilometer in length, and the transit cart took about 2 minutes to get the whole way, though there were no interruptions, it being way too early in the station's 'day' for incidental traffic. The normal mission complement was only 160 or so sailors, plus several SAR (Search and Rescue) , supply and ferry crews which nearly outnumbered the formal complement, but who were gone most of the time to more wonderful places. The drive unlocked and mag-braked to a halt at the Operations level in the saucer where Perez got off the cart and headed to the stations' Bridge, still grumbling like a bear awoken by tourists in the winter.

Irritably scratching his head, he reached out and whacked the bridge entrance requester and said, "Perez, as ordered."

"Thank you, one moment," said the Bridge AI computer.

He suppressed the impulse to give the AI a rousing middle finger, because the system would cheerfully record him and forward the picture to the OOD (Officer of the Deck). Perez was convinced that all the AI's hated him. The AI beeped twice and opened the seal and slid the door aside in a Roddenberrian maneuver. Perez stepped onto the Bridge, slicked his hair back, straightened his tunic and said flatly, "CPO Perez reporting as ordered, "pause, "... requesting permission to enter."

"Enter," said the OOD. He was standing over to the left of the Conn and looking at the mid-range detector display. Essentially it looked like a big computer monitor with a bunch of speckles on it (which is exactly what it was). Perez looked around at the status displays and stared hard for about thirty seconds at the drive status, which was "Hot Standby" per normal. This meant the fusion reactor was powering the station, the drive coils energized, and the system was switching between port and starboard auxiliary propulsion system in station-keeping mode every hour as required. This enabled the station to move out of the way of any moving objects or move position as necessary. Lt. Reagan was a short, dark, jumpy little man with a pencil mustache and a rumpled uniform (with the appropriate coffee stain), he looked exactly like the evil comic screen villain he was. The Lt. glared at Perez as he walked into control.

"What's the problem, Lt. Reagan? Why did you drag me back up here," Perez said.

Reagan was staring malevolently at the Chief from the moment he walked on the bridge. "You farked up my detector system with your stupid modifications, and I'm going to have your ass for this."

The verbal assault stopped the CPO cold. Perez blinked, stunned for a moment, and said, "Are you sure you don't want to do this in private... sir."

"No. You humiliated me in public, Chief, and now I'm going to bury your ass, in public," said Reagan.

"I didn't humiliate you, Lieutenant, I needed to get work done and you were obstructing for no reason. You tried to prevent the installation of an approved, planned alteration in the Engineering Dept, and you had no grounds to stop me. The ship was not in danger, you didn't have conflicting maintenance already approved. I just went to the Engineer like I'm supposed to," said Perez.

"That's insubordination, Chief! Your continual obstruction is finally going to be punished," said Reagan.

Perez took a breath and thought about it. Something was wrong here. There's no way that the little guy should be getting this worked up over something that was his own fault. A normal junior officer inclination is to bury the mistakes and help the middle management get things going again.

"You do realize... sir... that you are being recorded. For the record, I didn't touch the detectors, so... " Perez informed the Lt., "are you charging me with something? Accusing me of something?"

"Yes... so you said. I am putting you on report for malicious destruction of Navy Equipment, and I'm going to make you eat it," said the Lt.

"And this is because I called you out for not reading the day report? Last week?"

"No, this is because you broke the stations sensor safety net with your illegal modifications, and I can prove it."

Perez looked over at the Immergence Officer of the Watch, MCPO Joseph Muschivck, an impossibly spelled name for a big burly man. On station-keeping the IOW ran Control, while the OOD ran the station. He was the senior enlisted engineering crew member, and Perez's immediate boss. "Did you know about this," Perez asked quietly.

"Nope. Little shrimp cooked this one up on his own. Besides, I wouldn't do that to you and you know it. We had a problem, we'd settle it the right way. In any event, you only finished the shielding two hours ago," the Master Chief answered just as quietly.

"Yeah, that's what I thought," said Perez. He looked over at the Lt. and raised an eyebrow (he only had the one, over both eyes).

"Okay, so you're putting me on report. As a CPO (Chief Petty Officer, they are appointed by the Galactic Congress, not the military so a local Commander cannot remove rank or pay). Okay, now what," he asked.

"You are relieved of all duties and confined to quarters pending your hearing. I've talked to the C.O. and it will be later today."

"Later today..." asked Perez. "How did you manage that? There's supposed to be an investigation, a review, and after that a hearing."

"Because of the severity of your offense, and the dire threat to the station, I asked him to speed up the hearing," said Reagan, twirling his non-existent mustache and chuckling evilly, like an awful comic book character. He looked at the IOW, "Master Chief, if you please."

The Master Chief looked over at Reagan and said flatly, "You have the Deck and the Conn. I will escort him back down below. I'll call the COB (Chief of the Boat, the senior enlisted member on the crew) have him come up here and spell me. This might take a few minutes." He turned to Perez and said, "Let's go, Randy."

They turned and left the Bridge, heading out towards the spindle transit. After the Bridge blast door closed behind them, Perez turned to the MCPO and said, "Okay, what the hell is this all about."

"It's not your problem. Reagan is my problem and I should have taken care of that little shit a year ago. Just go to the hearing this afternoon and tell what you did. I'm really tired of his crap."

"You set him up," said Perez.

"Nope. I might... have planned what to do if the idiot stepped in it, though. It's hard to get rid of an officer no matter how big a moron he is."

"No telling tales, Joe. Perez still has his innocence," said the COB from behind them. MCPO Makena wa Wamamere was standing outside the bridge doors as if waiting for them. Wamere was tall, beyond tall, dark skinned. When you looked straight at him, you heard the cries of scared lions running away.

"Hey now, Ken, he needs to learn how this all works sometimes, and I need to get him working on the real problem," said Joe.

"Aye that. I'll take care of the shrimp. Anything else I need to know," asked Ken.

"Other than the stuff we talked about already; no," said Joe.

"I relieve you," said Ken.

"I stand relieved," said Joe. Ken turned and hit the Bridge entry button and the portal slid aside immediately. The Chief of the Boat, as the senior enlisted member, has immediate access to all areas of the ship, even or maybe especially in station-keeping mode.

They got on the transit elevator and the Master Chief spoke to the AI, something Perez hated to do, "Auxiliary Control."

"Auxiliary Control, aye," said the transit AI.

"Why are we going to Auxiliary Control," asked Perez.

"Your detector mod had some unexpected consequences," said Muschivck.

"It's not a detector mod," said Perez.

"I know that, I read your proposal. That's what the CO called it, so that's what I'm calling it."

"Okay, Sally and I figured that the detection system would be affected, but what are these consequences," asked Perez. Sally was Perez's PIM.

"Wait till you see it. Then you tell me. I would have preferred to do this on the Bridge, but then Dr. Evil would have annoyed us to the point where we couldn't do anything."

Perez grunted, in a Navyish sort of way. They took the transit all the way down to the bottom of the central hub, where a smaller saucer stuck out like the bottom of a baby's rattle. The aft Auxiliary Control entrance was right off the elevator.

The master chief looked at the door and said, "Muschivck. Open."

"Open, aye," said the door and it slid itself aside. They both traversed the locks, and Perez called out, "Request permission to enter Aux."

Auxiliary Control was the emergency Bridge, damage control central, and the most protected part of the station. It was pretty much guaranteed to survive any accident or attack within reason. With the shields up, it was nigh invulnerable, with its own small fusion plant and backup battery system. The detectors displayed on the Bridge were actually down here, and repeated up there.

"Granted," said MCPO Oscar Takeashi, a big blond Irishman with a thick brogue. "You'll be a lookin at mah screens here now?"

"I didn't touch your screens, Oscar," said Perez.

"Ah know that. But since you ah be the best electronics guy within 20 light years, Ah expect you can help me," said Takeashi.

"Did you know your brogue fades away when you get serious, Master Chief, and I'm the only electronics guy within 20 light years" asked Perez.

"Hey now," said PO1 Grahame, ET1 (SPA/EVA), a navigation systems electronics technician.

"Micro-board replacement techs don't count," said Perez.

"See? My ancestors will have at thee, heathen, look at the screens and help us figure this out," said Takeashi.

Perez looked at the screens. They were the same as on the Bridge, empty local contacts except for the local traffic, and blue ghosting around the outside of the 3Display. The flat panel repeater on the wall showed a similar effect.

"Did you read my proposal, Master Chief," asked Perez.

"And I did," said Takeashi

"As did I," said Muschivck.

Perez turned and raised his voice as if speaking to the intercom, "Sally, wake up. Everybody, just a minute please. I'd really rather only explain this once."

"Ready," said the AI PIM on his belt. The AuxCon Bridge crew got up and crowded around the detector display. Takeashi looked over at Perez, "Get on wit it, laddie."

"Sally, record. Okay Master Chief, here goes," said Perez.

"Acknowledged. Beginning recording."

Perez began, "As all of you know, yesterday (this morning, really), I and the other members of the RC division completed a formal experiment with Navy approval. We installed some new nano-refractive type shielding around both Fusion One and Two, as well as the backup power installation and the power conduit. It took us awhile, a couple of weeks, but the goal was to reduce the fast neutrino flux generated from the fusion reactions and power transfers, in order to see if control was easier, and monitoring and power generation more efficient. As a side effect it should have also increased the signal to noise in the detector receptor circuits, by reducing the locally generated subspace flux noise. The shielding circuit closed on both power plants last night at 0330 or so. This means that the immergence antenna array will be able to resolve subspace signatures from about 1/3 again as far. I haven't as yet looked at the control instruments in Fusion One and Two, but it seems like the foam is working."

Perez walked over to the wall behind the detector display and put his PIM in the slot and pushed a couple of buttons. A panel folded inward revealing some nano-circuit cards, a chassis and several condenser units for cooling.

"Sally, show yesterday's baseline hash noise level for 24 hours ending at 3am"

Sally blinked the screen twice and put up a 2D screen on the detector display with a more or less horizontal line across about half the screen.

"Sally, overlay today's detection in red, starting at 0300 this morning."

Sally blinked twice again, and put a red curtain about halfway up the previous line.

"Sally, connect to the AuxCon display alignment check. Re-align the screen display to show... no ... to encompass the new prospective maximum range, and recalculate to the logarithmic scale." Perez said, "And it should be meaningful to us primitive apes."

Sally blinked the screen twice.

He looked up, "It looks like the shielding is working better than estimated, and it has some silly feedback effect of making the systems about 3 percent more efficient by reflecting the lost energy right back into the magnetic bottle. If you are going to ask me how that's possible, I don't know, but because Dr. Ching thought this was theoretically possible, I can tell you what's going on: those blue dots and speckling were edge ghosting from the display AI, to tell the watchstander that there are contacts just out of display range. You folks don't see this often because space is very empty here, and there are no outside sources of noise to limit the resolving range. We about doubled the effective range of the system. The logs should show contacts resolved out of display range. The why of this isn't really my field...

Sally and I tried to create a baseline estimation of a 20% improvement and install that in the analysis system, but it looks like we got about an 80% improvement between the power reduction and the noise reduction. So... it works too well for the system to display the outer contacts because the area covered is too large and distorts the inner system volume because it's not quite square. Whoops. But we installed the new analysis routines in the detector repeater three weeks ago and tested them against the noise levels at the time. We made no changes to the system last night, and that was the problem. I finished growing the shielding and went to bed. I figured the follow up and side effects could wait a shift. I stole the ghosting routine from the hi-res display of the Space Traffic Control system at the Terra Major station on Luna. It resolves like that. I figured the training might be less. "

"So you doubled the effective range of the detector system? Holy crap!" said Takaeshi.

"Not quite doubled, about 160%. Not only me. I was one of a team of folks that came up with this stupid plan," said Perez.

"That's not really the point here, " said Muschivck, " the point is: what are the contacts."

"Ships," said Perez, "I mean, what else could they be? There's nothing else out here but rocks. What in nature besides suns can generate and leave fast neutrinos and long-lived entangled quarks around for the detector to detect? We know where all the suns are. Sally, analyze the logs for immergence depth and relative velocity. Create a spreadsheet and send it to the XO, the COB and the SEEA, keep a copy for us."

Sally blinked once.

"Oh, right, sorry," said Perez, "Just since 0300 this morning. Starting when Fusion One went online with the new shielding."

Sally blinked twice.

"But we're alone out here," said one of the Aux crew, a PO2 named Jason Bindini.

"No... Jason. I don't think so." said Perez, "Not alone at all.:

Perez looked at Muschivk and said, "Master Chief, do you want me so have Sally fix the Bridge display and analysis system as well? The Bridge system is a little different because it displays AI analysis as well as contact info. Reprogramming the Bridge AI is a little beyond me. It might take a couple of watches to get that right. That's more Barb's thing than mine."

"No, you've done enough for today, I think. You just probably saved our lives, developed a new detector system, realigned it, and been put on report for something that's gonna get you a commendation. Go back to bed. I'll call the Warrior, and the CO, and the ENG and let them know what's up, and you can sleep till your hearing at 1400. After that I think we're gonna have to have you... naw... never mind... we'll talk about it later. Just hit the rack, " said Muschivk, "Kenny can sit down with the rest of the Zeros and figure out what we might do."

Perez disconnected his PIM and went to bed.