IT DIDN'T LOOK LIKE A WEAPON. In fact it looked for all the universe like a black pineapple on its side with spiky leaves leading. It came at the Carrier dead-on and stopped precisely 55.55 motras from it. Small ballistic cannon targeted it, but to no effect. Larger pulse cannons targeted it, but again, it suffered not a scratch. A probe was sent to investigate it. At 54.55 motras from the object, the "pineapple" opened and fired a small glowing orange bullet that blew the probe to powder and impacted the hull of the Carrier, to burrow through as if it were a hot ash through paper.
Auto-repair closed the hole it made.
It chimed, once, a sound not heard in nearly 300 million years. Then the fist-sized slug began to spin, the chime winding in intensity the faster the slug spun.
When the sound became painful, it erupted in an unbelievable burst of impossibly-intense white light, so bright that witnesses claimed to be able to see through the ship as if it were transparent – discounting the fact that they weren't blind from the intensity, even though they weren't.
The light faded and took all other light with it.
The slug continued to spin and to chime.
The Carrier darkened.
All of it.
Every instrument, every generator, every light, switch, conduit feed, every mechanical part and even those things just swinging freely through random motion lost power. Not all of it. Just enough to render the mighty vessel functionally useless, but not enough to damage the crew.
It was a tribute to the professionalism of the crew that while everyone was startled and concerned, perhaps on some level frightened, there was no actual chaos, just the seeming chaos of a crew immediately setting out to determine the problem and seek solutions. A ship five kilometres long and three wide not counting Frag Cannon and tracks - and only a six-tenths of the normal complement even at half-power could survive a long while.
There were wormhole-shielded lockers with sensitive military equipment therein – the Peacekeeper versions of Night-vision goggles, weapons, emergency fusion cells. But they couldn't run a whole Carrier. When they were extracted from shielded areas, the device stole their energy as well.
There was a spot on the great ship that still had power, a room ringed with shunts based on wormhole tech, powered by generators churning with energies plucked from event horizons and exotic particles changed with ancient energies.
Deliberately isolated from the rest of the ship, they were not allowed to deviate from their tasks. Driven by one man's obsession and perhaps more than one, even in the midst of crisis they toiled on.
PROWLER PILOT OFFICER NERIDA DEMAN watched the Carrier go dark and snarled. A quick check of her trackers netted her a track to follow.
"Fifth Sector picket," she commed. "On me. Weapon track indicates origin 111 Dekka. Altering patrol to investigate."
Twelve affirmatives and she hit the throttle as her fellows fell in behind her.
Whatever had the temerity to attack a Peacekeeper Command Carrier was about to be rudely surprised.
IN THE LAB, JOHN HAD SURPRISED HIMSELF with the speed the thing was coming together. The techs around him were well-versed in, if not wormholes precisely, then the forces that shaped them, or prevented them, made them stable, made them erratic. Tech Captain Ereel was extremely knowledgeable but she was mostly attitude. Bad attitude.
"…it's because they tend to twist back on themselves." She was telling Tech Renaa. "Torsional stresses can impact…"
"With all due respect, Captain, it's not torsional stresses liquefying our pilots. The Prowlers never have a scratch."
"What do you think it is then?"
"It may be Ranthath Flux, or a variance in overcharged electron bursts…"
"Excuse me – what's this about?"
"That's classified." Renaa told him with a dismissive attitude that rankled him.
"'Liquefying pilots'." John fixed her with an annoyed gaze. "Tends to draw one's attention. You're talking about adverse effects on Prowler pilots inside wormholes, aren't you?"
Ereel gave him a condescending look of her own.
"It's irrelevant to your assigned task, Crichton."
John shrugged.
"If you say so. I've been in and out of them in my 'antiquated' ship and never had so much as a sniffle. But, hey – irrelevant, like you said." He wandered away.
"Well why then?"
"That's likely irrelevant to your assigned task." Crichton mimicked. "Not like I'm the resident wormhole expert or anything."
"Your understanding is very advanced," Ereel told him, trying to mollify him, having not really realized how her attitude came off. She doubted any Peacekeeper realized it. It was a natural as breathing to simply assume they were superior. "It is only a matter of terminology."
"No, no… you know better than I do. I honestly don't even know why Scorpius bothered to come all this way when I'm just this big walkin' pile of primitive irrelevancy." He pointed to his workstation, his tone reasonable. "I'll just wander over there and get back to picking fleas off myself, shall I?"
John walked away and returned to his machine, waved a tech aside and began fiddling with connections. Renaa and Ereel exchanged looked and a moment later realized what they'd done. The tech he'd shooed came back with a component and waited until he looked up.
"What?" He demanded of the man as the two head techs came into earshot.
"I had meant to ask… what is the purpose of this design?" He tasked, pointed to the machine dominating the centre of the room, to which they were both approaching. It was tall and cylindrical, with massive power shunts and generators on either side. It had an entrance and approximately eye-level claw-like protrusions pointed down. He pointed to the 'claws'.
"It's just an interface," John replied, speaking as if he was trying to reach a complete cretin, even though the majority of techs treated him with professional civility. "It's a mnemonic field receptacle with an energy pulse amp bent into a Mobius loop that generates a direct neural feed directly into your brain that should allow anyone direct control over the machine. Just think it and it happens." He smirked, spoke as if they were children. "Monkey juju. Too savage and unsophisticated for you lot."
"This is hardly productive." Renaa told him. Ereel nodded in agreement.
"What? Oh, sorry… I have to attempt to align five separate magnetic intensities across a unstable electrically-charged gas injector and keep them within millimicrot tolerances to generate usable power for the hevex shunts." He crossed his arms and turned to look at the machine. He frowned and pursed his lips. "Unfortunately I left my bone rattle and magic beads at home." He sighed over-dramatically and scratched his posterior. He threw his hands up. "Oh, well. Ooga-booga, Chattanooga, I'm screwed."
"The circuit fabrication team can…" she began.
"No, no, no!" he interrupted, "I wouldn't dream of interfering in anyone's extremely important work building a device to control the very fundamental fabric of the universe using my personal design schema." He waved in a motion intended to get her to leave. "The generators are combiners with regulators that stagger the feeds from the reactors." He muttered again. "They are loopers that will increase the energy output without overtaxing the reactors. It's extremely efficient. For a primitive." He chuckled to himself. "If I could install it on a car, it'd make a single tank of gas last for five thousand miles."
He glanced back at her.
"You still here? If you can choke down your nausea long enough to get one of your minions to fetch me something that can redirect the power flow from a hevex shunt, I'd appreciate that." He pulled a chair over, sat. "I can wait."
Ereel bit back a frustrated comment, felt a headache spring up behind her left eye. Her orders were to cooperate and be efficient, to give all possible help to have this device created, completed and ready for use. This device was essential. Essential. She took a deep breath and tried again, complimented him on the intelligence and efficiency of the design, because he was very intelligent and she was actually impressed.
He was unmoved.
"No, better yet, get Scorpius on the horn and tell him I want techs that care more about the work and less about their prejudices. Until then, I'm not doing squat." He smiled an insolent smile. "Any time." He made a motion of picking an flea from his shoulder and flicking it away.
Ereel glared at him, nodded once and stalked off, pulling Renaa after her.
John smiled to himself. That should buy him some time. He knew he was walking the edge of a razor here. He couldn't afford to finish this machine in any real sense but he had to give them something. It had to look good. If he had to piss off the Superior Techs there to do it, well, whatever, he could do that easy. There was a blue spark from one of the reactor feeds and a tech cursed, locked it down. It was an extremely efficient design, and unlike the rest of the contraption, those had been his idea.
He had looked at the feasibility of jinking up something similar to be employed in nuclear reactors – it'd make them a hundred times more powerful and almost completely safe – the design even used the radiation spillage as fuel. If he could someday implement everything he'd planned…
… his statue would be half-a-mile high. He would almost single-handedly change his entire world and species, and his name would be remembered for generation after generation – humanity's greatest benefactor – hell, in many ways, its savior.
He smiled at the machine taking shape before him. If he could wing it, maybe… if he could tweak it… if he could design the interface for a Sebacean brain… it was capable of enormous destructive power. Apocalyptic destructive power. One use and both Peacekeepers and Scarrans would vanish as if they'd never been, he'd rid the Universe of two malevolent races and do it from a safe distance. With this weapon, it was possible. He hadn't worked it all out yet – how to build in the 'off switch' to stop it so it didn't consume the galaxy it was deployed in – wherever the hell the Peacekeeper galaxy was – but he was reasonably sure he could. Was genocide ever justified if it literally saved uncountable billions upon billions? Could he make that decision? Would they force it on him? How ready should he be if it came down to it?
How close could he allow himself to get to becoming a god?
