Chapter Two: An old friend
"So, this 'Hyperdrive' thing isn't finished?"
Holly was flying over the French Alps in a Hurricane class gunship, and was actually quite impressed at just how quickly that the humans had recovered from the Techno Crash. Then again, only the really advanced stuff was destroyed, which didn't make CERN or DARPA happy at all.
"No, not without Minerva's knowledge. I hear that you've been meeting with her occasionally?" said Foaly.
Holly dipped a winglet and knocked a small bit of snow off an alpine peak, in the process inadvertently setting off an avalanche. She winced and prayed that no one was trying to scale it at the time.
"Well, yeah, but only to check up on her, make sure that she didn't get into another mess."
"That can't be all," Foaly pushed with a quizzical tone.
"Okay, she invites me inside for tea."
"And?"
"Sometimes we play some games, pass the time."
"And?"
"Oh for God's sakes… sometimes we do dress ups."
"Wait, really?"
"No you numbnut, it stops at her video games. You wouldn't think it if you saw her, but she's actually a fairly prolific gamer as it turns out, when she doesn't have her nose to some book or apparatus. Gives me something to do on my visits at any rate."
"Oh. My map says you're getting close to the chateau. Just over the next peak." And with that, Foaly closed the connection.
There it was. The plateau chateau. Holly made a descent onto the dedicated helipad. She kept her shield off. Minerva didn't have any guards present except for a chosen few who were selected for their ability and also their willingness to keep a secret. Everyone in the building knew of the fairies, having been among the small circle that had been directly involved with the Demon research. Shutting down the gunship's repulsorlift, Holly climbed out of the cockpit and made for the door. Security chief Juan Soto, whose skills had greatly improved over the years, was there to meet her.
"Morning captain, no wingpack today? And I must say, that aircraft is quite the piece. Oh, what I could do with one of those…"
Holly walked past him.
"Well, maybe you'd get a go at it in time, eh Soto?" she teased, slipping off her helmet.
Soto put a finger to his earpiece. "Be advised, LEP captain Short is on the premises. Keep any visitors away from the western wing."
Entering the building, Holly went to where she knew that Minerva would be. There was a section of the chateau dedicated to her needs, with a lab, tech room, kitchen, accommodation and other such facilities. It was intended to be self-sufficient for her, away from distraction. It had an ultra modern interior, which matched the rest of the building's insides despite the castle like exterior. Her booted feet made quiet cloomfs as she moved across the thick carpet. Minerva came out of her room upon hearing Holly's approach. The French girl was tapping away at her ipad and muttering about getting Persia to leave her empire alone. Obviously her electronic nation building was still ongoing from when Holly had last seen her. She shut down the tablet and smiled at the Captain.
"Ah, Holly, glad to see you've made it. I got your message earlier, something about my research, yes?" Paradizo said.
"Yup, Foaly wants your dimensional techy stuff for a project he's got going."
"What sort of project?" Minerva asked.
"One that was inherited from Artemis."
The genius gained a certain look. "Come with me, I know just what project he's talking about."
The two walked to the lab. "About a year ago, I was using my equipment from the Demon capture program to try and get readings from other dimensions, to see if I could get a Nobel Prize off that. I wasn't really expecting anything to come of it, but after a certain adjustment to the sensor I started getting some very… unusual data. You see, I had found evidence of particles in another dimension that were clearly moving at speeds well beyond the speed of light. At first I was rather doubtful of this, as this sort of thing had been found and then proven false several times already, and I fine-tuned the equipment to ever increasing parameters in an attempt to find any faults in the experiments. I couldn't find any at all."
The pair rounded a corner in the corridor.
"Now, I could have released this information to the world and have gotten all the funding and reputation I would ever require, but I felt that I needed something bigger. So I contacted Artemis about it, and we started working together on the research regarding this phenomenon. It was then that he proposed the idea of exploiting this new dimension's faster than light properties for travel. We knew that faster than light communication was possible, thanks to your Subspace transmitters, but your people had told us specifically to not release that technology to the wider world, given the great risks of discovery through finding Fairy transmissions. Travel, though? We were never told what to do about that sort of thing."
Holly quietly snorted. Of course they weren't, it was supposed to be impossible. They entered Minerva's lab, which contained, among other things, a powerful bank of supercomputer hardware, several terminals for them, a pair of 3D printers for the on site fabrication of necessary parts, and in the centre of it all was a spire that stretched almost to the ceiling.
"This is my dimensional research equipment. I used it to work out the Demon arrival times and locations, but then someone deleted all my data and broke the computers. Thanks for that by the way."
"Hey, in my defence, I gave you the back ups that I had made!" protested Foaly over Holly's helmet loudspeaker, having opened the communications channel again upon hearing the comment that was clearly directed at him.
"You also burnt my diary to a crisp. It didn't even contain any research; it was literally just a normal diary. Any back ups for that?" said Minerva with a certain biting venom to her tone. All she got in reply was a guilty sounding "eehhh…". She huffed in annoyance and sat at a terminal. She pulled up a file, filling the screen with an interface that Holly couldn't even hope to interpret, instead opting to simply set down her helmet and point its camera at the screen, hoping that Foaly could probably make sense of the thing. Minerva pointed at one row of data spikes, numbers, and code.
"See these oscillations? Those are the representations of our mystery FTL particles passing through the area being read by the spire. Those speeds are incomprehensible, if not impossible. Make no mistake; you will need this data for the project, along with a spire of your own. I can send you the schematics for the hardware, but the results that are already here… I don't know if Holly's helmet can carry the files. They are quite large."
"How large are we talking?" asked Foaly. The number he got in reply was, indeed, large, even by Fairy standards.
"Well, good thing I brought a gunship today. Minerva, I'm going to take the data drives holding the stuff we need. I'll get a hover trolley to help move it all out." Holly walked away towards the door, only to be stopped by Minerva.
"Captain, your people won't be able to work with the data without my being there to teach them how to read it properly. I'm coming with you to Haven."
Holly thought for a bit. "Foaly, do we have clearance for her to come downstairs?"
"Minerva's part of the Friends in High Places program, which so far contains only herself and Artemis's team. She'll have the clearance, as long as the Commander is informed first," Foaly stated as he opened up the relevant paperwork to do just that.
"Huh, I forgot that we had that thing. All right then, Minerva, set the drives for transport. Remove them from the system; pull the plug, whatever it is that you do with these things. I'll be back in maybe five minutes."
Three and a half minutes later
"How heavy are these things?"
"To be honest, I don't actually know."
There was a strained grunt as Holly attempted to heft the data drive. The thing barely even budged.
"Right then. That heavy." She tapped a couple of times on her wrist computer and was rewarded with a mechanical whine from her armour as it reconfigured underneath the plates.
"Powered strength assistance. Foaly was able to miniaturize the technology from our powered battlesuits, but it only works for a short time and isn't quite as strong. Should be enough to move this thing…"
She lifted the device with far less effort than before and set it down on the trolley.
"One down, nineteen to go…" the Captain muttered. She turned to Minerva. "You might as well pack your travel gear, no point ending up with no spare clothes or tooth brush."
About fifteen minutes later, Holly locked the now fully loaded down hover trolley into the cargo bay and stuck her head out the door of the gunship.
"Minerva, you totally sure you need to come? You have travel clearance, sure, but if you have anything that needs doing…"
"Oh relax, Holly, my schedule is clear for the next week. I think I'll be spending a couple of days in Haven. You know, seeing the sights. I hear it is quite a feat of engineering, and I'm also interested in just how the city was repaired in such a short time," Minerva assured as she walked past and took a seat in one of the bay's slightly undersized chairs that lined the inside edges of the gunship.
Holly shrugged and put on her helmet, syncing the systems to those of the aircraft.
"So, about your family… where are they right now? I haven't seen them around."
"Calais. Father and Beau got invited to a family friend's retreat on the coast up north, and I declined to come, mostly due to having a project at the time that I couldn't leave alone. That one is completed now, so no interference with our current job."
Holly entered the cockpit area and climbed into the pilot seat, keying the engines with a press of a button. Her HUD switched to flight mode, with an altimeter, speed gauge, armament monitors, scanner, and all the other things that could be reasonably expected to be used for controlling an advanced LEP aircraft like the GS-6 Hurricane. She closed the gunship's door and turned on the internal lights. Pushing away from the helipad, the gunship turned north and boosted away, carrying what could very well prove to be the keys to the future.