I'd like to thank everyone for their comments! I realize there are people on both sides of the 'Great Draka Divide', and it's my hope that all of you will continue following this story as it progresses onward. I'm trying to be as realistic as possible with the universe as S.M. Stirling has provided it and allowing it to progress with no bias towards one side or the other as Mass Effect's Prothean bunker and its tech sends ripples outward, changing things here and there.
Be sure to let me know if you are following this, because comments have been known to spur me to faster writing - provided that Real Life doesn't get in the way, of course.
ABOARD ASFS INDEFATIGABLE
NEAR PLUTO
SEPTEMBER 30, 1997
"Topographical scans complete, sir."
"Very good. Have the boys down in cryptography encode and compress the information for transmission back to Earth." Robert Kunzman, captain of the Indefatigable, gave the new map of the surface of Pluto a cursory scan before blanking it from his screen. I'll give it a closer look later.
He had always liked maps and globes as a kid, had found the newer ones of the other planets, moons and asteroids published as he grew up endlessly fascinating. A childhood memory came back: looking at a world map pulled down over the blackboard in school, the large oval showing the oceans and the continents divided into the two superpowers of the Alliance for Democracy and the Domination of the Draka. Remembering his lessons about Christopher Columbus sailing the ocean blue and how the world was round and looking at the map in a new light, wondering: what's on the other side, then?
Kunzman smiled to himself at the memory, then refocused himself back to the present. "Are we receiving from the probes?"
"Yes, sir," the Sensor Officer reported. "Transmission from orbiters are loud and clear. Landers and rovers are loud and clear; onboard A.I.s have begun autonomous survey missions."
"Right then," the captain said, leaning back in his crashcouch. "Phase One of the planetary survey is complete. We'll move on to the moons while the probes gather their data, then we'll swing back to record it. Helmsman, calculate burn to Charon."
Kunzman frowned as the mainbrain computer began running the numbers. He was glad to be out on the edges of the solar system, mapping some of its final unexplored bodies. But why are we way out here? The space effort, for both sides in the Protracted Struggle, had been about setting up strategic bases and colonies to outposition the other in the event of the Final War, or laying claim to deposits of ores and water ice and, more recently, helium-3 to power fusion reactors. The Snakes dominate the gas-giant moons and that's one heck of an obstacle between here and the Belt, not to mention the distances involved. Can the trans-Neptunian region really be self-sufficient? It had plenty of large rocks – some were what were being termed 'dwarf planets' – and ices but it covered an area twenty times the size of the Belt, from beyond the orbit of Neptune out to 55 AU from the Sun.
"Calculations complete, sir."
"Execute drive burn."
"Has to have something to do with the Protheans," he muttered under his breath as the ship surged beneath him. He had been as awestruck as everyone else when the news of the alien bunker on Mars had finally been released to the public, with panic following right on its heels. The fourth planet was wholly under the control of the Domination, and news of the successful capture of the Draka convoy full of Prothean artifacts had left a lot of people across the Alliance feeling mixed. On the one hand, it was like something the Snakes would do – had, in fact, been doing for years – and the Alliance for Democracy was supposed to be the 'Good Guys'. On the other, they sure as hell weren't going to share it with us, and they'd use that Prothean tech to put us all under the Yoke at the first opportunity. 'Ugly, but necessary' had been the consensus of the whole affair.
Indefatigable having one of these new mirror-matter powered drives probably helps. The new cruiser was based on the auxiliaries built for the New America back in the Belt. Beats the hell out of the old pulsedrives. Faster and has more range. Even the Draka were fielding them now after the Belt task force had run rings around their convoy. Maybe that's why we're out this far. The solar system as a whole wasn't as large as it used to be.
Eight hours later, the mainbrain's calculated burn had put them into a stable orbit around Charon, Pluto's largest moon. Kunzman watched the viewer screen showing the outside camera view of the icy surface below. Already their sensors had confirmed that much of the surface was made up of water ice, instead of the more volatile nitrogen and methane ices that covered the surface of Pluto. That alone make a base out here possible, he thought. Build a fusion reactor for energy to replace the distant Sun, and we just might be able to set up a self-sufficient colony. Helium-3 fuel would be the big bottleneck, but perhaps somewhere else in the trans-Neptunian region-
"Sir, the lander probes are sending back some strange readings."
Brought out of his reverie, the captain looked over at the Sensor Officer. "What have you got?"
"The seismic measurements profile ice with relatively minute amounts of rock in the crust, but the core is much more dense than expected." A frown. "Too dense to be rock... and the shape is extremely irregular. I'll have the landers run a sequential seismic profile to see if we can get a better idea."
Several hours later, Kunzman was marveling at the massive shape the probes had revealed buried deep beneath the ice of Charon. No, that thing is Charon, the ice is just covering it! Which means...
"That's no moon."
ABOARD ASFS YAMATO
NEW AMERICA PROJECT
CENTRAL BELT, ALLIANCE INTERDICTED ZONE
OCTOBER 22, 1997
"Bring the FTL drive core online."
There was a loud hum as the outer ring of the machine began to spin, then a low thrumming sound as it picked up speed. Frederick Lefarge winced involuntarily at the first snap of energy between the three metal arms in the center of the device; a look at Henry Wasser's calm demeanor reassured him that this was normal.
"Levels are looking good."
The air between the three arms began to subtly waver, as if the light were being ever so slightly distorted as it passed through. Slowly the visual effect began to grow, picking up speed as it built up until it was an amorphous blob about a meter across. Bolts of blue-white energy coursed over the nearly invisible phenomenon, growing in number until they became a general glow formed along the outside of it.
"Drive core is online. Good work, people."
There were smiles and nods among some of the men and women in white labcoats, while others continued to tap away at their terminals after a brief acknowledgment. Lefarge approved of the latter in the abstract, but was still left wondering how they had become so inured to such a sight. Those detached types are able to focus more on their projects, he thought, but with some of them there's something a little... off. Others, he knew, merely lacked social graces but remained valuable nevertheless.
Wasser was smiling tightly as he approached the OSS head of the Project. "That's the fourth one, Brigadier. Are you sure we can't install any more? I'm sure I can refine the design to generate more output."
Lefarge shook his head. "Four FTL ships is all we can afford at the moment, Doctor. Further research will have to be done in the lab. Most of our resources are going into upgrading the New America's weapons and defensive systems." Since building and installing an FTL drive sufficient to move the mass of the starship was deemed prohibitive, current doctrine had moves towards turning it into a mobile fortress from which its faster auxiliaries could base themselves.
Wasser's face fell, but he nodded reluctantly and followed in Frederick's wake as he led the two of them out of the engineering section. Technically neither of them had had to be there when the core was brought online, but Wasser had taken to mass effect drive with the zeal of a convert. In the other's case, it was sheerly a desire to witness the spectacle with his own eyes. The other three cores had been brought online from afar, with the distances between them and their tenders closing with each activation.
The other department heads were waiting for them in the conference room when they arrived. Two of them were standing near the back wall, squeeze bulbs of coffee in their hands. The coffee machine was going, scenting the air; it looked odd compared to its terrestrial counterpart, but you did have to push the water through here. The two looked over as the newcomers floated in and went to their chairs, strapping themselves into them.
"Ladies, gentlemen, glad you could all make it," Lefarge began as he fastened his chair's seatbelt. "We've all worked together for... at least a decade now. You've all shown that you are willing to cut yourselves off from the outside world to work on the Project in its various phases." He paused, looked down at his hands for a moment. "I think most of you who haven't been told have guessed; the New America was not the only purpose of the Project." He turned to de Ribeiro. "Fill them in, Professor."
"We all know we have been building a starship," he began stroking his goatee, "with surprising success – although the only way to test it is to undertake the voyage. Scarcely a low-risk method! We have also become the primary research center into the Protheans' technology."
Patricia Hayato nodded. "We've all gotten used to secret projects," she said. "Since the war, every five years another group of scientists drops out of sight. The Los Alamos Project pattern. Mistaken, in my opinion. It sacrifices long-term to short-term; more suitable for wartime than the Protracted Struggle."
De Ribeiro inclined his head graciously. "What is the best disguise? A disguise that is no disguise at all. Here we hid the New America within a series of concentric shells of secret projects, each one genuine. More layers were peeled away than we would have liked following the unmasking of New America's auxiliaries, but within the Prothean research and the New America itself, the ultimate secret. A weapon."
Hayato threw up her hands. "Oh, no, not some superbomb!" Everyone else winced slightly; the rain of fission weapons that had brought down the Empire of Japan toward the end of the Eurasian War was still a sensitive subject. "Just what we need, more firepower. What have you discovered, a way to make the sun go nova?"
Lefarge rapped sharply on the table. "Ladies, gentlemen, we've all been cooped up with each other so long our arguments have gotten repetitive. Let the professor speak, please."
The Brazilian examined his fingertips. "We've developed a weapon that is no weapon – which should appeal to you, my dear colleague." Hayato flushed, she took neo-Zen more seriously than the founders of that remarkably playful philosophy might have wished. "You were quite right; bigger and better means of destruction have reached a point of self-defeating futility. But consider what controls those weapons."
"Data plague," Wasser said. "I always did think you had too much facility for what we needed."
De Ribeiro beamed. "Exactly." A sip of coffee. "To be more precise, contamination of the embedded compinstruction sets of mainbrain computers. It was unleashed several months ago. It spreads slowly, from one manufacturing center to another, as improved instruction-sets are handed out. In the event of war – he grinned – "the Draka will find their machines... rebellious."
"And when enough are infected, the Alliance will move." Lefarge looked around the table. "We've been slowly positioning our forces to be ready when the time comes." A frown. "Every indication of the way they've configured their off-Earth forces, every intuition I've built up about Draka behavior, tells me the Snakes have some sort of ace in the hole comparable to us. It's a race, and we know for a fact that they won't hesitate a moment once they're ready."
A rustling around the table as the scientists shifted and looked around at each other, their faces grim. "Are we really that close?" That was Colin McKenzie; he was Quebec-Scots, a heavy-construction man. "I mean... I've got kin back on Earth."
"We all do," the security chief said. "The Prothean bunker just threw petroleum onto the fire. We both have its technology now, and we've got a larger free population than they do. Both sides know that, given enough time, we'll overcome the disadvantage of having less to work with than they do and overtake them."
He clasped his hands together. "The war might even start before either side is ready. The mass relay we discovered last month inside Charon, both we and the Snakes are currently working on removing the hundreds of kilometers of ice and frozen debris that's formed a shell around it. No clashes yet – even Charon is large enough that they can keep some distance from each other – but it is a definite flashpoint."
Lefarge looked around the table, meeting each of their gazes in turn. "I thought all of you should know. The Project is crucial; we are not going to let the Snakes destroy us here when the war comes. Whatever happens, what we've built here is important to the future of the Alliance for Democracy and the human race.
"Now, any questions?" Silence. "Very well. Meeting adjourned."