Fool's Gold (The Wandering Engineer) (74 page)

"Right
then. I believe someone had a question about stealth and why it doesn't work at
higher acceleration?" He looked at the teacher for confirmation.

She
nodded. "Alessandra?" she asked. A young woman stood.

"Yes
sir, ah, I was wondering why stealth systems do not work under power. What is
the point of having a stealth coating and stealth systems if they don't work
when you’re moving?" she asked. He smiled.

"Well
Midshipman woman, it's a bit of a trade off. Stealth systems work when you are
at rest or under low acceleration because you’re not flaring your drive or
giving off high amounts of neutrinos."

"Didn't
you say long range sensors are not very effective?" someone asked.

"Yes
I did. Just a moment," Harris looked a little flustered. "You see,
when a ship is under acceleration her shields are up. This gives off a force
emission that distorts space. This can be detected by the impact of particles
on the shield facing the direction of travel." He sent a signal and the
holo beside him changed to a ship and then the flare of particles hitting the
shields.

"Also,
if you're under power, anything using the wedge or speeds above point one light
will send your neutrino counts into detectable threshold levels," he
smiled. "Then there is the fusion engine. If you are pointed in a
direction that the enemy ship can see your wake then it's spectrographic
sensors can detect the plasma thrust and pinpoint your course." He
shrugged as the students nodded catching on.

"Now
to answer the second part of your question, stealth is good for various
applications. The first is in a trap scenario. Where you are lying in wait for
an enemy to pass or to enter a preplanned position to pounce on them. This is
great against pirates and smugglers I am told." He smiled remembering the
brief battle with the pirates then shrugged. "Another application is to
get away from an attacker to regroup. By using a decoy and your stealth systems
under the right conditions you may be able to fool your enemy into following it
while you get away to regroup." Several students nodded at this.

"Now,
let’s look at both scenarios here in past events. I've taken the liberty of
flagging the recent events here. You will get to see them from Firefly's point
of view. My point of view." He put his hand on his chest for dramatic
effect. Some of the students looked politely interested, a few looked eager.

"Now,
I planned it so the enemy would exit hyper and we would be behind and below
them when they hit the minefield..."

“How
are the elections going?” Irons asked Sprite as he sat in the wardroom. They
were still on the survey mission, taking the long route to Fuente. Election
fever had started about a week after the delegates had gotten back. It had been
briefly overshadowed in the news by the revival of the castaways but now it was
back as the main story across the system.

“Why
Admiral are you actually showing an interest in politics?” Sprite asked amused.
“Will wonders never cease?”

“Cute.
Spit it out.”

“Um.
Okay. You asked for it. Just remember that.”

“Oh
boy.”

“Well...”
she smiled maliciously. “Debates are still going on. A few of the colonies like
the Horsehead have had early prelim elections. A couple have had to have run
offs when their elections were too close to call.”

“Joy.”

“Some
have gotten the idea to buy air time on Knox's channel and one of the competing
local channels that has started to break into the market.”

“Knox
has competition? Well, that will keep him honest and on his toes.”

“He's
already expanded to four channels and has even started a soap novella channel.
Using live actors no less. Selling commercials for the candidates is paying for
it apparently.”

“Spare
me the details,” Irons growled.

“Very
well. To summarize, it's going about how you expected. The debates haven't
started showing any mud flinging yet, but one can hope.”

“Funny.
Really really funny Sprite.”

“I
try.”

“You
know, we could freeze him. Stick him back in cryostasis I mean,” a med tech
said, giving Doctor Thornby a look.

“It
is certainly a possibility, but one the patient has refused,” she said not
looking up. She'd disregarded the notion herself even before she'd presented it
to the midshipman.  She grimaced, she'd thought it would be a simple clone job,
but it was a bit more ticklish then she'd realized. She shook her head,
checking her time. Of course, she'd only been working on it for two weeks now.

“But,
I mean it wouldn't be forever, just until we found another of his species.”

“Which
race?” doctor Standish asked, coming in.

“Both.
Ah, either,” the med tech said helplessly.

“Both
refuse the option,” Thornby said shaking her head. She frowned and ran her hand
through her hair, tossing the tablet she'd been looking at onto the table in
front of her. “How's it going Stitches?” she asked smiling to Standish.

“Not
bad,” he shrugged. “I've got Firefly squared away, the staff is reasonably
trained and we've made a major dent on the manning table for the rest of the
fleet.”

“So?”
Thornby asked.

“Well,
I wanted another project,” he said. She raised an eyebrow at him. He spread his
hands. “Something I can do on the side that isn't a right this minute job,” he
said, shrugging helplessly. The med tech gave him a disbelieving look.

“Glutton
for punishment eh?” Thornby asked sitting back with a laugh.

“Something
like that.” Standish replied with a smile. “More like riding a hobby horse.”

“Think
you can handle one of these projects in your copious free time?” she asked
amused.

“Or
I can pinch hit for you in your college classes if you're overloaded,” he
grimaced. “When I'm in port of course,” he added picking her tablet up. “Pair
bonding nucleotide... okay...” He shook his head.

“Yeah,
a little much for a simple country doctor,” Thornby said smiling.

“Not
without the right set of circumstances,” Standish retorted shaking his head.

“I'm
sure if you hum a few bars I can pick enough of it up.”

“Which
is what I was saying. We don't have the skills needed, the equipment...” the
med tech said throwing up her hands.

“What
we don't know, we'll learn. What we need, we'll make,” Standish replied.

“Exactly,”
Thornby nodded. “I'll take the Ssislli, you work on the Malekian.”

“Oh
joy.”

“What?
Your project at least has a couple terabytes more of data. You should be ahead
there.”

“Yeah.
Wait, why do I have the Malekian? The Ssislli is on Firefly.” He waved to the
station. “You've got the Malekian stashed here.” Thornby grinned at him.

“Not
exactly. It's in the shipyard,” the med tech responded. “I tried to get it to
stay here.”

“As
a permanent fixture in sickbay?” Standish asked. “It'd be bored to tears inside
an hour. No, better to keep it occupied and out of your hair,” he shook his
head. Thornby nodded. She turned to the med techs.

“Jessie,
I know you mean well...”

“But
I'm being a downer and I need to open up. Just my way of keeping things on the
level and grounded. Guess it isn't helping,” she grimaced.  “Yeah Doc, I get
it. I'll just go check on things,” she waved and walked out.

“I
know she means well,” Thornby sighed.

“But
she's right. The scope of this is...”

“The
biggest anyone's ever attempted,” Thornby said smiling. “Martel is still
hopping up and down over it.”

“That's
one way to look at it.”

“Yeah,
here's another. Think of the monographs we'll be writing. Not to mention our
names in the history books.”

“Interesting
carrot to go with this. But the stick is if we fail...” The thought of that
momentous responsibility, of the future of an entire species, hell, two species
was terrifying.

“So
we won’t. We can always freeze them if we have to. It is a fall back,” she
shrugged. “Let's just not let it come to that,” she continued, sitting back,
eyes closed.

“Why
do you want me to do the Malekian?” Standish asked after a moment.

“Because
we can't do much with the Ssislli. He's still a larval. Adolescent, granted,
but he's not a full adult yet. So no spermatophores. I checked.”

“Oh.
That must have been an interesting examination,” Standish said with a snort.
“So you took skin and samples for no reason?”

“No.
I took them for testing. That way we've got some lead in time before he becomes
an adult. He said he's about five years away from his final molt. That's Terran
standard time.”

“And
you need spermatophores..?”

“Silly.
They are the best source of Ssislli stem cells that we can get,” Thornby
answered. She shook her head. “We'll need them. Their DNA sequences are
automatically randomized by nature after all. We can pair bond them and then
induce fission to form a cloned fetus. Getting an artificial womb will be
interesting. We'll have to figure out a method for inserting gender programming
as well. Not something I'm looking forward to doing.”

“Ah.”

“I'm
using the skin samples to iron out the procedures. Also I'm going to try to
replicate the gestation pools they use. If I can get a clone going I can test
the pool out.”

“Yeah,
good luck with that. Lighting, heat, water temp, metal concentrations,
salinity...” he frowned. “They are mammalian as well, so you'll have to
replicate the mother's milk as well.”

“Yeah.
So it's better to start slow,” she frowned. “Which explains the long lead in
time. I've got four people on it now.” She shook her head.

“Which
makes my job even more of a pain,” Standish said with a grimace. “I'm not sure
if I can figure out how to generate two distinct gender templates from a single
neuter source Doc.”

“I
guess you better figure something out then,” Thornby said sitting back.

“Right.
Well, I've got some reading to do,” Standish said waving as he left.

"Anything
more on the pirates?" Mayweather asked.  He glanced at her. She'd come in
to the wardroom while he'd been reading. She'd obviously patiently waited for
his attention to return. She was getting good, five weeks in uniform and
shaping up nicely he thought with a hidden inner smile.

Irons
nodded. "We vacuumed their computers but there was a lot of crap hiding
what we really wanted. It took time to sort it out. The surviving prisoners
aren't very talkative either. They don't volunteer anything and only answer
specific questions with a minimum answer and little or no detail if possible.
Sprite is going to give us a detailed briefing at the next conference."

He
watched as her eyebrow rose. "But, if you insist, I can give you the high
and low points now," he shrugged. She nodded.

"The
pirates are from the Horath empire."

She
looked shocked. "An empire?" she laughed. "You're kidding!
Sounds like something out of a bad holo-novella!" She shook her head.

"I
know, but it's true. Apparently they held on to some of their tech, and from
some of the things Sprite has uncovered, they just salvaged a
dreadnought." Her eyes went wide at this.

"Shit,
I am not going up against that!"

"Right,
at least, not without a fleet at your back," he chuckled.
"Fortunately, her hyper drive is shot so she's acting as the core of their
home fleet. But they dug up a few other ships, probably the same way we did,
then sent them out to go a Viking to grab more."

He
shrugged as her face became thoughtful. "That snowballed into the planet
raids," he finished.

"Right.
I wonder if that group was the only one?" she asked rubbing her chin. He
froze.

"Goddess
of space I hope so," he said quietly.

"I
think we better find out. Soon," Firefly said in the ensuing quiet.

"Yeah,
you just do that," Mayweather said. "I doubt the yacht will come
back. My sister is loooong gone. She won’t come near this sector," she
chuckled.

"Too
bad, she's going to miss out on her sister and seeing her as a naval
captain," Firefly replied.

"Flattery
will get you an extra ration of amperage," Mayweather said sweetly. Irons
chuckled.

"Well,
since Harris is our resident historian, I think I'll tap Dan as Intel officer
until we get someone else trained." The Admiral picked up his coffee mug
and took a sip. Mayweather sighed. "We need more bodies."

"We've
got them. Twenty two out of thirty six of the sleepers volunteered. All but two
were military anyway. Let’s see.” He looked at the feed Sprite put up. “Four
pilots, two are potential fighter jocks. I'm commissioning them as jigs for
now. A Chad Dresden Zek is listed as a college student who supported himself by
working in a shipyard. We'll put him in with Logan at Bu-ships as a
lieutenant.” He frowned at the feed.