Chapter Two Thirteen War Reports and Discussions (Patreon)

August 22nd, 008 SDE:

Countryman stepped into the council chambers and looked around. Most of the Council was already present, which was good since this meeting was going to be an important one. Over the last few days they’d been getting reports of the battles in Cooperative space. The Dregari and Raiders had launched multiple attacks on Cooperative-held facilities and colonies over the last week. Aside from some minor victories, it seemed they had all been brutal defeats.

Thankfully the refit of the Enterprise had completed rather smoothly. Initial tests of the new multispatial sensors had also been completed. Countryman was rather pleased with what he had seen, but their ability to predict hyperspatial eddies remained untested. Not to mention Ruri would need more data to produce a reliable algorithm for that. Right now, they might see it coming and not even realize what they are looking at.

Settling down, he said, “Why don’t we start with the good news, Ruri, Vera?”

The two scientists shifted in their seats, and shared looks. A lot went unspoken in that, and Vera stepped forward, “Our initial tests with the multispatial array went very well. We’d some ideas in the lab but they proved to work better than expected, unfortunately, the energy draw is very much in line with what we expected.”

“Sorry I’m late,” said a female voice as the door opened. Countryman looked up to see the Valorian representative Reia step in.

“Oh you didn’t miss anything, we are just getting started. Vera and Ruri were just going over the sensor tests.”

Kurtz nodded, “They were just getting into the energy draw,” he turned to Vera, “How much fuel are we talking?”

“To maintain continuous active scans, we will need the full capacity of six of our Fusion Reactors.”

Kurtz sighed, “We’ve got the reserve for that, but that’s going to eat into our fuel reserves. Do the plating upgrades not help?”

“They are what is keeping everything else running.”

Baker interjected, “So bad news aside, you mentioned working better.”

Vera smiled, “They are nothing like the primitive sensors we were working with before. Interstellar tracking tests confirmed we could detect our own patrols on the border, that’s about fifty lightyears of range, compared to the previous three and a half we were working with. Detailed scanning is up to thirty lightyears compared to one and a quarter with the old sensors.”

Baker blinked, “Um that’s quite the improvement.”

Ruri nodded, “It helps that we recruited everyone we could find with a specialty or minor in sensor technology, which included a few specialists from the dreadnought crew. Most helpful was young Arla of Clan Atai, she was a navigator second class with several degrees in multispatial theory and tracking technologies. She was very well-versed in Valorian sensor technology and was quite impressed with the resolution our sensors produced at shorter ranges. Although she did find the range lacking. Without her help, this project could have taken months longer and might not have produced an array half this good.”

“What about peering into other spatial layers? What kind of resolution and ranges do we get?”

“Pretty much the same, our trick with the Ephon Crystal lenses, allows us to look at other layers without loss of signal, resulting in near identical tracking ranges and resolution. The array lets us peer into several layers at once, including normal space.”

“Oh? So we can see what’s going on outside the storm? Pick up anything interesting?”

“Only that we don’t recognize anything in the area, and it confirmed what we already suspected, the storm is moving, and much faster than we thought.”

“Faster? How much?”

“We need more time to figure out an exact speed, but we are looking in excess of a thousand times the speed of light, but like on a planet we could not tell due to lacking a frame of reference.”

Countryman sighed as he considered that, but didn’t want to dwell on the implications. On the brightside he figured they’d have more distance from the Valorian Confederation and the Cathamari Empire. However, he knew that meant they would be further away from the Krall Imperium and more importantly Earth. It did not, however, change much, when they got out of the storm they would just resume their original mission. Sure Anchorage was shaping up to be a nice place, but an asteroid in a storm wasn’t much of a home.

Vera changed the subject, “Normal space aside, we are gaining a wealth of information on the other layers. We are going to need more computer resources to handle all the data.”

Redfox leaned forward, “Why don’t we try hailing some of the ships we see in normal space? I know we won’t stay in an area long, but it might be worth the try?”

Vera looked to Ruri, who spoke up, “The subspace radio wasn’t designed for that. It’s supposed to contact another target on the same dimensional plane, not two ships on different planes. I’m sure we can work something out, but the technology isn’t something we fully understand.”

Vera blinked, “You don’t fully understand it?”

“We bought it from the Krall, we know enough about it to build more, but we never had the time to fully pick apart why it works. What we do know is that the device scans for subspace radios in range, when one is found it locks on, when you choose to open a channel it generates a micro subspace inversion, which allows instant communication between two points.”

Vera gave her another look, “You actually bought one of those from the Krall? How? They’d never let us buy something like that.”

Countryman chuckled, “We made a good impression with first contact and we did receive some technological assistance from them, for one thing they helped us upgrade our warp engines.”

“I guess that explains a few things I’d wondered about.”

“Doesn’t really factor today and we are drifting from the main topic.”

Ruri nodded, “Right, as Vera mentioned we need more computer resources. In addition, the sensor array, while a step forward, it is taking a lot of power to use. I’d like to start working on fixing that, if we could figure out a way to reduce the power requirements that would go a long way towards making it more viable.”

“I’m willing to grant that,” said Countryman as he looked at the quartermaster, “Kurtz, think that will be much of an issue?”

“Normally no, but I think with the war, you should establish a caveat about that grant. We might need the resources for other uses.”

“Noted, but before we get into that, Robins, how’s our mutation problem looking?”

He sighed, “Well I’ve got a new gene treatment out for the gender ratio problem, in the lab it should partially correct the issue, but it remains to be tested. I expect to roll therapy out by the end of the year. As for the rest of the issue? We are still just monitoring problems as they occur. Thankfully the latest development is pretty harmless.”

Smith interjected, “Harmless? What is it?”

“Loss of body hair, it’s more pronounced in females but the genes responsible for body hair are disappearing. Hair on the head seems to remain though.”

Countryman chuckled, “Well that is pretty minor, all things considered.”

Several of the girls exchanged looks, then Misaki spoke up, “I don’t know, that sounds pretty positive to me. No more shaving my legs.”

Robins interjected, “That’s true, but it’s all the hair below your neck that will vanish. Some of the people coming in weren’t too happy about that.”

Misaki chuckled, “I don’t know, a free hairless vulva should be pretty popular, a lot of people shave it anyway.”

Several guilty looks appeared around the table.

“Right, so any idea why we are losing body hair? It seems pretty random.”

Robins glanced at the captain, “Maybe not so much, I’m not sure of the mechanism but there is definitely some kind of gene jumping going on. Humans taking on Valorian traits, Valorians taking human traits. Whatever it is, I’m just glad we ain’t taking on fish genes.”

Misaki frowned, “Why look at the captain?”

“I was told about this earlier but didn’t spread the information. I wanted it kept on the down low.”

“And here I thought you would tell me you deactivated those genes in yourself or something?”

Countryman shook his head, then changed the subject, “Now why don’t we talk about the developing war? Those new sensors are going to help...”

Baker spoke up, “Seeing them coming will be a big boon, but it's no substitute for proper patrols. I’d like to suggest that we start equipping our Vulcans with Multispatial sensor arrays. They might not be able to support the power-hungry array on the Enterprise but surely a smaller less powerful array will need less power, and even a fraction of that power should be helpful for them”

Kaori nodded, “All well and good but the speed of the Raider advance is a problem. They’ve hit the Cooperative in multiple locations and taken several key facilities, the battle at the Outpost as we understand it was one of the better showings for Cooperative forces.”

Countryman nodded, “I’m well aware of that. For the sensors, our science division can design a smaller array and we will start fitting our patrol ships between rotations with the more advanced multispatial arrays. As for the Raider Alliance? We’ll just keep an eye on developments, we haven’t seen much of them here but sooner or later they will be moving on this sector. The question is where will they engage?”

Greyman leaned forward and pressed a few keys, “Well based on what we know, the Raiders may not be aware of Anchorage’s exact location, more importantly we have given them a few bloody noses. They’ll hit us sooner or later, but I suspect they may go for softer targets.” he tapped on the location of The Lodge. “Our Drifter neighbors do seem more likely, the Lodge is lightly protected and to our knowledge, there aren’t any large capital ships defending this sector. The Stormwolf is the most powerful ship they have in this sector.”

Reynolds spoke up, “The implications of that aren’t lost on me, especially since the Stormwolf is a light cruiser. Enterprise alone outguns her more than ten to one, and I have to agree the Raiders would be well aware of the vulnerability. We know the Drifters are mobilizing, but the storm is large.”

Drakes nodded, “So it is, based on what we were told it will be a month and a half before any significant forces can be moved to the Lodge. One or two large capital ships and their escorts might get here sooner, but the Lodge remains quite vulnerable. Now she does have some defenses and her position buried in a crater provides the colony the space to move into underground bunkers. However those defenses aren’t intended to head off a fleet.”

Countryman had to agree, “You might be right, we could be expecting an attack there in the next couple of weeks. The position is too strategic to ignore.”

“In that case, we should stand ready to deploy to The Lodge at any moment.”

“With that settled, we should discuss force composition and deployments...”