Sliding Reality: Chapter 3 Part 4 of 4 (Patreon)

Dana checked her screens, standing on the bridge of Vulture. The Corvette Screamer was lined up abreast, Jung Su's Gladius watching over them both as they drifted through the La-grange point of the seventh planet.

Leblanc sat at her weapons and navigation station. Klinsky at the helm and Ayambe in the communications station to Dana's right.

"Ichika confirmed she is ready to jump."

"Thank you miss Ayambe, ," Dana said.

"You know that Jung Su and Diego are going to be playing the Hoplite every second we're gone?" Klinksy asked.

"Of course, they best not scratch the paint." Dana said.

Klinsky's cough sounded remarkably close to a laugh as Leblanc shook her head.

"Signal jump readiness, we will go through first." Dana said. “I guess rank does come with some privilege's.”

Her crew’s mouths crept up into smiles.

"Wormhole projectors extended, capacitors are charged, we are ready for wormhole initiation," Klinsky said.

"Plot looks good, math lines up," Leblanc echoed.

"Initiate wormhole formation." Dana said.

Space ahead of Vulture twisted, warping the starlight around it and twisting the light of its exit point, a marble of beautiful twisted light. It expanded like blown glass going from as big as a pin head to bigger than the Corvette.

"Wormhole stable, readings are clean, looks like where we're supposed to be going." Leblanc looked to Dana.

"Take us through mister Klinsky."

"Aye aye."

The Corvette’s engines pushed Dana lightly back into her seat, passing through the surface of the wormhole, it was like being inside a kaleidoscope, the stars and light of Orion system folded into a sphere butting up against the stars and light of their destination system. It was beautiful, a sight as indescribable as seeing a mountain range with one’s own eyes.

The lights moved around them as Vulture cut through the wormhole, a clear line separating the two semi-sphere’s of twisted light. The stars of their destination spread out.

“Exiting wormhole.” Klinsky said.

"System information coming in," Leblanc said.

The light from the system’s primary star did the job for their sensors, weeks old light that had bounced off of planets, moons, asteroids and debris on its way out of the system, past the Oort line where the Vulture’s light sensitive panels drank in the information. Spectrometry figured out the chemical makeup of what they were seeing, computers calculated orbital dynamics, building a map of the system’s largest features.

All happening in real-time as the wormhole began to unravel behind them. “Twelve planets, Lots of Sub-Jovians and Jovians and five rock planets. Lets see if we can get some more information on the moons around the-“

[Connection Lost]

"What?" Dana yelled at the red blinking word, appearing in the Sphere World Spawn menu.

“Maybe the system isn’t completed?” Ayambe said.

Klinsky clucked his tongue. “I’ve seen this a few times before, its rare now. But if you go to the fringes, past the limit of the hypernet nodes then you can lose connection, same notification. As soon as the wormhole closes then you lose hypernet connection.”

“You think that we need to have a hypernet connection?” Dana said.

“Well, if they’re being realistic, sure, need something to connect to the bots and ships through.” Klinsky said.

“How can we fix it?” Dana asked.

“Build a hypernet?” Ayambe said.

“It looks like we can build hypernet nodes, so yeah we can put one in our system and another in the system we’re discovering.”

“So we have to lay out a hyper net node in each system?” Ayambe asked.

“Well, we could replicate what real world warships and exploring ships do. Each of them have an internal hypernet node so that they can’t lose connection, even if they go through non-network systems.” Klinsky said.

Dana added Ichika to the chat. "Hold your jump, we just got disconnected."

"Huh? How, did the game crash?"

"No it said that there was no net connection and then stopped," Dana added in Minnie as well.

"What happened?"

"We went into the system and then the connection stopped." Dana said. “We’re wondering if we need to build a hypernet connection to the system.”

“Or else we lose communication with the bots.” Minnie said, in the half conscious way of doing something else. “Yeah here it is, net node. I was wondering what that was for."

"You think that we need a net node to connect?" Ichika asked.

“That’s what me and my crew think.”

"Yeah, it would make sense, sneaky sneaky. I'm putting in a rush, we need to get in there quickly else someone with a net node in the new system could take control over the ship." Minnie said.

"Do we need to do upgrades to the ships to take them?" Dana asked.

"A Corvette just has the right capacity to take one on with the current standard layout," Minnie said. "I'm going to have one built and shipped to you, then Ichika can fit it to her corvette and go hunt ours down."

"And how long is that going to take?" Dana asked.

"Just a few hours."

"What if we were to keep a wormhole active? If we used the wormhole projector from Ichika's ship to open a tiny wormhole, then it should mean the net would reach the vulture and we could regain control over it." Klinsky said.

"That should work?" Dana asked the others.

"Don't see why not," Minnie said.

"Ichika, if you could make the smallest stable wormhole?"

"Okay, give me a few seconds to get it setup, be ready to jump back into the Vulture as soon as I do."

Dana checked her favorite and recent spawn locations.

"Wormhole is active."

Her last bot lit up on her list. Dana jumped into it before Ichika finished speaking, appearing on the bridge once again.

"Well that worked, okay," Dana looked at the others as they entered their bots. Ayambe started to run tests.

"Yeah the net is active, it looks like that was the problem."

"Minnie, I think that we should make sure we have each of our corvettes hooked up with a net node that we control and see if you can get some into those defenders that Mitch is building."

"Create a defensive network we can control on our own and a back up if someone goes node hunting." Minnie said.

"Read my thoughts." I'm going to have to change the plan to take other systems again.

***

It took a few hours before Diego’s Stallion arrived with the net node. Accelerating all the way here at emergency thrust no less.

They had mapped out the entirety of the system, their first readout had been correct, their sensors adding in roving asteroids as the waiting crews looked for a suitable location to setup a base.

Ichika had closed her mini-wormhole to build up her charge to create a wormhole big enough for Screamer to pass through.

Dana smirked inside her suit at the reality of it all. Her amused snort made it across the channel.

"Something funny? What I miss?" Minnie asked.

"Well, you think about it, we're out here trying to jump into other systems and just cause we want to get there faster we have a corvette, one of a few dozen in existence in the system, burning at emergency speed to just drop us off two components."

Klinsky chuckled. "Yeah when you put it that way, its one of the most luxurious delivery services going."

"You wish you were the one pushing the ship at emergency speeds too," Leblanc said.

"Hey, you don't just work the helm to drive the bus. More maneuverable than a fighter and ten times faster, that's the beauty." Klinsky patted his console.

After the battle for the mining planetoid Dana made sure every ship was filled with components and bots for engineers to jump into. The bots had been busy preparing Ichika’s ship, the Stallion came to a relative stop next to Screamer.

Bots used their jets carrying the node aboard the Screamer, engineers plugging the component into the ship’s systems.

"Okay we're good to go. Net node is operational and connected to the nodes in Sanctorium," Ichika said.

"Okay, lets give this a second try." Dana said. "Net node first."

Diego’s wormhole projectors created a wormhole through to the new system and ejected the second net node through the wormhole. Dana jumped into her bot as her crew and engineers populated.

"Net node located." Leblanc said.

"Moving to intercept," Klinsky said.

"Opening bay doors." Ayambe said.

They drifted to the net node floating out of the wormhole, engineers mag clamped to the node and used their jets to bring it in.

Dana forced herself to not tap on her armest.

"Hooked in and live," Ayambe mused. "Yeah we're looking good here, linked to the Sanctorium net."

"Diego cut the wormhole." Dana said.

"Copy."

The wormhole winked out and...nothing. No connection lost message.

"Ichika can you hear me?"

"Loud and clear, did it work?"

"Well we're still here," Dana looked to Ayambe.

“Connection is good, we’re connected to Stallion, Screamer and Sanctorium.”

“Looks like we’ve got over the second hurdle of multi-system travel.” Leblanc said.

"Umm, you're going to want to see this," Minnie said.

"What?" Dana asked, scanning for threats on the sensors. A link to an article appeared to the side of her vision.

Sphere World Hoax? Stuart Martin Reveal.