Station Charlie -- Earth Orbit -- August 26th, 2289
Markus stepped onto the transport ship that would take him to Station Alpha. He was told that the reason that he would be taking the transport and not his own ship is that his ship had already been moved to Station Alpha. Which, if he was being honest, tickled him rougher than most things have in the past. No one touches his baby without his permission. But they did promise not to modify it in any way, which made him feel at ease.
Markus looked around in the ship for where he could put his luggage, which included Tempest and an assortment of clothes. The ship itself looked like something out of the golden age for cinematography. Big, blocky, designed solely for the purpose that it was intended for and no consideration for much else. In this case however, this transport seemed more armored and meatier than he remembered. In the ship there were 2 rows that you could barely walk down comfortably that had drop-down seats on either side that faced each other. Behind each seat were storage compartments inlaid into the walls that weren't much bigger than lockers. The 2 rows led to what appeared to be a cockpit with what amounted to a blast door. Overall the ship had an extremely utilitarian design. The only wasted effort seemed to be some cushions stapled onto a couple seats that sat closer towards the cockpit. Markus decided he wanted one of the cushioned seats, seeing as he figured some jarhead decided the regular seats were too uncomfortable, even for a jarhead.
And that's saying something.
Looking around the space inside the transport, Markus saw more rows of seats than people to sit in them. Inside the compartment was of course himself, but also Jeremy Fallen. Markus saw the captain enter the cockpit as Markus boarded, and he thought the captain was probably stowing away some of those documents he held in his hands and talking to the pilots.
When Markus went to go take a cushioned seat however, he was interrupted by Jeremy.
"I wouldn't do that if I were you," Jeremy told Markus.
"And why is that, pray tell?" Markus said turning around.
"The person who stapled those cushions down, that's the cap," Jeremy answered. "And I doubt he'd want your dog ass stinking up his seat."
"Oh? And butthead up there wouldn't stink it up either?" Markus grinned.
Jeremy had a confused look on his face.
"Oh, don't tell me you don't know about Beavis and Butt-Head?"
Jeremy still gave Markus a confused look.
Markus, almost dying from boredom from his first return trip from his first freight haul, had vowed never to be bored again. When he got back to earth, he bought damn near every movie and TV show ever produced in existence. While it did relieve him of almost a quarter of his funds from his first job, he had gotten a cheap package deal, and it was a most welcome benefit. Utilizing the rest of his funds from his first freight haul, Markus decided to also grab a new Full Dive VR, a robust collection of every video game that had more than ten thousand sales, emulators, and FDVR ports for said emulators. All told, just about every item with time wasting potential produced before WW3 lined the data stores of Markus' ship. Literally. He had to purchase more data storage for his ship to be able to hold it all. This was also about the time he started to get into modifying his ship's AI, but Markus saw it as a necessary evil.
"It's an old TV show reference, don't worry about it," Markus said. "and that must be one hell of a story the captain has."
"It sure is." the captain said while the cockpit blast doors closed behind him. "But an even better story is the one about why we are on this transport." The cap gave a pointed look at Jeremy. "Buckle up, we're out of here in three minutes. Jeremy, Debrief the man. Preferably over there" he said, while taking a seat on his cushioned seat, pointing at the opposite side of the ship. "I'm going to get some shut eye, should be a two hour flight or so. When I wake up, I want him to know what the name of the laser thing for the mission is."
At the closing of his words the captain opened the compartment behind his head and took out an eye cover. The captain then lied his head down on the second cushioned seat, strapped himself to the seats, put on the eye cover, and almost immediately fell asleep.
"Well I see the captain wastes no time." Markus said.
"We shouldn't either." Jeremy said. "What do you know about the history of Grav-drives Markus?"
"Not much, just enough to repair them and what we were taught in class about them. Why do you ask?"
"Well, originally," Jeremy started while sitting down and strapping in, "Grav-drives were engines that used unique mathematics and physical properties to manipulate space around them. They were later refined by matter found very rarely within the earths crust, and only in groups of a couple parts per million when they were found. The matter found is thought to be the remnants of strange matter found within a neutron star. There are some theories as to how it has appeared in our solar system, like neutron stars being ripped around a black hole, or the remnants of some of the first Kilonovas. Whatever the case, we were able to find a way to extract it and gather it into enough quantities to make Grav-drives."
"Yea, I heard about this from some drunk smuggler telling me about how his dad made a living looking for downed drones from WW3 that had Grav-Drives." Markus said. By the time he was done with his sentence, the pilot had come over the speakers telling everyone that they had departed Station Charlie and were headed for Station Alpha, ETA 2 hours.
Jeremy, ignoring the pilot and Markus, continued. "Grav-drives, through an extremely complicated process, are able to create a kind of 'sphere' around a ship. Using gravity, the Grav-Drive creates a field of 'opposite' gravity behind this 'sphere' while also creating a gravity well in front of the ship. This was known before to many sci-fi fans and nerds alike as the Alcubierre drive."
"older model Grav-drives were originally introduced towards the start of WW3, which led to the start of drone combat in the skies and space combat being possible. The reason for this wasn't because pilots couldn't handle the stresses, but because they no longer had the reaction time necessary to fulfil the dog-fighting role. Hence your smuggler friend's father making a living off of finding crashed drone ships." Jeremy gave Markus a look, as if saying 'praise me, I remembered.'
"Uh huh," said Markus, "this is all kind of basic stuff, no? We were all taught that stuff in school."
Jeremy sighed, "This you may know, but not the instability of the drives. Grav-drives were revolutionary in its ability to dog-fight being able to accept stresses of up to 27g's, but it wasn't without its drawbacks. Because of a lack of strong enough material, they constantly folded themselves up like origami. It wasn't until we were able to harness and employ unique matter that we got modern stable Grav-Drives. Recent developments have also allowed greater and more robust Grav-drives to come out, like that new one you told the cap you've been eyeing."
"What you're going to be doing is using a different drive altogether. It's development began some time during WW3 and hasn't bore fruit until recently. The creation of the matter necessary to have the drive function baffles my mind still, and I don't remember all of the steps, but I'll give you an outline. A couple decades ago, scientists were messing with some unique matter in a lab, going back through and testing it with every experiment they could think of. Some experiments drew more success than others, eliciting whole new worlds of research, but none were as effective at creating something as novel as the experiments with the MAGIS-100 laser. When they hit the unique matter with a MAGIS laser, seemingly nothing happened. It was later realized through data mining that quite a lot of the particles in the area became... interlocked?"
"What do you mean?" Markus asked, Intrigued.
"Just that. They became... entangled? paired?" Jeremy replied. "Whatever you want to call it, testing immediately began, and 3 years later they were able to successfully synthesize this new matter. Running it through a MAGIS laser, they would then subject the matter with an incredible amount of energy and pressure. Slowly easing off and subjecting this matter to an 'opposite' gravity field as well as an extremely high magnetic field, they were able to stabilize this new matter. It acts similar to modern Grav-drives, creating a 'bubble' in which instead of being gravitationally the same it instead 'links' everything within. Using a large amount of energy and a device able to open wormholes on the atomic scale, scientists were able to push this 'bubble' through while only pushing the small amount of matter through said open wormhole. The scientists at Alpha eventually created a much longer ranged micro-wormhole generator, and here we are after a couple years of testing."
Markus took a moment to piece together what that all meant, then was visibly shocked. "So... your telling me we can... teleport now?"
"Well... Sure, I guess. You would have to ask one of the egg-heads at Alpha for a better explanation than that, but that's the general gist of it. Last time I got an explanation from them they made the entire universe sound like a game or something." Jeremy seemed to be done explaining the complications of it to Markus.
"So what, I'm going to be the first lab rat to use this or something?"
"Oh no, the scientists have already successfully tested extra-solar jumps with live test subjects." Jeremy said. Markus' eyes bulged a little at hearing that. "What we need is someone to go out and haul the resources necessary to start construction on a station we want to make on one of the moons of Uranus, Triton. Nothing like the stations orbiting earth, just something for docking and refueling some smaller vessels."
"So in summary," Markus was feeling Déjà vu. "Use a never before seen FTL drive - that has been tested - to transport lots of material to the largest moon of Uranus? Which last I remember has fuck all out there? Why not something like the moon of Europa on Jupiter? It's the shorter distance and has more resources if I remember correctly."
"Well you see," Jeremy seemed a little reluctant to tell Markus this next bit. "Jupiter's gravity well messes with the calculations for the wormhole generator quite a bit. The egg-heads don't know exactly why, but they decided that Uranus was better. All the more reason to talk to them about it, and not me."
Markus chalked it up to Jeremy being hesitant or not wanting to seem unknowledgeable in the field.
"I don't think that my ship can handle that type of load, Jeremy."
"That's why your not going to be using your ship, instead your going to be using the newest in the lineup of your ship's design." Jeremy said. "If I remember correctly, you ship is the Mk 2 Epsilon Hauler, Right?" Jeremy asked Markus.
"You hit it on the nose." Markus punctuated with a scratch on his nose.
"Well we've gotten you a Mk 5 Epsilon Multi Kit. The brass in charge spared no expense for this and decided to grab something for the mission that suits the pilot. In this case, the pilot is you. With backwards compatibility, we can transfer just about everything over to the newer ship and integrate it easily with the ships systems."
Markus looked downright jittery. He was itching to get up and go play with his new ship, but his hopes were then dashed by Jeremy.
"Don't get too excited." Jeremy said. "The ship is only yours for the duration of the mission, then it reverts back to USSF control."
"Why you got to ruin my dreams like that man." Markus pouted. "And to think," Markus held his hand aloft as if in a theatrical play, "I could have dominion over a galactic empire."
"In your dreams," Jeremy said. "Like you could rule over anything."
"If you haven't forgotten," Markus rebutted, "I am a ruling interest in my company."
"That's totally different and you know it."
The conversation died down, until they started talking and shooting the shit with each other like old times.
It lasted until they were close to arriving at Station Alpha.
"Hey Jeremy?" Markus said in askance.
"What?"
"I ever apologize to you about the whole smuggling deal? Because I do. It seems like it made it real hard for you there for a while, and I'm just awfully sorry for that."
"Ah," Jeremy paused. "No worries, that's water under the bridge at this point. I'll still be a bit sore at you for a while, but it's nothing you can't handle" Jeremy said with a grin.
"So I'm never going to live it down is what your saying?"
"Yep"
"Bastard."
I like the chapter. Good quality and interesting premise, keep up the good work and I hope there’s more to come😁
Thanks, will upload tomorrow. Feeling good about the chapter!