Chapter 3

            As Ethan hurtled through hyperspace, his mind was astounded by the complexity of Aurora.  She hadn’t said a word to him after Admiral Franklin left, but it was easy for Ethan to see that she was not happy with his presence.  As soon as the Admiral had departed, she closed the door and lifted off, and was out the magnetic curtain before Ethan could even set his bags down.  She jerked the ship around the docking yard, and Ethan realized that she was heading for the minimum safe jump distance.

            He hurriedly stowed his bags and prepared for the jump, and his suspicions were confirmed when she turned to him and said, “Hyperspace jump in three seconds.”  Ethan barely had time to get in a chair and strapped in before the familiar disorientation overtook him as Aurora jumped into hyperspace.

            Hyperspace is a fascinating place, Ethan mused.  Physics in hyperspace are similar to normal space, but seem to exist both in line with and away from normal space.  For instance, once inside hyperspace, humans can operate normally.  Equipment functions as it does in normal space, but distances seem compressed.  In real space, this translates into faster than light travel.  Distances and directions seemed to be linked to normal space, and there seemed to be an event horizon that existed between the two realities.  This was a curiosity unto itself, because if a ship got too close to this horizon, it would seem to move and not allow contact.  The only way to get into hyperspace and out again was the use of special spatial warping engines that could pierce the boundary.  A few probes had bent sent away from that boundary, but contact with those probes was quickly lost, and they were never heard from again.  It was surmised that there were forces away from the event horizon that were much different than normal space—or even hyperspace near the even horizon—and the probes had been destroyed.  Engines also didn’t work correctly in normal space, and so the ship could only go as fast as it was entering the hyperspace entrance created by the jump engines.  This speed was also a set speed, since the jump engine could only breech into hyperspace a certain distance in front of the ship, and if the ship was going too fast it would run into an incomplete breech, and would shear the sides of the ship off as part of the ship entered hyperspace and the rest remained in normal space.

            The jump itself was always the problem; Ethan winced as he came out of the jump.  There was always a slight disorientation that accompanied the jump, as the body adjusted from normal space to the altered physics of hyperspace.  It was Federation policy that all personnel must be seated and strapped in for the jumps themselves, and after the jump was completed the crew was free to return to their duties.

            Ethan shook his head and decided that he and Aurora had best settle any differences they had before they started.  If they were at each other’s throats while engaging the enemy, it could kill them both.

            He stood up from his chair and called to her, “Aurora.”

            “What?” she asked, without turning around.

            “What’s wrong?”

            “You are.”

            “What do you mean?  Come over here and talk to me about it.”

            She slowly turned around and walked over to where he was.  They both sat at a small table built into the wall, and Ethan ordered a coffee while Aurora spoke.

            “I resent you being here,” she said honestly. “I don’t understand why the Admiral sent you here, and I don’t want you here.  There is no way you can help me in any way—you are just a human, and I can work infinitely faster and more accurately than you can.”

            “I see.  Well, I didn’t ask to be here either.  The Admiral took me away from my friends, my girlfriend, and everything I know.  Can we accept that we’re both in a situation we find undesirable?”

            “Perhaps,” she said with some skepticism.

            “Good,” he said, then reached into one of his bags and produced a datapad. “I have our orders here, and I think it would be best if we opened them together.”

            “Together?” Aurora said, surprise written all over her face.

            Ethan realized the true problem then, “You think I’m going to control you, don’t you?  That I’m just another human that’s going to hold you back and keep you from realizing your true potential?”

            “Yes,” she said, without any hint of embarrassment.  “That’s all you humans ever do.”

            “Well, I’ve got a surprise for you.  You aren’t just another computer to me.  You’re a member of this two-person team.  And I would never try to limit a team member.”

            “Whatever you say,” she said, obviously not believing a word he said.  Ethan made his mind up that he’d have to work on that.

            He placed the datapad on the table, and turned it on.  Immediately a hologram of Admiral Franklin appeared over the table, and he said, “Ethan, you and Aurora are to head to the moon orbiting the fourth planet of the Mustafi system.  There you will find a small base buried deep in the moon.  Its sole purpose is to give you and Aurora a place to work on finding a way to beat the Kropellian menace.  You have no limit to budget, materials, or anything.  You are cleared for any mission you deem necessary to defeat this enemy.  Good luck.  The complete data dump from all relevant missions is now available from Aurora.  She has a few advanced weapons you may want to try out, as well as an experimental neural interface for control of the ship.  I daresay you’ll need every advantage you can get.  Good luck.”  With that, the datapad went dark, and sparked once as it self-destructed.

            “Well,” Ethan said, leaning back and thinking.

            “Well what? We’re almost to the moon, and once there what are we going to do?”

            “I’d like first to get an idea what you can do,” Ethan said, a plan starting to form in his head.

            “What do you mean?”

            “Well, before we can do anything, I need to know your tactical and defensive capabilities.  For instance, what weapons do you have, what defensive capabilities, and what is this neural interface that the Admiral mentioned?”

            “The neural interface is over there,” she indicated, pointing to a chair with a helmet hanging from a cable.  “No one has ever been able to get it to work before, it just sits there and hums.  If it was working, it would give you absolute control over the ship at the speed of thought, and would allow you to use the ships sensors as your own senses.  It would also let you download any information you needed into your brain, and give you the ability to use me to interpret anything you required.

            “For offensive weapons, I have all the standard Federation weapons—particle beams, lasers, and both Titan and Odysseus class anti-matter missiles…”

            “Odysseus class?” Ethan interrupted, “I’ve never heard of them.”

            “They contain about a third the anti-matter yield of the Titans,” Aurora explained, “More shield busters than anything.  It was one of the first things that I developed.”

            “Oh, ok.  What else do you have?”

            “Well, right now those are the operational weapons.  I also have on board some miniaturized versions of those for ground use, as well as a railgun prototype.”

            “A railgun prototype?  Will it go through shields?”

            “Some.  I’ve had some luck with the simulators, but I’m trying to get it miniaturized so ground forces could carry it.  It will go through anything on the ground so far.  But it’s far too big to be carried by a single person.”

            “Interesting.  Is that all you have offensive wise?”

            “Currently.  I also have the schematics Admiral Franklin gave me on your idea for a phasing particle beam weapon.”

            “We can work on that later.  What do you have defensively?”

            “Well, you’ve already seen the optical camouflage.  The advantages are that it absorbs ALL electromagnetic radiation that comes into its area of effect—light, sensors, everything.  It even absorbs all our own electromagnetic radiation—even the heat of our bodies.”

            “And the drawbacks?” Ethan asked.

            “Well, while it’s active, we can’t use normal shields.  We also won’t have any communications at all.  We can see out using the viewers and receive communications but we won’t be able to send any communications out.”

            “I see.  What else?”

            “I have standard Federation shield generators rated at 50 terawatts, and I have modified them to modulate in a harmonic pattern which makes them around 50% more effective without draining more power.”

            “Have you combined that with the Admiral’s analysis of my phasing particle beam weapon?”

            Aurora’s eyes widened as she said, “Analyzing.” She worked for a moment and then shouted, “Yes! Preliminary analysis indicates a 45% decrease in effectiveness of phasing particle beam weapon.”

            Ethan’s mind went into overdrive.  “We need to get this information to the Admiral.  Our first objective when we get to the base is to get specifications on the phasing particle beam weapon and these harmonic shields to the Admiral.  Second objective is to get the neural interface working, and adapt it to get it into our ships.  Third, miniaturizing both systems for use in smaller craft.”

            “What do you mean?”

            “Well, from what I remember the Admiral telling me, the battle of Ganymede was fairly even until the Kropellians brought that big bitch into the battle.  That was when the Dauntless was vaporized.  Some form of a phasing particle beam weapon hit it, I’d bet, and I bet that if we got that weapon into our cruisers and destroyers, we’d be much harder to defeat.  And if we could get it into a fighter, we would be nigh unstoppable.”

            “But the question is, have they been able to figure out the shields to it?”

            That question brought Ethan up short.  “I’m thinking out loud here, but before the big one got in the battle, our forces were fairly evenly matched.  How effective are standard Federation weapons against your shields?”

            “Working…complete.  Standard medium lasers are shown to be 65% less effective, particle beam weapons are shown to be 50% less effective, and missiles are 45% less effective.  Why?”

            “Well, from what the Admiral told me, there wasn’t any report of weapons being less effective.  I think that means that they don’t have shields that are more advanced than ours are.”

            “A reasonable assumption.  Now what?”

            Ethan got a glint in his eyes.  “You feel spunky?”

            “What do you mean?” Aurora asked suspiciously.

            “We get to the moon base, miniaturize the phasing particle beam, mount it on you, and go pay a visit to the Kropellian battle fleet,” Ethan stated plainly.

            “Shit!” Ethan screamed as he jerked the neural interface helmet off his head after getting shocked for the twenty-fifth time.

            “I told you,” Aurora chuckled from the workstation she was standing at.  They had been at the moon base for three weeks, and Aurora and Ethan had settled most of their differences.  They had some struggles, but Aurora learned very quickly that Ethan was not a human to be taken lightly.  He had the fastest reflexes she’d ever seen, just as fast as her android reflexes.  And his mind was something she wondered at—he could complete calculations in his head almost as fast as she could, and his mind moved in ways her cybernetics never could.  And his drive was something that she had never expected from a human.  There were days that he would literally work himself into sleep, falling asleep at a computer board or under some piece of equipment he was working on.

            Of course, the news from outside their little moon base was not good.  Twice, the Federation had met the Kropellian battle fleet, and both times had been completely destroyed.  The last time, the other races of the Alliance had joined in the war, and only the hit and run tactics of the Orani had any effect.  There appeared to be a time delay for the charging of the Kropellian’s main weapon, and that gave the Orani the time to get in and hit them, then get out before the main ship of the fleet could destroy them.  The Orani had suffered losses, for sure, but nothing like if that ship had been able to fire on them.  The Kropellians had actually lost one of their destroyers from the Orani attacks, but rather than leave it, it was determined later that they had fired their main weapon on the destroyer, vaporizing it in space.

            However, Ethan and Aurora had been working in overdrive to get some things done.  They had sent off plans for two new ships to Admiral Franklin—a Supernova class battleship and a Galaxy class super-battleship.  The Supernova—the first ship of the Supernova class—would be the first off the line, by the Admiral’s orders, and it would be equipped with two new weapon systems—the heavy particle beam and heavy laser turrets.  These were over twice as powerful as the former models, and with forty of each, plus sixty medium particle beam and laser turrets, one hundred Titan class antimatter missile launchers, and a fifty fighter escort, it would be a serious contender on the battlefield.  With the new harmonic shielding that Aurora had designed, the Federation had one mean battlewagon that would be a serious problem for the Kropellians.

            The Galaxy was quite possibly the largest ship ever created by any species of the Alliance.  It was over twice the size of the Supernova, and carried a fearsome array of weaponry.  One hundred heavy particle beams and lasers, two hundred medium particle beams and lasers, five hundred Titan missile tubes, one hundred Greyhound fast attack fighters, and sixty Mastiff class light bombers completed the standard capabilities.  However, its fiercest weapon was the Hammer of Thor—what Ethan and Aurora had named the phasing particle beam weapon.  The ship was literally designed around the weapon.  If Ethan and Aurora’s calculations were close, the Hammer would be at least as powerful as the Kropellian’s design, and would take almost twenty seconds less to charge.  It would take almost six months to build the ship, however, and that was time they simply didn’t have.

            Since getting the two ship designs sent off to Admiral Franklin, Ethan and Aurora had labored on Ethan’s main projects—miniaturizing the phasing particle beam and getting the neural interface to work.  Ethan was currently working on getting the neural interface to work while Aurora worked on miniaturization.

            Ethan stood up in disgust from the neural interface, “I just can’t get it to work.”

            “Why don’t you try meditating?  Or get some sleep?  You’ve been up for nearly,” Aurora looked at the clock, “thirty five hours.”

            “Has it been that long?” Ethan asked.

            “Yes,” Aurora stated, coming to a decision. “Now go to bed you silly man.  I admire your determination, but you are only human.  You need to rest.  Go get some food, and sleep.  I’ll wake you in twelve hours.”

            “Yes ma’am.” Ethan intoned.  He’d learned that when she had that look in her eyes it would be better just to accept it.  She had ways of making him do it anyway—usually by slipping a sedative in his drink.

            Ethan slept fitfully.  His dreams were first plagued by images of his parents getting crushed in that tunnel accident so many years ago, and then by the control code of the neural interface, and he finally realized where he was going wrong.

            Aurora could tell he was not sleeping peacefully when she came into his room to wake him up.  His covers were strewn all over the place and he was covered in a light sweat.  As she reached down to wake him up, his eyes snapped open and he grabbed the wrist of the hand that was reaching down to wake him.  Aurora could only stand there in awe at the speed he used to do that.

            Ethan realized who it was, and immediately let go of her wrist.  Without a word, he got up and rushed out of his room.  Aurora followed him, and when she finally caught up with him in the computer room, she could see him furiously typing away at the computer.  She watched for long moments, and jumped when Ethan finally said something.

            “Got it!” he exclaimed, jumping up and putting on the neural interface helmet and activating it.  The lights dimmed slightly in the room, and Aurora gasped as she felt an unusual sensation.  Her consciousness expanded, and she could feel a new presence in her mind.  She suddenly felt much more…unbound…than she did before, and she realized that Ethan had made the interface succeed in joining his mind and hers.  It was an instant and an eternity, and in that instant she truly understood Ethan.  His whole mind was laid bare to her, as was hers to him, and they both shared in that moment.  The sensation died away as the pre-programmed test program ran its course, and the neural interface disconnected Ethan and Aurora.

            They both just sat there stunned for a moment, then looked at each other with a wide grin.  “What did you do?” Aurora asked.

            “It was so simple,” Ethan began. “You’ve looked into my file.  Why am I different?”

            “I don’t know,” Aurora said, “Nothing that is in your file would indicate that you are any different than any other person that has worked on the neural interface.”

            “How about that I’m not entirely human?”

            Aurora was stunned.  There was no mention of anything like that in his file.  “What do you mean?” she asked.

            “Why do you think I was so poor?  Why were my parents working as repair technicians on a Tau Ceti III?  My mother was Alfari.”  In the years since peaceful negotiations with the Alfari, very few interspecies relationships had come about.  Those that did were often ridiculed and made to be outcasts.

            “And the programming didn’t account for that.  After you found the previous errors, it was still configured for a human brain, not your half Alfari brain.”

            “Exactly.  It would’ve worked for a pure human days ago.”

            “Well, now what?” Aurora asked.

            “How are you coming with the miniaturization of the phasing particle beam?”

            “I have one small enough to fit on me, but I don’t know how effective it will be.  I don’t know if it has enough power to do any real damage.”

            “Well, what do you say we find out?”

            “The Kropellian battle fleet?”

            “Let’s take it to them and see,” Ethan said with grim resolve.

            This is crazy. Admiral Franklin was on board the Bawdy Blue, a Nova class destroyer, and he was questioning the sanity of his pet projects.  Ethan and Aurora had requested a seven destroyer escort to the last known position of the Kropellian battle fleet.  But rather than entering normal space, the fleet would only open breeches into real space, then close them without going through.  Ethan and Aurora wanted those decoys to allow them to slip in using Aurora’s EM cloak undetected.  In a way, it made sense.  The Kropellians could just target a single hyperspace opening and shoot anything coming out.  Ethan and Aurora had been very tight-lipped about the mission itself, and that’s why he was questioning their sanity.  All attempts to attack the Kropellians had been met with utter and complete failure.  He had no idea what the pair had planned, but he was praying that it wouldn’t result in the loss of the most advanced computer system in the galaxy and the most promising young officer he’d ever seen.

            On board Aurora, Ethan and Aurora were resting.  They’d gone over the plan again and again, and they thought it would work.  Testing outside their moon base had shown that the phasing particle beam was an efficient weapon, but could only be fired about once every twenty seconds.  Their plan was to jump into the system under full stealth, and try to get close enough to overhear casual radio chatter in the Kropellian ships.  Then they would turn and attack one of the escort ships, hopefully damaging it.  Neither of them had any thought that they could destroy it, but they hoped it would at least be damaged.  Of course, if it was destroyed, that would be even better.  And once they’d taken their shots, gotten readings, they would jump out before the other ships could respond.  They were scheduled for another ten minutes in hyperspace, and then they would jump to normal space.

            Nine minutes later, the Aurora and her escort were preparing to make the jump to normal space.  Ethan was sitting in the command chair, and was plugged into the neural interface.  He and Aurora had decided to keep that little secret from the Admiral until they could test it in an operational situation.

            “Forty-seconds to jump.  Good luck son,” Admiral Franklin’s voice came over the com system, “Whatever you have planned…I hope it’s a damned miracle.”

            “Roger that, Admiral.  We’ll contact you as soon as we make the jump back to hyperspace.”

            Ethan used his sensor-enhanced vision to watch as the destroyer escort and Aurora opened jump points, and then he watched the destroyers veer off as he and Aurora slipped into normal space.  Immediately, he could see the entire Kropellian battle fleet at the ready, and training weapons on the opening jump points.  However, none of the ships fired at the jump points, so Ethan thought that they didn’t detect anything coming through.  Aurora and Ethan coasted through the gate unmolested, and slowly moved toward the fleet.  Ethan could see that they had added to their fleet after the Orani had destroyed one of their ships—either that, he thought, or they had already had assets either on the way or already in the sector.

            Aurora slowly maneuvered closer to the fleet.  She and Ethan decided that they would get as close to that big behemoth, what the boys at Intelligence Control had dubbed the Samael, and see if they couldn’t record any random com chatter.  It took them nearly three hours, but at the end of that time the two of them were close enough to extend a docking tube to the ship.

            “Well,” Ethan said, “I think that’s close enough.  I guess they can’t see through your cloak.  Any chatter?”

            “Scanning…Ethan…Ethan, you need to see to this,” Aurora stammered.

            Ethan shifted his thinking to “see” the com signal that Aurora was receiving.  What he saw shocked him to the depth of his soul.  In an instant, the plan was thrown out the window, as Ethan’s mind seized control of the tactical system and powered up the phasing particle beam weapon.  As soon as it was charged, he switched shields from the cloaking system to the advanced shields and fired the PPB at point blank range.  It penetrated deeply into the bowels of the Samael, completely vaporizing miles of the ship.  As soon as the charge on that weapon ran out, Ethan fired every Titan missile they had at the remaining ships, then started firing the normal particle beam weapons and lasers as he steered the ship away from the Samael.  By the time the Kropellian battle fleet responded and trained weapons on Ethan and Aurora, over three quarters of their fleet was either destroyed or disabled, and Ethan and Aurora had slipped back into hyperspace.

            Ethan disengaged the neural interface and jumped out of the chair.  As he turned, he and Aurora could only stare at each other in shock.

            The image they had seen on the com channel was human.