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The Dawn of our Age

Teaser - 2

By Mog Moogle

"Gandhi tower, this is Tango Charley Won Zero Tree, USS Destiny requesting departure," Harold Townsend said into the microphone on his headset after he received confirmation his ion drive was primed from his pilot.

"Roger, Tango Charley One Oh Three, mornings released, atmospheric pressure equalizing, bay doors opening. Proceed ahead one third, maneuvering thrusters only. Good luck, Doc."

"Serena? Ahead one third, maneuvering thrusters."

"Aye, Captain," a young woman with her long blond hair in a bun at the front of the cockpit acknowledged and throttled two levers in the middle of six up to one third.

"Serena, don't call me Captain."

"Aye, Doctor Townsend."

"Serena, I asked you to merry me not two weeks ago. How about Harold?"

"Respectfully, after that lecture about mixing work and pleasure you gave me two days ago?"

"Serena, I was aligning the fold core. If I had made a mistake, I could have folded the whole lab with us in it to God knows where."

"Oh, don't think I won't pull rank on you, sir." Serena looked back at him. "You may be in command of this mission, but I'll bust you to ensign if you sass me one more time."

Townsend shook his head and sighed. He barely caught Serena's smile as she looked back out of the cockpit. Her sense of humor would be the hardest thing to get used to. "Very well, Lieutenant Commander Yager," he said as the front of the craft passed the threshold of the Gandhi dry dock bay five. "Set course for the Vasco da Gama gate."

"Aye. Course laid in to the Gama gate," she said as she throttled all the levers back and activated the automatic stabilization system. "Constricting magnetic rings, ion drive at one-hundred percent."

The slender craft with the large sphere shape near the aft radiated a blue glow from the ion thruster as the shipyard fell astern. They passed over the outer ring of the Stanford torus station that housed the shipyard, dry dock, laboratory and terraformation workers. Their backdrop was the planet Mars, with wispy clouds over the many rivers, patches of green and vast red badlands.

The Destiny climbed higher toward an equatorial orbit of Mars with an approach trajectory toward the gate. At one-and-a-half million kilometers was two massive towers on either side of a ring the circumference of Phobos. The Vasco da Gama singularity generator. The towers housed four fusion reactors each that generated more than enough power to supply Earth and its entire twenty-three billion population.

They were humanity's crowning achievement. A series of gates that spanned from Venus to Saturn. Each gate had a twin that it aligned with and created a wormhole between them, enabling faster than light travel without needing to develop a star drive for the spacecraft. The drawbacks were the massive size and energy required to generate and collapse wormholes for the interplanetary travel. They also had to be constructed in place, carefully stabilized so that they didn't move more than a few microns while they were open and had to be completely automated because of the massive power surges that electrified the entire structure.

The magnetic field they generated could pull the trace metals out of the human body up to distances of fifty kilometers from the generators. The aperture gave ships passing through them a twenty kilometer buffer, but in relative terms of the speeds of spacecraft and possibility of navigational error, the risks of using them were high. Townsend was looking to change that.

"Transmitting gate activation signal," Serena announced as she tapped a few buttons on her nav halloscreen. "Confirming receipt, singularity generator online and powering."

"Take us in," Townsend said as he watched the center of the ring seemingly distort the stars behind it as the light began to bend and fold in on itself.

"Gate fully powered, entering outer event horizon, ten seconds to aperture," she said as she started flipping a line of arming switch covered toggles. "Locking systems, faraday circuits engaged."

The space around the ship distorted and a funnel-like shape formed around the edge of the gate ring and poured inward. The front of the Destiny appeared to stretch farther than they could see as it entered, the rest of the ship catching up to the stretched form as it left normal space. When the cockpit was past the distortion effect, Doctor Townsend commented, "I hate the disorienting feeling of seeing my own body stretch infinitely and then snap back to normal."

Serena chuckled and looked at the red display on her nav screen. "Thirty-seven minutes to Drake gate."

"Okay. I'll start priming the fold drive," Townsend told her as he unfastened his harness. He lifted from his rear seat and turned around. He gripped the handles on the hatch and twisted them open. The hatch slid down into the bulkhead and revealed a narrow passageway snaked with wires and pipes along the walls and ceiling.

He pulled himself into the access port and floated toward the aft of the ship. At the end of the corridor he came to another hatch and opened it. He saw the custom drive section of the modified scout ship widened out to hold the shell of the fold drive. Townsend pulled himself up to the yellow and black striped band that wrapped around the shell and tapped a button that brought up a halloscreen.

The display was a two dimensional graph, a three dimensional projection of the graph that showed three axes, and a text readout of BIOS and OS function. He pressed the green button at the bottom of the display and the sphere began to hum. The graphs came to life as the the separate isolated reactor powered up. When both graphs indicated nominal readings, he touched the button on the band again and the display disappeared.

Moving the cover off a sight window he peered into the core of the fold drive. Counter rotating magnetic rings orbited around a bright blue sphere suspended in the middle of the magnetic field. When he was satisfied that what he saw inside the core was indeed what the readings displayed, he closed the sight window and made his way back toward the cockpit.

He contorted himself to close the hatch and then ease back into his seat. Fastening his restraints again, he activated the halloscreen that had been modified to be the navigational and status readings for his fold drive. The whole time fighting to keep the butterflies in his stomach from flying into his throat.

Looking up over the pilot seat out of the cockpit, he watched the spectrum of colors as light was pulled from the entrance of the wormhole and streaked around the ship at light speed toward the other end. The colors meshed and danced like the Aurora Borealis. The effect of the singularity generated wormhole would pull the light apart as it was dragged into the aperture.

"It really is beautiful," Townsend said as he looked at the walls of light around them. "Probably the only thing I'll miss about the interplanetary travel."

"I think the gates will be around for a long time, Doctor," Serena commented.

"Why would they? We could allocate those reactors to new colonies outside of our system." Townsend looked down at the screen in front of him. "After our ships are outfitted with fold drives, that leaves sixty-four reactors to repurpose."

"You really think the Federal Navy will make your tech available for civilian use anytime soon?"

"The gates were constructed by a popular vote from both the Mars Confederation and the Terran Council. The reason the Federated Planetary Alliance even exists was a result of that vote under the explicit condition that a unified human government would serve the people."

"I see. So the fleet, Marine corps and R&D under Navy control are actually run by the people."

"The heads of the government are elected representatives, and the Navy answers to them."

"Ah, of course. That's why your patents are classified." Serena chuckled and looked back at Townsend. "You're an idealist and an optimist, Doctor Townsend. But, that's why I love you."

"And you're a cynic, Serena," Townsend rebutted.

"Ah, what did I say about sass, Lieutenant?" Serena joked as she looked forward.

"But, that's why I love you." He heard Serena chuckle softly as before returning her focus to piloting the craft.

"Two minutes to Drake," she announced.

They both began their individual preparations for entering normal space. The Destiny came to the exit aperture and with a bright white flash the distortion effect of the traversable wormhole dissipated. Serena maintained full thrust until the ship cleared the outer event horizon of the Francis Drake gate. The massive gas giant of Jupiter and three of her moons were visible from the cockpit as Serena fired the port maneuvering thrusters and angled them into a high orbit.

"Confirming receipt of deactivation signal. Drake gate powering for singularity dispersal," she announced.

Behind them the ring of the gate sparked with arcs of electricity jumping from the reactor towers to the outside of the ring. When the capacitors were fully charged, it reversed the magnetic polarity and discharged toward the center of the ring. The wormhole snapped shut and the blanket of stars was visible normally through the ring as it was before the exit aperture opened only ten minutes prior.

"Unlocking systems, disengaging faraday circuits." Serena watched as the red displays flickered back to full color and the red hue was replaced with a more inviting incandescent glow. "Time dilation in expected parameters, synchronizing chronometer with Jupiter tower."

"Set course for Aldrin Proving Grounds."

"Aye, course set."

The Destiny swung around Jupiter until a series of buoys came into view and Serena fired the braking thrusters, matching the orbital velocity of the markers in the restricted test sight for the Navy. She began the same procedure as entering the gate, locking the systems and switching to the isolated circuits that were protected from the electrical surges that the gates caused.

Townsend tapped activation buttons on his halloscreen and the hum of the fusion generator in the aft section became a roar. He verified the coordinates in his separate navigation system and then double and triple checked. "Engaging fold drive in five seconds," he said aloud as he watched the timer count down to zero. He took a deep breath when his display indicated 'PRIMED' and tapped the button below the text.

There was almost no indication that anything had happened except the momentary flash followed by the sound of the reactor slowly easing from its roar to a soft hum once again. Outside, however, none of the buoys were visible, and the light of a red star poured into the cockpit.

"Serena," he said excitedly, "unlock the systems and activate our sensors."

Serena didn't say anything as she looked out of the thick layer of transparent metal in front of her at the star. It wasn't until Townsend repeated himself that she snapped out of her awe and reengaged the ship systems. As they came back online, she activated the spectrograph and began taking radiation and mass readings from the star. "Sir, readings of the star ..."

"Yes?"

"They match all known parameters of Proxima Centari," she nearly squealed in excitement. She unfastened her restraint, bound up from her seat and over the back of it to Townsend and wrapped her arms around him in a tight hug. "Harold, we did it!You did it." She kissed his lips but pulled away as she realized she had lost her professional composure. "Um, that is, fold successful, sir."

"Fold successful ..." he repeated softly. "Over four light-years in an instant." He looked up at Serena and smiled. "Commander Yager. Prep the ship for fold jump. Let's go home."

"Aye, sir!" Serena acknowledged as she worked herself back into the pilot seat.

A blue sphere flashed for an instant and the_Destiny_ was in place where nothing was a moment prior. Sixty kilometers ahead of her bow was the Gandhi tower. As soon as Serena reactivated the ship systems, she informed Townsend that Gandhi acknowledged their transponder signal.

"Gandhi tower, this is Tango Charley Won Zero Tree,USS Destiny. How copy?"

"Destiny, this is Admiral Denisov, Gandhi tower. We read you loud and clear."

"Sir, respectfully requesting recommission of Tango Charley Won Zero Tree, USS Destiny to X-ray Won, USS Dawn of our Age."

"Granted," he replied in the midst of applause and cheers in the background. "Congratulations, Doctor. I'm looking forward to your report. You're cleared for approach to Gandhi dry dock, bay five."

"Harold?" Serena said after the Admiral finished. "There's something I need to tell you."

"What is it, Serena?"

"I'm pregnant."

Townsend sat speechless for a moment as he tried to absorb the news. He furled his brow and and covered his face with his hands. "What were you thinking?" he asked as he kicked the metal frame of her seat. "Why wouldn't you tell me this before you piloted a craft with an experimental drive?"

"And let you assign someone else to the flight? No way." Serena's answer was firm and direct.

"You ... and I," Townsend took a deep breath and exhaled in a long sigh. "We're going to have a baby? I'm ... going to be a father?"

"Yes, Harold. You and I are going to be parents."

"I ... I don't know what to say."

"I love you, Harold."

"I love you too, Serena." He unfastened his restraints and closed his halloscreen, leaned forward over her chair and put his hands on his shoulders. "Don't you dare do anything like that again."

"As you were, Lieutenant," she said and then chuckled.