Beginnings - chapter 2 (2nd draft)

Jump engine technology hadn’t caught on for terrestrial travel yet, so I got to sit on a transatlantic flight from Denver to Edinburgh for 6 boring hours. Once we arrived Easton procured a rental car and we set off on a drive across Scotland’s eastern edge. The drive was a little over 100 miles, and we ended up on the coast several hours after sunset. Once we got off the A90 we wound along smaller and smaller roads, finally finding a narrow track that I never would have seen. A few miles bumping along this meager path and climbing a steep hill brought us to a very imposing ancient castle. The walls were made of massive dark stone blocks, and imposing towers graced the corners. Narrow windows could be seen in the towers, but the castle walls were inviolate. As we rounded the final curve and approached the castle we saw a guard house about 100 yards from the gates. The sides of the roads were lined with rock walls, and the front of the guard house was parallel with a set of steel bollards blocking the roadway. As we approached the guard house two very large, solidly built men wearing black stepped into the roadway and waited for us to stop.



“Identification.”



Easton handed over his ID and I presented my US passport. While the first guard had been collecting our IDs the second had been standing off to the side, a very fearsome and unusual weapon pointed not directly at us, but very close to it. I also noticed that his finger wasn’t terribly far from the trigger guard. I found myself staring at the weapon. The first guard signaled to the second, who lowered his weapon, then returned to Easton’s window and returned our IDs. As he did the bollards sank into the roadbed.



“Here are your IDs, gentlemen. Please proceed.”



Once we were underway I had to ask Easton about those weapons. “Those rifles the guards were carrying weren’t anything I’ve ever seen before. What gives?”



“New technology out of Israel - energy rifles. They’re basically small charged particle weapons. The output can be set from a level low enough to just stun a human to high enough to blast significant chunks out of rock walls. Not commercially available yet, but one of the founders of this consortium is the majority owner of the company that developed them. We’ve got a factory in the Seychelles licensed to manufacture them, and their entire output comes straight to us.”



Much closer to the castle I observed that the castle’s drawbridge appeared to still be in use. Instead of the traditional and ancient wooden construction, this one appeared to be steel plate over a duralum frame. The traditional ropes were replaced with what appeared to be steel cables. More guards wearing black uniforms and carrying the same weapons the gate house guards had been carrying patrolled the gate area, and I caught glimpses of what appeared to be large machine gun barrels and rocket launchers just barely visible through the embrasures.



Another pair of guards flagged us to a stop under the murder holes in the curtain wall, and our IDs were checked again.



“Good evening, gentlemen. Lord Lofton will see you in his study while your bags are delivered to your rooms. Please park your vehicle in the car park against the west wall, slot number 17.”



We parked and left everything in the car, including the keys. Easton led us through the grand entrance and down a well-lighted hallway. I had expected a structure that looked as dark and forbidding as this to smell damp and moldy, but it didn’t. The air felt less humid than had the air outdoors, and the only smell I could detect was the faint fragrance of flowers. Further down the hallway I caught a whiff of some meat roasting and realized that I hadn’t eaten for more than 12 hours. Easton then stopped before a massive oak door, banded with thick iron bands and hung from very solid hinges and knocked. A refined voice from inside the room said “Enter.” Easton easily swung the large door open. I was impressed, as it must have been exquisitely balanced to open so easily.



“My lord, I would like to present Michael Joseph “Red” Campbell. Red, this is Lord Geoffry Lofton.”



“My lord, it is an honor to meet you.”



“Mr. Campbell, pleased to meet you. I’m delighted that you decided to accept our offer, absolutely delighted.”



“Thank you, my lord. I’ve known Easton long enough to know that if he’s behind a project, it’s got to have potential. And given the current state of affairs on Earth, who in his right mind wouldn’t be eager to check out the possibility of leaving it all behind?”



“Quite, quite. And your current affairs won’t prevent you from departing?”



“No, my lord. All of the other projects I’m working on are of far less importance than this, and I can work on them from anywhere.”



“Excellent. Mr. Warwick most likely will not have had an opportunity to tell you about our project structure. The design committee drew up an arrangement where all participants will be assigned one or more Occupational Specialties - rather like you yanks with your ‘MOS’ among the military people. Within a given occupational specialty, practitioners will be assigned levels or ranks from 1 to 9, where 1 indicates an entry-level familiarity and a 9 indicates mastery. For example, a medical doctor would be a level 9 life sciences specialist. Using this system, the committee has designated you as a level 9 general engineer, a level 9 communications specialist, and a level 9 provisioner (what you would probably call a ‘woodsman’). There will be very few individuals holding two occupational specialties, and even fewer with three. They actually wanted to assign you a fourth occupational specialty, for manifold jump navigation, but the system they designed is really only suited to a maximum of three specialties. I do hope that you will still agree to be our navigation specialist even though not assigned a formal specialty code.”



“Who really cares about labels, my lord? I don’t. Just point me at the work to be done and I’ll get busy.” As I was saying this my stomach growled quite loudly.



Lord Lofton chuckled at my look of embarrassment. “Mr. Warwick, why don’t you and Mr. Campbell enjoy some dinner as you as soon as you have washed off the dust of the road? You have adjacent quarters in the dormitory. Again, Mr. Campbell, I am delighted that you decided to join us.”



We took our leave and decided to get some food before checking on our quarters. Breakfast had been a good while ago, and the smells from the kitchen had been most wonderful. The dining room was on the opposite side of the keep, and was quite large. Long tables lined the room, and I would estimate that it could have seated a couple hundred people without too much effort. Colorful coats of arms hung from all four walls. A huge fireplace in the front of the room had an applewood fire going, and the fragrance of the fire competed with the smell of the meat. The chimney must have had a wonderful draft, as the smell of the smoke hadn’t been detectable until we entered the room.



All but two of the tables were deserted, as it was rather late by the time we arrived. One of the tables was occupied by some very studious types poring over books and data tablets. The other occupied table seated just a single individual, a guy built like a fireplug. He was at least 9 inches shorter than me, but probably outweighed me by 50 pounds. And from his appearance I would guess that he was solid muscle. Easton called out to the kitchen that two more had arrived for dinner, then introduced the rock of a man.



“Fredo, this is Red Campbell. Red, this is Fredo McGuire, the mining supervisor. He just arrived at the castle a couple of days ago.”



“Pleased to meet you, Fredo.”



His handshake was firm but not painful. I sensed that he could have broken most of the bones in my hand, but didn’t see a need to assert dominance in that way. “Likewise, Red. What is your role in this grand adventure?”



Easton answered for me. “He’s a level 9 general engineer, level 9 communications specialist, and level 9 provisioner.”



“General engineer, huh? We’ll probably be doing a lot of work together. Ever work with distillation mining?”



“Not in production. I helped design the power control circuits of the cannons and did some work on the molecular discriminators of the condensers, but the technical details of how the condensers work with the output of the discriminators is way beyond my ken.”



“Mine too! But who cares, as long as it works, right? Ah, here comes a serving wench with meat!”



A cute young lady, an attractive blond with lovely sparkling green eyes and carrying a platter with a sizable roast, snapped “Wench? Who you calling a wench, troll! Just for that I ought to take this roast beef back to the kitchen!”



“I apologize, you vision of loveliness! Red, Easton, meet Sally McDonald. She’s helping out in the kitchen now, but she’s actually a level 7 in material sciences.”



Introductions we made all around. Sally then asked “Can I get you gentlemen - and troll - anything else? Something to drink besides the water in the pitcher?”



“Yes, Ms. McDonald, I could really go for about a gallon of beer. Ale, pilsner, IPA, whatever you’ve got.” I really was thirsty after all that traveling and talking.



“It just so happens that Lord Lofton is quite fond of preserving traditions, so the nearby village brews a wonderful mead. I’ll bring you two tankards and a large pitcher.”



“Make it 2 pitchers, dear. We’ve got a powerful thirst on,” Fredo requested.



“Hmmmph.” Sally stalked off towards the kitchen. Moment later she returned with two large tankards and two huge pitchers of a wonderfully golden concoction. I poured some for all three of us, then cautiously tasted - it was my first time drinking mead. It wasn’t bad. It didn’t have the body of the Guinness and Smithwicks I was used to, but it would do. I quickly downed my first tankard.



Fredo refilled my tankard and laughed “Hah! A man after my own heart!”



Once the roast was gone Sally brought out three large slices of a wonderfully tart berry pie. I protested that I couldn’t possibly finish the serving she placed before me, but she just grinned and walked off. A few minutes later the desert plate was empty. We spent another couple hours talking and drinking. Our hopes for the project were pretty uniform, and we all looked forward to actually getting some work done.



Easton and Fredo showed me to the living quarters in the residential wing of the castle. The Consortium had taken a huge room (maybe a ballroom, or banquet hall?) and partitioned it into a dozen or so dormitory areas. The three of us were all in the unit nearest the entry door. I was pleased to find that we had a well-equipped shower attached to our dorm unit, so I took a nice long shower, hit my bunk, and quickly fell asleep.



The next few months consisted of long days working with the personnel selection committee, assessing available astronomical data for the initial jump, reviewing equipment selection and acquisition, and performing receiving inspection as equipment arrived. When I wasn’t tied up with the boring stuff I had the castle’s head of security check me out of the energy rifles, and did target practice as often as I could. I found the range to be excellent - I could take down large rabbits out to 150 yards or so with the rifle set to the lowest energy setting. I also managed to pulverize a few of the plentiful rocks the nearby hills grew so profusely using higher output power.



As the planned launch date drew near, security at the castle seemed to develop leaks as the public learned of our plans. Almost all of the personnel selections remained secret, but the plans didn’t. We were soon on the receiving end of quite a bit of negative publicity and hostility. The groups opposed to our plans fell into two groups. The first and largest group was people who wanted to go along but hadn’t been invited. Their ranks grew daily, and they often tried to camp outside the gate house. Fortunately the guards had little trouble persuading them to move along. The second group was the religious nutters who insisted that God had created Earth as mankind’s home, and trying to get humans to live on any planet other than Earth was a direct insult to God’s Plan. This was the group I most feared. My life experience had shown me that few causes can be used to justify extremism and violence more easily than religious convictions. While the first group were primarily begging and pleaded to be included, the second group occasionally tried to bomb the castle or shoot the guards walking patrol. From time to time a sniper would try to pick off one of the gate house guards, but the castle was situated such that nobody was able to approach closer than 400 yards or so on foot, and the castle’s electronic alarm system almost always detected would-be snipers well before they reached even that range. The public denunciation and anger at our project became heated enough that project personnel were not allowed out of the castle via ground transportation, and flying out via helicopter was discouraged since we couldn’t be sure that the nutters wouldn’t get their hands on missiles.



As the nutters proliferated, so did the craziness from politicians. As more people learned of the plans to establish a privately managed colony, political bodies around the world began to weigh in. The Congress of the United States debated and almost passed bills making participation in colonization attempts directed by anyone other than the government illegal. The British Parliament considered a similar bill, and came within a couple votes of passing it. The political leaders of both countries, as well as Russian, Chinese, and Japanese leaders, loudly denounced the plans as misguided and fanatical, and suggested that such attempts should be outlawed.



Worldwide outcry against our project reached a new peak in August. The Chinese government built a ship they called an ark ship and equipped it with a manifold engine, and they announced publicly that they were going to travel to the Alpha Centauri system in just a single jump. They called it a “grand display of the technological prowess and united will of the Chinese people”. Engineers who saw footage of the ship under construction called it a foolhardy attempt at mass suicide. The problem with their plan was the phenomenon of “bow shock”. When using a manifold engine to warp space-time, there is a release of turbulent energy whenever a body attempts to span the warped space. The magnitude of the energy released is proportional to the linear distance being spanned by the warped space-time curve. By planning to jump a little over 4 lightyears in a single jump, the Chinese would be encountering enough turbulence to shred a 21st century aircraft carrier.



The day of the planned departure arrived with great fanfare. TV networks from all over the world were on hand to record the event and had crews monitoring the tangle-link communications gear. The tangle-link spit out a steady stream of information coming from the ark ship.



“Crew and passengers all secure and ready to jump… Manifold engine on-line… Engaging manifold engine now… Experiencing turbulence… Turbulence growi”



Then the communications from the ark ship cut off. The Chinese military immediately shoved all the news crews out of the tangle-link communications hut, and a few minutes later a Chinese official made an announcement.



“Ladies and gentlemen of the press and people of the world, it is with great pride that the People’s Republic of China announces the successful transition from this solar system to the Alpha Centauri system of the first Chinese colonization ark ship. An unfortunate technical problem with the communications system prevented us from sharing the words of the ship’s crew with you, but we would like to assure you that the ark ship is now safely landed on a hospitable planet and is now proudly launching a grand colony of proud Chinese adventurers. Thank you for coming.”



Of course everybody knew that the reason the tangle-link communications stream was interrupted was that the ship disintegrated. The Chinese government would never admit this, of course - that would be embarrassing to the government. But everybody knew anyway. The religious nutjobs took this failure as yet another sign from God that this project was contrary to God’s plan. The attacks against the castle escalated greatly.



Political bodies quickly followed public sentiment, and the US, British, French, Chinese, Indian, and Pakistani governments all passed new laws making attempts to colonize other planets illegal. The British law went so far as to pronounce participation in such activities as treasonous. Those of us working at the castle were following news reports pretty closely, so when Lord Lofton received a call from the MP responsible for our area nobody was surprised. Lord Lofton was told that all activity must cease immediately, and that all personnel must vacate the castle within 48 hours. He was also informed that a private session of Parliament had ruled that the castle was forfeit, becoming the property of the Crown.



The result was 48 hours of hellish effort. The Consortium had previously purchased a remote island in the Indian Ocean. The island had previously been used as a shipping terminal, so it already had large warehouses and traction equipment. Dorms for the workers were already present, so building management staff just cleaned them up and added amenities. Several of the warehouses were modified to have environmental controls, allowing for the storage of even the most delicate of equipment without having to worry about damage from exposure to moist, salty air. Most importantly, the three jump ships themselves were constructed on-site under an aluminum shelter that had previously housed a dry dock. When the British government made their pronouncements, most of the expedition’s general consumables had been warehoused. The high tech equipment had been delivered to the castle for testing, so we faced a huge task - relocating tens of tonnes of equipment from the castle to the Indian Ocean site without passing through the castle gates. The team figured out a reasonably safe way to bug out. We simply built and configured a small manifold engine and set it to travel to the remote site. Since a bunch of levitation skids (basically fork lifts that used gravitational energy to lift and move heavy loads) were available, we fired them up and every able body in the castle worked humping freight for the hours remaining to us. Almost everything was already on pallets for ease of management, so we just had to strap everything down before starting to transport them. But even so, the sheer volume of material to be moved meant that everybody in the castle was working 20 or more hours a day up until the deadline. Lord Loftman arranged to have the remaining deliveries of supplies redirected to a transshipment point in order to avoid discovery of our new location. It was a huge effort that left us all feeling like we were ready to drop, but we did it. Once the last pallet of material was moved, we made sure that all of the project personnel had abandoned the castle along with their personal equipment. The security staff was the last to leave, and as the last of them arrived in the IO they reported that army helicopters had just arrived at the castle, and troops were fast-roping onto the grounds.



We had been transporting the materials from the castle directly into the holds of the ships, so we didn’t have to delay further by moving pallets a second time. The first jump ship was ready, and I joined the spacer crew in making some short-range test jumps within the solar system and back. We tried to minimize the amount of testing, wanting to be sure that world governments wouldn’t be able to locate our remote base by tracking us. Once we determined that everything was working we spent the better part of a day getting the personnel loaded and briefed. Once everything was secured, we made our first jump out of the solar system.