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Chapter 18
The Adventures of the Beer Keg of Science![]
Wardroom, NMS Beer Keg of Science!
Zenith Jump Point, Stettin System, 13 August, 3158
Major Mitch "Ned" Stark, head of the marine contingent aboard the Beer Keg of Science, watched Captain Carpentier and Commander Kirk enter into the Keg's small wardroom and take their seats.
Ostensibly, Stark's marines not only headed up shipboard security, but would also babysit the various egghead scientists and researchers during surface operations, including the contingent of BattleMechs attached to the teams.
Ned had served aboard smaller Niops Association Militia ships before transferring to his current post, and had gotten practical experience on anti-piracy patrols. He'd trained for the day the Marian Hegemony attacked the Niops Association again, had worked with Interstellar Expeditions teams, and he'd done hostile boarding of pirate JumpShips while taking fire. Ned was a warrior, but was also a Niopian. He was no stranger to science and engineering.
None of it had prepared him for duty aboard the Keg. Especially that last jump.
He knew he wasn't alone in that, though. Ned need only look at the faces of the people around him to know that. Or at his captain's eyes. No, nobody aboard the Keg was ready for that.
Speaking of which, Ned watched as Captain Carpentier gathered her thoughts, and finally spoke. "We've all been through an unexpectedly rough experience. I expect that we will probably bear the scars of this experience, physical and mental, for some time. What's important now is to determine what happened, whether this event poses a risk to this ship and to our mission, and determine from here how best to proceed. Let's start with the obvious question: I know our jump equations had a slight variance, but they should not have caused...that. Theories?"
Bob Howard, the ship's head sysadmin, went to speak first. Ned wasn't sure how the hell he'd been let out of med bay. Howard appeared sunken and withdrawn, almost a stranger in his own body, his eyes simultaneously bloodshot and nearly luminous with how bright green his irises suddenly seemed. That, Ned though, was new.
"Captain," Bob finally said, "are you familiar with multiverse theory?"
"I am," the Captain stated quietly.
Maureen O'Brien-Howard, Bob's wife, and the ship's chief science officer, who had been studiously trying not to look at him, suddenly turned and stared at Bob intently. "Bob, the energy required to cross over into another universe..."
"Not into another universe, Mo," Bob replied, shaking his head. "Just...bumped up against other universes while we were in hyperspace." He paused for a moment, gathering his thoughts. "Maybe that's not even the right word. While we were in hyperspace, we resonated with other universes, ones where other versions of us existed, with whom we resonated with."
"Some more than others," Commander Rozhenko grumbled.
Bob simply nodded in agreement. "Yes, sir. Exactly. And why for the most part, our individual experiences were so individual. It's vanishingly unlikely that there are many universes where all of us are all together on this ship, and those are probably more like alternate timelines of this universe."
Ned may not have been the best-versed individual on hyperspace theory, but that sounded…insane.
Commander Kirk, though, was better versed in hyperspace theory. “That shouldn’t be possible, Lieutenant,” he said uncomfortably. “We’ve certainly never had any reputable cases of any phenomena like this occurring.”
Mo O’Brien-Howard, though, simply shook her head. “They might not have survived, Commander. Or, if they had, they might have found their jump drives no longer worked, and found themselves stranded. Strange things do happen from time to time, Commander. Let’s not forget the rumors around the SLS Manassas.”
“Well, I don’t think we’re quite that screwed,” Tig Reno, the Keg’s chief engineer, said. “Look, I’ll be the first to admit that some days our KF drive acts like it’s put together with duct tape, safety wire, and chewing gum, because it kind of is. But goofy crap during a jump aside, it’s not going to get us stuck, or fail on us. We’ll get where we need to go. The ride might be a little rough, is all.”
Captain Carpentier nodded. “We certainly hope that’s the case, Chief. But, we’ll sill want to verify that before we try leaving the Stettin system.”
“We’ll also want to go over our jump numbers very carefully, once our navigators all recover from that jump. Commander O’Brien, Lieutenant Howard and I are certainly capable of running jump calculations, but our jump navigators were hit particularly hard by this jump, and having them go over the calculations is only prudent.”
Bob, still shaking slightly, spoke up again, “We should compare notes if we can on the universes we might have bumped up against. Might help explain the physical changes some of us have.”. He looked briefly at his Mo, then her left hand, then quickly looked away.
Ned shuddered, uncertain he wanted to share with the rest of the command staff.
“Agreed,” Captain Carpentier said. “And just to put you all at ease, I’ll go first.”
“Captain, if I may,” Bob interrupted, “perhaps I should go first. I seem to have encountered an…entity, who was aware of our situation, and provided a warning.”
“You aren’t the only one who did, Lieutenant,” Captain Carpentier replied dryly.
“Sorry, Captain.”
“I encountered an entity who identified herself as Mab, Queen of Air and Darkness. This may have been the same Mab from ancient Terran mythology, or the myth’s inspiration, or an alien entity who chose to use the ancient myth as a framework with which to communicate with me. She seemed familiar with a Terran history, though not necessarily with our own, and based on elements of our conversation. She also mentioned FTL theories put forth by a Miguel Alcubierre, whom, I’m informed by Commander Kirk, did in fact present a theory of warp drive in the late 20th Century, which I hadn’t been aware of.” Carpentier paused for a moment to let her staff consider the implications.
Ned wondered who would take the bait, and wasn’t surprised when Commander O’Brien spoke first. “Her timeline and ours don’t line up, do they?”
“No, they don’t,” Carpentier agreed. “When I explained we’d used hyperspace jump drives based on Kearny’s and Fuchida’s theories, she implied that such ‘incredibly lethal toys’ were beyond what humanity should be experimenting with. She was stunned when I explained that we’d done so for over a thousand years, starting in 2107, which puts her somewhere between the late 20th and early 22nd Centuries in her universe. She left me with one warning before I was, evidently, pulled back to our universe: Beware the Outer Gates, and DO Not Breach Them.”
Ned wasn’t surprised to hear someone ask, “What does that even mean, though, Captain?” What did surprise him was when he realized he’d blurted that out.
Captain Carpentier shrugged. “She didn’t have time to elaborate. Lieutenant Howard, you mentioned contact with an entity.”
Bob nodded. “Yes, Captain. His name was Angleton, and he knew someone roughly equivalent to me in thr universe he’d taken up residence in.”
“At the bloody Laundry Service,” Mo muttered. Everyone, Ned noted, just turned and stared at her. “I suspect Bob and I intruded upon the same universe.”
“Please tell me your…instrument…didn’t come back with you,” Bob asked carefully.
Mo shook her head. “No sign of it. I'm more worried about the…Memorandum.”
“Doesn’t work here. Mo is asking about skills my counterpart in that universe ended up with to induce entropy in the eigenstates of a person's consciousness and utilize the resulting energy.”
“You were the Junior Eater of Souls, Bob. And Angleton was the Senior one.”
Ned just stared at them both. “You mean that literally.”
“Yes,” Bob agreed, “but I can't eat souls in our universe, so that doesn’t matter. Look, from the perspective of Angleton’s universe, the boundaries between universes were getting thinner and weaker. Incursions were becoming easier, the mathematics that formed the underpinnings sometimes leaking across universes.”
Mo continued for Bob. “And that process, from the perspective of Angleton, and that other Bob, and that other Mo, was accelerating. Computation, consciousness itself accelerated it. And what we call hyperspace is largely a mathematical abstraction.”
“Which is probably where our math anomaly came in. If the boundaries between universes are getting thinner, this may become a bigger problem, and not just for us with our unique KF drive.”
“That would certainly fit with Mab calling hyperspace-based FTL dangerous,” Captain Carpentier mused, “but for now it's the only game in town. Perhaps the Outer Gates, then, represent the boundaries between universes.”
“Or our universes,” Mo noted, “and whatever is outside.”
Rozhenko frowned, “I am in favor of not collapsing the universes together.”
“Agreed,” Captain Carpentier said. “Next time we have a variance like that, we resolve the issue. It may not be a problem for other JumpShips, but the Keg is unique. We need more data to determine whether this may become a more widespread issue in the future.”
“Winter is coming,” Ned murmured to himself.
“Major?” Kirk asked.
“I don’t remember much from the jump, Commander,” Ned explained. “Just those three words. They could be unrelated. But they feel like a warning.”
“Major Stark, are you familiar with the folklore behind Queen Mab?” Carpentier asked.
“No, ma’am.”
“She's queen of the Unseelie Court. The Winter fae, Major. I doubt that’s a coincidence, nor that our jump drive worked just fine until we finally arrived in the Stettin system, a presumably dead world. It's worth considering we don’t have two separate mysteries here.”