8

A Single Step to a Star

A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step
—Lao Tzu

To the stars, through adversities
—var.

In Geosynchronous Orbit over Novaya Petersburg, Novaya Rodina

Novaya Rodina—altogether Earthlike save for a certain peach-colored tinge to the predominant blue common to almost all such worlds as viewed from space—rolled beneath Fleet Admiral Li Han, TRN, First Space Lord of the Terran Republic, as her shuttle approached the orbital construction dock.

The planet held no little significance for her. Partly it was personal, for this was the birthworld of her friend Magda Petrovna Windrider, godmother of her daughter. But beyond that, it was the site of the atrocity which had given the Fringe Insurrection its baptism of innocent blood and made it irreversible, setting in motion the Terran Republic’s eventful early history—quite a bit of which Li Han herself had made.

But she had no eyes for it, or for anything except the titanic shape that lay within the dock, nearing completion as the latest of the TRN’s devastators.

Over the centuries, reactionless drives and internal artificial-gravity and acceleration-compensation fields had caused spaceship design to assume a form which pre-spaceflight humans would have found oddly familiar: organized fore-and-aft, with the major components of the drive abaft where they produced the unavoidable “blind zone” that formed the basis of so much naval tactical doctrine. There were innumerable variations, of course—notably in the case of carriers, with their “outrigger” flight decks which enabled fighters to approach from astern for recovery despite that same blind zone. But by and large, the look was one not too unlike that which humans of Old Terra’s immediate pre-spaceflight era would have expected to see five or six centuries in their future.

The Devastator she saw under construction was no exception, despite her unprecedentedly titanic mass of two million metric tonnes. She still had the lines that had come to embody the transcendent combination of fleetness and destructive power wrapped within the hulls of the capital ships of space. To modern eyes, it meant what the blocky massiveness of a sailing ship-of-the-line must have meant to humans in the age of…Oh, who was that wet-navy admiral Ian Trevayne has so often spoken of? Oh, yes, Nelson…

Her communicator beeped for attention; the voice of her chief of staff awoke in her earpiece. “Admiral, Goethals has arrived—with Admiral Desai as a passenger. You asked to be notified as soon as—”

“Yes, of course, Captain M’Zangwe. I will be rendezvousing directly.”

* * *

By the time Li Han’s shuttle approached the test station, TRNS Goethals lay alongside it, dwarfing it so completely as to reduce it to a tiny irrelevancy. Studying the new arrival’s configuration—which the unaided eye could do from a seemingly impossible distance—Li Han was struck by how completely it contradicted all her recent reflections on starship architecture.

The Goethals reminded her irresistibly of an épée, its “blade” a thin keel-shaft five kilometers long, with a seemingly tiny tip at the forward end and a disc-shaped shield at the other. Abaft of that was the massive “handle” holding the drive and power plant. On closer inspection, some of the illusion vanished, for the épée-thin shaft was encircled by a series of radiator ribs. And when the Kasugawa generator—currently retracted into a tight ring along the circumference of the shield—was activated almost two and a half years from now, it would expand and unfold into a wagon wheel–like assembly whose rim held secondary power plants and whose spokes were rectifying conduits.

Sonja Desai had already transferred to the test station—which, while fairly Spartan, was considerably more comfortable than the Goethals—and she was waiting when Li Han disembarked. A shuttle bay full of curious eyes watched as the two women who had taken it upon themselves to end the war of the Fringe Insurrection greeted each other.

“I hope the trip wasn’t too uncomfortable for you,” Li Han commiserated after the initial pleasantries. “What I’ve heard about Goethals’s accommodations—”

“—is not exaggerated,” Desai clipped. As was typical of her, it came out more abrasive than intended. Less typically, she then had the grace to look abashed. “But I shouldn’t say so in the presence of her captain, here.” She motioned forward a sturdy figure in TRN uniform, who saluted Li Han punctiliously.

“Ah, yes, Captain Cardones, I’m glad to make your acquaintance,” said Li Han, returning the salute and studying the man who was to taketheGoethals across two-and-a-fifth light-years of normal space. Like everyone else who was to make that crossing, he was a volunteer…and something more. It was—embarrassing wasn’t exactly the word—to talk to a man who had sworn an oath to destroy his ship and himself if necessary to prevent the Kasugawa generator from falling into the hands (tentacle clusters, really) of the Baldies. “I believe you still have a little time before you’ll need to return to your ship for the test. Is that correct, Captain M’Zangwe?”

“Yes, Admiral,” the chief of staff acknowledged.

“Then let’s go to the observation deck while the techs are finalizing their preparations, shall we, Sonja?”

As the two admirals, with M’Zangwe and Cardones in attendance, proceeded through the station, Li Han briefly reviewed current availability and projected construction rates for the Terran Republic’s growing fleet of devastators. “So, as you can see,” she concluded as they entered the observation deck, “series production is well underway, and on schedule. Our force levels should be as planned when the time comes for the operation to actually commence—even assuming that there are no delays in the Goethals’s departure.”

“There shouldn’t be,” Desai assured her. “The Desai prime drive has passed all its tests, up to and including the ones we performed in the course of our passage here. The shielding problem is the greatest single obstacle, but the team assigned to it has concluded that they’ve worked out the best solutions we’re likely to get within the limits of current technology, and that therefore any further redesign studies would result only in pointless delay.”

“Do you concur, Captain Cardones?”

“I do, Admiral. We should be ready to depart by three standard weeks from now—four at the outside.” Cardones kept his expression blank, but Li Han could sense his frustration. She had already pegged him as an officer of the rather stiff, formal school, and he had a crew consisting mainly of civilian technicians. “I believe any unanticipated delay at this point would have a negative morale effect. Especially—” He caught himself and stopped so abruptly his teeth clicked together. He also exchanged a quick glance with Sonja Desai.

Li Han leaned forward. “Do you have something more to tell me, Sonja?”

“Just this—and it’s not really news, because it’s what we’ve feared and expected from the outset. Simply put, Goethals’s Desai prime drive has only one voyage of this length in it. If they arrive at Borden and the Kasugawa generators, despite our theoretical predictions, prove incapable of establishing a warp connection across interstellar distances—”

“Yes, I think I catch your drift.” Li Han turned to Cardones. “Your crew are, I presume, aware of this possibility?” This possibility of being permanently marooned, she did not add.

“They are, Admiral.”

“I see. My respect for them has just gone up another notch, Captain.”

M’Zangwe took on the look of someone who had gotten beeped on his implanted battlephone. He subvocalized his reply, then turned to Li Han. “Excuse me, Admiral, but the technical staffs say they’re ready to commence the extended countdown for the test.”

Cardones stood up. “With your permission, Admiral, I should return to my ship.”

“Of course.” Li Han also stood up and extended her hand. “Let me repeat that it has been a pleasure to meet you, Captain Cardones—and an honor. Oh, and…I’ll see you in about two point six standard years, in the Borden system.”

* * *

It was actually as much a demonstration as a test. It was already pretty well established that a single Kasugawa generator could enhance existing warp points to accommodate greater ship tonnages, up to the tonnage of a devastator. (“Dredge” them, in a bit of historical wet-navy terminology that had become common currency and whose origins, Li Han suspected, could be traced back to Ian Trevayne.) She and Sonja Desai sat on the station’s observation deck and watched a screen that displayed an effect which Isadore Kasugawa had tossed off as an afterthought. It took the readings from a whole suite of gravitic and other sensors and interpreted them in the form of an entirely specious visual overlay, as though one could see the invisible phenomenon of a warp point.

“Coming up on activation,” she heard a voice say. Her eyes strayed to the visual pickup that showed the wheel-like Kasugawa generator and the Goethals poised before it. A similar generator was threaded into her round “handguard” that was located well aft on the ship’s narrow, épée-like keel. In just over two and a half years, that embedded generator would be one half of the pair that would—hopefully—make history by forging the first artificial warp point.

As this day’s countdown went to zero, Li Han’s eyes strayed back to the warp-point display…but not quite fast enough. She missed the instant of transition, missed the sudden flux and burgeoning of the pattern—but the golden whirlpool she saw was perceptibly larger. And the data were pouring in.

Sonja Desai was watching those data readouts expressionlessly. “Hmm…Odd. The warp point’s capacity is almost twelve percent larger than the theoretical predictions. And the curve of the gravitic gradient…I wonder.…”

“Sonja!” Li Han interrupted her firmly. “Please don’t tell me that you’re suggesting, at this late date, that it might be possible to produce warp points that could accommodate ships larger than the figures we’ve already factored into the Devastator design!”

“Eh?” Desai came out of her reverie. “Well, I’m just thinking out loud, you understand. Still…if we doubled the capacity of the nodes in the rho quadrant…just maybe…” Her eyes glazed over again.

Li Han turned away, visions of the trillions of credits invested in the Kasugawa generators and devastators already under construction dancing in her head.

Typical!