January 8th, 009 SDE:
Footage played on the monitor as several figures sat around the table. One of them stood up angrily, “Look at this, it’s barely been a week and they...”
“Twelve days, it’s been twelve days.”
“Fine twelve days, but still they are broadcasting this on every channel. Morale is dropping in the fleets!”
A sigh was heard as a second figure shifted. “I know the loss of the Maiden was a major blow, but not a crippling one. We’ve scored major victories against the Cooperative, even without the Maiden to support them, our loyal captains seized six capital ships at Sheltered Harbor, including three of their battleships.”
“Bah, I know, but they aren’t the Maiden.”
“Enough of this, a loss is a loss, we must decide on a new course of action.”
“It won’t matter, our push into Drifter space is compromised. Without those capital ships we don’t have the muscle to push further, and the phantom base at Anchorage is well positioned to strike our supply lines. By the time we can reinforce they’d almost certainly cut our existing forces off.”
“They already are. Phantom forces took the freighter Yuronda six hours ago.”
“What? Why have I not heard of that?”
“The attack was very recent and quite brief. Yuronda transmitted nine seconds before she was silenced.” Came the reply just before someone turned on a video. Depicting phantom fighters materializing in the shadows of the storm. Blue-white spheres were launched from under their wings and crossed the void rapidly. Slamming unseen into the hull of the Yuronda just as the video cut out. “This was all we received. Attempts to contact the ship after were met with silence.”
“Wonderful, but I’m more worried about the Phantom sat weapons, did you see how they tore through theYurifa and the Maiden?”
“I’ve analyzed the footage, the weapon appears to fire a sustained energy pulse of a yield comparable to a battleship’s main gun. Factor in the sheer number of them and even powerful ships like the Maiden don’t hold up. A single one won’t be much of a threat to a battleship, as we saw the Maiden’s shields did absorb the first few hits. I’m not sure how quickly the sats recharge as they staggered their shots to hide that, but I can’t imagine it’s a quick recharge. That much firepower...”
“How quick?”
“Hard to say but I’d say about twenty, thirty seconds. Can’t be much longer than that, they were firing too quickly for a recharge much longer than thirty seconds.”
“That’s quite the variance...”
______________________
EFS Enterprise; Council Chambers:
Countryman stepped into the conference room to find most of the officers council had already arrived. The only people missing were himself and Ruri, who was a step behind him. Things were going pretty well following the battle, the Enterprise had required some repairs but damage had been confined largely to the outer hull. Once they’d worked out the repair schedules and moved into a slip, things had gone pretty quick. It had taken mere hours to recycle the destroyed sections, build new plate and modules and reconstruct the damaged section. From start to finish, they were done in two days. That timeline included the post repair inspection to make sure everything was functioning as intended and that the rebuilt sections were fully habitable.
Countryman took his seat and addressed Robins, “First thing on the agenda I believe you have an update for us on our mutation issue?”
“I’ve begun rolling out a gene therapy solution to our gender skew. It won’t completely fix the issue but should normalize the observed skew. Lab tests were highly promising, but field results may very. As usual, medical science is somewhat slow so I won’t be certain for several months.”
“That’s quite alright,” replied Countryman.
Vera spoke up, “Have you made any progress on solving our mutation issue entirely?”
“Afraid not, but I’ve recently been briefed on new theories of genetics. Ones that if proven, would invalidate all current theories on evolution and...”
Vera interjected, “I’d say our current theories have already been disproven. It seems pretty clear that evolution is driven by some mechanism capable of working in a single generation.”
Robins nodded, “Quite right, but until now we didn’t have a theory on that. Our current understanding of quantum genetics doesn’t allow for this. The new theory labeled multi-quantum genetics seems to explain many of the observed data points and may provide an answer to the mystery mechanisms.” He sighed, “Unfortunately my progress is now being slowed by a lack of computer resources.”
Countryman blinked, “A lack? Your department has double the computer allocation of...”
“Any other. I know, it’s not a matter of allocation. I misspoke; our computers are simply inadequate for this new line of research. They can barely handle the calculations. I might have better luck with a quantum research computer, they tend to handle quantum calculations better.”
“Am I to understand that you have hit an effective wall and that until better computers are available, we can’t expect significant progress?”
Robins sighed, “Unfortunately that does sum things up. Unless you happen to have a quantum computer somewhere.”
“We do not, and even if we did. There is a reason they aren’t on spaceships; the things are far too temperamental,” said Ruri as she glanced to Countryman, “May I?”
“It’s about time it was brought up in council. I presume you’ve finished working out the rough edges?”
“We have, and we’ve put together a proof of concept.”
Looks were exchanged around the table. Several previously silent voices who’d merely been taking notes all asked at once, “What’s going on?”
Ruri brought out some pads. “One of my senior specialists in computers, Jade Walstein, brought me a proposal for a new revolutionary computer substrate. Modern computers are either optical or quantum-based. The ones on the Enterprise use a highly sophisticated optical fiber network. Resilient, very fast and reasonably capable of most calculations, but as noted it does run into issues with certain calculations. Quantum computers are slower, and somewhat temperamental but they are better with certain higher order calculations. Pressing a chip into the displays she brought up a projection of a new computer structure. One that looked very different from current gen computing: “Instead of a traditional substrate, this new computer takes advantage of new discoveries to produce a crystalline substrate. At first glance, the crystal computer doesn’t seem like much, until you note that its not a standard optical or quantum computer; the substrate is actually metaphasic in nature. We achieved this by taking advantage of the properties of Ephon Crystals, The hyperspace crystals we found are not only good for sensor lenses, a different process makes them useful as part of a computing substrate.”
“So we are talking about some kind of hyperspace computer?” inquired Robins.
“Not exactly, we have taken to referring to the new crystal computers as Multi-optical computers. They are very much optical, just based in an entirely new substrate where....”
The conversation lasted a couple of hours as they went into ever increasing depth on the new computer designs before the topic switched to project funding.
Kurtz spoked, “The science aside, how long before these could be in common use?”
“Like engine cores, it being crystalline-based means we need time for the nanocrystal lattice to be properly formatted. The resulting crystal will need to be scanned for errors, producing a new computer large enough for the Enterprise will take weeks,” replied Ruri, “but we’ve only just produced our first prototype and while promising, further study will be required.
Smith and Richards shared looks, “We’ve had some ideas about that.”
Countryman blinked, “Oh? Anything to share?”
Smith nodded, “A rydium crystal core has always been the largest bottleneck for modern ship construction. Our current method of growing them slowly in a nanobath has proven effective and much faster than other methods. However I’ve been looking into using gravity fields to suspend the nanorich crystal fluid within a microgravity environment. Simulations show a growth increase of nearly 40 points. That means instead of taking six to eight months to grow a capital grade engine core, we can do it in four to five months, potentially cutting as much as three months off the process. We are also looking into the improvements that new generation nanites might bring to the construction process. Projections indicate they can knock off another ten to twenty points off while also reducing errors. The error rate is already high enough that we need to make more cores than we actually use every time an engine is ordered. If we can cut that down and speed the process up. We’d not only save time, but precious materials and labor as well.”
Ruri interjected, “and the process would benefit the new computers as well. I see what you are getting at.”
Kurtz commented, “Solving production bottlenecks would be helpful, but we will need these sooner rather than later. Do we have a timeline for these projects?”
Ruri nodded, “I have a working prototype, give me and Jade a year to refine it and scale the system up for shipboard use. Expect delivery of the new computer around this time next year.”
Robins interjected, “If there is any way you can deliver a prototype to me earlier I would appreciate that. If the specs are that promising, it should speed my research by years.”
“That would be to my benefit as well. We can take your real-world use of the prototype to help refine the design.”
Countryman interjected, “I believe this brings us to the most important item on the list; the annual department budget discussion.”
Robins quickly spoke up, “In favor of waiting for new computers, I’m willing to relinquish some of our current computer resource budget.”
Setting a new item on the table Countryman nodded, “A nice gesture, now which departments want the extra overhead.”
Several hands came up including Ruri’s department, Richard’s Department and Smith’s. Leading to a lively debate as they started on the first item of the budget committee, computer resources. There was honestly a lot to consider on the merits of which department received what, and how much. So once they had that ironed out they moved on to energy allocations followed by material resources. The research and industrial divisions competed most fiercely to secure as much as they could of the last one. Striking a balance was always a delicate discussion.
Not that these decisions would be entirely final but they would set the tone for the year. So long as nothing significant changes, the budget would likely remain as decided. Only times they had to renegotiate was when they had a large boon or loss in materials. Computer resources, however, tended to be much more set in stone once negotiated.