The Priestess Second Saga Returns Monday August 29th as The Valley Knight begins his quest to thwart an army of desert warriors descending upon the Valley Real. Their target is the Priestess herself! As this is a mortal threat, the goddess within the Priestess cannot interfere even with all her vast power. With the help of Little Fish, the Knight has reached the place where the great host has gathered as they begin their genocidal war. But what can one man do against an army? Without Little Fish's power and the stalwart sword arm of the Aesir Chief Svengald, somehow the Valley Knight must move an entire nation to war to prevent the destruction of his wife the Priestess and all he holds dear. One man alone or not, whomever stands in the path of one who is beloved by a goddess-made-woman and Death itself best be prepared for a man who will stop at nothing to protect that which he loves! Read the week long event, 'The Priestess: Stones, Love and War'....
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| Image Source: Simon Kneebone – cartoonist and illustrator |
Topics: Astrophysics, Cosmology, SETI, Space Exploration, Star Trek
Xenophobia is something we experience among ourselves from others with five fingers, five toes; slight differences in frames and shades of Melanin. We've never encountered - as far as we know - an intelligence beyond our world similar to us due to the laws of physics, chemistry and biology but distinctly: alien.
Whatever we as a species ascribe to as deity for example, MUST by design favor our particular human tribe. We create echo chambers to reinforce our own confirmation-bias about ourselves, in the modern vernacular "creating our own realities." Any news outside this special nurturing bubble is usually opposed with breathtaking, sometimes violent cognitive dissonance to maintain this special nurturing cocoon.
What exactly WILL we do when some species a little older, surviving its own M.A.D. ideology answers our calls in the dark? Our history - both current and documented - doesn't bode well towards a rational or civilized response.
The short-lived Star Trek: Enterprise seemed to be hitting its stride with the episodes Demons and Terra Prime before its cancellation; our current clamor for nationalism and purity makes them both quite prescient. Enterprise showed a humanity at the cusp of establishing a United Federation of Planets. They initially instead showed old prejudices, and our disdain for being put out of our self-appointed special place in the universe, post surviving Trek's fictional human extinction-level events of World War III and war with the Xindi. Before the imagined utopias of Kirk or Picard and the current xenophobia displayed among our own species, we likely still have some growing to do.
Abstract
We are at a stage in our evolution where we do not yet know if we will ever communicate with intelligent beings that have evolved on other planets, yet we are intelligent and curious enough to wonder about this. We find ourselves wondering about this at the very beginning of a long era in which stellar luminosity warms many planets, and by our best models, continues to provide equally good opportunities for intelligent life to evolve. By simple Bayesian reasoning, if, as we believe, intelligent life forms have the same propensity to evolve later on other planets as we had to evolve on ours, it follows that they will likely not pass through a similar wondering stage in their evolution. This suggests that the future holds some kind of interstellar communication that will serve to inform newly evolved intelligent life forms that they are not alone before they become curious.
Physics arXiv: Odds for an enlightened rather than barren future, David Haussler
Hello, BSFS Members!
I have a giveaway going on for one of my short stories. Here is the link to the giveaway: http://joeyspen.com/cardinal-rule-one-year-anniversary-giveaway/
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| James O'Brien for Quanta Magazine |
Topics: Cosmology, History, Modern Physics, Richard Feynman
Horror vacui: "nature abhors a vacuum." (attributed to Aristotle)
Richard Feynman looked tired when he wandered into my office. It was the end of a long, exhausting day in Santa Barbara, sometime around 1982. Events had included a seminar that was also a performance, lunchtime grilling by eager postdocs, and lively discussions with senior researchers. The life of a celebrated physicist is always intense. But our visitor still wanted to talk physics. We had a couple of hours to fill before dinner.
I described to Feynman what I thought were exciting if speculative new ideas such as fractional spin and anyons. Feynman was unimpressed, saying: “Wilczek, you should work on something real.” (Anyons are real, but that’s a topic for another post.)
Looking to break the awkward silence that followed, I asked Feynman the most disturbing question in physics, then as now: “There’s something else I’ve been thinking a lot about: Why doesn’t empty space weigh anything?”
Feynman, normally as quick and lively as they come, went silent. It was the only time I’ve ever seen him look wistful. Finally he said dreamily, “I once thought I had that one figured out. It was beautiful.” And then, excited, he began an explanation that crescendoed in a near shout: “The reason space doesn’t weigh anything, I thought, is because there’s nothing there!”
Vacuum, in modern usage, is what you get when you remove everything that you can, whether practically or in principle. We say a region of space “realizes vacuum” if it is free of all the different kinds of particles and radiation we know about (including, for this purpose, dark matter — which we know about in a general way, though not in detail). Alternatively, vacuum is the state of minimum energy.
Intergalactic space is a good approximation to a vacuum.
Void, on the other hand, is a theoretical idealization. It means nothingness: space without independent properties, whose only role, we might say, is to keep everything from happening in the same place. Void gives particles addresses, nothing more.
Aristotle famously claimed that “Nature abhors a vacuum,” but I’m pretty sure a more correct translation would be “Nature abhors a void.” Isaac Newton appeared to agree when he wrote:
...that one Body may act upon another at a Distance thro’ a Vacuum, without the Mediation of any thing else, by and through which their Action and Force may be conveyed from one to another, is to me so great an Absurdity, that I believe no Man who has in philosophical Matters a competent Faculty of thinking, can ever fall into it.
But in Newton’s masterpiece, the Principia, the players are bodies that exert forces on one another. Space, the stage, is an empty receptacle. It has no life of its own. In Newtonian physics, vacuum is a void.
Quanta Magazine: How Feynman Diagrams Almost Saved Space, Frank Wilczek
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| Zika Mosquito - Internet Search |
Topics: Biology, Climate Change, Global Warming, Research
I recorded something on my DVR titled "Global Weirding," which I think is far more descriptive of the phenomena. "Warming" tends to imply extreme heat like the Sahara Desert ALL the time. It's more like what you've grown comfortable expecting...don't. Sensational blockbusters like "The Day After Tomorrow" don't help in our impatient point-and-click attention-deficit patience either. Instead of a sudden dystopian disaster, it should be thought of as a slow but steady train wreck.
Aerosol threats have been expected from our changing climate. This new threat is currently growing and concerning for many, like me that have relatives in harms way on the Gulf Coast and Florida. Thankfully, our stalwart, "science-friendly" representatives are on the case, tying battling related birth defects to eliminating abortion. Infants will be safely born on the Gulf Coast (as Latin America grapples with their own previous conservative views and legal prohibitions) sadly, with smaller heads and shortened lifespans. It is an oxymoron; a contradiction in terms and "values."
One of the top U.S. public health officials on Sunday warned that the mosquito-borne Zika virus could extend its reach across the U.S. Gulf Coast after officials last week confirmed it as active in the popular tourist destination of Miami Beach.
The possibility of transmission in Gulf States such as Louisiana and Texas will likely fuel concerns that the virus, which has been shown to cause the severe birth defect known as microcephaly, could spread across the continental United States, even though officials have played down such an outcome.
Concern has mounted since confirmation that Zika has expanded into a second region of the tourist hub of Miami-Dade County in Florida. Miami's Wynwood arts neighborhood last month became the site of the first locally transmitted cases of Zika in the continental United States.
"It would not be surprising we would see additional cases perhaps in other Gulf Coast states," Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the allergy and infectious diseases unit of the National Institutes of Health (NIH), said in an interview on Sunday morning with ABC News.
Scientific American:
Zika Poised for Possible Spread across U.S. Gulf, Chris Prentice
What's up BSFS members? This is Ricardo Holliman; as you know I am working on an animated series called Kollege Kids with the new addition of Professor Holmes. This picture is the rough draft stages of the show. I wanted to do this blog for inspiring creatives who are starting out and thinking of giving up because they don't see any major progress or results. When you work on a team oriented project vs a self oriented one; you tend to get criticism you don't want to hear. You want to throw a temper tantrum like a three year old when you don't get your way.
In reality compared to industry standards; you don't measure up. You get so burned out that you put your illustrations in the attic for a while. Your team abandons you because they feel you are incompetent for the task. What do you do when this happens? The answer is in plain sight. Perfect your technique and craft. Go up in the attic and grab your illustrations. Go and watch the Behind The Scenes of your favorite animation show or movie you grew watching. Approach it from an industry standards so you know what role you play in projects.
Like me; my strong points are in visuals. My role as a visual/animation coordinator is character & background creation; graphic design; prop master; coordinating frames and key-frames for an animation; video production & editing. I am getting in writing and producing however my strong points are in visuals. When you revisit the attic and you are not facing any pressures working with a team who wants things in a timely manner. Your free time should be in perfecting your craft and learn new way of doing things.
Read blogs, join groups, and get feedback from professionals who are doing what you do. Take the constructive criticism like a creative professionals; be open to new ideas and programs. Make this an self oriented project and whatever you create. Write a story behind those rough drafts of your illustrations. Following industry standards will help you set up a template how to do things. It will help to show how professionals take constructive criticism vs an ameteur.
It is two years later; your team calls you up asking you the progress of your work. They see the new revamped version and they are very eager for you to rejoin the team. This is what happened to me for the past two years. You have to perfect your technique when no one is looking. You have to put work in even if you have two jobs. All you need is two hours out of a day to do so. If this is your passion; you will make time when you feel like you have no time. Perfect your technique and windows of opportunities will open for you. Give it time and you see major results.
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| APS/Alan Stonebraker Distant partners. In this sketch, two cesium atoms in high Rydberg states form a weakly bound molecule about 1 micrometer across, comparable to the size of typical bacteria. |
Topics: Atomic Physics, Particle Physics, Quantum Computer, Rydberg Atom
Strongly bound diatomic molecules such as H2 or O2 are less than a nanometer across. Surprisingly, scientists have been able to create two-atom molecules more than a thousand times larger by using exotic atoms that attract one another only very weakly. Now, a pair of physicists have calculated what makes these “macrodimers” stable, and they have verified their predictions by creating micrometer-sized molecules containing two cesium atoms. The macrodimers could have applications in quantum computing.
Interest in these macromolecules stems from the challenges they pose to conventional understanding of molecules and bonds. More than a decade ago, physicists predicted that molecules with interatomic distances as large as 1 micrometer might be created by using a pair of atoms in so-called Rydberg states. These are atoms in which a single outer-shell electron has been excited to a high quantum state so that it orbits far away from the nucleus. Although Rydberg atoms are unstable, they can live as long as tens of microseconds, and experimenters have succeeded in creating macrodimers from them, confirming their existence indirectly by destroying them and detecting specific spectroscopic signatures [1].
APS Focus: Giant Molecule Made from Two Atoms, Mark Buchanan
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| Olena Shmahalo/Quanta Magazine As neutrinos and antineutrinos change flavors they may illuminate the differences between matter and antimatter. |
Topics: Atomic Physics, Neutrinos, Particle Physics, Quantum Mechanics
(July 28, 2016) - In the same underground observatory in Japan where, 18 years ago, neutrinos were first seen oscillating from one “flavor” to another — a landmark discovery that earned two physicists the 2015 Nobel Prize — a tiny anomaly has begun to surface in the neutrinos’ oscillations that could herald an answer to one of the biggest mysteries in physics: why matter dominates over antimatter in the universe.
The anomaly, detected by the T2K experiment, is not yet pronounced enough to be sure of, but it and the findings of two related experiments “are all pointing in the same direction,” said Hirohisa Tanaka of the University of Toronto, a member of the T2K team who presented the result to a packed audience in London earlier this month.
“A full proof will take more time,” said Werner Rodejohann, a neutrino specialist at the Max Planck Institute for Nuclear Physics in Heidelberg who was not involved in the experiments, “but my and many others’ feeling is that there is something real here.”
The long-standing puzzle to be solved is why we and everything we see is matter-made. More to the point, why does anything — matter or antimatter — exist at all? The reigning laws of particle physics, known as the Standard Model, treat matter and antimatter nearly equivalently, respecting (with one known exception) so-called charge-parity, or “CP,” symmetry: For every particle decay that produces, say, a negatively charged electron, the mirror-image decay yielding a positively charged antielectron occurs at the same rate. But this cannot be the whole story. If equal amounts of matter and antimatter were produced during the Big Bang, equal amounts should have existed shortly thereafter. And since matter and antimatter annihilate upon contact, such a situation would have led to the wholesale destruction of both, resulting in an empty cosmos.
Quanta Magazine: Neutrinos Hint of Matter-Antimatter Rift, Natalie Wolchover
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| Credit: Chris Gash |
Topics: Economy, Education, Politics, STEM
"We hold these truths to be self-evident": the rest is a contentious matter, for at the time the revered words were written, the rest of the sentence "all men were [not] created equal," Native Americans, women and my ancestors chief among them.
"Self-evident": this is attributed to Benjamin Franklin, Founding Father and scientist. It was an edit from Thomas Jefferson's original "sacred and undeniable," a reflection of the scientific revolution at the time, homage to Sir Isaac Newton and "the analytic empiricism of Franklin's close friend David Hume." The American experiment, though far then and now from perfect, would be based not on divine right or dynastic succession, but reason, facts and currently bereft in the public sphere: logic.
It is incredible that Scientific American would take such a stance, but it has to be taken. There are elements of our society that promote "creating their own reality"; the backlash to the Cosmos reboot; Creationism versus Evolutionary Biology; the Flat Earth Society; Young Earth Creationism with more dangerous, unscientific thought on the horizon for exploitation by cynical politicians or the latest flimflam artist.
This year's election is unique as one political party has nominated such a flimflam artist as its candidate, that has made no bones about his hostility to science: "climate change is a plot by the Chinese against American manufacturing." As the New York Daily News opined on his loose 2nd amendment comments: "this isn't funny anymore."
This is an assault on fact versus fantasy, science versus psychobabble; sanity versus insanity. Flimflam's persona non grata interviewed on Alex Jones - the KING of conspiracy provocateurs - as a casual search of YouTube on his rant compilations attests, many right wing pundits have, as he's complained - mainstreamed his views in the public sphere without crediting him, only nourishing a faux ecosystem around Mr. Flimflam. FF sometimes quotes him verbatim, which Jones says admirably is "surreal."
What is surreal is that as a nation, we've crossed the Rubicon. What started as a political tactic to - as Barry Goldwater said "hunt where the ducks are," getting votes from a disgruntled south that couldn't take the changes the Civil Rights Act (1964), the Voting Rights Act (1965) and the Fair Housing Act (1968) ushered in, the Dixiecrat ducks came: John Birch Society cum Southern Strategy cum Reagan Welfare Queens cum Faux News cum Birther Movement cum Alt-Right Movement mainstreamed in an echo chamber. Like a cult, they created their own realities. When Bob Jones University's policy against miscegenation (interracial dating) no longer worked selling themselves as a Christian institution, they found a suitable substitute in abortion opposition. The GOP's platform opposing gay rights - despite the American Psychiatric Association's removing it from the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders - is evidenced by its insistence on the quackery of "reparative therapy."
What is surreal is our measure and substantiation of information as citizenry, and how we make decisions as a republic respecting reality, facts, data, evidence, REAL THINGS: what truths are self-evident, or quackery we'll follow over a cliff.
"There is a fifth dimension beyond that which is known to man. It is a dimension as vast as space and as timeless as infinity. It is the middle ground between light and shadow, between science and superstition, and it lies between the pit of man's fears and the summit of his knowledge. This is the dimension of imagination. It is an area which we call the Twilight Zone." Rod Serling, Season One Intro.
“If it disagrees with experiment it is wrong.”
—Richard Feynman
Four years ago in these pages, writer Shawn Otto warned our readers of the danger of a growing antiscience current in American politics. “By turning public opinion away from the antiauthoritarian principles of the nation's founders,” Otto wrote, “the new science denialism is creating an existential crisis like few the country has faced before.”
Otto wrote those words in the heat of a presidential election race that now seems quaint by comparison to the one the nation now finds itself in. As if to prove his point, one of the two major party candidates for the highest office in the land has repeatedly and resoundingly demonstrated a disregard, if not outright contempt, for science. Donald Trump also has shown an authoritarian tendency to base policy arguments on questionable assertions of fact and a cult of personality.
Americans have long prided themselves on their ability to see the world for what it is, as opposed to what someone says it is or what most people happen to believe. In one of the most powerful lines in American literature, Huck Finn says: “It warn't so. I tried it.” A respect for evidence is not just a part of the national character. It goes to the heart of the country's particular brand of democratic government. When the founding fathers, including Benjamin Franklin, scientist and inventor, wrote arguably the most important line in the Declaration of Independence—“We hold these truths to be self-evident”—they were asserting the fledgling nation's grounding in the primacy of reason based on evidence.
Scientific American:
Donald Trump’s Lack of Respect for Science Is Alarming, The Editors
#P4TC: Missing In Action...
The Consortium ship drew nearer, its missiles and energy batteries subjecting the Horseman to a merciless barrage.
The hammering force of the enemy's assault reverberated through every section of the ship, fissuring decks and bulkheads. Explosive power surges erupted from bridge consoles, multiple shockwaves sweeping Mingana off her feet, sending her head first to the deck.
She blacked out. When she came to seconds later, Povich was kneeling over her, his face fraught with concern. “Captain!”
Mingana glanced about with disoriented eyes. The bridge was a smoke-clogged shambles. Crew members not wounded or dead labored intensively to maintain besieged systems. A few lay curled on the deck, traumatized and oblivious to the screaming chaos around them.
Povich helped Mingana to her feet.
The captain dabbed at a patch of wetness above her left brow, and came away with blood on her fingers.
“Batteries are down. We did all we could,” said Povich.
Mingana shook her head despairingly. “But it wasn't enough. We failed.”
The raucous suddenly ceased and an alien image popped up on one of the few working interface screens on the bridge. The alien's face was broad and jowly with a snout nose, wide mouth and dark, sunken pits for eyes.
The species was different, but Mingana could almost smell the stench of Consortium arrogance wafting through the screen.
“Captain Mingana. Are you alive?” The alien inquired, sounding almost bored.
Mingana stepped a bit unsteadily to the interface. “I'm alive. You must be the captain of the ship I'm trying to annihilate.”
“I am,” replied the alien.
“Good. Do me a favor. Bring your ship to a complete stop so I can ram it.”
The Consortium captain tilted his head a gesture that would have been taken as curiosity in a human. “Amazing and commendable is your ability to spout levity in your final seconds. If your treachery did not result in the destruction of a Consortium ship, with all hands lost, I would be content to simply capture your vessel and enslave you and your crew.”
“Then why are you talking to me?” Mingana asked.
“I wish to inquire about the Duke.”
“The duke is dead.” Mingana raised her chin. “By my hand. In fact I'm responsible for attacking your ships. It was me alone. No one else. My crew was not aware of my Resistance affiliation. Kill me. Spare my crew.”
After a lengthy pause, the Consortium captain spoke. “Trading a single life for the hundreds snuffed out in your devious attack? The death of Duke Rassellin alone is worth three times that many lives. Not a fair balance, Captain. Not a fair balance at all. Goodbye, Captain.”
The alien's image faded away.
Mingana shut her eyes, whispered a farewell to her family and waited.
“Captain, another ship is inbound,” a sensor specialist announced breathily.
Mingana's eyes snapped open.
Povich rushed to a working tactical interface and his face lit up. “It's a Calaar war cruiser!”
***
A second Calaar cruiser flashed out of jump space. Both ships opened fire on the Consortium vessel. Missiles, interspersed with pulsing slashes of point range fusion beams, drenched the enemy ship in a throbbing star hot cauldron.
The Consortium ship launched a spread of missiles and attempted to withdraw. A small percentage of Consortium missiles weaved through the Calaar ships' defensive screen to strike home. But they did little damage. The Consortium ship's objective was to escape. But the Calaar cruisers could not allow that...not with an orbiting city in jeopardy. Even if the Calaar leaders had been warned of the very imminent danger to their lives and evacuated, the Consortium captain could still strike the city out of cruel spite.
Huge explosions chipped away at the Consortium ship's hull. The ship veered off course, its shield reduced to impotence beneath a punishing barrage. Less than a minute later, the ship stuttered to a full stop. The Calaar cruisers ceased fire and took up flanking positions beside their crippled quarry.
***
Mingana witnessed the confrontation on an interface screen and plopped down in her chair, her body sagging with relief.
Povich stood next to his captain, clearly fatigued. “That was a very timely intervention.”
Mingana nodded. “Very timely.”
The Consortium ship surrendered. Mingana had to commend the Calaar for their restraint in not finishing it off. She sure as hell would have. That's why the Calaar were more civilized. Humanity had so much to learn from them.
“I told you no happy farewells,” Mingana said to Povich.
Her Second broke out in weary laughter.
***
Justine Mingana stood on the balcony of the tallest tower in Kitroor, a city located on a Calaar colony world called Ir't. Even as she reveled in the beauty and grandeur of this alien vista, her mind lingered billions of light years away, on a far less important world. Earth remained a constant and vivid picture in her thoughts. She missed her family so much, her heart ached. When she looked up, her longing for home intensified. A thousand Calaar warships of all sizes and classes filled the aquamarine sky. They were part of a grand fleet tasked with retaking Earth.
She spotted the Horseman directly above, resplendent in all of its refurbished glory. Eight months ago, after being rescued by those Calaar ships, she held very little hope that the Horseman could be salvaged for more than a few spare parts. Her hosts on I'rt had exposed their human guests to the gracious, compassionate kindness typical of the Calaar. They had also kept Mingana informed of developments on Earth. She was saddened to hear that Admiral Casey was killed in a U.N. airstrike, and that Ot^^^ had been captured and executed a week later, putting a nail in the Resistance's coffin. She was consoled that the Consortium mass destruction weapon carried on her ship was in Calaar hands. The weapon was a singularity-generating device. A planet-bombardment missile would have been its delivery system. Had the device been deployed, in concert with those launched by the two Consortium ships, a vast orbital city would have been snared in an artificial black hole and reduced to the size of a pinhead. Mingana shuddered at the sheer scale of a such a catastrophe.
Her eyes narrowed to fierce slits. Soon the Consortium occupiers and their human lackeys would be receiving their just desserts. The Calaar did not promise that the fight for Earth be easy. But they did promise victory.
“Captain.”
Mingana turned to see Commander Povich standing at the balcony entrance, accompanied by Lt. Winter and Lt. Commander Kochran. The three regarded their captain with optimistic gazes.
“Your ship and crew awaits,” said Povich with humorous flourish. “Shall we take back our planet?”
Mingana presented a wolfish grin. “By all means, Commander.”
“The probe is sending target updates,” said Commander Povich.
“Bring it up,” Mingana ordered.
Instantly, images of an enormous oblong structure orbiting a world striated in vibrant bands of colors unfurled on half the interfaces on the bridge. According to Consortium data, a city the size of Australia existed within the silvery, sun reflective shell of that structure. Population figures ran as high as a billion. Mingana was curious about the planet, but had no data. Her mission was the orbiting city. If the Consortium and U.N. Command wanted her to have information about the planet they would have made it available to her. She exhaled a mirthful breath and tightened her focus on the target.
After a few moments, she gazed over at Duke Rassellin, who stood next to Helm.“Looks as impregnable as ever.”
“Not a very encouraging assessment, Captain,” the Duke said dryly.
“It wasn't meant to be encouraging or discouraging,” said Mingana. “I'm just making an observation. That city is encased in material denser than a neutron star. Are you certain that whatever we're delivering will crack it?”
“Oh, the package will do more than crack it,” Helm inserted with unshakable confidence. “Much, much more.”
“At least let me take a look at this wonder weapon,” Mingana requested.
Helm narrowed a reproving gaze. “Captain, we've been over this...”
“I know.” Mingana huffed. “Eyes only. And I don't have those eyes. This is a senseless restriction placed upon me.”
“As an officer of the U.N. Fleet...an officer under orders...it is not your place to question or criticize U.N. directives,” Helm said with a sharpness in tone he had never used up to this point.
Mingana hid a smile. After her repeated lack of deference and, more often than not, overt displays of contempt toward the observer, she had finally gotten a rise out of the bastard.
Rasellin stood silent, staring at the captain. Whatever thoughts lurked behind that uncomprehending alien mask of a face, he gave no voice to them. “I will be in my quarters.” He pivoted and departed the bridge, his bodyguards in tow.
After a moment of studying the orbiting city, Helm turned away. “Let me know if the probe reports any change in the target's status.” He too left the bridge, his pace brisk.
Povich walked over to Mingana. “You shouldn't antagonize him,” he whispered.
The captain smirked. “What's he going to do, confine me to quarters? This mission is far too critical.”
“He could very well remove you, and place me in command if he doesn't want to take over,” said Povich.
“But he won't.” Mingana raised a brow. “He values crew morale, and nothing could be more demoralizing than an observer dismissing a captain in the middle of a mission.”
Povich considered his captain's point and walked away to check on a nearby station.
Mingana leaned back in her chair, resting her chin on the back of her knuckles. It won't be long. Soon, our objective will be achieved. And if we fail...we die.
***
Two years out of the Academy, Justine was posted aboard an Atlas system patrol boat as an engineering specialist.
Atlas boats were ships based on a Calaar design. They were small, sleek vessels with aerospace and warp capabilities. But what made Atlases special was that they represented the first class of advanced, galaxy standard vessels to be indigenously manufactured.
A month earlier, humans lacked the technological capacity to assemble galaxy standard ships. Such ships had been supplied by the Calaar for human use. Now, thanks to Calaar tutelage, humanity was able to establish an interstellar-level tech base...albeit at the lowest tier, but that was a start. A year later, Earth began manufacturing Explorers, larger spaceships equipped with ion drives for deep space travel. Visionaries pictured the day when the first Earth ship would reach the galaxy's core. Justine shared that grand dream. Being on the fast track, she was promoted to a lead engineering position on an Explorer ship. But the galaxy's core remained a centerpiece in her mind when she was off-duty. So much so, that she approached her captain and requested a transfer to the U.N. Technology Development Institute, a research-development facility established on Earth through human-Calaar collaboration.
The UNTDI, in a sense, was part of a weening process. The Calaar had done a great deal for the human race, actively laboring to create conditions where humans could thrive. Now, it was time for humans to take charge of their development. No longer would the Calaar transfer technology to Earth. Humans were now left to figure out a way to upgrade themselves. The Calaar provided the blueprint to help humans build tools to reach the promised land of top tier status. Humans could either follow that blueprint or lapse into stagnation. The UNTDI promised to be the catalyst that would propel Earth forward and Justine wanted so desperately to be a part of it.
“You have been a highly valued member of this crew,” her captain had told her as they conversed in his office. “But beyond that, quite frankly, you are the best engineering officer I've ever had. Are you sure you want this?”
Justine spoke without hesitation. “Very much so, sir.” Her rigid expression softened. “UNTDI is where I belong.”
After a minute, the captain relented, cracked a sentiment-filled smile and folded his hands on top of his desk. “So be it, Lt. Mingana...Justine. I can see that short of remapping your brain wave patterns, there's no changing your mind. I'll draw up transfer documents, plus a glowing letter of recommendation.”
Justine's face brightened. “Thank you so much, sir...”
A shipwide alarm intruded on the moment. A message from the bridge filled the captain's office. “Captain, four unidentified vessels have appeared on sensors...they are not Calaar!”
***
Captain Mingana walked the decks and levels of her ship as she usually did...as her crew and guests expected. She enjoyed seeing her ship's every nooks and crannies. The highlight of her tours was interacting with crew members who, if normal protocols were adhered to, would rarely see their captain in person. Mingana had never been one for protocols, at least the ones she deemed useless.
After leaving the engineering wing, her favorite section of the ship, she ventured toward the weapons control rooms. Twelve Consortium guards were posted in the corridors leading to the third weapons room. She had not a clue how many more guards were inside the room itself. She ran surveillance on Duke Rassellin's people at the beginning of this mission as they boarded the ship. Frustratingly, her officers could not get a count of the Consortium guards because they wore scramblers, a type of distortion inducing countermeasure designed to obscure monitor and sensor imagery. And since Observer Helm did not allow crew members to be present when the Consortium guests boarded, Mingana had no physical eyes to give her the count she needed. Imagers inside the third room were inactive, again on Helm's orders, leaving that area the only blind spot on the ship, surveillance wise.
The guards were protecting the weapon from prying gazes...the weapon soon to be deployed against the orbiting city. Rassellin brought his own specialists to operate the weapon, displacing Mingana's staff.
What the hell type of weapon was on her ship? she wondered obsessively. She walked past the armored guards, keeping her stride casual, even as her mind churned with feverish curiosity.
Lt. Commander Kochran met the captain when she entered the forth weapons room.
Weapons specialists paused to acknowledge their captain. Mingana met their gazes with an approving nod.
The weapons room was not Kochran's domain, but Mingana needed the engineering officer and his equipment in the area for a special assignment.
“What've you got?” she asked.
Kochran led the captain to a bulkhead at the far end of the weapons room. A saucer shaped deep probing sensor was attached to the bulkhead. He glanced at data on the sensor's display strip. “Same high level gravity readings but no source has been pinpointed. The jamming frequency they're using is off the charts.”
“So far, all we can deduce is that the weapon is gravity-based,” said Mingana.
Kochran rubbed the back of his neck, his expression grim. “So far. I've calibrated the sensor probe to the highest setting I can squeeze out of it and it still hasn't detected anything new. I'll keep tweaking it.”
Mingana sighed. “Do what you can. Determining the nature of this weapon may provide a pathway for us to disable it. Otherwise, we'll have to stick to our original timetable.”
“I just hope that damn observer doesn't nose his way down here,” Kochran snarled.
Mingana's tone matched the engineer's distaste. “Oh I highly doubt he'll be interested in visiting this area, not when he can be on the bridge keeping a keenly watchful eye on me.”
Kochran chuckled at the logic. “I guess I really don't have anything to worry about.”
***
An alien resembling a hairless feline appeared on the primary bridge monitor five hours after the battle ended. “Inhabitants of Earth. I am Opesil of the Enlightenment Group. We represent the 3rd Consortium. We have liberated your planet from the Calaar. Do not be fooled. The Calaar pretended to be your allies. Their supposed generosity and goodness was a sham. They had every intention of stripping your planet of its precious resources and enslaving you. Unfortunately, the Calaar threat is far from neutralized. They will launch an effort to regain this system and reinstate your species under their diabolical control. We will not let that happen. Forces of the 3rd Consortium will remain in your system for the time being, providing protection and assistance. Rejoice humans. Rejoice in your liberation. Let this day be a day of celebration for now and hereafter.”
Fearful silence smothered the bridge. Justine held her breath, her eyes agape with shock. She looked to her captain, who tried to maintain a dispassionate face, but trembling lips betrayed his effort.
The bridge crew had witnessed a battle five hours earlier and the sheer savagery and intensity of the clash left everyone in a state of shock. The outcome of that terrible encounter compounded their shock with horror.
One hundred Consortium ships appeared out of warp just inside the solar system. The Calaar had gradually drawn down their presence in the system. Originally, their ships numbered five hundred. Now, there were only twenty five left, stationed around Earth.
The Consortium force attacked those remaining Calaar ships and glaring pulses of space combat lit Earth's skies like lightning.
The Calaar ships fought valiantly, destroying over a dozen Consortium attackers. But valor availed only so much in the face of superior numbers. The Calaar force died to the last ship. The Consortium never bothered to take prisoners. Of course, the Calaar ships never offered to surrender.
Earth vessels in the vicinity remained on the sidelines, their crews fixated witnesses to an immense slaughter.
Justine's ship was positioned midway between the sun and Earth. On one hand, she completely understood why her captain had not given the order to intervene on the Calaar's behalf. He was protecting his crew. The Earth ship, even with its cutting edge, galaxy standard composition would have have been blown out of space. On the other hand, she wanted badly for her ship to enter the battle and inflict as much damage as possible on those Consortium invaders. God, how she hated the captain at that moment for not giving the order. How she hated feeling like a coward! But most of all, she hated this Consortium with a passion that made her blood boil.
When Consortium ground units landed on Earth, they hunted down and executed every Calaar they could find. And then they consolidated their presence. A month later, it became clear to humanity that this protection Opesil spoke of had become a full fledge occupation.
***
Captain Mingana ordered a full stop and the Horseman emerged out of warp, its attitude thrusts reversing in an emergency deceleration. Helm, standing on the opposite side of the bridge, peered in the captain's direction. “What's going on, Captain?”
Mingana pointed to blips on a sensor interface. “Long range probe picked up ship traffic. It's likely a Calaar patrol.”
The observer walked toward the sensor station, a frown forming on his face. “How many ships?”
“Five,” said Mingana. “They're spread out twelve light minutes apart, which definitely conforms to a Calaar patrol formation.”
“Why are we stopping?” Helm demanded. “We're too far out to be detected.”
“Do you know what kind of ships those are, Observer?”
Helm sniffed as if the question were elementary. “S12 cruisers, the Calaar's primary deep reconnaissance vessels.”
“Correct,” said Mingana, but with a very obvious qualifier in her tone. “However, the Calaar upgraded their S12s. They have range-boosting and spatial disruption sensors. In five minutes they would have picked up our warp signature. Our best...no...only option is to remain stationary until that patrol passes.”
“Now, we're behind schedule,” Helm stated none too pleased. “How long do we have to wait?”
“Until the patrol passes,” Mingana repeated, mentally rolling her eyes.
“Fifteen minutes, Captain,” Helm ordered impatiently. “Then resume motion, but at an initial minimum impulse.”
“Even at minimum we could still be detected,” said Mingana.
“Then we'll be detected.” A flash of fervor intensified the observer's expression. “And the Calaar will send every ship they have after us. Either way, this vessel and its crew will carry out the mission. We will do what the Consortium has tasked us to do and we will do it within the proper timeframe. Understood, Captain?”
Mingana uttered a lethargic reply. “Loud and clear, Observer.”
Justine looked suitably unassuming in her lime green civilian tank top and blue jeans. Her hair, normally braided while on duty crowned her head, unfettered like a black cloud.
She walked down a bustling Chicago street, projecting a mood as carefree as the weekend revelers around her. But inside, she seethed. The U.N. Authority and its enforcement arm, U.N. Command had just established control over Earth, with Consortium backing. With the Authority's ascension every damnable ill that had plagued Earth before the Calaar's presence was returning in despicable increments: economic disparities, racial and ethnic bigotry, gender discrimination, religious fanaticism, crime...
And to make matters worse, a U.N./Consortium propaganda machine had been established, extolling the virtues of the Consortium and its puppet regime, while denigrating the Calaar and their supporters. Anyone espousing an opposing viewpoint were branded subversives and tended to disappear.
The Consortium continued to kill any Calaar left on Earth. As for the Calaar's human allies...well rumors abounded as to their fate, dark rumors of underground internment/torture/death facilities...
Justine shook herself back to the here and now.. She was nervous enough as it was. She didn't need her resolve to be degraded by runaway thoughts.
She stopped in front of a bar with a CLOSED sign in the window. This was the place. She took a breath and entered. The interior was dim and empty. She ventured to a banquet room in the back to find it filled with men and women. Most sat in chairs set up for the purpose. Others stood. All eyes were directed to the purple-skinned long necked, quadruped standing on a small stage.
The Calaar's eyeless, bulb-shaped head seemed to brush across every face in the room. Justine froze when the alien's sightless gaze leveled on her and stopped. It was if she were being scrutinized in some fashion. Unlikely. She relaxed, chalked it up to imagination and surveyed the people around her. She recognized a few men and women from the military. She even spotted a fleet admiral.
“To those who do not know me,” The Calaar began, its voice flowing from a vocal orifice at the base of its neck in soft ripples. “I am Ot^^^, former aide to the Master Administrator.” Ot^^^ referred to his superior whose title and function were the equivalent of a governor.
With a degree of melancholy, Ot^^^ added: “I may be the only Calaar left on your planet.” The Calaar paused, its body rigid as a statue. “The Consortium has drastically reduced our numbers in this sector, but not our determination. They caught us by surprise, but we are not beaten.”
At that second, the fleet admiral Justine saw in the crowd, stepped onto the stage and stood next to Ot^^^. His piercing dark eyes swept the audience. “Hello all, I'm Admiral James Casey. What the distinguished aide is trying to say is that the Calaar, in the wake of their defeat, has to regroup. Currently, they're occupied on multiple fronts in a war spanning a good chunk of the galaxy. We don't know when they'll come back to liberate us from these Consortium thugs, but they will return. In the meantime, for those of us in attendance today, the nucleus of what I anticipate will be a growing worldwide resistance, we're going to take up arms against the Consortium and strike blows for our freedom until the Calaar returns. Hopefully, we'll have run these bastards off the planet and out of the system before then.”
The room erupted in cheering. When it subsided, the admiral spoke for a few more minutes, his words ringing with encouragement, hope and a strident desire to inflict as much damage upon the enemy as possible. Afterward, the meeting became a strategy session which Justine vigorously participated in.
At one point, Casey took Justine aside. “I know who you are, Justine Mingana. I've read your file. You're an outstanding officer.”
“I don't know about the outstanding part,” Justine said, very much surprised that anyone this high ranking was remotely aware of her existence. “But I won't be an officer for long. Based on what I've seen here today, I'm quitting the military and joining the resistance.”
The admiral regarded Justine solemnly. “I had a feeling you would make that decision, Lieutenant. But I need you to reconsider.”
“Reconsider?”
“We need military personnel committed to the Resistance to remain in the military.”
Justine nodded slowly as the logic of the admiral's request sunk in. “You want us in places where our position and access will be of use to the resistance.”
“Precisely,” Casey beamed. “Are you still interested in resigning?”
Justine spared a moment of thought. “Alright. I'll stay in. I do have a question: who is this 'we' you refer to?”
The admiral gestured to the Calaar, who stood on the stage staring...so to speak...in Justine's direction.
“Ot^^^ also read your file,” said the admiral with a wink.
“We're 26 hours 43 seconds to target range,” Commander Povich reported from the data on his pad. “22 hours until our rendezvous with the Consortium ships that will be joining us.”
Captain Mingana nodded and looked at Duke Rassellin who requested...or demanded rather...that information.
The Consortium representative raised his feline head, but kept his eyes on Mingana. “Good. In five hours my technicians will begin the activation sequence that will power up the weapon. The weapon will be drawing a portion of its power from this ship. I know that you would prefer that life support not be compromised. I leave it to you to determine the systems you deem nonessential enough to afford power losses.”
“Thank you for the heads up, Duke.” Mingana turned away from Rassellin and faced Observer Helm. “I'll be in my office. It looks like I have some determining to do.” She walked away before Helm could voice or gesture his approval.
Four minutes later, Mingana shut her office door and tapped her desk com.
Lt. Winter's face popped on the wall screen.
Mingana tapped an encryption sequence before speaking. “Lieutenant, we have our timetable: 22 hours.”
“That's when we initiate?” Winter asked, anticipation radiating like twin spotlights from her eyes.
“No, not at that precise second.” Mingana rubbed her chin thoughtfully. “Just be ready. Wait for my word.”
“I will...and Captain.”
Mingana focused on Winter's image.
“I'm ready. I've been ready for this for years.”
“Me too,” said Mingana, her tone edged with iron. She cut the transmission and plopped down in her desk chair. For several minutes she tried to manage the churning fears and doubts that threatened to stay her hand, abort this mad endeavor. Because that's what it amounted to: madness. But someone had to do it. Someone had to challenge the Consortium in a way that it had never been challenged by humans up to this point. Mingana seized her trepidation and pounded it into impotence. Now, was not the time for second thoughts. She came this far. There would be no turning back.
***
Protests against authoritarian governments across the world were met with overwhelmingly brutal responses by regime forces. In Justine's own country, Cameroon, the government had instituted all sorts of legislation curtailing free speech and non-violent expression. The Consortium had no hand in how Earth regimes governed their nations. Its representatives were content to sit back and allow a privileged minority of humans a freehand to do what it took to safeguard Consortium interests.
In such tense times, Justine worried ceaselessly about her parents and brothers. After a four month run along the fringe of the solar system commanding a patrol ship, much needed leave time brought Justine and her crew back to Earth. An encrypted transmission showed up in her message feed. She read it and her heart jumped with excitement. After more than a decade, the Resistance had finally contacted her.
Very little had been heard from them since the U.N. crackdown four years earlier that resulted in the arrests and executions of over ten thousand suspected Resistance members, in addition to the destruction of hundreds of Resistance bases of operations across the system. Many times, Justine worried that her affiliation, if exposed, would result not just in dire consequences for her, but her family as well. Those were the moments when she reminded herself that most of all, that what she did in service to the Resistance, was for her family...not that she had done much if any service other than being a silent mole. Now, she had an opportunity to prove her mettle.
The message told her to arrive at a lake front restaurant in Chicago at 1300 hours. Justine arrived five minutes early. On the dot, the very admiral she met at the Resistance meeting years ago, sat at her table. Of course, he was no longer an admiral. Dressed in a fashionable button down shirt with creased slacks, Justine wasn't sure what kind of public face the man sitting across from her presented in his daily life.. James Casey volunteered nothing to sate her curiosity. Instead, he spoke without preamble. “Captain Mingana, we have a mission for you, a mission you may not survive, but if successful will do considerable damage to the Consortium. Do you accept it?”
“Hell yes. Need you ask?” Justine replied with bravado.
The former admiral's lips parted in a sliver of a smile. “First of all, you're being promoted to a new command. You'll be captain of the Horseman, a Hercules-class ship.”
Justine's brow rose. “That's no trivial promotion. Hercules-class ships are deep-space capable with practically no limitations in their warp capacity.”
“A vessel of that class could travel to the galaxy's core if need be,” Casey agreed. “Fortunately, you won't need to go that far. There's a city...an orbiting city...located in Calaar space. A conference is scheduled to be held at that city in three months. The entire Calaar leadership, along with the highest ranking of their military officers, will be in attendance. Consortium planners have hatched a plot to assassinate everyone at that conference using a weapon of mass destruction. The problem is, we have no idea what kind of weapon it is, only that its frightfully powerful.”
“Most weapons of mass destruction are,” Justine commented flippantly.
Casey planted his elbows on the table. “This one is uncommonly lethal I'm told.”
A waiter appeared with menus. The former admiral accepted a menu and ordered a glass of red wine.
Justine asked for water and waited for Casey to continue when the waiter departed. “U.N. Command has chosen the Horseman as the ship from which this Consortium weapon will be deployed. Two Consortium ships, each carrying a similar mass destruction weapon, are scheduled to join the Horseman. It seems it'll take three such weapons to destroy that city.” A nasty little smirk played across the Casey's face. “U.N. Command jumped like an over eager grasshopper at the opportunity to participate in a joint outing with the Consortium. They want so badly to prove our worth to our so-called masters. Success or failure, what you accomplish on this mission will reduce U.N. Command's credibility, in the eyes of the Consortium, to dirt.”
“What exactly will I be accomplishing?” Justine asked, intrigued.
The waiter returned with glasses of wine and water. The former admiral took a sip of wine and continued. “You're going to foil that weapon's deployment, neutralize anyone in your ship who gets in your way, destroy the two Consortium ships, make contact with the Calaar, and turn the weapon over to them.” He raised a finger. “And not to worry. I've arranged for Resistance members to join your crew. They'll occupy key positions on your roster. A good portion will be Shipboard Marines. Not as many as I would have liked, but enough for your purposes.”
“Why not warn the Calaar about this imminent danger to their leadership?” Mingana inquired.
“Because the Consortium controls all hyper-range communication in the solar system.” The former admiral set his glass down. “Not even the most boot licking of humans have that kind of access, and if we did try to send a signal beyond the system, it would be flagged and traced in an instant.” He gave the captain a grave look. “The fate of the Calaar's leadership and the lives of millions of innocents hinges on you.”
Justine sighed. “No pressure.” She leaned back in her chair. “When do I report to my new ship?”
Casey smiled. “When is your leave time up?”
The orbiting city filled every interface on the bridge. Less than an hour from target range, the mood on the bridge was electric. Mingana stood in front of her chair, fixated on the central interface while Duke Rassellin transmitted the city's coordinates to those of his people in Weapons room 3 in charge of operating the Consortium weapon. Helm paced the bridge's lower section, rubbing his hands in anticipation. Povich walked from station to station ensuring that everything flowed smoothly leading up to the weapon's deployment.
“Consortium ships, Hrizer and Kemirt are inbound,” announced a sensor specialist. “ETA, twelve minutes.”
Mingana switched images on her personal interface and watched real time footage of both Consortium ships approaching the Horseman at max impulse. She turned partially and met the eye of an officer at the weapons station named Daoud.
The weapons officer motioned a subtle nod.
Mingana nodded back and returned her attention to the interface. Casually, she strode to a console behind her command chair. As she activated a control panel, she glanced up to see Helm watching her. If the observer was curious about why Mingana was at the console, he didn't show it. If anything, he was clearly preoccupied with other matters.
Mingana looked away from the observer, and began typing on a keypad.
“Captain,” Helm called.
“Yes, Observer?”
“Is everything alright?”
Mingana replied without looking at the observer. Her fingers continued to blur across the keypad. “Never better, Observer.”
“Captain, communication is down,” said Povich, his brow crinkled in puzzlement.
Both Helm and Rassellin faced the Second.
“We have neither outgoing nor incoming communication.” Povich leaned forward, gleaning data from a com station interface. “Diagnostic isn't revealing anything. Must be a momentary glitch caused by cosmic radiation.”
“I'm not interested in guesses, Commander,” Helm said, his jaw clenched tight with tension. “Find out exactly what's wrong and fix it.”
Mingana regarded the observer with a hooded gaze. It wasn't Helm's place to give orders to her crew. It was even less appropriate for him to adopt a berating tone while doing so. Normally, she would have pulled the observer aside for a word. But, after what she had just done, nothing that came before this fateful moment mattered. The Rubicon had been crossed.
A dozen Shipboard Marines in polished navy blue armor suddenly stormed onto the bridge, their weapons raised.
Rassellin's bodyguards reacted swiftly, leveling their blasters on the marines. Duke Rassellin reached for the jeweled-handled ceremonial knife sheathed at his hip.
“Stand down, Duke!” Mingana shouted. “Tell your guards to drop their weapons!”
Lt. Winter approached the captain with an extra firearm in hand, a KR auto-shotgun. The captain accepted the weapon and aimed it at Rassellin.
“Captain! What the hell are you doing?” Helm exclaimed, in gape-mouthed shock..
Povich froze, his eyes flashing skittishly between armed parties. “Captain...what's going on?”
“It should be obvious to you, Commander Povich,” Rassellin said, slowly, defiantly drawing his blade. “Your captain is a traitor.” He threw a cutting glance Helm's way. “And your U.N. Authority vetted her. Pitiful.”
Mingana cocked the KR with attitude. “Duke Rasellin, you're not in a very tenable position. Plus, I just implemented an executive override, shutting down all communication, further isolating you and your people on this ship. If you want to avoid the shitstorm I'm prepared to rain on you, I strongly advise you and your guards to surrender.”
Rasellin huffed in a manner of laughter peculiar to his species. “I love these colorful human metaphors.” The Duke appeared thoughtful. “Why don't we do this instead. You and every traitor backing you will surrender to me. You will undo this executive override and then I turn you over to Observer Helm's custody. He'll detain you and your accomplices and we resume our mission. The alternative is we kill you on the spot. You choose.”
Mingana stared at the Duke as if the other had gone certifiably mad. “Drop your weapons, now. I will not make that request again.”
Rassellin's blade glowed like silver fire. “Neither will I, Captain.” He screamed an utterance in his native tongue and both of his guards opened fire.
Dark, scorching iridescence streamed from the guards' blasters, ripping into three marines before the rest retaliated.
Marine M82s pulsed furiously. Carbon-jacketed rounds smacked into the Consortium guards' armored suits with no initial debilitating effects. Projectile impacts staggered the guards, but they continued firing, dark energy stabbing like black arrows into marine armor.
Mingana dove behind a console and popped up, triggering her KR. Massive titanium shells spurted from her auto-shotgun's barrel in deafening rapid fire reports. A guards head snapped back, his faceplate holed by a shotgun shell that burrowed halfway into his skull.
Bridge crew scrambled for cover. Two officers and a specialist, caught in the crossfire, tumbled to the deck in bloody heaps.
Rassellin charged toward the nearest marine. His energized blade flashed, plunging hilt deep into the marine's neck guard.
The marine let out a wet gurgle as Rassellin extracted the blade and swung swiftly to his right. The blade's molecular edge sliced effortlessly through the armor, flesh and bone of a second marine, lopping off an arm at the elbow.
The Duke started to lunge toward another marine but a spatter of M82 bullets peppered his torso, stopping him short.
Mingana rammed her KR's muzzle into the side of Rassellin's head and squeezed the trigger. A third of the Duke's head erupted in a globular fountain of brain and bone fragments from the KR's thunderous discharge.
The marines poured combined fire into the last Consortium guard. The guard somehow remained upright, despite a raging welter of rounds gouging hot divots out of his near impenetrable armor.
“Everyone down!” Lt. Winter shouted.
Mingana and the marines hit the deck as Winter launched a grenade from her M82.
The grenade struck the tottering guard square in the chest and detonated. The blast turned the guards torso into a steaming crater. Shockwaves reverberated through the bridge like an assault from giant invisible sledgehammers.
Observer Helm rushed to his feet and grabbed a dead guard's blaster. He pointed it at Mingana, but his grip on the alien weapon lacked surety. Panic flared bright as torches in his eyes. “Put your weapons down!”
Mingana trained her shotgun on the observer. Her surviving marines did the same.
“Don't be an idiot, Helm,” Mingana growled. With adrenaline pumping through her body like wildfire, and impatience gnawing at her discipline, she hoped she could suppress a burning compulsion to blow the observer's head off.
“The Consortium are our allies...our...our...friends,” Helm stammered, the blaster shaking in his hand. “They rid us of the Calaar, gave us our planet back...and this is the gratitude you show them?”
“Gratitude for what?” Mingana bit off, her face twisted in ridicule.. “For returning us to the same instability that wracked our world before the Calaar came? The Calaar helped us...”
“They hobbled us!” Helm cut in, displaying teeth like a cornered wolf. “They took away out ability to solve our own problems, tackle our own challenges.”
“We weren't doing an effective job of that in the first place,” said the captain. “Hell, too many people with the power to effect change had no interest in doing so. Too much profit to be made maintaining a status quo that condemned billions to poverty and suffering. But I'm not going to waste time arguing the pros and cons of Human-Calaar relations with you.” Mingana stepped forward with very meaningful intent. “Drop that blaster.”
Helm wisely chose not to test the captain's resolve. Despairingly, he lowered the weapon and let it slip from his fingers to clatter on the deck.
Lt Winter rushed forward to pick up the blaster while a marine slapped cuffs on the observer.
Mingana gazed gravely at the dead and wounded marines sprawled on the deck and sighed wistfully. Over half down against two guards and a puffed up VIP. She knew the Consortium soldiers would be a formidable challenge with their durable armor and powerful guns...but she hadn't imagined that they would be this difficult to bring down even with upgraded assault weapons. She reached down to pick up Duke Rassellin's knife and appraised it with a grudging respect. The blade still glowed with lethal energy. She glanced at the ill fortuned marine with the amputated arm, knotted her brow in sympathy, and gestured to an officer. “Get a medical team up here.”
The officer like the rest of the bridge crew looked a like frightened rabbit.
“Now!”
The officer moved promptly in compliance. Although, it was clear his obedience was motivated more by the automatic shotgun in Mingana's hand than her status as a superior officer.
Mingana couldn't help but to be amused by the irony. Here she was a captain leading a mutiny on her own ship. “Listen up,” she announced to the entire bridge. “As you've no doubt gathered, our mission has changed. We no longer work for the Consortium. Some of you may be fine with that, others not. Those of you who are not, step forward. I promise no harm will come to you. You'll simply be confined to quarters. The rest, we have work to do and all I'll require from you is one hundred percent loyalty, one hundred percent commitment.”
Five crew members stepped forward. Two marines immediately escorted them from the bridge.
Two of the five operated critical systems, as did the ones who were deceased.
Mingana rubbed her brow. She would manage..
She noticed that Povich hadn't budged, but the critical set of his face offered no guarantee of support..
“Commander?” She said, solicitously.
Povich frowned. “You've put me in quite a predicament, Captain.”
Mingana conceded with a guilty nod. “Let's talk, Second...if you're still my Second.”
Povich offered no hints.
Three hours crawled by.
Mingana had gone straight to the bridge after the weapons room seizure. She ignored her marines' insistence that she stop at sickbay to get her arm treated. She had the medics meet her on the bridge instead.
Stripped down to a sleeveless black undershirt, with burn-treatment gauze covering her tricep wound, Captain Mingana stood beside her chair, eyes glued to an interface.
The Consortium ships had dropped into extended sensor range. As was mapped out before the mission, neither ship would make contact with the Horseman until they were within ten million miles of the city.
Mingana brought up schematics of both ships. They were roughly crab shaped vessels, each one slightly larger than the Horsemen, with shields powerful enough to withstand sustained bombardment from the most lethal of ship-killing missiles. Those shields, however, were only effective when they were up. At the moment those ships lay bare, like lions bereft of teeth and claws. The key in this operation was timing. Hit them while they were weak. Hit them hard. Mingana licked her mental chops, savoring the slaughter she was about to inflict.
“Consortium vessels have crossed the strike threshold, Captain,” Commander Povich reported, facing a gridded tactical interface.
Mingana acknowledged her Second's announcement with a crisp nod. She tapped an comm function on her chair. “Lt. Commander Kochran, status.”
“The packages are ready,” came Kochran's confident voice.
“Thank you.” Mingana turned to a senior combat officer. “Launch.”
The officer tapped keys on his console. “Yes, Captain. Initiating launch. Release in five...four...three...two...
***
Two thermal nuclear missiles exited the Horseman at velocities approaching light. They were human built with Calaar cloaking emitters embedded in their warheads.
Shortly before the Consortium occupied Earth, the Calaar added upgraded stealth to their capabilities, giving them a slight edge over their enemies in that area. The missiles were not simply swathed in light deflectant bubbles, they moved in subspace, further masking their existence from opposing optics and sensors. Fortunately, the Resistance's sole Calaar member, Ot^^^, had overseen the salvaging of a few new generation cloaking emitters. Afterward, the Consortium swept the solar system clean of any traces of Calaar technology.
The first Consortium ship became a pitch black cutout at the heart of a massive glare of hell light when the first missile struck it. A cascade of released nuclear fury cooked the ship, reducing it to a crumpled, smoldering husk. What remained of the vessel drifted powerlessly in the void. The second missile was knocked off of its trajectory by the pummeling effects of the first blast, sustaining just enough damage to short out its stealth function.
The missile emerged into full visibility five seconds before terminal contact with the second Consortium ship...which was more than enough time for the ship's close range defenses to respond.
Mingana watched her interface, the ecstatic thrill she felt witnessing the first ship's demise replaced by sickening horror as the second missile's cloak failed. A glittering salvo of close-range defense fire blew the missile apart in a blinding massive glow that quickly subsided like a snuffed out candle flame.
Mortified silence seized the bridge. The mission could only succeed if both enemy ships were destroyed. Mingana had to stop that second ship at all costs. All costs!
“Prep ship to ship missiles,” she ordered. “Move forward to engagement range, full impulse.”
Commander Povich didn't bat an eye when he relayed his captain's orders. Neither did anyone else on the bridge for that matter. Yet, they all knew that the Horseman, a human built vessel, stood little chance in a head to head encounter with a product of advanced extraterrestrial technology. But doing nothing at all to prevent the deaths of billions was certainly not an option.
Twenty Dragon Flare ship to ship missiles shot out from the Horseman's launchers, slicing a deadly path toward the Consortium ship. One by one the missiles vanished in a frenetic maelstrom of precision enemy counter fire.
Emitter nodes pimpling the enemy ship's hull spat incandescent lashes of energy toward the Horseman.
The human ship bucked violently as impacting beams speared explosively into its hull. Followup anti-ship missiles tore glowing gashes in the Horseman. Atmosphere plumed from numerous hull breaches, crystallizing in the freezing vacuum.
Bridge lighting and well over two thirds of interface screens blinked out. Auxiliary power had suffered substantially. Barely enough backup lighting clicked on to adequately alleviate the bridge's shadowy darkness.
Operations consoles sizzled and sparked from pernicious power surges.
“Guidance systems have suffered critical damage,” Povich reported, more calmly than the situation warranted. “Breaches are on every level...overall life support is at 80 percent, but that number is dropping.”
“Casualties?” Mingana asked.
“Eleven dead...so far. Twice that number injured according to sickbay data.”
The captain dropped a dejected gaze. More losses under her command...but she could not turn back. She refused. “Maintain target lock on enemy ship. Keep firing.”
“Most of our batteries are inoperable,” Povich said with a heavy grimace.
Mingana looked determinedly at her Second. “Then we'll use the batteries we have left, and when they're exhausted or destroyed, we'll come at that ship with fists, feet and teeth if need be.”
Povich gazed appreciatively at Mingana. “If need be. It's been an honor serving with you, Captain.”
Mingana smirked. “Likewise, Commander. But no happy farewells just yet. I want to at least bloody their noses.”
The Horseman and Consortium ship exchanged volleys. But the Horseman's missiles were knocked out of space faster than they could launch. By contrast, every missile cast by the enemy ship penetrated the Horesman's paltry defense screen with contemptuous lack of effort. More breaches opened up the length and breadth of the Horseman's hull, a few so deep as to gut entire levels. Crewmembers not incinerated in the blasts were sucked out into space in raging windstorms.
“You're Resistance?” Povich asked when he and Mingana stepped into the captain's office.
Mingana nodded.
“For how long?”
“Years. But, this is my first operation.” The captain perched on the corner of her desk, arms folded. “And I intend for it to be successful.”
Povich cocked his head. “What is this operation?”
“To prevent this ship from using the weapon that will wipe out that city,” Mingana replied. “Also, we have to destroy the Consortium ships that'll be joining us. And and then we make contact with the Calaar and deliver this weapon to them.”
“Sounds...overly ambitious,” said Povich.
“It'll be easier with your participation.”
Povich shook his head, his gaze smoldering with frustration. “Damn you Captain for dropping this trouble in my lap. My intention since the Consortium arrived in our part of the galaxy was to keep my head down, don't make waves, and do my duty.”
Mingana said nothing. She watched her second deliberate.
“In fact, I'd always considered the Resistance to be pursuing a futile enterprise.” Povich threw his hands up. “I mean, how in the hell can we, mere humans, take on a colossus like the Consortium? What could we possibly achieve? What kind of blow could we inflict on them?”
“There's one way to find out,” said Mingana. “And it sounds to me like you want to be on the inflicting end.”
Povich blew out a heavy sigh. “I suppose I do, Captain.”
“Are you with us?”
Povich stared deeply into his captain's eyes. “I'm with you, Justine Mingana. I still think what the Resistance is doing is folly, but I'll join this mission.”
Mingana displayed a relieved smile. “Thank you, Arie. I'm sorry for plunging you into this situation.”
Povich gave his captain a sly look accompanied by a skeptical grin. “No you're not.”
***
Mingana led the assault on weapons room 3 while Povich remained on the bridge. Povich protested, expressing deep concern for his captain's safety, and offering to lead the assault, given his greater ground combat expertise. But Mingana turned him down on principle. She had put a portion of her crew at great risk, with the possibility that her ship and everyone on board, Resistance and non-Resistance alike could be destroyed. She could not in good conscious enjoy the safety of the bridge while her shipboard marines faced the danger of taking on Consortium guards. The Resistance entrusted this mission to her and she intended to carry it out at the fullest measure. And if she were killed, Povich would take command and finish the mission.
Mingana ordered that the marines be armed with heavy weapons and a disproportionate amount of explosives. She was able to muster up to fifteen extra marines to augment the thirty two who were part of the Resistance. The marines who refused to participate in the mission, she ordered restricted to quarters.
Two marines emerged into the corridor wielding Tactical Arena mini-rocket launchers.
They triggered rockets before the guards in the corridor outside of weapons room 3 could react. Both rockets struck the guards and exploded, shattering their armor and killing them instantly. A marine tossed a disk shaped charge and it landed inches from the weapons room 3 door. The door opened and as Consortium guards rushed out into the corridor, the charge exploded. The explosion's force slammed with point blank ferocity into the guards, scattering them like confetti. Three lay still in the corridor, two others, struggled to their feet, appearing disoriented.
Mingana rushed ahead of her marines and targeted the nearest wounded guard with her KR. A torrent of shotgun shells blazed from the weapon shearing into damaged parts of the guard's armor, penetrating flesh.
The guard's movements ceased in a bloody instant.
Lt. Winter finished off the other guard with a savage burst of her mini-rocket launcher.
Winter held back her over zealous captain and signaled a marine forward. The marine pointed a launcher and shot a grenade into the weapons room. A blast sounded and ash gray smoke gusted out of the weapons room into the corridor.
Marines stormed into the room. A crossfire of dark energy beams greeted them. A marine flopped lifelessly to the deck, his head blasted to red vaper by a well placed energy beam. The marine behind him spun practically full circle as energy beams lacerated his upper body. A lance of energy thrust like a fiery blade into Lt. Winter's side. She cried out in pain as she stumbled to the deck.
Mingana fired her KR, unleashing hot metal on the position where that shot came from. She saw a Consortium guard go down, but she wasn't sure if it was her doing. Two marines with Beringer 50 cals swept the area. A third marine fired a rocket before being cut down in a volley of energy.
The rocket collided with a bulkhead and the subsequent explosion upended a guard in a searing swell of fire, smoke and debris.
Mingana knelt protectively over Lt. Winter, pumping shells from her KR in every direction. When her clip ran empty, she expelled it and slapped in a full one with expert precision. She fired several more thumping bursts, hitting a Consortium guard in the chest.
A marine appeared and helped the captain drag Winter to the cover of a nearby partition. Energy beams sizzled past Mingana. A beam grazed her gun arm. That minor brush tore through the interlocking ballistic mesh of her flak jacket, marking her skin with a deep blistering burn. The captain clenched her teeth at that hot, scathing patch of pain. She switched her KR to her other hand and fired blindly around the partition. The gun's brutal recoil nearly threw her arm out its socket. More explosions from grenades and rockets rang out in deafening succession. Black smoke clogged the room. The enraged or anguished voices of Consortium guards and marines carried above the churning raucous of combat. Mingana didn't know exactly when the silence set in. For a few seconds, the rapid, drumming of her heartbeat filled her head as if she were locked in an echo chamber. And then a marine called out: “Clear!”
Mingana checked on Winter.
Wisps of smoke spiraled from a glistening wound in the lieutenant's side. Winter tried to project a certain unflappability, but intense pain sabotaged her effort. She let out a ragged groan.
“You're going to be OK, lieutenant,” Mingana assured the woman, gently squeezing her hand.
Winter managed a wry smile. “I...hope so, Captain...because I'm not done kicking ass.”
Mingana grinned in agreement.. “Neither am I.” She rose slowly, cautiously, taking a look around the room.
Marines were circulating about, assessing their kills. Ten Consortium guards and five Consortium technicians had occupied the weapons room. All of them lay scattered on the deck, dead. Six marine fatalities, from what Mingana could make out; four wounded. Her shoulders slumped. Another battle won at a terrible cost. But the mission wasn't over yet.
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| Molecular geometry of plastic deformation. Subplot (a): snapshots of the deformation mechanisms, pure CF, for increasing strain. Fibrillar yield is characterized by intermolecular slip (see the circles highlighting a local area of repeated molecular slip). Slip leads to the formation of regions with lower material density. Subplot (b): snapshots of the deformation mechanisms, mineralized collagen fibrils, for increasing strain. Slip initiates at the interface between hydroxyapatite particles and tropocollagen molecules. Slip reduces the density, leading to the formation of nanoscale voids. Courtesy of Nanotechnology |
Topics: Biology, Materials Science, Carbon Nanotubes, Nanotechnology
Nanostructures, such as carbon nanotubes, are often added to polymers and composites to enhance their strength. The extreme mechanical properties of carbon nanotubes suggest an obvious rationale behind this approach. However, as Markus Buehler and Isabelle Su at Massachusetts Institute of Technology in the US highlight in their recent topical review, the behaviour that renders nanomaterials soft or strong can be far from trivial, often involving interactions on a range of scales from macrostructures to nanostructures and – in the case of biostructures – the amino acids and proteins they are built from.
Bone is a classic example of excellent natural material engineering. It primarily consists of tropocollagen fibrils – which would be too soft to support the weight of the skeleton under its daily loads – and hydroxyapatite, a stiff but fragile material prone to fracture. However, the alliance of these two imperfect candidates is an extremely tough, lightweight and robust material.
Based on a simple molecular model of mineralized collagen fibrils, Buehler showed that, as might be expected, the stiffness of mineralized fibrils lies somewhere between the two extremes of the component materials, with as more recent studies reveal, the mineral components bearing up to four times the stress of the collagen fibrils. However, in addition his 2007 study pointed out that the mineralization increases the energy dissipation during deformation. As he explains in his report, “The fibrillar toughening mechanism increases the resistance to fracture by forming large local yield regions around crack-like defects, a mechanism that protects the integrity of the entire structure by allowing for localized failure.”
Nanotechweb:
Nanomechanics – the whole is more than the sum of its parts, Anna Demming
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| Plastic fantastic? Quasicrystal deformations and bending observed |
Topics: Materials Science, Nanotechnology, Quasicrystal
Caveat emptor: I did notice one comment on the article at the main site referencing "Laplace Pressure" as a source explaining how quasicrystal structures become pliable at the nanoscale. The link (I've provided) is to a Wikipedia page. In blogging, one can play kind of "fast and loose" with reference links if trying to make a point as in an essay, but I wouldn't in general use an open source page with the subtitle "A Free Encyclopedia that everyone can edit" referring to a science article. Out of curiosity, I did look it up on Scholarpedia: "the peer-reviewed open-access encyclopedia, where knowledge is curated by communities of experts." The search term Laplace Pressure came up with four links that did not seem to relate to a nanoscale phenomena.
When shrunk to the nanoscale, quasicrystals become plastic. That is the finding of an international team of researchers, which says that its results could potentially widen the material's applications. Quasicrystals – materials in which the atoms show long-range order but have no finite, periodically repeated unit cell – have fascinated materials scientists ever since their Nobel-prize-winning discovery in 1984. Their practical use, however, has been limited by their brittleness.
Conventional crystals plastically deform through dislocations in their lattice that can allow individual unit cells to swap places relatively easily. This makes some crystals, such as pure metals like copper and gold, highly ductile. In quasicrystals, however, there are no unit cells, so it takes more energy to move dislocations. "Normally, the dislocations in quasicrystals are quite mobile at high temperatures," says materials-scientist Yu Zou of Massachusetts Institute of Technology in the US. "However, below 500 °C, the dislocations are not that mobile, so this can make the quasicrystal very brittle."
Physics World: Brittle quasicrystals become ductile at the nanoscale, Tim Wogan
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| Credit: NASA/CXC/SAO/J.DePasquale and NASA/JPL-Caltech and NASA/STScI |
Topics: Astrophysics, Big Bang, Cosmology, Science Fiction, Theoretical Physics
The next-to-last related topic may seem unrelated: one of the Marvel Comics I recall reading was "Origin of Galactus," nee Galan who in the rebirth of the previous universe became the devouring planet eater that the Fantastic Four would battle and enslave his herald The Silver Surfer. This wouldn't be possible without someone reading the scientific papers of the day, so this idea is not new. It doesn't have to be true, proven or compelling to exist as an effective plot device.
What most non-fans of comics never appreciated is the amount of research the writers did to create their stories. I recall for instance passing a history test on Norse Mythology solely on the info I'd gleaned from Thor comics, albeit the original Norse god was describe as red-haired, needing a power belt and gloves to lift Mjölnir, having a goat-drawn chariot; three wives and children. Probably too much to put on the big screen.
Did the universe start with a bang or a bounce—or something else entirely? The question of our origins is one of the thorniest in physics, with few answers and lots of speculation and strong feelings. The most popular theory by far is inflation, the notion that the cosmos blew up in size in the first few fractions of a second after it was born in a bang. But an underdog idea posits that the birth of this universe was not actually the beginning—that an earlier version of spacetime had existed and contracted toward a “big crunch,” then flipped and started expanding into what we see today. Now a new study suggesting a twist on this “bounce” scenario has supporters excited and inflation proponents newly inflamed over a “rival” they say they have repeatedly disproved, only to have it keep bouncing back.
Inflation has many admirers because the rapid expansion it posits seems to explain numerous features of the universe, such as the fact that it appears relatively flat (as opposed to curved, on large scales) and roughly uniform in all directions (there is roughly the same amount of stuff everywhere, again on large scales). Both conditions result when regions of space that ended up very far away initially started out close together and in contact with one another. Yet the latest versions of the theory seem to suggest—even require—that inflation created not just our universe but an infinite landscape of universes in which every possible type of universe with every possible set of physical laws and characteristics formed somewhere. Some scientists like this implication because it could explain why our particular universe, with its seemingly random yet perfectly calibrated-to-life conditions, exists—if every type of cosmos is out there, it is no wonder that ours is, too. But other physicists find the multiverse idea repulsive, in part because if the theory predicts that every possibility will come to pass, it does not uniquely foretell a universe like the one we have.
“Big bounce” theories also predict a flat and uniform cosmos, thanks to smoothing-out effects on space that can take place during the contraction. But the sticking point of the bounce idea has long been the transition between shrinking and expanding, which seemed to require the much-hated idea of a “singularity”—a time when the universe was a single point of infinite density—seen by many as a mathematically meaningless proposition that indicates a theory has gone off the rails. Now physicists say they have found a way to calculate the bounce without encountering any singularities. “We found we could describe the quantum evolution of the universe exactly,” says study co-author Neil Turok, director of the Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics in Ontario. “We found that the universe passes smoothly through the singularity and out the other side. That was our hope, but we’d never really accomplished this before.” He and Steffen Gielen of Imperial College London published their calculations last month in Physical Review Letters.
Scientific American: Did the Universe Boot Up with a “Big Bounce?” Clara Moskowitz
I had a great time on Genesis Science Fiction Radio with William Hayashi for the July 29th Episode.
We talked about the jinx of talking about a future projects too early, the use of beta readers and much more during a two-hour discussion where we talked about books, breaks in creativity and beyond.
