Saxon Andrew - A rose grows in weeds

Bridget O’Donald and Tag sat in a room with Planet Leader Sten looking at his new ship that was being completed at the Central Planet’s largest ship yard. Both Tag and Bridget were amazed at its size; it was at least two miles long. Sten let them stare and then said, “I suppose you’re wondering why it’s so big.”

Tag looked at him and said, “Yes, I am. How big are the power cells on its surface; I can’t see the seams where they come together.”

“That’s because there aren’t any.”

Tag and Bridget both looked at Sten with shocked expressions and Sten said, “Sit down and let me explain how this ship came about.” They sat down and Sten turned on the large display in front of their table. “This is a one of a kind ship; we will never be able to build another. Cade McAllister came to me more than two years ago with a video he wanted me to see; it was the destruction of Admiral Kosievs’ ship.” Sten immediately saw the pain in Tag’s expression and knew the loss he felt for Kosievs’ death. “McAllister saw something in the recording that he couldn’t explain and wanted me to help him understand it. I know the pain this video might cause you, Your Majesty, but I think it’s important for you to see it.”

Tag looked at Sten and said, “Go ahead, I see it in my mind at least once a day.”

Sten began the video at the point just before the fifty anti-matter missiles hit the Moscow. I want you to watch closely what happens during the explosion.”

Tag watched as the missiles hit the Moscow and the huge explosion that followed. He noticed that the explosion seemed to be bigger at the top of the doomed Megaship. “Why is the explosion bigger at the top?”

“Excellent, you saw the same thing McAllister did when he looked at it. I’m going to slow the explosion down to one ten thousandths of normal speed,” Sten said and then ran the recording again.

Tag watched and saw the ship blowing up but there was a piece of it that was blown away so fast that even at the slow speed of the video it left almost faster than he could follow. “A piece of the ship survived the blast.”

“Yes it did. Once McAllister made that determination he decided that there should have been no way any part of that ship should have survived that many anti-matter blasts and he decided that finding that piece of the Moscow that survived was important. If it could survive then maybe we would have armor that is anti-matter proof.”

“So what did he do?” Bridget asked.

“It wasn’t as easy as he thought it was going to be. The Plant fleet had left the planet after their missiles had destroyed it, so McAllister went to the last coordinates of Kosievs’ ship and oriented his sensor array on the line that the piece was blow away. He has one of Earth’s foremost engineers determine the velocity that it has left and calculated how far away it had to be. He knew that the slightest variation would put him off millions of miles so he brought fifty megaships to spread out to the limits of their sensors and then jumped to the vicinity of where the piece should be located; nothing showed up on their sensors. He called in a thousand megaships and began the process again and once more nothing showed up.”

“Could he have read the trajectory wrong?” Tag asked.

“He had five other scientists check the trajectory and they all independently agreed that he was right.” Sten leaned back in his chair and looked up at the ceiling. “It took him four months of troubled thought to come up with a breakthrough; maybe it could not be read by the sensors.”

Bridget frowned and said, “How is that possible?”

Sten said, “He didn’t want to believe it either but he decided to try another way to find it. He ran his calculations again and used three thousand megaships spaced evenly in front of where the object should be traveling and set their visual sensors to alarm if anything caused a star to blink because an object crossed between it and a ship. In less than a day ten megaships had their sensors alarm. McAllister used their readings to triangulate where the object was and jumped to where it should be. He came out of his jump and the object barely missed hitting his ship as it sped by. Cade had his ship accelerate and catch up to the piece of the Moscow and match velocities. He called the other Megaships over and he shot a grappling hook into the object; the grappling hook disappeared and was cut off with the smoothest, cleanest, cut McAllister had ever seen.”

Tag and Bridget looked at Sten with furrowed brows. “What was going on with that piece,” Tag asked.

“Prince Gardner, Cade followed that piece for more than eight months trying to slow it down; nothing worked. Whatever touched the object disappeared and no energy was read from the object. He was starting to get frustrated. He decided to extend his screen in front of the object in hopes that the energy would slow it down.”

Bridget said, “Wasn’t that dangerous? What if the screen touched it and the object pulled whatever was in the screen into it.”

“Sometimes in the heat of frustration one doesn’t think things thru.”

“What Happened?” Tag asked.

“The object hit the screen and came to a complete stop just inside the screen; McAllister was dumbfounded; he immediately fired another grappling hook and it locked on the piece without being destroyed. Cade surmised that the object had to be contained in a Coronado Screen or it would be dangerous to work with. That’s when he called me and asked if I could help him understand what was going on with the object. He brought it here and I erected a space lab to work on it that was completely surrounded by a Coronado screen. Once we got it in we examined it quite thoroughly. We were amazed at what we discovered.”

Sten paused and Bridget said, “Well don’t keep us waiting.”

“You know that the Moscow was powered by five black hole reactors that Kosiev had overloaded and burned out to get to the ships that were preventing our fleet and forts from escaping. Just as they failed, the Moscow was hit with multiple anti-matter missiles that released a tremendous amount of energy. We now believe that just as those five small black holes broke thru their containers in Kosievs’ reactors they were blown into the top center section of Moscow’s hull and all five were trapped in the Coronado Power Cells. The explosion then blew that section away.”

“Why didn’t the explosion destroy that piece like the rest of the ship?” Tag asked.

“Sten smiled and said, “Because once those black holes locked themselves into those cells, their ability to absorb energy grew more than a trillion fold. We, quite frankly, have been unable to determine just how much energy that object can hold but we’re beginning to believe that it has no limit. And it doesn’t have to be energy; we’ve actually flown one of our old megaships that was damaged in battle into it and the megaship disappeared as if it never existed and there were no energy readings given off.”

“That doesn’t make sense. When matter is destroyed, it produces energy.” Tag said.

“You’re singing to the choir,” Sten said. “I really like some of your human expressions; they are so appropriate at the right time. Anyway, you’re right; it should have released energy. We decided to try and reduce its power so we attached a hundred foot long section of power cells that were still connected to their software connection. We hoped that possibly one of the black holes would leave the fifty foot object and enter the new section. A remarkable thing happened; the new section seemed to melt into the object and there were no seams between them. The fifty cells on the new section all melted into one large power cell.”