Ivan Kal - What War Had Wrought

“The next agenda is Fleet,” Nadia said as Jack finished his report.

“Thanks, Nadia,” Laura said as she stood up. “As far as the fleets themselves go, everything is fine. The increase in the Eurus shipyards is going according to plans, with four more yards going fully online in five days. I have taken the liberty of stopping the production on the Star-Guard Platforms Two and Three and moved the resources to the Star-Guard One, which is, relatively speaking, finished. We are going to be doing shield testing for the next month or two. And the resources that were supposed to go to Star-Guard Two and Three will be rerouted to the shipyards to increase our ship productions. Also, I want to increase the number of defense platforms around Sanctuary itself. With the prospect of a war with the Erasi, I want us to be ready. As far as everything else, there are no notable problems.”

“We have been sending all extra platforms out to Sol and the Shara Daim; is it really necessary?” Tomas asked. “Sanctuary is well protected, but even if it wasn’t, it is very well hidden; you need to know its location in order to actually find it, and our trans-points are defended by the stations.”

“It’s not an immediate concern, but I want you to have it in mind,” Laura added.

“Of course. Anything else?” Tomas asked.

“No, that is all,” Laura responded.

“The next on the agenda is sciences,” Nadia announced, and Seo-yun stood and started updating them on the status on several projects her people were currently working on.

Seo-yun sat in her office relaxing and reading the scientific data from the sphere. It still amazed her just how much they had gotten wrong, how many theories and laws of the universe they had been outright wrong about or had simply misunderstood. And there was so much more in the data, knowledge spanning an incredible period of time, and she was only at the beginning. She had tried reading the knowledge the People had at their end, but frankly she couldn’t understand any of it. The terms and equations were alien to her, so she had started reading from the beginning, trying to understand the concepts that were the foundations of what the People had at their end. The Empire was doing the same, albeit slowly, as they were actually testing out and attempting to gain the full understanding and control over the technology and knowledge.

Seo-yun was just reading a bit ahead. For example, she was currently reading about dimensions. Humanity had theories about other dimensions, and most believed that other dimensions were separate from ours. The metaphor used often was that each dimension was a floor in a multistoried building, each individual and isolated. The People believed—at least at the point she had reached to—that dimensions existed on a spectrum, overlapping each other. Hyperspace was a different dimension, one that overlapped the most with our own, which was why it was relatively easy to access.

However, as it overlapped our dimension so much, it also meant that our dimension had some influence on it, which was why you couldn’t enter hyperspace when close to a star. Trans-space was another dimension, one that had a bit less overlap with ours, and whose rules were slightly different, which was why it could only be accessed through trans-points, which the People realized were in fact places where the border between our two dimensions was weaker. Although there seemed to be a bit of a gap with their knowledge of those dimensions. The People hadn’t used hyperspace or trans-space for travel until very late in their civilization’s lifespan, as she read it almost seemed as if they hadn’t been aware of them. They used skim drives for FTL, and a bit later something they called access points, which were massive stations built inside suns, powered by them to move ships instantaneously between these points. Their discovery of trans-space and hyperspace seemed almost an afterthought, something that developed long after they reached their peak.

Then there was their discovery that higher intelligence required that the lifeform was capable of accessing the Sha, even if it was without the lifeform’s conscious ability. Looking back at the data, and then human history, Seo-yun had discovered that while humans didn’t have that conscious ability to manipulate the Sha, they did however have a connection to the Sha even before Adrian awakened it. It was manifested in small things, like people feeling that something was wrong when a bad thing was about to happen, one sibling feeling the death of another from far away, those kinds of things. Or at least that was what Axull Darr had written about the way it would be manifested. Not in those words, but similar.

And there so many other marvels and achievements that the People had discovered. And all of that knowledge was there for her to access. In a way, that saddened Seo-yun; knowledge was her life’s pursuit, and now there wasn’t anything left to discover, only things to master and add to. At least until they reached the level of the People and moved beyond them. Seo-yun knew that there were things that they didn’t know—the reason why they were dying, for one. Perhaps one day she would find the answer.

Adjutant Jonas sat at the sensor station on board the patrol ship Pharaoh. He was one of three others in command center during the third shift. It was a boring post. Jonas was looking over the passive and active sensors that were checking the space around the ship on their patrol route that took them to the edge of the nebula. Jonas had always wondered what it was like to be posted on a true fleet warship. He thought that it must be much more exciting, barring the possibility of death.

Sometimes when he got especially bored during his shifts, he toyed with the idea of putting in a request for a transfer. But then he inevitably remembered that the Empire was at war, or soon it would be, and he always gave up on the notion. Being bored on a patrol ship in the safest place in the Empire was infinitely better than being dead. So, Jonas resigned himself to boredom and almost mechanically looking over the data in front of him.

He was so lost in his musings that he almost missed an item that popped up on his screen. He saw that the ship’s AI had marked a scan with low priority for him to check out. Jonas frowned and took a deeper look at the data. Apparently, the ship’s sensors had detected a slight irregularity with the nebula density, which had disappeared after three point two seconds. Jonas checked and saw that there was no more data, and that the only reason the AI had marked it was because such scans had never before been encountered.

Jonas looked at the Low Prime sitting in the command chair with a blank look on his eyes that meant that he was reading a book on his imp, as he always did during the third shift. Jonas debated on whether to bother the Low Prime or not, and after a minute or two of thinking it over stood and walked over.

“Low Prime?” Jonas asked, and saw his superior blink a few times and then focus on him.

“Yes, Jonas?” Low Prime said, annoyed.

“The ship’s AI brought a strange scan to my attention. Here,” Jonas said quickly, and then accessed the holo table in front of the command chair and brought out the scan.

Low Prime looked at the scans thoughtfully for a minute, and then turned to look at Jonas. “This is unusual, but then again we’ve never had reliable scans this close to the nebula,” Low Prime said. Then he looked back at the scans. “Do we have an exact location on where this was picked up?”

“Yes, Low Prime,” Jonas said.

“Alright, let’s get an active ping in that region,” Low Prime ordered.

Jonas let out the breath he had been holding in relief. Apparently he had done the right thing by bringing this up. “Right away, sir.”