Ivan Kal - Sanctuary

She entered her office and sat down at her desk, the room was filled with holo images, graphics on the walls, and her desk was filled with data, theories, equations and presumptions. She was trying to crack the same problem that she had been working on for more than 20 years. The way that the Union ships traveled between the stars. She knew that they stopped using hyperspace a long time before they even started the journey towards Earth, and started using something they called translanes, what Seo-yun dubbed trans-space. But it just seemed impossible, it didn’t make sense, the time it took the ship to pass a set distance varied, sometimes it could take them a week, and sometimes a month to cross the same distance.

Seo-yun looked at the projected path that the Union ship took from their side of the galaxy to Earth, it wasn’t a straight line, sometimes they went back, or went around a star system that would reduce their travel time significantly. She knew that they were trying to find a place to bring their people and start over, but it didn’t make sense to ignore some viable star systems while going to other that couldn’t be what they were looking for. And their exit points inside the systems were strange as well. Sometimes they entered star systems well inside the gravity influence of the star, which was impossible, at least if one was using hyperspace, and sometimes they exited the trans-space so far away from the star that it took them months or years even to get deeper in the star system.

She used her implant to scroll through the data, coming to the entrance point into this Nebula system. They had entered the system between the orbits of the third planet – Boreas, and the fourth planet – Eurus , well within the Apollo’s strongest gravity influence. After that they proceeded to Sanctuary, which was the second planet in the system, after doing a short survey, they continued towards the other side of the system and exited the Nebula from a point between the orbits of Eurus and Gem the fifth planet. Seo-yun had already sent ships to those coordinates to scan the area, but they couldn’t find anything amiss. The way the Union ships entered and exited systems didn’t seem consistent at all, and yet this seemed to be a much faster way for them to travel, so much so that they abandoned hyperspace travel completely.

“You have been through this data a million times, it won’t change if you keep looking at it.” The voice of Luna, Seo-yun’s Ai said through her implant.

“I know, but it feels as if I’m missing something.” Seo-yun said.

“It will come to you when it comes, don’t force yourself.” Luna said.

Frustrated, she closed the files, and turned to other things, she reviewed the files her assistant sent her, concerning the Academy of Sciences, Seo-yun was elected as the Minister of Science, and was in charge of all the scientific programs. She went through the proposals, someone wanted equipment to go and study wildlife on the southern continent, then she noticed an inquiry from Nadia Wilson, she was appointed the Minister of Civil Service, Olympus had three branches the Civil Service, Military and Science branch. Between those three they ran Olympus under Tomas’s leadership, though in the past years it was all on them.

In the message, Nadia asked for permission to dig a tunnel through a hill where a science team was doing research. The tunnel was supposed to connect one of the power plants to the city. With her implant Seo-yun accessed the science team files and saw that their research was almost over, she then composed a message to Nadia telling her that the science team would be done in a few days and that she can start on the tunnel then.

As she read through the message again to check it, Seo-yun froze on the word tunnel. She immediately brought back the files pertaining to the trans-travel. She looked at the data again, at the path the Union ship took.

“What is it Seo-yun?” Luna asked worriedly.

Seo-yun was too busy to respond.

The first part of the Union word for this kind of travel wasn’t translatable so Seo-yun decided to call it trans, but the second they translated as lane, Seo-yun assumed that that was only the closest translation, but if it was a literal translation. What if Union ships didn’t travel through another kind of space similar to hyperspace, but a tunnel, a lane. She looked at the entrance and exit points of the Union ship, they weren’t constant, which suggested that they didn’t have control over where they enter or come out of it. She looked over the time the ship usually stayed in a system that they were just passing through, they would always proceed straight to the other system exit point immediately after entering a system. That suggested that they didn’t need to wait for a recharge of their drives, as she originally assumed, the translane was already there, they could detect it and use it. Which meant that the translanes were naturally occurring. She went through the scans of those areas where Union ship entered and exited the Sanctuary system, there was still nothing there, but Seo-yun was sure that she had found the answer, there was something there, and now that she knew that, she had no doubt that she would find it.

“I think that I got it.” Seo-yun said excitedly.

“Got what?”

“The translanes problem.”

She was just about to send the message to her assistant to gather her best people, contact her ship in orbit, and to come and pick her up in a transport, but she noticed the time. It was already the middle of the night, and even though she wanted to start on this immediately she put the message in her implant queue to be sent in the morning. Another thought struck her and she prepared an additional instruction, for a special kind of scanning equipment.

“Can you wake me up at six in the morning?” Seo-yun asked.

“Of course Seo-yun.”

She then went back to her bedroom and went to sleep.

“Be careful with that! It is thousands of years old.” Seo-yun said to the crewmembers of her science vessel Insight, as they lowered a piece of equipment from the transport.

“What is it?” Mia her assistant asked.

“It’s a scanning computer from the Union ship. I am hoping that it will see what our scanners can’t.” Seo-yun said.

“Just the computer? What about the other equipment?” Mia asked.

“Out scanners are copies of theirs, a bit improved actually, the only thing that is different are our computers, there is a ton of data on each scan, the computers sort it out and present it in a way we can understand, perhaps there is something that our computers are overlooking, because we haven’t programed them to recognize it.” She said.

Seo-yun felt that she was right.

“They are done Seo-yun.” Mia said, referring to the loading of the scanner.

“Good, tell the Ship Master that we can get underway at his leisure, I will be in the lab.” She said, the science ship Insight, was the only one of its class, at least for now, there were plans to make more, but there was always something else that needed to be done. And now with half the fabricators working to help fleet expansion on Thanatos, it will be at least another year before they could start building more. The ship itself was unimpressive on the outside, it looked exactly like most other Olympus ships, its hull was grayish, and was shaped like an elongated box with soft corners, though Insight had much more sensitive sensors and telescopes than any other ship, and a state of the art labs, where the science crew could do their research. It didn’t have weapons, only two laser emitters for clearing out debris. It was equipped with two shuttles for missions, and of course an FTL comm.