Part XVII: Into the Void!
by Vir Cotto
Most ancient craft, with a few experimental and non-mass-produced exceptions, used an exhaust based propulsion. Although the current ion coil drive is of this same basic principal, the ancient star drives, which relied on emission of charged particles; ions, electrons or light bosons, were far less efficient, rarely being able to propel a craft beyond the velocity of a few thousand miles per minute.
Since all these early drives relied upon a fuel source carried with the craft, their range and maneuverability were dependant upon this limited fuel. Thus extreme maneuvers and erratic evasive techniques were foolhardy, as they would tend to threaten to exhaust the limited fuel supply and leave the craft helplessly headed out toward its last trajectory, unable to make necessary course corrections.
In the situations where two hostile craft found themselves engaged in potential combat, these difficulties became paramount, and, as often was the case, made early attempts at space combat futile gestures at best. A perfect example of this case was the events that transpired on or about April 28th 2115 A.D. in the system of Alpha Proxima. There took place a chase between local Colonial Authorities and a fugitive who had commandeered a mining scout ship in an attempt to evade capture.
The Colonial Authority ship, a transport shuttle armed with a single primitive laser weapon and using a high energy photon emission drive, left the planet’s orbit at 0800 local time in response to the reports of the fugitive’s escape attempt. Rounding the planet, the Authority ship decreased its altitude in an attempt to use the planet’s gravity to boost their own velocity. With this maneuver complete, the Authority ship shot out from the orbit of AP-04 in pursuit of the stolen scout ship, now two point four light hours away from the Authority ship.
A major problem now confronted the Authority vessel. Their laser ray weapon could reach its target only as fast as the speed of light would allow. This meant that were they to fire, their shot would take over two hours to reach the target. As the target, the fugitive scout ship, was traveling at a velocity of sixteen thousand miles per minute it could, by the time the weapon’s ray had reached their original position, be anywhere within a sphere of some seven point one cubic light hours. Hitting a target under such conditions is, of course, highly improbable.
Another major problem would of course need to be overcome. Without increasing acceleration substantially, the Authority ship (traveling at a velocity of 17,500 miles per minute) would take three point one years to catch up to the fugitive ship, if both ships were to maintain their velocities and relative trajectories. Such were the limitations of ancient ships, in a time when interstellar travel was still in its barest infancy. Of course, these ships drives could have sustained much higher velocities, but doing so would threaten to exhaust their fuel and make a return voyage difficult at best, impossible at worst. Historically, the fugitive would have gotten away, had not the gravitational effects of the three nearby moons overwhelmed his limited piloting capabilities, causing him to crash.
Of course, in those ancient days, just prior to the development of the enormous and mythical Ark Ships; the first human craft to make the perilous and tedious journeys through interstellar space, the majority of space traffic was intrasystem, between the Homeworld and the mining and monitoring installations located in the Jovian Belt and among the Trans-Neptunian objects, the Oort Cloud, and Kuiper Belt.
Each of the Jovian Belt and Rim bases kept large reserves of fuel on hand, continually replenished by robotic drone cargo haulers which slowly and steadily plied the vast distances of the solar system to supply these far flung human bases. The far bases were dependant upon these slow but steady drone fleet for every bit of necessary material that could not be mined or synthesized from the elements available amongst the cosmic debris.
With ready fuel and supplies available at the far bases, it was possible for intrasystem craft to travel at top velocity between Homeworld and the edge of the solar system in a few short weeks using these somewhat expensive yet effective fuel burning techniques. Gone were the days when such a journey would have taken years or even decades.
In the fledgling days of yore there were only two real destinations for interstellar travelers. In the Twenty-first and Twenty-Second centuries, the UFE had launched thousands of robotic probes into deep space, each one a tiny explorer of the far realm of the universe. While monitored on Homeworld, the probes sought out habitable planetary systems as candidates for colonization and terraforming.
Over the years three were found; the somewhat inhospitable but terraformable AP-04 only four point three five light years from Homeworld, the bleak, barely habitable rock known ominously as Devil’s Den, orbiting at the very edge of the Sirius System, eight point seven light years from Homeworld, and the planet CT-031. While CT-03 appeared to rather similar to Homeworld, its distance proved to be, at the time, an insurmountable obstacle to its colonization.
The world of Devil’s Den is a terrifying, yet habitable planet, orbiting the large star of Sirius A and the white dwarf of Sirius B. The combined orbit of these two stars constantly sends large magnetic storms through the system, bathing the few small terrestrial planets with heavy doses of magnetic waves and radiation. The prior casting off of stellar material by Sirius B in its transition to the white dwarf stage left large amounts of heavy metals on the planets of the system. The atmosphere of Devil’s Den consisted of forty percent oxygen, forty percent nitrogen, as well as certain amounts of methane, sulfur, and hydrogen.
Thus, the planet’s atmosphere was breathable, but with constant rains of sulfuric acid, and with volcanic vents constantly sending up methane and sulfur into the air and causing large fire storms to rage both through the atmosphere and along the volcanic mountain ranges near the planet’s equator. It is for these obvious reasons that the first human eyes to witness images of the world found it ominously similar to Hell.
Though the planet was seemingly an ideal candidate for terranizing, the magnetic storms of the binary system and high levels of radiation made the system too dangerous and unstable for standard colonization. But humans tend to be a resourceful species, and with real estate in the universe at a premium, were loathe to let even Devil’s Den go to waste.
The only use ever found for the planet of Devil’s Den was as a penal colony, and thus the trip there was taken slowly, the only passengers being criminals condemned to die. For this reason, expediency was not a concern, and the Devil’s Den bound ships were most often drones, of a similar type to the transports used for interstellar supply. The voyages of these ships, even at high speed, were known to take up to forty years, and it was only the hardiest of criminals who could survive the long journeys onboard the prison barges. Enough did, however, to arrive and set up something of a rouge society on the horrid and hellish world called Devil’s Den.
Vir Cotto is diplomatic attache to Ambassador Londo Mollari of the Centauri Republic. He enjoys spoo.
I like your web site. It is fun and imaginative.
Vyr Vandalou’s name was taken from Vir Cotto of B-5.
I like fun stuff like this… Very encouraging to see the human heart and the childs imagination of what can potentially “Be” has not died and withered away.
Be well
While the human heart and the child’s imagination have not died and withered away, we have managed to put them in a coma and send them to the Bester Memorial Psychiatric Hospital for further “observation.”