Imperialistic Tendencies
By James 'Porphyre' Grahn
All things considered, Porphyre was having a bad decade. Currently, he
was sputtering around the edge of Imperial space in his Marquette. While
easily being one of the most maneuverable and responsive ships ever made,
the only thing it was good for was ferrying passengers from station to
station. And Porphyre didn’t want to do that for the rest of his life.
Here he was, after years of education, hauling the riff-raff of the Empire
from point A to point B. "Bah…" he muttered, bringing the Marquette off
the landing pad and preparing for a jump to a planet about 3 AU away, "I
need a break."
An Imperial gentleman strolled into the cabin just then. He must have been
familiar with the controls of ships, as, after a deep rumbling in his throat,
he asked Porphyre, "You have a fastdrive, do you?"
Porphyre was a little surprised, as it was fairly new equipment. He turned
to face the man. "Yeah…" The man was ancient. "Were you around during the
early years of the fastdrive?"
He smiled. "No, but I was a journalist for the Imperial Herald during the
first of the starquakes. We should have seen it coming. The gravitic distortions
that caused asteroids, even moons, to be disturbed, sometimes even thrown
out of orbit were warning enough. Yet we kept using those fastdrives, up
until the effects reached the stars themselves. And once the stars started
to flare and belch small asteroids of stellar matter, we at last switched
to Delta Inducers to accelerate not our speed, but the time. At least as
we feel it… Why have we started to use fastdrives again? Why do we feel
the need? I’ve seen the horrors of a starquake. Why risk another?"
Porphyre paused for a minute, and, at length, said, "The starquakes were
the result of a miscalculation. The best physicists of the time were in
denial. No one knew what the accumulative effects of a fastdrive could
be. After all, we’d only been using them for about one hundred years, right?
But you have nothing to worry about, fastdrives nowadays clean up after
themselves. They have a disrupter hitched onto them that breaks the distortions
into smaller patches which shrink into nothingness, instead of growing
to threaten entire star systems."
The man grunted. "An educated man…" he said, with obvious malice. He walked
back into his cabin.
Porphyre brought the Marquette out of the atmosphere, set the autopilot,
and engaged the fastdrive. A display indicated that he had five minutes
till arrival time. Porphyre glided across the room in his command chair,
to check his account and find out just how much more money he needed before
he could sell his craft and get one capable of hyperspace transit.
Three minutes later, an alarm sounded. "Fastdrive function negated by gravitational
disturbance. Ship identified as source of the disturbance," the Marquette
informed him.
"The craft has been identified as a Krait Mk 2. The ship is on an intercept
course, and closing fast," the computer warned.
"What armaments does this craft have?"
"The ship has two naval missiles and fore and aft lasers."
"Crap. What do they want?" The ship, sensing the question was rhetorical,
didn’t respond.
The ship wasn’t there by accident. In the vastness of space, accidents
rarely happen, and they were still about one AU away from the closest inhabited
planet.
The Krait hailed them. "We do not wish to cause you harm, but if you don’t
surrender… err.. tell you what, just hand over Norman Winston, and we’ll
leave you alone."
"Lock cabin door," Porphyre said. If there was a Winston on his passenger
manifest, he didn't want him to come in and commandeer the ship.
His eyes scanned over the document. Here it was… Norman Winston, cabin
1B. It was the old man.
Porphyre responded to the hail. "I don’t have ejectable cabins, we’ll have
to dock manually."
"Acknowledged."
Porphyre considered his options quickly. He liked the old man, and wasn’t
about to give him up. But his Marquette wasn’t armed…
He then thought about the Marquette itself. It had no magnetic components,
so jerry-rigging a coil gun was out of the question. The only thing odd
about the Marquette was its thrusters, which were different from any ship
before it. They were experimental, and expelled ions and photons instead
of the hydrogen of the traditional thrusters.
Porphyre got the old man on his communications screen. "Listen to me. There
are some people out there who want you. And I don’t think they mean well.
I’m going to try to get rid of them, though."
"For the Emperor’s sake, kid! What are they in?"
"A Krait Mk 2."
"And you’re going to take them on in a Marquette?"
"Not quite," Porphyre replied, "But I’m not going to let them have you,
either… Close com." The man’s face blipped off the screen.
The Krait was close over head now, adjusting for a hard dock.
Porphyre needed more time. He hailed the Krait. "What are you, stupid?"
he yelled. "That hatch has been sealed shut for years. Use the bottom one."
"Oh… sorry."
The Krait moved off, and started docking procedures for his bottom hatch.
Porphyre moved to his Engine Status screen to make some unusual adjustments.
The old man only had one chance. Suddenly, he found himself calling on
all those years of education. He adjusted the engine output from 66% ions
(the most efficient) to less than 1%. He then made adjustments to the spectrum
of the photons emitted. From visible light to gamma rays. In the hands
of a less capable man, it could blow the thrusters and kill them all. But
then, a less capable man wouldn’t have thought of it…
As soon as the Krait 2 was under him, Porphyre slammed the button marked
‘Max thrust.’ The Marquette lurched forward, and Porphyre watched the back
view carefully for any activity. The ship had one thruster, the rotation
thruster #3, firing, the final action of the ship’s owner. The ship gently
drifted into infinity, spinning forever.
Porphyre’s com screen bleeped. He turned. The old man was on the screen.
"How’d you do that, boy?"
Porphyre blinked and responded, "I sterilized their ship."
"Ingenious, boy. Congratulations, too. Did I ever mention my rank with
the Empire?"
"No."
"Well, regardless, you’ll receive one now. It’s not everyday a Federation
man saves an Imperial officer."
"I’m not a Federal. Well, by birth only."
"Happy to hear that, lad. I always knew you had Imperialistic tendencies.
But you being so smart, why are you only rated Competent?"
Porphyre begged off then, reset the thrusters to norm, and re-engaged the
fastdrive. Two minutes later, they were at port, and the old man was waiting
for Porphyre at the bar.
He cleared his throat, and said, "I heard a rumor of junkyard where there
was a Stiletto stashed. You should check it out."
It seemed the man was not kidding, so Porphyre decided it was worth a look.
As it turned out, there really was an old junkyard that had a fully equipped
Stiletto drifting in it. And when he entered, he found the ship called
him by name, that it had been waiting for him, and that it had a list of
missions to complete to pay for itself. And so began Porphyre’s career
in the Imperial Navy.
Story ©1998-2000 James Grahn
Glossary
· AU—An astronomical unit, the distance between the Earth
and Sun
· Delta Inducer—A device which induces sleep in the user.
· Empire, The— The Empire was formed after the defeat
of the Federation in the Battle of Achenar in the 2320s when the Federation
had sent a war fleet in response to the alleged elimination of a sentient
race by private colonists on Achenar 6d (now known as Capitol). The Empire
spread from Achenar to surrounding worlds during the 2330s, and the wars
between the Federation and Empire continued until the 2380s when a peace
treaty was signed between the two powers...
The new emperor is a lot more liberal than the dear departed Hengist
Duval. Several social security programs have been started, and the populace
are feeling a lot happier. Controls on the press have been relaxed, but
the newsmen are always conscious of the watchful gaze of the Imperial Guard
and are wary of pushing their new freedom too far.
· Federation, The— The Federation was formed after a battle
between forces from Earth and Tau Ceti after the later were making several
alien species extinct. Initial members were Earth (0,0), Tau Ceti (0,0),
Delta Pavonis (0,-2), Altair (-2,1) and Beta Hydri (0,-2). It had a long
cold war with the Empire, and it continues in propaganda only. It had been
known as the guardian of human rights, but now, there are signs of corruption...
· Fastdrive—A varient of the hyperdrive that allows for
small jumps between points in Realspace to occur at the exclusion of the
larger jump typical. The net effect is a FTL movement. The concept of the
Fastdrive I based this story is only usable on smaller ships that don't
have enough room for a hyperdrive. Fastdrive technology was banned soon
after its creation because of the disastrous effects it had on inhabited
star systems. Fastdrives in TEP will cease to work when within a certain
range of a ship, asteroid, sun, planet, or moon. Fastdrive technology may
or may not be included in The Elite Project.
· Gravitic—Dealing with gravity. Because a concrete idea
of gravity does not exist, using this term is safer than saying ‘gravitron
radiation,’ gravity waves, or gravity distortions. If pressed, I refer
to it as a distortion, but it's really guessing game. Gravity is rather
tricky, and though it may turn out to be a wave-particle like light, it
may be something else…
· Krait 2—A small-to-medium attack craft.
· Marquette—A small craft used for interplanetary passenger
transport.
· Starquake—An event in which stars flared, spewed matter,
and ‘quaked’ due to the effects of Jump technology.
· Stiletto—A ship designed by Jades.
Several items from the glossary I 'researched' on Jades's various sites,
as well as Rob's. (Well, I learned of the ships from Rob's site, and the
'Starquake' reference is from my 'research' of one of his stories.)
Please do not copy or use this work without
permission.
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