Foray (Invasion Challenge, Sci-Fi Multi-Crossover MC-SI)

[KillerFish]

Chapter Seven

Universe 1

This, Matt thought to himself as he waited with his sister Rachel at the table, Is a stupidly dangerous idea.

The 15 people who lived together had voted and come to a decision to talk to the people behind the portals and the robots, the Ralbeen Tech-Union. Matt was against the idea, not trusting that this wasn't a trap to kill them all.

He felt he'd been able to convince the group that this meeting was simply a ploy to separate them one by one, and eliminate them. Until one of the other group members, Gary, pointed out that whoever the Ralbeen were, they could already eliminate everyone without going through with an elaborate plan like Matt was suggesting.

And doesn't that sting that he's probably right!

The lights of the portal opened up ten feet away, and Matt was surprised when a different model of robot stepped out. It was just as tall as the skeleton robots, but had a different style of head. It was also wearing clothing, a pair of purple trousers, and a green t-shirt with a logo comprised of a large white circle with a green symbol of two lines that sandwiched another circle within it.

At least it wasn't armed, and didn't look like it could fight.

"You're the representatives?" it asked in a snooty and nasally male voice.

"Yes," Rachel replied, whilst Matt scowled.

"Very well," the robot looked over at her, "Just walk through the portal, and you'll arrive a short distance from the meeting point. Much to my displeasure, I shall remain here as a show of good faith."

It turned to look at the table.

"I should have brought a chair," it bemoaned, and then shooed Matt and Rachel towards the portal, "Go on, she's waiting."

I thought they'd be sending one of their people, not another clanker! Matt seethed, as Rachel stepped through, Already they break their word!

And with that he stepped through after his sister ...

Universe 0

… and found himself in a lush green environment.

The leaves on the trees nearby looked healthy, the grass beneath their feet freshly mown, and sky above was a shade of blue he'd only ever heard stories about.

And thirty feet away was a slighty raised platform, with a round table encircled by several chairs. On the platform stood two robots, one dressed in a red robe with the hood up and metal tentacles protruding from it's back, whilst the other was a shorter more feminine looking robot with a yellow stripe down the left side of it's body.

Another thirty feet behind the platform opposite from the direction the portal was, sat a small spaceship of some sort. The portal closed behind the siblings.

Matt observed the surroundings as Rachel lead them up to the platform, looking for signs of ambush. He was mildly disappointed that it appeared safe, and resolved to keep an eye out for signs of duplicity anyway.

"Thank you for coming," the shorter robot spoke in a dulcet female voice, "Please take a seat wherever you wish."

"You going to be coming out, or are you going to hide whilst you talk through your robot toys?" Matt asked angrily.

"We are the robots, numbnuts," the red robed one spoke up, the tentacle arms shifting in agitation, "How humancentric of you to assume that …"

"Mark," the female robot softly interrupted, before taking a seat at the table, "Calm down. They wouldn't have reason to believe sentient robots exist, it's easier to believe remote operation or clever programing."

Rachel sat down opposite her, but Matt decided to keep standing. As did the robed one.

"I'm Commander Mind-Intergration-System-Series-Yellow," the female one introduced herself, "But it's easier to just call me Missy. This is Mechadendrite-Assisted-Repository-of-Knowledge, or Mark. He knows stuff."

"I'm Rachel," Matt's sister introduced herself, "And this is my brother, Matt."

Matt crossed his arms and glared at his sibling. He was the eldest, he should be talking!

"Pleased to meet you," Missy spoke, before leaning forward and resting her elbows on the table and intertwining her fingers, "Let's get down to it: 2,364 and falling."

"What?" Matt looked at her in confusion.

"2,364 and falling," Missy repeated, "That's the number of humans left alive on Earth. Less than two and a half thousand lives, and your group is one of the largest."

"That's … not good," Rachel admitted.

"The Global Exodus Alliance lifted off with somewhere between 500 and 750 million lives over ten years ago" the robed one, Mark, spoke up, "And left behind somewhere between 250 to 500 million lives. That's not just 'not good', the difference between how many were left behind and how many are now alive is 'catastrophic'! At best you lost 99.999% of the remaining population."

"To do so in that space of time," Missy unclasped her hands and moved her right hand to support her temple, "Does not make sense. Either the Alliance left with more people than we estimated, or something happened."

"No offence," Matt interrupted, intending every offence, "But what does this have to do with us?"

Missy looked at Mark, who gave an admittedly impressive shrug with his many limbs.

"We want to gather up you survivors," Missy admitted, "We've got tools, tech, building materials, seeds and a planet you can stay. Our medical capabilities are still in the process of gearing up, but we'll put what we can at your disposal."

"Sounds good," Rachel admitted, "So what do you get out of this?"

Missy paused.

"Honestly?" she asked, "Nothing. As you are, and for a great deal of the foreseeable future, you survivors have nothing the Ralbeen needs. On a scale of cold logical resource use; it would be more efficient resource wise to kill you then to offer you support, and even more efficient to just ignore you all and let you all die.

"And if we were all cold, indifferent, unfeeling machines, that's probably exactly what we'd do. Ignore you."

The clearing was silent for a moment.

"However," Missy continued, "Every single human survivor on Earth has something that has so far only manifested in three members of the Ralbeen Tech-Union."

"And what's that?" Matt asked, still a bit shaken by the female robot's blunt assessment of how little the robots – no, the Ralbeen – needed them.

"A consciousness," Missy replied, "The individual intrinsic understanding of self that separates an animal and a person, or between a toaster …"

"Hey!" Mark gave out a put upon tone, "Doncha be dissing mah toasters, woman! I'll set them on you!"

"… and us," Missy smoothly ignored Mark, whilst using her hand to indicate the two of them, "And that shared trait we possess is worth preserving."

"So you're offering assistance out of the goodness of your heart?" Rachel sounded sceptical.

"Well, a bit more than just mere assistance," Missy admitted, "Mark, the details about terraforming you discovered?"

Mark 'cleared his throat', and turned to Missy.

"I'd have made a slide-show presentation if I'd knew you wanted me to discuss this," Matt could almost swear the robed robot was whining, "Alright, basic gist. The riots that caused the downfall of Earth-Th … of Earth were the direct result of the failure of the Luna, Venus and Mars terraforming projects. The tech worked, but the planets didn't have the right conditions.

"Meaning that, right now, there are working examples of terraforming technology that the Global Exodus Alliance left behind. Technology that the Ralbeen Tech-Union is planning on picking up and studying."

"And that," Missy jumped in, "Combined with the portals, gives us the opportunity to get to 34Tauri(2020), terraform the planets and stake a claim to ownership a good 100 years before the Exodus Fleet even arrives.

"Tell me," she leaned forward, "Do you want to get a little payback?"

===

((AN: It's difficult writing a viewpoint that is mistrustful of your main character, whilst wanting them to become an ally. Baby steps. This is only the first meeting after all.))

[Edit: Called Rachel 'Jessica' by accident early in the chapter. Fixed]

[Double-Edit: Atticus on SpaceBattles pointed out I used "Then" when I should have used "Than" a few times. Fortunately it was less times than I expected.]

 

[KillerFish]

Chapter Eight

Universe 0

Turns out, spite is a powerful motivator.

After I'd concluded the meeting with them, the two siblings returned to their universe, and, after a brief group meeting (which I wasn't spying on using a drone, honest!), the consensus was to agree to relocate to Earth Origin.

I'd arranged for some of Steve's miners to craft some basic shelters for the group to stay in whilst the Wakehurst group built more permanent structures for themselves. It wasn't our job to build civilisation for them, but to give them the tools and lessons they'd eventually need when they moved on to Tau cluster.

We'd arranged the initial meeting at the location Wakehurst Place would have been, just so I could be there myself. Whilst none of my boys bots had the same instinctive targeting flair I did with portals, it was fairly simple for them to open an aperture at the same location in different universes.

It was annoying as it literally tied me to the portal controls for the more difficult transfers.

So to free me from indefinite portal duty, the Wakehurst group were setting up their new home on the site where their old home had been located. You'd be surprised how different the same location looked in two universes without human intervention, even for a botanical garden.

Arnold was still refusing to let me go to Universe 1. Mark assured me that my firstborn second-in-command hadn't achieved sentience, he'd just got a heavy set of 'Nanny' protocols that prioritised my wellbeing.

It was fortunate that Rick had been able to rig up a simple ship to shuttle me to and from the surface for the meeting. It had no life support, sensors, or even chairs, but it could get me anywhere I needed to go on Earth Origin, without risking me getting stuck during a cross-universe transfer through Checkpoint Alpha.

Despite the blocky, unfinished nature of the shuttle, I liked it. It gave me a tangible sensation that I actually was improving my situation and my tech base. Sheldon, however, had taken one look at it, and snorted.

"It's barely worth celebrating as a ship," he explained, "It's even slower then The Scarlet will be after the refit, and that'll probably top out at under a third of what the Global Exodus Alliance fleet can hit at full speed."

He then went on a long 30 minute explanation of some of the inadequacies of our ship thrust capabilities, using techno-speak well in advance of my own understanding. Not wanting to discourage him from expressing himself, I'd kept one ear open on what he was saying whilst opening a game of chess on my hud.

I lost. I would say it's because my attention was split, but I'd gotten better at multitasking since I'd woken up in this technological body. No, I was just bad at chess.

After waving Sheldon off, with compliments on his Green-Lantern T-shirt he'd picked up from somewhere, I began focusing on gathering the human survivors.

The standard operation was to have one of the Wakehurst group approach from a safe distance with offers of food, and have them explain what the deal we were offering entailed. This worked surprisingly well, with only three groups attempting to attack the envoy.

Fortunately, I'd had Arnold and his boys keep an eye on the operations, and they'd been able to step in and de-escalate the situations enough to bring the outliers to the negotiation table.

Mostly the ones that attacked were demanding that they be the ones in charge, despite having less people then even the initial Wakehurst group. Having the envoys point out that the survivors were only approaching them as a courtesy, not as an obligation, got the outliers angry.

So we took the offered food back, and left them under observation for a week. After portalling away in front of their faces. After a few non-violent demonstrations, the grumbling went down.

So after about two months of the Wakehurst group moving to Earth Origin, the majority of the human survivors had gathered up to join them. They'd had a meeting and decided that as a group they should be known as The Omitted.

I'd run out a few hundred medical bots now that the Ralbeen was starting to see some inflow of building resources, and assigned them to The Omitted to ensure that the health issues that would crop up could be dealt with.

I remained hands off for The Omitted, but did offer them some educational programs to help get them up to speed where they could stand against the GEA in the future. Mostly though, I left them to their own devices.

Because in that two month period, two major things had happened. Primarily, the Scarlet had relaunched and had recovered the three examples of terraforming tech from Venus, Mars and Luna.

Secondly, Sheldon had cracked the math behind gravity manipulation. We no longer were restricted to just gravity tech we'd reverse engineered, and could start using it in ways the GEA hadn't.

So, it was time to design our first warship.

***

"Ok," Mark stood up from the round table I'd made for Ralbeen Council meetings, "First off, propulsion. Combining the Graviton Drive with the Orion Nuclear Pulse …"

"Is a waste of materials and a stupid idea," I interjected, "Sure, being propelled forward by exploding nukes sounds badass as hell, but in order to slow down you'd need to fly backwards in the direction of an exploding nuke. And designing a warship around that premise seems to be tempting fate a bit too much."

"Fine," Mark crumpled up a piece of paper with doodles on it that I'm pretty sure he'd had made just for this meeting "Solar Sails? We can get a much faster rate of acceleration if we can pair them up with a high powered laser, and it would mean lesser reliance on fuel."

"Not for a warship that may need to rapidly charge course," I sadly shook my head, "Good possibility for a cargo ship on a set route, with little flight deviation expected, though. We can save it for then."

"Wouldn't the time dilation be an issue?" Sheldon piped up.

"Not for us," I replied.

"That leaves us with the only other possibilities," Mark continued his spiel, "Ion thrust, or Plasma Propulsion, both of which have drawbacks."

"Ion thrust has slower acceleration than chemical propellants, but a higher top speed, right?" I asked, "Because of the constant acceleration?"

"Which I suspect," Mark nodded, "Is what the GEA is using on the exodus ships. It's an extremely fuel and energy efficient form of propulsion, especially when paired with the Graviton Drive.

"Whereas a Plasma propulsion engine gets a higher acceleration than an Ion thrust, but at a higher energy cost."

"I know you're dumbing it down for me," I rubbed my helm, "I appreciate that, I'm not all that well versed in hard science. So if we go with plasma propulsion we'll need a heavy duty power-plant?"

"Some sort of nuclear fission …" Sheldon began speculating.

"Actually," I interrupted, "We've got gravity manipulation tech. Can we use that to create microscopic artificial singularities to extract energy from? I mean, is that possible?"

Both Mark and Sheldon looked at me, but I wasn't sure if it was in shock or disgust.

"I'd," Sheldon spoke up briefly, "I'd need to run the numbers for the amount of radiation that it would generate. But, possibly."

"And I need to go ask Scotty some questions," Mark added, "You might have accidentally suggested another propulsion form we can use."

===

((AN: I am not a scientist. This chapter gave me a headache. I know extracting energy from an artificial singularity has something to do with the rate at which it evaporates into radiation, but that's about it.

Please, if I get things wrong, roll with it?))

 

[Logos01]

((AN: I am not a scientist. This chapter gave me a headache. I know extracting energy from an artificial singularity has something to do with the rate at which it evaporates into radiation, but that's about it.

Please, if I get things wrong, roll with it?))

Click to shrink...

Hawking radiation. You have the problem of harvesting it into workable energy, but if you assume the ability to induce via gravitic manipulation and intense laser emissions a kugelblitz (about the smallest, in terms of energy, singularity you're going to get) -- you could then directly convert mass into energy by keeping the kugelblitz at the "bare subsistence" level. Perfect conversion of matter into an energy state.

Mind you, energy isn't necessarily the same thing as work, and it's work you want -- which is captured and adjustable energy.

BUT: The concept of the kugelblitz drive itself is also an interesting one. There's lots of conceptual implementations therein.

Of course, one of the easiest ways -- assuming you can affix a kugelblitz in position relative to a craft -- to obtain thrust is to simply open a port to the rear of the vehicle and allow the continuous energy emissions to act as an immense thruster.

This isn't something you can have on a small vehicle, mind you; and simply keeping the thing contained would involve utterly absurd and immense scales of power. You wouldn't ever want to use this sort of solution on a vehicle that -- using conventional material science -- was less than several hundred kilometers along its shortest axis. Although I suppose you could reduce the energy levels by first generating artificial intense gravity fields so that the black-hole threshold is that much lower.

Really, what you'd be better served doing is grav-assisted fusion torches. Use of gravitic confinement supplement to inertial-electric confinement would make hydrogen-chain fusion possible -- and the same trick here applies: vent the fusing plasma into space, but do so along an elongated tube of concentric rings of 45*-angled grav-decking and laser-emitters. The lasers aim along the direction of thrust at 45* as well, and act to re-concentrate the plasma even as the grav-decking diffuses it. The combination of the lasers and grav-decking would increase the total thrust obtained from the vented plasma.

This has the added advantage that there's even a "stealth" mode of operation, in that instead of superheated plasma you could use -- albeit far less effective -- cold gas.

The major drawback is that you need extreme long thrust tubes. This can be reduced in necessary length by the development of stronger grav-deck plating. (And if you could replace the lasers with antigravity decking.) Call it gravitic-reaction drive. This would still require reaction mass, but you get as much thrust out of it as you can supplementally get from the gravitic reaction as well.

A much simpler implementation -- if you had it that is -- would be to add antigravity repulsors to the exhaust funnel of conventional ion thrusters.

 

[Logos01]

And this is why the character Mark exists, people. Might take me a day or two to mentally unpack that all, and I might just quote you in the story verbatim. But for now, I'm adding that post to the informational threads.

Click to shrink...

Oh -- one other thing: a kugelblitz drive's emitted thruster exhaust would be intensely ionizing/radioactive. You couldn't use it in the vicinity of the gravity well of any place you care about the ecosystem of. The smaller the drive, the worse this problem would be.

So it makes sense for your "Strapping rockets onto planets" scale thrusters, but anything smaller than that -- bad idea IMHO. Especially if you want the vehicle to, y'know, be habitable.

 

[Logos01]

Oh. More fun with gravity tech.

Weapons. With those spinal-focused exhaust accelerators you're not far from a grav-assisted linear railgun.

If you use (again artigrav assisted to generate the pressures needed to produce it) metallic hydrogen slugs in said railgun, accelerating a mere 10g (yes, gram not kilogram) projectile to 0.1% of the speed of light... You'd have a roughly 450Mj kinetic impactor. Which is in the range of a (small) nuclear blast.

But this gets even better if the thing hit actually resists the impact. Because then the hydrogen undergoes kinetically-induced fusion at point blank range, with a blast of roughly 58Gj -- that's over one hundred times more total energy.

And yes, metallic hydrogen can carry a magnetic charge sufficient for railgun usage.

It even works for small scale/infantry weapons, too -- while metallic hydrogen requires a significant amount of shock force to destabilize, when it does, it does so with the energy profile of C4. Imagine a footsoldier shooting several dozen high explosive bullets a second.