Chapter 22

Year 3, Day 104, Earth, Inhabited Earth.

Alexander jerked the control stick hard and banked the Manta craft away from the trees as he exited the unstable vortex. The targeting on the Kromagg sliding drive was nowhere near as precise as LVIOS could manage. LVIOS could drop you where you wanted with a margin of error measured in micron, in contrast the Kromagg drive had a margin of error measured in kilometers.

It was his nineteenth transit since leaving the Kromagg colony world, and he had a lot more to go before he dared return to Terra Prime. He wasn't sure if the Kromaggs could track their drives but he was going to make them work for it if they could.

Alexander brought up the targeting controls and consulted the list of worlds he'd programmed in. The Kromagg targeting computer was limited entering the target universe, the ship designed to exit in roughly the same place it had entered from. If you left a world in North America you'd show up in North America, give or take a few kilometers.

That wasn't good enough for Alexander, who was use to being able to jump between entire galaxies at will. After his fifth 'slide' he'd powered down the craft and got to work on translating LVIOS coordinate system into something that could be used with the Kromagg drive. It had taken him a few hours, he'd planned on taking a break anyway, to see if the Kromaggs were tracking him; He'd managed to tweak the system to allow him some leeway on where he appeared in his target universe, it was still wildly imprecise compared LVIOS, but he could target pretty much anywhere within several hundred kilometers.

Shaking his head Alexander selected his new target and activated the drive.

Year 3, Day 106, Endeavour, Terra Prime.

Two days later Alexander swung the Manta clear of the collapsing wormhole, pulling it up into rapid climb over the city of Endeavour proper. With a few quick flicks he opened a wideband radio.

"Endeavour Control, this is Paladin," Alexander said quickly, "do not fire, I repeat do not fire, authorisation J9 K6 Pigdog. I repeat J9 K6 Pigdog, hold your fire"

Alexander switched the Manta into hover mode a few hundred meters above Endeavour and waited tensely; It was only as he was entering the vortex to return to Terra Prime that he'd remembered he hadn't told anyone he was coming, and while far from fortified Endeavour wasn't defenseless. There were rings of anti-air and anti-space weapons hidden around the nearby area, designed to take down craft far more advanced than the admittedly impressive Kromagg Manta fighters. At that moment he could imagine dozens of energy and kinetic weapons locking onto him.

"Paladin, Endeavour Control, hold position and respond to challenge." The radio hissed to life, "Challenge Foxhound, repeat Foxhound"

Alexandre breathed a sigh of relief, "Challenge response, Bluebird, I repeat Bluebird"

***

A little while later Alexander swung the Manta over the ESRO Space Research Centre's control tower. He could see dozens of people racing around the facility, including more than a few white clad soldiers carrying very large weapons. As much as the idea of being fragged by his own people disturbed him, he was also proud that they were taking this incursion seriously.

Alexander flicked the radio on again, "SpaceCom this is Paladin, get hangar four ready, repeat hangar four, I want it locked down as soon as I bring this baby in, full containment, everything you can think to throw at it, EMC, subspace scramblers, hell if you've got a cell scrambler use that too, use everything, we can't risk it phoning home"

"Roger that Paladin" Someone responded a few seconds later.

Alexander couldn't hear it, but he imagined that the loudspeakers around the research centre were blaring with instructions. The a group of people on the ground split off, dashing for the hangar in question, one that had been set up for 'sensitive' acquisitions but had never been used.

When the hangar doors were open Alexander banked the craft gently and eased it down towards the ground. Despite the intuitiveness of the controls and his pre-emptive practice he was still far from an experienced pilot so he took care not to over correct his movements.

The Manta hovered over the ground, it's propulsion system kicking dust and grit into the air, as Alexander guided it into the hangar. As the doors closed behind the craft Alexander breathed a sigh of relief and landed the craft, only he came down a little hard, and there was an almighty thump as the landing gear hit the concrete floor.

Alexander winced as he started powering down the Manta, careful to avoid anything on the gunners side of the cockpit, last thing he wanted was to blow the side off the hangar. As the power died he jumped out of the seat and dashed towards the boarding ramp, slapping the open button as he did. When the door opened and the ramp clanged on the ground Alexander dashed out, ignoring the half dozen blaster rifles pointed at him, looking for his target.

"Dieter!" He called out as he spotted the head of space research, "I want this thing stripped down, make sure you get Hoshi and Elizabeth here to make sure whatever this thing uses for a comm-system is totally offline."

"Alex..." Hoffmann started to say, before shaking his head and waving to one of his engineers.

Alexander turned away from the German as he began issuing orders, looking for the ranking soldier, "Karth, I want a round the clock guard on this thing, at least a full squad, anything funky starts going on, lights lighting up, whatever, they are to call someone ASAP, the people that made this thing are not nice, and we can't afford them tracking it here"

Sergeant Karth Treehollow snapped to attention, "Sir, Yes Sir!" he said crisply before turning away to start issuing orders to his men.

Alexander once again started searching for something, spotting his target he rushed off, only to be interrupted by Matt Campbell stepping into his path.

"Alex, what the hell is going on?" The chief administrator demanded.

Shaking his head Alexander ducked around him, "Later Matt, I've been stuck in this armour for three goddamn days and the waste system is full, I need a piss or I'm going to explode"

Excerpt from Alexander Harlow's Personal Journal. Year 3, Day 111, Endeavour, Terra Prime

Damn! I thought calculus was a pain in the ass! It's got nothing on inter-dimensional targeting calculations!

I've spent the last few days since I got the Manta back to Terra Prime working out how to get the Kromagg sliding device working with our operation. As impressive as the tech is, and damn is it ever, compared to LVIOS it's primitive in the extreme.

It's a great boon for us, but there are a lot of problems, for one thing it has no 'lock on' function, it's a plain 1:1 jump, if you leave from a world where the date is 01/01/2015 you'll show up in the world you want at 01/01/2015 which wouldn't be a big deal except for LVIOS won't let us.

I've written before how LVIOS is hard coded to prevent time-travel at my user level, oh I can travel to any point in any universe, but once I've done so I'm 'locked on', meaning I can't just jump back and forth in time in that universe, time moves at 1:1, if I jump to a world in the 10th century but later want to visit the same world in the 17th century I need to wait for 700 years in real time.

That is the problem in a nutshell, when I selected Terra Prime, I didn't nominate a year, so it defaulted to that of my home universe, currently it's 2017 on Terra Prime, when we tried to open a portal to the Falling Skies universe, it started to work but then spluttered out with a lot of sparks (thankfully no-one was hurt, but it did fry a bunch of monitoring equipment) and I got a heap of great big red warnings shoved in my face.

You see if I hop over there now using LVIOS it's 2013, because when I went there the first time it was 2011, but if the Sliding drive opened a portal it would open one to the Falling Skies world of 2017, and LVIOS really doesn't like that idea, something about coding and fail safes to protect causality and prevent multi universal collapse.

I nearly had a heart attack when I read that warning.

All is not lost however, getting my greedy little hands on other trans-dimensional travel tech has opened up a series of information files that I previously couldn't access; apparently it's a failsafe built into LVIOS to keep idiots like me from blowing up entire universes, it includes a lot of high end math and what amounts to a 'trans-dimensional for dummies' (if a dummy had the equivalent of five doctorates).

When I was jumping around like a mad hatter trying to avoid the Kromagg LVIOS was scanning the drive and how it works. I'm having a bitch of a time getting my head around it, but with work, a hell of a lot of work, we'll be able to modify it to use LVIOS' targeting system, allowing for us to jump between worlds were a time-lock already exists.

Oh and all those worlds I visited to salt the trail? Those are time-locked too now...

Year 3, Day 113, Endeavour, Terra Prime.

"Okay people, progress reports, and no more recriminations!" Matt said from the head of the table, shooting Mark Clayworth a look. For the last week the former Royal Marine had been giving Alexander hell about his solo mission.

Alexander felt it was grossly unfair, Terra Prime could survive without him now, their population, at over two thousand, was more than enough to ensure genetic diversity; hell civilizations had been founded with as little as thirty human beings and thrived. They might lose access to inter-dimensional travel and the benefits it brought, at least for a time, until they manage to reinvent it, but between their infrastructure and numbers they were hardly in danger of dying off.

"I agree, we all know Lord Alexander acted like a moron, there is no need to keep bringing it up" Viriathus chimed in from Matt's left.

Alexander rolled his eyes, "You know there are days I regret not introducing lese-majeste laws."

Matt scowled and tapped the table with his knuckles, "Moving on, Doctor Yoshida, you wished to speak first?"

The petite Japanese woman, their leading expert in fast-than-light technology and now wormhole theory nodded her head and spoke; "Thank you Mr. Campbell, we've removed the sliding drive from the host craft and tested it. The wormholes themselves are unstable but useable in nature and their power consumption is interesting; opening one requires very little power, you could do it with the battery from a mobile phone, however the longer the portal is open the power consumption grows exponentially."

"Excuse me Ma'am, I'm sure it's fascinating, but how is it relevant?" Clayworth asked, his tone polite.

Hoshi frowned slightly, "It has logistical and, I'm told by one of the more military minded members of my team, tactical implications Master Sergeant." She paused for a moment gathering her thoughts, "Holding a wormhole open for a short time, say the amount of time it takes to move the fighter through, is no issue, but holding it up for even thirty seconds ramps up the power needed considerably. As an example the Endeavour power grid, enough to power half the United States on most worlds, would only be able to hold a wormhole open for a maximum of nine minutes at this time."

Clayworth blinked, before nodding curtly to himself, "Ahh I see"

"It also goes a long way to explaining why each Kromagg craft is equipped with their own wormhole generator, even beyond the possibility of theft" Dieter Hoffmann said studiously not looking at Alexander, "some of the components involved in it's construction are very rare, if it wasn't for the power issue I believe they'd go with a carrier model for their ships".

The conversation continued for a time before coming around to Quentin Watson, the head of computer science for the ESRO.

"Umm" The young Englishman started elegantly, looking through his notes, "Now that we've had a chance to go through the data drive Lord Alexander retrieved in more detail, I can present some of our findings. While a majority of the contents are encrypted, we've been able to break into most of the lower level files, and of course the general public files. Some of the stuff in there is really off, stomach churning stuff; especially what they consider 'entertainment'. There are terabytes of humans being mutilated and slaughtered, and it's all real, not CG. It's like something out of Ancient Rome!" He paused looking like he was going to throw up.

"I understand Quentin, take your time" Alexander said feeling sick. The rest of the table was looking just as ill, except for Clayworth and Viriathus who looked murderous.

"I'm sorry" Quentin shaking his head, "Like I said, we've broken some of the lower levels of encryption, we've got a bunch of lower level tech, some military training stuff, personal files, the 'entertainment' I mentioned, but the good stuff, such as locations of their world and technology on the scale of the sliding drive are still locked behind some heavy duty protection"

"Got an estimate for us son?" Clayworth asked, his voice surprisingly gentle.

"Give my team a few weeks and we'll have it all" Quentin said with confidence.

"That soon?" Alexander said in surprise.

"If we were still working with 21st century tech, it would be years, maybe decades, but the Star Wars and Farscape computer tech you got us is making mincemeat of it" Quentin said.

"Good" Clayworth broke in, "You tell us where they live lad and we'll pay them a visit"

There was a chorus of agreement around the table and Quentin Watson brightened up considerably.