Demosthenes, Alkeides System
The full complement of the Alyard barely dented the capacity of Demosthenes. The dining room they used was the smallest one apart from the captain’s private room. Yet it still seemed empty even when everyone was in it. As a consequence, at meal times, everyone tended to sit only at the two long tables closest to the servery outlets. After eating, the diners lingered, talking and laughing.
Bellona recognized the bonding as a useful morale booster and often stayed for a while herself, despite more important matters that weighed upon her. Even though the conversation was casual and relaxed, the subjects discussed were still vital ones; politics was the most popular. The range of expertise and knowledge across Demos was surprisingly vast and sometimes conversations veered off in unexpected directions. That was how it happened.
On that night, Bellona suspected everyone living in Demosthenes was at the tables. Thecla had overridden the controls on the printers, so they produced beverages that featured real alcohol. The conversations after dinner had a free-flowing, relaxed sound, although no one seemed to be overindulging.
Sang had been talking about the Xenia feeds he had been blasting across the Karassian systems. Bellona had spent a whole day as Xenia, providing sound bites and speeches, written by Khalil and Vang, who had supplied the psychology driving them. Sang had captured Xenia digitally and could now make his own footage using the digital images, faster than Bellona could record them live.
“Karassians are watching,” Sang said. “The audience is not the size of Chidi’s, yet it is growing.”
“Word of mouth will bring more,” Khalil said, his long fingers curled around a glass of clear liquid that he only sipped. “As long as you keep the feed going.”
Sang nodded. “I intend to. The more people who see it, the more they talk about it, the more the doubt will grow.”
“If the doubt reaches critical mass,” Vang said, “They’ll finish the work of convincing themselves for you.”
Hero tapped Sang’s shoulder, for she was sitting on the table behind the one where Bellona and the others were sitting. Hero was not the only one perched on the adjoining tables, joining in. “Sang, is it true that communications channels are just miniature wormholes?”
Bellona smiled. “Where did you hear that?”
“Aideen said it.” Hero shrugged. “I thought wormholes were lethal.”
“The one working wormhole anyone has ever built was lethal,” Fontana said. “It destroyed Pushyani.”
“That’s the moon where they built that generator, yes?” Retha said.
Hero nudged Sang again. “So, is it true? Channels are wormholes and no one has ever told anyone?”
Sang shook his head. “The knowledge isn’t secret. It just doesn’t get talked about widely because the Pushyan disaster makes most people nervous when wormholes are mentioned.”
“Then it’s true?” Bellona asked, as surprised as most of the expressions around the table told her everyone else was.
Sang frowned. “It’s not that simple—”
“Name one thing in life that is simple,” Fontana growled.
“Sex,” Hero said instantly.
Everyone groaned.
“Sex with you is not simple,” Vang replied. “Not if one values their genitals.”
“No, wait,” Bellona said. “I want to go back to the wormhole thing. Sang, really? Feeds are all wormholes?”
“The feeds are not wormholes,” Sang said. “They’re just normal audio-visual compilations. What they pass through to get from system to system and not lose cohesion are microscopic wormholes. Interstellar communications satellites are really bridge generators, that send and receive feeds from other systems, then broadcast them down to the planet they’re over.”
Thecla laughed. “If that is true, then why didn’t they use the same model for Pushyani? It would have worked, then, instead of blowing up the whole damn moon.”
“They did use the same model,” Sang said.
Everyone stared at him.
Sang didn’t seem to be bothered by the attention. “Bridge forge technology has been known and understood for hundreds of years. The miniature forges used for communications channels were developed nearly two hundred years ago. Then someone decided that scaling up the forges to a dimension that could generate a ship-sized bridge would be useful. Funding was found to develop a generator on Pushyani.”
“Yikes,” someone breathed.
“Exactly,” Sang said in agreement. “Simple scaling presented problems that don’t exist at micro-sizes. Forges are impractical at ship-size. They’re far more massive than null-space generators. The strongest materials known to the free worlds collapse as soon as the hole is produced. They can’t cope with the strain. That’s what happened on Pushyani. The engineers used carbyne for the entire generator and it still wasn’t strong enough. The forces produced crushed the moon to gravel.”
“The bigger the bridge, the stronger the forge has to be,” Fontana said thoughtfully.
“It’s a geometric scale,” Sang said. “The smaller the hole, the more stable it is.
“I had no idea,” someone whispered. “It’s incredible!”
Bellona tended to agree. She shuddered. The idea that a bridge forge was being used even for something as benign as a microscopic communications feed was unsettling.
Fontana leaned forward. “Has anyone tried to make a man-sized forge?”
Sang’s eyes widened, as if he had been slapped.
Bellona sat up, as excitement gripped her. “Man sized…” she breathed. “Sang, is it possible?”
Sang blinked. “Theoretically, yes. In practice, though, there are all sorts of challenges. Electrical charges, structural strength…you’d have to find something stronger than carbyne, just to begin.”
“There is nothing stronger than carbyne,” Thecla said shortly, annoyed.
“You said it was a geometric scale of pressure,” Fontana said. “How intense would the pressure be if the generator was man-sized? Maybe carbyne would be enough.”
Bellona drew in a breath, striving for calm. “Look into it,” she told Sang. “Work with Fontana and Thecla and whoever and whatever else you need. Do the calculations. I want to know if this is more than theoretically possible.”
Khalil leaned closer to her. “Perhaps this should be put aside for now,” he said very quietly.
“Why?” she breathed back.
“You should be focusing on recruiting the free states. Everything hinges on you winning them over to your side.”
Next to her, everyone was talking rapidly and loudly, shouting over each other, as they pulled the idea apart.
Bellona shook her head. “No,” she told Khalil. “It doesn’t all hinge on that at all. Don’t you see? This could be the coup we’ve been looking for.”
“A man-sized bridge?” Khalil said doubtfully.
Bellona nodded. “It would change everything.” She was no longer keeping her voice down. She didn’t have to. The conversation right next to her was loud enough to muffle her. “Amilcare said it the other day. The Republic and the Homogeny rely on ship power. The biggest ship, the biggest guns, wins. With the city killers, they can stay in space and still win.”
“Which is why you need every free state and their combined fire power lined up beside you,” Khalil said patiently.
“Not if we aren’t on ships,” she shot back.
Khalil sat back, frowning. “I know you want to think of this place as a station or a city, only it’s just a ship. We can still get shot out of the sky.”
“Not if we’re not on it.”
Khalil pushed his hand through his hair, clearly frustrated.
Bellona rested her hand on his wrist. “Alkeides,” she said. “You heard what Isabelle Lykke said about it. The Karassian troops hung back while Xenia fought off the free staters.”
Khalil nodded.
“Why?” she demanded.
“Because they’re gutless.” He shrugged.
“Because they don’t know how to fight. They haven’t been trained. They’ve never had to bother.” Bellona gripped his wrist harder. “We know how.”
Khalil considered her, enlightenment dawning in his eyes.
Bellona swiveled on her stool. “Sang. If a personal sized forge could work, would it be possible to jump from the surface of a planet to another planet? Or would we have to be in space, first, like the communications satellites are?”
“The satellites are in space because from orbit it’s easier to send the communications feeds across the face of the globe,” Sang said. “A forge, if it works at all, can work anywhere.”
Bellona looked back at Khalil. “Think of it,” she urged him. “If we can step across a bridge—”
“Through a bridge,” Fontana corrected.
“Through a bridge,” Bellona repeated. “If we could step through a bridge from, say, Circe to Kachmar City, in the very heart of the Homogeny, instantly, then we would have no need for ships of any sort. The Republic and the Karassians could fight each other to a standstill out here. It wouldn’t matter. We would control the planets themselves.”
“Won’t the Karassians fight you when you step through to Kachmar City?” Hayes asked, frowning as he followed along.
“They don’t know how to fight. Not as we can,” Bellona said. “Neither do Eriumans.”
Amilcare’s mouth was open. His eyes were wide once more. He sees it, Bellona thought to herself, with satisfaction.
“Free staters can still fight. Alkeides proved they can. We can train them to fight even better,” Bellona said. Everyone was listening to her now. “With a personal bridge forge, we could move from world to world instantly, going wherever we are needed. We could step onto Kachmar whenever we want, or Cardenas, for that matter. It would neutralize the threat of the city killers.”
She got to her feet. “That’s how we’re going to help the free states take back their freedom. That’s how we will win.”