Conquest dropped out of pulse again, and Absen fought not to vomit on the deck. The edges of his vision sparkled with phantom lights, and he could have sworn he’d heard a snippet of Rigoletto, sung in his dead mother’s voice.
Hallucination.
“One point two lights,” he gasped. “I’d say that was about my safe limit, even with the drugs. Bogrin, report.”
“Moment, please.” The Sekoi carefully tapped on the keyboard made for hands his size, reading from several screens. “Sixteen percent of crew report serious impairment. Five percent have been sedated by comrades.” He looked over at Absen. “I would not recommend extending the pulse beyond one point one light-year. Better only one point zero.”
Keeping his head still, Absen replied, “I agree. We had to find out what would happen, and we have, but until further notice, let’s keep our pulses to one light-year or less.”
“Aye, sir,” Okuda said. “Point six seems to be where the curve takes off. Below that, the drugs and adjustments to the field will be enough.”
“What if we have to pulse again, right away?” Absen asked Bogrin.
“Second pulse immediately afterward is almost same as not stopping. Need fourteen minutes to recharge capacitors anyway. Better to wait one hour, let biology recover.”
Absen took a deep breath and moved his head slightly, testing. “COB, you are in charge of fabrication, right?”
“Yes, sir,” Timmons replied.
“Good. We need a new helmet design. Something that is integrated with the suits and will stay out of the way when someone needs to vomit, but will snap shut in case of a breach. Think you can come up with a design?”
“Well, sir, if our newest warrant officer isn’t overtasked, I think between her and her minders we can make something that the manufactory can mass-produce.”
“Do it.” Absen rubbed his neck. “Scoggins, let’s see a strategic plot. Flat display is fine.”
On the main screen the sensors officer put up a top-down view of Conquest’s progress from Gliese 370 to Earth’s system, originally 36 light-years away. The grid scale showed they had come about one quarter of the way, approximately eight light-years, in ten jumps of increasing distance. It had taken them three careful boat weeks of adjusting systems, testing new drugs, and learning to cope with pulse anomalies.
“Hard to believe eight years have actually passed outside while we’ve been traveling,” Ford mused wistfully. He looked over at Melissa Scoggins, his wife. “Our kids are all grown up now.”
She glared at him from her station and then turned away and hunched her shoulders.
“Save your awkward personal observations for your off time, Mister Ford,” Absen said, more to spare Scoggins than anything. Somebody’s asking for the doghouse. Deliberately changing the subject, he said, “Yes, it’s now the year 2133, sometime in March, as far as we can tell.” The captain pointed at the displays that showed boat time and outside time. As every pulse changed their relationship with the temporal universe, synchronizing with it was not a priority. The computers would eventually come up with the exact date as stellar observations came in.
“Sensors, what are we seeing from Earth?”
Scoggins cleared her throat twice, then said without turning around, “As we’re 28 light-years away, we are peering that same time into the past, so to speak. The laser and radio we are receiving are all from the year 2107...August, in fact.” Finally, she turned around with puffy eyes. “The Meme fleet arrives in about two years and eight months. I mean, that’s how it appears to us, even though it’s already happened.”
Absen said, “Understood. Notify Intel I want a briefing at 0800 hours every day from now on. Helm, I want you to schedule a pulse of four light-months each day at 1600 for six days, then plan for three more of one light-month, once per day. That will allow us to get snapshots of what’s happening in the run-up to the battle as we get closer and closer. When the time comes, we’ll stop here in interstellar space and watch in realtime.”
Delayed realtime, Absen thought, but that’s how it will seem as we meet the laser and radio comm reports of what’s happening.
Fortunately EarthFleet still stuck to the protocols he had established when Task Force Conquest had left, to keep beaming a full suite of encrypted operational and intelligence data to Gliese 370. Even though EarthFleet had heard nothing from Absen – the beamed report of his victory was only halfway back, after all – as long as the new Conquest stayed within the laser and radio comms corridor from Earth to Afrana, they were able to keep abreast of the situation.
At least, the situation that obtained when the information was transmitted.
What a strange way to think, and travel. Everywhere we look, we see the past. When we see a star system one hundred light-years away, we see it not as it is, but as it was then. Ditto with the solar system. We look backward to Afrana and see reports that seem to be only weeks old, as the light from the past slowly overtakes us.