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“’Captain’s Log, Stardate 12008.22. According to Nerio we have reached the halfway point to Alpha Phoenicis. No deviation from course from the Union ship. If they would just drop out of warp we could end this damn chase and go home! But that would be too considerate.’ Stop recording.”
Chloe sat and considered what she’d just said.
“Rio, erase everything after ‘Union ship.’”
“Erased.”
“Resume recording. ‘Crew morale remains surprisingly high, considering the disruption to their regular routine, and preparedness marks remain at or above standard. Should they drop out of warp, we’ll be able to make quick work of them.’ End recording. What do you think, Rio?”
“A much more balanced statement of the conditions, Captain.”
“I still wish they’d drop out of warp.”
“As do most of the crew, Captain.”
“Engineering to Captain Resler.”
“Go ahead, KC.” This couldn’t be good; the Chief Engineer was as taciturn an officer as Chloe had ever served with. She’d prefer to communicate strictly by message, if possible, and routinely sent her assistant to the daily status meetings.
“Captain, can you come down to Engineering?”
She didn’t have to think about her reply. “On my way. Lieutenant Wilder, you have the conn.”
Moments later she was in Engineering; Defiant wasn’t a big ship, and the request added urgency to her steps.
“KC.”
The Chief Engineer turned from the discussion she was having with one of her assistants.
“Captain.” She walked across the compartment and gestured for Chloe to follow. Chloe noted they were as nearly ‘private’ as they were liable to get and her unease grew.
“What’s wrong, KC?”
“The warp field is developing instability.”
“Is it going to fail?” Might was well jump right to the worst-case scenario and hope the Eng could put those fears to rest.
“Eventually, yes.”
So much for resting.
“How long?”
“It’s complicated, Captain. Short version, if we maintain this speed we can manage them. If we have to push to a higher warp factor, though, the instability will grow.”
“What sort of instability are you talking about?”
“How up on warp field theory are you, Captain?”
“Fairly comfortable.”
“There’s a piece of langasite, lanthanum gallium silicate, at the heart of the drive. We pass an electrical charge through it which directly correlates to the strength of the field we want to generate, and the oscillations produced are precisely measured. Passing the charge and converting it to oscillations cleans up the occasional messiness associated with electricity which we can’t allow to pass into the warp field.”
“So it’s a filter.”
“Exactly.”
“So?”
“As the crystal ages, it degrades, and the oscillation profile changes. SOP is to replace the crystal after eighty hours of use, though the crystals don’t usually display any degradation for up to double that, or more.”
“And we’ve been underway at warp for thirteen days,” Chloe said, understanding this part of the problem. “Do we have replacements?”
“Of course, part of the standard load-out. But I can’t replace it without dropping out of warp for roughly an hour, and it’s a fiddly process. Rushing it won’t wreck the drive if we get it wrong, but it will ruin the sample and we’ll have to change it out again.”
“We can’t drop out for an hour; we’ll never catch up to them!”
“Not entirely accurate, Captain; we can catch them, but we wouldn’t be certain of their course once they got far enough away.” Wardell shook her head and repeated her point. “No, we can catch them, but we will put a strain on the engines. That will cut the lifetime of the langasite, which will mean we have to replace the replacement sooner, and eventually they’ll do something we don’t expect and it’s game over.”
Chloe closed her eyes and took a deep breath before replying.
“You said ‘eventually’. What did you mean?”
Wardell looked unhappy.
“The langasite degrades along a steady curve based on the charge, age of crystal, and other factors. We can compensate for it, to a point, on the output end. We’ve been compensating for it for a week now. Unfortunately, it’s a geometric curve, and we’re reaching the knee pretty soon.”
“And when we hit the knee, you won’t be able to keep up.”
“Exactly.”
“How soon?”
“Rio. Time to failure?”
“Seventeen hours, eight minutes, forty-two seconds. Mark.”
“Do I want to know what happens when it fails?”
“Best case, we end up like the Defender.”
“No power and no engine room. Not good.”
“Worst case, we’re an expanding ball of plasma, and in about 46 years the light from our boom will reach Njord.”
“Worse. Right. If we don’t drop out of warp to do the replacement, either we get old in deep space or turn into an expanding ball of gas. If we do drop out, the target puts over twenty light-minutes between us every second. If we’re down for an hour, they add thirteen hundred light-hours gap!”
“Pretty much what I figured, Captain. I’ve been working the problem for ten days now, one reason Petty Officer Sirois has been at the meetings instead of me.”
“Recommendation?”
“We can’t catch them if we’re plasma, Captain. We’ve got to do the replacement. It’s not an option. We can push the drive easily to warp five; that will give us a nearly 2:1 speed advantage. I wouldn’t be happy pushing harder than 5.5 for anything more than a burst, but the way I figure it it’s still the same binary choice. Either we catch them or we don’t, and if we don’t I’d rather not be a light show.”
Chloe mused. “You have a point. And if we lose them, we can always return home. Wherever they are, we’ll arrive before them and can nail them when they drop out of warp in-System.”
She nodded to herself.
“Fine, KC. Do it.”
“Aye, Captain. I’ll set it up and be ready to drop from warp within the hour.”
“Thank you. Good luck.”
“Luck is for amateurs, Captain.”