3 – Vigilance

The central dais brightened as soon as Dube stepped into the room. As he approached, it rose slightly to greet him, rising further as his feet were firmly planted in the center. Other terminals and posts were already lit up and their attendants turned to greet Dube. And when he placed his hands out before him, an interface materialized in front of them.

He signalled to the ship’s AI that he was ready to assume his role as the Transverse’s temporary Custodian.

[Alright, Jonas. Show me the stars.]

The bulkhead directly in front of him, a concave feature that occupied much of the Bridge’s front section, went from opaque to transparent. Dube was immediately struck by the intense glow of the starfield, its countless pinpricks of light ranging from soft to piercing. In terms of color, they ranged from yellow and green to various shades of blue. This did not represent their true colors, but the way their light was being blueshifted.

Such was the effect of moving at relativistic speed. Checking their velocity, Dube was informed that they were travelling at 15% the speed of light, a consistent 0.15 c. At this velocity, they were moving faster than any crewed vehicle in human history. As they flew, the light coming from distant stars continued to meet them at a constant rate of c. To accommodate this quirk of nature, the wavelength was shortened, to the point that all light was shifted towards the blue end of the spectrum.

Switching to the rear view, Dube saw the opposite effect with the stars that were receding from them. The light from these reached the ship at the same velocity and time as the oncoming light, but its wavelength was shifted towards the red end of the spectrum. The situation would remain unchanged until the Transverse ceased its acceleration burn and settled into its cruise phase. And in generations, when they commenced their deceleration burn, the situation would be reversed.

Just one of the consequences of living in a relativistic Universe. Another, as indicated by the nature of their vessel, was the immense amount of energy and vast stretches of time it took to travel from one star to the next.

The inspired thought led Dube to call up an overlay and request permission to access the ship’s systems. His Engineer status was immediately accepted, and a range of options appeared before him. He quickly navigated through the menus to select Power and Propulsion, then checked on three interconnected things simultaneously.

Singularity Drive
Reaction Chambers
Main Thrusters

As he hoped, all three systems were in the green. At the ship’s core, a tiny, controlled singularity – no larger than a micron in diameter – caused material periodically injected into its chamber to swirl around it, eventually reaching close to the speed of light. Eventually, the material would fall onto the face of the singularity and be stripped down into its subatomic constituents. Immense energy was released in the process, which the reactor’s receptors happily absorbed.

Meanwhile, the Transverse’ Chambers were cool and calm. The smashing of protons and anti-protons in a carefully controlled process known as matter-antimatter annihilations had ceased with their last acceleration. And the thrusters were quiet, as their were no subatomic particles to accelerate to relativistic speeds.

Dube tried, but a quick check on the other ship systems and subsystems showed no indication of any malfunctions or problems. There were a few issues that were bracketed to one side of the display window. These were those that emerged since last shift and been resolved. Dube noted the work signature of his peers, Engineers Ahika Chen and ShankarVorhees – both of whom had been up for a few minutes longer than he.

At last, he had confirmation. There were absolutely no issues on the ship that required the attention of an Engineer. No distractions and no means for stalling.

Sighing, Dube called out to the ship’s Custodian again.

[Okay, Jonas. I’m here. Let’s have those updates.]

Jonas obliged, sounding almost happy to be summoned.

[Excellent. There are many reports and status updates for your perusal. Shall I share them in chronological order?]

[No. Parse all for anything considered vital, and collate them, starting with the most-recent updates, then provide synthesis from all previous updates.]

Jonas complied. Within seconds, Dube’s mind was filled with new data on the status of the Transverse and all that had happened since he had gone to sleep. As always, Jonas considered some matters to vital that Dube did not, nor any sensible engineer for that matter. For safety’s sake, Jonas’ threshold of concern – ToC, as the Engineers knew it – was deliberately set to high to make sure no small things slipped through the net and became a big thing later. But that meant that seemingly trivial things might slip through in the meantime.

Dube was on the verge of concluding that everything on the list was trivial, until he came to one particular item.

[Stop. What’s this about a power drop in this subsection?]

Jonas summoned a schematic of the ship and enlarged it in his visual field. The image zoomed in on the section in question, highlighted in yellow. The drop was unsubstantial, but not so meagre as to have gone unnoticed.

[Cause?]

[Unknown at this time.]

[Speculate]

Jonas quickly ran through the various possibilities, based on probability and level of concern. It was good that the ship’s Custodian considered a malfunction with its internal sensors (or worse, itself) to be the least likely or worrisome. Dube, personally, would have thought those warranted the most concern.

His attention became fixated on one possibility the moment Jonas mentioned it.

[A siphon? Someone could be siphoning power in that section?]

[Initial assessment indicates a probability of twenty-to-one. Comparatively, the probability of this being the result of a fault in the conduit are one point seven-to-one.]

Dube sighed and felt like chastising Jonas for making him anxious. Jonas wasn’t finished, though. [However, the probability of a power siphon changes considerably when adjusted for axiomatic non-exclusivity.]

Dube huffed. [Meaning?]

[Meaning they may be related. If a structural fault in the conduit was the result of tampering, hypothetically for the sake of syphoning power, then the probability becomes point-zero-six-three to one.]

Dube paused to consider that. A sixty-three percent chance that someone was tampering with the power conduits? Those were hardly comforting odds. The only question was why they were seeing this now.

[What purpose would a siphon in this subsection have?]

[Unknown.]

Dube was on the verge of telling Jonas to speculate once more but stopped himself. Asking for theories at this point was a waste of time, especially when he had his own thoughts on the matter and didn’t want to hear them repeated back to him.

This was something that warranted more eyes and thoughts, he felt.

[Jonas, where are Engineers Chen and Vorhees?]  Jonas replied that both were taking their restoratives in the Arboretum. [Alert them, quietly. Tell them to meet me at Steering. I believe we may have a Sigma-class Contingency on our hands.]