The Iris (Gravity, Space, and Time: Book 1) by Patkós Csaba - HTML preview

Chapter 23 - Post Mortem

Date: June 01, 2856

"Three days. Time to cut through the fog and get some hard answers." Peterson's voice held a sharp edge that hadn't been present since those first frantic days after the jump. "I understand the situation has been… challenging, but we need clarity."

He leaned forward, catching Chief Engineer Ratiu slightly off-guard. The small meeting room aboard the Iris, bathed in the eerie glow of the emergency lights, felt claustrophobic, the tense faces around the table a stark contrast to the vastness of space outside.

Ratiu blinked, a flicker of frustration crossing her face. One errant emergency light shone a blinding beam directly into her eyes, and Peterson's glare was nearly as harsh.

"Ratiu, engineering analysis. Now."

"Captain…" she began, momentarily flustered. "Essentially, we're adrift. Dead in the proverbial water." Peterson raised a skeptical eyebrow. Stating the obvious was not going to cut it.

Sensing his demand for specifics, she plunged on, "The core issue is power generation. We have backup batteries, enough to keep life support running at minimal levels for a surprisingly long time... as long as we leave most of the ship powered down."

"Chief, I need numbers." Peterson interrupted. "Enough with the abstract."

Ratiu sighed. "Three months, on minimum support, no engine power, and limiting the EMCs to bare essentials – food production, but even that would have to be rationed down to one meal a day."

Relief washed over Peterson. "That's not terrible. Three months should give us enough time to get either fusion or gravitational power back online…"

Turmal, uncharacteristically silent until now, raised his hand slightly. "May I, Captain?"

Peterson nodded.

Turmal leaned back slightly in his chair, exhaling slowly. "These aliens… they hacked us again," he declared.

Peterson frowned. "Hacked us? We haven't had a functioning comm system since we lost gravitational power."

"Perhaps 'again' isn't quite right," Turmal admitted. "See, after they wanted to turn our gravitational computer against us, I went back, analyzed the damage. We scrubbed everything hard, and as far as I could tell, the problem was contained. But by then, our quantum computer was already online." Peterson's eyebrows shot towards his hairline. This thought hadn't crossed his mind.

"They planted something in the quantum computer?" Peterson asked, a note of disbelief coloring his voice.

Turmal nodded grimly. "In a manner of speaking. I scoured the system personally after the 4G fiasco. The mainframe was clean, I'd stake my life on it. But then..."

"The fusion reactors," Peterson finished the thought, a sinking feeling settling in his gut.

"Exactly. Individual control computers, networked with the mainframe. They weren't even on my radar at the time. Each reactor has one, and they link to each other to balance power loads." Turmal paused, organizing his thoughts. "As we powered them up one by other, the infection spread."

"But… we've been using them for weeks," Peterson sputtered.

"Yes," Turmal agreed. "The… whatever it is… it was designed to be deviously patient. Trigger point - steady 1G acceleration."

"That's… odd," Peterson murmured, his mind racing to connect the dots.

Specialist Anita Jouvier, who had thus far remained unusually quiet, broke the charged silence. "Not necessarily," she offered in a thoughtful tone. "Let's assume their gravitational sensors are conceptually similar to ours – more refined, longer range, but same basic principle. They generate a faint 'net' of gravitational waves, detecting minute distortions caused by objects in space." She paused, considering her phrasing. "Think of space as strewn with debris, constantly in motion, bumping and altering each other's trajectories. The more space you're scanning, the more of that background noise you have to filter out. While drifting, accelerating sporadically, we were just another piece of cosmic driftwood."

Peterson's face cleared into a mask of understanding. "We weren't leaking gravitational energy. And our heat signature... the light wouldn't have even reached them yet."

"Exactly." Turmal's dark eyes glinted with a spark of grim satisfaction. "I believe this failsafe – this worm, this virus… it was meant for exactly this scenario. They get reckless, they lose track of us, and bam – we light ourselves up like a beacon and simultaneously cripple our chances of getting away again."

"Then why wouldn't a simple jumpstart from our batteries work?" Peterson pressed, irritation lacing his voice.

Ratiu sighed, "They're fried, Captain. Toast. These reactors, they use two rings of highly compressed gas, whipping around at nearly the speed of light. Opposing directions. Magnetic fields hold them in shape, pivot them, force controlled collisions

– atoms fusing, releasing a hell of a lot of energy."

"Never understood all the details myself," Peterson confessed, "So… why not just magnetically squish the gas until it fuses?"

Ratiu smiled faintly, the corner of her mouth quirking ever so slightly. "They did that, centuries ago. Turns out, it costs more energy to create those fields than you get out of the fusion itself. Net loss."

"But if we're colliding atoms at those speeds… I'd expect them to shatter, not fuse,"

Peterson observed hesitantly.

Ratiu nodded. "Oh, most of the time, they do just that. We've had particle colliders achieving exactly that since the 20th century. But… if you can create a magnetic field strong enough at the exact moment of the collision, the debris has no escape. Those shattered fragments get… twisted back together by brute force. Fusion, plus a burst of bonus energy." She paused thoughtfully. "A brutal, elegant bit of physics."

Peterson felt a glimmer of understanding, but their current problems were far from elegant. He snapped back to the matter at hand. "So why the hell can't we restart them? Stay on topic, Chief."

A hint of wry humor flickered in Ratiu's eyes. "On topic, Captain, on topic. Our alien friends took those rings of near-lightspeed plasma, pivoted them like weapons…

smashed one into the gas inlets, sealing them shut. Second ring? They used to melt down the reactor's control systems, nice and precise."

Turmal, never one to stay out of a conversation, chimed in, a mirthless laugh escaping his lips. "So, as they say… fused."

The cramped confines of the ready room felt suffocating, mirroring the tension that had settled on the crew since their abrupt return to technological darkness.

Peterson's gaze locked on Turmal, demanding answers after the ensign's misplaced levity. "Digital computers. We're back to the stone age, but are they clean?" The edge in the captain's voice was unmistakable.

Turmal straightened instinctively, chastened. "Absolutely, Captain. First, they were dormant until the emergency power-up. The backup batteries, those are purely analog devices – no operating system, no code to exploit. And secondly," his confidence returning, "Chief Ratiu and I are both convinced that these aliens, advanced as they are, wouldn't even recognize digital computing as a threat. The technology gap is too vast. They likely haven't seen a setup like this in centuries, might even mistake it for some bizarre museum display."

A thread of grim humor twisted Peterson's expression. "So, they're so advanced, they became too clever for their own good?" He paused, allowing a small measure of relief to creep in. "That, at least, offers a glimmer of hope."

Peterson turned to Collins, the question hanging heavily in the dimly lit room. "Status report. Ship, and crew."

Collins exhaled slowly. "Life support, minimal heating, functional. Ratiu's right about the EMCs – they're running bare bones, solely for food production. The stuff they're churning out…" he winced, "let's just say it makes those old military rations seem like

a gourmet meal. Still, nutritional enough. Emergency rations were distributed to everyone within the powered zones. The ones scattered across the larger, inactive portions of the ship? Untouched, for now. We won't starve, or run out of water."

A silence settled over the group. Peterson considered the words, parsing out their implications.

"Air will become an issue before food and water," Collins finally stated, his voice tinged with the same grim practicality that had carried him through countless simulations and drills. "And eventually, even this emergency power and heat won't last…"

Peterson nodded, the harsh reality settling in his gut. Food, at least in some form, was available. It was the basics – breathable air, bearable temperatures, and most importantly, the power needed to keep both going – that were the ticking clocks they couldn't avoid. A well-fed crew was vital, but it meant little if they froze to death or suffocated first.

"Movement?" Peterson shifted his focus to Potaski. "Can we change course, even a fraction?"

Potaski's response was immediate, his voice steady. "Within limits, Captain. The backup batteries have enough juice to power up one or two of the fusion engines.

But remember, this system was designed for precision maneuvering, docking, emergency adjustments – not long-haul flight. And it'll drain the reserves fast. Full blast on two engines? We'd be lucky to squeeze a few hours out of them before we're back to darkness." His eyes met the Captain's squarely. "I recommend keeping that scenario for genuine life-or-death situations."

Peterson nodded, the gravity of their situation etching itself deeper in the lines on his face. "Understood. Thank you, Sava."

Peterson let out a heavy sigh. "Alright. We understand where we stand. Now…

options."

A flurry of proposals filled the small room, a desperate symphony of 'what-ifs' and long shots. None of the ideas were good. None offered a realistic path to safety, only variations on a slow, inevitable demise. Somewhere along the way, the technical discussion began to fade into a meaningless drone in Peterson's ears.

Hope, that intangible lifeline they'd all been clinging to, started to unravel in his hands. Images of his wife and daughter, their faces radiant with the simple joy of life back on Earth, replaced the engineering schematics that had dominated his thoughts for weeks. The realization that he might never see them again sank into him like an anchor dropped into the abyss. Would he perish here, 67 light years from home, his body a frozen testament to their failure, adrift in the cosmic void? His existence reduced a footnote in some future history book, a tale of ambition and hubris swallowed by the vast, indifferent universe.

The dull murmur of hopeless brainstorming was shattered by an earsplitting crash.

The Iris lurched violently, throwing everyone off balance.

Over the emergency intercom, a familiar voice echoed through the ship, stripped of its usual calm: "All crew to their stations. Everyone else find a crash couch and strap in. We are under attack. Repeat, we are under attack!"

Lieutenant Elisabeth Grigorescu, as stoic as she was sharp, was the only crew member remaining on a formal bridge watch. The others, Captain Peterson included, had abandoned the darkened bridge consoles for smaller, more practical gatherings in powered areas. Practicality took many forms – even technical crews, unable to work on the primary power systems, drifted in and out of Engineering, assisting with patchwork repairs out of boredom more than true necessity.

Only Grigorescu diligently manned her post, despite the ship's helplessness. She was a quiet soul, preferring solitude to the forced camaraderie of the now-crowded powered sections. Even when asleep, she often remained on the bridge, curled on a deactivated crash couch. Turmal had rigged up an array of digital displays for her, granting her constant views of the ship's exterior. She stared at those screens relentlessly, searching for the first sign of trouble, the one clue they might have missed.

And she'd failed. There had been no warning, no sign of approach. But now, the undeniable proof of attack rippled through the Iris. One of the fusion engines, and a chunk of the precious external rail, gone in a blinding flash.

Grigorescu secured her belts, her mind racing. "This is going to be one bumpy ride."