Mage-Commander: Starship’s Mage Book Eleven by Stewart Glynn

Author:Stewart, Glynn
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Faolan's Pen Publishing
Published: 2021-09-21T00:00:00+00:00

36

“I’m not sure there’s any good news in any of this,” Mac Thaidhg said dourly as the department heads watched the list of Sounds of Rainfall at Dawn’s cargo scroll in the middle of the table.

“Two hundred thousand tons of antimatter?”

“I’m curious as to how Mercedes had that much antimatter to sell them,” Roslyn replied. “Mercedes still does not have any transmutation facilities. All of their antimatter is imported. For them to turn around and fill a quarter of a ship like Sounds with antimatter fuel…it stinks.”

Storage needs meant that every ton of antimatter required nineteen tons of equipment. Two hundred thousand tons of fuel was four million tons of cargo for all but hyper-specialized antimatter-transport ships.

“I’m not sure why it’s coming from Mercedes, but that’s Erewhonwen’s regular energy shipment,” Salucci told them, the logistics officer looking at a different set of data on her wrist-comp. “It comes in twice a year, usually from the transmutation plants at Corinthian.

“I’m guessing they relayed it through Mercedes because some quirk of shipping made it cheaper for them to ship it that way.”

“If we weren’t already a light-year away, I’d ask the Erewhonwenese what they were thinking,” Roslyn said drily. “As it is, well. What else was she carrying?”

“The usual kind of assorted mix of a big ship heading to a Fringe World,” Salucci said. “I mean, that’s everything from a small restock of missiles for the corvettes to hunting rifles to agricultural equipment.

“All of it was preordered via a factor who works in Mercedes,” she finished.

“Because I’m so much happier seeing the antimatter missiles on the manifest,” the XO noted. “If I was a pirate, those and the fuel alone would make Sounds an amazing target.”

“Which is, sadly, almost certainly part of why she got hit,” Roslyn noted. “Everything we saw on Condesa suggests that these pirates have pretty decent intel. It’s not spectacular, not really, but it suggests that they’ve got access to the civilian Link network—and the decryption protocols to access shipping information that’s supposed to be secure.”

“Plus, the ability to divert information to Link terminals other than the intended destination,” Salucci noted.

“Potentially not…” Kumar said slowly, the engineer looking thoughtful.

“Lieutenant?” Roslyn prodded him.

“Correct me if I’m wrong, Lieutenant Salucci,” the engineer told the coms officer. “I’m familiar with the hardware side of the Link terminals but less so on the software side.”

Salucci gestured for him to continue, acquiring her own thoughtful look.

“The Link system is based on quantum entanglement,” Kumar explained. “That’s a point-to-point link. Each entangled particle is mirrored by another entangled particle, both created at the same instant. That’s why all of the Link terminals for a given network come from one place—because the particles start together.

“So, to create a network, each Link terminal is linked to a number of other terminals,” he continued. “The exact number varies from unit to unit, but it’s never less than sixteen and usually hovers around forty. A message to a terminal that isn’t directly connected is relayed via connecting nodes in a process that runs entirely in the background.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.