Read Online Jack of Harts 2.5: Wolfenheim Rising by Medron Pryde - Free Book Online
Authors: Medron Pryde
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fell into the whirlpool of the binary star system at the heart of Alpha Centauri. There they found multiple worlds, brimming with life and waiting for us to colonize them.
And they learned why the river between home and Alpha Centauri was so much stronger than any other. Early scientists assumed it was simply because Alpha Centauri was closer. But Alpha Centauri’s three suns twisted the gravitic currents of hyperspace more than mankind’s home star, spraying out torrents of gravity far more powerful, and far faster, than any other. For a hundred years, every ship from Earth sailed to Alpha Centauri first, and only then did they go to the stars.
And then the Peloran made Contact. They brought faster and more powerful hyperdrives that could break out of the tiny streams connecting stars, and forge their own paths through the true depths of hyperspace. Normandy and the other starships of the Wolfenheim Project used the best Peloran hyperdrives, built into them by Peloran shipyards and powered by Peloran reactors. After months of being ripped apart and put back together by Peloran hands, they were Peloran starships in every way that mattered, built to spend a lifetime in hyperspace.
They’d spent the last thirty-four days traveling across the ninety-four lightyears between New Earth and Sunnydale at a thousand times the speed of light, as the outside world measured time and space. Aboard Normandy , a mere seventeen days passed by, and none of her sisters ever accelerated past a hundred measly kilometers per second by their measurements. Now Normandy rose up through the multicolored currents of gravity like a shark, watching for enemies. The giant whale of Wolfenheim’s bulk crested another current nearby far less gracefully. The colony ship was slow and clumsy compared to the tiny piranhas that surrounded her, ready to kill anything that threatened her as they searched for their destination.
The New Earth–Sunnydale Run had been mapped out for decades, with survey ships scanning every conceivable current in the area. It was updated every month, as new ships arrived to add their navigational information to the database. But it was always changing.
And the only way to be sure where you were on the Run was to obtain a solid read on a nearby star. Most stars could be detected in hyperspace at least a few lighthours away. Giants could be detected significantly farther out, while main sequence stars like our Sun could be detected ten or twenty lighthours away.
The F1V star named Sunnydale was one of the brightest stars that mankind had colonized, and it had a more energetic interaction with hyperspace than most stars. It could be detected a full two lightdays away, making it an effective beacon star for long-range travel. A ship on the New Earth–Sunnydale Run followed the mapped gravitic currents for seventeen days subjective, across nearly a hundred lightyears, and then spent several hours moving “up” towards the wall in hopes that they could detect the gravitic fingerprint of a single star’s effect on hyperspace. If they didn’t get thrown off course by a current that wasn’t there the last time a ship came through, and if they calculated the right time-dilation factor, they just might find that they arrived in the vicinity of their target.
It was like throwing a dart across the yard, during a windstorm, and trying to hit a dime attached to the fence. Very few humans had ever shown the natural aptitude it required to do that. Modern navigational computers usually hit their targets. Usually.
Malcolm sat at the rear of the bridge, watching as Normandy and her little fleet snuck up into the shallows of hyperspace, scanning for threats as they followed Sunnydale’s scent. His squadron should be the first arrivals from New Earth since the confrontation with Commodore Murphy. Through some highly serendipitous events that couldn’t possibly be tracked to him, no couriers
And they learned why the river between home and Alpha Centauri was so much stronger than any other. Early scientists assumed it was simply because Alpha Centauri was closer. But Alpha Centauri’s three suns twisted the gravitic currents of hyperspace more than mankind’s home star, spraying out torrents of gravity far more powerful, and far faster, than any other. For a hundred years, every ship from Earth sailed to Alpha Centauri first, and only then did they go to the stars.
And then the Peloran made Contact. They brought faster and more powerful hyperdrives that could break out of the tiny streams connecting stars, and forge their own paths through the true depths of hyperspace. Normandy and the other starships of the Wolfenheim Project used the best Peloran hyperdrives, built into them by Peloran shipyards and powered by Peloran reactors. After months of being ripped apart and put back together by Peloran hands, they were Peloran starships in every way that mattered, built to spend a lifetime in hyperspace.
They’d spent the last thirty-four days traveling across the ninety-four lightyears between New Earth and Sunnydale at a thousand times the speed of light, as the outside world measured time and space. Aboard Normandy , a mere seventeen days passed by, and none of her sisters ever accelerated past a hundred measly kilometers per second by their measurements. Now Normandy rose up through the multicolored currents of gravity like a shark, watching for enemies. The giant whale of Wolfenheim’s bulk crested another current nearby far less gracefully. The colony ship was slow and clumsy compared to the tiny piranhas that surrounded her, ready to kill anything that threatened her as they searched for their destination.
The New Earth–Sunnydale Run had been mapped out for decades, with survey ships scanning every conceivable current in the area. It was updated every month, as new ships arrived to add their navigational information to the database. But it was always changing.
And the only way to be sure where you were on the Run was to obtain a solid read on a nearby star. Most stars could be detected in hyperspace at least a few lighthours away. Giants could be detected significantly farther out, while main sequence stars like our Sun could be detected ten or twenty lighthours away.
The F1V star named Sunnydale was one of the brightest stars that mankind had colonized, and it had a more energetic interaction with hyperspace than most stars. It could be detected a full two lightdays away, making it an effective beacon star for long-range travel. A ship on the New Earth–Sunnydale Run followed the mapped gravitic currents for seventeen days subjective, across nearly a hundred lightyears, and then spent several hours moving “up” towards the wall in hopes that they could detect the gravitic fingerprint of a single star’s effect on hyperspace. If they didn’t get thrown off course by a current that wasn’t there the last time a ship came through, and if they calculated the right time-dilation factor, they just might find that they arrived in the vicinity of their target.
It was like throwing a dart across the yard, during a windstorm, and trying to hit a dime attached to the fence. Very few humans had ever shown the natural aptitude it required to do that. Modern navigational computers usually hit their targets. Usually.
Malcolm sat at the rear of the bridge, watching as Normandy and her little fleet snuck up into the shallows of hyperspace, scanning for threats as they followed Sunnydale’s scent. His squadron should be the first arrivals from New Earth since the confrontation with Commodore Murphy. Through some highly serendipitous events that couldn’t possibly be tracked to him, no couriers
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