Kless and Jenkins were in the center sensory deprivation chamber. Jenkins stood gazing out the open door in the direction of the control room, his vision still unfocused. Overturned storage boxes indicated what Kless had been doing. In fact similar discarded boxes littered the other interrogation chambers, the entryway, the control room, and other space in the Central Bay. The longer it took, the more frustrated and angry he grew, throwing boxes around once it was clear they did not contain the item he was looking for. He was swearing continuously and loudly now.
After having knocked every box occupying the recently-decommissioned cell, he took one lightweight box, looked more closely at the label, tore the lid open, and removed something small.
"Oh...fuck...fucking hells. Fucking blood of the fucking elders! Beryllium wire. Fucking beryllium wire! We're supposed to get beryllium wire. We fucking risk our lives for beryllium fucking fucky fuck fuck wire. Whose fucking idea was it to go into the center of the fucking occupied zones for some beryllium wire."
"Conduit," Jenkins said while still staring out the door.
"And why the bleeding fuck did you make me release all these prisoners? Stupid fucking mental idea from a stupid fucking G-rider. That's all we needed is some fucking beryllium conduit. What was it, 40, 50 meters?"
"40 meters of beryllium conduit," replied Jenkins without inflection.
"Yeah!" screamed Kless. "And what does this look like to you?!?" shouted Kless as he turned and held up a small spool with a little more than a foot of a thin silver thread hanging off the spool.
Jenkins slowly ambled around in a semi-circle and looked at what Kless, red-faced with anger, was holding up. "Looks like 40 centimeters of beryllium wire..." he said distractedly.
"Yeah. 40 fucking CENTI-meters! And you know about how much shy of 40 METERS of it we are?" Before Jenkins could say anything, he answered, "ALL OF IT!" With that he threw the small spool against a wall and sat down on a ledge that spanned the back wall, glowering.
Jenkins looked at the spool and the room. He spoke slowly, but coherently. "We...we're in the detention center. We found the beryllium, but it's all...a lie? We can't give up...not yet."
"Oh look...the cavalry's arrived," Kless said bitterly. "Perhaps you didn't notice while you were in your little happy land, but the situation is pretty bad right now. Of the two escape pods, one is 40 fucking meters shy of beryllium and the other was destroyed while you were riding high on the G-root."
"I was on a G-root trip?" Jenkins said with some surprise.
"Not a trip. A ride. As in, you're a G-rider. I imagine right now is that precious flat-time between the two extremes."
"A rider? But... sure I used the stuff, but not that much..."
"Until now. Welcome on board. You've got a lifetime pass. Which, in case you care, will probably expire, along with you and me, in about 15 minutes."
"No," Jenkins said adamantly. "I refuse to believe there's nothing we can do. There are always some options, it's just that sometime's they're hard to see."
"OK, Mr. Science, why don't you go through the process of elimination."
"Not a bad idea, actually, since I'm not sure what I missed in the last...how long was I catatonic?"
"Less than an hour. More than a half."
Jenkins nodded. "How many people...did you...kill on the way here?"
"I don't know," Kless said casually. "I needed a prisoner uniform to blend in. You were my prisoner and my decoy. The first one was a huge fat fuck. That wasn't good in the long run. Took two more before I found a size that fit. Then there was that group of four. I guess the answer would be: a few."
"OK. Well, anyway, the pods aren't an option right now. Actually, the one that needs the conduit is working, it just has no way to engage the engines and transfer the power. We'd only need the conduit for a short time, then the reaction is self-sustaining."
"Could we fake it?" asked Kless.
"It'd take a lot of power. A lot. And in a small package. Very small."
"PFD?"
"Yeah, a pocket fusion device or something like that would put out enough power, but it'd be too big. It'd blow up the ship before the power loop was set. We'd need something more like anti-matter dots or some space-time wake from another operating engine, that sort of thing."
Kless looked up at him and stared.
"Yeah...we don't have any AM or any of that stuff. How long till we're in the transition zone of the gravity well?"
"About five minutes..." Kless said.
"Well that gives us..." began Jenkins.
"...ago," interrupted Kless and went back to staring at the floor, his fists on his temples.
"Oh. OK, so we can't even launch a pod from the current position. We need to think about the ship then. Both engines are dead and pretty nasty radiation sources too. So that's not an option. If there was only some way to get the ship out of the gravity well." Jenkins trailed off, lost in though, muttering various things to himself then shaking his head each time.
"If only you had a magic wand, it'd make everything a lot simpler," Kless said sardonically.
Jenkins spun around, cocked his head, furrowed his brow, and froze for a moment.
"Time to take the G-train?" Kless said, but Jenkins seemed oblivious of the taunt.
"Last night, Lon...you know, the Reverend Neutron Star guy told me..."
"He's dead, you know."
"I think so. I remember some bits. X'til, as I recall. It was all rather unpleasant for me. But that's off topic. Lon had mentioned a sort of magic wand. A scientific breakthrough. The Y'valatic had invented and smuggled aboard a working dark energy field projector."
"You mean the X'tonu'u. The X's are the thinking ones, the Y's are all about reactions, impulses, and that shit. Not to be letterist or monoculturalist, but, well..."
"Yeah, it kind of is true in general," Jenkins agreed. "But no, that's the point. It was a Y invention. It's one of those 'impossible' things. The X's did the math and determined it was impossible. The Y's...well, just because they prove something is impossible mathematically doesn't really dissuade them. If anything, it only encourages them. They'd throw everything into a project and make it work out of spite alone, for the laws of physics and the X's attitude towards it all. I think they managed to invent one, not to prove it's possible, just to prove that you can't just trust math, at least not without knowing ALL the assumptions."
"OK, so they invented this thing. What's it do?" demanded Kless.
"That's the thing. At some point, once they were pretty sure it was working, they really couldn't tell what it was doing or what it could do, because, basically, they didn't have the math background to understand these things. They sure as hell weren't about to give it to the X and ask them to explain it. They'd either refuse because the device was impossible or take it and kill them with it somehow. I think their plan was to get it on board the ship and then consult some of the science and weapons officers. The scientists here on the last run were quite the brain boxes."
"The best and the brightest was the popular phrase, I believe," said Kless in a tone filled with loathing and contempt.
"But they brought it on board. Smuggled it with one of the prisoners."
Kless looked up, curious. "So this is some kind of weapon?" he asked.
"Not really, but of course it could be. But first, they had no idea how to use it, which meant it didn't really do anything, as far as they knew, and that's because they didn't really think about it very far. But second, it would have no energy signature. Wouldn't be seen as a threat when they were captured. Lon said a prisoner had it, but passed it on to someone who passed it on. It kind of gets muddy after that."
"You think it's still on board?"
"Actually, I do. I think Lon found out about it after the escape fleet had left. My theory is it's somewhere in the detention center."
"OK...so what can it do?"
"I don't know...but I have a hunch. Dark energy has a way of pushing things away. If this thing could project a dark energy field towards the white hole from this ship, I think I could get it to push us out of the white hole's gravity well, at least far enough out that the escape pods could get out and we'd have enough time to make them work."
"OK, sure, whatever. You think you can buy us time, maybe get us away from the white hole. Then the next question is what does it look like?"
"Lon said it was a small, handheld device. If I were trying to smuggle it on board, I'd make it look like a weapon...only one that didn't work."
Kless' jaw went slack and he slowly turned to look up at Jenkins as he paced around the small room. He asked, "this 'weapon'...would it look like a normal gun?"
"Well, it would certainly be different, and probably look nicer to play up the ornamental status angle, but yeah, it would be handheld. Beyond that, I can't say. I guess I'll have to trust that I can identify it when I see it. Now if we check in the cells, we can do that quickly. The two bays would be harder, even if you wanted a slaughter fest. Speaking of which, I wasn't really all back when we got here, so excuse me for asking, but did you pick up a new energy pack for your gun? I assume there'd be one by the operator's station."
Kless sprang up from his seat and walked out the door. Shortly the sound of desk drawers being opened and slammed shut could be heard. Thirty seconds later, Kless returned, holding two small energy packs and then sat down on the bench again and starting playing with his pulse gun, reloading it. Jenkins went on for a minute discussing possible search strategies while Kless continued to reload his weapon.
Once he finished reloading his pulse gun, he pulled his other gun out of his holster and held it over his head, at Jenkins' eye level. After another half minute, Jenkins' pacing took him by Kless and as he walked by he grabbed hold of the weapon.
Jenkins was flabbergasted. "What is...? Where'd you find...? Whose weapon is..."
"This what you talking about?" Kless inquired.
Jenkins just nodded, wide-eyed. And then started to examine the weapon.
"I found it," Kless said simply.
"Before someone lost it?" retorted Jenkins without looking up.
"Something like that. But the way I view it, he wouldn't be needing it again. Or anything. Ever," Kless said coldly.
"I'm not one hundred percent sure, but it looks like this takes a standard power lead into it. And then it's got another port for controls and adjustments. It shouldn't be too hard to get it to work."
"It's a gun that has to be plugged in? No wonder they're not the smart ones," commented Kless.
"I'm sure it's a safety mechanism. Plus, to make it portable they'd have to eliminate an internal power source. And without one, it's inert and more or less undetectable. Given a sufficient conventional power source, the system should be able to produce a pretty big dark energy field."
"And then what? What does this 'dark energy' do?"
Jenkins grimaced. "I'm...not really sure. Dark energy exists, of course..."
"Of course," chimed in Kless. "Unlike white holes."
"Well...yeah...actually, exactly so. But the problem is that people don't know a lot about dark energy, and have zero firsthand experience with it. If it's a dark energy field projector, it will create or project the energy where we want it. We don't have to worry about what it hits coming out of the gun. It's only in the form of a gun to get past...well...you."
"OK, well let's plug it in." And Kless looked towards the control room.
"Not that simple. It'll need an enormous power supply, at least initially, to spool it up. And I will need someplace where I can see where the field is, or at least where I want to direct it. It's energy and it's dark, so I won't 'see it' no matter what. The engines will have more than enough power. I'll go to the engine room and you can head to the forward observatory," Jenkins said excitedly.
"Just one problem. We lost engine number one when we had the T-space drop-out. Remember? Kind of tore through the ship. And then trying to get away from the hole, the number two engine blew rather spectacularly. I think all told it was over two thousand casualties from those incidents. I don't think you'll be plugging that into the engines."
"This is true," Jenkins said and started pacing frenetically again. After a moment he turned around and walked back to Kless and said, "Life support. Simple. I tied into that." And before Kless could get a word in, Jenkins waived his hand and continued, "Section A is gone. The whole thing. By far the biggest life-raft with its own life support system. But the rest of the ship was able to power that section in case their systems went out. That's still online and available. And there's a junction I can tap into near an observation room. I can tie into it and not have to worry about any of our life support cutting out. And once it's powered up and stable, it won't need any further power and I can get to work trying to use the dark energy to push the ship away from the hole. 1, 2, 3, just like that."
"Can you do it? How hard is it?" asked Kless.
"Of course I can. And that's not the Ganesha root talking. I know I can. I used to study exotic matter and transplanar energy types when I was in the academy. I've got some good ideas about how this would go. But to answer the second question, it's incredibly difficult. No one has ever conceived of how to harness that power, let alone make it happen. Our little Y friends made it possible, but I'm sure they had no idea how to do it. I just have one thing I need from..."
Before he could complete his sentence, the ship shuddered violently as it lurched one way and then a couple seconds later, shifted the other way. Both men were thrown against one wall in the chamber and then hard against the other. Kless screamed at the computer to explain what just happened.
The computer reported a chunk of nascent matter had just been ejected from the hole and appeared to have some unusual quantum alignments. Its mass was in flux, varying from 1018 to 1025 kilograms.
"Impossible!" shouted Kless. "You're telling me this thing's mass is changing from an asteroid to a moon and back in a matter of seconds?"
The computer ignored the finer points of the size ranges of planetary objects and confirmed that was the source of the current changes to the local gravitational field. And that the chunk of ejected matter had missed the ship.
"Things are coming out of the white hole, yet we're being drawn into it. Explain that!" he demanded of the computer. It was unable but confirmed the readings were accurate though unprecedented.
"OK, then go," said Kless to Jenkins.
He replied, "I'm on my way. But...I might need some help. I don't know how long I can stay in this zone before I start Riding again. I might need a fix. If you get me some ammonia, oil, salt, and a simple acid, anything, vinegar, lemon juice, with a small heat source, I can change a bit of the stardust brick into G-root."
"Sounds like a grocery list."
"The galley would have all of that. That's the point. The process is quite simple and fast and doesn't require anything that wouldn't be found as standard issue in a galley. I should know, I invented it," he said boastfully.
"Why not?" Kless said. Then he paused and asked, "So...had you been testing this out before, making it in the galley? Maybe even occionally spilling bits of stardust?"
Before Jenkins could answer, Kless said, "Fuck it. I don't want to know. I don't care. Tell me where to meet you and I'll see you there."
Jenkins told him the location. And with that, Kless left, gun in hand, followed by Jenkins.