The Rebel Faction

For a moment there was a slight tinge of fear as Trachta mentioned combing his records, but the fear subsided before it took hold as he remember that there were no records of his criminal past in Imperial hands, and other than his little conspiracy against the other candidates for governor - crimes to which he was connected only by a single call to a guaranteed-safe Smuggler's Alliance contact - his Imperial service record was squeaky clean if you overlooked his rather rambunctious days at the academy.

Looking at Trachta he wondered if he were trying to intimidate him. If he was it wasn't working. "Have it your way," he said, pulling out the recorder in his pocket and turning it off. He noticed a green light that had been shining on the director of COMPNOR went out. He then pulled out another cylinder, a Disruption Bubble Generator and turned it on. "It's just you and me now," he said. There would be no records of his treason. He paused for a moment. He was getting no bad feelings. He may be dangerous, but Thorton was getting the impression that Grand Conspiracy was something right up this man's alley.

"You know," he began in a sympathetic voice, "you look unappreciated, Commander. Almost as if you had lofty goals and dreams, but political rivals were holding you down. Men possibly not as qualified as you, but far better connected and well liked in high-ranking military and political circles seem to get the positions of promotions you're striving for. Has that ever happened to you? Because something like that's happened to me before. And you know what? It's a damn shame. All I want to do is serve the Empire as best I can from the highest rank I can. Have you ever had that happen to you?"

Trachta - now Commodore Trachta, he knew - was clearly not a nervous man. He was very calm and in control of himself. The only bad bit of nervous body language on him was his toying with that sphere. Though Thorton wasn't an expert at reading body language he wasn't half bad. Playing with it was clearly a habit of some sort that he'd never taken the time to shed. Why he'd ever taken it up he had no idea.

"You're right, Commodore, that I've achieved quite a bit. A Protectorate and a high rank in the fleet are both admiral achievements, as is the fame I possess. I know I should be satisfied, but I am not. And so I can only set my sights higher. How high I can go I do not know, but I intend to find out." Thorton looked up at the ceiling quizzically. "Perhaps I may even reach the top."

"However, despite my willingness to serve the Empire as best I can I have found some" he paused briefly, "obstacles in my path. When you reach the levels that we have both worked our way to you find that not everybody around you is working toward the best interests of the Empire exclusively. Some might," he paused for effect, "not even be working for the best interests of the Empire at all, but for only themselves. I think it is a tragedy that men like that prevent men like us for doing our best work for Emperor Hyfe." He smirked slightly.

"I want only what's best for His Madjesty Hyfe" - he threw the refrence to the Emperor in on purpose - "but men in the Imperial bureaucracy who view me as a rival of all things make my job difficult, and moving up even more so. If there were some way to . . . neutralize those who don't have the Empire's best interests in mind, then I could serve the Empire much, much better."

Thorton smirked. He'd basically said what he had to and Trachta had made no move to arrest him, so so far so good. While he might be waiting for him to say more, with no recorders going on in the room he would find it basically impossible to arrest, torture and send him to trial. COMPNOR could make low ranking bureaucrats and military personnel disappear if they wanted to and nobody would notice, but you couldn't just make one of the most powerful men in the Empire disappear suddenly. Not without proof of treason.

"In exchange for your . . . help, I am in a position to offer you things you lack. COMPNOR has no vessels designed for combat. The Borderland, however, has plenty of ships. We could, perhaps, loan you some if you ever need them. In addition, while COMPNOR possesses extensive intelligence gathering assets within the Empire, you have no information about external affairs, since that is covered by Imperial Naval Intelligence. I, however, receive full Naval Intelligence reports, which you could most certainly use. They contain extensive detail - so extensive that I cannot read the entirety of each report - about foreign nations, vessels, and individuals. In addition, I have a third party underworld contact network I can call upon if you need assistance of that sort. A large contact network.

"There is one more thing. If I do reach the top of the Imperial Hierarchy - hypothetically of course, for His Majesty Hyfe seems in good health - I am responsible for filling the position of Grand Inquisitor. Let's just say that I am . . . unsatisfied with the man currently there."

Project Futuregate
A critical analysis of the particle bursts by theoretical and quantum engineers confirmed that their efforts up until now had not been in vain. The Futuregate particle collider – by far the largest every built – produced massive bursts of both tachyons and gravitons. When fired, gravitons would slip into alternate dimensions as a byproduct of the reaction, but the tachyons would slip into the future and the past. Time travel for individuals, though impossible, was much easier to induce on a quantum scale. Bursts of subatomic particles, created by massive explosions resulting from collisions between groups of particles traveling almost at the speed of light, could travel into the past or future. Theoretically, if there was a way to pick up these bursts of Tacheyons then messages could be sent into the future by using crude binary or Morse code. Individuals might not be able to time travel, but messages could. They could even be sent different amounts of time forward or back by altering the power of the accelerator and therefore the speed of the particles in the resulting burst.

Theoretically.

The technology was limited by the huge amounts of power required. Information transmitted was limited into the bytes. The Futuregate assembly drew as much power as four Imperial-class Star Destroyers at full power. In addition, assuming the physics worked, messages would be extremely slow to transmit and receive. Assuming it worked – as the physics suggested it would – the most that could ever be sent was text. Computer programs, images, schematics or other things were far too large for efficient transmission. One Futuregate assembly was the equivalent of one transistor or telegraph post.

The Empire’s best physicists said it would work. Now it was time to put that to the test.

On the keypad in front of him, Malek baal Kaar began to type a message. “Is anyone there? We would like to speak with you.” Then he turned on the recorder again, as he had last done for test eleven. Around him in the Futuregate control room a dozen of the Empire’s best physicists – the core team for the project – milled about in preparation and nervousness.

“Test one of Phase two for the Futuregate Assembly is now in progress.” He let go of the button and pushed forward one of three levers. In response the earth around the base began to vibrate and a massive hum began to permeate the base. He looked at a pair of diagrams on a screen in front of him. “Reactor output stable” he said. “Reactor cooling stable.” He pushed the second lever forward and much of the vibrating and humming dissipated. “Particle accelerators online. All cooling and electrical systems green. Magnetic containment fields are live.” He pushed the third lever forward. “Monitoring and reception gear online.” He glanced at the screen again. “All monitoring and reception gear cooling systems are online. All transmission computers are active and optimized.” He looked down at a big, red button for a moment and then pressed it. “Particles released. The transmission has begun.”

Outside there was a noticeably louder rumbling as half a ton of ions began accelerating down the massive particle acceleration track. It faded as the particles moved away from the base at low speed, but as they came around the track in only fifteen seconds the rumbling came back more intensely than before. On the screen in front of him he could see that the particles were now moving two thousand kilometers per second. Over the course of two minutes they continued to accelerate up to relativistic velocities, reaching well over 99% of the speed of light.

“Collision phase commencing,” he said as he watched a timer count down in front of him. As it hit zero there was a massive rumbling as the particles in the accelerator were forced together by a powerful supermagnet array to create a small version of the big bang. Powerful seismic waves shook the base as the particles collided. At the relativistic velocities they were propelled to, each Ion carried the same amount of momentum as a turbolaser. On screens around the room his fellow physicists watched readouts of the tachyon and graviton output. Unlike the prior test, this one did not stop with one explosion. There was a string of approximately eighty taking place at varying intervals due to their use of Morse code for the transmissions. Throughout the broadcast Malik carefully watched the cooling readings for the accelerator and reactors with his hand ready on the kill button. If any of them reached the red zone he could cut them off instantly. Fortunately the massive cooling systems that accompanied Futuregate’s reactors were up to the task, and none of the reactors left the green zone.

All of a sudden the world was quiet except for a whine as most of the base’s power generators and portions of the electrical distribution grid went off line. After thirty seconds even that was gone, and the base was silent as a grave. “Transmission Test successfully concluded,” he said. “We are awaiting a response.”