Chapter 3

Aiden sighed as he paced back and forth across the lower deck of Archangel, a thick book on ship repair held in his hands.

"Angel, I'm only finding so many ways to reroute the same system, or to get around the same set of fused chips." He continued to read as he talked half to himself and half to his A.I. partner. "This ship wasn't designed to operate this deep in Underspace for even a few minutes, much less two weeks straight. Over four percent of your power grid is offline, beyond my ability to repair. The magnetic lining of the plasma conduits is going to rupture if we continue to operate at this extreme stress level for much longer. The engines already need an overhaul that I cannot give them as long as we are still moving. Even your neural net is showing instability due to how active your A.I. core has been over the last fifteen days. We should have anticipated this level of damage, but since no one ever travels this deep into Underspace, we had no accurate information on the intensity of the energy eddies here. We cannot hold up much longer. We are going to have to come up to standard Underspace cruising level, and soon."

Resignation filled Angel's voice as she responded. "I agree with your situational analysis, but as soon as we come up to standard level we'll be detected by the Imperial deep space sensor networks. You are making us choose between mechanical failure in Underspace, capture by an Imperial vessel, or destruction by an Imperial vessel. Personally, I do not really like any of those choices. We are barely a week from the edge of the Imperial security systems, and two from Frontier station. There has to be an alternative."

Throwing himself into a nearby chair in front of the primary engineering console, Aiden slumped in exasperation. "So what the hell do we do? I am sorry Angel, I really am. I do not want to go back into slavery any more than you do, and I do not want to die any more than you want to go offline. Nevertheless, I see no alternative. If we continue to hide and run, we die. If we show ourselves, we will be killed or captured. If there is another option, I can't see it."

"I know Aiden. It was worth a shot. I will prepare the ship to come up to... Aiden! Sensor arrays are reporting an incursion into Underspace near us, at nearly the same depth we are! It is probably a search probe."

Aiden could not help but be confused. "So what's the problem? I thought you said that this far down they couldn't detect us?"

"That is not what I said," Angel corrected. "I said that we would be undetectable and untraceable until they came down to the same level. There are many layers of energy and unidentified phenomena between this level and the standard travel level that prevent sensors from reaching this far. If two ships are at or near the same level, they can detect each other. The main disruptions to sensors exist between the third and fourth levels, the third level being the standard travel level. We are currently at the fifth level, and the probe I just detected is heading almost to the same depth as us."

"If the ship that launched that probe is on the third level, how long will it be before the probe can report back?"

Angel hesitated for a moment as she did the rough mathematics, most of the figures nothing but a guess. "Most likely, three minutes if it is designed to travel at the optimum velocity for breeching the third-fourth level energy disruptions."

Aiden thought for barely a second before he came up with the solution. "So we just need to disappear off the ship's sensors as it enters this level to engage us. Since any human operated vessels will not be able to survive for more than a few minutes at this level, we will only need to disappear for five or six minutes. If I remember my astrophysics, the deep-Underspace charting probe missions went as deep as the sixth level. They revealed a massive amount of energy blocking off the sixth level from the fifth, and attempted to penetrate it. The energy tore them to ribbons before they even got a tenth of the way through. According to your database, how powerful is the sixth level's energy barrier?"

"That is your big alternative? To blow ourselves up? The sixth level energy barrier is more than ten times the strength of the fourth level energy barrier! Not only that, but even if we survived the initial penetration, the sixth level itself would damage us much quicker than the fifth level. If you think this ship cannot handle the fifth level, what makes you think that it will handle the sixth?"

"Run the odds Angel!" Aiden shouted after he had taken a couple of seconds to do the math in his head. "Odds are 125 to 1 that we would win in a conflict against even one Imperial cruiser. They decrease even further if there is more than one ship up there. Based on your above-average performance at reaching this level, odds are only 70 to 1 that we will survive the energy barrier and last for six minutes on the sixth level. The lesser of two evils, Angel."

"Well I guess diving into an energy barrier is a better form of suicide than just detonating the fusion reactor." As Angel finished talking, the gravity forces inside of the ship shifted as it began diving towards the energy barrier. "Two minutes until contact with barrier."

Aiden sat in thought for a few seconds. It was his experience that when life handed you two bad choices to decide between, it was always better to create a third. It was time to get a little creative.

"Angel," Aiden began in a thoughtful tone, "exactly why do the patterns of energy suddenly concentrate on a ship as soon as it enters any of the Underspace barriers?"

"Think of the energy barriers as flowing rivers," Angel responded. "Everything goes smoothly, flowing calmly, and disturbing nothing under normal conditions. However, if you suddenly throw a large object in, such as a person, the pressure increases behind the object as the water tries to get around it. If the person does not move with the water, it has to push strongly to get it to go with the flow. The exact same thing occurs with the barriers; they are made of flowing energy, and ships disturb the flow. Pressure builds around them since they do not travel with the flow while they are penetrating levels."

The deck began to shake as the Archangel entered the fringes of the immensely powerful barrier, forcing Aiden to quicken his thought process.

"So what if another, larger object enters next to us in the stream? The 'water' would have already lost force by the time it reaches us if it had already been pushing against something else!"

"Whatever you are thinking of, I would do it quickly." Angel warned.

Aiden scampered over to a nearby console, rapidly typing in commands.

"Angel, disengage master weapons lock. Target is the energy stream, upstream from us as it were. Aim two thousand kilometers out from our relative Underspace position."

"Aye, sir," Angel replied seriously. "Target lock established. Specify ordinance."

"Launch six plasma missiles, velocity set at maximum," Aiden ordered. "Safeties off at fifteen hundred kilometers. Use wide deployment; the stream is deep, so we have to disrupt it at several points. Once we hit the mark where those missiles will no longer shield us from energy pressure, launch another wave of six missiles at the same relative distance."

"Executing," Angel replied. "First six missiles are away. Recharging magnetic inductance tubes. Detonation in three... two... one... mark. Energy pressure along hull is dropping off... next wave will be away in thirty seconds."

Aiden sat back down, his knuckles white against the chair's armrests. The ship had begun to shake intensely, nearly dislodging him once or twice. He could not even see the displays near him; fiery red light was spilling in through a nearby viewing window, even through the automatic dimming.