Chapter 16: Into the Breach

Heels in the Sand Island, Seychelles archipelago, Earth

Monday, October 2^nd, 3116 (ten months later)

Ironically, the opening move to the Canis Minor campaign did not take place in the constellation Canis Minor. Instead of in that patch of stars where one would look to find the oncoming Assemblage ark vessel, the campaign began at a point in space nearly twenty degrees away, very near the star Sirius A.

There, at a distance of 8.610 light years from Sol, only a tenth of a percent of a light year short of the bright blue star itself, mankind’s most distant wormhole popped into existence. We were stress-testing the new improved wormhole machinery and AI-augmented guidance algorithms to verify that we could bridge the extreme distances required to reach the enemy ark.

After nearly half a minute of adjusting and stabilization of the ultra-long-range wormhole, a sensor stalk was finally poked through. The bulbous head of the stalk, studded with advanced gadgets of all types, quickly scanned the surrounding space for any natural or unnatural emissions.

Instead of monitoring the test with the masses, I was watching it in real time from the comfort of the great room in my island’s main lodge. Following my plan of keeping a low profile, I’d declined the invitation to view the test along with about a million other interested humans as part of the global science forum currently being hosted in Conscientia.

I even had company! Watching the live feed on the room’s holo-projector was a small group of family and friends. We’d been casually chatting up until the action had started a few moments ago. Now all were silent, transfixed on the distant sensor data showing the first close-up view of one of our nearest stellar neighbors.

I will admit the first images transmitted were slightly ... underwhelming. I wasn’t quite sure of what I’d been expecting to see, maybe amazing alien ringed planets, or moons around moons surrounding moons, but just another extremely bright star was not it.

Then I remembered that this test wormhole, being only a thousandth-of-a-light-year away from Sirius, meant that the portal was still sixty AU away from that star. The distance remained vast, fifty percent further than our own dwarf planet Pluto was from the Sun. Of course, from such a vantage the Dog Star would still look just like any other average star, albeit a brightly shining one!

I took a moment to study my companions who were still focused on the images with rapt attention. Sitting to my right and sharing my small sofa was Riho. The alien ambassador still spent time in my presence ‘attending’ me as she referred to it. We sometimes had our own duties or meetings which kept us apart but the majority of the time, she was near.

Next to her were Hannah and Alek. The pair were seated in separate chairs befitting their cooling relationship status, but they remained good friends and still trained together regularly. Their dedication to the cause was proven by maintaining the thrice-weekly combat training sessions. I attempted to join them when I could but was lucky if I made one session every week or two.

To my left were seated Kela and Picket. My daughter and her inamorata were sharing one end of the second sofa, a sign that their relationship had definitely not cooled. I continued to be happy for them as they had slowly transitioned their relationship from previously almost exclusively existing in the virtual and out into the physical ‘real’ world.

I’d recently learned that the pair were constructing an isolation lodge together. Some sort of ice palace located in Antarctica of all places! After I learned more details, I was actually intrigued. Their lodge was to be a geothermal oasis built on the rim of a partially-submerged caldera of a semi-active volcano, located on the South Shetland Islands, just off the edge of Antarctica.

They’d made me promise not to visit until their work was finished. Later, I’d expressed my concerns privately to Naomi about Kela and Picket building their lodge on a volcano and was reassured that the planetary wormhole network could whisk them away to safety in moments if an emergency were to arise on their island. Although it defeated the purpose of isolation, the fast and easy access was just another side benefit of Uxe’s invention we were becoming accustomed to.

Serenity and Cassius were also in attendance and were lying entwined in front of us on the neo-bear rug. The couple had only been a couple again for the past two days as Cassius no longer resided on my island. Five months ago, the young man had followed his passions for the sea and had left the island to learn marine biology as a deckhand on a bio-restoration vessel. Ironically, the vessel was part of the fleet managed by Director Carn-Conlin. Naomi assured me that she was monitoring the situation.

Cassius had come back earlier this week for a bit of rest and recuperation. I took that to mean that he was horny. My great-granddaughter had wasted no time in helping him with that, although I suspect the lad was now getting less R&R as a result. A side effect of Serenity spending time with Cassius was that I’d actually had to work at managing my own island for the past few days as she’d called in a few favors in order to free her schedule.

I returned to Riho to see how she was taking the wormhole sensor data. After all, she was the only one here to have actually previously seen other stars close up. She noticed my attention and smiled. I was struck at how humanlike the alien had become over the past eleven months. Now, when she smiled, I actually believed she was happy.

Riho had become a trusted and close friend. I found that I missed her company when we were apart. It had been a busy time for both of us. She’d begun traveling the planet both virtually and in reality to appear at various exobiology and alien linguistic study conferences while I split my time mostly shuttling between the Earth and the Moon.

My lunar duties had been varied but now mostly involved transitioning the weapons research being finalized at Far Side station into a viable armament production network spread across the inner solar system. Some of the issues I’d helped solve, or force through bureaucratic hurdles, had ranged from safer antimatter production to where to store the finished warheads.

We’d ended up staging the fragile warheads at a newly constructed arsenal located in the trailing Mars Lagrange point. The facility was automated and unmanned, as was the nearby interplanetary-ranged wormhole generator we’d built in a halo orbit around the Lagrange point itself.

The portal was close enough to the arsenal for convenient and fast shipping but far enough away so as to survive an accidental detonation. With the system, we would be able to deliver individual warheads to either the Phobos military wormhole complex or to Vesta on a timely basis, thus reducing the danger of stockpiling antimatter locally.

Ohmu was in attendance in my great room as well, but the android was off to the side, kneeling on one of her charging pads. Her current position prevented her from seeing the holo-images directly but she was undoubtedly monitoring the feed via the digital networks. I smiled as I took in the group; it was quite the little entourage. The fact that they were all here with me and not attending the far-more-spectacular public global virtual event meant a lot.

Movement off towards the dining area caught my eye ... and earned me a disproving glare. It was my final guest, Adele Sol Chilean, slowly panning her imager across the group. She was working on a new documentary about Riho and busy recording us as we watched the unfolding historical event. Even though she’d reminded us many times to ‘don’t look at the imager!’ I couldn’t avoid doing so. Oops! Hopefully, she could edit out my slip-up.

I quickly returned my focus to the view screen just as Hannah spoke, “Well, they’ve proved that the new wormhole machinery on Phobos can reach out as far as the current distance of the Assemblage Ark. Uxe and her team did it again!”

An unexpected voice replied from the room’s sound system, “Thank you, Hannah. I’m just happy that this time the main relays didn’t blow from the energy being funneled through them. We’ve had to redesign them twice.”

We looked to one another with surprise as we’d not expected my former wife to be online and actively monitoring our group. When I had spoken to Uxe earlier, she had mentioned that the plan was for her to be busy in deep interface overseeing the test. Obviously, this was no longer necessary ... which was good news! It meant that the new AI controls and algorithms were handling the calculations on their own without issue.

“Hi Honey!” I said, louder than was probably necessary. “Congratulations on the successful attempt!”

The rest of the room spoke up, offering their own congratulations. Hannah, Riho, and Picket took advantage of Uxe’s presence by seeking additional details about the ongoing test. Kela, Alek, and I just listened in as we had already spoken with Uxe earlier in the day and had heard much of it already. The kids and I had wanted to wish their mother good luck before the test series began.

The impromptu question and answer session continued until Uxe announced that the second phase of the test was about to begin. She would definitely be needed in deep interface this time around. We quickly said goodbye to let her get back to her work.

The next phase would be verifying and fine tuning our long-range targeting and guidance capabilities. It began with the deployment of a small autonomous targeting probe. We watched as the sensor stack penetrating the interstellar wormhole was withdrawn and, in its place, the probe was sent through.

Then, after briefly poking the sensor cluster back through the wormhole into Sirius space to verify that the probe had successfully orientated itself and come to a full stop just beyond the wormhole, the sensor stalk was withdrawn and the wormhole terminated.

Over the next ten minutes, the wormhole machinery was given a quick diagnostic and the energy reserves on Phobos allowed to recharge. Once the hardware was ready, a new wormhole would be formed. The targeted terminus destination for this second wormhole was to be the exact same spatial location as the first.

Due to galactic rotation, stellar drift, and the dozens of other spatial corrections needed, it was expected that we would miss our target. The big question was, how far would that miss be? All chat stopped as we again focused on the holo-display. The still-recording sensor stalk showed the purplish distortion ring of the second wormhole forming and punching a tunnel to the distant star.

The bright flash of a tunnel suddenly receding into infinity resolved itself revealing a distant starfield. Sirius was no longer centered in the new view which meant that the wormhole terminus had shifted. After a short pause to verify its stability, the sensor stalk was reinserted. The starfield quickly panned around as the articulated sensor stalk brought the bright blue star into the center of the image.

Riho was following the data scrolling along the edges of the display and reported, “The brightness and angular resolution of the target star matches that of the previous images.”

At our perplexed look, she explained, “This indicates that the second wormhole terminus has formed at roughly the same distance from the target star as the first.”

Ah, now I understood. I also realized that from sixty AU, to have the star appear the same would still allow for quite a bit of drift ... possibly hundreds of thousands of kilometers or more. We’d need to find the probe we had left behind earlier in order to use precise range-finding.

On the display, the data indicated that the sensor was receiving the probe’s transponder signal. The starfield panned around until we were looking back towards the wormhole terminus the sensor stalk was protruding from.

It then zoomed in on an area of starfield just off the top edge of the wormhole where the flashing marker lights of the probe became visible! The zoom had taken many seconds and the markers looked quite small, which meant the probe had to be far away.

We’d missed of course. From the probe’s location, it also appeared that we’d undershot the first wormhole terminus point and had formed the second much further away from the probe. I quickly found the new data scrolling alongside the image.

“Seven hundred forty-three kilometers and change,” I read to the others. “That’s quite a miss from the first terminus point right?”

They looked amongst themselves, as puzzled as I was. We all turned to Riho at the same time. She was the one whose augment was a full AI after all.

“The discrepancy is amazingly minuscule, John,” She reported excitedly. “To have missed the target destination by only seven hundred forty-three kilometers out of eighty-one and a half trillion kilometers is virtually perfect!”

Ohmu spoke up from her charging mat. “Yes, the test results are quite successful for a first attempt. Truffles and Uxe are quite happy and are hopeful that refinements to the targeting algorithms will reduce the discrepancy.”

“Are you in contact with my wife?” I asked, now beginning to comprehend just how amazing the second test had been.

I saw Alek and Kela smirk at my slip of their mother’s present marital status. Ohmu was kind enough to ignore my gaff as she answered, “No, but I am monitoring the hyperdata exchange ongoing between the various members of the AI advisory council.”

The android then gracefully stood and moved into our circle. “The result is well within predicted margins. Five additional refinement tests will now be attempted before phase three begins. These tests may last up to two hours and will involve mostly waiting for power levels to recharge. As it is nearing supper, to help pass the time I suggest we adjourn to the dining area and enjoy nourishment. What would everyone like?”

Hannah jumped up. “I’ll help you, Ohmu. I prefer cooked food and I’ll decide what I want when I see what’s in John’s pantry.”

I got up also. “I’ll man the grill up on the patio. Everyone okay with barbequed seafood?”

Two hours later we were back in front of the holo-display watching as phase three of the test was about to begin. By ‘we’ I did not include Serenity and Cassius. The youngsters had had enough of watching the live ‘boring’ tests and had gone for an evening moonlit swim at the north beach.

I did not begrudge them as I remembered (barely) being young, impatient, and in lust. I also had to admit that the past hour had been about as dull as watching paint dry. Despite the boredom for the observers, the phase two trials had gone well with six successful attempts made at forming wormholes near the deployed probe over eight light years away. The final three had seen the spherical error of probability drop to less than a hundred kilometers.

Phase three would hopefully reduce this error number drastically. At the same time, new complications would be added. Instead of only forming one wormhole at such an incredible distance, phase three would evaluate our ability to create a second, companion wormhole in close proximity to the first.

The tests involving the second wormhole had two purposes. The first was to verify that the modifications made to the Sarissa mechanism on Vesta would allow it to project wormholes at least as far and with the same accuracy as the Phobos installation. The second purpose was to verify if it was possible to link the two wormhole facilities together.

We hoped to use the first wormhole to help guide the placement of the second. Much as the old ground-based telescopes of my birth era had used artificial stars projected by lasers to compensate their imaging due to atmospheric distortion, we hoped to use the feedback from the first active wormhole to correct the guidance and ranging for the second.

Since the modified Sarissa machine used similar hardware as the already-proven Phobos, achieving the first goal was almost a certainty. The second goal, linking the two wormhole facilities using the virtually lag-less intra-system wormhole com systems to pass guidance data back and forth was the big unknown.

They had evaluated the process with some success locally, but Uxe and the AIs debated on whether the process would scale up to the interstellar distances required to successfully target the Assemblage ark with extreme precision.

Uxe would certainly be busy in deep interface, but we had asked Naomi to keep a channel open from Uxe’s consciousness for us to monitor. She would not be able to directly talk to us or answer any of our questions, but her augment would translate her thoughts and relay relevant summaries to us audibly.

That channel suddenly spoke, “Second wormhole forming. Sarissa mechanism apparatus stable. Direct interface linkage between Phobos and Vesta stable. That fucking data repeater! Truffles, I thought we had that ... unnecessary commentary redacted. Test proceeding.”

I almost laughed at the slip which allowed the inadvertent broadcasting of Uxe’s innermost thoughts. She had picked up the outdated colorful language from her long association with me. But then, the thought of my ex-wife merging her mind with the machines so intimately sobered me.

The holo-display, now a split screen, relayed what was happening on Vesta along with the view from the Phobos wormhole created earlier. A smaller sensor cluster was just entering the smaller, six-inch diameter Sarissa wormhole, and soon that half of the display now showed a star field like the first!

The view shifted as the new sensor head quickly panned around until Sirius was visible. The Dog star and the star field beyond looked the same in both images confirming they were at least located in the same general vicinity.

Uxe’s augment reported in again, “We’ve confirmed that the new spatial disruption sensor on the Phobos wormhole sensor stalk has detected the gravimetric waves of the second wormhole.”

We’d expected the recently developed detector to function as we’d tested it in local space but to have confirmation that it worked after having passed through an ultra-long-range wormhole was still great news. The new sensor could detect wormholes as they formed or dispersed, but the technology was still too imprecise to gauge true distances and bearings.

“Both wormhole standard-wavelength sensor units detecting the transponder signals from the other. Laser range finding successful. Distance between the two sensor units verified at 987.62 meters.”

Twelve and a half meters short of the goal of exactly one kilometer of separation! The images on both screens panned slightly and zoomed in. In each, we could see the flashing marker lights of the opposite sensor heads. I shook my head at the audacity of what we had just done.

“I’m finding it hard to believe what I am seeing!” I said aloud. The others nodded or commented that they felt much the same way. We had just managed to open two separate doorways over eight light years away and near one of our stellar neighbors and the locations were just thirteen meters shy of a perfect one kilometer apart.

“Resonance feedback holding stable. Adjusting guidance algorithms,” the ceiling speaker reported. Like I’d noticed during previous episodes of deep interface, Uxe’s voice was blended with that of Truffles AI! That her augment could not even use Uxe’s normal voice was perplexing and disturbing. I saw Kela look at Alek. The kids had noticed and were clearly just as concerned as I.

What Uxe-Truffle’s last statement confirmed was that the wormhole machines were successfully integrating the feedback data and using it to gain more precision from their targeting algorithms. The next step would be to terminate the Sarissa wormhole and then reestablish it using what they had learned from the first attempt. The goal for the second attempt was to reduce the separation by half and form the termini with exactly five hundred meters’ separation.

They would only be able to try this once, as Vesta had far smaller energy reserves than Phobos. But the test was already being considered a wild success and I was sure they would run it again in a few days or weeks when power was again sufficient.

The Vesta screen showed the micro sensor stalk being withdrawn and another independent probe sent through. To fit the narrow wormhole, this second probe was tiny, only the size of an orange. It lacked the full sensor suite as the larger probe sent through two hours ago by the Phobos wormhole but it did manage to squeeze in a camera, a combination laser communicator and range finder, and a radio transmitter/receiver.

Once it was through, it would function as a backup to the earlier probe and both would act as target points for future tests. The new microprobe’s transmitter must be working as we heard, “Contact. Sensors penetrating the Phobos wormhole have detected the Sarissa deployed probe.”

We now had a second autonomous satellite operating in a distant orbit around Sirius. If nothing else, both transmitting probes marked our presence around that distant star and revealed that mankind was interstellar capable. I only hoped that nothing smart and aggressive lived in that system to become offended upon receiving our signals.

“First Sarissa wormhole terminated. Attempting second wormhole in eighty seconds. Vesta power reserves at forty-one percent.”

As we waited, Hannah spoke up. “Well, this was the big one. Combining data from two wormholes has proven that we can precisely target the second onto any part of the Assemblage ark we want. Even though the Sarissa wormholes are too small for our antimatter warheads, they are still large and accurate enough to accommodate ‘Acid Rain’.

Kela and Picket looked at her with a puzzled expression. Dammit, Hannah! I spoke quickly, “Hannah is referring to a smaller, specialized warhead that is still under development. We have not gotten it quite figured out but as it’s unlikely to be needed, it’s been placed on the back burner for now.”

I saw Hannah frown as she realized her slip. Alek reached over and patted her hand.

“Now attempting the second Sarissa wormhole,” the ceiling voice said. It was back to sounding just like my ex-wife. I was not reassured.

The first screen was already zoomed in on the anticipated terminus arrival spot and we actually saw the tiny, sixteen-centimeter Sarissa wormhole form.

“Wormhole stable. Inserting sensor head.”

The second screen showed motion as the narrow sensor stalk penetrated into this new wormhole.

“Transponder detected ... verifying ranges.”

I held my breath but the data came quickly.

“Distance between both wormholes confirmed at 500.1240 meters.”

I did the math in my head but I could already hear cheering from Alek and Hannah.

“The error was only 124 millimeters. That is well within the accuracy needed,” Riho whispered into my ear after I had remained silent.

I’d already understood as much but had remained silent because I was again stunned. I held up my hand, the discrepancy just over half the length of my palm to my fingertips. We had achieved this from over eight light years away! I finally started chuckling, but with tears betraying my deeper emotions.

The test continued for another three minutes before the Sarissa wormhole had to be suspended due to lack of power. During that time, they had shifted the smaller wormhole while it remained active by simply shifting its spatial position. The one-hundred-meter shift closer to the first wormhole was nearly flawless.

With less than a minute left, they attempted to shift the position of the larger Phobos wormhole. It too was able to adjust its spatial location, although with far less accuracy than the smaller, nimbler Sarissa wormhole. They had aimed for a separation of two hundred meters but had come up over twenty meters long. It was clear that while Phobos had the size and brute force, Vesta had the pinpoint accuracy.

Finally, with time running out, the Sarissa wormhole was shifted until the two termini were just five meters apart. On the split screen, we were able to see close-up views of each of the opposing sensor stalks.

Then, just before the smaller wormhole was shut down, the grand finale of the test series came. This involved the launching of a microprobe from the larger Phobos sensor stalk aimed at its new smaller neighbor. The smaller sensor stalk was withdrawn leaving the petite wormhole a perfect target in space.

At only five meters separation, it was an easy shot and this was confirmed when the micro-probe bullseyed the boundary and arrived on Vesta. Aside from breaking a new record for total distance traveled by a human-made object (just over sixteen light years round trip), this final test proved that the Sarissa mechanism could compensate for translating distant masses sent from Sirius’s spatial vectors and velocities and align them with the local conditions at the asteroid.

The test series was complete and our holo-display feed was shut down soon after. We waited around until Uxe emerged out of deep interface and again congratulated the exhausted woman. She was graceful in her acceptance but I could tell that she was both extremely tired and eager to begin analyzing the full data accumulated.

I made her promise that she would not work too hard and reminded her that her son would be arriving in Mars orbit in a few days. Now that both wormhole facilities had been proven capable of Assemblage-range transfers, Hannah and Alek were shifting their base of operation to the Elon II orbital station.

They’d chosen the station due to the increasing availability of dwelling spaces on the station. The surplus was due to the lessening need for docking interplanetary transports and surface shuttles at the station. Now, with wormhole transport, everyone just arrived on the surface without any intermediary steps and delays. Living on the station, Alek or Hannah were just a short shuttle flight or local wormhole transfer from either Phobos or the surface colonies.

Our viewing party broke up after that. Hannah and Alek were staying in the guest cottage down by my workshop and departed using the tube-way. The cottage had two bedrooms but I suspected from the way they’d left holding hands that tonight’s excitement would translate to a temporary rekindling of intimacy and that only one bed would need making in the morning.

Kela and Picket were staying in the guest suite just down the hall. Kela hugged me goodnight before they made their escape. From experience, I knew that instead of anything carnal, the pair would likely be off in virtual for much of the night.

Their augments would see to their shells, resting their physical bodies while their mentalities spent accelerated time working in the SRP or other virtual occupations. I was not happy with the way they’d chosen to live, but it was their lives. Naomi assured me that Dionus AI was watching both beings carefully for mental degradation. So far, with their humanity remaining intact and their mentality somewhat sane, I would respect their choice of lifestyle.

Serenity and Cassius had not yet returned from the beach area. Ohmu reported that after the test broadcast had concluded, most of the island’s guests had returned from the virtual forum in such high spirits that an impromptu beachside bonfire party had broken out. Serenity and Cassius were ‘overseeing’ the party and would likely not return until very late, if at all.

Riho and I had been invited to come down and join in on the celebration, but we’d declined. The alien was not a big fan of dancing naked around a fire while under the influence of intoxicants, and I used that as an excuse for my own reluctance to celebrate.

The truth was, despite the amazing results of the wormhole experiments, I was in a bit of a mood. Today was also my birthday. 1148 years ago, I had been born. I guess I was just feeling my age.

Riho was silent as she followed me to our bedroom. Yes, our relationship had developed to the point that we shared quarters whenever we were together. Was it love for either of us? I wasn’t sure of my own feelings, let alone understand what the alien was feeling.

I did not think I was feeling a complete and devotional love. I enjoyed Riho’s company and thought of the alien ambassador as a good and trusted friend. I think she thought similarly. She maintained that sharing beds was a logical decision as it facilitated my usefulness in relieving her biological shell’s occasional need for hormonal release. It only made sense that while doing that chore, my own shell’s hormonal needs should be satisfied.

Adding to my comfort level in our growing physical relationship was the fact that Riho’s shell no longer resembled a child’s. We’d arranged for Xenius to buy out Riho’s shell lease and had begun growth treatments. In the past eight months, the shell had grown almost fourteen centimeters in height and gained ten kilograms in mass. While still petite, she now safely appeared as a grown-up and I felt less like a pedophile.