Chapter 132

Dear Willow and family,

Hello from someplace outside of what we knew about the universe when humanity took up the Confederacy's challenge to fight the Sa'arm. I'm sure that you're saying that in my last letter that we had a good idea of where we were and how to get back to Confederacy space. And that is true. At least the part about having a clue about how to get back to Confederacy space.

In my last letter, I believe that I mentioned that we were pursuing an anomalous signal that seemed to be coming from the equivalent of a spaceship's black box? I'm sure I did. I think I mentioned that we had to have the replicator build tens of thousands (if not millions) of tiny drones that could then be configured in such a manner that they formed a steerable space-borne radio telescope in essence. But in order to pinpoint the location of the signal we couldn't build just one radio telescope but rather we had to build at least three and have them fly to points far enough from our location that they could attempt to triangulate the possible location of the signal. We finally decided that it was in some way emanating from within what appears to be the event horizon (if such things can be said to have event horizons) of the star-gate that some ancient race abandoned many millennia before the Confederacy was even a dream for its most ancient race.

We had posited that the only way that such a thing could be happening (that is a ship, or a black box being in that area was if it was drifting, essentially powerless. We further posited that we could only approach that location by drifting into it as if we too were without an operating drive. So that is what we set out to do. We broke orbit from around our dark companion and set a course for a point in space that we could only detect by indirect means.

Or rather more indirect means than even radio (or radar or lasers) represent. Or maybe I'm saying that wrong? Anyway what I mean is that you can't observe what is happening with your eyeballs, nor can you normally observe is with a radio telescope and say, 'Ah, there's a star-gate.' unless you know what you're looking at and know what to expect from a star-gate.

Of course I could spend another ten thousand words trying to explain exactly what we are detecting and how we're doing it and probably only confuse you more than I already have. Suffice it to say that we learned what to look for and found what we expected. It did help that we had a fair idea of where to look when we started looking, and that we did have the not yet interdicted information on the behavior characteristics of a star-gate from the Confederacy. Then again I could be totally wrong in my assessment of the Confederacy's attitude toward us being able to detect star-gates. They may think that having ships go astray like we have will become ever more of an issue if we don't know what to look for so that we can avoid star-gates.

Yet at the same time I can see the Confederacy not wanting us to have the knowledge that any such thing had been built. Because just the knowledge of the possibility of such constructs can give us clues as to how such constructs are created.

But I suppose that you aren't interested in such things unless they get me back to my family in a better time than a normal hyperspace drive will. That of course hasn't yet been proved as it will take a certain amount of time for us to coast into the position we believe we need to approach. So in the meantime I do still have to deal with concubines who are at least to some degree still grieving the loss of their sponsor. I can imagine, if this letter ever gets published to the diaspora at large that there will be some concubines out there who can't imagine how anyone could grieve for their sponsor. And I'm sure there'll be others who think that I've glossed over the amount of emotional turmoil that a concubine experiences when they find that their sponsor has been killed in battle.

All I can say in the end is that I have been careful to respect the grief that I've observed. You can think what you want but so far as I can tell these people were members of a family that was at least devastated by the loss of one of it's members. The fact that the person who is dead also was their 'sponsor' who provided them their place to live and guaranteed it with his or her life just makes things that much worse. Because they can't be sure of anything except that they must meet a new sponsor and become dependent on him or her for the things (including love) that their dead family member once provided.

I won't go into the psychology of what is going on, I just know that while the people we've picked up have opened up quite a bit to Holly, they have avoided me for the most part. I'm sure they feel that I and Captain O'Malley are the most dangerous people on board. Yet most of the women for all that they've been reset to look about twenty are quite a bit older than either of us.

After all Ensign O'Malley had barely gotten his second lieutenant's bars after graduating college a year early when he broke his back on a night jump, while taking airborne school with the army. That put paid to any thought of him staying in the military, even if they might have been able to run him through a med-tube. Only out here among the stars are we picking up the wounded on battlefields or training grounds and sending them through med-tubes then placing them back on duty. Then again we don't have the luxury of even a several hundred million adult population to draw from for people to perform any tasks. Indeed we have been pressing even those who originally volunteered to be concubines to take on more and more active roles in our communities, not just be early childhood caregivers.