doitstory Chapter 617: Gateway Station
Chapter 617: Gateway Station
Jace looked at the tablet as the newly printed probe started floating in front of him. The tablet was the controller for the probe. So he took a few seconds to program a flight path after checking the distance between them and the gravitational tachyon time bubble. It would enter, it would scan and then it would come back out and return to the hangar.
"Jace, are you about to send the probe?" Shinobi asked and Jace looked over to see him and the others had entered the hangar. Even Eduta who opted to meditate instead of helping them. Not that anyone else really minded, having a full-on alien looking creature around was still a bit abstract for most of them. Because they were used to entire human crews and teams.
"Once the diagnostic finishes." Jace answered before looking back down at the progress bar. "Which will be a few minutes since the probe has to run an automated course. Have you turned the shielding off?" He directed his question towards Cain who was following behind the humanoids.
"I did." Cain answered. "With the secondary power source offline I was able to turn off most of the ship’s excess functions. It will stay stationary and operate at maximum capacity while we are gone. When do we leave?" Cain asked as Jace moved the probe away from the printer and watched as it started printing a bundle of computing devices.
"We will leave after the probe gets back." Jace answered as he looked over at them and saw confusion. "It will be at least a week before Cain and I leave. When we leave it could be anywhere from one month to five years."
"That is a specific time frame." Victor pointed out as he moved to join the circle that they had slowly made.
"It is the time frame chosen from the minimum amount of time to the maximum amount of time that the tachyon bubble could be manipulated an hour of our time into." Shilla explained, she was looking at a data pad of her own. A quick glance with Jace’s abilities revealed that she was looking at the scan he did earlier. "Two months is the minimum amount of time they would need to activate the device. Which I believe is what Jace used. Just as a week would be on the better side for the probe to be gone, but not the best case scenario."
"What would be the best case scenario?" K crossed her arms, she had clearly taken the time to go back to her room to change into something more comfortable. Because now she was wearing a loose t-shirt that hung low to reveal some of her cleavage and a pair of sweatpants.
"The best case would be if the probe returned after an hour. That would be the minimum. But that is unlikely to happen." Jace explained before they could hear a beeping from his hand held tablet. He looked at it and nodded before pressing a button. The hangar door opened to reveal the yellow bubble in the distance with the red surroundings really announcing its color.
"You are a pessimist." Liz declared. "What should we do while we wait?" She asked as the probe floated out of the hangar before launching toward the bubble on a predetermined path.
Jace shrugged, "pick up a hobby. Just keep in mind our limited amount of resources. I suggest you specifically, Liz, learn languages."
Are you serious? So we just sit here for a while until the probe comes back out. When do we say enough is enough?" Jamal asked in astonishment.
"When a month passes," Jace answered as he moved over to some boxes and set the tablet down on them. "Now if you will excuse me. I am going to tinker with something to pass the time." That was a lie, he knew he was going to make something specific but wanted it to be a surprise gift.
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[System Update: 100%. Time Left: 0.]
Jace looked away from the room he had just finished setting up. It had been two weeks and two days since they arrived and sent the probe into the tachyon bubble. They had all busied themselves and were preparing for the possibly long road ahead. Jace in anticipation of the worst case had been preparing gifts for members of his team while he was gone.
[System update has been completed. Intergalactic method established. Begin Installation? Y/N?]
"Can I get some more information about what will happen when I do this?" Jace asked openly as he made sure the room was complete. Then he used a pulse of electricity to check the surrounding area and confirmed that no one was nearby.
[Three things are needed for installation. A home galaxy as the registered station. A fixed limit set by the current avatar. A gravitational device. Once all three things are acquired, then the installation will infect all inhabitants of the galaxy with a system and integrate all systems in the galaxy or remove foreign systems or enemies of the system and the host.]
Jace frowned as he walked out of the room and closed it behind him before moving down the hallway. "By ’infect’ do you mean all of the people in the Spectre Galaxy will get a system and not just the people in a certain radius?"
[This is correct Avatar. There were several other effects and restrictions. Would you like to see all of the effects or just the larger ones?]
"Give me a list of all of them to browse and read at my leisure." Jace answered with a twitch of his eyebrow. He just registered something happening on another part of the ship. He moved into a jog but nearly tripped when the list of information from the nanosystem popped up. He looked over it and whistled as he pressed the button for the elevator and waited.
It is an impressive and worrying list of information. All of which were things he could not currently activate. All of this would have to wait though. Because as the elevator door opened and he stepped in he received a request for communication as his hand held communication device started beeping in his pocket.
He pulled it out of his pocket and answered. "Yeah, I know. I am on my way."
"Two weeks and two days for roughly over five minutes. That is more on the bad side of things." Victor declared, he must have been the closest to the hangar.
"It is, but we expected as much after it did not return after the first week." Jace answered as he watched the level tick down until he arrived on the level where he would walk into the base of the hangar that was open. "We will talk about it when we all gather together. Send the notification to Cain to have everyone gather."
The elevator door opened and Jace walked through the ship as he hung up the communication device. As he moved he rubbed the back of his head. Already making plans after doing some equations in his head. A rough estimate meant that every hour inside the bubble was six months in the outside world.
They would have to move quickly. Because if they took too long the Mortella might be able to establish a beach head in the Spectre Galaxy. The Spectre Galaxy was what Jace referred to as their home galaxy. There were talks about it briefly during the meeting of the rulers. But they never decided.
Jace walked into the hangar and towards the probe. He approached the probe and accepted the tablet from Victor who had been looking at it. "What are we thinking?"
Jace opened the scan and began looking at the contents. "Prepare the extra power source for transfer. We are taking it to the gateway station." Jace told him almost immediately. The gateway station as they decided to call it, was running on reserve power and definitely required a power source.
"Does it need a power source? How is it emitting the tachyons?" Victor asked in surprise.
"It’s latent." Jace answered. "I will explain more when the others get here but that is the gateway station’s natural state, it is probably not a natural occurrence."
The lack of a power source was not the only thing the high frequency scan had revealed. It had also revealed that the tachyon bubble occurred because the gateway station was out of phase with time. The scan showed that the station only had four parts to it: a landing pad, a control station, a power station, and a living space. The living space was made up of several different parts which is why he thought it was a living space. The power station had pipes and wiring going from it. The control station had a view of the three chunks of metal that they had learned were projectors for a portal. Then the landing pad was clearly what it was.