Solbidyum Wars Saga 6: Defeat of the Tottalax (25 page)

“No, probably not.  However, his habitat is pretty unique from what the crew has been telling me.  Half water with deep pools and then a habitat above water but with between 96 and 100% humidity.  Not a comfortable place.”

“Yes but, they could swim with him, and if we got gill packs for them, they could swim underwater with him,” Kala said.

“Gill packs?  Are they some sort of self-contained breathing gear?”

“Yes, didn’t you have those back on Earth?”

“Well we did have some breathing gear for under water.  One consisted of bottles of compressed air, and the other was a device called a re-breather that took the exhaled air from the diver and re-oxygenated it.”

“Sounds archaic and dangerous to me,” Kala said, “we have gill packs. They are a device one wears around your neck sort of like a thick collar.  You have a mask you wear with tubes that connect to the gill pack.  The gill pack consists of a lot of coiled osmotic tubes that are in the collar that water circulates around.  On one side the collar strips oxygen from the water which you inhale and when you exhale, it goes to the other side where the carbon molecules are stripped of the air and passed out into the water, as the rest of the air circulates through the system. There is a pressure-sensing compensator built in as well to take into account the need for air pressure changes due to depth.”

“Wow, how deep can divers go with these units?” I asked

“About 50 meters is the max, I believe.  They have other gill packs for deeper but those hook directly into your circulatory system via small plugs you need to have installed in your carotid arteries, and you don’t actually breathe while using them.  Your blood passes through them and is re-oxygenated as you swim,” Kala answered.

“I’m assuming it’s the first type the kids would use and not the second?”  I said questioningly.

“Of course, the second type is only used by professional divers, marine biologists, and some specially trained military troopers.

“So the first kind, do they make them kid sized?”

Kala laughed, “Of course they do.  All you do is put the size parameters into the computer before it makes them."

“So then it will be all right for me to take them to visit Tot?”

“Yes, but only under the condition that you ask him first if he would like for them to visit him.  You’re probably going to need to explain to them that Tot won’t be able to make any of those bubbles for them like he did in the show as well.”

I heard the twins squeal with laughter and delight and turned to see Jenira standing with them inside a giant bubble.

“By the stars, how did she do that?”  I asked.  Kala shook her head and said, “I don’t know.  Jenira did it earlier, but she won’t tell me how she does it.

“Isn’t the ship commissioning for the Maxette tomorrow?” she asked abruptly.

“Yes, at noon.”

“I would like to go with you,” Kala said.  “Captain Maxette was not only my commanding officer for years, but he was a close friend as well.  I would like to be there when this ship is commissioned in his honor.”

“Very well,” I said, “I see no problem with that.  We’ll be using Cantolla Gates to travel there.  We will need to go through the transport hub, though.  There isn’t a direct gate from either the
DUSTEN
or the
NEW ORLEANS
to Nibaria.”

“That should be fun,” Kala relied, “I’ve not traveled through the transfer hub before, and I have wanted to see what it’s like.”

Traveling using transfer hubs and Cantolla Gates was much like flying back on Earth when I lived there.  It was possible to take direct routes to some locations just like you could get direct flights on Earth.  However, for other destinations, you may need to transfer several times from one location to another to get a gate to where you wished to go.  The
DUSTEN
, being a flagship, had a direct gate to the central hub as well as other key destinations.  However, it didn’t have a direct link to Nibaria, which meant we would need to pass through a gate on the
DUSTEN
to the transfer hub and after that from there to Nibaria.

Persons on other ships in the fleet traveling to Nibaria may need to travel to the
DUSTEN
first before transferring to the main transfer hub and then on to their destination.  The entire system was set up so no one would need to pass through more than four gates to get to any location.  Very few persons ever needed to use more than three, since the main transfer hub contained thousands of gate stations, including some that could be reconfigured for special and more remote places.

The transfer hub location was a highly classified secret.  The entire hub was actually an old space station that had been used in the days before gravity wave propulsion systems and FLT speeds. It was a location where people needed halfway stations where they could get supplies and fuel.  They also provided locations where trade could occur between different worlds, and a base of operation for Federation troops.  Many of these stations were abandoned many years previously and all but forgotten.  The Federation had refurbished one of the largest for use as a transfer hub, towed it to a new location in space and cloaked it so its whereabouts was a secret for security reasons.  Millions of people, and tons of supplies and commerce, traveled through the hub without them knowing just where it was in the universe.

I had been through a transit station once myself, and that was in its first few days of operation, before it was known about, and used by the citizens of the Federation.  At that time, it was still undergoing a lot of construction, and only a few dozen gates were operational.  The station the hubs were in was one of the largest stations ever built.  It had a central cylindrical core, nearly a kilometer in diameter that was almost two kilometers long.  Radiating out from this middle core were arms that attached to the outer donut-like rings that were nearly three kilometers in diameter and each ring was a kilometer thick.  At one time, each of these rings had docking stations for ships to dock at, and there were cargo storage areas in each layer as well as shops, and other businesses.  Today most of those layers are now made up of hundreds of thousands of Cantolla Gates, going to places all over the universe.  Inside the central cylinder core, there are even more layers, each containing housing and barracks for thousands of Federation troops that can be dispatched to anywhere in the universe at a moment’s notice, through any of the Cantolla Gates on the station.

The shops and businesses were gone, replaced by dining facilities and recreation and exercise areas for the troops that occupied the station.  Security on the station is tight, and every level is guarded and every gate manned by Federation troopers.  Nine long access tubes run between layers all the way through the core from top to bottom; eight around the outer rim of the cylinder and one down the center.  Each level is equipped with trains and trams that transport people quickly from one gate area to another.  People in transit move rapidly through the station, and only working personnel and troopers posted to the hub station are there for more than an hour or two.  Each person arriving on the station passes through a scanner, as is each departing person.  The system is automated and done by a computer so quickly that very few individuals even know the process has happened.  At the very bottom of the central core was a large area with large Cantolla Gates capable of handling small ships like patrol ships and fighters, including mechanized armor and other pieces of military equipment.

The
MAXETTE
would have its own direct Cantolla Gates designated for critical Federation locations. However, at the moment only one gate was operational, and that required us using the transfer hub to reach it.  The other Cantolla Gates would have their sympathetic particles installed and activated after commissioning.

Due to time differences between our location near Irribis and the
MAXETTE
at Nibaria, Kala and I needed to get up quite early in the morning to make the trip.  Because the commissioning was a ceremonial occasion, I needed to wear my formal white uniform with the light-blue piping.  Although Kalana no longer served in full capacity in the Federation military, she still was listed on its active roles.  Shortly after our rescue from Desolation, Admiral Regeny had surprised her by increasing her rank to that of captain, so she now was dressed in her formal military whites with the dark-green piping of a captain.

As First Citizens, Kala and I could have elected to wear special outfits reserved for us alone, but since this was a military event and in respect for Captain Maxette, we decided to stay with our formal military whites.  We were an odd-looking entourage as we passed through the Cantolla Gates with my Federation bodyguards, and Kala’s bodyguards made up of Jenira’s team of Women with Swords, though now, after the event at Irribis, they also carried side arms as well.  Jenira, of course, insisted she be part of that team, while leaving four more of her team to babysit the twins while we were gone.  When I tried to question Jenira as to why the twins needed four sitter/guards, aboard the
NEW ORLEANS
where they were safe, her response was, “One cannot be too careful,” I simply shook my head and let her have her way.

The transfer hub had two levels set aside specifically for Federation representatives and military personnel traveling to ships and restricted government sites, and it was through one of these that we arrived at the hub.  We no sooner exited the gate then we were greeted by the captain of the guard unit for that level, and while I was his superior officer, I was granted no special favor in passing through the security procedures, nor were any of my guards.  Only after all security checks had been made, and we were cleared, did the captain salute and say, “Welcome to the transfer hub, Admiral, how may we assist you in getting to your departure gate?"  I was glad to see his attention to security measures; he had performed exactly as the protocol we had set up for the station dictated.  No person using a gate was to be granted any special favor or privilege until they had cleared the security checks.  Around the hub, small trapdoors concealing weapons for defending the station could be seen.  Vid cameras were everywhere, and both computers and humans scanned vid screens, watching every movement for suspicious actions that might indicate a threat to the hub.

The gate we arrived through on the hub was located in the central core, but the gate we would need to use to travel to the
MAXETTE
was located in one of the outer rings over a kilometer away and on a lower level.  This required us to travel the distance inside one of the tube trains that ran through the stations.  The tube trains were capable of running vertically or horizontally depending on where you were going and used some sort of magnetic propulsion system.  We were assigned an additional group of eight troopers to accompany us through the station, and while the number of guards seemed excessive, after seeing the ruthless nature of the Brotherhood, I was beginning to understand the necessity for all the security.  It’s human nature to believe that most security is unnecessary until it’s proven to be ineffective in some event, and then voices are raised as to why there wasn’t more.  Because of the size of our group, which now had grown to eighteen; nineteen if you counted the captain of the guard who insisted on traveling with us to our departure gate, it became necessary for us to travel in three separate tube cars.  Four station troopers in the first and four in the rear cars and my group of ten plus the captain in the middle car.  The cars had no windows, so it was impossible to see what was outside the cars as we moved through the station.  The only sense of where we were going was provided by the sensation of motion as we accelerated, decelerated, turned, or moved up or down.  Otherwise, we were pretty much at a loss as to where we might be on the station.  I, and my security team, had a fair idea of our location because we had studied the station plans and the route we would travel before we’d ever left the
DUSTEN
. 

“So, Captain,” I said, addressing the captain of the hub security team as we began our journey, “how long have you been stationed here?”

“Sir, I’ve been stationed here since renovations on the station began,” he replied.

“So then you’ve gotten to see all the changes that have taken place.  I imagine things are quite a bit different now from what they were back then.”

“Definitely, sir.  When I first arrived at the station we only had three gates operational, now there are nearly one hundred thousand gates and more being installed every day.”

“One hundred thousand gates!  Already?”

“Yes sir.  I heard one of the engineers say the other day that this station can probably operate about 500,000 gates, but it will require at least four times that many to serve the Federation planets.”

“Really, I said, realizing that I needed to talk to the engineers and A’Lappe, and see about finding more stations to convert to a hub, and get them working on it if we wished to be able to serve all the Federation with Cantolla Gates.

“How are the troops serving on the hub taking it?  Are there any problems or complaints?” I asked.

“No sir, no complaints, just the opposite.  Because of the gates, the personnel here transfer home at the end of each duty cycle, and they get to see and spend more time with their families.  At first, there were some complaints about the sizes of personal accommodations here being so much smaller than on the Federation ships, but once they realized they were only using them for a few days at a time before being rotated back to their homes, they no longer minded at all. It’s not like a starship where you were gone for years at a time, though I guess that’s changing now as well,” he said.