[Chronicles of a Traveler] book 3 chapter 28

With Captain Dupont going to try and convince his leadership to go with my plan, it was my job to alter the hyperspace transceiver to swamp hyperspace with noise and drown out any harmonic communications. When I first started traveling, I would have been hesitant to attempt such a modification, but after my year on a mega-structure helping repair terraforming machinery I was confident enough in my engineering abilities.

The first step of which was figuring out how, exactly, the people of this world were using hyperspace for communication. Turns out they were doing it the easiest and simplest way possible, through vacuum cavitation. This is an odd property of space that only manifests when a hyperspace bubble is overlapping with normal space. To make things as simple as possible, normally space on the smallest scales is often described as a turbulent sea of fleeting oddities, too small and short lived to have any effect on much of anything. This is true whether there is a hyperspace bubble or not. But when there is a hyperspace bubble it’s possible to cause vacuum cavitation if you rapidly accelerate certain materials. In fact, this is one of the main ways to detect if a hyperspace bubble exists.

When certain heavier atomic masses are accelerated rapidly, on the order of several thousand gravities, normal stress-energy tensors are driven far from their normal equilibrium, creating a small resonance within hyperspace that forms pico-scale topological defects in spacetime that intersect with hyperspace. These defects last on the order of nanoseconds before collapsing; the result is a sharp snap that echoes through hyperspace since it operates on different laws than normal space. It’s important to note that the deformations of spacetime themselves don’t carry any information, rather the vibrations through the fabric of hyperspace are what were used for communication.

Human hyperspace transmitters utilized a handful of Neodymium ions that are passed through what amounts to a very short particle accelerator, rapidly accelerating the ions to a fifth a percent the speed of light and then back to zero over the course of a few meters. The ions undergo approximately 6 million gravities over a few microseconds, the result is a nice clear, single snap in hyperspace. The issue is that the neodymium ions absorb immense amounts of energy and become incredibly hot, their mass is low enough that they can be cooled off in a few more seconds but it limits the ability to use the same cluster of ions, so, often, a dozen or so of these accelerators are lined up in parallel, serving as effectively a single transmission source. I enjoy thinking of them as a hyperspace pipe organ.

Why was Neodymium chosen? I don’t know, every universe has slight differences in the exact nature of their hyperspace bubbles, after years of testing in this universe humanity decided that neodymium had the best interactions with hyperspace.

While this was fine for short transmissions of digital information that are clear and distinct, it didn’t work for what I wanted. I needed a constant roar, static, white noise. Something that would drown out any other noise present. The good news was there were only a few “frequencies” that one could transmit through hyperspace, which were less actual distinct bands than they were resonant frequencies that propagated better than others through the fabric of hyperspace for whatever reason.

One might imagine the best way to do this would be to curve the particle accelerators into a circle and run the ions around and around, the immense acceleration of going around would create a steady stream of snaps. But this wouldn’t work for a few reasons. First off, it was, oddly, too predictable. It would be a single, regular vibration that could easily be accounted and corrected for. And second it wasn’t loud enough, a handful of ions could create a good snapping sound, but that wasn’t good enough.

The solution was one that the people of this reality hadn’t considered, and that was their artificial gravity generators. I won’t get into how those work, but they create a localized, fixed slope in spacetime, resulting in a contained gravity field.

When I asked for a small artificial gravity generator in addition to the transceiver I got some odd looks, but they eventually found a spare generator for one of the ship’s shuttles and brought it to me.

The important part here is that gravity isn’t really a force, not in the classical sense; it’s a curvature in spacetime. When you are sitting at home, you think you’re sitting still, but space is rushing by you, downwards, which is why it feels like you’re being pressed into your couch. You aren’t moving, but spacetime is. This is, however, indistinguishable from the reverse happening from a physics standpoint.

By shrinking the effect zone of the gravity generator, and cranking up its output to insane levels I could create a small bubble where if you suspended a handful of neodymium atoms within it, you’d get the same effect as if they were being accelerated in a circle.

This would, of course, have the same effect as the circular particle collider. It would be too regular, too even. Which is why I wouldn’t simply suspend the atoms within the gravity field. I’d run them through a series of loops at high speed, not quite relativistic speeds, but enough that their relative speed compared to the fabric of space would vary by about 10% as they moved around the loop. By adding several of these loops at various angles and sizes, it would result in a truly abhorrent, constantly shifting noise that would be near impossible to correct for. Add in a slight randomizer program to the gravity generator altering its gravity field at random and even the Harmony agreed there was no way to communicate with that amount of noise.

That just left volume, and that was an easy fix. All ships already had hyperspace drives that allowed them to transition into hyperspace and back. By activating such a drive a partial power, enough to weaken the barrier between realspace and hyperspace it was like fixing an amp to a drum. Of course, hyperspace drives weren’t built to sustain that for long, so we’d need multiple ships to cycle through serving as the amp. They’d have to pull up alongside our ship and run their drive at low power for as long as they could, as if they were going to pull us into hyperspace with them. Then, when their drive started to overheat another ship would have to move in and take over as soon as the first ship shut down their drive.

The timing was incredibly precise, the Harmony calculated that if the jamming signal dropped for more than 5 seconds it would be enough for the disparate harmonic Phaeren to reharmonize and undo all our work. But if both drives were active with overlapping hyperspace entry fields we’d actually be drug into hyperspace where the transmitter would no longer work.

The next issue was with the gravity generator, to put it simply, it wasn’t designed to operate at such a high gravitational effect, even across an area less than a meter in diameter. Reducing the size of the field did increase its lifespan, but we figured it wouldn’t last more than a day or possibly two. I would have made more of these contraptions, but hyperspace transceivers weren’t common, since first contact with the harmonic Phaeren they hadn’t used them because they feared that the Phaeren could infect people through them. The older scientific ships still had them as a holdover, and for scientific purposes, but most ships didn’t. And while I didn’t use most of the device, I did need the particle accelerator parts from them.

Two days later Dupont finally came to get me, a mug of coffee in one hand, looking as harried and stressed as before.

“You have a working system?” he asked simply, looking over the mechanical monstrosity I’d built with help from his ship’s techs.

“We haven’t tested it, don’t want to tip off the Phaeren what we have, but yes,” I nodded, briefly explaining how it worked, “Based on our math we need a dozen ships to maintain a single jamming signal, and it will last at most two days.”

“Well, I got the fleet to agree to this wild plan,” Dupont said after a long sip of his coffee, “we’ll need another week for planning, given the odd requirements of this job. Near as we can tell the Phaeren harmony spans about twenty systems, we can likely manage good assaults on five or six of them.”

“Not good enough,” the Harmony replied, “you’d need to hit 18 systems at a minimum to ensure no unity remains between the harmonic entities.”

“We just don’t have the ships for that kind of assault.”

“I can design several transmissions that a single ship can broadcast in each system,” the Harmony offered, “this harmonic entity isn’t expecting an attack from one of its own, so a signal encoded in a harmonic song it should accept easily. I’ll design forty different songs to broadcast, each will, in theory, wipe a small section of the local harmony’s memories and feed it bad intel. That alone will prevent them from instantly reunifying once the jamming signal stops. But it won’t be enough alone. If they are only pushed apart by these signals, they’ll figure it out and reunify rapidly. But if at least a quarter of their systems are radically different it will introduce enough discord that reunification will become impossible.”

“Why forty different signals?” Dupont after a moment.

“Because I don’t know if any given signal will work, so each ship will have to broadcast two different songs, to hopefully ensure that at least one works.”

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It was a long week for everyone, the Independent, Dupont’s ship, had just come out of a major battle, the crew were tired, stressed and injured. Yet here we were, about to launch another major operation. One even more important than the last. I spent the week helping with repairs and selecting the best broadcast location for the jamming signal, doing everything I could to ensure the jammer lasted as long as possible in my off hours.

Hundreds of ships gathered from across human space, different nations contributed parts of their navies, with the United Colonial States of America contributing the most, enough to handle the assault on one system all by themselves. While others banded together with the international fleet for other attacks. Until, on the eve of the battle, I found myself in the officer’s mess with Dupont and his command staff.

“Apparently even North Korea offered to help,” one of his command officers was joking, “though they were turned down.”

“North Korea still exists?” I asked, confused.

“Sort of,” Dupont replied, “after hyperspace drives became common they bothered China until they were given a ship and a world to colonize. The world was... not great... barely habitable, but it shut them up. So the leaders of North Korea and a few million people moved to the new world they called Kim, after their glorious leader. And rebranded to, what was it... the Democratic People’s Socialist Empire of Greater Korea or something. Everyone still calls them North Korea.”

“And they have a navy?”

“Four ships, a hundred years out of date, that barely fly, with crews that are barely trained. Officially we put them in the emergency reserves but, between you and me, if we ever have to tap those reserves, we’re already doomed.”

“Still surprised they managed to become an interplanetary empire,” I remarked.

“Technically they aren’t, when the Chinese Communist party fell, South Korea took over the peninsula in, I mean it was technically a war. But in the same way a father putting a child over his shoulder and carrying them to their room for time-out is technically a fight.”

“Sounds about right,” I chuckled, “speaking of, is China joining in?”

“Yes, they’re still recovering from the civil war a few decades back, but they have donated a handful of ships to the cause. They’re out of date, but not by as much as the North Korean ships are. Largest contributors, after the UCSA, are the British, French and Ethiopia.”

“Ethiopia?” I asked, surprised, “that’s an odd one.”

“It’s said they have the fastest growing economy of the main colonies,” Dupont shrugged, “at least as of last time I checked. New Dakota might have overtaken them by now.”

“Seems like this is a major operation,” I remarked, “why didn’t these nations help out before?”

“Honestly? Because we wanted to keep it within the United Fleet, an international group made for exploration, and not involve individual nations. But we simply didn’t have enough ships, even with all the ones the militarists have been building. Technically this is still a Fleet operation, including all the national aligned ships nearly half of the ships belong to the Fleet.

“The real defining feature of this operation isn’t the addition of the national fleets, it’s the combining of the traditionalist and militarist fleets,” Dupont continued, the rest of the table growing quiet as they listened, “us Explorers and Scientists are handling six systems, five we are simply broadcasting the signals provided by the Harmony, and one we’re launching a false flag attack with ships posing as harmonics. The militarists are handling another twelve systems, broadcasting the signal in many of them and launching proper attacks in a couple others. Finally the national fleets are covering the rest, broadcasting the signals and attacking in their own ways.

“But the most important role, us with the jamming signal created by the Traveler, will consist of a small flotilla from both Traditionalist and Militarist groups. One might say that humanity only became strong by embracing the unity the Harmonic Phaeren have enjoyed, but I disagree, it isn’t our unity or general agreement that is what led to this. It’s the opposite, our lack of unity caused the Fleet to split into two, national groupings spread us across dozens of worlds, with hundreds of factions. We’ve fought each other less violently, but no less often than we’ve fought the harmonics. And because of that we have an opportunity to break the unity of the harmonics.

“Indeed, I’d say it’s their very unity that is their weakness. If there is only one point of view you’ll accept, that you’ll work with, then even the smallest divides can cause irreparable fractures. We are certain to lose every individual battle tomorrow, we won’t take control of a signal system, and while we might come out ahead on ships lost it won’t be by much. But, ultimately we will win the war, because what was once a harmonious union will find by the end that they aren’t facing one other point of view, but dozens. Former allies will become their enemies because they are no longer the same.

“We are going to inflict on them not a devastating loss or crippling blow, but perhaps the greatest curse they can imagine. Individuality,” Dupont finished, lifting his wine glass, the rest of us doing the same in response.

“To those of us who are about to die, and for those of us who might survive,” he intoned, “we might have our differences, but it’s because of those differences that we have a chance.”

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