A pure fractal made in Apophysis 2.09, mirrored and overlaid upon itself
No Egybterian Glassine Moths were harmed in the solving of this crisis. They are still among the galaxy's rarest creatures, but are not extinct largely due to the work of then-Lieutenant Benjamin Banneker, the fleet's finest science officer of his generation. He worked out how to save Egypteri 4's ecology from a change in its star's flare pattern that would otherwise have completely irradiated the planet, and the fleet enacted this solution successfully.
When asked why the fleet should go through all that for some pretty moths, he made a comment which latter part would become legendary, six decades later.
“They are sentient and asked, and also, I pray we never experience what it is to meet a danger that has us where we can fly, but cannot run.”
Six decades later, that same big-hearted lieutenant, now an admiral, would give some people that same experience, and let them choose whether they wanted to live or die.
“How many ships do you need, Rear Admiral?” full fleet admiral Chenggis Chulalaangkorn asked.
“I need only the Amanirenas – we don't want them to get out of range too soon. When they see one ship, they will just think one smart-eyed captain just noticed something amiss, and that will get us close enough.”
“Rear Admiral, that will put you in the situation of being outgunned at least 20 to 1 – and even given that those are old Cepheid-class ships, that's still a problem if you get surrounded.”
“You're right, sir; I can't dispute that, although of course, the Amanirenas has one of the sharpest navigation crews in the fleet. They just need to miss once.”
“I'm sending five ships ten minutes out of range behind you. They will miss once, twice over.”
“Yes, sir.”
So, off the Amanirenas went under my command, going fast and then slow to interrupt a heist of old fleet starships that were supposed to have been scrapped years before … but 25 of them had fallen through the cracks, and were being ripped off from a shipyard in the Ghtryoson System. The personnel had been knocked out with the thieves' adaptation of Syreneyesian hypnosis technology, and the thieves were taking their time getting their loot up to working order as they wanted it.
So, we were running along with the element of surprise, working our sensors to screen out the Syreneyesian elements, working on all the things that the 83-year-old rear admiral knew that progress had forgotten about Cepheid-class starships – why the younger generations of our galactic rivals had wanted them, and why the generations prior to my uncle in the fleet no longer did.
“It's an elegant solution,” Lt. Cmdr. James Doohan my chief engineer said. “I mean, it's from Miguel Alcubierre's own playbook – it's like this has been a known possible strategy since 1994, and somehow the people who built the Cepheid-class of ships didn't know.”
“Who reads the old science?” I said. “It took my uncle and his protege Admiral Vlarian Triefield combined more than twenty years to get folks to admit the mistake and let these things go – and folks are still not convinced.”
“Well, if these ship thieves do not have good sense, they are going to do the convincing,” Lt. Cmdr. Doohan said.
“I need people in the galaxy to stop trying so hard to prove old science wrong,” I said. “I'm not even talking about my uncle – I'm talking about Alcubierre and everyone before him in the 20th century who already settled this.”
“I don't think they are trying to prove old science wrong, ma'am,” my chief engineer said. “Like you said: who cares about the science?”
So we closed in on the Ghtryoson System like we were the only starship and had noticed something wrong; we tried hailing the shipyard although we knew what happened to all of them and would beam crews in to bring those personnel to our sickbay for treatment. This alerted the thieves that we were in the vicinity, but, owing to having pulled their criminal records, we know they weren't going to be alarmed, and that their leader was actually going to hang around for a little while to flex on his haters.
“John Whitson – thrown out of the Academy, bounced around as a mercenary before settling into the interstellar black markets and pulling off small stuff against the consortium – but this is his biggest and most personal heist,” Adm. Chulalaangkorn had said at the fleet briefing.
“Yeah, they were still talking about the Cepheid-class and how stodgy the Galaxy-class ships of today are in some ways by comparison when he was there – and by 'they' I mean those who didn't actually bother to study,” Capt. Alessandro Donato said. “He must be close to my age, and collecting Academy flunkies and little brothers all this time – sad.”
“He's going to want to rub our noses in it,” Adm. Banneker-Jackson said, “and that's what we're counting on.”
So we had optimized our strategy with the necessary algorithms all the way to the scene of the crime – when finally there, I got up from my captain's chair.
“The comm is yours, Admiral,” I said to my uncle, and he sat down like he had never left it. He had been a captain for the last 15 years of his career, and a good one – but he had added some additional skills to that in 20 years off.
“When a consummate diplomat is ready to hurt you,” Lt. Morimoto said about it later on, “you are ready to get hurt.”
“We need two good minutes once communications are established for surety,” Cmdr. Helmut Allemande my first officer announced to the bridge at the moment, “but, we can run it in ninety seconds if necessary.”
“Understood, Commander,” Adm. Banneker-Jackson said.
I sat down on the panel next to my first officer and took over setting up for the short run if necessary, and kept an eye on the board upon which the ships in question were coming into long-range sensor reach, one by one.
“They're all in range, Admiral,” I announced.
“Open communications, Lt. Almuz,” the admiral ordered, and the chief communications officer did so. “This is Adm. Benjamin Banneker-Jackson of the starship Amanirenas. Power down your vessels and the stolen vessels and surrender.”
Sure enough, Mr. Whitson could not resist.
“Oh, so they had to send an old admiral on his retirement lap? That's the best the fleet can do nowadays?”
Mr. Whitson and his crew had a good laugh before he continued.
“You should know, old man, what a Cepheid-class ship can do – why the oldheads of your time ever decommissioned them I'll never understand. You can have our old ships – that's a fair trade, because these babies can do Warp 11 and be into the nearest Neutral Zone to deliver our cargo before you can get around the shipyard to go to a mere Warp 9! I know some of you modern oldheads need excitement in your life, but you don't need to go out a complete loser – sorry your retirement tour brought you this way!”
They laughed and laughed and then slowly stopped laughing as they saw the admiral was serenely smiling.
“Do you know what you have in common with an Egybterian Glassine Moth, Mr. Whitson?”
The confusion on Mr. Whitson's face was epic.
“What?” he said.
“I said, do you know what you have in common with an Egybterian Glassine Moth, Mr. Whitson? You might want to look that up really quickly.”
“Time is money, old man – I don't have time to look through Interstellar Geographic right now.”
“I'll tell you,” my uncle said. “You are in the same situation they were in 61 years ago: you can fly, but you can't run.”
One by one, red sheathes were appearing around the images of each of the stolen ships as Cmdr. Allemande and I worked on.
“Your dust,” my uncle said, “will not so much as kiss the outer regions of the Ghtryoson System if you do not power down and surrender at once.”
That stopped the conversation for a moment, because the sudden coldness of my uncle's manner was just that shocking to my crew, to say nothing of Mr. Whitson and his crew – nonetheless, because they did not know him, they reached for their bravado and started laughing again.
“You've got one ship, old man!” Mr. Whitson said before enjoying another peal of laughter.
“Umm hmm,” my uncle purred, unmoved.
I had sent the news to the monitor my uncle could but people on the viewscreen could not see that all was ready a minute earlier.
But while the laughter was going on, Lt. Almuz touched his earpiece.
“Admiral, there's another conversation going on with one of the ships!”
“Mute us to Mr. Whitson and put that on,” he said softly, then listened, then order, “OK, run that back a bit and play it real-time on my command. Put Mr. Whitson back on... Mr. Whitson, it was reported to me that you have a habit of collecting Academy little brothers, and as it turns out, the big brother of one of them is trying to save his little brother's life and also yours. Put that on, Mr. Almuz.”
There came the voice of retired Cmdr. John Buir on the line, talking with his brother Richard.
“Listen, Rick – your wife talks too much is how I know and it's a good thing because there are three things you gotta know about Benjamin Banneker. The first thing is that he respects life – all life, down to the smallest bacteria. The second thing is that he does not lie. The third thing is that if you put the two together you know the third: if he says he's going to kill you, he will, because he doesn't make empty threats about ending life. You gotta power down and surrender, Rick – you're going have to do some time, but you'll see me and your wife and kids again!”
“That's true for all of you,” Adm. Banneker-Jackson said. “Right now, you're up for battery by means of mental manipulation, but you haven't moved those ships – in the process of stealing, but not actually having stolen, so we can only get you for the attempt. You're going to get some years, but you'll see your families again. You make that attempt good, and you're dead.”
Meanwhile, because his bionic feet were out of sight, he had typed out with his toes, “Green-line Mr. Buir's ship, and open up communications with his ship. Quietly greet him, and tell him: begin a partial powerdown, but get ready to run toward the Amanirenas, at his maximum speed.”
“You know, old man, this has been real entertaining,” Mr. Whitson said, “but we need to go make some money before you get here and we have to put you out of your – what?”
He looked at someone off screen, and his face broke up in fury.
“What do you mean Buir is powering down – the coward – vaporize him!”
But Mr. Buir did a jump from his position at Warp 11, and was by the Amanirenas in a flash.
“How good of you to return that stolen property to the fleet, Mr. Buir,” Adm. Banneker-Jackson said. “It will be noted in your trial.”
Mr. Whitson blew up – “Oh, we can get over there just as fast, old man – we're gonna kill all y'all!”
But in the next moment, the ghosts of some even older men were waiting on him.
Everyone from Albert Einstein to Miguel Alcubierre knew: light speed is the natural speed limit for all matter and energy in the universe. No element can withstand the pressures necessary to exceed it before breaking down: most cannot even approach it to any appreciable degree. But, in theorizing about a warp drive in 1994, Alcubierre had put forth that an item could be contained in a protective bubble to protect it, and the discovery of anti-matter later provided a means to do that while generating the thrust necessary to sustain warp speed. The same technology that generates the warp drive also can generate the needed structural integrity fields to hold the ship's matter together.
The builders of the Cepheid-class of starships had indeed built them in mind of later adaptations making much higher warp speeds possible. What they had overlooked was that while indeed, their warp drives were adaptable with later technologies so that short bursts well above Warp 9 were possible, they had not coupled that ability with automatic corresponding structural field strength. One had to re-calibrate the fields manually. This was a design flaw that truly became immense when powering the ships back up from being completely off, because there was no failsafe to tell anyone that the warp engines were back up, but the fields were still off. Nor was there a failsafe against the ships being remotely ordered to turn their fields off.
As it happened, three-quarters of the ships in question had never turned their fields on, and one-quarter, including the one under Richard Buir's command, had turned their fields on manually and calibrated them correctly. Richard's big brother had graduated the Academy with honors, and Richard had listened carefully about the different kinds of ships there were and how they worked. So, it had actually taken only thirty seconds for my uncle's custom remote commands to turn off the fields that were on, and five seconds to turn Mr. Buir's ship's fields back on. So, he alone was able to do that amazing jump to Warp 11. Every other ship that went to warp immediately met the ghosts of Einstein and Alcubierre, at some appreciable closeness to the natural speed limit for all elements in Creation. As predicted, their subatomic dust never escaped the inner Ghtryoson System.
Adm. Banneker-Jackson's reputation was already immense, but one ship sub-atomizing 19 without firing a shot: that made him a legend, along with his statement that “You can fly, but you can't run.”
Our galactic rivals who had set up that situation did not know what to think. They respected Adm. Chulalaangkorn's well-known penchant for violence. They were not ready for the elder statesman of the fleet, a man who filled in at need as a soft-spoken and effective diplomat, to have done that.
“Sometimes,” my uncle said, “diplomacy fails, and when it does, and you still want peace, you have to make diplomacy fail spectacularly for those who insist on breaching the peace.”
But for the Buir brothers, diplomacy succeeded.
"And my life was spared three times, Admiral: spared from a life of evil, spared for my family, and spared to change my ways and be a force for good for the rest of my life," Richard Buir would later come and tell Adm. Banneker-Jackson. "Thank you."
"My pleasure, young Mr. Buir," he said. "Thank you for availing yourself of the opportunity of a better life, three times over."