888 888 New Break Room
It didn’t appear that the ship had detected their sensor sweep, so the Arisen shouldn’t know that the humans had found them and were on a following course toward the Anomaly in Koleska Space.
As they passed by various Koleska inhabited systems on their way back to their station, they saw even more Arisen vessels staging for attacks, sitting in the other layer of space and waiting for some sort of signal.
That was just cheating. No wonder they were always ready to block the human vessels. They already knew where they were, and they had time to stage ships to deal with them.
As they approached the other human vessels, Max watched the Cube disappear into the distance, not headed for their system. There also weren’t any other Arisen vessels waiting here, and the space in the other layer was particularly turbulent. It was almost like someone had turned on the jets in a hot tub, and the currents were swirling madly.
Nico was already working to analyze the pattern, which only seemed to be partially affected by the Anomaly. Something else had made it turbulent and left a detectable mark on the region.
“I’ve got it. The center of the vortexes is where we detonated Antimatter weapons. The explosions seem to have stirred up the other layer enough that it is affecting space here.” Nico declared after a few minutes of silent calculations.
That sent the Innu into a flurry of action, double-checking the data and trying to determine if there was something that they could do to stabilize the layer or prevent actions here from affecting it at all.
None of the experiments that they had done at home had ever had this sort of effect, so it opened up a whole new range of possibilities as far as scientific theories went.
“It’s like the barrier between layers is thinner here than it is at home. Or perhaps the other layer is different at home. Do you think that the war that everyone talks about, the one that destroyed all the stars here in the past, affected space to that extent?” Someone asked while Max was distracted by calculating the likelihood of major attacks on the systems they had passed.
Nico shrugged. “I can’t say it’s impossible. We don’t even know what species were involved, though, so we can’t even begin to guess what they used as weapons. But look here. There is a gravity well on the other side where the star is here. The layers must be affected by each other somehow.”
The Innu worked on their theories for a few minutes before the one doing the layered space Thesis sighed.
“We need another sample set. More spots around the region, and then through the Alliance and Human space. There isn’t enough data in this set to support the theory that Antimatter Weapons are causing irreparable instability.” She explained.
Max shook his head. “I think that we already have evidence that it’s not permanent. Look at the interference patterns and then cross reference them against the time and scale of the explosions. You can see that the older ones have significantly degraded, while the more extreme and more recent ones are still holding closer to their original levels.
Going by that data, we should be able to estimate the amount of time that it would take for space to normalize after a significant Antimatter battle.”
That got them all going for the last few minutes of their shift until the alarm dinged to tell them it was the end of their shift and time to eat. That was Nergal’s cue to burst out with the excitement that she had been holding back.
“Everyone, follow me! The Commander made a new spot to have dinner, and it’s amazing. I mean really amazing like you wouldn’t believe.” She gushed.
Nico’s eyes went vacant for a second as she searched the ship’s cameras for what he had done, and then a smile came to her face.
“No overtime tonight, ladies. Let’s go see what Nergal is so excited about. If the Commander made it just specifically for us, then it has to be good.” Nico informed the research team.
“It’s for the whole crew, but I admit that the Research Team is likely to love it the most.” He laughed as Nergal started dragging teammates toward the door.
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“Welcome, everyone, to the greatest lunchroom ever built in a Cutter Class ship.”
That was probably Max’s job, to introduce the new ship features to the crew, but when they raced inside, they weren’t the only ones there. All four of the crew members who had just gotten off duty on the Bridge were there as well.
“Welcome back, Commander. We saw the power draw on the ship’s status window and came to see what was happening. This is incredible.” The shift’s engineer, a Human Woman who was now in a black bikini with a light sarong tied around her waist, greeted them.
The Innu were already gone, at a dead run for the Gravity slides with a trail of clothing behind them. The Giant was shaking his head in dismay while Nico picked up their armour and piled it next to the bar so that they could pick it up when they got back down to the bottom of the slides.
“They never did have a sense of propriety.” The big man sighed.
“They’re Innu, plus they’re still students. Don’t tell me that you didn’t have a wild phase during University.”: Max joked, and the Giant looked vaguely offended.
“Of course. My species are quite serious about our studies and our personal reputation.” He replied quite seriously.
Max noticed that Nico was bringing swimsuits to the landing pool at the bottom of the slide and subtly moved over so that everyone else was looking away. The armour suits were self-cleaning and temperature controlled, so the chances were that the Innu were wearing very little underneath them, and the Giant would be even more scandalized if he saw ten naked researchers rocketing through the transparent slides.