matter, Sondra?” asked
the Emperor of Grand High Admiral McCollum, the Chief of Naval Operations.
“I say hit those sorry shits with everything we
have, your Majesty,” said the woman, sitting in a chair almost a thousand light
years away, on the capital planet of Jewel. “From what I understand, the
window for the supernova really doesn’t start for another month, so if we give
them two weeks of hell, we can still be ready for the kickoff of Bagration. It will be tight, but it would be nice to secure that flank. In the long
run, I think it will help with our concentration of forces.”
“Mary?”
Captain Mary Innocent, Sean’s Staff
Intelligence Officer, looked up from her flat screen with a look of
concentration on her face. “I concur, your Majesty,” said the woman with a
slight strained smile. “With a few reservations. We can’t really be sure when
the supernova event is going to kick off. We have research vessels near to the
star, but something like this has never before happened in the Empire.”
“And by that, you mean two supergiants
spiraling into one?” asked McCollum.
“Exactly, ma’am. I think we need a real expert
on scene to observe the star. A theoretical astrophysicist who specializes in
supernova events. And I think I have just the man.”
The holo came up over the table, showing a
middle aged man with a pleasant expression on his face. Intelligent eyes
looked out of the holo as it rotated to show everyone at the table his face.
“Dr. Larry Southard, of the University of New
Detroit, on the planet of that name. Specializing in Mathematical models of
stellar decay, including novas, supernovas, and even hypernovas. Over a
hundred and forty peer reviewed papers in the field, a stint in Exploration
Command, and considered the foremost expert on the phenomenon. I think we need
a man like this eyeballing the star as it goes through its final stages, so we
have the best possible judgment on when it’s going to blow.”
“Get him,” said Sean, nodding. “No matter what
it takes. If he won’t be reasonable, call up his reserve commission. But get
him on a research ship orbiting that star. I want to know to the second when
it is going off, as soon as he can figure it out.”
Bagration depended on that star going supernova.
When a large object like a blue supergiant blew up, it not only sent huge waves
of photons from across the electromagnetic spectrum out at the speed of light,
photons of gamma rays, xrays, visible light and the searing heat that
accompanied those masses of photons. They also sent most of the star’s mass as
superhot particles, at high speed, though not at anywhere near the speed of
light. And, of course, the gravitons that had been coming out of the mass of
the star, telling the Universe that it was there, continued to move at light
speed into the space surrounding the expanding mass. They changed in quality
and quantity as the mass expanded from a high gravity source to a much more
dispersed source of matter.
Gravitons also travelled through hyperspace,
moving at light speed across the more compact expanse of the other dimensions.
In hyper VIII they were moving at a pseudospeed of over one hundred and sixty
times the speed of light. And there would be millions of times more of them
released by the explosion than was normal for the extant stellar body. They
reverberated through all levels of hyper, transmitting the thunderous roar of
the explosion, as it were, through hyper, for hundreds of light years in each
direction, and swamping the sounds given off by the graviton emissions
of smaller objects, such as star ships. For weeks at a time ships would be
very hard to detect, if not simply impossible. And the star in question was
the combination of two very large supergiants that had spiraled together,
leading to an unprecedented explosion.
And hopefully, we’ll be around long enough to
shield the planets within
the Emperor of Grand High Admiral McCollum, the Chief of Naval Operations.
“I say hit those sorry shits with everything we
have, your Majesty,” said the woman, sitting in a chair almost a thousand light
years away, on the capital planet of Jewel. “From what I understand, the
window for the supernova really doesn’t start for another month, so if we give
them two weeks of hell, we can still be ready for the kickoff of Bagration. It will be tight, but it would be nice to secure that flank. In the long
run, I think it will help with our concentration of forces.”
“Mary?”
Captain Mary Innocent, Sean’s Staff
Intelligence Officer, looked up from her flat screen with a look of
concentration on her face. “I concur, your Majesty,” said the woman with a
slight strained smile. “With a few reservations. We can’t really be sure when
the supernova event is going to kick off. We have research vessels near to the
star, but something like this has never before happened in the Empire.”
“And by that, you mean two supergiants
spiraling into one?” asked McCollum.
“Exactly, ma’am. I think we need a real expert
on scene to observe the star. A theoretical astrophysicist who specializes in
supernova events. And I think I have just the man.”
The holo came up over the table, showing a
middle aged man with a pleasant expression on his face. Intelligent eyes
looked out of the holo as it rotated to show everyone at the table his face.
“Dr. Larry Southard, of the University of New
Detroit, on the planet of that name. Specializing in Mathematical models of
stellar decay, including novas, supernovas, and even hypernovas. Over a
hundred and forty peer reviewed papers in the field, a stint in Exploration
Command, and considered the foremost expert on the phenomenon. I think we need
a man like this eyeballing the star as it goes through its final stages, so we
have the best possible judgment on when it’s going to blow.”
“Get him,” said Sean, nodding. “No matter what
it takes. If he won’t be reasonable, call up his reserve commission. But get
him on a research ship orbiting that star. I want to know to the second when
it is going off, as soon as he can figure it out.”
Bagration depended on that star going supernova.
When a large object like a blue supergiant blew up, it not only sent huge waves
of photons from across the electromagnetic spectrum out at the speed of light,
photons of gamma rays, xrays, visible light and the searing heat that
accompanied those masses of photons. They also sent most of the star’s mass as
superhot particles, at high speed, though not at anywhere near the speed of
light. And, of course, the gravitons that had been coming out of the mass of
the star, telling the Universe that it was there, continued to move at light
speed into the space surrounding the expanding mass. They changed in quality
and quantity as the mass expanded from a high gravity source to a much more
dispersed source of matter.
Gravitons also travelled through hyperspace,
moving at light speed across the more compact expanse of the other dimensions.
In hyper VIII they were moving at a pseudospeed of over one hundred and sixty
times the speed of light. And there would be millions of times more of them
released by the explosion than was normal for the extant stellar body. They
reverberated through all levels of hyper, transmitting the thunderous roar of
the explosion, as it were, through hyper, for hundreds of light years in each
direction, and swamping the sounds given off by the graviton emissions
of smaller objects, such as star ships. For weeks at a time ships would be
very hard to detect, if not simply impossible. And the star in question was
the combination of two very large supergiants that had spiraled together,
leading to an unprecedented explosion.
And hopefully, we’ll be around long enough to
shield the planets within
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