A DIFFERENT POINT OF VIEW

by De Writer

Curiosity and Observation

In the total darkness that ruled the wrecked Chain of Empire, Supreme Admiral Hassit snarled at empty air, “Why in the name of Empire do we need to shut down even the lights? That makes no sense!”

From the darkness came the calm voice of the blue furred creature, “I am trying to keep you alive, Hassit, old nutcase. Let me put it to you this way, perhaps you can actually think it through. If you massively warp space on very small scales, is G the only constant that will go down the drain?

“Not at all. All of your electrical junk depends on e, right? C too? Distort space severely and all of that goes out the window. I remind you that there is a hard vacuum on the other side of the window in this case. Every conducting wire or energy handling device will find itself unable to function. The energy, though, will remain. It will have to go somewhere. Those conductors and devices will become bombs. I guarantee that concussion and fragmentation will still function.

“Got it now? Or do I need to give you an infant foal’s formula bottle?”

“Our ship is already wrecked! What worse could happen?”

It was not necessary to see the blue creature to gather that he was grinning. “Hassit! Really? Don’t you know better than to ask that? You are far too likely to find out!

“Bye the way, you and all of yours, prepare for a very rough ride! Your ship was taken out by a grazing hit from what is coming. My sweet foster daughter is about to correct a number of factors connected to the moon that you are sitting on.

“It will be harmless because you are embedded in the local space-time complex. However, the distortions will be so great that you will be able to see things only a few meters away seeming to distort in bizarre ways. Gravity will do funny things too.”

Moments later, on the bridge of the Lash, Hissin got the same warning. He sent some of his bridge crew to feel their way throughout the ship to deliver the warning.

The pilot, on his return, asked, “Respected blue creature, one of engineering’s Rakki has a question. Would it be safe for us to use burning objects for lighting? They will not use electrical or displacement energies. They should pose no threat to our air supplies for the short duration of this emergency.”

The creature replied, “That is an excellent idea. The light output will vary as certain subatomic constants become variables but none should go into the ultraviolet or infrared. We call them candles. Since you were so polite, I will get a box of them and help you to light them.”

The old blue one vanished silently and quickly reappeared with two boxes. Holding them out in a field of slightly glowing pale blue, he explained, “One box is holders that will catch any wax that drips from the candles. The other box is the candles. They go together like so.”

The pale blue field supporting the boxes altered slightly and both boxes opened. One longish cylinder floated out and a small tray with a cup thing on it came from the other. The cylinder socketed into the cup part. A blue spark seemed to come from nowhere and lit the candle.

Its soft yellow light filled the chamber. To dark adapted eyes, it seemed bright. The pilot carefully fitted a set together and lit it from the flame of the first. Bearing the light and carrying the boxes, he set out to give the gift of light to the rest of the crew.

Shortly the Correction began. The floor appeared to be tilting though the candle in its holder stayed secure. At an angle at first. Then Hissin noticed that the other end of the bridge was twisted like a corkscrew to upside down and stretched away in an impossible fashion.

The old blue creature appeared to fold and flex but was not, apparently, bothered by it. That helped Hissin and his crew to take the sudden shifts and changes. Sometimes they seemed impossibly light or heavy. Through it all, the candles, though they appeared to shift about, stayed stable but the flames did change colors from time to time.

After a particularly weird twisting accompanied by a huge alteration in weight, the old blue creature smiled and commented, “Oh, that was lovely! She used the core’s angular momentum to cause the crust to adjust. Truly an elegant solution!”

As things appeared to be settling down, Hissin asked the creature, “Respected One, what was this that has just happened?”

The being made a fairly deep bowing of his head in return. He replied, “My foster daughter, Luna just made a correction to this moon’s orbit, rate of spin, angle of axial tilt and a whole peck of other factors. More than a hundred of them in the usual correction.

“Once it is safe to power up, have your astrogation verify what I just told you. You have the moon’s orbital elements in your computer just to get you here. Compare them to the present.

“Pilot, the problem that you identified with orbital decay? It applies to this moon, too. By the time that we could get on the problem, it took almost 75 years to get it here where it belongs. Keeping it here is a pain, too!”

Lights began to come on. Some instruments came to life. Hissin issued no orders. His crew knew what to do and how to do it best. It was not long before the Emperor’s Lash was back up to fully operational.

Somewhat puzzled, he turned to the blue being. “You let us restore our ship to operation, knowing us for a potentially deadly warship. Why?”

The being flexed his shoulders in a shrug. “If I HAVE TO, I can destroy your ship in under a second. I would rather not. I prefer let you live. I have been watching your Empire for a goodly while.

“You represent the best in your species. You treat your crew and any other slaves with respect for their skills and persons. Hassit and his like are far too common. Bye the bye, your laws require you to take him in chains to a tribunal on the loss of the Chain of Empire. Don’t let him buffalo you into having any preferential treatment.”

The old blue being quietly vanished again. Sensors reported, “He did it again, Sir and Master. However he does that, there is NO Displacement Signature. I was checking him in other ways too. He was not a hologram or other projection that we understand but represents a paradox. He was both there and not there at the same time.

“I got most curious about him when we saw him appear on Supreme Star Admiral Hassit’s bridge. Hassit shot five bullets at him. They all should have hit him but none did. In the process, I recorded this set of images of the bridge. Hassit executed his bridge slaves while at their stations. His bullets did so much damage to the controls that he totally lost ability to maneuver at all. He was lucky to manage the controlled crash here on this satellite.

“I have taken the liberty of making permanent recordings of the damage and all contacts with Supreme Star Admiral Hassit. The Chain might have been salvageable if not for the destruction of the bridge controls by Hassit.

“According to Engineering, the Chain is good only for scrap. For that use, we would have to be able to recover the wreck. Due to the dangerous nature of the locality, we cannot even do that.”

Hissin shook his head at the dismaying news. “It cannot be helped. Prepare for a vacuum rescue of the Chain’s surviving slaves and Hassit. He is to be treated as a hostile and taken by force of arms. He may not enter this ship’s pressure without being in manacles. Put him in the brig as a prisoner to be returned to the Empire for trial.

“He is to be charged with the willful destruction of the Chain of Empire through both faulty scouting of the local space and direct destruction of maneuvering controls while in orbit around a possibly hostile sphere.”

The complex rescue was carried out after several nerve wracking hours. The rescue of the valuable skilled slaves was delayed by Hassit demanding to go first. By screen, Hissin informed him, “Sir, you must be disarmed and in irons before I can allow you into the Emperor’s Lash. You are charged with the willful disabling of your vessel while in potentially hostile space. You are further charged with being the direct cause of the loss of the Chain of Empire through faulty scouting.”

“Ridiculous! We were attacked in a cowardly manner by an unknown weapon! We fought them off for several orbits before taking a hit to the Displacement Engine array that triggered an engine explosion! We suffered major losses in the engagement and retreated to this satellite for recovery!”

“Sir, that whole tale is a total lie. We have done a full flight log recovery from the Chain of Empire. The automatic recordings of control settings shows exactly when your reckless bullets destroyed operational controls. Our recording made while speaking with you, show the condition of the bridge. Only Free beings can posses handguns. Yours was the only one on the bridge.

“More, we have video of you shooting at and hitting the blue furred being that came to assist us. Luckily, he was not harmed by your stupidity. Your bridge lost the entire environmental control panel that was behind him. He saved our ship and kept yours habitable in spite of your foolish hostile actions toward him.

“You will be disarmed and in irons or you will be dead. Those are your ONLY options.”

Not long after, the Lash was headed back to Equestria. Hissin pointed out an exact spot and told both his pilot and a trainee from among the rescued slaves, “We need to maintain this spot under surveillance. It is of interest because there are NINE stealth aircraft circling that area. They are of two distinct types. Both have supersonic capabilities which they are not using. These,” he pulled up one of sensor’s pictures, “are hypersonic and have sub orbital ability which we have observed. Even more interesting to me is this, they have flown to position and been loitering for over a day without refueling.

“What has drawn so much well concealed attention, I wish to observe. Sensors has set her systems as widely as possible.”

Sensors looked up from her many displays and asked politely, “If it is practical, can we simply hold our position over the target by application of auxiliary power systems? It will make our data gathering far better.”

Hissin simply nodded acceptance. “You both know the area to avoid. We do not want to pass over that region on the other continent at all if it can be avoided. Somewhere in that area seems to be the origin of the dangerous space warping.”

The pilot, using his headset, conferred with both engineering and sensors before agreeing, “Sir and Master, we can hold our position over any designated spot on auxiliaries alone. We will coordinate with sensors and maintain the position for best observation of the target.”

“Very good, pilot. Do it, please.”

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The Emperor’s Lash hovered unseen by those below, over one hundred and fifty kilometers above the bare patch of desert between cradling hills. In the center of that stony valley stood a tall, gangly tower, apparently of iron or steel construction.

Sensors turned to face Hissin, who was watching her video displays with fascination. Both she and he knew that the real information was on other screens, showing as everything from graphs and charts to constantly shifting columns of numerical data.

“Sir and Master, besides what we see, there are the stealth aircraft and a variety of both ground and air vehicles that do not show, due to the scale of the image. I thought that you would wish to know what is not shown.”

Hissin nodded a courtesy as he replied, “I thank you for the information. Can you flag the watching aircraft in some way? I am not too concerned about ones delivering or removing personnel from the zone.”

She was just reaching for her display controls when she was rudely shoved out of her seat!