Short story-ish piece of writing

[Ded10c]

Wrote this while on holiday. It's quite an in-depth... thing... with a character from the AED (Archeological and Exploration Division) during the early part of the ISDF/Scion war, heading through the teleporter on the dark planet. Explains a lot of technology (including some of my own invention) using my own theories (built upon NK1's), but doesn't do much else. Might do more later.

The test does, of course, work out correctly, for those who were wondering.




The arms of the teleporter began to spin, bearing more than a passing resemblance to a gyroscope. The massive orange construction was almost one-of-a-kind, an experimental building designed to move large amounts of matter instantaneously from one place to another. Of course, this was already possible - large biometaloids distorted the fabric of space-time, allowing a WORM-drive to punch a hole between them - but the technology required to create and use such a wormhole was large and fixed to the surface; the holes created by WORM-drives were notoriously unstable, and attempting to use one without first activating the biometaloid's wormhole generator could prove catastrophic. Unfortunately, neither human nor Scion had ever managed to create a wormhole generator themselves, instead relying on the technology created by the Cthonians. To further complicate matters, only two wormhole generators were known to exist - one in the human solar system, orbiting Sol beyond Pluto and the Kuyper belt, and the other in the Scion system half-way across the galaxy, orbiting the large, warm star way out beyond the ice planet Bane - which effectively meant the wormhole technology could only be used to travel between these two locations, using one biometaloid as an entrance point and the other as the exit.

The teleporter currently powering up on the surface of Sol's biometaloid, however, was part of a different story entirely.

The biometaloid orbiting Sol had been dubbed the Dark Planet, an awful early-21st Century cliché, since it had not yet officially been discovered and the astronomers on Earth had no knowledge of its existence. They had no knowledge of the ISDF either, or the Scions, or biometal. But the ignorance of the human race as a whole is what keeps them safe from whatever may be lurking out there in the wider fringes of the galaxy.

A small team of scientists from the ISDF - the International Space Defence Force, the first and last line of defence against any extrasolar threat to humanity - had recently uncovered a massive cave network deep beneath the planet's surface. Inside, a new form of biometal had been discovered - Strain III, also referred to as Biometallic Lattice. These crystals had proven extremely valuable to the ISDF as both a resource and a source of power, and so they had been mined in earnest. In fact, so many crystals were mined that the Tug pilots were unable to keep up, and the commander-in-chief of the AED - the research division operating on the planet - had requested assistance from the ISDF's large and top-secret base on Pluto, Cerberus.

Instead of sending another detachment of Tug pilots, as the commander had expected, he had been issued with a single constructor, pre-programmed with the blueprints to the teleportals. Two had been constructed, one topside and one deep within the mines. And now it was time for them to be tested.

Such teleporters had been tested before, of course - despite being prototypes, any new technology developed by the ISDF underwent rigorous testing before being released for use. These teleporters, however, were a different story. While the main ISDF research facilities on Mars and Titan struggled to teleport anything more than a simple biometal slug more than a few metres, the facility on Cerberus base was far ahead of them. They had been able to successfully transported not only large amounts of biometal, but also anything in contact with that biometal. Fortunately, biometal had the unique ability to hover when the correct electrical current was applied to it - and it was also this phenomenon that the teleporters developed by the Cerberus team relied on.

Lieutennant-Commander Mark Watson knew how they worked in theory - in order to be attached to the Archaeological and Explorative Devision, he had to undergo basic training in biometal theory, something relatively few members of the military units got. Most were simply trained in the use of the technology, but Watson was one of the priveliged few who knew how it worked - or so he liked to think. There were, of course, those who understood the technology far better than he.

Simply put, to make a lump of biometal hover, one must apply an electrical current across it. When regulated properly, this current would cause a rearrangement of the subatomic particles in the synthetic substance, enabling a phenomenon known as gravitational resonance to occur. This reversed the gravitational polarity of the biometal, allowing it to push itself away from nearby objects - whilst not strong enough to cause it to shoot off uncontrollably into space, or to deflect incoming objects, it was certainly, depending on the current and frequency - enough to cause the object to float upward a few feet or so. The whole interaction had never been observed in any other material before or since - and the most widely accepted theory amongst the scientists in the ISDF was that it was due to the dark matter contained in the fabric of the biometal itself. Unfortunately, its presence also prevented biometal from being manufactured, which meant the entire ISDF had to rely on the resources scrounged from other sources - enemy units destroyed in battle, for example, or mined from deposits scattered around certain planets. The origins of such deposits were unclear - none had yet been discovered on Earth, and those on planets in the inner solar system were relatively few. The asteroid belt, however, held an abundance of biometal-rich bodies, each only a few kilometres across. These asteroids - the remains of the Cthonian home planet Icarus, which had been destroyed by a cataclysm of their own creation - were more than enough to fuel the ISDF for now.

When reversed, the same process which allowed biometal to hover could energise it to incredible levels. Watson knew that the spinning arms of the teleporter before him, for example, were charged to millions of tetravolts, creating a spinning vortex of forces that could rip apart anything within it. While this vortex was charging, it was incredibly dangerous - anything that found itself trapped within the arms would be torn into its constituent gaseous atoms, after which the atoms would be rendered a nucleic plasma, their electrons stripped by the incredible amounts of electricity coursing through the arms.

The singularity before him settled into a single point of pure darkness, distorting the light that passed around it. Arcs of electricity still crackled through the air, the arms beginning to discharge through the air to the small pylon in the centre of the ring, a few feet below the singularity. Watson knew that in a few moments, the singularity would collapse, and that he had to pass through soon.

Massive amounts of energy were required to sustain a miniature black hole like this - amounts inconceiveable to the human mind. Fortunately, this technology was made possible by the very discovery that was sitting just under a kilometre beneath Watson's tank - Strain III biometal.

The crystals could be used to generate electricity in the same way as any other battery. After being purified, they could be passed through a dissociation generator, and whilst Watson did not understand the specifics (he had damn near failed Chemistry at high school), he knew that this set up a sustainable electrochemical reaction inside them, allowing a number of crystals in parallel to create the incredible amounts of power required to create and maintain the singularity before him. Taking a deep breath, he pushed the throttle lever of his Sabre forward, screwing his eyes shut and gritting his teeth as he prepared to impact the teleporter's spinning arms.

[Sly]

yes

[Ded10c]

yes

A slightly more... technical reply would be nice.

[bigbadbogie]

Is this similar to Hadean portal technology?

It certainly explains the presence of the 'teleporter' quarry device on the Dark Planet that Braddock is so eager to remove.

Very nice.

[Ded10c]

It's part of a pack of lies that runs much deeper than most initially realise - the relationship between the ISDF and Scions before BZ2 begins, what happened at the facilities on Pluto, the reason for the teleporter, why Braddock wants it destroyed, what's on the other side. Perhaps I will some day get the time to make the ideas into a mod. After PF, of course.

[Axial]

Interesting theory. We here at the Facility are perplexed as to why anyone not posted at Cerberus Base would even know of Cerberus Base's existence and call for aid. That existence of that installation is not even known to the rest of the ISDF or to the AAN.
Concerning the so-called "Strain III," I can neither confirm nor deny its existence. What I can tell you is that metals, by definition, form crystalline structures. That is why metals are so malleable, and that is partially why they are great conductors. Biometal is no exception, however it does possess a fair amount of what we can only describe as doping; it behaves more akin to a metal polymer than a straight metal. What we discovered is that if we powder the biometal and dissolve it in mercury, we create a biometal-mercury amalgam in which can store a charge. The energy density is akin to that found in a single gram of Uranium, but it is stored as pure electric potential. That charge is stored with an efficiency of 93.5%, so very little of the electric potential that makes it into the resulting biometal capacitor is lost to waste heat. Curiously, charges dissipate at a rate of 1 mA per week, but we believe we can further reduce this to 1 mA per year with the introduction of more doping agents. At any rate, you may or may not have heard of the so-called "red mercury." It has been an urban legend since the second World War, with many countries, especially the Soviet Union, attempting to replicate or acquire the substance. What I have just described to you is, in fact, "red mercury." It is a misnomer, because it is not actually red in colour, only the anti-gravity mechanism glows red. It may or may not run off of "red mercury," depending on how advanced one has progressed into the biometal's memory.

We at the facility theorize that your "Strain III" is actually an entirely different substance. It is not biometal, but rather a type of super-conducting semiconductor crystal doped with biometal. Conventional scientists back here at home have been dabbling around the idea for decades, but they have not successfully manufactured any room-temperature samples. To cut to the chase, the crystal itself is doing nothing but carrying the power without vaporizing; it is the biometal particles suspended inside that are actually carrying the charge. Since Cerberus has long since ceased communications with this Facility, we request a sample to confirm our analyses.

[Ded10c]

You are mistaken in the first part of your assumptions there - Cerberus' operations extended far wider than the original investigations suggested. The facility on Pluto was operated by a part of the AED that was privy to operations on Pluto, and therefore was, in a sense, part of the Cerberus facility's personell.

As for the second part... interesting theory. I'll poke around.

[Axial]

This facility is the beginning of all things pertaining to biometal and has been at the forefront of its development since 1945. We believe that the AED operating on that facility were not actual AED but rather ISDF black operations posing as AED. In other words, they did not come from the AED to Pluto, but rather came from Pluto, planted themselves into the AED, and came back to Pluto as an AED team so the AED would stop pushing for an expedition to the planetoid. The AED is/was therefore ignorant of the base's existence and, by extension, the existence of the crystals. Pluto was always Braddock's personal project, started during the early 70s with funds siphoned off of Project Pedigree. We understand that the Cerberus installation had been conducting field tests on the Dark Planet, and that they had some assistance from the now estranged Scions who were in the process of colonizing it (hence the network of superconducting crystals). The renegade Braddock got what he wanted and sought to eliminate them as witnesses, triggering the infamous conflict that culminated in the destruction of Dark Planet (New Core). Ironically, his destruction of Dark Planet is what has jumped our understanding of portal technology forward, with the ongoing Cerberi outbreak.

[Sly]

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