Free Warrior Chronicles 3: Warrior's Realm by Shawn Jones

housing. To save time and space, we designed the inner surface of the housing as the parabolic reflector for the Hawking drive. A twenty-first century physicist named White suggested altering the shape of the warp field to minimize an anomaly known as particle blueshift explosions. Obviously we cannot turn off a quantum anomaly, so when the. . .” Book stopped when Cort held up his hand.
     
    “Captain, I’m not a physicist. Dumb it down for me.”
     
    “Uh, yes sir. We have three drive systems. The transdimensional drive you are familiar with. The other two drives are housed inside an ellipsoid. The Alcubierre drive is a warp drive. It bends time and space around the ship for faster-than-light travel. In the front of the Alcubierre Drive is the Hawking drive. It is a perfectly massed micro-black hole that emits Hawking radiation, which the ends of the ellipsoid reflect to propel the ship at sublight speeds, as well as brake it. This combination is the Jonah Drive Construct.”
     
    “I follow you so far. Go on, Captain.”
     
    “What I said about saving time and space. We made the housing for the FTL drive the exact shape and size that is required for the black hole to operate. By adding or subtracting mass, we can control our sublight speed.”
     
    “Okay, Captain. Tell me why it’s invisible though," Cort said.
     
    “Oh, yes sir. Combined with the dark energy from the Alcubierre drive, the mass of the ship is well, neutrally buoyant, gravitationally speaking. When the black hole is perfectly balanced, it has no effect on the spacetime around it. It is even invisible on the other side of c. Tachyon nets cannot detect it either. We nullify the mass of the rest of the ship by altering the mass of the Hawking Drive anomaly or the dark energy from the Alcubierre drive, depending on our drive mode.”
     
    “So the combined mass of the drive system is inverse to the mass of the ship,” Cort said.
     
    “That’s really dumbing it down, but yes sir.” Book realized what he had said and blushed.
     
    Cort decided to let the unintended jibe slide and moved on, saying, “You know Captain, back in my time I met Stephen Hawking. He was a smart-ass, but funny as hell.”
     
    JJ turned to the General. “You met Stephen Hawking sir? How?”
     
    “He was giving a lecture at Caltech and some bad people decided to kidnap him. My team resolved the situation.”
     
    “Wow,” Book said.
     
    “Why does her hull look like a Brillo pad?”
     
    “A brillo pad, General?”
     
    “The spongy surface of the ship.”
     
    Book understood and said, “Ah. That is the ablative nanotube mesh. It absorbs energy and converts it for ship use. We got the idea from your HAWC suit. Not even photons can escape it.”
     
    “One last question, Captain. You are clearly a scientist. As a rule, scientists aren’t willing to take life without thought. There will be times that you won’t be able to think about it when I give you an order. Can you follow me blindly?”
     
    “Yes, sir.”
     
    “Can you order the death of a planet? Can you kill other intelligent beings without a second thought?”
     
    “Wow,” Book said before turning directly to Addison. “General, I do not know the answer to that question. Theoretically, yes. But I do not believe that is good enough for your purpose. I suppose I should stick to building the ships.”
     
    “Does that mean you want to turn down the commission, Captain?” Jones asked.
     
    “No sir. I do not want to. But I have to. I suppose we should bring that other crew on.”
     
    “What about the rest of your people?” Jones asked.
     
    Book was taken aback and said, “I’m sorry, we are all nerds, sirs. That being the case, you should probably stick to combat ready staff.”
     
    “Keith,” Captain Jones said, “Do not ever apologize for being a nerd. Without nerds, men and women like the General’s fighters would be naked and hitting our enemies with sticks and rocks. And no