After dealing with the whole Shall i and ensuring there were no immediate problems that needed his attention, Alexander spent the week with Yulia duriime off of school.

  He would have loved to spend more time with her, but by the end of the week, he could see she was growing frustrated with him stantly being around. She was a child, she wao hang out with her friends again. Not wanting to undo all of the effort he had goo to improve her mood, Alexander obliged her. He khat children didn’t view time the same way adults did and they teo ge their minds on a whim. Yulia wasn’t quite as flighty as some of the children he had met – her ability to stay mad at him the eime he was gone was a good example of that – but she was still a kid.

  With Yulia’s mood improved, Alexander went in search of Dr. Lund. It had been far too long sihey st spoke. The room he had offered to her for her research wasn’t huge, but she didn’t need a rge space. The two items that took up the most spa her room were her desk and the holo-projector she had asked Alexander for.

  The projector was mouo the ceiling and covered the entire room with an array of virtual boards from which she could work. Lucas had desighe program that allowed Nova to harness every inch of spad more for her notes. As far as Alexander was aware, she had provided the young programmer with the design specifics based on a simir room on her sce vessel.

  The older woman g him as he entered, but she didn’t stop writing a plex equation with the light pen. “I’ll be with you in a moment, Alexander, I’m almost doh this.”

  A moment turned out to be an hour as she put the finishing touches on a plicated mathematical formu. Alexander had watched her write it, but he only uood the bare basics of what it was trying to prove. The woma down the writing devid flicked the virtual board. It floated away until it nded against the wall, pushing other boards out of the way. Some even vanished entirely, saved out of sight. It was an iing way to work, but a bit too cluttered and messy for his tastes.

  “So,” Nova began as she slowly stood from her desk and stretched. “I heard you returhe lost mbs and their ship. I’m holy surprised the STO let you leave. I assume it was because they wanted something from you?”

  “The Vice Admiral wanted me to produce a small number of engines for some of their other stealth ships. The offer was a bit too generous to turn down.”

  She snorted and walked out from behind her desk, the boards filled with notes and other equations turning to follow her, but kept out of the way. “I imagi was. That’s how they get their hooks in you. They like to throw mo problems they know they ’t solve any other way. In your case, that’s good, it means this Vice Admiral wasn’t uimating you. Be wary, Alexander, don’t let them pull you in with honeyed words.”

  “I’ll keep that in mind. Do you think I did the right thing by accepting the offer?”

  She shrugged. “What I believe, doesn’t matter. Do you believe you did the right thing?”

  He had plenty of time to think about this on the way home. “I do. I might have ged some things or asked for more money, but I think overall, I’m fih the oute. The only thing I’m ed with is Omni finding out about our deal.”

  “It is bound to happen sooner or ter, there’s no point w about it until it happens. Now enough about Omni and the STO. I assume you didn’t e here to waste my time with that nonsense.”

  He smiled at the woman’s brusque attitude. “No. I actually wao ask you if you knew anything about static field geors. I purchased a learning module on them but thought you might be able to provide some insight.”

  “I know what they do,” she said, making a gesture to pull up a clear board. After it floated in front of her, she took out her light pen again. With the device, she drew a crude ship with a crest dome in front of it. “An energized field is projected ahead of a ship. This field is desigo i with matter heading toward the ship, providing a charge to that matter whiteracts with the sed field. The sed field helps redirect items away from the ship's path. The faster a ship goes, the more power the fields require. They either adjust further out to increase the projected distance of this field or the strength of the field itself. It’s a rather simple solution but not a perfee. However, it works well enough. I could probably figure out the math involved if that’s what you’re asking.”

  “Oh, no. I was w if it was something you could use in your research?”

  She shook her head. “There were a couple of members of my stific team looking into improving static fields to help push pressed psma eje closer to the theoretical limit, but it’s a dead-end teology as far as I’m ed. Those stists were too limited in their goals. Light speed is still light speed. While you would see quicker travel through systems with that as yoal, you are barely even scratg the surface. The hypergates show us that near-instantaneous travel across vast distances is possible. Maybe not that teology specifically, but if it be aplished one way, who's to say it ’t be done another?”

  “So… a hypergate geor?”

  She chuckled at that. “Something like that, yes. I’ve done all the math, and it's theoretically possible. If you could somehow fit a ron star inside a spaceship, you might even be able to power a device that could make it happen.”

  Alexander’s avatar wi that. “If the power requirements are so ridiculous, how are the hypergates powered?”

  She smirked and waggled her fi him. “That’s a good question, isn’t it? The gates ’t be drawing power from their local stars. It would be detectable. The only other possibility is some sort of power transfer system located elsewhere. Maybe orbiting a bck hole or ron star. Heck, maybe the aliens who built the gates figured out how to tap into higher dimensions to power the devices. Either way, the teology is way beyond us. And until someos brave enough to take one of them apart, we will never know.”

  “What about antimatter?” Alexander asked.

  Nova threw her arms up in the air. “Antimatter this, antimatter that. Why is it every time a eology es along that requires an absurd amount of energy, everyone points to that as the magic fix-all?”

  “It would work though, wouldn’t it?”

  She sighed in exasperation. “With enough of it sure, anything’s possible. But we’re talking about the antimatter mass equivalent of the ey of Eden’s End; the building, not the p. And that’s only for orip. There’s a reason I abahat line of research. While the math proves it is possible, the energy requirements make it wildly improbable. Most of my research has been focused on improving drives because we have already overe the teological straints that made faster-than-light possible. Why reihe wheel when we already have a teology that works? All I o do is make it faster and more reliable in a gravity well, not an easy task, mind you. Knowing how the gravity pting works might help point me in the right dire, but I haven’t been able to figure that out yet. I don’t suppose you have those learning modules, though, do you?”

  “I’m afraid not. The pany that owns the patent oeology has set such a ridiculous pri it that it's not practical to purchase at the moment.”

  “I’m aware,” Nova grumbled. “I’ve been trying to buy it from them si was first introduced. I’m not even sure who’s produg the ptes. The pany has mao remain anonymous, even though that should be impossible with the ws ihat govern patents withiO. My only guess is that it belongs directly to the STO Navy.”

  “I tried to reverse ehe ptes,” he admitted. “They don’t make any logical sense and shouldn’t even work.”

  She ughed at that. “Join the club. I imagine every single pany and gover iO has attempted what you did. None of them have mao figure it out either. And I guarantee some of those institutions have purchased the learning modules that expin how the teology funs. What does that tell you?”

  “That my money would be better spent elsewhere.”

  She nodded and patted him on the arm. “Maybe one day you’ll figure it out. In the meantime, I have something I need you to build for me and I have the calcutions you asked for. I would tell you to focus oeology at a time, but I also didn’t think you’d already have an Omni equivalent engine ready. You’re progressing faster than I thought. I will warn you. Yoing to need zero-g manufacturing to pull off the pressed psma eje. The math shows that the tolerances are much more critical.”

  “That’s not a problem,” Alexander decred proudly. “I already have a sort of orbital factory. I’m sure I’ll o make some adjustments, but I probably figure it out.”

  She didn’t look at all surprised by his decration, which took a bit of the wind out of his sails.

  “If you’re using the designs I gave you for the omni es, that’s not going to cut it, at least not for some parts of the delivery system. Yoing to o tighten those tolerances down to ten naers. Tighter would be better.”

  Alexander couldn’t quite believe what he was hearing. “You’re joking, right? Why do they o be so precise? I would have thought the magic fields would be enough to tain the psma.”

  “They are, but if the pump housies even a little in thiess, that weakens the field that is geed through it, causing turbulen the psma stream, which quickly bee an issue. The st thing you want to happen is for the psma stream to fluctuate enough to touch the inner lining. If that happens, the entire system could bee promised.”

  “Point taken. I’ll work to improve my printers, yet again.”

  “And don’t fet my project,” she added happily, holding out a data chip. “No hurry, but it will require the same accuracy as the pressed psma systems, so the timing is rather perfect, wouldn’t you agree?”

  Alexander just stared at the woman. She had no shame and had obviously pnned for her project to cide with these improvements, which meant she knew he would have to make them at some point anyway. She could have told him this months ago, and he would have simply tirying to improve his printers and manufacturing instead of pausing at his current level.

  He plucked the chip out of her hand. “Yes, I would say it is.”

  She gave him another pat on the arm. “Excellent. Run along now, I want to get bay work.”

  Alexander sighed internally. It was easy tet this old womao lead her own research group. She robably used to getting her way any time she wished.

  He was annoyed with how she waited to tell him the requirements of her projetil after getting him all worked up on the requirements of his own, but he couldn’t be mad at her. He had agreed to help her when it came to making some of her theoretical work a reality. She probably wouldn’t have anything funal for years to e, but any step towards turning that theoretical work into something real was a good sign in his book.

  Another reason why he wasn’t mad with the elderly stist was that he would be from her work as well. She couldly take her designs to the STO, Omni, or Sinorus and have them build them for her.

  That made Alexander her only real ally when it came to making her dream a reality. He would just have to put up with her etricities in the meantime. He supposed it could be worse, he could be some mindless drone w for Omni.