“Why not just port it down?” Herzer asked, confused.
“The ship, for safety reasons, never comes closer than the orbit of the Moon to Earth,” Evan said. “The initial shuttle punch occurs far outside the orbit of the Moon and the ship continues on trajectory past Terra and the Moon. It’s far enough out that even modern porting systems are questionable and a portal, since it moves at a high rate of comparative velocity to a link on Earth is highly unstable. When the system was designed, of course, teleportation had not yet been developed.”
“So we can’t just set up a portal and flood the ship with troops,” Herzer said.
“No,” Evan confirmed. “The only way up, and the only way back is on the shuttles. Seven at a time, per shuttle. Nine at a real squeeze. There are, in addition, four small space-capable shuttles. They are not capable of landing on Ter… Earth. They’re designed for moving around the ship and between the ship and its fueling stations around Jupiter and Saturn and cannot handle reentry gravitational loading. Nor are they aerodynamic.”
“So… what’s the plan?” Herzer said.
“The control room can reprogram shuttle priorities,” Evan said. “The original Icarus plan was to go up in the first shuttles and take the control room, then reprogram the shuttles to only refuel Freedom Coalition reactors.”
“Sounds like a plan,” Herzer said.
“What about the engine room?” Megan asked.
“Anyone who controls the engine room, effectively controls the main engines,” Evan said, frowning. “But that only gives direct velocity control. I’m not sure what utility that would have to the mission. My primary concern was with the shuttles themselves.”
“Why?” Herzer asked.
“They can be overridden by an onboard pilot,” Evan pointed out. “We can reprogram them to land at only our reactors. But if New Destiny has pilots in them, it won’t matter.”
“Ouch,” Herzer muttered. “This is making my head hurt. What we really need to do, in other words, is capture all twelve of the shuttles.”
“That was my suggestion,” Evan said. “There was, however, a problem.”
“And that is?” Megan asked.
“Where, pardon me, ma’am, you come in. The shuttles require a security override for pilots to take control. For that matter, so does the control room.”
“And the security can only be overridden by a Key-holder,” Megan guessed.
“Correct,” Evan said, frowning. “So to take control of the shuttles, you will be required to go to each of them and tell them who you are. The system is a real antique. We don’t even have good mock-ups for it. That’s one of the reasons we’ll have to have some people who know old computers. There were some on the original team and they gave a presentation on the systems. Unfortunately, I don’t even have their notes.”
“Great,” Megan said, frowning.
“But New Destiny will be sending up their own people in their shuttles,” Herzer said. “Do the shuttles always go back to the same reactors?”
“No,” Evan said, unhappily. “Just because you have a shuttle, doesn’t mean it’s programmed for your reactor. But if you have a pilot in it, it can be forced to go there.”
“I have to ask this,” Megan said. “Is Mother going to intervene in this little scuffle?”
“She shouldn’t,” Evan temporized. “As far as we were able to determine, she doesn’t have a protocol that governs security for this ship.”
“Hmmm…” Megan mused. “Mother?”
“Yes, Megan?” a voice answered out of the air.
Evan reacted with surprise but Herzer just looked nonplussed.
“You are aware that we’re planning on… hijacking the Excelsior?” Megan asked.
“Yes,” the disembodied voice replied.
“Are you going to tell New Destiny what our plans are?”
“No.”
“And I don’t suppose you’ll tell me their plans?” Megan asked, hopefully.
“No.”
“Are you going to interfere?”
“Not unless the safety of Terra is jeopardized,” Mother responded. “And perhaps not even then.”
“What does that mean?” Herzer asked.
“I suspect it has to do with ship trajectory,” Evan said. “If the ship were to crash into Terra, it would be very unpleasant. Big boom.”
“Okay, handy safety tip,” Herzer said. “Don’t crash the ship into the Earth.”
“Is Evan correct, Mother?” Megan asked. “As long as we don’t crash the ship into Terra, you will not interfere?”
“That is correct,” Mother replied. “As long as you remain within your plans to capture or destroy the ship, there will be no interference from this party. Furthermore, reentry of the Excelsior under these conditions could be described as human error. I am remanded from fixing human errors other than through specific protocol provisions.”
“In other words,” Megan said, frowning, “if we crash it into the Earth, Mother won’t save us.”
“That would be bad,” Evan said, quietly.
“How bad?” Herzer asked.
“Mother,” Megan said, puzzled. “What about explosive protocols?”
“The impact of the Excelsior, more or less intact, would exceed explosive protocol overrides given current power reserves.”
“Very bad,” Evan said.
“But if we slam it in the Moon we’re good to go?” Herzer asked.
There was a pause and Megan smiled as the computer didn’t answer.
“But if we are forced to crash it into the Moon, there will be no repercussion?” Megan asked.
“No,” Mother replied. “The mass of the ship is insufficient to deflect the orbit of the Moon.”
“Thank you, Mother,” Megan said, frowning. “I really don’t want to crash the ship. Once we drain the reactors down in this damned war, we won’t even have the power left to build another ship that can go out and get the fuel we’ll need. Even if we take all the Keys we may be stuck on the planet.”
“No,” Evan said. “If we take nine Keys we can override several protocols that will permit us to build different reactors. Then, when we’ve built up the power, we can build another Excelsior and go get the fuel we need. It will be a pain and it will stretch out the rebuild time, but we can do it.”
“What sort of reactors?” Herzer asked.
“The HE3 reactors can be converted to use hydrogen,” Evan said. “Which is easy enough to extract from water.”
“Why don’t they already?” Megan asked curiously.
“There are… unpleasant by-products,” Evan admitted.
“Define unpleasant,” Megan requested.
“Very radioactive,” Evan admitted. “It’s why they use HE3 instead; it has virtually no radioactive by-products. The only radiation comes from hydrogen and H2 contamination and that’s in parts per billion; easy enough to scrub in use. But if you use hydrogen you’re constantly having to replace parts that have been irradiated. It was extremely time and cost intensive at the time of their design, requiring that the parts be ground down and then reprocessed laboriously to extract the radioactive isotopes and then mixing them with glass and eventually containing them in a long-term containment facility.” He paused and his eyes unfocused as a thought hit him. “Of course, with modern replication technology, it would be easier to reprocess the materials since the replicator fields can distinguish, of course, between standard stable and unstable isotopes…’