Gods Dogs, Book 3
Chapter 17

To me, unconventional thinking is approaching a problem and asking, ‘Why not? Why can’t something be done?’ If someone can’t give me a good reason why you can’t do something, I replace a way to do it.

Eli Broad

Heng-chern pushed the Iracian Hegemony to first denounce any military action against the Milky Way, and later to threaten an alliance with the Milky Way as deterrence to war. It took some months for this to occur, as diplomacy had its own timing.

With this development, though, the Machine Autocracy piled on with a commitment to both – the denunciation and the threat to support the Galactic Congress’ autonomy. That took another few months to materialize.

Emperor Anjevin Rona Est was, understandably, upset with this development. Autocrats, regardless of species, uniformly felt betrayed when confronted with opposition to their cherished goals. The felt-sense of betrayal fed a martyr complex that only victory over their rivals would assuage. The very idea of a loyal opposition was beyond him.

If there was a blind spot for autocrats, it was this: their goals were self-evident expressions of a manifest destiny. Those who opposed those goals were, at best delusional, at worst enemies of the people.

The Dobal and Baston empires went along with Chert rhetoric, but they were in it for the profit potential. In their cost-benefit analysis, the androids and bugs wouldn’t fight them. As such, the three empires should be able to overwhelm the Congress’ defenses. If it became too costly, there was a plan for seeking a cease-fire.

The months that followed Moss’ fight in the throne room, the six delegations played the diplomatic game, angling for positions and leverage. It was a fruitless endeavor, in the end, as the lines were now drawn. Quinn had one last gambit to attempt. Raina provided him with the means.

It had to do with waste heat. True stealth in space was impossible because of electromagnetic leakage and waste heat from the craft itself. EM could be blocked to some degree, but waste heat needed radiators to bleed it off, or heat sinks to store it – heat from propulsion, life support, and actually any system, including biological processes.

Radiators of various types dumped the waste heat, which when weapons were engaged doubled or tripled in capacity. Additionally, engines, when under power, sent off an infrared signature for all to see. When the engines were cold, the infrared signature of the radiated heat was still evident.

Heat sinks within the ship were a short-term solution. A more complete solution was needed to support Quinn’s plan. That plan was to fly up to the Chert homeworld and pay a visit to Anjevin.

Pax was responsible for the initial breakthrough. It came as a result of a trip to the archetypal plain with the bug shaman.

The shaman, Mondemon was his name, was on the meadow where they typically met in the world of spirit. He was saying, “We can only visit the upper realms with the aid and permission of our power animals.”

Pax replied, “That is the safest way to visit those realms. Call in your power animal and I will talk to him.”

Mondemon bowed his fearsome head and did so. A pterodactyl-like bird appeared and landed next to the shaman.

Pax approached and called out, “Hail, agent of the Divine. I need not know your name. I only wish to aid Mondemon in his spiritual development. Would you guide him to the Cathedral of Light?”

The power animal looked to Mondemon, and he nodded an assent. The power animal squatted down so Mondemon could climb aboard, and they flew off.

Pax breathed in, set the intention to shift to the cathedral of light, the place of healing in spirit, and on the out-breath shifted there.

Moments later, Mondemon arrived. He staggered off the back of the power animal and gazed at the magnificent sight. It was a crystal palace of light and etheric healing energy. Across a courtyard where they stood was a glowing marble table.

Pax told him, “Go and lie on the table. I will show you what you can do here.”

Mondemon checked with the power animal first, to see if that was permitted. Apparently, it was, and he hurried to lie down on the table.

Helpers emerged from the hidden halls beyond the table. Dressed in flowing robes, they waited for Pax to lay his hands on Mondemon. Once the healing energy began to flow through Pax and into Mondemon, the helpers directed the gentle and fragile flows of energy to various locations on Mondemon’s body.

Pax told the shaman, “This form of healing is for the sicknesses that originate in the soul. The only restriction is you cannot have a strong emotional attachment to the patient.”

Mondemon said, “It is more refined than healing with Nature’s energy.”

“Yes. It is also easily corrupted or changed by emotional attachment.”

“I can see that. Even so, this is a wondrous place.”

Pax smiled. “Yes. It is.”

They eventually returned to the consensus reality and met for lunch. After they finished, Mondemon asked, “What can I do to thank you for this?”

“Shamans share these things freely in my galaxy. I require no payment.”

Mondemon chattered and said, “I don’t think you would refuse this gift. We know of a bacterium that eats heat and its waste product is cold. We use it for refrigeration.”

Fascinated, Pax asked, “How is that possible?”

“It’s an extremophile. It adapted to volcanic environments by eating heat to refrigerate its homes.”

“And you have access to these bacteria?”

“Yes. I also have permission from Mudark to give you a sample as well as our research on their life cycle.”

Raina ran with this breakthrough by enlisting one of the crew who held a degree in biology, and another crewmember with a degree in engineering habitats. What she came up with was a honeycomb structure of graphene and titanium as housing for the bacteria. Then she filled the inner hull with this matrix, connected it to a low voltage charge to wake up the bacteria, and the waste heat problem was mostly solved. The engines were still a problem – how does one mask a torch?

Even so, Satya’s stealth potential, already quite sophisticated with anti-radar skin and angled outer hull, made a quantum leap with this innovation.

Moss’ comment, though, was unflattering. “Great. Now we live in a mold ship.”

“It’s not mold,” Raina protested. “It’s more like yeast. Instead of converting carbohydrates into carbon dioxide and alcohol, our little guys convert heat into cold.”

“So it’s a fungus ship,” was Moss’ reply.

“Bacterium, maybe even an eukaryote, we’re not sure.”

“What if I’m allergic?”

“Moss, are you messing with me?”

Moss laughed and headed for the mess deck.

Later, Raina reported to Quinn, “We’re ready to test this.”

“I’m not sure how we do that without witnesses.”

Raina grinned, “We’re going on a field trip to the Iracian homeworld.”

Quinn grinned back. “That will work.”

Tucked into an Iracian cruiser, Satya enjoyed the flight to Iracian space with the multi-species crew. Most were of the same race as the guardsmen, but many were insectoids of various species.

Pax and River spent a few days instructing three of the crew, as well as Mondemon who was along for the ride, on shaman journey techniques and destinations.

At length, they entered the Iracian system. The name of the homeworld translated to Earth or World, which wasn’t that uncommon. The phonetic name was Dakon.

Satya undocked as soon as the cruiser exited FTL. Then the tests began. Over the sixteen hours it took to reach Dakon, Satya found the right concentrations of the bacteria at the different spots of the inner hull to render Satya a cold spot in space. They named the bacterium Thermophile, which wasn’t all that exciting, but it was descriptive.

As they passed through an asteroid field, they tested the heat bleed off when weapons were used, and made those adjustments. They ended up with a threefold increase in firing rate because of the efficiency of the Thermophile heat dump.

By the time they reached Dakon, the captain and crew were confident of their new stealth system. While at Dakon, the crew fabricated and outfitted their two armored shuttles with this new system. Once the diplomats finished with the Iracian Hegemony, which included securing a contingency-heavy agreement, they began the return trip to the Accords station.

However, once they neared the border to the Chert Empire, Satya set off on her own. With accurate star charts from the Iracians, Capt. John set course for the Chert homeworld.

It was in the loose ring of empire homeworlds a third of the way out from the galaxy core. Even so, it was quite a distance at FTL speeds. They couldn’t use the stargates, as a record of those transitions would blow their cover. Not withstanding, the FTL upgrades they received from the Congress made the journey doable within the timeframe they wanted.

Hyperspace was a dimensional anomaly. In a sense, it was a ‘place’ connected to but out of phase with the space-time continuum that housed the Universe. This dimension possessed its own layers of successively higher energy states. The higher the energy state, the faster one traveled from point A to point B in the connected ‘real’ Universe. It was the upgrades that allowed Satya access to the higher energy states. Five days later, the Satya dropped out of FTL beyond the Oort Cloud, high on the elliptic. She accelerated hard for a day and a half, and then coasted into the system – a heatless object in the night sky.

For the Satya, the task was to coast in, drop off a shuttle, and make a big figure 8 around two of the inner planets. Using the gravity of those planets to slow down, the Satya would then rendezvous with the shuttle ten days later.

The shuttle would orbit the planet to slow down, and the Coyotes would drop from high orbit to begin their mission. The shuttle, still coasting and using only maneuvering jets, would stay in high orbit and await the return of the team.

The plan was for the team to ride up from the planet on a passenger shuttle headed for a nearby space station. Somehow, they would release from their ride so that Satya’s shuttle could scoop them up. Then the shuttle would use the planet as a gravity assist to rendezvous with Satya further out.

“Nothing can go wrong with this plan,” Moss said in a cheery voice.

They were prepping their one-man drop pods in the shuttle’s loading bay.

Pax answered, “It’s all orbital mechanics. They’ll be where they’re supposed to be.”

“I have no doubt of that,” Moss replied. “It’s the rest of it. Little intel, ten day window, and we’re not even sure Anjevin will be home. He might be off on safari somewhere.”

River snorted. “I like Plan B and C better, anyway.”

Moss chuckled. “Since when did you come over to the dark side? You didn’t used to like blowing shit up.”

“Lousy role models,” she muttered.

The others laughed, and she reluctantly grinned back at them.

Quinn said, “It looks good. Chief, let the pilot know we’re ready to drop.”

The crew chief ducked into the pilot compartment and quickly returned to say, “We’ll be in position in twenty minutes, Quinn.”

“Okay. Let’s strap in.”

Twenty minutes later they dropped with the pilot saying, “In 3, 2, 1, drop, drop, drop. Spirits of Space be with you, Coyotes.”

The pods, using the loaded program and maneuvering jets, circled the planet once to bleed off more delta-V. Then they began their descent through the atmosphere.

The targeted landing zone was a wilderness lake thirty miles from the capital city. It was wishful thinking they would actually hit the LZ, but the marshlands around it provided a safe terrain for their landing.

It was the middle of the night, and they unpacked their pods, triggered the re-programming cycle, shouldered their packs, and scurried to their initial RV point at the south end of the lake. Then the trek began toward the city.