If the banners aboard the Jakobi brothers' fgship (and a hastily put together signal transtion manual) were anything to go by, they were one jump away from their final destination plus however long it would take to make ndfall. By this point in time, all of the systems that needed to be checked were operating within their desired parameters. Arc had set up all the automated surveilnce and maintenance systems and locked away a certain amount of processing and electrical power so that his actions would not affect their operation. The less vital systems, such as sensors and turrets, had been fine tuned and practiced with to iron out any remaining kinks in their software and identify potential weak points.

  All of that was a few days ago now though, and much to Diana's disappointment he refused to leave the cockpit for anything other than a meal or the bathroom. He desperately needed to study something, if not to render a complete understanding then at least to be able to communicate with Arc when the topic arose. This topic was void travel, more specifically the mechanics through which such travel was actuated. This consisted of two modes of travel, Interstelr (between stars) and Contrastelr (against a star).

  Interstelr travel was, much to his surprise, considered the simpler of the two modes of travel for the denizens of this universe. There were two primary subjects here, the medium of travel - the 'Stream' - and the vessel - the 'Bubble'. For Donovan's purposes, the medium of travel was quite simple to understand. They were pathways of 'least resistance' between stars that permitted such travel. The mechanisms through which a Stream was created sat beyond his level of comprehension, something to do with the dimensional mesh upon which the 'Bubble' interacted with normal three dimensional space, but the idea itself was simple.

  The more complex part of Interstelr travel was the 'Bubble'. Setting aside the mechanics of formation and dissolution, which had proven to be the more nightmarish half of this particur story, the mechanics of its operation, its 'existence', were incredibly strange. Actually generating one was impossible within something called the 'Well', a spherical zone centered around a star, but being on the edge of one was crucial for the formation of a Bubble. The Arboreal Maiden's wording felt a tad flowery for Donovan's taste, but it got the general idea across.

  "Just as a stream which drops into a well creates bubbles, so too does a 'Split Stream' between stars create 'Spatial Bubbles' upon entering a star's 'Void Well'. These spatial bubbles, pockets of material space trapped in a different point along what you might consider a fourth spatial axis, are captured by the implement intending to travel between pces and expanded to encapsute the vessel it is attached to. The process is akin to blowing up a balloon, injecting 'space' instead of air."

  Basically, 'dimensional turbulence' at the intersection of stream and well generated microscopic instances of 'real' space separated from the normal three dimensional matrix along a separate dimension. These microscopic instances of 'real' space were captured by some portion of a Split-Space Drive before they could decay, stabilizing them and enrging them by using Split to pump 'Space' into the bubble. This bubble would then be slipped over the vessel along the extra dimension, secured, and then removed from the normal three dimensional matrix so that it may ride the Stream.

  How the fuck anybody figured this out and managed to make a tool that does this automatically was beyond Donovan, however notes in the margins of some images made mention of living beings that could travel between stars this way. If that was the case, then it might be better to consider this more of a natural process in this universe rather than an artificial one.

  "Entering Split-Space."

  The alert from Arc sent chills down his spine, even though he knew there was no chance of anything going wrong. Donovan had made the mistake of assuming a deeper understanding of the Bubble and how it functioned would ease his concerns, however the opposite ended up happening. The Bubble was terrifying, and Donovan didn't know which part was the worst.

  Being removed from the rest of reality was the first of the three big problems for him. This effectively made it impossible to communicate with the outside world. One could look outside at the rest of the bubble and see everything else, but it was distorted. Instead of a band of red along the gactic pne, stars seemed to scatter about without regard for their actual location in real space, while their colors changed drastically from what they really were. Even the ships in formation with you warped in ways entirely unexpectable, sometimes being able to see both port and starboard sides simultaneously.

  The second concern stemmed from the film of the bubble. Simply put, it was a wall of split preventing the space inside from spilling outside. Ostensibly, this thing was safe, incredibly safe, if only because Arc could properly maintain it on his own. It helped that their Drive was considerably more advanced than their counterparts on account of the material quality and the Arboreal Maiden's own input. What concerned him wasn't about it popping, but about what would happen once they tried to get more efficient with it. The Arboreal Maiden testified that, to her knowledge, there were two known concentrations of split for a bubble of any given size and shape that would result in a stable and 'safe' outcome. The first was easy to reach, and was what everybody used. It was an equilibrium point where reducing concentration would make the bubble more amenable to absorbing more, bringing it back to the safe level, while an increased concentration would make the bubble 'bleed' split much faster.

  The second known point of equilibrium was not so easy to deal with. It was an unstable equilibrium, dropping below the desired concentration would make adding more extremely difficult due to high rates of bleed, while going above it could result in an unstoppable cascading effect of increasing concentration if the problem was not identified immediately. The Arboreal Maiden, the one who had tested this point for whatever reason, concluded that a third equilibrium point might not exist, and that testing would be too dangerous. The only problem with that in Donovan's eyes is that this second point was so much faster that he would have to be stupid to ignore it. Cutting travel times by as much as 90%, even if that was an exaggeration on the Arboreal Maiden's part, was no joke. If they could get it right, it would be possible to save a lot more Nekh.

  Unfortunately, that concern with equilibrium points fed into the third major concern. What happened when the bubble 'popped'? Nobody really knew, but everyone suspected there was no surviving. The Arboreal Maiden offered a list of possible results based on both rumors and her understanding of the field, none of which sounded particurly appealing. Some were as simple as being stranded in a separate dimension. The biggest apparently involved the contents of the bubble being strewn across the length of the stream, reduced to their most basic elements. Others still asserted that the occupants of the bubble would be stuck in time and space for an eternity, frozen with no way to return to the flow of time. None of them felt like a good way to go out.

  "How long is this jump anticipated to take?"

  "Four hours. Should I inform Diana that we are approaching Ambrosia? I doubt she would want her first impressions of home to be through tired eyes."

  "I agree. Four hours should be enough beauty sleep."

  "What about you? Now would be a good time to smother her with affection, would it not?"

  "That would defeat the purpose of beauty sleep."

  "Donovan."

  "What?"

  "I know that you don't like me interfering in your love life, but I must implore you to spend the night with her. She needs it."

  "Fine. Let me finish reading this though. I've only got a few pages left."

  "Of course. I'll have a shower ready for you."

  "Thanks."

  Donovan returned to his studies, intending to finish the section on Contrastelr travel. He initially held a great deal of confusion when he saw sub-light travel being referred to in this manner, Contrastelr meaning 'against' a star, however the more he learned about it the more sense it made. It was sailing, pin and simple. Well, it was more complicated from a technical standpoint, and Donovan had absolutely no idea how to sail, but the basic idea was easy to understand.

  The sea, in his conception the entity that provided teral resistance to the pushing on the sails, was something akin to the Well that stars generated, an extradimensional field through which a certain application of Split would permit interaction with the physical, sort of like a field. Unlike a magnetic field, this one was without pority, and unlike gravity it did not possess a form of 'directionality' (at least as far as the Arboreal Maiden knew). This meant that despite being called a 'sea' there were no currents, however it did possess an element of viscosity in keeping with the liquid analogy.

  The other element was the wind. Sor wind, actually, which finally meant there was something he had experience with that everybody else would sort of understand. Of course, it would never be so simple as a one to one comparison. Split made this a very different kind of wind, more akin to one found in atmosphere, however it had simir properties to the wind he knew. For one, it tended to travel directly outward from a star, deviating from this trend in the presence of electromagnetic fields. These sor winds also possess a sort of pority, though not of the kind Donovan was familiar with, which dictated the interaction the sails had with this wind.

  The sails aboard these void vessels could catch wind in an atmosphere, just like a normal one, but also worked in a manner simir to a coil when exposed to sor winds. The threading, weaving, or whatever the textile was made of possessed a special property of 'catching' the wind in the voids between and turning that into force. Turning this sail around such that the wind went in the opposite direction would reverse the direction of applied force. Naturally this confounded Donovan as, according to his understanding of flux and coils, the nature of the field determined the direction of flow and force, not the coils. At this point he had lost the energy to care about it though, which left the other key element in facilitating Contrastelr navigation.

  Daggerboards, long pnks of wood treated to interact with the sea, spanned the length of the ships. Should the rest of the structure be stripped and one look through from the bow or stern, one would see these boards arranged in crosses. This formation allowed the greatest degree of resistance to motion up and down and side to side, allowing the force applied to the sails - which was always in line with the sor wind - to be transted into movement side to side so long as the daggerboard was at a sufficient angle. Smaller daggerboards, rudderboards, could be found in key locations around the ship in order to facilitate rotation in three dimensions.

  The sail and daggerboard worked in tandem to facilitate movement throughout space in such a way that amounted to 'fighting' a star, not really cooperating. The star could only ever push you away or pull you closer, and careful positioning was necessary to ensure the daggerboards would be effective. Getting too far away from a star would make it difficult to move as you want due to a weaker wind, while getting closer would both mean a stronger wind to contend with and necessitate a proper response to the star's gravity. Sor storms were also a problem, with bursts of heightened activity capable of damaging the sails, breaking the masts, and leaving a ship stranded.

  The Pegasus and ships like her would not have this problem. The method of propulsion that had been developed by his betters did not rely upon sor winds to function, although Arc mentioned that the 'sea' provided the resistance necessary for the insane levels of thrust. Given the simirities to naval development he had noticed thus far he wondered if it was some sort of propeller, however Arc denied the analogy. Such a thing was probably possible, in all likelihood the next step the natives of this gaxy would have to take once they developed an engine powerful enough to make it viable, but it was not efficient enough to get the levels of force the Noah had been able to accelerate under.

  Arc instead described it as a sort of force induction field, using concepts simir to the Atmospheric Isotion Field to apply a force to a given area of 'sea'. He offered forth the theoretical aircraft propulsion concept developed by a Terran engineer of some sort that served as the inspiration. It utilized an isotion field with a single direction of action, the idea being that individual molecules could pass through one way but not the other, inducing a directional pressure without any moving parts. This idea wasn't without its merits, especially considering it eventually found use, however such a design would be so slow and expensive from the mass of the MAID needed to make it viable that traditional systems of propulsion were more time and energy efficient.

  This method of propulsion would also be completely unsuitable for a spacecraft considering the ck of an atmosphere, however the presence of something like an atmosphere changed the dynamic entirely, especially one so dense. It really should not have come as a surprise to Donovan, but this system was one of the first Split reted bits of tech they managed to make functional. The simirities to existing theory and retive simplicity of design, modifications only needing to be made to permit a MAID to operate in this 'extra' dimension, made the necessary investment incredibly small in comparison.

  "Alright buddy, see you tomorrow."

  "I will see you when you wake up. Please rex during your shower and try to concentrate on resting. We are going to be getting straight to work once we nd."

  "Sure thing."

  Donovan gently closed the door behind him, his mind lingering on the final paragraph of the 'textbook' which dictated the contents of the next one. Somehow, he didn't think he was going to like the subject of atypical travel hazards and voidborne megafauna.

  cakeonfrosting