As a graduation exercise, we were unceremoniously stuffed into a ship-Earth's Hope, the same one we rode to Charon-and bundled off to Stargate at a little more than 1 G.
The trip seemed endless, about six months subjective time, and boring, but not as hard on the carcass as going to Charon had been. Captain Stott made us review our training orally, day by day, and we did exercises every day until we were worn to a collective frazzle.
Stargate I was like Charon's darkside, only more so. The base on Stargate I was smaller than Miami Base-only a little bigger than the one we constructed on darkside-and we were due to lay over a week to help expand the facilities. The crew there was very glad to see us; especially the two females, who looked a little worn around the edges.
We all crowded into the small dining hall, where Submajor Williamson, the man in charge of Stargate I, gave us some disconcerting news:
"Everybody get comfortable. Get off the tables, though, there's plenty of floor.
"I have some idea of what you just went through, training on Charon. I won't say it's all been wasted. But where you're headed, things will be quite different. Warmer."
He paused to let that soak in.
"Aleph Aurigae, the first collapsar ever detected, revolves around the normal star Epsilon Aurigae, in a twenty-seven-year orbit. The enemy has a base of operations, not on a regular portal planet of Aleph, but on a planet in orbit around Epsilon. We don't know much about the planet: just that it goes around Epsilon once every seven hundred forty-five days, is about three-fourths the size of Earth, and has an albedo of 0.8, meaning it's probably covered with clouds. We can't say precisely how hot it will be, but judging from its distance from Epsilon, it's probably rather hotter than Earth. Of course, we don't know whether you'll be working…fighting on lightside or darkside, equator or poles. It's highly unlikely that the atmosphere will be breathable-at any rate, you'll stay inside your suits.
"Now you know exactly as much about where you're going as I do. Questions?"
"Sir," Stein drawled, "now we know where we're goin'…anybody know what we're goin' to do when we get there?"
Williamson shrugged. "That's up to your captain-and your sergeant, and the captain of Earth's Hope, and Hope's logistic computer. We just don't have enough data yet, to project a course of action for you. It may be a long and bloody battle, it may be just a case of walking in to pick up the pieces. Conceivably, the Taurans might want to make a peace offer"-Cortez snorted-"in which case you would simply be part of our muscle, our bargaining power." He looked at Cortez mildly. "No one can say for sure." THE ORGY THAT night was kind of amusing, but it was like trying to sleep in the middle of a raucous beach party. The only area big enough to sleep all of us was the dining hall; they draped a few bedsheets here and there for privacy, then unleashed Stargate's eighteen sex-starved men on our women, compliant and promiscuous by military custom-and law-but desiring nothing so much as sleep on solid ground.
The eighteen men acted as if they were compelled to try as many permutations as possible, and their performance was impressive-in a strictly quantitative sense, that is.
The next morning-and every other morning we were on Stargate I-we staggered out of bed and into our suits, to go outside and work on the "new wing." Eventually, Stargate would be tactical and logistic headquarters for the war, with thousands of permanent personnel, guarded by half-a-dozen heavy cruisers in Hope's class. When we started, it was two shacks and twenty people; when we left, it was four shacks and twenty people. The work was a breeze, compared to darkside, since we had all the light we needed, and got sixteen hours inside for every eight hours' work. And no drone attacks for a final exam.
When we shuttled back up to the Hope, nobody was too happy about leaving-though some of the more popular females declared it'd be good to get some rest-Stargate was the last easy, safe assignment we'd have before taking up arms against the Taurans. And as Williamson had pointed out the first day, there was no way of predicting what that would be like.
Most of us didn't feel too enthusiastic about making a collapsar jump, either. We'd been assured that we wouldn't even feel it happen, just free fall all the way.
I wasn't convinced. As a physics student, I'd had the usual courses in general relativity and theories of gravitation. We only had a little direct data at that time-Stargate was discovered when I was in grade school-but the mathematical model seemed clear enough.
The collapsar Stargate was a perfect sphere about three kilometers in radius. It was suspended forever in a state of gravitational collapse that should have meant its surface was dropping toward its center at nearly the speed of light. Relativity propped it up, at least gave it the illusion of being there…the way all reality becomes illusory and observer-oriented when you study general relativity, or Buddhism.
At any rate, there would be a theoretical point in spacetime when one end of our ship was just above the surface of the collapsar, and the other end was a kilometer away-in our frame of reference. In any sane universe, this would set up tidal stresses and tear the ship apart, and we would be just another million kilograms of degenerate matter on the theoretical surface, rushing headlong to nowhere for the rest of eternity; or dropping to the center in the next trillionth of a second. You pays your money and you takes your frame of reference.
But they were right. We blasted away from Stargate I, made a few course corrections and then just dropped, for about an hour.
Then a bell rang and we sank into our cushions under a steady two gravities of deceleration. We were in enemy territory.