Cowboys and Aliens Ch. 44

"OK, I'll build two prototypes, if you make any changes, just let me know, so I can re-sync the copies we're building from."

"Thank you for this opportunity! Hopefully, we can talk again soon when the prototypes are up and running."

"I look forward to seeing if this works! Thank you, Brian!"

At that the call ended and Mark asked Cricket, "You've looked at the design, do you think it could actually work?"

"I honestly don't know! He's come up with a very complex formula that looks like he's trying to fold space and time, the Mazjik were experimenting with it at the time they gave me to the Atlanteans, so the light drives were the pinnacle of their space travel that I had access to. As we know from Magellan, we could improve upon those designs! So who knows, this might work... we won't know until we try."

"From what I saw in the drawings, these 'hypergates' appear to be two giant rings, with a big orb in the middle connecting the two."

"The central orb is actually several huge redundant power plants, as it looks like these things need a tremendous amount of energy to operate. There is a small command bridge at the end of the spires that connect to each of the rings, but wouldn't take staff to operate the gates if we automated them. It also looks like both gates can send and receive, you enter from the blue side and leave from the red side. So theoretically, if a place is high traffic, we could expand up and down to give you four gates, the orb would just need to be bigger to accommodate the additional power plants and the spires would need to be longer to accommodate the four rings. Each gate diameter is one kilometre wide, but there are a series of sensors that precede the rings. It looks like they are slightly smaller at about 750 metres in diameter and function as a safety prior to hitting the gate. If they touch any of those sensors on approach, it cuts the power to the gate. Kind of like an emergency stop button on automation equipment, but at 750 metres, it's still big enough that even a Sentinel could fit through it."

"OK, take the Sentinel at Thulark and the Sentinel from Earth and move them far enough away, if we build this on the same orbit as the moon, but on the opposite side of the planet, we'll be over the minimum distance to a gravity well. The central device is big, but the rings appear to just be smaller components, so it should be relatively easy to construct. I also think we should build one of these at Atlanterra, just so we have redundant test sites."

"Good idea! I'd recommend the Sentinels make a run to an asteroid field and harvest enough matter for the construction before we build. Then, we could actually use the harvesters as construction bots for moving the pieces into place; a construx can easily build the primary structure between the rings."

"Whatever works! Also, don't leave these things undefended, maybe attach a bunch of autonomous fighter drones to the central orb. Maybe not right away while we're testing, but before they go into production!"

Mark then caught the smell of bacon, and his stomach grumbled. Realizing he had spent significantly more time than he thought talking to Brian and Cricket, he exited his office and went downstairs.

Everyone was already eating by the time he got downstairs, so they questioned him about what made him tardy.

So Mark had to tell them what he could about the new hyperspace gate idea and that there was three of them being developed, one at Thulark, one at Earth and one at Atlanterra and that, if they worked, it would provide near instantaneous transit between the gates.

Ra'ki was the first to speak, "That would be awesome, I like Thulark and I would definitely like to visit Rifterville more often, that place is a blast!"

Liyana then said, "Actually it would be beneficial for all tourism and even freight traffic between planets, plus we could build more ships as they wouldn't need light drives, they could just have sub-light drives and then use the gates for transit! How cool would it be to take off to Thulark for a few days of rest and relaxation and not have to spend weeks in transit aboard a ship? Then, speaking of ships, they could definitely be a lot more basic as they wouldn't need quarters for people to sleep in or amenities to keep people active during the trip."

Annabelle said, "They would become more like Earth airplanes, just pack people on for a short flight."

Rayven said, "It takes away from the experience of space travel, but it would bolster support for planets to join the Federation."

Solara then asked, "So what is the timeline for building and testing these prototypes?"

Mark explained, "I don't honestly know, I've got one Sentinel and their asteroid harvesters working on each gate, and Cricket was developing some space capable cargo bots to help with assembly because the components are too big to build inside a Sentinel."

Mark asked Cricket aloud for everyone's benefit, "Hey Cricket, any idea on how long until those gates will be ready for testing?"

Cricket's hologram popped up, "This isn't like simply upgrading existing technology, it'll be about 3 weeks until they are ready for testing. Then I would suggest using an autonomous ship for testing, performing a complete structural scan after each run. Then we would progress to having one person on the ship and then multiple people, etc. I would guess it's still going to be at least a month or two before they could go into service, if there aren't any issues. Once testing is complete, we could begin construction of the gates near every planet."

After breakfast, Mark called Kaleb and caught him up with the experiment and if anyone asked him about it, just say it's an experiment and that no details would be available until the experiment is successful and passes all the trials and tests.

Mark sent a message to Brian and also informed him they were now going to build gates around 3 different planets. This would provide some redundancy and test some other things, like sending and receiving simultaneously, one gate receiving from two gates simultaneously, incoming and outgoing between the same gates simultaneously, plus whatever other tests they may think of.

***

The rest of the day and the next three weeks were pretty unremarkable. There were no major issues to deal with, no more incidents at the ranch, the emergency services site got off the ground and people used it and even the emergency call centre for Alberta used them, primarily in rural areas and the mountain parks. The shuttles were much more reliable in the mountains than helicopters were, plus it saved a lot of money as the service was being provided absolutely free!

The recycling business was still growing like wildfire. After New York's praises of the system, most major cities around the world had either switched over, either completely or partially. The water filtration business was growing as well, but not as rapidly as they thought, but in reaching out to the foreign aid organizations, it had brought them into several projects they had ongoing in several countries around the world.

Brian had answered the questions. Two gates could not send to one gate, as each outbound gate had to establish a connection to an inbound gate before any ship could transit. Each gate had its own unique identifier, so you could theoretically have as many gates around a planet as you needed, as long as they were far enough apart and the system could load balance between all gates. However, if multiple ships were going to the same destination gate from the same departure gate, they could leave the connection open and ships could follow each other through.

The gates would auto-accept incoming requests, but gate control handled any outbound requests.

Finally, three weeks later, the hyperspace gate construction completed. To facilitate monitoring and to oversee the experiments, Cricket had created a unique display that actually showed the arrival and departure gates for all 3 gates for both Mark and Brian and, since there wasn't any other staff, Cricket was going to be manning all the gates, which would help with the coordination of the tests.

They were going to use the asteroid harvesters as their test machines. They were autonomous and easy to build, pretty much just floating dumpsters with two arms, but they had sub-light engines.

The moment came for the first experiment as Mark and most of his gang were in the meeting room to witness the event and Brian was watching the display Cricket had created for monitoring the tests. Test 1 was a ship leaving Thulark and travelling to Earth, normally a 21 day trip. Cricket selected the Earth gate, and everyone watched as the ring of devices around the Earth arrivals gate glowed blue, while the departure ring at Thulark changed from red to green. All total, the process only took a few seconds.

The asteroid harvester made its way toward the departure gate, slightly off centre, but still well within the outer sensors, as they didn't want the experiment to be too pinpoint accurate.

The view from the ship was of total blackness, no light was escaping either of the gates. It approached the precipice of the void, and it was almost like a black liquid that made the part of the ship in the void look like it was disappearing. Within seconds the entire ship disappeared, and they had lost contact with it, as everyone waited with bated breath... all attention focussed on the Earth arrivals gate.

It took 42 seconds, but the ship emerged from the Earth gate and was soon entirely out of the void and it disconnected the gate connection. Everyone started cheering in the meeting room.

Cricket did a complete scan of the ship and deemed there were no anomalies to report, so they sent the ship back to Thulark along with a second ship from Earth in quick succession. 42 seconds later, the ships emerged, one after the other, at Thulark. After scans to check the ships over, they then sent both ships back to Earth with both ships entering the void side-by-side. This test was also successful as the ships emerged from the void at the exact point where they entered.

Over the course of the day, Cricket performed over a hundred tests, eventually using all 3 gates and even incorporating the Sentinels. The next step was to send a manned ship through and for that test they were going to use the fighters from the Poseidon, of which they had asked for volunteers and in no time had two volunteers.

To recognize the bravery and trust of the test pilots, Mark planned to visit the Poseidon to meet and greet the pilots before their mission.

As a reward for their bravery, they would get a promotion, and they could request a new assignment.

That night, everyone was in a celebratory mood after the successful tests of the gate system.

As an orgy ensued on the patio, and in the barn for Gaderius, Candy and Dany. After Rayven had taken care of Annabelle, Annabelle then realized that Mark wasn't celebrating as much as everyone else.

As she sauntered herself over to Mark's lounge chair, and tenderly grasped his cock and slowly stroked it until it was hard enough to enter her as she straddled his waist, "All these wet pussies and you still had a softie. What's on your mind?"

He looked into her eyes and saw genuine worry in them. He kissed her tenderly and explained that although the gates worked for inanimate objects; doing human trials worried him. It really hurt when they lost Captain Kirby and his crew when their ship got destroyed trying to defend Cantara against the Destructors. Even though everything was likely going to be fine, it still worried him.

Even though Annabelle wasn't due for a few more weeks, she was still horny, her sex drive hadn't diminished at all during pregnancy, in fact it had increased. After some soft kisses and some very full breasts in his face, mixed with some pelvic grinding, they were soon full on fucking and even Rayven had joined in from behind.

It didn't take long until they were all in a state of orgasm, after which they opted for a shower before going to bed.

Everyone loved the outdoor rainfall type shower, mainly because the cove and elevated multi-tier patio was very private plus the weather in Atlantis was always tropical, and it was just nice to shower outside all the time and not have to worry about steaming up mirrors and rooms.

Despite his previous worries, having his balls drained and then a warm shower, he was soon fast asleep with the girls.