Blood Impulse

Part 36.3 - BATTLE RITUALS

Mississippi Sector, Battleship Singularity

It was early in the morning, ship's time. Formal battle preparations would soon begin, but for the moment, it was quiet. It was during such time, in the waning hours before a mission, that Maria Galhino always found herself on the observation deck.

It felt as though the wide, empty space gave her room to think. There were a wealth of chairs, couches, and benches, but she never sat. She always stood, looking out the windows, practicing an analysis of what she saw there.

The wide ports weren't real windows, but they cast the illusion of such. They were the views of telescopes on the hull, reflecting the light through an optical mirror system to produce the view here. Perhaps that seemed an unnecessary design addition, but the mirror system was far wiser than having fragile viewports on a combat ship.

Even without power, the mirrors and telescopes gave them a chance to see obstacles in the ship's path, and while it was rare to steer a ship by sight and star, the capability to do so was a comfort. If it ever became necessary, observation decks like this gave them the view from the hull without a spacewalk. But, beside their practical purpose, the observation deck was a favorite for many members of the crew. It gave them a chance to stare out at the stars and study the colors of distant nebulas and planets as they passed by.

Others came here for recreation, but Galhino came here with a purpose: to remind herself that what she saw out there was just a fraction of the information that was truly there. Her eyes were poor tools to study the void, and that was never more apparent than staring out into the Mississippi Sector. Dark planets drifted endlessly out here. Other parts of the sector were filled with gas giants' whose gaseous layering reflected the small amount of starlight at different wavelengths, giving them a slight marbled appearance, but their local region was now dominated by rock planets. Atmosphere-less hunks of ice-cold earth, these planets were only visible in the way they blotted out the stars. With the naked eye, it was impossible to ascertain the location of the vagrant planets.

The ship began a sweeping turn, evident by the change in the engines' low hum. Clearly there were other planets out here besides the one that Maria Galhino thought she could make out in the darkness. But, of course, the Singularity wasn't as blind as her crew in the constant midnight of the Mississippi Sector. That was why Galhino was here. She liked to contemplate the way their ship perceived their surroundings. As a rehearsal for combat, she liked to consider what sensor sweeps would be best applied, and the Mississippi Sector was certainly an interesting challenge.

The ship's sensors were usually calibrated to the infrared spectrum to study changes in heat energy, but so distant from any stars, the planets adrift in the Mississippi Sector had no heat energy. They were cold. If any of the planets still had active cores, the infrared may return as a blur, but that was no way to reliably discern size or mass.

Without light, the spectroscopes were similarly useless – unable to analyze the material properties of the planets' surface. For those planets without atmosphere, the ship's laser sensors would be adequate to determine distance and size. They were quite useful as long as nothing scattered their focused photon beam. Still, the most reliable method of navigation in this area was to go by radar.

Most ships didn't have the radar range to detect a planet far enough away to prevent falling into its gravity well. It was an advantage of the Singularity's size to carry a larger array and have a greater detection radius. The Singularity's radar had ample range to confirm the presence and range of a planet, and then check the accelerometers to obtain its gravitational force. With that, it was a simple calculation with the law of universal gravitation to determine the smallest necessary course deviation to avoid the planet and its gravity well.