Progenitor - Michael Jan Friedman [72]
He looked at Joseph, who saw him looking and winked. Simenon frowned at him. Singing in the midst of the ritual, he thought disdainfully. Then he sang some more.
Jiterica knew exactly when she would come in contact with the Belladonna’s weakening deflector shields.
After all, her suit’s sensor pack had warned her about it soon after she entered the accretion bridge. But she hadn’t worried about the research ship’s defenses because Commander Wu had conceived a way for her to bypass them.
As Jiterica understood it, ships’ deflectors—like other force fields, including the one inside her own containment suit—were emitted at certain frequencies. They were designed to fend off solid objects as well as directed-energy barrages, but not other fields generated at the same frequency.
So if the ensign extended her personal force field outside of her suit, and set it for the frequency most commonly used by Federation vessels, she would be able to penetrate the Belladonna’s protective barrier. At least, in theory.
Of course, Commander Wu might have guessed wrong about the frequency of the research ship’s shields, in which case the challenge facing Jiterica would suddenly become a good deal more complicated. However, she had decided to—as humans seemed fond of saying—cross that bridge when she came to it.
With the outer surface of the Belladonna’s deflector wall getting close enough to reach out and touch with the fingers of her gauntlet, that bridge was now at hand.
As Wu had instructed her, the ensign extended her force field beyond the skin of her suit, instantly placing a much greater burden on herself to maintain an unnaturally dense form. If she had to do this on her own all the time, it wouldn’t be possible for her to remain on a ship like the Stargazer. But for a short span of time, she could handle the considerable strain of self-containment.
Next, Jiterica matched her field’s frequency to the deflector’s—or rather, what she expected the deflector’s to be. At that point, there was only one thing left for her to do.
She let the shuttle’s tractor beam carry her forward.
The ensign’s sensors ticked off the distance between her and the Belladonna. Twenty-five centimeters. Twenty. Fifteen. Ten. None.
She braced herself for an impact—because if the deflector remained impervious to her, she would bounce off it like any other solid object. But she didn’t bounce.
She went right through it.
Wu’s theory had proven out. Jiterica had pierced the Belladonna’s defenses. And the tractor beam was still carrying her forward.
Once she was certain she was past the deflector barrier, the ensign withdrew her force field into the fabric of her suit again. Then she relaxed, allowing it to reassume the burden of containment.
Better, Jiterica thought with a sense of relief. Much better.
The still-visible portion of the research ship was looming in front of her, looking strangely truncated. Also a little curved, an effect of the churning graviton activity in the area.
As luck would have it, one of the vessel’s exterior hatches was almost directly ahead. The ensign could make her way toward it as soon as the tractor beam released her—which it would do in a matter of seconds, judging by the rate at which she was approaching the Belladonna’s hull.
Again, she braced herself—not for contact with a deflector shield, but with the duranium surface used by the Federation in the construction of spacegoing vessels. But the impact, however gentle, never came. And somehow, though it seemed the research ship was mere centimeters away, Jiterica was still moving forward—propelled dutifully by the shuttle’s tractor beam.
At first, she didn’t understand. Then she checked her sensors and realized what was happening.
The Belladonna wasn’t nearly as close as it looked. But then, her suit’s visual-analog device was designed to respond