The group watched as the ship parked itself in a geostationary orbit. It wasn't necessary for the drive to create the bridge, but it did simplify things quite a bit.

Outwardly, nothing changed for quite some time, then a distorted ripple of light was caught on the camera, and Alexander zoomed onto that section of space. The drive must have established a link on the other end, or he assumed it had.

The ripple slowly grew outward, the space in front of the ship starting to look like a Fresnel lens as the gravitational waves rippled outward from the center. In a move that made even Alexander's mind hurt, and the others wince away from the image and groan, the center seemed to stretch and elongate itself into infinity inside the rippling waves.

Lucas rushed to the side of the room and puked. Alexander wished he could as well. The others managed to hold their lunch, but they all looked rather green.

"I don't think a human mind was designed to process something like that," Krieger said, holding back a gag.

"I agree, it was not a pleasant sight to see, even for me," Alexander replied softly. "Maybe you should all wait outside while the ship transitions."

Surprisingly, they all shook their heads, even Lucas, who seemed the most affected by the gravitational phenomenon.

"And miss out on witnessing this? Screw that," Lucas said. "Although, when you record this for history's sake, edit out the part with me puking, please."

The bridge continued to expand as the ship's generator poured power into the FTL drive. Soon, they could see stars through the connection.

The ship was monitoring the gravity coming from the other side, and it was fluctuating slightly, making the tunnel seem to warp and wobble, stretching the stars on the other end. The radiation coming through the connection was horrendous as well, and he was glad the opening was pointed away from anything further inside Unokane's gravity well. The deadly rays wouldn't just kill anything organic aboard the ship; they would kill anything organic within a few light seconds of the opening. It was the equivalent of being blasted by a solar eruption while being right next to the star.

Once the ship's computer determined the opening was large enough, the vessel accelerated forward as fast as possible. Even then, as soon as the ship began to move, the opening started to distort and close. Only part of the vessel made it through as the rift in space snapped closed like a rubber band. The feed inside the room went black and was replaced by a 'signal lost' text.

Alexander pulled up the feed from the distant satellite that was monitoring the opening on Unokane's side. The group watched silently as the back third of the vessel tumbled erratically as the engines no longer had any input and were stuck on full power.

Emergency protocols quickly activated, and the engines powered down. The rear of the ship soon vanished into the swirling clouds of the gas giant.

"Well…" Alexander said. "That was less than ideal."

"The bridge will need to be much wider," Lucas said, still sounding a bit ill from before. "At least we got some data. With that, the computer should be able to calculate how much larger we need to make the opening to allow the ship to transition through properly."

"I'll have to retrofit the new drive into a stingray," Alexander grumbled. "We don't have time to build a new ship from scratch."

He had queued up a second modular ship, since anything could go wrong with untested technology, but it was still weeks off from completion. He would have done so far sooner, had he known the Shican were involved with Xin, but hindsight was twenty-twenty. He could fit the drive into a Stingray, so that would suffice for testing.

***

The group returned to the same room two days later for the second test. This time, Lucas had a handy little bucket that nobody commented on, but the others looked at longingly.

It had taken Alexander far longer than he thought to remove the old FTL drive and insert the new one on the volunteer Stingray. It wasn't quite as simple as a plug-and-play swap. A section of armor had to be cut away to fit the larger unit, and Alexander had to change out and rewire the sensors and some power cables to make the whole thing work, but he got it done.

The gravitational lensing showed up much faster this time around, thanks in part to the additional power Alexander was pumping into the drive. The video feed even helpfully cut out at the part where the initial bridge formed, to prevent any undue stress on the watchers.

A case of theft: this story is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.

They all thanked him for that, and he even heard a sigh of relief from Lucas as the man set the bucket down.

Despite the initial opening forming faster, the expansion of the bridge was still a slow process, taking nearly ten minutes to get to the desired size, which was larger than the first attempt, but much smaller than they would need when the carrier went through.

Another issue cropped up as they watched. The bridge was much more unstable than the first time.

"Why's it doing that?" Archie asked.

"Echoes from the previous test?" Alexander replied uncertainly. Nothing in Lund's research hinted at such a problem, but she had dropped her research after concluding it was not what she was looking for, so it wasn't an exhaustive work on all the idiosyncrasies they might run into with the technology. Despite that, what Alexander said made sense to him. They were using nearly the same spot as before. Why wouldn't a hole through space and time have some sort of ripple effect?

If the transit worked, they would need to test the hypothesis from the other end.

He hoped he was wrong, because if whatever weird dimension of spacetime the bridge was forming on was also disturbed by the formation of the bridge, it could make forming bridges around the same planet increasingly difficult until the disturbances had time to settle. That wasn't exactly an ideal problem for mass transport, even if he did figure out the deadly radiation problem.

They couldn't do anything about that for now, so the group waited while the portal formed. Eventually, the distortions seemed to smooth out, or the expanding bridge moved past them. A tunnel four times the size of the Stingray rippled in space, and the small gunship shot forward at full speed.

Much like the first test, the portal began to contract immediately, but the extra-wide opening and acceleration of the ship allowed it to hit the event horizon before it could contract very much.

And that's when the weird stretching occurred again. The ship seemed to appear across the entirety of the bridge, existing on both sides simultaneously, and everyone but Alexander lost their lunch. He wasn't immune, though. A weird vertigo assaulted his senses, and when he came to, he found himself lying on the floor.

Thankfully, he hadn't fallen on anyone.

Alexander climbed to his feet and looked around at the rest of the heaving watchers. "Okay. I'm deleting all video recordings of that."

He got emphatic nods of approval from everyone at that statement.

Once he ensured there were no lingering effects of watching the phenomenon, he looked at the screen. The Stingray floated above a completely new world, over a dozen systems away.

Since Lucas and the others were still recovering, Alexander added a blackout for when the ship neared the event horizon, so they wouldn't have to watch that again. Once the program was in place, he instructed the ship to begin cycling the drive once more to form a return bridge.

The lensing happened, but the initial portal never formed, even after waiting nearly twenty minutes. Not wanting to damage the drive, he told the ship to power it down.

"Looks like you might have been right," Lucas said as he walked up to Alexander. The man looked and sounded much better now that he had some time to recover.

"Yeah, that's not ideal," Alexander grumbled. "I'm going to try moving the ship to the opposite pole and try again."

"I know you plan on sending a few ships through for the attack. What about having one as an anchor ship?" Lucas asked.

"Without additional testing, I don't know if the bridge would remain stable while another ship approaches. If the Stingray can form a stable connection on the far side of the planet, it might just be better to jump them one at a time."

Alexander couldn't risk losing one of the carriers if the bridge acted up.

"Fair enough," Lucas added quietly so as not to disturb the others, who seemed to still be wrestling with the aftereffects of watching the jump.

Once the Stingray was in place on the opposite side of the planet, and the other people in the room nodded that they were well enough to continue, Alexander sent the command to fire up the drive.

The bridge did form, but you could see it was highly unstable as it wavered back and forth so much that it occasionally cut off the view of the stars on the other end.

To help alleviate the issue, Alexander told the Stingray's computer to increase the portal's dimension by five times the ship's size instead of four. Once it passed that boundary, most of the turbulence seemed to cease once again.

It was nice to know that they could sort of overpower the unstable connection, but he hoped it didn't keep growing, or the reactor aboard a ship wouldn't be able to output enough energy to make it larger after a certain point.

Once the portal size was met, the ship flashed through and appeared back in Unokane once again.

The test had been a success. Not a great one considering the problems they encountered, but a success nonetheless.

Please read this chapter on its original platform—*.

Krieger walked up to him and clapped him on the arm. "Congratulations on making history."

"I don't know about that," Alexander said in embarrassment. "It was all Dr. Lund's work that made it possible."

"Still," Archie said, joining them. "It wouldn't have gone anywhere without you making it a reality. Any plans on a name for it, or do you plan on naming it after the late doctor?"

"I don't think she would want her name on this. If I ever realize her life's work, the gravitational folding, that'll get her name. As for what to call this drive? I honestly don't know," Alexander admitted.

"You could call it the vomit drive," Lucas chimed in, earning disapproving looks from everyone.

"How about we table the discussion for later," Theo cut in. "As far as I know, you only plan on using the drive technology sparingly and for covert operations, so it doesn't really need a name at this moment."

"You just want to workshop something that has more appeal," Lucas responded jokingly.

"Obviously," Theo grinned in response, getting chuckles out of everyone. "But mainly I need Alex's attention for another matter."

"Guess that's our cue to leave," Lucas said. "I need to get back to my other research anyway. I think we're nearing a working prototype, Alex. I'll contact you when we have something worth showing."

Everyone waved as they left, leaving Alexander alone with Theo. The man wrinkled his nose, and Alexander got the hint. "Right. Let's move to a cleaner room, and I'll send some bots in with some industrial-grade solvents to clean up the mess in here."