Earth Song: Twilight Serenade (25 page)

Chapter 25

May 8th, 535 AE

Deep Space, The Frontier

Minu floated in the CIC with her family and marveled at the display. Lilith had set the interior to reflect near space so the CIC was like being outside in the void, with the viewers being the Kaatan.

Space slid by at many thousands of times the speed of light. The Kaatan was near the front of a flotilla. Directly behind her was Fiisk Alpha, controlled by the other Kaatan CI. Just behind it was Fiisk Beta, being operated by a mixed crew of human and Beezer. Two Kiile class carriers, Alpha and Beta flanked it to either side. Ibeen Gamma and Zeta were just behind the Kiile, Beta having left a week ago. And finally over forty Eseel gunboats surrounded them out to a quarter of a light year as pickets.

The only ship that couldn’t be gotten underway was the Kaatan that had been hulled through by a powerful energy beam. It had been loaded whole into one of the cargo balls on Ibeen Gamma.

“It’s a fleet,” Aaron said where he played with Mindy. The little girl was growing like a weed. She also simply loved playing in microgravity. Minu thought it was the best playpen ever. Lilith created little holographic things for the girl to grasp at and watch with her intense green eyes. Lilith never seemed to get bored with the girl.

“You’re damn right it is,” Minu agreed.

Mindy turned her head at her mother’s voice, the sudden motion inducing a slight spin. Amazingly she threw an arm out in the opposite direction and nearly succeeded in arresting the spin.

“This fleet is really nothing more than a collection of wrecks and half operational hulks,” Lilith pointed out. She gestured and the baby girl stopped spinning. The gentle caress of the forcefields made her giggle wildly, just like always. It was the feel of a forcefield against her skin that made her laugh for the first time days ago.

“It might be a bunch of wrecks,” Minu agreed, “but no one would know that to see us flying by.”

“Still, I believe stealth is a better tactic.”

“I agreed,” Minu reminded her, “which is why the Eseel aren’t ranging out very far.” Lilith nodded and went about her job of marshaling the taskforce. Minu thought about how they had to use the Eseel as scouts and thought about the day she could start using the Tog scout ships. Their electronics capabilities were an order of magnitude over that of the Eseel.

The voice of the command crew about Fiisk Beta came over the room’s audio system. “Engine #2 heat gradient has stabilized,” the man reported.

A few hours ago they’d started to have trouble with one of the Fiisk’s two huge engines. Lilith had responded by slowing the entire fleet by a hundred times the speed of light. It appeared to have remediated the problem.

The main navigational display against one circular wall of the CIC showed their progress towards the third ghost fleet. A stylized line in blue pulsing across the void from one deep space location to another. Around them for lightyears in all direction was nothing more than the occasional hydrogen atom every few cubic meters, and even more occasionally other atoms.

Still, at thousands of times the speed of light, they encountered a million of those atoms a second. A large part of the drive was actually its shield projector that created a gravity lance, which forcefully shunted aside anything it encountered. As long as it was less than the mass of the drive itself. Seen from the outside, a starship traveling at that speed seemed to shimmer as it deflected atoms aside.

That same deflection happened faster than the speed of light. The result was similar to what many ages ago on Earth had been sought after in a positron collider. Naturally, that subatomic reaction produced some unusual side effects. One of them, was tachyons. Tachyon flux, as Lilith called it, was the principal way of detecting a starship approaching at supraluminal speed. While neutrinos didn’t ‘really’ travel faster than light, they propagated faster than the event wave which created them. To Minu, in the end, it was enough to know that it was a reliable way to detect a fast moving ship.

The problem for them was that it was a double edged sword. The same effect allowed them to be detected as they moved through space. It was a game of cat and howler.

As Minu examined the map she noticed something forming ahead of them towards their destination.

“What is that?” she asked.

“It’s a minor nebula,” Lilith said, “the next ghost fleet appears to have begun at one end and has been transiting it slowly over the intervening years.”

“How dense is it?” Aaron asked.

“On the order of five hundred particles per cubic meter.”

“Is that a lot?” Minu asked.

Lilith gave a slight shrug. “If you were to walk through a cloud of that density you would not notice it. However it is dense enough to limit our speed considerably.”

“How much so?”

“Less than two hundred times the speed of light. Even then we’ll have to go in line to minimize the strain on the salvaged ships. Fiisk Alpha will lead, it has the most power drive. Higher speed risks overloading the drives, or initiating fusion along the bow shockwave.”

Minu considered. “Only two hundred times the speed of light. How far into the nebula is it?”

“Three light years. Even at the rate of drift the ghost fleet won’t leave the nebula for another forty-two thousand years because the nebula is itself moving relative to the fleet and in somewhat the same direction.”

Minu watched her daughter giggle and watch a holographic butterfly Lilith had created fly around her head and thought. “So it’s going to take about six days to transit into the nebula and reach the fleet?”

Lilith nodded.

“Are you sure it’s there?”

“No,” Lilith admitted. “While the density of the nebula is almost intangible from our point of view, it’s more than enough to shield passive sensors.” She gestured and a new display came alive showing a massive cloud of intricate patterns and swirling colors. Stars were visible in places giving it eerie, living pulsations. “There is a magnetar towards the side of the nebula we are going towards. It appears to have been part of the natural structure which helped the nebula come about.”

“Magnetar is a kind of neutron star, isn’t it?” Aaron asked.

“Yes,” Lilith confirmed, “only with a much slower rate of rotation and a much more powerful magnetic field.”

On the display one of the stars flashed to a very slow rhythm. Every time it flared the nebula around it gave off an iridescent lightshow.

“I don’t have a record of a magnetar in this stellar quadrant,” Lilith told them. “Since they don’t form quickly, I can only assume it was once much deeper in the nebula and not identified by the stellar cartographers of The People.”

“Science later,” Minu said, “right now we have to decide if it’s worth the risk to waste twelve days going in and out of that thing only to possibly find nothing.”

“We could bypass it,” Aaron suggested.

“I don’t advise that,” Lilith said immediately. “The days of cruise from the previous ghost fleet have pointed out a number of modifications that are necessary to fine-tune the newly installed drives in Fiisk Beta. And entering the nebula has secondary benefits.” Minu gestured for her to continue. “Within hours of entering the nebula we will be all be undetectable. We must be cautious with our speed navigating in the nebula, and against the massive magnetic flux from the magnetar. But these are quantifiable risks.”

“While a possible pursuing enemy fleet is not,” Minu said. “Let me ask you, what happens if we’re attacked inside the nebula?”

“They could not find us,” Lilith complained.

“Indulge me,” Minu asked.

“Combat would be extremely challenging for both sides. Because of the density of space, shields effectiveness would be limited as well as sensor locks for weapons fire. Particle weapons and lasers would be useless at anything other than pointblank ranges, and missiles would have to be reprogrammed for slower speeds, considering the environment.”

Minu thought for a few moments before deciding.

The fleet slowed to just ten times the speed of light and came into a tight, single file formation. Fiisk Alpha was in the lead, Lilith’s Kaatan right in its wake. Arrayed behind were the Kiile and then Ibeen Gamma. All but ten of the Eseel were aboard the carriers.

“We’re approaching the edge of the nebula,” Lilith told them.

Aaron watched from where she held Mindy, who seemed to naturally want to be awake whenever anything exciting was about to happen. After finding out about the nebula he’d studied up on the stellar phenomenon, both scientific and fiction.

“I still think we should call it the Mutara Nebula,” Aaron said.

“After what happened to the good guys in that one?” Minu asked.

“Hey, the bad guy got owned, remember?”

Minu wasn’t impressed. A minute later they encountered the leading edge of the nebula.

All the times she’d been in the ship performing incredibly powerful maneuvers and inconceivable speeds, and Minu had no memory of ever feeling motion. The ship’s internal forcefields and gravitic control system kept the ride smooth. It had to. At the speeds the ship operated at if the inertial compensation system failed, even partly, the fragile living occupants would be turned to strawberry jam.

When the hit the edge of the nebula, Minu felt the disorientation of sudden slowing. It was only for a second, but it was still disconcerting.

“We’ve entered the nebula,” Lilith told them, rather unnecessarily. 

For the next several hours it was a rollercoaster ride as Lilith fought the ship’s navigational and inertial control system. Lilith’s generally distant and vacant look when she piloted morphed into one of concentration.

“Is there anything we can do?” Minu asked as Lilith’s look of concentration turned to one of mild anger and sweat broke out on her forehead, something Minu hadn’t seen before.

“Silence would help,” she growled. Instantly everyone fell quiet. Even Mindy, who’d been cooing and blowing bubbles, fell silent and looked around. “I was not prepared for the layers of variable density in the nebula.”

Two tense hours later the ride smoothed out and they could no longer feel anything. Lilith took a deep breath and slowly let it out in a long sigh.

“Is the fleet okay?” Minu asked, know they were fine.

“Fiisk Alpha reports some minor damage to the gravitic drive. That vessel absorbed far more abuse than we did.”

Minu pursed her lips thinking about the wild ride they’d just experienced and how it must have been in the other side. But the Fiisk was currently unmanned, except for the Kaatan CI.

“The Eseel had the least effects,” Lilith finished. “The Ibeen are a robust design, so I was less concerned about buffeting.”

“Can we expect this to be so bad throughout the nebula?” Aaron asked.

“Uncertain,” Lilith admitted. “I’ve gathered some baseline data that will help greatly in predicting the effects ahead of us, allowing me to slow the fleet as necessary. I may even be able to maneuver around the worst of it. I’ll send the Eseel ahead as to help feel our way through the nebula.”

As the fleet settled into a more comfortable cruise and Lilith gradually increased their speed, Minu fell into a contemplative silence. Aaron, keeping their baby amused with part of his efforts, glanced at his wife then turned most of his attention to her. There was the beautiful woman he’d fallen in love with at first sight so many years ago watching the navigational map of the nebula fill in bit by bit, her eyes narrowed and that little cock of her head he found so adorable.

He’d been with her as a friend at first, watching as she came into her own as a Chosen and then struggled with herself as she realized her abilities. Her abilities to lead men into combat and deal out death and destruction.

Minu liked science and was a natural study. She was a kind person at heart, and the fact that she was so good at killing troubled her on a fundamental level.

Then, in that dread art, she’d found her reason for being. To make humanity safe in the endless dangers of the Concordia. He’d once told Gregg that he knew Minu would be First one day way back during the trials as she was taking them all through by the sheer force of her will alone. He’d laughed it off. A female First? Hilarious. No one was laughing now.

The look on her face spoke volumes to him. He’d learned as a husband to allow her those quiet moments when she was a hundred billion kilometers away, wrapped in the tenuous feelings of a growing idea. Just as he suspected she reached up and began stroking the brilliant blue sapphire which hung on the dualloy chain she always wore around her neck. A tiny smile broke his face. Minu had an idea.

Chapter 26

May 23th, 535 AE

Aether Nebula, The Frontier

The fleet had reached the area where the ghost fleet should have been almost a week ago only to find nothing. Not so much as a piece of charred hull plating.

Lilith launched almost all the Eseel and sent them out in a search pattern. Not finding the fleet where it should have been disquieted her.

They’d docked two days ago to transfer all the senior staff for a strategy meeting when Lilith could find no trace of the drifting ships that should have been there. Minu held a brief meeting with her Rangers to evaluate their training then turned her attention back to the current task.

“There has to be a logical reason,” Lilith insisted.

“Or an illogical one,” Cherise had said, getting a sidelong look from Lilith. Cherise always liked to consider the impossible, which sometimes annoyed Minu’s ever practical daughter who lived in space.

“Like what?” Minu asked her old friend.

“Well, I see a couple possibilities. Maybe something changed their course through the Aether Nebula.”

“I detest that name,” Lilith grumbled, making everyone else smile. Minu had to admit it had stuck when Aaron had used it one day just after entering. She’d looked it up and liked it. All the Chosen liked using old names from Earth for things. It was part of the human condition, she supposed.

Cherise continued without interruption. “The other is that we were beaten to the fleet, or it was simply never there and the data from the CI was incorrect.”

“Lilith?” Minu asked, wanting her take on it.

“While it is possible that the data was in error, I find it unlikely. The stability of the CI is not in question. We have to consider the possibility that we were beaten to the fleet, of course. However that is also unlikely. Consider that The People used this location on purpose. Once secreted inside the nebula-”

“The Aether Nebula,” Aaron corrected.

Lilith’s face gave a little twitch that made Aaron grin. Minu smiled a little, hoping he didn’t push her too far someday. Who knew what the girl was truly capable of?

Lilith continued without using the name. “Once secreted inside the nebula the ghost fleet was all but invisible. If you consider that the previous two fleets were simply drifting through deep space and had not been located, we have to consider that either they were never found or no real efforts were made to locate them.”

“So what about the option that it was moved?” Cherise asked.

“I don’t see any logical reason for that,” Lilith said simply.

“There may be no logical reason,” Cherise countered. Lilith’s eyes narrowed. “Sometimes life is illogical.”

“I only find people illogical,” Lilith said.

“And it is people we’re talking about here. Aliens, sure, but people who left these ships.”

“Maybe we are missing a possibility,” a new voice suggested. Every turned to look at Kal’at who’d been mostly silent during the meeting. He was gazing at the huge holographic 3D map of the Aether Nebula which floated just off center of the CIC.

“What do you mean?” Of all of them, Lilith had spent the most time with the Rasa scientist.

“While the ships of The People are composed of all kinds of material, a lot of it is still metal, right?”

“Yes.”

“Have you had to adjust courses through the nebula in response to that magnetar?” He pointed a claw at the star several light years away which once every twenty-two minutes rotated to cast a scintillating lightshow through the nebula, causing Aaron to name it the Aether.

“Very minimally,” Lilith said. “Not enough that a human would notice.”

“But would that minimal difference add up over hundreds of thousands of years?”

Everyone’s eyes got wider and they all looked at Lilith who, after a moment, began to look uncomfortable.

“Yes,” she admitted. “I am sorry, I was foolish.”

“No,” Minu said quickly, “no one expects you to think of everything.”

“That’s why you have friends,” Cherise said. Lilith looked at her and Cherise winked and gave her a huge smile.

“I cannot tell when you are being serious,” Lilith complained. Everyone chuckled and Lilith looked around suspiciously. She’d come far in human (and alien) interaction, but humor was something she struggled with and probably always would. Bakook just watched it all with disinterest.

“Can you extrapolate based on the magnetar’s influence?” Minu asked, getting them back on track.

“Yes,” Lilith said. A second later the swarm of distant Eseel began to change course. “It will take a day or more to reposition the search and correlate the results.”

It was two days. They’d found the fleet just hours ago, sending everyone rushing to the CIC. Minu, Aaron, Cherise, Brian the head of the scientific team, Bakook, Kal’at, and Captain Pape all gathered as Lilith worked the displays within the circular space.

They were much closer to the magnetar now. Close enough that when its frighteningly powerful magnetic field and gamma ray shockwave passed by the ships had to use shields to avoid damage to sensitive systems. Those flashes lit up space all around them, creating the effect of them floating in a rainbow kaleidoscope of milky fireworks every twenty-two minutes. 

“I found a cloud of accreted debris first,” Lilith told them, then nodded to Cherise. “It was all highly magnetic and that made it clump together. I reviewed the course it must have taken, did a baseline extrapolation on that and recalculated yet again. And here we are.”

Lilith made one of her gestures and the space outside changed to show a cluster of ships. A trio of Eseel were circling the ghost fleet recording images and sensor data.

“They are in an orbit around the Magnetar. A stable orbit, I might add.”

“What is the chance of that?” Kal’at said in wonder. “A million to one?”

“Far lower,” Lilith corrected. “The only possibility is The People set them on their original course on purpose.”

“Then the ships may be worthless,” Kal’at said. “Every time the magnetar flashed it would irradiate the fleet.”

“Sensor data from asteroids in the system seems to suggest this neutron star only bursts in a certain direction, or plane of eclipse. The fleet’s orbit is in a different eclipse.

“So you mean they aimed the damaged ships here, from hundreds of light years away, so they ended up in an orbit around a magnetar that would keep them safe?” Minu asked.

Lilith nodded.

“But why?”

“Safe harbor?” Aaron asked. He was sans baby this time. Mindy had been asleep when the call went out so he’d left her with the nanny.

“That,” Lilith said, “is a fascinating possibility.”

Over the next half hour the fleet slowed as it approached the magnetar star system. The flotilla of Eseel were spreading out to cover all the approaches to the hybrid neutron star. Then Lilith did a double take and turned to look at the growing map. There represented next to the magnestar, in addition to the ghost fleet, were a number of other targets.

“Can you tell what they are?” Minu asked.

“These three appear to be planets,” Lilith said and three of the points flashed green. “This one,” another flashed, “is too small and artificial.”

Bran pointed at the planets. “Humans didn’t study magnetars overly much before we lost Earth. There weren’t any in our quadrant of space, and they’re hard to study for the obvious reason. But we had no reason to believe that they would harbor planets.”

“The People didn’t study them extensively,” Lilith said. “There really isn’t much to be found of interest, normally. And because of their gamma ray and magnetic bursts, they are just far too dangerous.”

The Eseel continued to relay data and the worlds quickly took shape. One was a ball of rock in an extremely eccentric and distant orbit. Readings indicated it might be rich in metals and that would half explain how it stayed in orbit of the star.

The second was a highly unusual proto-gas giant. “This could be the remnants of a true gas giant with most of its gaseous mass blown away by the neutron star,” Bran suggested.

The third took the longest to gather data on. Everyone kept waiting as the blue circle representing the world remained blank. Finally Minu spoke up.

“Is there a problem?”

“I’m triple checking the data.”

“Why?” Kal’at asked, Dan nodding.

“Because the results are too improbable.”

“The latest in a long list?” Minu asked. “Spill it.”

The circle became a planet. A planet with the haze of an atmosphere, topography, and… oceans.

“Is that Bellatrix-like?” Bran asked, excited.

“Yes,” Lilith said, “it is. It has an oxygen/nitrogen atmosphere and liquid water seas. The life belt your scientists called the Goldilocks zone, for some strange reason, shouldn’t even exist in this system. Neutron stars are remnants of nova. As close as this world is to the neutron star it should have been obliterated by the blast.”

The screen showed the magnetar’s system in relation to the galactic eclipse, then showed a graphic of the star giving off a gamma ray burst with data appearing in a window. Then the planets were added in familiar orbits, but all ninety degrees off the normal eclipse.

“It’s like someone stood the system on its edge,” Kal’at commented.

Dram pointed. “But the star is rotating in the normal eclipse of the galaxy!”

“Correct,” Lilith agreed. “It is as if the planets were turned on their edge.” The star burst over and over, always the planets were out of the danger zone of the burst.

“Was this all designed by The People?” Minu asked in an awed voice.

“We know they did planetary level engineering,” Kal’at said, “your planet is proof of that. But this seems even beyond them.”

“In a brute force sort of way,” Lilith agree, “but not if they took advantage of the supernova. If they were prepared for it.”

“Or caused it,” Minu agreed and added. They all thought back to Planet K and its sudden but unexplainable supernova while they had been there fighting the Mok-Tok.

Minu thought of what it would take to find just the right planet, Bellatrix-like, with the right atmosphere, gravity, water, and all. Then have it around the right sun, one that could produce a neutron star. Then force it to go off at a time of your choosing to create a star system suitable to your purposes. And of course, protect that life-bearing world from being completely obliterated when the most powerful explosive force in the universe rolls over it. And the blast of the star’s exploding creates the nebula to hide it all.

“To what advantage would this be?” she wondered.

“Further data is available,” Lilith said and more details appeared next to each world. “The small rock is actually incredibly rich in heavy metals and other metals and radioactives.

The proto-gas giant is indeed the core of a gas giant. There are some very rare chemical elements only found in the center of a gas giant. They take eons to form from the intense pressure of the planet’s atmosphere. All can be artificially produced, at great expense. Likewise mining those elements from a gas giant is just as difficult in technology because of the atmosphere.”

“Unless you blow off the atmosphere,” Minu said.

“Like diverting a river to wash away dirt off a hill to get at the minerals underneath,” Aaron said, snapping his fingers. “Boom, instant riches.”

“And the Bellatrix-like planet?” Minu asked.

“A place to live,” Lilith said. The planet detail had continued to increase and now cities were being displayed.

“Are there people there?” Minu asked.

“We are getting some energy readings, but only minor ones.”

Minu reached into the special pocket on her uniform and drew out her PCR, portal control rod. Even though they were almost a light year away, the device could sense and report on a portal even that far away, if you knew how to ask it the right question.

She activated the script control and used that part of her brain which the Weavers had changed to manipulate the control and got her answer. Nothing.

“There are no portals down there,” she told them all.

“So the only way to get on and off was by spaceship,” Bakook said. “And who would look for a star system with valuable resources in the middle of a nebula almost impossible to navigate and having a deadly magnetar at its center?”

“Brilliant,” Lilith agreed. She looked at even more data. “The positions of the planets are also ideally set within the gravitic sheer plane of the neutron star. Gravity should be normal, unlike many other places in the system. The survivable world also has a very powerful magnetic field itself as well, likely keeping much of the magnetar’s radiation from reaching the surface.”

All the while they discussed the planets Lilith had Eseel racing around the system gathering data, and she was ready for her last revelation. Minu jumped her by a bit by remembering something.

“What about the artificial point you found?”