The Desert of Stars (The Human Reach) (37 page)

The forthcoming
third book in the Human Reach series

I was born too soon.

Jurgen Becker, master of the United Nations Survey Ship
Javier
Perez de Cuellar
, floated before his stateroom window, musing at the field
of stars before him, something he found himself doing more and more lately. The
red dwarf GJ 1167 hung close within his view.

We think we have come so far. We’re more than fifty
light-years out, and we’ve colonized a few dozen planets, and the politicians
praise themselves for those accomplishments. But we’ve only taken a child’s
step into the cosmos!

And so much of it remained out of reach, at least to Becker,
who was approaching mandatory retirement age.

I would have liked to have seen the raging T Tauris and
swirling protoplanetary discs in the Orion Nebula up close. But it will be more
than a millennium until we get there, if we do at all. We’re still centuries
from reaching the nearest neutron star or black hole. Even the closest B-class
star, Regulus, is decades distant. I will probably be dead before the Chinese
open a wormhole there. If I had been born later ...

He shook his head.
I must discipline myself away from
pondering such melancholies; I will have plenty of time for such thoughts after
my retirement. And perhaps it is a good thing we have not reached such exotic
phenomena. They are so beautiful, but evidence of something deadly.
Some
primeval disaster – the sort that probably would leave behind a neutron star,
nebula or black hole – had wiped away life from an entire region of space near
Earth. Scientists had only begun to debate where and when the event had taken
place, but it had turned an estimated forty percent of Earth’s sky into a dark
desert of lifeless worlds. And worlds with no indigenous life would have
generated no oxygen atmosphere and were almost certainly useless to humanity.

The desert, too, had ignited humanity’s first interstellar
war, which was in its third year and showed no sign of ending. Japan and the
United States had been the first to realize their colonial arms had reached the
edge of the desert, and that they would find no more colony worlds; they had
attacked China and Korea, whose expansion would otherwise have continued
unhindered.

Russia and India had also built off the Japanese wormhole
networks and founded a few colonies, and they also faced long-term stagnation.
They had threatened China and received concessions, ultimately finding ways to
avoid war.

And Europa, a power whose intervention could likely end the
conflict, had remained passive. Becker knew his former countrymen – he had
considered himself neither German nor European for more than four decades – had
no reason to join. Europa’s colonial expansion, into Cetus, Eridani and Fornax,
ran along the apparent edge of the desert. They would still have colonies to
settle, though not as many as the Chinese. The powerbrokers in Paris and Berlin
would call for peace even as they used their neutrality to enrich themselves by
selling things to the belligerents, or people who wanted nothing to do with
either side.

Such hypocrites
. Becker had been raised to believe
Europa was the world’s only great humanitarian nation, the only one that truly
put people before money, unlike the mercantile empires of America, China and
Japan. And perhaps that had been true, once, but a trip through the factory
towns of North Africa, owned by European companies and operated by the locals,
had taught him otherwise. People lived in tin-roofed shacks and relieved
themselves in filthy ditches nearby. Disease was rampant; generic treatments
were only sometimes available, and proper gene-tailored ones never were.

Becker joined the European colonial program not long after,
hoping to build better worlds. He had been part of the crew that opened up
Esperance, way back in ’08, and he had taken part in dozens of wormhole
openings since. But his dissatisfaction with mother Europa had only grown; its
masters regarded the colonies as sources of prestige, not places to build a
new, better society. Disgusted, he joined the United Nations’ colonization
effort, aimed at helping troubled and displaced peoples start over, on a fresh
world. It hadn’t always gone well; he had wept when the government on
Commonwealth had collapsed, turning the planet into a lawless anarchy.

Now, he was captain of the last remaining U.N. ship capable
of building the wormhole bridges that linked the stars. The major powers had
slashed their U.N. funding to pay for their own exploration and military
fleets, and the other U.N. and Red Cross wormhole breeders were either
mothballed or on permanent lease to other nations.

No other vessels plied GJ 1167, the fingertip of a wormhole
chain that extended into Coma Berenices, another constellation near the
desert’s edge. It was a busy time on board. Within days, they would launch an
antimatter-fueled Valkyrie, a tiny robotic vessel carrying the mouth of a new
wormhole, toward a G7 star eight light-years distant. Long-range telescopes had
located a candidate world there, with the telltale signs of an oxygen-nitrogen
atmosphere. Only a close survey, however, could determine whether humans could
live there: Any number of issues, like too much carbon dioxide or chlorine in
the atmosphere, could render it uninhabitable. His crew was also readying a
second Valkyrie, to launch toward another red dwarf, a lily pad to a second
potentially habitable world.

His handheld beeped: his first officer, Abrego, calling from
the bridge.

“Jurgen, the supply freighter has arrived in the system,”
Abrego said. The
Perez de Cuellar
was about 300,000 kilometers from the
only wormhole out of the system, close enough for almost instant communications
with any emerging ship. “The captain wants to speak with you regarding a
special request. Also, he confirmed another virus has knocked the comm links at
every wormhole between here and Entente off-line, so we’re still in the dark.”

“Any word from the
Grau
?” The Peruvian frigate, hired
by the U.N. to deliver the precious antimatter for the Valkyries – was supposed
to remain as an escort until they launched the wormhole carriers. But her
captain had messaged some of their water recyclers had failed, and they had to
return to Entente as quickly as possible.

“No word,” Abrego said. “I will put the freighter captain
through.”

Becker’s handheld screen told him the call was audio-only.
Becker accepted it.

The voice on the other end spoke English with an American
accent.

Odd,
Becker thought.
We don’t get a lot of
Americans out here.

“Captain Becker, glad to meet you,” the voice said. “This is
Bill Cole aboard the
Freedom’s Hope
. We’re about 36 hours from your
location, and, well, we’ve brought a surprise for you. If you can provide a
dining room, we’d like to share some Christmas turkey with you.”

Becker smiled. He was no Christian, but Abrego and a fair
number of his crew were, and tomorrow was Christmas Eve. It would mean some
protocols would get bent – with all the antimatter on board, any guests were
supposed to be carefully watched, and a party would make that pretty difficult.
But his crew could use the break.

“Captain Cole, that sounds delightful. We shall look
forward to your arrival.”

A maneuvering thruster on the
Freedom’s Hope
fired
briefly, imparting a brief rotation that was quickly countered by another
thruster firing in the opposite direction. The skeletal space train, now
alongside the roomy mass of the
Perez de Cuellar
, extended an umbilical,
and the two ships were joined.

Becker, Abrego and several of his section chiefs waited
outside the airlock as the freighter crew cycled through.

“Looks like all of them,” Abrego muttered. Becker silently
counted thirteen people, twelve men and one little woman with Asian features,
crammed into the airlock chamber. They weren’t wearing spacesuits – the
umbilical was pressurized, but the airlock was the only way to board the ship.
Nor were they wearing uniforms.

The airlock’s door retracted into the wall, and Becker felt
a slight pull of air.

“Captain Becker, I’m Bill Cole,” one of the twelve said. He
looked about 40, a pale, mustached man with sandy brown hair and a thick build.
He did not approach or offer his hand. His eyes darted around.

Something is wrong
, Becker thought. The men behind
Cole seemed tense.

Abrego, a former soldier, sensed it, too. He pulled his
handheld from his belt.

Cole pulled a pistol from his jacket and shot Abrego in the chest.
He toppled backward, the back of his skull striking the floor and bouncing off.
His body floated limply in freefall. One of Becker’s section chiefs screamed.

The captain thought,
I don’t understand
, and
something that felt like a plate of forge-hot iron slammed into his chest. He
was spun into a bulkhead and was surprised to see his own blood had already
splattered against it.

Every breath hurt, but somehow, he didn’t pass out. He still
had some residual rotation from the bullet hit, and he couldn’t seem to move
his arms or legs. So he spun, slowly, brushing the bulkhead with each rotation.
He had brief views of the men rushing by. They all looked northern European,
sort of. All carried guns. He heard a few more shots echo through the ships,
and, at one point, the lights flickered off and were replaced by emergency red
strobes.

Static hissed from every handheld on the ship. Becker heard
Cole’s voice: “Everyone, we’ve had an accident on board, and some sections of
the ship have decompressed. Please stay in your quarters or move to the
cafeteria as quickly as possible. Keep your decompression bubbles handy.”

Becker knew how the crew would react to that. They were
scientists and engineers and would do as they were told. Most of them probably
had no idea what was happening. His own handheld beeped several times, but he
couldn’t find the strength to operate it.

Why would the Americans attack us? Are they trying to
prevent us from reaching our stars so they can grab them first?
He didn’t
believe it. America could be greedy, but murdering a U.N. crew was beyond the
pale.
Wasn’t it?

He spun slowly for another hour, fading in and out of
consciousness. All at once, the crew of the
Freedom’s Hope
strode
through the corridor, pulling two bulky masses in their midst.

The antimatter units for the Valkyries! The antimatter is
worth a fortune, but the Americans produce enough of their own. Are these
simple thieves?

Becker tried to speak, but he produced only a croak.

But Cole heard him, and he stopped his motion on a handhold
outside the airlock and pushed himself toward Becker. Cole put a gentle hand on
Becker’s shoulder, at last stopping the rotation. It was a relief.

“Captain Becker, I’m so sorry,” Cole whispered to him. “I
thought you were dead. We would have tried to ease your pain. I’m doubly sorry
this act is necessary. I ask you to make your peace with God, for there isn’t
much time left.”

Cole and the other men left. Becker could see the umbilical
retract, and the
Freedom’s Hope
broke away.

Jurgen Becker tried to find some peace within himself, but
all he could detect was anxiety and regret.
I would have liked to have seen the
infant stars of Orion up close.

He wouldn’t allow himself to pray to a god he did not
believe in; it simply felt wrong to make his last act one of hypocrisy.

In his ship’s core, a small amount of antimatter, left
behind by Cole and his men, was released to merge with normal matter.

A great flare of silent light consumed Jurgen Becker and the
Perez de Cuellar
.

About the Author

John J. Lumpkin was born in 1973 in San Antonio, Texas, and
educated at Texas Christian University and lately at the University of Colorado
at Boulder. A former national security reporter for the Associated Press, his
experience includes covering 9-11, walking the halls of CIA headquarters, and
racing through Baghdad and Kabul in military convoys. He may also be the only
person who has had a drink with both Donald Rumsfeld and Steve-O from Jackass
(but, to be clear, not at the same time). Now a writer and teacher, he lives
outside of Boulder, Colorado, with his wife Alice and their daughter Charlotte
and son Theo. His web site is
www.thehumanreach.net
.

About the Illustrator

Winchell Chung, who provided the cover art for
Through
Struggle, the Stars
and
The Desert of Stars
was born in 1957 in
California. He started out life as a science fiction illustrator, most
famously providing the iconic images of the Ogre cybertank for the eponymic
wargame. He later gravitated toward computer programming, and his lifelong
hobby is applying the tools of science to the game of science fiction. This
culminated in his 
Atomic
Rockets
 web site, which is probably the most popular online term paper
ever written. He lives with his wife and two adorable, insouciant black
cats.