Far above Rauti, outside the Venusian atmosphere, his second team had begun assembly of the space elevator. They would use that to bring raw materials to orbit. Then they could begin construction of the first Dyson object - a half-shell that would cover the sunward side of the planet completely.
One hundred years, thought Rauti. One hundred years from now, a Human will be able to walk unprotected on this planet.
But I wonder if they will remember what we did for them. I wonder if they will stand up to their bargain with us.
Enroute to Stalingrad
Packet Boat Donkey
Rita came back to herself. It was dark. She didn’t know where she was.
The last thing she remembered clearly was sitting with Orma in the Ashkelon shuttle, on her way to Zukra’s palace to be tortured and killed.
The poison. Stephanie gave me poison. Why am I alive?
She realized she had another hazy memory. Jim, standing over her in a hospital room. And another vague memory of waking in a shuttle, with Jim lying beside her, holding her.
How could that be?
She tried to speak. But something was wrong. She couldn’t feel her tongue. It was as if she had no tongue. She panicked.
I’m losing my mind!
Suddenly she felt a touch. A hand on her shoulder, then moving down to take her hand. She heard a voice.
“Easy, Rita. Take it easy. Everything is OK. You’re safe.”
Jim.
That’s Jim.
She tried to speak again. This time, somehow, it worked. She heard her voice.
“Where…”
But it wasn’t really her voice. It was close; it was almost her voice. But something was different. And she couldn’t feel her tongue.
“Where…”
“You’re safe, Rita. Everything is alright. We’re both safe, and we’re going to have a wonderful life together. We’re going to Stalingrad right now - you’re going to need some rehabilitation. Then we’ll go to Earth to get Imogen. Then we’re going to explore the Universe together. Just relax. I’ll tell you all about it.”
Author Notes
Broken Galaxy Book Five will be out early- to mid-summer 2021. We’ll see how Jim and Rita handle her new capabilities as a Goblin, with no fixed physical body anymore. My mind runs wild.
I’m also working on another book, the generation ship novel Sosen. I’ve had a soft spot in my heart for genship novels ever since I read Gene Wolfe’s Book of the Long Sun series.
My personal feeling is that the only way Humanity will survive in the long haul is to send a genship to the stars. There just ain’t no other way to get there, folks. We might as well start thinking seriously about this now, while we still have a civilization with the capability to do it.
And IMHO, it’s crazy to build a genship from scratch, when the solar system is overrun with asteroids that could be hollowed out and used for that purpose.
If we can build a tunnel under the English Channel for our cars and trains, we can hollow out a small asteroid and launch it to the stars.
That’s my two cents. You get what you pay for.
So - to get back on topic - Broken Galaxy Book Five and Sosen will both be released in the first half of 2021. I can’t promise which will drop first, as at the moment they are neck-and-neck.
I hope you’ll stay on the roller coaster for the next ride.
Preview - Book Five (Mid-2021)
Sol System
Surface of Venus
Commander Rauti gazed with radar eyes and was pleased. His Goblin detachment had successfully completed the first structure of their surface base on Venus. They were off to a good start.
Had a normal Human been able to survive in the caustic atmosphere of Venus for any significant period of time, they would have seen two low mounds, crossing in their centers like the letter ‘X’. Each side of the ‘X’ was five hundred and fifty meters long. The remainder of the structure was underground.
Beneath that mound were the command-and-control centers for the expedition, living quarters for his crew of 150 Goblins, and storage areas for their gear. That structure would be their home for the next 150 rotations of the planet. 36,525 Earth days. 100 Earth years.
His government had asked him to terraform the planet in one century. That was challenging, but not beyond the realm of possibility. He had plenty of raw materials and a good crew. He knew he could do it.
Gazing farther afield, Rauti contemplated with pride the crop of microbots that covered the surface as far as he could see. From horizon to horizon, the surface was covered with green, the microbots soaking up the carbon dioxide, converting it to oxygen for the atmosphere and carbon nanotubes for further construction.
The surface was alive with movement, as other microbots collected up the carbon nanotubes and moved the material to pipes, which fed into large hoppers located every ten kilometers.
Within a few more years, the self-replicating microbots would cover the entire planet.
Rauti looked off to the West at the base station for the space elevator. The large mountain there had ten tunnels exiting its base, equally spaced around the mountain. Each tunnel mouth had a tether which exited the tunnel and ran along the ground for several kilometers, anchored to the surface.
Lifting his eyes, Rauti looked at the top of the mountain. What had once been a mountain peak was now flat, chopped off to form the base station for the space elevator. Rising up out of the flat top of the mountain, the individual cables were woven together to create the final tether. That was just a stub so far, ending a few dozen meters above the top of the base station. The main tether would not be extended farther until the upper end came down from space to meet it. But from the top of the stub, a thin preliminary tether continued up into space, its diameter just large enough to allow the transmission of the raw carbon nanotubes to space.
Looking up, Rauti adjusted the wavelength of his eyes so he could see beyond the atmosphere. There, far above, he picked out the other end of the incomplete tether. It terminated at a dumbbell-like structure in geosynchronous orbit, with an additional tether extension continuing upward. Due to the extremely slow rotation speed of Venus, the dumbbell structure was many thousands of kilometers above the surface, much higher than would be required if it were built on Mars or Earth.
But that made no difference to Rauti. The four dozen small asteroids that his Goblin team had moved in from the asteroid belt orbited next to the dumbbell structure. A constant stream of raw materials flowed from the asteroids to the dumbbell via piping filled with microbots, moving the required elements like a river as they disassembled the asteroids.
The final terminal of the preliminary tether was still higher, thousands more kilometers above the dumbbell structure. It would take another ten years to complete the full space elevator. But that made no difference to Rauti. He had all the time in the world to complete the structure, because that was not the critical link in the Goblin’s terraforming design. The critical link was still higher, far beyond the terminus of the space elevator.
Adjusting his eyes again, changing to a wavelength that gave him more detail at extreme distances from the planet, Rauti looked with satisfaction at the beginnings of the Dyson shell. That was the structure that would eventually block a significant portion of the solar radiation from the planet, allowing him to cool it to a more reasonable temperature.
The shell so far was only a few hundred kilometers in diameter, a rounded disk making a dark dot on the sun. Beside the disk were dozens of smaller dots in his vision. These were additional asteroids brought in by the Goblins to provide the raw materials for shell construction. Most of them were rocky asteroids, selected for their high carbon or iron content. A few were ice balls, selected for water and trace elements.
It would take Rauti another century to completely reduce the carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere, complete the full Dyson structure screening Venus from the Sun, and bring the temperature down to a reasonable level.
Rauti smiled. He had plenty of time.
Sol System
Backside of Venus
The two occupants aboard the tiny Stree scout ship knew quite well the range of Goblin radar eyes. As they surveyed Rauti’s enormous construction project, they made sure their orbit stayed below the horizon of the Goblin surface station. Their tiny drones on the other side of the planet sent them all the data they needed.
“More blasphemy,” said Junior Prophet-in-Training Yatonna, staring at the monitors. “They build as they did at their home planet. Soon they’ll have a new colony.”
“Yes,” replied Senior Prophet-in-Training Cibekku. “If we let them complete this, it will become even harder to root out their blasphemy from the Galaxy. We must warn the Prophet.”
The scout ship turned and departed orbit, pushing 400g accel on a line that kept it hidden from the Goblins.
5.3 hours later, traveling at 25 percent light speed, it ceased accel and coasted.
5.4 hours after that, it reached the Sun’s mass limit and disappeared.
Stree was 4,725 lights distant.
It would take them a while to get there.
It would take a while to get back with a war fleet.
But then all hell would break loose.
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About the Author
Like Huckleberry Finn, Phil Huddleston grew up barefoot and outdoors, catching mudbugs by the creek, chasing rabbits through the fields, and forgetting to come home for dinner. Then he discovered books. Thereafter, he read everything he could get his hands on, including reading the Encyclopedia Britannica and Funk & Wagnalls from A-to-Z multiple times. He served in the U.S. Marines for four years, returned to college and completed his degree on the GI Bill. Since that time, he built computer systems, worked in cybersecurity, played in a band, flew a bush plane from Alaska to Texas, rode a motorcycle around a good bit of America, and watched in amazement as his wife raised two wonderful daughters. And would like to do it all again. Except without the mistakes.
The Short End: Broken Galaxy Book Four Page 30