Trace the Stars

by Nancy Fulda

  “Admiral Zhou, the fleet reports their crews are at battle stations,” the Executive Officer said. “All ships are at status one A.”

  “Follow the acceleration protocol,” Admiral Zhou ordered.

  The fleet began slowly advancing, their systems linked together with the memory cores on the colony ships. Without absolute precision of movement, some ships would be damaged while inside the Wheeler-Bridge, and could be destroyed.

  Sachiko observed the drill, as she had several others, ready to assist in any way required. The exercise progressed with nothing more than minor telemetry errors, and at the end Admiral Zhou sent a recording to all the ships praising a job well done.

  As the bulk of CMC naval crews were in their debriefing meetings, Sachiko sent a congratulatory video message to all the technicians, engineers, system designers, and all the other Neo Nihon women onboard the ships. She had hand picked and worked with them over the past four months to help make the ready the colony ships, and service the military escorts who would soon leave for Earth. She ended the message by bowing and touching her heart with two fingers.

  Some of the women in the video feeds mimicked her gesture. Moments later, Sachiko watched the alarms light up the screens in the command center.

  “What’s happening?” Admiral Zhou asked, as he stared at live images of the fleet, which was still in a slow moving cylindrical column formation.

  “Admiral, we’re getting reports that several pulse wave weapon systems have activated, locked on to all ships and are preparing to discharge.”

  “What?” Zhou and his assistants looked stunned and darted toward the monitors.

  “They’re going to fire, sir!” A terrified officer shouted.

  “Shut them all down!” Zhou screamed. “Send the abort codes!”

  “The codes aren’t working! The Colony ships are blocking the signal. The weapons are going to fire in twelve seconds. Eleven! Ten!”

  “Admiral Zhou,” Sachiko said, “allow me to help you understand.”

  He spun around fast, bewilderment, fear, and anger playing across his face.

  “I wanted to watch you suffer,” Sachiko said.

  “Six seconds!”

  Admiral Zhou’s face paled and his eyes widened.

  “Five!”

  “This death will have to suffice,” Sachiko said, “but know that your greed and stupidity have lost this war, and when I’m done, the CMC will be obliterated.”

  Alarms flashed and screeched.

  Zhou collapsed, along with all the men in the room.

  Sachiko reached down and took a handful of his silver hair. She jerked his head so he was looking at her, then spit in his face as he died. She dropped him as he gasped like a suffocating fish out of water. She let his head bounce hard on the metal floor and admired the quality of the sound.

  Female technicians entered the command center and took up positions at key terminals. Sachiko bowed to them before standing in front of a bank of signaling monitors. She tied the lavender scarf Takeshi had given her around her neck, then connected her personal data-pack to the system core, prepared several prewritten commands, and turned on the broadcast channel. She connected to the fleet, and all the receiving stations on Neo Nihon. “This is Prime Minister Sachiko Okura. I am now in command of the entire fleet, including all battle drones. The CMC personnel in the fleet are dead.”

  The camera tilted to reveal Admiral Zhou’s body and the other dead officers. Sachiko watched the startled reaction of soldiers in various video feeds. She also saw groups of women smiling and bowing.

  “To the CMC soldiers on the surface of Neo Nihon. Many of you have behaved inhumanely in the past twenty-two months since you’ve occupied this colony. You have abused the women here and it will not continue. Satisfaction reports have been submitted by all of the colony women, and health reports have also been generated from their medical nanobots. It has been found that forty-six point eight percent of you CMC soldiers have committed heinous crimes and offenses against at least one female colonist. I deem you unfit to live among us. There will be no trials. Please consider these executions as a warning to those of you who remain among us.”

  Sachiko watched the panicked faces of solders in her video feeds. She pressed the command function on her data pack and verified the order, then initiated the protocol by a DNA scan of her finger. Bio-nanobots had entered all of the CMC soldiers through the water supply and had been tasked hours before to gather near the brainstems of the offending men. Anti-nanobot technology had been bypassed entirely.

  Patiently, Sachiko waited for the signal to reach the condemned. A few seconds later micro explosions severed their brainstems and 248,179 CMC criminals died.

  “To those of you CMC soldiers left alive, I have this message: you may be asked to leave your assigned residence. Some of you may be allowed to remain. I urge each of you to behave in a respectful manner toward your hostess. If you do so, you will be welcome in our society.”

  The video feeds showed mayhem and chaos as the survivors reacted to seeing so many men die in front of them. Sachiko waited for a long moment before continuing.

  “Residents of Neo Nihon, if I may please have your attention. I wish to inform you that later today I will lead the majority of the fleet back to Earth. Any surviving Japanese citizens will be rescued and brought up to the colony ships. Estimates are that a few hundred thousand have survived. I will bring them here.

  “CMC soldiers and any others left on Earth will be killed with the pulse wave weapon after rescue operations are concluded. The CMC or their allies cannot be permitted to survive and plot a counter attack upon us or any other colony. All manufacturing and tech sites on Earth will also be destroyed. The pulse wave weapon must never be constructed again, and those weapons we possess will be dismantled.

  “I thank you very much for your attention, and I ask for your patience in the days ahead. An interim Prime Minister will be selected when Parliament reconvenes in three days. The original constitution and laws of Neo Nihon will be restored and the war powers mandate suspended.

  “When I return from Earth I will submit my official resignation as your Prime Minister. The wartime clauses will then no longer apply and I will stand trial for any crime it is deemed I have committed.

  “Please understand that everything I did was for the survival of the people of Neo Nihon. I have followed the defensive plans drafted over the past years with a goal to preserve the lives of our people at any cost. I humbly thank the citizens of Neo Nihon for the opportunity to serve you. This has been the greatest honor of my life.”

  Sachiko’s eyes filled with honest tears. She bowed low and thought about her granddaughter, Little Sachiko, and about the family she had lost in the CMC invasion. She wondered what her husband, Takeshi would think of what she had done, then switched off the broadcast channel. Historians might judge her harshly, but her people and the many colonies would survive because the choices she made.

  Once the fleet had returned from Earth, Sachiko would consider sparing her people the ordeal of a trial. Others would lead now. Perhaps she would follow brave Okina-san’s example, and take her own life. Had Sachiko not suffered enough? She had learned far too much about war but had done her duty. Thankfully, Neo Nihon was victorious and would prosper. There would be peace, and Sachiko’s great task would soon be over.

  The Last Ray of Light

  Wulf Moon

  Editor’s Note

  The following story was originally published in the May 18, 1978 issue of Science World, magazine. Moon was fifteen at the time his story was accepted, and it was his first professional sale. Prior to being picked up by Science World, this story won the Scholastic Art and Writing Awards national competition. Since then, Moon has gone on to have a story published in a Star Trek anthology, to write a conclusion to one of Nora Roberts’ romance novellas, and more. The story is reprinted here with only minor grammar and punctuation edits. Hopefully, it will inspire young writers to submit
their stories to a wide variety of venues, and to keep improving their craft.

  Author’s Note

  Science World didn’t generally publish science fiction, though this story did happen to be about a hyperloop/vactrain, decades before Elon Musk theorized building one through Tesla. While men as far back as Jules Verne’s son Michel had written about pneumatic tube travel, I didn’t know that. I had nothing to read on such things in our small town in Wisconsin—internet didn’t exist, there were no search engines, and the best I had for research was a tiny school library. But here’s the point: I wasn’t handicapped at all. Like every kid, I had within easy reach the best tool possible: Imagination.

  This was the Seventies. An energy crisis crushed the country. The news made me dream about a fuel starved future world. How would people travel? What if that system failed? What price would my protagonist pay to save those trapped inside? Forty years later, you get to see into a boy’s imagination. What’s more, I’m thrilled this tale has been resurrected in an anthology where proceeds help students reach for the stars! Just forgive my naiveté about how computers might communicate in the future—our school’s computer lab had the only computer I had seen, and those of you in the know (i.e., Ancient Ones) will understand why the computer in my story says “STOP” at the end of every sentence.

  This is car PM7-T. Request aid from Dock 5. Repeat, request aid for car PM7-T.”

  Xenon spun around just as he was about to leave the computer component production plant. Had he heard a voice over the com-system?

  “Car PM7-T. Emergency. Request aid.”

  Again a faint sound passed down the corridor.

  Was it possible that someone was still in the building? The computer read-out on the screen had shown that all cars were at their platforms. There shouldn’t be anyone left in this sector. Unless . . . there had been a malfunction.

  He raced back down the hall to the terminal of the dock. In five minutes the cooling system would automatically turn off to conserve the planet’s dwindling fuel supplies. With the triple suns reaching their maximum intensity in another fifteen minutes, the atmosphere inside would quickly rise to 110°C. If there was someone locked in one of the cars—and he hoped to God there wasn’t—their blood would slowly boil.

  Standing in the terminal of the dock, Xenon pressed his electromagnetically charged identification ring into the “INPUT” slot. A humming sound came from the computer as it analyzed the ring’s clearance data. The screen and buttons lit up, revealing the words, “COMPUTER SHUTDOWN: 5:07 MINUTES STOP.”

  He slapped the side of the panel. Only five minutes of computer aid . . . and someone may be trapped. The com-system was silent.

  “Where are they!” he muttered under his breath.

  As if in response, a voice sounded.

  “Dock 5, this is car PM7-T. Repeat, car PM7-T. Emergency, car locked in tube.”

  Xenon took no time to respond as he flipped off the cover to the control panel and fingered down glistening square buttons.

  “Perpetual Motion tube 7,” he muttered at last. Punching in that information, his fingers moved on to oval buttons. As he pushed in T, the circuits of the computer locked into the transportation system. A second later the screen lit up.

  “PM7-T PRESENT AT DOCK 5 STOP SHUTDOWN: 4:17 MINUTES STOP.”

  It couldn’t be. He pressed “VIDEO SCANNER” and again modules and components clicked into place. The three dimensional screen revealed tube 7, but no car was there.

  “Great, just great,” he moaned as he switched the video scanner to “INTERIOR.” The screen revealed the faces of two men and one woman—one of whom he recognized from the research quadrant.

  “Argon! What’s wrong with the car? You realize, don’t you, that in less than twenty minutes we’ll be nothing but steam.”

  Desperation marked the faces of the trapped car crew members. Argon moved closer to the viewer. He ran fingers through his tousled hair.

  “The frictional force regulator went haywire. It flew up to a ten and we stopped dead. Drained out the com-system of our car for a full ten minutes. Why didn’t this show up on the computer’s emergency tables?”

  Xenon shook his head in perplexity. “Haven’t got the slightest idea. Your dead stop might have overpowered the circuits. Can you get the friction regulator back down to a zero?”

  “Already fixed it,” replied Argon. “But that stop gave it an awful beating. Only goes down to 1.5.”

  “Good enough,” he responded. “Rock the car forward with your bodies to give it enough force to start moving. After that, perpetual motion will take over and you can start praying you’ll make it in time.”

  “Nothing doing. I’ve already tried it. The computers shut down the anti-gravity pulsators and we’ve got one long slope to climb to the dock. We’re just sittin’ here like a rock. Any more suggestions?”

  Xenon pounded his fist down on the computer. “That’s just swell. The automatic time regulators switched them off four minutes ago. They aren’t scheduled to activate until eight tomorrow morning.”

  Argon and his companions nervously sat back in their chairs. Though the cooling system was still working, thick beads of perspiration dribbled down their foreheads.

  Xenon tapped his fingers on the computer console. He was desperately trying to think of how to get them out.

  “Hold on, I might have it yet,” he yelled in sudden inspiration.

  Xenon put his hand in a pocket and pulled out a lightweight blasting repair tool.

  “I’m going to disconnect the time regulator from the anti-grav and it should—I hope—switch on.”

  “SHUTDOWN: 2:23 MINUTES STOP.”

  Blasted by an intense beam of light from the repair tool, the plate covering the time regulator vaporized. Xenon thrust his hands into the space, fingering over a mass compiling of modules, circuits, and components. The anti-gravity modules were in red. Only a computer maintenance specialist would know which controlled which tube, so he blew them all out.

  “SHUTDOWN: 1:18 MINUTES STOP.”

  “Try it now!” Xenon yelled.

  Shaking forward, the people in the car got it to move—slower than the force they had exerted because of the frictional pull.

  Victory shouts sounded over the com-system as Xenon returned to the control panel. Punching out computer supplied distance figures and rates of speed, he calculated their arrival. He stared, dumbfounded, at the blinking letters.

  “PM7-T ARRIVAL TO DOCK 5:26:39 MINUTES STOP.”

  They would arrive . . . ten minutes too late.

  “SHUTDOWN: 0:37 MINUTES STOP.”

  Thinking quickly, Xenon pressed “LOCK OPEN” for tubes 7 and 6.

  “Be ready for anything,” he called into the com-system.

  Xenon raced out of the terminal while there were still lights to guide him. Just ahead, he saw the two open locks. He could see the number 6 through the transparent tube on the car inside. Basically, the car was a cylinder of unbreakable glass, powered by a single explosive burst from the rear. He flung himself inside the car just as the lights went out.

  Fingers skipping down the control panel, Xenon punched on the auxiliary lighting and reduced the friction to zero. The car lunged forward. Xenon’s body smashed against the control panel as the car moved down the tube.

  Hands poised over the control panel, Xenon punched in a crossover to tube 7. Then he raced to the rear of the car and pried open the panel over the power mechanism. That mechanism was designed to give the car its one burst of energy. Xenon smiled as he noted that the fuel tank held over a gallon of the precious ruby-red fluid that could be exploded by any spark. That gallon of fuel packed enough power to make the car move all the way into the tube 7 intersection and around the entire building in less than ten minutes. Normally that much fuel would last two weeks, but this was no time to worry about the planet’s dwindling fuel supplies.

  Xenon flattened himself against the floor and sighted the repair tool at the point of i
gnition. Eyes closed, he pressed the trigger. A beam of intense light slashed out.

  Xenon didn’t hear the explosion because there was no air outside to transmit sound. But he felt it. His body bounced off the floor . . . into the wall. The instrument panel and chairs squeaked with the force—but everything remained intact.

  Dizzily, Xenon stood up. He couldn’t feel any motion but he realized that the car must be traveling at a tremendous rate of speed. Climbing into the control section, he snapped the impact shield over him in expectation of what was to come. The crossover into tube 7 was a blur, but he recognized it. It wouldn’t be long now.

  The temperature slowly rose as minutes ticked by. By now the others should realize that they wouldn’t make it in time. Xenon had no way of communicating his plans to them. Xenon ripped his shirt off. The heat was becoming unbearable. Sweat seeped down his body and stung his eyes. Breathing became more and more difficult. He tried to remain motionless.

  A point of light glowed ahead. Xenon only hoped the occupants of car PM7-T would be ready for the impact. He could not tune up the friction control to slow his car down without losing precious seconds.

  If only they could see him, they would have a moment to prepare . . . BOOM!!! The entire control flew apart, and Xenon was knocked to the floor.

  Pulling himself from the debris, he gazed into the other car. The seats had broken off with the occupants still in them. But the control section remained intact. Xenon looked to where the frictional force regulator was located. Only jagged edges remained.

  “Get to that regulator!” he gasped as Argon stood up.

  Argon pulled himself to the control panel and tuned it up. Xenon could barely see Dock 5 approaching in the dim darkness. The friction increased and held as the cars slowed to a stop. Xenon fell into the corridor as the others fell out—wheezing and gasping. They flung themselves into the exit chute and slid down, down, down into the cool underground city.