by Neely Dobbs
CHAPTER 57: Coalition
The view was spectacular, even breathtaking.
Lord Ptoriil gazed out one of his private cruiser’s spacious view ports and reflected. Arrayed across vast star-strewn distances in space, yet they look like a string of pearls floating faintly in starlight. The generators look so small, but actually are so huge— immense beyond imagination. It’s hard to truly appreciate their size without resorting to imponderable technical specifications. Yet these mighty engines will act at our bidding, unleashing their combined energies to guide an unstoppable force in rending the fabric of the universe.
He shuddered. His discomfort was not entirely due to the vivid image. He couldn’t shake his unaccountable aversion to space flight. Personally, he would have preferred to skip this trip. However, as Commander-in-Chief, he could hardly fail to make the appearance. My real consolation is that Eebri agreed to travel with me.
Briin’s command ship merited a prime, unobstructed view of the long line of massive transition-field generators stretching into distant space. Their construction had consumed virtually the entire heavy metal content of one major asteroid belt and two uninhabited worlds. He marveled that the ongoing marshaling of these forces was being performed principally by unapproachably huge machines. Only self-replicating machines, each creating ever-larger versions of themselves, could ever have attained this size. The tradeoff was that no living being could ever approach them closely with impunity. The focused spectrum of their intense radiation— harmless to their specially hardened robot attendants— would fry us in seconds.
At this considerable distance from the closest transition-field generator, Briin could not visually resolve any but its largest component parts. However, he knew that each complex machine was a blocky cube almost a thousand kilometers on each side. Each “face” of the cube contained numerous mechanical appendages and protuberances in a variety of shapes and sizes, with a wide variety of functions.
Briin had earlier pointed out one of the "smaller" visible appendages, commenting that the part looked “frail and easily broken.”
A crew member politely informed him that “small arm” was over a kilometer in diameter, and that it required the combined efforts of the three largest robots tending the titanic cube to simply reset that single arm’s functions.
His thoughts returned to a more immediate and enjoyable subject: Eebri. She had excused herself earlier and retired to a rear compartment of the ship. She had been absent long enough that he was concerned she might have experienced some embarrassing low-gravity powder-room accident. Upon her return, her immaculate appearance proved that no such incident had occurred. Still, he couldn’t resist the rare opportunity to tease her.
“I was about to mount a rescue mission." He winked. "I was afraid you might be floating in the fresher.”
Her look of disdain was one she used to wither perpetrators of pointed innuendoes and veiled barbs. “You are just oozing with sensitivity, Your Grace." He winced from the sharpness of her voice. "But put your mind at rest. I know enough to lock down the covers before activating the flow handles.”
Briin winced again, then shrugged apologetically. “So is everything OK… er, uh, I mean… for the transition?”
Smiling at Briin’s now careful choice of words, she replied with calm authority, “Yes, Your Grace. The equipment check has been completed and the on-line repositioning of the repaired unit is concluding, probably as we speak. The haze pulse-rate has remained constant for ten minutes, so the capture should occur on schedule. Nature is cooperating with us on this one… so far.”
She slid her slender fingers through her thick scarlet mane. It reminded Briin that her hairstyle was a less restrained than her usual “official duty” plaited twist.
He smiled. “Excellent! I pray all goes well.” He noticed that his designated administrative aide for this trip was nearby, apparently unmindful of them as she stared out another viewport. There were a number of reasons Briin had no concern about her spying on them or their conversation. First, Faantian Aalteea was the granddaughter of Lord Faantian Thlomaz, one of House Ptoriil’s oldest and staunchest allies. Secondly, since her grandfather had been such a loyal, life-long friend of Lord Ptoriil Bereeun when Briin’s father was alive, he and Aalteea had been close friends for most of her life. In fact, he had granted her a special favor by choosing her to serve as his aide on this trip. Of course, the fact of her presence also added the necessary hint of propriety that allowed Eebri to travel with Briin without raising annoying questions of respectability.
He took Eebri’s elbow and led her to the viewport where Aalteea stood transfixed. “Lieutenant Faantian?” Briin said quietly. Aalteea didn’t move, so Briin spoke a bit more forcefully, “Ahem… Lieutenant Faantian!”
Aalteea started, turned quickly and stammered an embarrassed, “Lord Ptoriil…Officer Laytonn…I… I should not have allowed myself to become so inattentive. My sincerest apologies. How may I assist you?”
Briin smiled reassuringly. “No need for apologies, Aalteea, except on my part. I’m afraid I’ve abandoned you longer than one friend should another. Your faraway look has reminded me again how new all this is to you. I fully understand how you might become distracted... and I am happy to give you this opportunity to experience it in person. May I ask your impressions?”
Aalteea glanced at Eebri before speaking, and Briin quickly offered, “You may consider Eebri a friend, and I hope you do. She has my complete trust— both personally and professionally.”
So, perhaps it is more than just a rumor. Good for Briin! Aalteea gave a nod and her first non-official smile to a beaming Eebri, then spoke somewhat shyly. “It’s silly, really. It’s just…everything is so big. I’m afraid I didn’t hear you at first because I was lost in a memory. I was trying to grasp the size of the generators and scale the whole operation.
“When I realized how hopeless it was to truly grasp it, I remembered the first time I saw the Maagnus Rift. More than two thousand klicks long, over three klicks deep, and from eight to seventeen klicks wide. I had heard of it all my life. I had seen pictures and vids of it. But, standing on the rim of just one segment of that gigantic canyon for the first time, I realized that its size was beyond my ability to encompass or even truly comprehend. It was more than I could possibly grasp.
“I now feel that same awe about the generator array. I mean, I know the size: forty transition-field generators, each a billion cubic klicks, spaced 75,000 klicks apart, arrayed in series along a curvilinear line stretching over three million klicks long. I know the numbers, and I can see it right there in front of me… but it’s still beyond me.”
Briin touched her arm gently and shook his head. “Don’t be embarrassed, Aalteea. I had the same initial reaction, and I’m still in awe each time I see the array. And when I think of the power involved…it reminds me how small I am.”
He tilted his head, nodding toward Eebri. “She’s one of the few people I know who has actually managed to get a handle on it. Explain it to Aalteea, please, the way you explained it to me. Not the numbers, but the sense of the power involved in a transition.”
Eebri's eyes sparkled with emerald glints as she gazed out into deep space. She spoke with a sense of awe. “These massive generators— what Briin so poetically calls a ‘string of pearls’— generates the largest known artificial focus of energy. Yet the energy imbalance that exists between our universe and that sun's system— in another universe entirely— is incomprehensibly greater than our meager ability to control.. Nature’s balancing forces will rip apart the weave of space-time and capture that system, whether we act or not.
“All we can do is help make the transitions somewhat more orderly. These transition-field generators are essentially enhanced versions of technology we first developed over a century ago. Of course, the original machinery was designed
for a much different purpose— three generators much smaller than these allowed us to move a planet to a more hospitable orbit for mining or settlement. Now, these specially developed generators, working together in this advanced multiple-unit array, serve us well in this dire situation." Eebri sighed, "Or, at least, up to the limit of their capabilities.
"Yet, unless we make use of those capabilities, some of the planets circling that other sun would— in all probability— be severely damaged or destroyed. Even our maximum efforts will merely nudge the edges of the haze’s energy horizon sufficiently to save the system's planets from destruction. Or rather,” she corrected herself regretfully, "those planets that are settled or inhabited. They must remain our prime mission. If our limited efforts allow us to save more than just the settled planets, so much the better.”
Aalteea asked hopefully, "Will we succeed completely with today's capture?"
Briin answered for a pensive Eebri. "We sincerely hope all of these planets survive this transition, Aalteea, but it’s rare for all to come through unscathed. The target system's size and its arrangement of planets often dictates that some compromise is necessary. Too often, we must reconcile ourselves to no more than keeping the priority planets safe—those we believe are or were inhabited— if even that much is possible.”
Still looking out, but now trying to imagine what lay beyond the stars, Aalteea asked, “I know there are classified recordings of their communications that have been withheld from me... ones with information beyond my particular specialty. And I suspect those recordings have the answers to my major unanswered questions: Do the inhabitants of that other universe understand what is happening? And those who were transferred— those surviving inhabitants who were not evacuated before their systems were captured— do they understand what has happened to them?”
Eebri looked to Briin, who nodded his permission.
“No, Aalteea, they certainly do not comprehend the full magnitude of their transfer. By analyzing years of recordings of the communications between the captured systems for, we have learned they've been tapping the energy of their own stars for transportation for many years, without ever realizing they were tapping energy from more than one universe. Apparently their science hasn’t even determined— other than as speculative hypotheses— that multiple universes do, in fact, exist. So, as you must know from your studies of the recordings, their communications are primarily attempts to contact their home cluster, not realizing it’s far beyond their reach.
"Nor do they comprehend the energy interactions between the universes, so they don't yet know that they have caused these problems themselves, by using an interstellar travel technology that—over time— creates monumental energy imbalances between their universe and ours. In fact, Aalteea, the monitored communications of later arrivals tell us they actually believe that some evil intelligence is responsible for their plight."
The three stood in silence for a few minutes, contemplating the heavens. Finally, a mischievous smile lit Eebri’s face. She asked, “Briin, will you defy MAC’s orders and attempt contact this time?”
“No,” he replied with a frown. "At least, not without exceptional circumstances. We will, of course, examine this new system carefully. If recent history repeats itself, any settled planets will have been totally evacuated, except for machine intelligences. The most recent captures have involved only empty planets and settled planets that had been evacuated prior to the transfer. Those evacuations proves their government is aware— at least to some degree— of the possibility of a system’s capture. They clearly have taken defensive steps, apparently focusing selectively on the regions of highest probability.”
“I’m not sure we should assume that much,” Eebri countered. “We don’t know, for example, if they specifically targeted only high risk systems or simply evacuated most of their occupied planets— regardless of what system they were in. That would be a monumental undertaking, but…” An old question nagged at her again, and she spoke it aloud. “Evacuated, yes…but to where?”
“Another good question, same answer. “We don’t know,” Briin retorted glumly. "However, Aalteea, it's not all bleak. We have made progress and there are some important things we do have answers for. In fact, your work in translating the recordings we have gotten by monitoring the captured systems’ communications has helped us to identify which planets are the priorities to protect. This impending transition involves either two or three such settled, though now probably evacuated, planets. Plus one moon of an unsettled planet. The moon settlement is— or was— a small mining outpost.”
Eebri consulted her personal com-link and found the item she wanted. “This present situation is indeed a case in point, Aalteea. The mining colony's moon, at nearly ninety degrees out of phase from the settled planets, is beyond our reach. There's a strong chance it will not come through intact. We have no choice but to concentrate our alignment efforts on saving the priority planets, gambling that the moon has been completely evacuated. If we had the ability to do more— if we had more transition-field generators or a more powerful array…”
At that moment, a voice sounded, reporting that the haze's rapidly increasing pulse-rate indicated the capture would occur in less than one minute. Even while the message was being delivered, an electrostatic aura filled the cabin as the massive generators intensified their focused energies.
Briin had torn a small sheet from a note pad into tiny bits and placed them on a small table. Catching Aalteea’s attention, he nodded toward the table. The bits were standing on edge, twitching rapidly in a grotesquely animated dance.
Their ship was slightly to one side and far above the nearest transition-field generator. From their position they could, in effect, “look over the shoulder” of the generator and observe the action beyond. As the seconds ticked away, the energies continued to mount. Briin felt a faint tingling; his body hair lifted, “standing at attention.” He knew that their distance from the generators included a large margin for safety, but he had to keep reassuring himself as his body insistently sent warning signals.
He looked over at Aalteea and Eebri. Aalteea’s wavy hair was in the close-cut style favored by young female lieutenants. Eebri had exercised some precaution by covering her hair with a scarf at the last minute so her dignity would not be compromised by the sight of her hair sticking out from her head in a blazing crimson corona.
Briin was about to needle Eebri about that possibility when the actual capture began.