by J. N. Chaney
“Conover, just answer my question, okay? And do it like I have almost no idea how stars work, because I don’t. What makes a star explode?”
“When it starts running out of things like hydrogen, the stuff it normally uses for fusion fuel, it starts burning heavier and heavier elements instead. These release less energy, though. Once it starts fusing things into iron, it’s no longer producing enough energy to overcome the gravitational attraction of its own mass, so it—”
“Collapses in on itself,” Dash said. “That’s what I thought. So the Lens—”
“Seems to somehow reduce the amount of energy the star produces in its core, so it triggers that collapse artificially. I’m not sure how it does that though. There’s probably a clue in how you were able to make the one that Nathis had implode and wipe out his fleet.” Conover shook his head. “Dash, why are you asking me about this?”
“Can the Lens make a star collapse partway?”
“I’m…not sure. Why?”
“Find out. Fast. Talk to Custodian, see if it can help you.”
“Dash, what’s this about?” Viktor said.
“It’s about saving Leira.”
Amy perked up. “What? How? What are you going to do?”
“It’s just an idea. Probably a crazy, stupid unworkable one. But crazy, stupid and unworkable might be all we have to work with. For now, help Conover.”
Amy opened her mouth, but closed it again and nodded. “Got it.”
“We’re on it, Dash,” Viktor said, then looked at Conover. “What do you need?”
Conover blinked again. Things were suddenly happening so fast.
But, if it might save Leira, that didn’t matter.
“I need to talk to Custodian,” he said. “Hopefully, it knows something about that Lens.”
“Okay, seriously, Dash, that’s insane,” Leira said. “There’s no way I’m going to let you do that.”
Dash shrugged. “I’m not asking. I’m telling. This is for you. For all of us. I need you, Leira. We all do.”
As he talked, he checked the Archetype’s systems again. Self-repair was proceeding, but slowly. Still, propulsion was his big concern; he’d had Sentinel prioritize it. Right now, he needed speed more than anything else.
And the shield. He’d probably need that, too.
“Dash, listen to me,” Leira said. “It’s a ridiculous plan. More than ridiculous. The risk is just too much.”
“Leira, listen.”
“And you kind of do need my permission. I’m the one holding the Lens, remember?”
“Leira,” he said, and his voice was stern.
“You seriously want to partially collapse this system’s star.”
“Only temporarily.”
“Dash.”
“No, Leira, listen. Conover, Viktor, and Amy have been talking to Custodian. It has some stuff, at least, about the Lens in its database. They think it’s possible to use it to cause the star to start collapsing, then stop it partway and just hold it there.” He thought about what they had told him. “See, that’ll make its density increase, because the same amount of mass will be stuffed into a smaller space—but that’s the key. Its mass won’t change, so neither will its gravitational effects. You’ll be pulled along exactly the same trajectory you would have if we did nothing at all. When you get to the point where you’d be vaporized in the star’s photosphere, you won’t—because its photosphere won’t be there anymore. It’ll be at least a quarter of a million klicks away. Close, and still pretty hairy, sure, but not enough to make you go poof.”
“You seriously want to start screwing around with a—and I can’t believe I’m actually saying this—a freaking star?”
“Why not? The Unseen did it, using this exact same tech.”
“But what if we can’t make it collapse only partway? What if it just keeps collapsing?”
“Well, then it’ll blow up.”
“And destroy me, you, the Archetype, the Forge, everybody.”
“Conover says Custodian figures at least a ninety percent chance it won’t. Depending on how long we leave it partly-collapsed, it’ll lose a few million years off its lifespan, yes. But since its lifespan is about another six billion years, I don’t think we need to worry too much about that.”
“That’s still a ten percent chance of that star just exploding, Dash. I’m sorry, but I just can’t accept that. Not with what’s at stake. I’m just not that important."
“Yes, Leira, you are,” Dash said. “I need you. I need Viktor and Amy and Conover too, and I need Kai and his monks. But I especially need you. I need you to be the hotshot pilot who I know always has my back. I need you to be there, to tell me those chompers really are dangerous. I need you, because…well, because I need you.”
There was silence, and Dash just let it go on.
Finally, Leira said, “I have to admit, I’m not really keen on dying. But if we’re going to actually do this insanity, you should take the Archetype well out of the system. That way, if the star does blow, you’re safe and can carry on with the fight.”
“Sorry, but Sentinel’s run the numbers. Remember that the star’s gravitation won’t change at all. So, when you reach where the photosphere would have been, your trajectory beyond that will effectively be inside the star—or, at least, inside the star where it is right now. The gravitational pull is going to increase fast from there. Your orbit will spiral inward just as fast. You’ll still eventually hit the photosphere of the shrunken star, it’ll just take longer. But that time is enough for me to get to you, then boost both of us up to a higher orbit that’ll take us clear.”
Leira said, “Okay, I’ve plotted it on the nav. I see what you mean. You’ll have a really narrow window to get in here and lift me out of trouble.”
“Really narrow windows of time seem to be the story of my life lately.”
“What the hell,” Leira finally said. “Let’s give it a try. I have the Lens. Just tell me what to do.”
“Conover, over to you. And Leira?” Dash said.
“What?”
“Make sure you follow the kid’s instructions exactly. Now is definitely not the time to press the wrong button.”
The stars, Dash thought, were a constant. With lifespans in the hundreds of millions, or even billions of years, they made even the enormous time scales he associated with the Unseen dwindle to almost nothing. That’s why seeing the star at the heart of the Forge’s system suddenly begin to shrink just seemed—wrong didn’t even begin to describe it.
“Holy shit, Dash,” Leira said, her voice softened by sheer awe. “It’s working. The star is actually collapsing. And this little thing in my hand, here, is what’s doing it.”
Dash just nodded.
The surface of the star fell away, all of its titanic mass plunging toward its core. As it did, its spectrum changed, shifting closer to blue, and brightening as it did. It gave Dash a weird moment, where it seemed he was suddenly racing away from the star at some terrific speed, so it receded into the distance behind him. But its light intensified at the same time, a jarring disconnect that left him staring, dumbfounded.
“I just…” Leira said, and that was it.
Dash nodded. “Yeah. Me too.”
The star kept shrinking.
Okay, Dash thought, awe and wonder aside, this could stop at any time now. If it didn’t, and the star collapsed beyond a certain, critical radius, Custodian had said it would just continue collapsing, falling inexorably toward its own center. The power of the Lens would be unable to stop it. Its full mass would finally slam into its core, there’d be a moment of wild, unconstrained nuclear fusion, then it would all rebound in a colossal explosion—a supernova. The resulting blast would vaporize everything in this star system, the Archetype and the Forge included.
Still shrinking.
Dash thought, well, damn. If Custodian, Conover, and the others were wrong about this, if they’d made an error in the inputs to the Lens that Leira had
had to make—or if Leira had made a mistake herself—then they all had maybe thirty seconds left to live.
The star kept collapsing for a few more moments, then it stopped. It stayed shrunken to somewhere between half and two-thirds of its original size, burning a fierce bluish-white, its nuclear furnace a searing globe of light. Custodian had said it should remain like this until they deactivated the Lens—but. That but was a lingering chance it would spontaneously collapse on its own anyway. A small chance, but still uncomfortably more than zero.
Dash hadn’t been wasting time, though. He’d been racing after Leira, rapidly closing on her as she and the Slipwing arced down toward where the star’s surface had been only a moment before. He had about ten minutes, Sentinel calculated, to boost both the Slipwing and the Archetype into a higher orbit and escape the star’s gravity. Any longer, and he might be able to extricate the Archetype, but only if he discarded the dead mass of the Slipwing. Leira would still be locked into an irrevocable spiral with only one possible, very fatal destination.
“Leira, are you burning the thrusters?”
“I am. Not sure how much good it’s doing, though.”
“Every little bit of extra velocity helps.”
Dash closed in. Not long now.
The Slipwing hit the point where she would have been vaporized. “Still here,” Leira said. “That’s a positive, anyway.”
“Just another few minutes, Leira.”
“I can see you coming up behind me. Uh…the hull temperature’s increasing pretty fast. Four hundred degrees now.”
“That’s okay. We knew that was going to happen.”
“Not this fast, though. There’s something else going on here. Something we didn’t consider. Five-hundred-fifty now.”
“Almost there, Leira.”
“Six seventy-five. Dash, I’m heating up too fast. Just break off. This isn’t going to work.”
He drew in a breath and let it out slowly. When he spoke, his voice was level—even calm. “Leira. Believe what I’m telling you. This is working.”
“Dash.”
“One minute.” Dash could see the Slipwing now, a bright point of light ahead. “Stop burning the thrusters. That’ll shave a few seconds off our time.”
“Thrusters off. Eight hundred degrees now. The hull’s starting to take damage. Dash, would you just admit this isn’t working and give it up?”
“Leira, stand by. Sentinel, you too.”
“Understood,” Sentinel said.
The Slipwing now loomed ahead. She glowed like a chunk of metal in a furnace, a shimmering cloud of vaporized ablative armor trailing in her wake.
Dash brought the Archetype up behind her, slid underneath her, reached up.
“Sentinel, shields!”
The Archetype’s shield shimmered into existence, enclosing both it and the Slipwing. At the same time, Dash grabbed the underside of his ship as gently as he could, then lifted, boosting both of them away from the shrunken star.
“Holy sh—Dash!” Leira said. “That was one hell of a bump.”
“Hey, I’m just not used to grabbing spaceships with giant mechanical hands.”
They raced on, arcing around the shrunken star, but gaining velocity as they did. As their orbit rose, Dash could feel the sleet of radiation pounding the Archetype’s shield, relentlessly grinding it away. It degraded far faster than Sentinel had calculated—so much so it would almost certainly fail before they’d finished even their single, partial orbit.
“There are unexpected electromagnetic resonances in the region surrounding the shrunken star,” Sentinel said, answering Dash’s unasked question. “The energy they are producing is expressed as a great deal of extra heat.”
Dash opened his mouth to reply, but Conover cut in. “Dash, Custodian says the star is starting to show signs of instability. There are waves, I guess, rippling through it from whatever’s going on in its core. It’s basically ringing like a gong, except a gong made out of, you know, superhot plasma.”
“The point being?”
“If the instability increases, the star might start shedding its outer layers. Or it might resume collapsing.”
“Yeah, it’s bad news, I get it. We just need another few min—”
There was a searing flash. Dash winced, every muscle going taut.
The star had just exploded and that was that.
No. Wait. He and the Slipwing were still here.
“What the hell was that?” he asked Sentinel.
“A large coronal mass ejection. Essentially, a large stellar flare. It exceeds anything previously recorded for this class of star.”
Dash watched as a vast column of blazing gas leapt from the star’s surface and boiled into space. Not much could possibly have survived such a hurricane of incandescent plasma and charged particles. Fortunately, this one spewed off in a direction that wouldn’t imperil the Forge. The Archetype’s and Slipwing’s conjoined orbit would miss it as well. But if there was another one, they might not be so lucky.
“Dash, we can’t leave the star like this any longer,” Leira called out. “You’ve boosted me as much as you can.”
“Not enough,” he snapped, shoving himself and the Slipwing up and away from the star as hard as he could.
“Would you just break off already?”
“Leira, just shut up and enjoy the ride!”
“Could you be any more stubborn!”
“Probably, but I’m too busy being happy. Let’s go.”
“Even though it missed us, that coronal mass ejection event flooded this region of space with additional energy,” Sentinel said. “The shield is now saturated and will—correction, has failed.”
A tsunami of energy crashed into both the Archetype and the Slipwing. Leira shouted something about hull temperature; Sentinel something else about damage. Dash ignored them both and gave one last, massive shove. He checked their trajectory; it would have to be good enough.
“Leira, now! Shut down the Lens!”
Seconds passed, the gale of raw power pouring from the abused star ripping away the substance of both the Archetype and the Slipwing. Dash opened his mouth to shout again—desperately hoping that Leira hadn’t somehow been incapacitated, because if she couldn’t turn off the Lens, the star soon would fly apart—but the incandescent surface suddenly began to bulge back toward them.
The star was expanding again.
Dash braced himself as the searing bright surface raced toward them, consuming the starfield as it did. Now it looked like it was about to engulf them, and he felt a serpent of doubt uncoil in his guts, cold and writhing.
“I hate math,” Dash muttered, but he forced himself to look back at the star.
The expansion and turmoil abruptly stopped, the roiling surface fading from that blinding blue-white back to its accustomed, cooler yellowish glare. It still spat out stellar flares, but these were much smaller and less energetic. And now both the Archetype and the Slipwing were pulling away, on a higher trajectory that would take them back toward the Forge.
Dash just breathed. That’s it—just breathe.
“Dash?”
“Hey, Leira. Now, wasn’t that fun?”
“I’ve got words for it, but I’m not sure fun would be one of them. Oh, and the next time I want to do anything but fly straight from point A to point B, just shoot me, okay?”
Dash smiled. “You can count on it.”
Epilogue
Dash clambered slowly out of the cradle and dismounted the Archetype. When his feet touched the deck of the Forge’s docking bay, he just stopped and stood for a while, drinking in the sensation of being somewhere that wasn’t the mech. He heard the others from his vantage point, savoring the sensation of victory even as they began their celebration on the other side of his mech.
Shouts rose from the Slipwing. Leira had just descended her ramp and now stood under her scorched and abraded hull, bracing herself as Amy flung her arms out. Leira had to smile as they embraced, the
n again as Viktor gave her a much more restrained hug.
“It would seem, Messenger, that we have won the day.”
He turned and found Kai smiling a beatific smile. The rest of the monks were gathered with him, all regarding Dash with a mix of delight and awe.
Dash raised a hand. “Emphasis on we.” He shook his head. “Am I ever glad you convinced me to bring you guys along with us from Shylock.”
He turned back to Amy, Leira, and Viktor, who were chatting and gesticulating away at one another by the Slipwing. A lone figure stood a small distance away.
“Hey, kid!” he said, starting that way. He shook his head, though, when he stopped beside Conover. “You know what? No more of that kid stuff. Today, I think you proved that you’re one of the adults.”
Conover smiled and went a little red, but shrugged. “It’s okay. I don’t mind it, really.”
“You!” a voice called out, making Dash turn.
Leira strode toward him, Viktor and Amy in tow. She stopped a pace away and put her hands on her hips.
“You need to learn when to let something go, you know,” Leira said, her face severe. “You risked everything—literally everything—pulling that stunt to save me.”
Dash made a pfft sound. “Save you? I just didn’t want to lose my ship.”
Amy snorted, while Viktor smiled. Leira held her glare for a moment, then stepped that last pace and put her arms around Dash.
“Thank you,” she said.
“Hey, no big deal. Almost blowing up a star, after fighting an alien mech, to protect a space station built by different aliens? Just another day in the life of the Messenger.”
She smiled, then kissed him.
As she drew back, Dash raised an eyebrow. “I did not expect that.”
“Don’t get used to it.”
He rubbed his lips, smiling. “Don’t think I ever could.”
Movement outside the docking bay caught their attention. The limp, ravaged form of the Harbinger had drifted into view, tractored along by several of the station’s maintenance remotes. It would be taken to another docking bay, where they could start taking it apart to study it.