Koban 4: Shattered Worlds

by Stephen W Bennett

  “Eventually, after a couple of thousand years of recycling, our technology progressed to where we tried to make our own mind enhancers. When we reached that stage, a library suddenly opened to us with directions of how to make them. We never knew where the Olt’kitapi lived, but as we slowly expanded into space and established more colony worlds, they finally made contact again. This time they had no new mind enhancers to offer us, but instead gave us an invitation to join with them in a future that was being planned for many species. They told us they intended to construct gigantic habitats. Please note the use of plural here, because that is what they told us. They would be built around single stars, where different species could live and interact peacefully, without a need to compete for resources or space to live.

  “We Raspani were promised a habitat as a gift, and we would be permitted to build new ones of our own if we wished, using their technology. We could keep our original colony worlds, but we could also share life in the star systems where habitats would be built. It was shortly before the first construction was to start, that the Krall revolt happened. Our belief is that the Krall warrior class, learning of the Dismantler ships, desired them as super weapons.

  “However, the revolt really started as a way to prevent some of the clans that were cooperating with the Olt’kitapi, from being changed by them, from gaining access to this technology which the warrior class Krall could not have. The war loving Krall intended to stop the Olt’kitapi from turning all of their species soft. Into what most of the beings here would describe as more peaceful and civilized.

  “My people had not met any of the Krall at that time, and we also had little contact with the Olt’kitapi because our volume of space was adjacent to theirs but did not overlap. The Olt’kitapi were a benevolent people, who helped several species that needed a boost in order to advance if they agreed to accept the help, and then left them entirely alone, developing in their own way.

  “We think our peaceful advancement convinced them that we would be good neighbors. After meeting them again, we discovered our mind enhancers had once more opened up to reveal a new library of knowledge, preparing us for the first steps in joining them in the construction of the great habitats. This is much like the Torki have experienced, with libraries of knowledge being opened to them when they are ready.

  “Our newest library back then contained descriptions of various huge theoretical constructs that apparently the Olt’kitapi had studied, as ways to convert an entire solar system into a massive artificial habitat. A habitat that could be customized for any species, and would have room for a large number of different habitats. The Olt’kitapi planned to use the building material already in the selected systems, the planets, asteroids, and comets. The ideal star appeared to be one that would have a very long life, such as a red dwarf, which also contained many massive planets for dismantling for building material. We think one tool for doing this was a type of powerful mining ship, which may have been called a Dismantler in one of our old dialects.

  “Soon after we were contacted by them again, we were informed by an Olt’kitapi emissary of the Krall revolt, and of a war of extinction the Krall were waging against them. We learned that their pacifist ways were unable to resist the primitive species they had hoped to help advance, and to whom they had given basic tools of war for the defense of the future habitats. In absence of complete records today, we believe we Raspani were advised to flee from the edge of the Olt’kitapi volume of space, and to avoid contacting the Krall. The emissary said they were going to try to end the danger they had created, and would try to destroy the Krall world. We pulled away, and didn’t know then if they succeeded in that attempt.

  “We stayed away from the edge of Olt’kitapi space for a thousand or more years before the Krall found us. After that, we fared little better than our early benefactors, except that instead of extermination, or enslavement as workers, you know our curse was to become a source of food to the beastly barbarians, whom the Olt’kitapi accidentally unleashed on the galaxy.”

  He made the Raspani elbow squeeze gesture that served as a shrug. “That was long ago. I think the moon-world image you found in that Krall’s mind is in the system where the Olt’kitapi intended to start construction. The large round ended ships are possibly the mining craft that were designed for obtaining raw materials for building the habitats. The other Olt’kitapi ships we saw of theirs were not shaped like that. There must have been many more ship designs than just the Dismantlers involved in the future construction, but the Krall would only have seen the value in machines they could use for destructive purposes.”

  Mirikami asked, “How do the mining ships work? What do they do that could destroy an entire world? The Krall histories claim their original home world was torn apart somehow.”

  The elbow move again. “We do not have construction details in our library, merely possible designs for various enormous structures, apparently for us to study for our education. Obviously, they were not going to build all of the types depicted. Perhaps the shapes of what was to be built might suggest how it would be done. I can share the files with the general descriptions with the Torki, and with you Kobani, but the Prada and your guest here,” he indicated Mauss again, “do not have chips implanted to receive them.”

  Mirikami had a solution. “Share the information with us Kobani as you proposed. A Comtap chip can link to an AI, and there is one for this building. I believe it will be able to show a visual representation of your images on the wall behind you, which is a Smart Plastic full screen display panel we bought in Human Space. We should move some tables and equipment out of the way.”

  While the few items that might block a view were moved, Mirikami linked to the building’s AI. “Reception, I have a task for you in conference room three. Please respond on speaker.”

  “Yes, Sir. How may I be of assistance?”

  Mirikami had sensed the file transfer from Blue, but had not examined it as it flashed into chip storage. “I will send you a data file I received from a Raspani mind enhancer. It will contain some images that we wish to present on the wall screen in this room. Can you change the format the Raspani use, to display the image for us?” He forwarded the new files.

  “Yes Sir. I have worked with Raspani and Torki image files many times. I have the files you just transferred to me. Should I present the first image? They are numbered.”

  “Yes, please.”

  An image from space of a metallic sphere appeared, with no scale to indicate its size, although pinpoints of remote stars could be seen in the background. There were protuberances spaced frequently around it, and there were regularly placed circular areas of differing size that could be portals, or airlocks. This could be a spherical orbital station, for all that could be told from the image.

  Mirikami asked, “Blue, the building Reception AI has all of your images, but can you explain what we see here?”

  “I will try, Tet. This object is enormously larger than it may appear in this image. It completely encloses a star, with a radius that is dependent on the energy radiated by the host star selected. A red dwarf has lower energy output, and its lifetime is much longer than a star such as the brighter and hotter one of the Koban system. This type of shell would be smaller around a red dwarf. Such a sphere here, around your star, would have to be much larger for proper heat dissipation, and the Koban system would not have enough planetary material to construct something as large as is needed.

  “There are cutaway views, and transparencies to show this structure, and the sphere could be rotated for an added centrifugal effect on the inner side, strongest at the equator. This design would leave the poles of the sphere with only the gravity of the mass of the thin skin material. With tachyon energy, there would be no need for that inefficient method of gravity simulation. However, there is little reason to examine this image in detail, because this sort of structure had been determined by us, and by the Olt’kitapi, to be impractical for multiple reasons.

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nbsp; “It would require more planetary material than is usually available in a single star system, and it failed to provide the privacy and environmental customization for the different species they wanted to live in the habitats they constructed.”

  Max Born named the object in Standard. “That is known as a Dyson Sphere to humanity, and in our culture this was discussed as a possible structure an advanced civilization might build, to harness all of the energy of the host star. When Blue told me of the images, I looked into archives and discovered this proposal by a physicist named Freeman Dyson, in the twentieth century. There appear to have been others that considered such a concept, with variations. The energy collection was a main consideration, and the building of such a shell was found to be not only a staggering and difficult engineering task, it would be gravitationally unstable around the host star. How do you keep it from constantly drifting off center without continuous adjustments of a truly massive, yet potentially fragile shell?” He shrugged.

  “We didn’t have Normal Space drives or tachyon power then. That design fell into disfavor, not that humanity could have considered building one anyway. A solid ring was considered a possible alternative, and which required much less material. However, it too will have a gravitational instability problem, and neighbors would have no natural barriers to form privacy boundaries, and separate biospheres.”

  As Born spoke, Mirikami had prompted the AI to see if a ring structure was in the images. One appeared on the wall, and this time a central red colored sun was readily apparent, with the immense ring circling the star at the habitable zone, where water would be liquid. It provided the breathtaking scale of the construction effort required.

  Blue popped his lips in agreement, and added, “The Olt’kitapi did not favor either of these constructions, because of the requirement of constant massive energy inputs being required to maintain a stable rotation, and safe spacing of these rigid structures from the star.

  “They did not say in our library, which contains only images, but we believe they would have used a more flexible sort of ring that they repeated in more detailed images, which could be expanded easily, constructed in pieces, and mimicked the small individual multiple ring systems every stable solar system already has. My people described it as a chain of flowers around the star. There are images of this as well.”

  Coldar offered his people’s description, because they had also been looking at the Raspani files for several days. “It was described as the spawning cycle by us, when we compared it to how we release our fertilized eggs to circulate around the oceans, to return home when mature enough.”

  Wister showed the Prada had once dreamed larger as well. “We have not seen these images, but we thought of such things in the past. It was like a glade of trees around the mother star to us.”

  Killing the poetic sounding descriptions, Born described the human equivalent. “I think what you each describe was called a Dyson Swarm by us.”

  Maggi latched onto something Blue had said. “Blue, you said every stable solar system has multiple rings? What do you mean?”

  He wrinkled his brow in a smile. “The planets in their orbits, of course. One bead on a string. There is no reason there should be only one planet in each orbit, nor for there to be only one flat ring of planetary orbits.”

  She looked skeptical. “You think the Olt’kitapi intended to make dozens of smaller planets, to form orbital rings around the star?”

  Blue and his people had obviously been thinking of the possible Olt’kitapi choices for several days. “I doubt they would have been so wasteful of all of that building material. A sphere that enclosed a star was certainly too great a task for a practical design. However, a string of beads of planetary sized hollow spheres could start small, and be expanded. Clumps of sorted and matched building materials derived from larger planets could be placed in balanced orbits until needed. These raw material clumps would stay gravitationally stable, and the finished planetary scale spheres are massive certainly, on a personal scale of our own bodies. However, with Normal Space drives powered by tachyon energy, such hollow spheres can be slowly maneuvered if that were required, and would contain only a tiny fraction of the mass of a typical solid rocky planet, with none of the heavy metals wasted in a useless molten core.

  “With tachyon Traps to generate a gravity field on either side of the two surfaces of a planetary sized shell, the civilizations could live on the outer and inner surfaces, with an atmosphere held in place by gravity. Both sides of the spherical shell could be used, and the location of industry could be moved to the inside if they wish, while the outer surface could have a normal biosphere and cities, with a view of the grand design of the entire managed solar system, with thousands of shifting points of light that are your neighbors. Each sphere would have the surface gravity its users selected, and a biosphere designed for the comfort of their species.

  “We think, with mass balancing and managed weather, that rivers and seas and simulated mountains could be placed on the surface of each hollow planet sized world. At a minimum, each planet sized shell, roughly as massive as each of the others in the ring, offer double the usable space per sphere, and there could be many thousands of them, in various ring orbits around the star. If you use polar orbits, then there is no need to squeeze every ring into a single equatorial plane, where planets form naturally from the original stellar disc. Every planetary shell would be tailored for the species that would inhabit that one, or could have zones of different gravity and biosphere, to accommodate different species if they chose to share a shell world.

  “None of the species in this room currently have the mathematical, scientific, and technical knowledge to do this, particularly the complex orbital mechanics. Apparently, the Olt’kitapi did. They would have helped the species peaceful enough to accept their invitations, and would have taught them how to use the advanced technology, which they were willing to share. Had they not wanted a more aggressive species to be tamed down, to have the Krall become the future defenders of their planned society, they might have succeeded.”

  Everyone paused a moment quietly, to look at an image that the Reception AI, listening to their discussion, had considered to be appropriate. It was of a central star, with twelve orbital rings spaced around it, thirty degrees apart, and had at least a hundred “beads” in each ring, which would represent a shelled habitat sphere, or perhaps a power station or industrial complex. There were at least twelve hundred such spheres shown and with the inner and outer surfaces available for use, double the outer surface areas.

  Maggi had a question for the AI. “Reception, what is the scale you estimate in this image that is used for the individual habitats, the diameter of the spheres, not the mass.”

  Correctly assuming the answer to her question should be provided to everyone, it answered in Standard for the entire room. “Each sphere has roughly the diameter of either Haven or Koban, which are close to the habitable planet average in Human Space. That would be close to eight thousand miles in diameter, with a margin of error of one or two hundred miles, larger or smaller.”

  Mirikami said. “Wow, two thousand four hundred times the room of a single planet. From the spacing of the orbits, it looks as if more rings could be added, as well as more habitats per ring. I guess since there is no shortage of stars, why pack ‘em in any tighter? Start another neighborhood. I have no idea how much building material an entire solar system would provide, but that brings us to the reason why we considered the Olt’kitapi construction project in the first place.

  “How were they going to dismantle the planets, the gas and ice giants, on down to the rocky planets, moons, comets and asteroids to get what they needed? Any of these plans need most, or all of the metallic cores, and probably less of the gasses of the Jovian’s. Unless there are races that don’t breathe oxygen which we haven’t met. I wouldn’t bet against that possibility. Obviously, they needed what was in the cores of any of the planets. How do these relatively small ships get
in and get that material?”

  Thad discussed the rumor that had floated around among the early captives on Koban, when they had first heard about the Krall history of losing their home planet. Whatever did that to their planet was of interest to any enemy of theirs.

  “The Krall say their world was totally destroyed, pulled or blown apart. We could only speculate then that an antimatter bomb was used, but that notion is at odds with how the planet was left in fragments. This isn’t how a bomb that strikes the surface will behave. Besides, if you can make and contain a large quantity of antimatter in the first place, what does that have to do with a mining ship? It must be something else.”

  After a lengthy discussion, all they were left with was the belief the Olt’kitapi could somehow get to the core materials of a planet, and one old term for the ships that were intended to do that made sense. They were probably called Dismantlers for a reason. Except, how did the process work? Was it fast or slow? Is there a defense against the process? Do the ships get close and bore into the planet, or stand off a great distance?

  In the end, the discussion was interesting, but offered no clue as to how a world could be attacked on a large scale by a single ship, and therefore no specific defense could be considered. The one point the Prada and Raspani emphasized, is that the Krall claimed the ships traveled greatly faster than did a T squared Jump Drive, and the Prada had heard Krall clan stories that the ships could Jump directly from the surface of a planet, while deep in a gravity well. They did this without being instructed to do so, when a destination was provided by a soft Krall.

  It had been understood that the soft Krall, or Krall’tapi as several of the old Raspani dialects called them, were the only people alive that could operate the ships. Max Born thought it might have to do with a chip in the heads of the Krall’tapi, but the consensus was negative. The Krall had wiped out the Olt’kitapi, largely because of those chips imbedded in warriors of one or more ancient clans. There was no one that could make new chips if that was the key to operating the ships.