Sonata in Orionis (Earth Song Book 2)

by Mark Wandrey

  "So anyway," Cherise said once they were resettled, “tell me about your new gig.” Minu plucked a pickle from her friend’s hair and explained, including Bjorn's explanation of how she came to be there. "I don't get why you weren't prime material to a scout team," Cherise said when she was done. "That mission wasn't exactly textbook. Considering the shit we went through, I've heard a few people say it was a miracle you got us back alive."

  "What do the others say?"

  "Opinions vary."

  "I'm sure I can guess what a few of them say," Minu said with a frown.

  "You can't make everyone happy," Cherise reminded her and Minu just shrugged. Gregg and Aaron were generally unappreciative of their fellow scouts who'd tried to break up the wrestling match. As a result there were now four in the fight. Three more came running in and Minu wondered if she would have to retreat to her quarters to continue the conversation.

  "So what have you been up to?" she asked her friend.

  "We're working on a distribution system for factory scale EPC."

  "That can't be too complicated. I mean one decent sized EPC can run a city for a week."

  "That's the problem; we can't buy the larger ones. Instead we get skids full of little ones."

  "Huh? What's the sense in that?"

  "There isn't any sense. We buy power from a broker by the Erg and they deliver it however they want. No brokers will guarantee the type of EPC. Most of the bigger factories use about one 39 zeta ergs per month. The problem is we only get them in 39 tera erg."

  "Hold it, I can't remember my high school physics. The zeta is an order of magnitude bigger than the tera, right?"

  "Yep."

  Minu awkwardly did the math in her head and whistled. "Wow, that's quite a short fall. They use about a million megawatts a month, and you only get one megawatt EPC?" Cherise nodded. "Damn, those tera cells are about the size of a standard D lithium ion battery. So a million of those a month to each factory?"

  "Correct. Now you see the logistics issues."

  "With only the two portals, it must be a nightmare.” She tried to imagine a pile of one million cell-sized EPC and failed. “The portal here is busy half the time with work for the Chosen, and the one in Tranquility is busy with civilian traffic. So where are you doing this?"

  "We're talking about reactivating one of the original portals used by the tribes during the exodus from Earth and fabricating a robotic handling system. Add to this plans to open three new factories next year. I don't see how we can manage."

  "Can you imagine the Concordia factories pumping out these power cells? I mean holy shit! Billions, trillions of them?!"

  "Yeah, and we ship them back and forth to be recharged. I saw one of the power stations the other day at that polymer factory in New Jerusalem? It's a mess. The factory floor has three hundred employees and is fairly efficient, from what I can tell. The power station that runs it? More than a hundred employees just walking along plugging in cells and removing discharged ones. Takes days just to dump them all into one Zeta cell that the factory uses for power storage."

  "Sounds crazy, all right. Any idea why we can't get the bigger cells?"

  "Nope. I think it's something to do with our being so low on the pecking order. Pip said he thinks it's a shortage."

  Suddenly Minu recalled her conversation with Dram just before her first mission to the frontier. His theory that the vast galactic empire of the Concordian was dying sounded so ludicrous. Somehow it didn't sound so far-fetched any more.

  "Where does all the power come from?"

  Cherise thought for a moment then shrugged. "You know what, I don't know. I guess the Concordia have some massive power generation systems somewhere."

  "So why don't we just make our own?"

  Cherise did not have any answers so Minu decided she'd look up Pip later in the day. As she suspected, he had some answers. And a few more questions. "From what I've learned, the Concordia harvest high energy plasma right from the photosphere of stars. They call it Solar Tapping. I'm not sure how the process works since nothing can survive the heat. It must be like dipping into a fusion bomb for power."

  "So," Minu asked, "they just suck up plasma and stick it into and EPC then ship it around?"

  "Yep, that is about it. I'm sure they clean it up, of course, removing stray radioactives, neutrons, and other undesirable leftovers from the solar fusion process. The brokers we buy our energy from get the filled EPC from factories and in turn distribute them."

  "How much of their economy is based around energy?"

  "Most of it, in my opinion. It's the most valuable commodity, and the basis of everything. I don't think any worlds make their own power."

  "Except us."

  "No, not any more. We haven't built a new power plant in a hundred years."

  "Why?"

  "It's easier to buy it, or in our case beg or trade for it."

  "And eventually you become like a dug addict," Minu said.

  Pip leaned back in his chair and smiled. Behind him an instrument continued its analysis of a complex alien circuit. "Too bad you weren't around a hundred years ago."

  "So we're hopelessly addicted?"

  “Hopelessly, no. Addicted, without a doubt.”

  "So what can we do about it?"

  "Not much."

  "Why?"

  "You need to meet Ted."

  “Who the hell is Ted?”

  Ted Hurt turned out to be cut in the mold of Bjorn. He was a Chosen at least as old as Jovich, but he'd started as a civilian and was made a Chosen for his service. At the age of seventy, he was the oldest five-star in service. Pip took Minu to where the distinguished scientist spent every waking hour, and a good part of the sleeping ones.

  "I should warn you, Ted is a little over the top."

  "Like Bjorn isn't?" Minu laughed.

  "Ted is more composed and just as radically brilliant. There aren't many who dedicate themselves to pure science, he's one of them. He has a lot of wild theories, and some not so wild ones."

  Ted had an unassuming look about him. Medium build, slightly going to seed like many men his age, and with only a halo of wispy silver hair around the sides and back of his head and glittering blue eyes. When Pip and Minu entered his private lab Ted was sitting in a chair next to a table covered in computer tablets and was reading one. There was an amazing amount of stuff in the lab. Unlike Bjorn's office items were organized and stored in an orderly manner. There were no piles of random artifacts, instead examples were in display cases or carefully set up for meticulous examination. As Minu stepped closer she realized he was asleep and gently snoring.

  "Quite an amazing scientist, alright," Minu laughed.

  "You have no idea," Pip whispered, the reverence in his voice was very evident. Pip stepped up behind him and gently tapped his shoulder. Ted gave a start and looked up, putting hand to massage his neck.

  "Must have fallen asleep," he said in a voice surprisingly strong for his obvious age. "What month is it?"

  "Month?" Minu coughed.

  "December fourteenth," Pip said, "about three in the afternoon."

  "Ah," Ted said and turned to look at his visitors. "Pipson, good to see you boy." His gaze fell on Minu and his smile became altogether different. His eyes traveled her body, taking in every feminine curve with as much detail as if he were examining a new piece of tantalizing technology. "And who is this lovely lady?"

  "This is Minu Alma, command branch, assigned to my science team. Minu, this is Dr. Ted Hurt."

  "Really? I thought there were only six women currently in the Chosen, and I know them all well."

  I bet, Minu thought. His attention to her was unmistakable to any girl past the age of puberty. "I was on the most recent Trials." She offered him her hand which he took, then surprised her completely by lifting the hand to his mouth and planting a very warm and attentive kiss on the back. Tiny little prickles ran up her arm to her back and down her spine. How could a kiss to the hand have that kind
of effect?

  "And already a four-star? I am impressed, and you will find that a difficult thing to do." Minu smiled against her own will and reclaimed her hand. He smiled and gave her a lopsided nod. So he'd noticed more than her hips and breasts after all. He turned to Pip, looking away from her lithe form with difficulty. "What brings you to my corner of this austere edifice today?"

  Pip spent a few minutes summarizing the discussion between Minu himself. Ted listened with keen eyed interest until the story was complete. "So it's a lesson in energy economics and geology we're looking for?" he asked Minu.

  "Sure, I guess."

  "Okay, why not." He gestured to some chairs and the two young Chosen sat. "First a little back story. Five hundred years ago we were on the verge of reaching for the stars at long last. Our technology was only a pale shadow of what the Concordia achieved, but it was enough to tentatively reach into space, develop sophisticated electronics, and harness the atom. Then at that critical moment we are killed by a cruel twist of fate. The same act of fate that ushered the dinosaurs off the stage. Another century and we would have been beyond such a minor nuisance, I am sure of it."

  "I'm sorry to interrupt sir, but I've heard all this in school."

  "You are interrupting, I'll grant you some leeway considering how woefully inadequate your education has no doubt been." Minu scowled and he chuckled. "Now don't get all up in a huff, I know you're from Plateau, most likely a graduate of the Keepers Academy or you would have never passed the Chosen testing. Academy graduates are proud of their educational system, especially in Tranquility. There is still an awful lot you haven't learned, especially considering who your ancestors are.

  "So five hundred years ago we are swept off the stage before we even complete our first dance. Along come the Tog at the last minute and throw us a life preserver. Stopping the ship from sinking might have been appreciated,” he shrugged, “for whatever reason that wasn't offered." Minu was about to ask him to elaborate when he went on.

  "We were whisked away to a new home by our anonymous benefactors. This world possesses everything we need to survive if not exactly prosper, because you see Bellatrix is a very sick and old world."

  "I love this stuff," Pip whispered and got a glare from Ted that sealed his lips.

  "Maybe you learned in science that Bellatrix is an improbable life supporting planet, you likely didn't hear that impossible would be a better description. You see our star here is a couple billion years older than Sol was in our own solar system. That sun was not quite middle aged while Bellatrix prime is an old man. Like an old man its heart doesn't burn with passion and it's beginning to get wider around the middle. Our astronomers searching for life in the galaxy back on earth looked at this system and quickly moved on. There was no possibility it could support a life bearing planet. Maybe a few billion years ago...

  "After we got here we set about exploring. We mapped this world, we dug for minerals and fossil fuels, and we squabbled with our neighbors. For such an old world, we found very little of what we expected. Iron, titanium, diamonds were rare, radioactive elements almost nonexistent. We know that on earth every cubic meter of seawater has a couple atoms of uranium. Here, not a damn thing."

  "So the planet is poor?" Minu suggested. "Bad roll of the dice?"

  Ted shook his head and his eyes gleamed with that special look of a teacher sharing rare knowledge. "More like an orange eaten on the inside, only the skin is left with a few little bits of fruit clinging to the rind. No, Bellatrix is mined out."

  "What? How is that possible? I mean, it would take thousands of years, wouldn't it?"

  "Oh, at least. Maybe more like a hundred thousand years. Remember the issue about the planet being life bearing?"

  "Sure, but here it is, and we're doing great."

  "Not all that great. Global temperatures have increased three degrees Celsius in the five hundred years since we came here. The great barrier desert has grown by five thousand square kilometers and the planet has lost about one percent of its total water volume."

  "My God!" Minu gasped. "Is it like that horrible global warming that was endangering Earth?"

  Ted spat and sneered. "Global warming? If scientists on earth spent their time on science instead of popularism tripe brewed up by politicians to manipulate the masses, we might not be on this dying world talking about it. No, this is real global warming, of the kind that will see this world a lifeless rock in a few millennia."

  "Millennia? So if the planet is dying, why did the Tog give it to us?"

  "Why? Because we're the last in a long line of temporary residents." Minu stared and blinked. "Think of Bellatrix as a halfway house, a place for the seeds of a species to be planted until they have grown mature once more. A hothouse to nurse injured plants back to life."

  "So, many have lived here before us?"

  "Oh, most certainly." Minu looked questioningly. "Between five and a dozen over the last twenty million years. And to top it off, we know without a doubt that those sentient species living on this world didn't come from here. They aren't related in DNA and primary mitochondrial strings. Most even have subtle amino acid variation. Not enough that we can't coexist, of course. It really doesn't matter since the world is doomed."

  "If the planet is going to die in a few thousand years...."

  "How in the world have dozens of species used it before us? Why quite simple really. They moved the planet farther from the sun. There is no fossil record anywhere on the planet. Life never evolved here on its own."

  Minu tried to understand his statement. No life evolved here? The planet had been moved? You can move a rock, a tree, even a building, but planets don't 'move'. At least not other than spinning around a sun. "The Concordian can move worlds?"

  "Sure, at least at one time they could, I have no doubt. When you study stellar mechanics you come to see that certain types of worlds only occur at certain places in certain types of solar systems. B class main sequence stars like Bellatrix can form worlds like ours only in their infancy, and much deeper in the gravity well. There are no gas giants in this system; Bellatrix toasted them billions of years ago. As these types of stars age they quickly burn through their hydrogen and start using helium, that makes them expand and burn up the inner planets, and blow off the gas from the gas giants. The observations from earth five hundred years ago showed Bellatrix surrounded by a huge glowing sphere of plasma, debris from earlier stellar spasms of this old sun. Out where we orbit, you should only find charred husks like Mercury."

  "It's a fact," Pip agreed. "I've compared old earth scientific books to Concordia facts. Those old scientists were wrong about a lot of things, but not this though, not this."

  "So every hundred thousand years or so,” Ted continued, “Bellatrix gets an attitude and starts to cook this planet like a potato in an oven, just like how it's heating up right now."

  "And they move it?" Minu said, picking up a computer chip from Ted's desk and moving it a few inches before putting it back down, "Just like that? How is that even theoretically possible?"

  "With the kind of technology the Concordia possess, anything is possible. And I do mean anything." Ted finished with a flourish and moved the computer chip back to precisely where Minu picked it up.

  "All right, so I believe you. Then what? Are they going to show up and move our home again?"

  "Not this time."

  "Why not?"

  "Well, there's the mystery, right? You would think it would have happened decades ago. From ice samples and sediments its happened a hundred times before, but not this time."

  "And here I thought you were Mr. Answers."

  Ted laughed and gave her his most charming smile, which she admitted was quite charming. "No, I'm not Mr. Answers. More like Mr. Mystery. I come up with the questions; you young people get to gallivant around the galaxy looking for the answers." Minu took a deep breath and slowly let it out. "What we do know is a few million years ago something big happened, and I do mean big. Big enou
gh in fact to cause a near paradigm shift in the Concordia. First they stopped using space ships."

  "My dad said it was because they deemed them too wasteful."

  Ted just smiled at her before continuing. "Second, they stopped making new portals. Third, quite a few of their massive factory worlds shut down, and this is still an ongoing process. And lastly, and this might be linked to the first two, they stopped engineering on a planetary scale."

  "So how is this linked to the EPC issue?" she finally asked.

  "Just another clue in the bigger scheme of things." Minu scowled and he shrugged. "We can't have any real answers, of course. The Concordia don't want us to know the answers. Either they can't make new EPC of the zeta scale, power is running short (unlikely), or the distribution network is breaking down. Any one of these doesn't bode well for the Concordia. They're so hooked on vast amount of cheap and available power, it is impossible to get rid of that addiction."

  "What about us? We haven't got hooked yet."

  "We're working on that. Power generation on the scale even we're using is not a small thing. One of those fancy new factories consumes more power each year than the whole planet used prior to the return of the Concordian. At this point we could cut ourselves off from outside power and still survive. From what we've seen out there, most worlds can't even feed themselves. There are huge garden worlds that are nothing but one big farm. Their production is harvested with high tech machinery, processed, and delivered through the portals. A global integration on a galactic scale. Even with that there is hunger on some worlds? Hard to imagine what would happen if the power suddenly stopped flowing. War at the least. A holocaust of unimaginable proportions is a more likely outcome."