by Kali Altsoba
“Mr. Fontaine, how long will it take Alpha to reach the system L4 at maximum cruising speed? And as you know, that means top available speed of the slower of the two troopships.”
‘She’s thinking of taking us into full luminosity, right across the face of the white binary.’ RCW-138A is the third dancer in the three-body gravity entanglement that shapes the L2 where Alpha is shielded from stellar fire. Lacking other planets, the system has only five bohr-zones.
“Navigation is working the numbers for all LPs, ma’am. Boca do Inferno has never been gravity mapped. We have to get it right. It will take time to pinpoint the LP and plot the route.”
“Current best estimate, XO?”
“Two days, ma’am, at top sublight speed of Jutlandia. That gas giant is a long way out from the binary, meaning commensurate distance to the system Greek and Trojan LPs.”
He has to hurry. There’s little time if she orders emergency sublight across the ‘Mouth of Hell’ to the next LP. And the measurements he needs to make are only possible while still in the planetary umbra. Even the penumbra will be too luminous for his instruments to survive.
While Émile updates the ship’s portolan chart, Magda orders Resolve, Asimov, Tyco Brae, Warsaw and Jutlandia to hold in the effortless gravity bowl of the L2 for four hours. They’ll wait to see if there’s pursuit, while hurriedly tending to repairs, to wounded, and lastly to their dead from the escape battle. That’s the fight Émile Fontaine is already calling “Battle of the Gauntlet” in the ship’s Log. He’s very fond of naming things, and he’s a good naval historian.
“Stay at Battle Stations. I want every tube pre-loaded and every cannon crewed. We may yet have hostile company follow us here.”
“Aye captain.” Four other ships all confirm.
“Warships, assume line abreast of the flagship in the center position. Troop carriers, get directly behind me in line astern. I want Warsaw behind Jutlandia. I want that sabot cannon slung under her hull pointing in a direction we can use, if they fly right past us.”
Asimov and Tyco Brae straddle Resolve on either of her flanks. Forming the thin and vulnerable handle of a T, Jutlandia and Warsaw line right behind Resolve, with Warsaw’s lethal ass pointing in the opposite direction to the rest of the flotilla.
“Get a start on whatever repairs ships’ engineers can manage internally, without egress or access to port facilities we don’t have. Take nothing offline! Be ready to jump on short notice, tacking to Resolve’s sublight and quantum-drives. Lock both in, now. So far, there’s no sign of pursuit but that can change in the blink of a pulsar. The enemy may follow us here at any time.”
“What’s the chance of that?” Its Captain Lev Tiva, calling in from Asimov.
“They’ll likely check out the other six bohr options from the Genève L2 first, which is one reason why I brought us here. But we need to be ready. We left seven Zerstörers back there and they might split up and send a single scout down each escape route.”
“Maximum search pattern past the Lagrange point. So far, like you predicted patroon, they’ve stayed conservative. By-the-book, and that’s a standard search pattern.”
“Yes, but it only takes one daisa to break the mold, and throw away the prewar book. We have to be ready for that, too.”
“Understood, Very good, patroon.”
“Resolve and Tyco Brae will load a full spread in fore-and-aft launch tubes. Asimov’s aft tubes are out, but load up front. If any ship comes through the LP, don’t wait for the command. Blow anything that moves right into the ‘Mouth of Hell,’ while its crew is still coming out of vapors. I repeat: Tube Masters, you have the green light to fire. Don’t wait for my command.”
“Aye ma’am, ready.”
Émile assures her: “They’re good gunners, our fish will be out the chutes before heads stop spinning on any Kaigun ship that comes through.”
“Warships, before we leave we’ll drop seeker-mines in the LP. If more than one Zerstörer follows that’ll slow them down. Plus, they’ll have to rig for total light discipline before daring to leave the umbra, which we did before we came through. That gains us a little more time. We’re going to need it, because Jutlandia is hurt and that will slow us all down.”
“Leaving the umbra? Surely we’re jumping again direct from here?”
“Captain Tiva, maintain proper link decorum. Use my title as flotilla commodore or clear the ship-to-ship coms.” She can’t have it, this constant indiscipline from Tiva. Lives are at stake. This is not about titles or respect or ego, it’s about combat discipline. Then he does it again.
“You’re not thinking of taking this motley crew into that?”
“That’s enough. Clear the channel now, Captain Tiva.” There’s a moment of tense silence, then obedience.
“Why yes, ma’am. Apologies to Captain Aklyan. Asimov is leaving coms. Tiva out.”
She can’t close her eyes, so blue that when open like now they look like arctic icebergs. There are meditation techniques she likes to use to clear the ghosts from her mind that lurk after she makes bohr. Long after, in her case. She’s not one of the lucky, fast-recovering types. The vapors always hit her hard. But she can’t meditate now. She just has to fight through the fog.
“Aklyan to all captains and crews. Secure total light seal. Not a photon is to get through.” She intends to make the two-day crossing as soon as the four-hour repair clock hits zero. She’s not at all confident Kaigun pursuit won’t be swift and powerful. She can’t afford to be confident.
Émile’s worried. His captain hasn’t even stood up out of the command chair. And she’s being in it since a day before lift-off from Toruń. Her combat suit is taking care of all her bodily functions, of course. And she’s on modadrene to keep alert, and Alpha alive. Even so...
Émile is one of the lucky ones, and even he’s still recovering from the vapors. Magda knows him well enough to leave him alone at times like these, lost in his instruments and charts while the quantum nav-computer plots the precise location of the L4 and a way out of the system.
‘He’s earned it, today and at the moons. His ‘S’ maneuver got us past the picket ships in orbit, just like it was his idea that let us do serious damage to the Kaigun frigates at the Genèven moons. Let him study a system no one’s ever mapped. Gods help him, it’s how he seems to relax.’
On its solitary trek RCW-138A was heated in the interstellar dark only from within, by churning gases tens of thousands of klics thick, crushed down over an immense liquid metal core. Alone in the dark of interstellar space, the castaway made lashing storms lasting tens of thousands of years, spinning filaments of magnetic field reaching into blackness to grasp and hold … nothing. Ten million years ago the vagabond encountered a ferocious binary pair moving on a crossing vector at nearly the same speed, and so it decided to catch a ride.
‘Or was the vagabond enslaved by the binary? Does that depend on one’s angle of vision? It’s a born rebel in either case. Look how it flies in retrograde orbit around its new parents. Oh dear, more anthropomorphic rubbish! Gods, I despise the vapors.’
Billions of star systems in Orion, a hundred billion in the Milky Way. Two hundred billion more planets, a good share of them expelled by the host star or a jealous sibling into black and cold. Ever since parent stars first birthed planets, there were uncounted billions of homeless, unwanted worlds. Orphaned from their nativity star, forever. Unless they’re caught by another.
‘This castaway washed onto the gravity shore of a new sun. Or a pair of suns. The galaxy’s a far stranger and more hostile place than RCW-138. As for the Universe? Well...’
Lost offspring worlds swapped by careless star parents. Vast voids to engulf cold eternal wanderers, dark gas giants and frozen rocky worlds. Rogues in bondage, orbiting with no star to warm their lust. ‘You’re doing it again. Stars aren’t parents, planets aren’t orphans or rogues.’
Unhinged by hypervelocity, silent stars from failed binaries fly across the galaxy,
nomads plunging through Orion and on to the clusters. They hurtle over spiral gaps, searching the dark with gravity for some partner to clutch. Some rogues will be captured by another galaxy of the Local Group. Others make death rides into intergalactic void, to expire one terribly distant day in unmourned isolation, cooling to cinders in a whisper of futility. Ending in a whimper not a bang.
Émile knows nomadism is the story of RCW-138A because it orbits over 3,000 New Astronomical Units out from its adoptive parents. It’s far too big to have accreted way out there. And it circles at a pronounced tilt and in retrograde motion. Satisfied with the science, he records the virgin nomad in Resolve’s loxodograph. Then he turns to the binary.
The beta star is supermassive and super bright. A hypergiant, a low-range Type-O stellar mass with surface temperatures over 28,000˚ Celsius. This rare behemoth belongs to a star class comprising less than 0.2% of all stars in the Universe. It’s living a short, brilliant life destined to end in extreme violence. One way or another. It urges a nasty child’s verse into his mind. ‘Star light, star bright, the last star I see tonight; if you fall, as you might, does it mean I die tonight?’
The beta’s super-luminosity is what makes its smaller partner so remarkable. Incredibly, it’s brighter than the hypergiant. A ‘blue straggler’ vampire gulping mass from its obese partner as the two stars wobble about each other at intimate, coital distance. Already the cannibal has sucked and ripped a huge share of surface hydrogen from the raped hypergiant, making it look hotter, younger, bluer and more luminous than its victim. It’s already a million times brighter than Universal Standard Luminescence, a base measure used by cosmologists for two millennia.
The binary is bright far beyond human ability to observe or experience. Together the twinned stars are ultra-bright, almost beyond measurement by the ship’s best instruments even deep inside the protective planetary umbra, even deploying every filter Émile can position.
‘If Captain Aklyan didn’t order scuttles light-sealed against the intense luminosity before we made bohr, there would be lots of blind men and women onboard right now. Useless until we reach a med base where artificial cornea replacements can be implanted. A few mad ones, too.’
In time the terrible vampire will consume the hydrogen envelope of its victim. Swelling to supermassive size itself, in a protracted death duet it will reduce the Type-O to a dancing white dwarf. Or the duo might merge into a single star. Or their dangerous, illicit affair could end impulsively in a murder-suicide, a supernova or gamma ray burster so astonishingly luminous it will briefly outshine its entire galaxy in a flaring death note sent out to the whole Universe.
‘So, the binary’s destiny is not yet written. Well then, neither is ours.’ He gains comfort from the thought, though he doesn’t believe in destiny. He’s a scientist. A man of reason and calculation. And anthropomorphic sentimentality that resurfaces each time he has the vapors.
Ice
Émile understands why his captain picked this odd binary for the first bohr-jump. It’s so strange and hostile there’s little chance it harbors Kaigun picket ships. She calculated that arch-conservative Kaigun admirals would not intercept egress from Genève by stationing pickets in so luminous a system as RCW-138. Even the Kaigun must be wary of entering the ‘Mouth of Hell,’ afraid of debilitating and dangerous luminosity. They would assume that Krevans were as well.
“It’s been two hours captain. No pursuit has come through.”
“How do you read that, XO? Can we assume they started someplace else, that they didn’t break-up the hunter-killer group into individual scouts?”
“Kaigun admirals were watching the closer and more direct jumps out of Genève, ma’am. Sticking to their pattern, they’ve kept together the seven surviving Zerstörers that chased us, sent them ahead as a HK group to search one jump connector from the Genève L2 at a time.”
“I concur. They must think Alpha is running to one of our worlds not yet reached by their invasion fleets. If they’re using a standard pattern search, they’re at least two jumps behind us.”
“I have to confess, captain, I wanted to fight at the berm, before Governor Constance made her ‘you must live speech’ and the War Government ordered us on this Exodus mission.”
“You weren’t alone in that XO. Amiya Constance was remarkably persuasive.”
Magda knew about several of the dead general’s disinformation plants to mislead the Kaigun about when Alpha would leave the surface, and where it would run. But not about one man’s secret sacrifice. All knowledge of that bravery died with him in a bloody cell and her lying face-up and broken, looking skyward for Alpha as she died fighting outside the shattered berm.
‘She did it, that remarkable woman. There’s been no pursuit for two hours. If we can cross the Mouth of Hell and make one more bohr they’ll lose us. There’s no way to track us.’
Émile doesn’t know about it either. How Amiya Constance ordered her best intel agent to sacrifice. To let himself to be captured by the Rikugun at the berm, to hold out under torture as long as he could, then suggest a false Alpha destination to Kaigun MI. The ruse worked.
The Kaigun admiral in charge reinforced his close-orbit cruiser squadron but sent most smaller and faster escorts to picket positions at LPs where bohr routes from Genève ran straight to Aral. That meant the farside or stellar L3 and fast pickets at the Greek and Trojan LPs, too far from the gas planet leeside L2 where Alpha actually aimed, then bohred to unmapped RCW-138.
That left only four old frigates to guard that most distant and least likely egress, the one linked to just two Krevan systems and four uninhabited star systems, including RCW-138. It was the hardest LP to get to, even with a thinned gauntlet of picket ships along the way. So that’s the bohr-zone that Alpha fought to and escaped from. At least, escaped to here, the ‘Mouth of Hell.’
Alpha still needs to change LPs within this unmapped, hyper-luminous system. And soon, just in case the enemy isn’t as staid and by-the-book as Magda Aklyan thinks, as they were when she blasted through a cruiser line and past other picket ships at the L2. An angry admiral might yet order a scout ship or even a squadron into Boca do Inferno to search for the missing flotilla.
‘We’ve been fortunate to make it this far. Three times I was more lucky than good, sitting in this chair. Best not to chance a fourth.’
“Mr. Fontaine, how long until the system is mapped. Do we have L4 coordinates?”
“I have the numbers now. The last quantum calculation was just inferred, ma’am.”
Émile anticipates his captain’s needs but never forces his views against her command prerogative, even though he’s more often right than she is. He always holds his counsel until she asks, or the situation deems that he speak. But damned if she’s going to let him know all that.
“Well then, let’s have them.”
“Two days and four-point-two-five hours at Jutlandia’s max speed.”
“Very good. Lock destination in the sublight and quantum-drives.”
“Ma’am, why leave from the L4?”
“You think there’s an alternative?”
“Navigationally? Why yes ma’am. Three alternatives present without going outside the planet edge and umbra into hyper-luminosity. We can reach two of our own systems indirectly from here. Krakoya is nine jumps while Acis is seven. We could refit, resupply, and reinforce at either one. We can even backdoor to Aral in twelve jumps, if you so decide. I’ve worked out the routes for your inspection, ma’am. Just in case you wish to consider other options.”
“Good work, XO. But I have considered them. What you don’t know, since we’ve been a tad busy over the past two days, is that everything is collapsing inside the United Planets. Before we lifted off General Constance told me that Brno had fallen. A few ships got out that also carry fighters hot for vengeance, but like us they also left behind smoking ruins and crying widows.”
“One day we’ll repay all Grünen in kind for what they’ve done on Genèv
e and Brno, and all our other worlds. Pay them back five times over in wrack and ruin.”
“If we can, we will. One day, if she’s right and he can lead us...”
“Sorry? Who ma’am?”
“Not just now, apologies. It seems I still drift a bit on the vapors. Our main charge and duty is here and now, Mr. Fontaine. Packed below decks like mockfish aboard these little ships.”
“Aye ma’am. I don’t forget it. None of us will ever forget, or forgive.”
“There’s more. Constance said Special Branch picked up strong rumint that an all-out attack will be made very soon against Krakoya. Although that seems less than likely, given that system is so much closer to the Dauran frontier than the Imperium. Three other Krevan worlds still lie between Krakoya and any Kaigun fleets and Rikugun armies released from Aral.”
“Krakoya does seem a reach for the Imperium, ma’am, in the short-run at least. Such a move would expose the strategic rear and flank of their thrust into Krevan space. Not to us, who have no resources left to snap the shaft of their thrusting spear, and isolate its steel head. Expose them to the Daurans or Calmaris, I mean, should either want to take advantage of a distraction.”