by Chad Huskins
“Sir, a transmission from the far side of the system,” says the Observer.
“Vessel?”
“No, sir, it’s from a Four Point space station.”
Four Point. That is extremely far away, one of the remotest outposts that the Cerebs have. Four Point’s mission out there is to map galaxy filaments, the largest cosmic structures in the universe—massive, thread-like formations, which form the boundaries between large voids in the universe. After a few million years, enough of them should be mapped so that the Everlasting Empire can begin sending probes to other galaxies. “What does the message say?”
“That they’ve detected a strange gamma burst flash on their sensors, not conducive with predicted supernovae eruptions in the vicinity.”
“An unpredicted localized anomaly?”
“Yes, sir.”
“I trust they sent probes?”
“They did, sir. The probes found nothing that might have generated the gamma burst. However, they did find one anomalous thing: carbon black particles. They were extremely tiny fragments, barely detectable at all, the Researchers at Four Point missed them entirely but a more thorough scan by seekers later detected them.”
Carbon black particles. There it is again, the Phantom File. It is fleeting, there and gone, lasting only as long as he needs its reference and the reminder of protocols. It is an extremely unlikely thing that the Sidewinder would be that far out, in the farthest regions of the galaxy. However, the Phantom File is very clear on this part—the Sidewinder-class ships were made to be mankind’s greatest stealth ships, they had hulls made of compristeel, a very special alloy that was strong, flexible, and included a mixture of radar-absorbent materials. Part of that mixture was the old tried-and-true carbon black particles, but such particles were typically only created by the incomplete combustion of petroleum products. Of course, humans weren’t the only species that had ever used such products on starships. The Cerebs themselves had once used them, never for stealth purposes, but they had used them.
“Those particles might have been left a long time ago by the ships of other spacefaring civilizations, or by our own older model ships,” the Conductor reasons. “Have they quantum-dated the particles yet?”
“No, sir. They said the particles were far too scant for that.”
“Were there any signs of cooled ionic exhaust?” he asks, following the line of questioning initiated by the Phantom File protocols.
“No, sir. None.”
That doesn’t necessarily mean that it wasn’t the Phantom who left those particles behind. If it was him, the Supreme Conductor thinks, stepping through the large burst of light between the stars, then either his ship saw a glancing blow from a small asteroid moving too fast for his shields to deflect, or else the ship is still damaged from the Event Anomaly, and pieces of it are still being chipped off.
The Conductor runs through the scenarios, gauges likelihoods, weighs the risks versus rewards that the Phantom would have for fleeing that far. The answer is simple. It cannot be him. It can’t be, because there are no habitable planets out that far, and no sources of deuterium, which the Sidewinder would need to convert into pycnodeuterium, the fuel required to ignite its exomatter core and engage the power necessary to move into the quantum slipstream, the Bleed.
No food, no water, no fuel. If he went out there, he went out there to die.
Still, the Conductor is surprised to find that the Phantom File cannot be so easily dismissed. It keeps returning and insisting itself on him. Within a few seconds, another tier of the File is revealed to him: by the command of the Council of Elders, the Conductor is hereby ordered to follow this lead.
Only mildly perturbed by this, he signals one of the bridge’s Manager and issues a command. “Send a reply to Four Point, tell them we will make way shortly, after we’re finished recharging our cells here. And tell them that, in the meantime, they are ordered to run a spectral analysis on the carbon black particles. Tell me if the decay rates match.”
“Yes, sir.”
He concludes that if the decay rates don’t match, it would indicate that the particles were probably left over from the passing of some ancient fleet, but if they do match, then at least that would tell them that the particles came from one craft, not many. It was a start, even if a small one. And in matters so great as cosmic forensics, even a small start helps.
Another hour or so passes, then finally the Conductor prepares the rest of the fleet to make for Four Point station. We retreat from this Event, and the Conductor stands amid the holographic field, taking one last look at the colliding stars. Data confirms the formation of proto-gold, which will be thrust from the epicenter of the explosion over the next year. He files a report, and sends it back to the Council. Soon, they would have to prepare a mining fleet to come and gather the materials.
The Supreme Conductor takes his seat. All matters such as the Event Anomaly and the great matter of the Phantom recede. Now, his focus is solely on that of his ship’s navigation, as well as the other three ships. He communicates with the other Conductors, they share a Commune, cross-referencing data. Now all control is handed over to him, and now he moves his flagship to the front.
His mind is everywhere at once, calculating the pycno levels, routing power to the primary ignition cells, checking their relativistic shields, and measuring the tachyonic distortions all around the ship. The forward laser is fired, and warps space-time by one part in ten million. They enter the Bleed in a free-fall geodesic, so there are no acceleration g-forces.
We follow them, never concerning ourselves with such technical problems. We follow on the heels of those that annihilated us—but not for long. For, as you well know, we can move faster that the Cerebs. Much faster. In our form, the laws of physics don’t quite apply, and we race ahead of the Cereb fleet, through the quantum slipstream at speeds that would humble their Calculators. Stars wheel over end. They become wavy, like we are viewing them through a glass of sloshing water. The stars bleed together, their light and color compressed into blues and reds only. Very soon, a purple, mottled mess is all around us, and we move along the trajectory set by the Conductor.
It will take the fleet several hours to get to this part of the Milky Way, but we make it in seconds. And so here we are, exiting the Bleed mere moments later and coming into the blackest patch of space we’ve seen yet. Of course, space is never truly empty. Invisible trails of cosmic dust span thousands of miles, and the occasional rogue meteoroids may slip by, perhaps no bigger than a coin. Still, no major cosmic bodies are to be found for thousands of light-years. No planets, no stars. We are very nearly to the outer limits of our galaxy, our Milky Way.
Our home.
For so long we thought of Earth as our home, but with our new perspective we now see that our home was so much bigger than imagined. We framed ourselves within the context of our houses, not our neighborhoods. We identified ourselves according to our DNA, rather than coping with the fact that the majority of the elements in our bodies came from stars. We now realize that we were only connected to each other biologically, but that we were connected to the rest of the universe chemically and atomically.
Now we see our relationship with the tiniest of elements. Take these black carbon particles the Conductor was told about, for instance. So miniscule, and yet they were created by the same processes that fling comets through the universe. Well, actually, these particular particles might’ve had a helping hand. Being ghosts, we may know more than machines can ever find, and know for a certainty that these particles did indeed come from a single ship. We also see afterimages of its passing, impressions left on the fabric of space and time, like footprints at a quantum level. We follow these afterimages, which are scarcely more than blurred photographs, for a few dozen light-years.
Yes…yes, after a fashion, we do pick up on a cooled ion trail. We know that cryogenic coolers were added at the ends of the engine nozzles of all Sidewinders, and that those coolers used Bose-Einstein
condensate to cool the ions just before they left the engine’s exhaust ports. A stealth measure, exactly as the Supreme Conductor noted before. However, it’s a bit strange. The ion trails, scant as they are, seem to be leading off in many different directions…
Ahhhh, but now we see the reason and the rhyme. He knows that if the Cerebs found him once before, they will most assuredly find him again. It is only a matter of time. After all, they found every other human being, didn’t they? So the Phantom figured that, if he was eventually going to have his trail detected, he’d best make the occasional stop, fly off in one direction before double-backing to the same spot and shooting off into another. Deception and confusion, these are the only tools left to him and his Ianeth ally now.
So where do we begin? Well, lucky for us, we may go at tremendous speeds, impossible speeds, in all directions. We may check this path and then check that path, until we have tried them all. However, we soon find that none of these trails leads to anywhere in particular—no asteroid field, no solar system, no lone star or rogue comet, nothing. So what would he…?
Oh…oooohhhh. Clever Phantom. These aren’t trails leading to something, but rather ruses to lead us away from something. These trails aren’t indications of where he’s going, but perhaps where he’s come from. Perhaps, assuming his new base of operations would soon be discovered, he and his alien ally decided to give the Cerebs a feint, just something to occupy the Cerebs’ time while the two of them worked on something else?
We won’t know for sure until we follow the scant ionic trail back to its origin, and then try and focus on a trajectory. This…this could be difficult. The Sidewinder’s cryogenic coolers appear to have been focused, boosted even, to the point that there is virtually no detecting the trail. The Conductor’s Phantom undoubtedly powered them down to leave the slightly more obvious trail. He gave them bait to follow. But the real trail…
Well, we are ghosts, and though it may be difficult, we can see other things besides ion trails and quantum footprints. We can see the impression that energy, all energy, leaves on the universe. Thoughts are energy. They are made up of electric pulsations, and they form a narrative, they give off a signal, a “scent” no machine yet made can detect.
We focus.
We concentrate.
We see it.
A mind made for meddling.
It coincides with what we know of him. For what is a saboteur if not one who interferes with the normal processes of things? A meddler. In any case, here is an energy trail that only we may follow…the Cerebs will have to figure out a method for themselves.
Off we go, at breakneck speeds and beyond. We pass by a large, stadium-sized asteroid, with three smaller asteroids trailing in its wake. From there, we bounce off of a scattered and dead nebula, and only seconds after that, we are passing through the accretion disc of a black hole, which is currently powering the quasar we come to next. Turbulence. Lots of it. We are passing into a patch of space so dark…but wait…no…no, it’s not so black, is it? There is a black sphere refracting what little ambient starlight is around it.
A rogue planet.
It hangs there, impossibly huge, having no parent star or sister planets, a titan without a family. It is a low-mass brown dwarf, and a billion years ago it formed from the fragmentation of molecular cloud cores.
The meddling mind has been here before. We can sense his impression. We follow the trail the Phantom’s mind left around this dwarf, and on into the blackness, deeper and deeper, to a large body a hundred light-years away. Another rogue planet. A gas giant. We fly into the heart of the giant, shaking as we pass through the atmosphere of liquid helium, which undoubtedly caused him turbulence when he came through here.
Yes…yes, we can see the impression his ship left as it passed through…down, down, down…and there! Some sort of station, flying low inside, with energy shields still up, but those shields are weakening, and the station itself is close to being crushed by the gas giant’s gravity. Yet still it remains, and it is alien in design. Oblong, with dangerous-looking spires sticking out like spikes from either side. A base of some kind. Doubtless, some space station that the Phantom’s new companion told him about. Perhaps they made a pit stop here before…ah, yes, there goes the trail. Up and up, away from the gas giant.
Where is he going?
The trail leads far away from this rogue planet. We traverse a black gulf two hundred light-years wide. Across a field of black holes, through another nebula, and through the last asteroid field in the Milky Way. Deeper than we’ve ever gone. Perhaps deeper than the Cerebs have ever gone. There’s nothing out here. Absolutely nothing.
And then we see it. Another free agent, only this one is no brown dwarf, no gas giant. It is a rogue planet made of rock—terra firma, as we used to say. It’s so small that we almost miss it, being over a thousand times smaller than the brown dwarf we just left. It stands alone, adrift, its only master the gravitational forces at the very center of the galactic core, but soon it might just be escaping even that. It’s traveling at incredible speeds. Something must have flung it, but that would’ve happened millions of years ago, and taken a tremendous power—an Event, the Cerebs would say—to make it happen.
We remain a healthy 300,000 miles away, because the trail ends somewhere around here. The trail doesn’t take us into the planet…but it’s all over this space. The Phantom is here, somewhere, circling this dark rogue.
There’s no moon—the speed the planet’s going, it might’ve outrun any moons it had, leaving them behind, also adrift now—but there are satellites. Supermassive artificial satellites. Twelve of them: two at the north pole, two at the south pole, and four other groups of two arrayed around the middle in perfect geosynchronous orbit. They’ve managed to keep up with the rogue planet, and they remain directly and unflinchingly above the planet at the same coordinates a thousand miles above the surface. The satellites appear like silvery orbs, and they are enormous, each one almost one-seventieth the size of Earth’s Moon.
What is this? we can’t help but wonder.
Then, we sense it. The meddlesome mind, the paranoid creature with the soul of a steel trap, mistrustful and tactical, ever seeking an angle. We follow that paranoia to a slightly warped patch of space around the rogue planet. Here we are, with a familiar sight. The Sidewinder’s stealth systems are still switched on, and we pass through the refractive walls, feeling the tingling sensation of radio distortion.
It’s all part of the ship’s sensor shroud. The shroud is a package deal, consisting of a short-range sensor jammer, as well as a DERP (Dedicated Energy Receptor/Projector), which not only soaks up energy at long range, but also links up to the sensor analysis grid. That grid is made up of drones the pilot has sent out like retrieval dogs. The shroud also consists of an OPG (outward plasma generator) that produces an effect of plasma stealth—it emits ionized gases to reduce the RCS (radar cross section) of a spacecraft. Even the compristeel hull has panels that can slide to one side and extend mirrors that reflect the space around it, making it almost impossible to spot amid the void.
It is all more or less operational, exactly as when we last left it. Or, actually, it might even be a little improved. There aren’t as many bundles of cables hanging out of the walls where once a dozen panels were missing. There don’t seem to be as many traps, either. Now that there is a more active crew, traps would presumably only get in the way. And the floor! It gleams! Now that is certainly an improvement.
One thing hasn’t changed, though. The same engraving as before is still etched proudly into the compristeel wall of the main hall:
Interplanetary Space Force
Eternity
Legacy
Humanity
And not necessarily in that order, thinks the pilot, walking briskly past us. We hardly detected him at all before he went stalking by. The repair bot trundles behind him, sometimes extending its new pair of legs to maneuver around some tool or crate left in the corridor, then alig
hts back onto its wheels, picking up an MRE wrapper as it goes, as well as metal shavings left over from repair work.
It’s him, of course. Rook. We’ve found him. He glances over his shoulder, then stops dead in his tracks, squints as if he caught something in the distance. Does he see us? Does he see something else, something we cannot? We may know his mind. Bulk heads, he thinks. Need more sealant. Thought I felt a draft, like atmo escaping. He makes a mental note to tell Bishop he was right about the bulk heads, then goes off to check the boards in the circuitry bay.
“Sealant,” he says to the repair bot. “Make a note.”
“Compliance,” it says helpfully, following in his wake.
“So, plasma coils, talk to me.”
“All plasma coils have suffered decay, making it difficult to stabilize the magnetic plasma transference.”
“If we can’t stabilize transference we can’t make another jump anytime soon.”
“That is correct.”
Rook sighs, and steps inside the circuitry bay. There are fewer cannibalized parts and wires here than when last we were here. That is likely due to the omni-kit’s mini-fabricator, which Rook keeps strapped to his right hand. A little something he stole from the Cerebs. He surveys the wires, taps a few buttons on the touch-screens, gets an idea of circuitry decay and starts making a list on his micropad of parts that need replacing. “Communicate with the ship’s AI, see if there’s anything left in the Sidewinder’s fabricator, any materials at all that we can make into working plasma coils.”
“That is a laborious job,” says the repair bot. “Requiring many rare elements that we do not currently—”
“I know, I know, we can’t just go down to the parts store and pick up a new plasma coil. I know they’re exhaustive to make, you don’t have to tell me, just go and take a look, see what we lack. I want a complete inventory of everything we have and everything we need in six hours.”