Briefly he thought that something had happened to his suit, but he soon realized it was the mushroom-bugs' sticky stomach that had trapped him. He felt a jolt as the creature arched itself slightly, then began bouncing him back through the entrance into the darkened room.
“Lights!” he yelled at his HUD, which quickly showed him the room again.
A reddish blur was spinning near the board and it took him a moment to realize the wild dervish was Spiney, who had worked out a way to stop the creatures from being able to stick to him. He kept spinning fast, his spines knocking a few of the creatures away without hurting them, but they just bounced off the walls and came back at him.
In contrast, Cuddly had just lay down on his side near a corner and curled himself around into a tire shape. He was too soft, even in the nanite suit, and really didn't want to be hurt. He didn't move when a mushroom bug stuck itself on top of him.
Hogart grunted as the first bug bounced him to the center near the scratch boards, and more of the bugs jumped on top of him. "Come on, guys. You've got me already. No more needed."
With the shaking finally stopping he was able to connect to the ship.
“Stellar Flash, we are under attack,” reported Hogart. “You won’t be able to activate the fast return switch. The creatures have literally stuck themselves to us, so we can’t get a safe relocation signal. Stand by.”
"I guess it's time to say it then," Spiney's translator stuttered. His spin had been halted by a number of mushroom bug antenna grabbing him by the spines and lifting him off the ground.
"No. No. I will not say it."
"I will," said Cuddly. "I just finished the translation."
Through the chattering of the bugs, they heard a scratching sound coming from Cuddly. He'd recreated the bugs’ speaking alert, and the creatures stopped moving, waiting for the message. Cuddly then sent a signal to his nanite suit to create antennae, similar to the bug on top of him. Five antenna grew out from an area not covered by one of the bugs, made some complicated twisting movements, then stopped.
"Did you say it?" groaned Hogart.
"I said it. Our only option."
"I see," said Spiney.
The mushroom bugs took a moment to get organized, discussing the issue amongst themselves, making a decision, then curling their bodies slightly to hold Hogart, Spiney and Cuddly in the folds of their stomachs, or whatever they were. Then they began their tiny bounces out of the conical building and down and around the ramp.
Hogart was grateful he wasn’t one to get seasick or suffer nausea, and his suit and the lower gravity was protecting him from each landing, but the constant jolting was beginning to give him a pain in the neck, not to mention the constant up and down of the ground affecting his sense of direction. He closed his eyes and waited for them to arrive.
He hoped that they were actually taking them to see their leader. If they were just going to throw them in a dungeon and ignore them, he’d have words.
Chapter 4
Contingencies
Admiral Victoria Heartness strode along the cylindrical carpeted corridor that joined to ring number two.
While Ring Two and Ring Three had spokes and parts of their outer shells already in place, they were nowhere near complete. Engineering had confirmed that, for weight distribution, and artificial gravity alignment, it was better to get all the spokes done first, and finalize the ring parts later. For Heartness it was slightly disconcerting to see these almost skeleton-like pieces of the ring just stretching into space, reaching out like reaper’s fingers.
She stared out of one of the windows and could see a little EM drone transporting one of the prefabricated parts for the first of the officer’s quarters in Ring Two. Perhaps it was carrying the actual wall for her new cabin. For now, she was using the previous Admiral’s quarters at the front of the wheel. While ideal when Ring One had first been built, it was now too far away from the action of the rest of the station to be convenient for anyone to find her. Especially on a station this big.
She could see other EM drones flitting about amongst the stars, and smiled to herself. There was something comforting about them flying their pieces against the backdrop of Saturn's rings, giving life to the emptiness of space.
Even here, millions of kilometers from Earth, humanity continued to make a home for itself. She idly wondered how many rings would Saturn Base x-1a eventually have? Seven? But things change, and if Earth council suddenly decided it was better to have a station near Pluto, X-1a would become just another tourist destination, like many of the other space stations before it.
The moving walkway in the connecting corridors got her through the main tourism and shopping area, past the station AI’s tree avatar, and into the university quarter. She headed to one of the halls on the right where she knew Doctor Hiro Watanabe was giving a remote lecture to the alien students around the base, with a few in physical attendance.
Heartness could not believe she was here. Well, she’d been here many times, but now she was here for a while. A permanent posting next to Saturn for as long as she wanted it. Admiral in charge of Space Station X-1a.
While she’d had her fair share of space station work, and her immediate thought when she’d received her new assignment was not another space station, she had been surprised that it was this one.
If it had been one of those positions no one wanted she would have been disappointed. There were thousands of stations all over the Solar System and they were desperate to get workers in some of them, but X-1a was coveted by most of the space fleet, and for her to get it was the surprise of a lifetime.
She had a feeling she knew why. As this station was going to still be the launching point for the Stellar Flash, if anything went wrong with Hogart’s captaincy, she could immediately and easily take over.
Even so, managing a space station wasn’t an easy task and so, as she’d had quite a lot of experience managing massive star ships, and was a mean multitasker, she was ideal for the position.
Heartness also suspected she got the job as she had a propensity for making impulsive, instinctual decisions that usually ended up being crucial to survival. With her quirkiness and randomness, if she hadn’t got a degree in astrobiology or astrophysics, as well as one as an aeronautical engineer, she suspected she would have ended up as a cat lady on Earth.
Then again, she might still do that.
In the meantime, it was time for one of those impulsive instinctual decisions, and there was only one man that could help her.
She quietly slid through the slightly ajar door of Watanabe’s lecture room and stood at the back.
The university room had originally been built to comfortably stand three hundred alien students on several circular steps. Old Earth government officials remembered their grandparents' university days and wanted to spread the traditional style of teaching into space.
Unfortunately, not many modern Earth or alien students were even vaguely interested in standing in a room on a space station for hours when they could simply wait, download the lecture, and fast forward to the good bits. There were also instant upgrade options for those who were compatible. Why spend years studying when you can simply implant the specific work node?
Watanabe ended up being the only one on the whole base using it. In fact, he was probably one of only three lecturers on the station. When teachers could get any teaching node they liked, one teacher could teach thirty different courses a week.
Today he was teaching frequency technology. She knew he liked to hear his voice echo about the chamber, and with their personal cabins quite small, the lecture room gave him the freedom to pace back and forth and wave his arms wide to emphasize a point. Not to mention he loved using magnetic and sense boards, the one behind him now covered in hastily scrawled and almost illegible numbers.
OMG was he really wearing a cardigan? With elbow patches?
She could see him down near the bottom of the room, his white hair askew, his weather beaten and wrinkled face stil
l handsome in his old age, and his one ostentation glittering on one finger, bright even from where Heartness stood – a wedding ring from his late husband.
"And so," Watanabe said with a flourish, his arms flung wide to the empty hall, "what have we learned? We've learned that the universe we live in has a particular beat or pulse that gives it a unique signature. We’ve also learned that the universe isn’t real, it’s just a hologram, and it is turned off and on, or destroyed and recreated, every Planck second. We've learned that in between those beats, when our universe doesn't exist, there are infinite other universes turned off and on at their own different beats, or frequencies. We've learned that, by using the location vibration mathematics I've described to you today, we can calculate a new location within another of the universes, apply that location vibration to anything and flash it there."
He then noticed Heartness at the back and nodded, then turned to his white board and began erasing it while speaking. "Homework will be to calculate your own unique location vibration. You can use the quantum computers in hall three to do your calculations. In the next lecture, I will talk about how we create the energy template that enables us to grow the crystalline structure for our flash ships, and the cycles per second speed required to create the isolation field that enables them to briefly shift outside of reality. Thank you."
There was a quiet beep, and Watanabe pulled his earpiece out and set it on a nearby table, then strode up the steps to the back of the hall.
"Admiral Heartness," he said, bowing slightly, "What an unexpected pleasure. What brings you here to one of my lectures? You know all this, right? That must have sounded like a massive infodump!" He grinned.
"Doctor Watanabe, it's always good to be refreshed by an expert. You have a certain je ne sai qua when it comes to presenting." Then Heartness became serious. "But, actually, I need your help."
Watanabe bowed again. "At your service, Ma'am."
Heartness looked at him slyly and smiled in a coy way. “You know, Hiro, you don’t have to be so formal. And when are we going to get that drink together?”
“Well, I…” Watanabe suddenly looked uncomfortable as Heartness moved a little closer, reaching over and adjusting his tie, then, ever so slightly, touching his belt, then smiling innocently.
“Vicky, you know it hasn’t been that long since my husband died. I don’t think I’m ready to, you know, try something different. I’m a bit old fashioned.”
“You? You drank all my friends under the table at uni I recall. Even slept with a xeno. And besides, you’re still young, not even 69.”
“66”
“Oh, soon be middle-aged!”
Watanabe looked at her, and laughed. “You’ve always been after me, as I recall. I’m sorry, but I’m not really like you modern people. I’m a one-man guy.”
“Well, you know where to find me if you ever change your mind.”
Watanabe smiled. “Of course. Now, Vicky darling, what can I do for you?”
Heartness straightened her top and tried to act official. It was difficult with her long-term friend. She loved him dearly and would most definitely have liked to have been able to love him in other ways, but she’d been in the friendzone for years. Still, she loved just sitting, drinking and chatting with him and didn’t want to lose that. She turned back to the task at hand. "I need you to grow me an interfrequency scout ship, asap."
Watanabe looked at her and raised an eyebrow. "Hmm. I guess it's a need to know, and I don't need to know?"
Heartness nodded.
"Very well," Watanabe sighed. Then he thought for a moment and his face widened into a beaming smile. "My next lecture is on growing flash ships. No one has created a lecture while they're actually growing one. My ratings would go through the roof!"
"Just don't say what it is for, or install the cockpit controls on camera. Make it look like you just set it up for the lecture, then didn't finish it."
“Of course. Is this for you personally?”
“Yes.”
“Then I’ll set up a frequency resonance similar to your brainwaves so you can pilot it. I will have it ready within about two hours."
"Hangar 16?"
"I believe so. If anything changes, I'll let you know."
"Thank you, Hiro. I'll see you there."
This time they both gave each other a hug, and Heartness left him to close up, striding back down the corridor to her wheel section.
It wouldn't do for her to only be able to travel between here and Earth. Especially with no flash ships scheduled to appear anytime soon.
It really didn’t take them that long to make flash ships. They were just very, very expensive. She knew Watanabe would use some of their repair crystal supplies to create a small one but it would take her months before she could acquire more. She just hoped it would be worth it.
She smiled ruefully to herself. Just a few days after completing her final mission and she was already getting cabin fever.
But, her years in the other frequencies had given her a stronger feeling about possible futures. And her intuition was now telling her that the crew of the Stellar Flash might need her, and that trouble was on the horizon.
A lot of trouble.
Chapter 5
Take Me to Your Leader
The gold mushroom bug was at least ten meters wide. It sat on a large red rectangular podium in a space similar to a town square. It was surrounded by groups of smaller black and brown bugs that kept spitting on it. Well, Hogart thought it was spit. Some kind of chemical that spurted from the base of the antennae. They were either trying to keep the queen cool, or this was the way the mushroom bug ate. He decided not to think too much about the second possibility.
Perhaps this was the gold thing he saw through his helmet.
The bugs had released them, leaving their nanite suits covered in a sticky slime, and now they stood waiting while Cuddly flicked his antennae around.
"Cuddly, is this their leader?"
Cuddly spun and began flicking his antennae at Hogart. His translator translated. "Yes. This is Queen Unpronounceable, the leader of this planet. She had detected our presence and changed the frequency of her bioelectrical signals to enable us to meet her."
She can do that? Hogart thought, concern suddenly filling him. So, it wasn’t the translator that had given them away. The queen had some skills of her own.
Then a further thought worried him. If she could detect their original frequency, she might even be able to transport herself to Saturn.
Then he chided himself. Their capture could just be the way they treat visitors here. He shouldn’t assume the worst. He should be more positive at a time like this. This could be official First Contact. He had to follow protocol.
"Please tell her we are honored to meet her and would like her to know about alien life, and whether she feels her world would be ready for a first contact situation, or even an exchange in technology."
More waving of antennae, and Cuddly's translator had trouble getting the English words out.
"She doesn't know what you mean. She has never met anything that wasn't part of her System before. This is a confusing situation."
"She doesn't travel?"
"No, captain. System as in the population system. All the mushroom bugs are different parts of her."
Hogart thought about this for a moment. Was it like an ant or aphid colony? Or were they more like molds?
"Telepathically linked? Hive mind? Clones? Amoebas?"
"Actually, they're like you." replied Cuddly. "You're an individual but you have a symbiotic relationship with billions of different types of bacteria that live in specific areas of your body. The bacteria are yours, are part of you, but they can leave and go elsewhere if they wished."
"These darker bugs are like her bacteria? But connected to her?" asked Spiney. "So, there is only really one alien ready for first contact, and we have just done that!"
Hogart looked at the giant creature carefully. It was at leas
t three times the size of the largest mushroom bug they'd met, and seemed to have two sets of antennae, one on each side of it. Only one set seemed to be working, but, apart from that, the body almost seemed to be a mirror image on both sides. Like two insects joined together at the base.
"I don't think she is the only one," he said.
"Captain!" said Spiney. "You cannot simply disagree when we are at the beginning of a relationship. You need to see the other side!"
"I am seeing the other side. Both of her sides! She says she doesn't know any 'other' but your previous trip discovered evidence of a nuclear war, and now she's about to split into two creatures. She's like an amoeba. How many times do you think she's gone through mitosis? They may be part of her from her perspective, but I think they're a lot more individual than that."
Hogart was thinking about the school. If you're really all the same, why do you need a school?
"What about the others of your race?" asked Cuddly, taking everything Hogart had just said, and combining it into a much shorter sentence for the translator.
The queen shifted on her hill, and a flash of gas puffed out from between her, just as her body lengthened further. Was she going to split now?
"Gone," said the translator. "Other places. Create their own systems. Come back to take ours."
"You've been fighting yourself?" asked Hogart. "Or your children?"
“Activating automatic,” said Cuddly. “The system can translate between you and her now.”
The queen flicked her antennae and Cuddly’s translator answered. "Must have technology. Must leave this world. Start again."
Hogart looked at Spiney and Cuddly. Then he turned to the queen and said, "I'm really sorry queen, but we cannot help you in this way. We can only give you technology to help your world. It is up to you to develop offworld technology at this time."
The queen's antennae on the other side of her body suddenly started moving.
"Unacceptable. You will be dismembered," Cuddly translated, shaking.
Stellar Flash Page 4