Superluminary

by perpetrator

  This amount of energy was not negligible: the original warpcore had been powered by the output of the four gas giants, and the contributions of minor planets, worldlets, and moons. This was roughly an eighth of that.

  But it was enough.

  Aeneas, his face grim, issued the orders to the Talos warpcore. Signals issued to quantum entangled particle-pairs inside and outside the spherical singularity altered their mutual frames of reference. The Tipler rings raced. The lightcone of timespace in the immediate area was tilted by the frame-dragging effect. A closed timelike curve segment was formed between the Great Eye, and a point just beyond the dying Saturn.

  A blue-white dot emerged, dazzling, and swelled into the immensity of the Great Eye. The invisible singularity must have emerged from the far hemisphere of Saturn, for the burning mass of its accretion disk, and the immense gravitic distortion glowing like a dull coal, reached out from the ruins of Saturn and struck square into the center of the Great Eye.

  The surface distorted and puckered when the unseen pinpoint of nothingness intersected it. Concentric rings of fission and tidal stress ignition surrounded the point of impact. But the neutronium was not so easily pulled into the event horizon as the high-pressure liquid atmosphere of Saturn. The neutron star formed a crater for a moment, with a momentary mountain of neutronium lava midmost, but the immense gravity pulled the surface features flat again.

  And the great scream of the Eye came again. Anyone left alive on Saturn’s moons or orbital space stations no doubt was writhing on the floor. The plutonian vampire must have preset the warpcore of Pluto to catch and amplify it, because the tachyon sensors detected a faster-than-light signal carrying that shout of alarm toward all the nearby stars.

  His signet ring, without waiting to ask, had the warpcore establish a thought-free zone around Aeneas, but hollow rather than solid, so that he could still give commands to his ring, which could send them out electronically.

  On the analytical screen, Aeneas could see the gravity well of the singularity at the center of the neutron star. He made slight adjustments. Aeneas placed the singularity at the neutron star’s burning center at the correct distance to pull the plutonian singularity’s path into a parabola, then into a circle, then into an ever-narrowing spiral.

  The two event horizons in the middle of a mass of molten neutronium spiraled together, and merged. The combined singularity spun faster and faster, like a spinning iceskater who draws her outflung arms together.

  He turned his attention back toward the dying gas giant. Wherever he could detect life-energy, he formed a warp, and teleported the land mass involved to the corresponding depth in the atmosphere of Jupiter, along with a generous volume of the specialized oxynitrogen clouds terraformers had designed to grant the floating landscape earthly temperature and pressure, and to protect earthlife from the surrounding ultracold high-pressure helium or methane.

  Tears started leaking, unnoticed, along the cheeks of Aeneas’ stern face. It was so few. Out of the countless trillion who once had lived in the immensities of Saturn, so few were left. Perhaps the miraculous superscience of the present age could save bodies horribly burnt by x-rays and gamma rays, but perhaps not, not if the damage were too severe. There were a few more left alive at the outer moons. Aeneas left them were they were, for the mass of Saturn was the same. Despite the magnitude of the disaster, the orbits of the moons had not been disturbed.

  Gently, he returned the broken corpse of the gas giant to its proper location in its orbit, the right distance from the sun for surviving terraformers on the half-burned and blasted moons to restore their environments.

  Lord Saturn said, “My wife, my children... they had contortion pearls. Security insisted they carry them at all times. Many of my officers, courtiers, friends ... and there were public teleportation circuits for the common people...”

  Aeneas said, “The enemy flattened the space and prevented the formation of any contortions. I could have counteracted it, if I had only had enough power, enough mass. But I was using the power from Necropolis, and that was stolen, turned against me .... Sir, I ... no one could have used a pearl to escape. The way was blocked.”

  Saturn sobbed, “But why? Why, even as it was dying, would the monster bother erecting such a block? Merely to prevent victims from escaping? There were no military targets! It is so malign, so pointless, so...”

  Lady Luna, who had watched the whole disaster wide eyed, now laid a gentle hand on Lord Saturn’s shoulder. “I have seen their dreams. They are consumed with a hatred for all life. They need us and despise us. Perhaps, at one time, in ages long ago, they kept alive certain living things as food sources. But always, sooner or later, their hatred and jealousy of life overcame them, and they consumed and destroyed it all, even what they needed for themselves. Ours may be the last living star in the galaxy.”

  Lord Saturn sank down on one knee before Aeneas. “What you compelled from me before, my sovereign lord, I now freely offer. Lord Tellus passed his knowledge to you. It must have been him: there is no one else who knew the superluminary science! Let not my people have died in vain!”

  Aeneas felt the pull of temptation. The splendor and pomp that could be his for the asking! No, he did not need to ask. It would be pushed into his hands. Then he could command his uncles, or step on the neck of Lord Mars! Any of his fair cousins, he could ask to be his queen ... or, following the lawlessness of Lord Tellus himself, he could gather as many wives and concubines as Solomon...

  Raw self-loathing shocked him back to his senses. Is this what drove Lord Tellus mad, in the end? When even a sober man is given so much power, power to escape all punishment, all retaliation, will he always lose the ability to tell right from wrong?

  There, in his eye, was the burning wreckage of a world, collapsed to half its former volume, bright with burning fires in its methane layers, its core now a neutronium ball mere yards in diameter. Saturn had been one of the brightest jewels in the Solar System, a center for art, contemplation, and culture unparalleled in history. There were not even bodies to recover! All obliterated, now, due to the dying malice of a sick-minded undead creature. That was what evil looked like, when let free of the cage of conscience.

  Aeneas said to Saturn, “To your feet, Uncle Geras! Do not bow to me! I will teach everyone my art. We will all be Lord Tellus!”

  But Lord Saturn did not stand. “To whom will the secret be given?”

  Aeneas was puzzled. “What do you mean?”

  “That black stealthship! Who was aboard? Whoever it was, he is in league with the space vampires, and has known of them for over fifteen years.”

  Aeneas shook his head. He could not truly grasp the idea that someone would betray his family, his species, his kingdom, his very condition of being.

  Lord Saturn stood up. “Each of the Twelve controls a supertechnology known only to himself. Moreover, you have nine brothers and four sisters, and Hermaphrodita, who is both. You have two hundred cousins and twenty nieces and nephews. Then there are the five Empress Dowagers. All of the second and third generation are armed with the basic stratonic technologies we keep within the family, including enough photonics, kinetics, and contortion science to have made that black stealthship. Any of them could have been aboard. So who is the traitor? Who can you trust?”

  Aeneas said, “You, Lady Luna, and Lord Pluto were here with me the whole time.”

  Lord Pluto spoke up. His voice was cold and remote. “I could have arranged all this, or operated the ship by remote control. Lord Saturn likewise. You have not learned the lesson of mistrust I imparted earlier. The family is not to be trusted.”

  Lady Luna looked shocked. She said sharply, “Lord Saturn is above suspicion! Not only has he lost friends and family this day, but if he were the captain of the stealthship, he could have hidden the ship from us by merely not finding her with his machine, which only he controls! Absurd to suspect him!”

  Lord Pluto said, “The human heart is dark. It is not i
mpossible that men should slay wives and children, or kill a thousand billion of souls, if the goal was to obtain immense and untrammeled power over all other men. Before Lord Tellus imposed peace by terror on mankind, this was commonplace.”

  Lord Saturn, standing, was tall enough to look the seated Aeneas straight in the eye. “Imperial Majesty, you must not abdicate the power which the madness of fate or the madness of Lord Tellus has imposed on you. I saw you act with speed and compassion, and save all mankind this day. If you lead, I have some hope of vengeance and retaliation against the foe. If you give your knowledge to the traitor, there is none. And you dare not share your knowledge until the traitor is found. The only way I can prove that I am not he is to insist that I never learn the secret of the superluminary science!”

  Lady Luna said, “It will have to be shared eventually. But I think Lord Saturn speaks reason. Teach me last, after everyone else in the family.” Suddenly she looked woebegone. “I mean Uncle Geras. I — I suppose he cannot be called Lord Saturn, now that the planet is destroyed. And as for how many cousins you have — we don’t know.” She began sobbing.

  Lord Pluto said, “It is a smaller world, but of the same mass. Saturn can be terraformed.”

  Lady Luna gritted her teeth, angry beneath her tears. “Uncle Darius, sometimes you are heartless! Now is not the time to speak of that!”

  Aeneas said, “Not just the family.”

  Lady Luna said, “What?”

  Aeneas said, “I intend to give this secret to each and every man of every race of mankind, on every world, worldlet, moon and asteroid of the solar system.”

  Lord Pluto said, “On our family, perhaps, with risk, you could bestow the power to slay worlds without mankind being slain. But on all mankind, wise and foolish, sane and mad? You saw what one creature armed with warptech did. Extinction is sure.”

  Lord Saturn said, “No matter the numbers: if you make the secret public, the traitor knows it.”

  Lord Pluto turned his lens toward Aeneas, “Can you recover the plutonian warpcore from the center of the Great Eye? ”

  Aeneas turned his screen toward the dead sun, and Lady Luna stiffened. She spoke in a trembling voice kept level by an effort of will. “My instruments detect something — a ghost, a fragment — the scream the Great Eye sent is being answered. It is but a single concept, but it hangs in the dreams of the dead sun like a word echoing in an empty hall. Reinforcements.”

  She turned to Aeneas. “The vampire lords of the nearby stars know that life still lingers here, in our solar system. They are stirring from their sleep. The darkness is rising!”

  24. The Three Headed Throne

  To Aeneas’s surprise, both the plutonian warpcore and that hidden in the Great Eye were salvageable. The measurements of the distortions to the fabric of space tachyonic sensors provided could locate the vertical gravity wells of the two hollow singularities orbiting each other at the superdense neutronium-liquid core of the neutron star.

  Thanks to the bizarre disjunction possible between two frames of reference with no common elements whereby one could measure the mass, volume, or location of the other, Aeneas was able to form a warp which moved the two working warpcores into the very center of his. The singularities were nested, one within the next, all balanced precisely at the barycenter of his Tipler rings.

  Aeneas said, “If we park Mercury, Venus, Earth, and Mars in orbit around the Gas Giants, the three warpcores may be enough to move Jupiter, Uranus, and Neptune.”

  Lady Luna asked, “Move them ... where?”

  Lord Pluto stood up from the wardroom table where he had been sitting. “Father must have known. The reason he never revealed the secret of faster than light drive to the family was this: the stars are filled with vampires. Yet space is immense, boundless, infinite. There will be a place to find.”

  Lady Luna said, “... a place...? For what? You are kidding! The light of Sol keeps them at bay. Even the Great Eye was instantly obliterated!”

  Aeneas said, “Our position is known, and indefensible. Vampire planets and stars placed in the Oort Cloud, beyond Sol’s reach, could bombard us with waves of worlds like Pluto once was, or Baptistina. We have to abandon the Solar System. We are fleeing, and taking all our worlds with us.”

  Lord Pluto turned to Aeneas, and said solemnly, “I also accept you as my Emperor and vow my fealty to you. You are the protector of the people. What are your orders, Majesty?”

  Aeneas said, “My first command is that you tell me how Lady Luna blackmailed you.”

  The blank, one-eyed, dull gray helmet nodded slowly. He held up his signet ring. “Lord Saturn and Lady Luna can neither see nor hear us.”

  Aeneas looked around. There was no difference in sight or sound, he still seemed visible to himself.

  Lord Pluto said in his cold voice: “Lord Tellus is alive. I do not know where he is or how he stays alive. He communicates orders to me. I obey him. ”

  “W-What?!”

  “Lady Luna saw me dreaming in Everest, when Lord Tellus sent a message into my sleeping brain to wake me, to warn me you were being attacked. He told me of other events to come. I retreated immediately to my world, to await your advent and do his will.”

  Aeneas said, “Then the voice I heard on Pluto...? The one telling you to spare my life?”

  “Was his. He was there, unseen.”

  For a moment, Aeneas was speechless. “Everyone thinks Grandfather flew off to the stars.”

  “Perhaps he did. You now know what he found.”

  “Why make me his heir? Why save me?”

  “I do not know. But when a body charged with death-energy, like a vampire is, entered your room, the pearl meant to cover your escape became visible to you. Thoon was still alive beneath a layer of vampire cells embedded in his skin, and so he could exist on a planet so close to our sun. But the amount of vampirism was enough to trigger automatic defenses Lord Tellus long ago established, and set all things in motion.”

  Aeneas sat, frowning in thought. “Do you mean Grandfather meant to provoke a war between the Empire of Man and the space vampires?”

  Lord Pluto said, “Because the war had already started, albeit in secret. Whoever seduced Thoon away from your cause is in league with the vampires, for he used vampire technology more advanced than anything I know, and I am lord of the dead.”

  Aeneas said, “Your brothers would kill you, if they knew you served him. Grandfather is insane. You still obey him? Why do it? Why risk it?”

  Pluto’s helmet turned left and right as he shook his head. “My motives are my own. Leave them be.”

  Aeneas said, “Did you know about the space vampires?”

  “Only the one on Pluto. Year upon year I stood guard alone. My mission was to prevent its reanimation. I failed.”

  Aeneas said, “Very well. I trust you: I accept your fealty. Make us visible again.”

  Lord Saturn and Lady Luna both flinched, startled, at the reappearance of Aeneas and Pluto. Aeneas said to them, “Time is short. We have visited two star systems. Both had arms and armaments enough to crush the Solar System easily. Both had warpcore technology to allow them to travel here instantaneously. However, both were comatose, entirely drained of the death energy which powers their civilization. Evidence suggests that higher overlords seated at other star systems drained them. Therefore, it is safe to assume the invasion will require time to organize, but unsafe to assume it will take long. We must organize the whole solar system for exodus.”

  Lord Pluto said, “Majesty, the family will oppose you, and seek your death.”

  Aeneas stared at him in wonder. “Impossible! The solar system just saw two worlds destroyed!”

  Lady Luna said, “It will be five and a half hours before the inner planets see the battle. And any gas giants on the far side of the sun, forty minutes to four hours longer yet.”

  Aeneas said, “Then let us visit Venus first. Mother is persuasive.”

  Lord Saturn said, “Too persuasive
, Your Majesty. She will take over your mind and take your power for herself.”

  Aeneas said incredulously, “Her own son?”

  Saturn said, “She can always have more sons. There is only one throne.”

  The planet Saturn had lost half his volume but none of his mass. Heat from the cataclysms still burned and glowed through the immense cloud layers. Since the black hole had passed through the globe from north pole to south, the ring system was untouched. The burnt and blackened orbs of the many moons retained their old orbits, and now the four inhabited moons of Pluto were placed in orbit around Saturn, as well as the asteroid Talos. Saturn and the undead planet Necropolis were placed in orbit about the Great Eye and parked in the orbit Saturn once occupied.

  Charon, that silent monument to Cora, Lord Pluto’s dead wife, was left in place in orbit, a marker for the vanished planet Pluto.

  Aeneas gave the command. Saturn and its moons vanished from normal timespace and reappeared next to the sun, in the Lagrange Two point, with bright Venus in transition before the bright, burning face of Sol.

  The planet Venus was the only world that, from space, retained something of her original appearance. All other worlds and moons in the solar system were the white and blue of Earth. Venus had been terraformed differently, with countless swarms of tiny flat motes, black on one side and mirrored on the other, that hovered in the cloud layers, reflecting or absorbing solar heat, and producing a layer of earthly cool beneath the hellishly hot Venusian cloud layer.

  Aeneas lowered the asteroid Talos quickly through the cloud layer. A mist of vapor hung about the flying mountain as it flew down, clouds about its peak. Beneath, as a walled garden in the midst of a hot desert, were the flowering mountains and purple seas of Venus.

  The floating city of Cyprianople, like a jeweled crab, was submerged in one of her shallow oceans at the moment, and many jeweled towers, outbuildings, and coracles of the suburbia outside the city dome were either sailing the surface, or hanging in the perfumed air above the gleaming capital city.