Superluminary

by perpetrator

  A bright spot appeared on one limb of the Dyson, burning like acetylene. Aeneas winced. “Ah! There we see what happens when a Dyson sphere hull rams a gas giant. You do not have eyes like mine, my lords and ladies. I see x-rays and gamma rays released in that explosion. The speed of impact was enough to cause the planetary core to undergo fusion, but not the whole mass. It is only a decillion joules of energy, about the same as the solar output for a year. A pinprick. But hopefully all the other planets are either inside or outside the hull, and no more orbits will intersect.”

  Aeneas continued, “The third reason is this: a solar system Urvasthrang’s memory showed was swarming with worlds, believed to contain an unusual number of working warpcore armatures. Canopus had apparently been a major caravanserai to the Forerunners, a shipyard of worlds. The Forerunners preferred to travel while taking their worlds with them wherever they went. They had the thrill of exploration without the discomfort of leaving the drawing room or the backyard garden, They must have been a most civilized people indeed.”

  Lady Luna was staring up at the sight above in awe. Gas giants and smaller planers trapped within the Dyson were being caught in the compression field and shattered like eggs. She recovered her composure long enough to say, “You mentioned a fourth reason.”

  Aeneas smiled. “Canopus has outer worlds enough to give one to every member of the family, and, I hope, with some left over for any militia who wish to volunteer for the coming battle.”

  Lord Mercury said, “What do you mean, sire?”

  Aeneas said, “This method we are using to kidnap Canopus, destroy the star, and use its total energy output to create the next warpchannel we need to reach the next star of the same mass and volume, and next after that, and so on for seven more stars. This method will not work on our ultimate destinations, LBV 1806-20, the Master Star. The blue hypergiant is too big. Canopus is, or was, a place Urvasthrang’s memory assured us no vampires with enough life energy remained to stay awake or active lingered.

  “Unlike torpid Canopus, the Master Star is watched with sleepless eyes and guarded with most potent forces. A direct attack by a large War Dyson will not do. We must launch hundreds of attacks from hundreds of directions, with each warworld under its own independent command, free to use the initiative and imagination we need to catch the enemy unawares.”

  Lord Mercury said, “Your meaning is still unclear, sire...”

  Lady Venus groaned and rolled her large, dark, beautiful eyes. “It means, brother, that my idiot son is going to share the secret of the warpcore with all of us.”

  Lady Luna said, “That was His Majesty’s meaning all along.”

  And Lady Venus through lowered lids shot a sideways suspicious glance at Lord Uranus. Aeneas was impressed (and mildly frightened) by the perceptiveness of his mother. Did she actually guess that this had been a plan suggested by Lord Uranus to flush out the betrayer among them?

  He hoped the betrayer was not equally perceptive.

  Aeneas spoke. “My lords and ladies, you recall that I ordered the giant planets of the World Armada in an evenly spaced tetrahedron around the Dyson, farther away than the orbit of the outermost planet of Canopus. We have erected planes of antiphotonic and Schroedingerwave-opaque force fields to enclose the whole system, and, as you can see, our Dyson is flattening space to prevent nearby warps from forming. None slain by the light of Sol will know how they were slain, or tell the tale.

  “Nonetheless, a warpchannel of seventy solar masses crossing to here will have been detected by every large warpcore within a six thousand lightyear radius. So the enemy knows we are here.”

  He held up his ring. “Here is a list of the next stars we must capture and destroy. In order, it is 9 Sagittarii, KW Sagittarii, WR 102, the Peony Star, V4641 Sagittarii and finally a last jump to LBV 1806-20, the Master Star.

  “You will notice each one is roughly six thousand lightyears farther in the direction of Sagittarius. The Peony Star is near the Galactic Core, V4641 Sagittarii, and the Radio Nebula holding the Master Star is six thousand lightyears beyond, in the far half of the Milky Way.

  “The attack of Xi Sagittarii, out next target, cannot be accomplished as easily as this, as we will not have the burst of light of Sol available to wipe out a six to ten light minute spherical volume of the enemy. We must save our final shot for the Master Star.

  “So, my lords and ladies, we are out of time! Who wants to be first?”

  Lord Mercury was the quickest-witted of them, so he saw the point first, and kicked his heels and snapped his fingers. “So! No more debate on who will share the dangerous warpcore technology with whom, or who can be trusted! We are all trusted!”

  Lord Jupiter said, “Sire, this matter cannot be decided in a preemptory fashion! I, for one, do not trust my siblings with this dangerous...”

  The light, quick laughter of Mercury interrupted him. “Don’t you see it? We have no choice! He cannot work the Dyson Armature by himself, and capture the stars using a nullspace trick!”

  Lord Jupiter opened his mouth, no doubt to object that the undead technicians captured from Urvasthrang could do the warpcore work. Then he looked, and saw a flash of yellow light pass across the blue-white fiery face of Canopus. It was a glint of sunlight, Sol’s light. It burned for a moment, then dimmed and vanished.

  Lady Venus said, “Our puppet Lord Urvasthrang is dead now too, isn’t he? We can no longer sneak among the vampires, pretending to be one of them.”

  Aeneas said, “Not with all our undead now dead, I am afraid. If any of you, against my orders, had been constructing undead armies in secret, you will find them wiped out as well. And, yes. Urvasthrang’s Dyson has just killed Canopus, and destroyed all the inner planets of the system. Whether the vampire lords realize that mankind is still alive, or whether they think Urvasthrang is flying the Jolly Roger, does not much matter which, does it? Who wants to have his brain imprinted with the superluminary technology first? Speak quickly! The enemy is on their way!”

  40. Line of Battleworlds

  Aeneas said to the gathered Lords of Creation, “I open the secrets of the universe to you! Our recent tragedy must prove instructive: Mankind can spare me, but cannot lose my knowledge.”

  The circle of thrones hung in midair below the titanic vision of the War Dyson rising in the east. The star Canopus was shrinking visibly, undergoing a compression that would force it into a singularity.

  Aeneas raised his finger. Projectors formed the images, whole and solid-seeming, in the center of the ring of flying thrones.

  “Your eyes are not as mine. I spread before you images taken from my cortex, which I receive from myriad instruments posted near and far. These images are six to eighteen minutes old. Look! Here, found outside the Dyson, is a subterrestrial world with mountains like elfin minarets soaring above the thin atmosphere; there, a terrestrial coated from pole to pole with a single hellish city buried beneath snow, and I behold in the balconies of towers, in the windows of empty palaces, ranks of toppled vampires who have not lost their human form, hunger and wrath graven into their dead faces.

  “I see a larger world, a superterrestrial, with squat mountains and heavy glaciers whose sea beds are filled with vampires.

  “On a subjovian globe, I peer down in an atmosphere thicker than water the undead lying motionless on bridges and boulevards, and in the deep shafts of mines. No blade of grass grows here, no insect flies. But all their machinery is intact, and their robotic guard still swarm.

  “In the mile-deep atmosphere of a jovian world, atop a naked planetary core featureless and flat beneath the action of gigantic wind and crushing gravity, I view what seems humped hills looming, forest covered, swathed in smog. The hills are undead, archvampire flesh like those Lord Mars fought. The forest are their numberless tentacles, and the smog are midge swarms, remotely controlled, whom they send swimming on myriad delicate, small tasks. These fogs are settling, their hill crumbling to dust.

  “In a world even la
rger, at the bottom of layers of atmospheres and hydrospheres of chemicals not found on lighter worlds, layers so deep not even the brightness of giant Canopus could reach, from pole to pole crawls an ocean of undead, liquid flesh, of one solitary ultra-archvampire who slew countless hosts of his own slaves and absorbed them, one and all, and every last plankton in oceans larger than all the worlds of man combined. Even this titan is slain instantly.

  “All these had working warpcores. The subterrestrial is no bigger than Mercury or Titan, and can reach three lightyears; the superjovian, twice the size of Jupiter, two hundred fifty. These worlds are our Battleships, Battlecruisers, Cruisers, Destroyers, Frigates and small Corvettes. The War Dyson is our Dreadnaught. Our foe outnumbers us in all classes of battleworlds by thousands to millions to one. Who wishes first to assume command of one of these planetary engines of destruction?”

  Aeneas contorted all the gathered Lords of Creation now to the great dome of nacre, amber and mother-of-pearl his mother had erected on the bed of the Guinevere Sea of Second Venus, between the islands of Vasilisa and Sappho. Brother Beast was there as well, looking startled, as he had evidently been plucked up in the middle of prayers.

  Aeneas said, “Lady Venus here has prepared servants and equipment needed for the brain imprint process. Our hour is brief! The warp jump here was surely detected by any warpcore of eighteen solar masses or greater that happened to be within a radius of twenty thousand lightyears. The whole Milky Way is but five or six times that diameter. Space is vast beyond imagining, but so is the reach and power of the space vampires. Lord Uranus? Have you something to say?”

  Lord Uranus was holding his signet ring up before the eyeholes of his mask, as if something hidden in the sparkles of the signet fascinated him. “Not just the warpchannel was detected, good sire. Normal matter is transparent to the nova-burst of Sol’s holiness inside the Dyson. It was not smothered this time by a supergiant star. Even though neuropsionic waves lag along at lightspeed, any warpcore set to detect them has just seen Canopus blaze like a signal flare.”

  Aeneas said, “Come, my lords! Our race is a tasty plum rolling on an empty feast table surrounding by starved madmen with long arms. Why is no one clamoring to take command of a World of the Battle Line?”

  Lord Mars stood, “Forgive me, sire, but you asked for volunteers. Since my youth up, I have been wary of placing my head into one of my sister’s brain-editing helmets. It is a fate worse than death, because I could never trust any thought again to be my own. I will not disobey, if commanded, but I will commit suicide first, to keep sanity, self-command, and honor intact.”

  Brother Beast said sharply, “Speak not so! Suicide is the door of hell. Better to break faith with temporal lords than to offend eternal!”

  Aeneas said, “Are we to die rather than learn to trust each other? But I compel no unwilling. This is voluntary.”

  Lord Neptune looked sourly at Lord Jupiter, and said, “Voluntary as the choice to drown or swim! The warptech allows not only faster than light drive, but to alter the physical constants of nature, so as to shut off each of our special techniques. It was father’s whip hand.”

  Lord Jupiter said, “I will volunteer! Let Lady Venus do her worst!”

  Lady Ceres looked uncomfortable. “Why is this necessary at all? Why not just teach us what you know, sire?”

  Aeneas said, “A thousand books would not hold it all, and when should I start writing them? You must know not only theory, but reflexes and judgment, which the human brain otherwise learns only by years of practice. We have not years. I doubt we have an hour.”

  Lord Mercury stood. His boyish face was twisted into a frown. “I am sorry, my sire, but I also do not trust Lady Venus. I think you trust her only because she has made it so! But I know we need every man. May I substitute my son Autolycos Lord Anubis to stand in my stead?”

  Lord Mars said, “I offer my son Deimos, whose mother’s name I hide, but she is someone very dear to Lady Venus. She will not harm him.”

  Lord Pluto said, “I have walked unseen amid the many-chambered pleasure-palaces of Lady Venus, and know her work. She is allowed no access to my brain. I set forth my son Zagreus Lord Kerberos in my stead.”

  Aeneas showed no more expression than a poker player. “Not my lore only, then, must your sons learn. If and only if you imprint them with the secrets you so jealously have guarded, do I agree!”

  Brother Beast said, “The Archbishop of Valparaiso is willing to forgive my oath to forswear the sword in this, our desperate hour. I trust Lady Venus.”

  Lady Ceres said, “Unwarlike, my skill against the foe is unneeded. I offer my grandson, Anton Romanov Lord Hydra, child of my beloved Cora, who passed away.”

  And, likewise, Lady Vesta said, “A woman’s hands are more fitted to the loom than the lance. Let my son Winedark Savage, Lord Dionysus, who delights in frenzy, take my place, and lead his Bacchants to war. My science of theriopathy, control of beasts, is small enough, I willingly grant it him.”

  Aeneas scowled. “What do you say, Lady Pallas? Are women unsuited to war? You have no sons to take your place.”

  Lady Pallas said, “I say the gentler sex is deadlier than the male, for we fight only at need, not for sport. Arm me, and let us count how many enemy planets I throw like skulls at the foot of your throne!”

  There was no more time for discussion. The countless millions of pearls used for the mass migrations now were put to use. Clouds of pearls were flung by interplanetary range tractor presser beams, disinert and at nearly the speed of light, into the atmospheres of the newly-emptied worlds of Canopus. Those worlds which were frozen were thawed by beams issuing from Second Jupiter, diffused and gentle enough to leave the worlds and the needed machinery intact.

  Lady Venus imprinted the knowledge taken from an otherwise empty third brain of Aeneas into them. Aeneas did not know just how Lord Tellus had folded and compacted the information layers and neuron connections beforehand. He had only the finished product in his own mind, which Lady Venus had to extrapolate backward. There was some guesswork involved, hence some error.

  When the imprint was made, it did not come smoothly into their brains as it had with Aeneas. Some of the Lords of Creation reeled in their chairs, or drooled, or twitched, or convulsed. Others stood, amazement in their eyes, open mouthed, stunned by the wonders of the secret laws of nature now unfolding in their memory.

  There was no time for terraforming nor pantropy. All dispatched to the captured worlds were garbed in the living robes manufactured by the Graces of Pallas. These were shining garments made partly of matter and partly of force-field, whose outer fabric adjusted temperature, pressure, and gravity to the wearer, and whose inner side intermingled with flesh and bone and nerve-cell to adapt the wearer seamlessly to the environs.

  Deimos, along with the four-armed Quadramanes of Mars, copper-skinned Monotremes, blood-drinking Ghouls, fair Hitherfolk and brutal Thitherfolk, took the helm of the Dyson. Aeneas took the Dyson as his flagship, and he and Lord Mars accompanied Deimos.

  Brother Beast took command and possession of the superjovian. The single monster that once dwelled here was done. Nothing stirred. There was no opposition.

  He insisted on christening the planet, and called it Saint Michael’s World.

  Lord Jupiter with fifty of his daughters, along with the gigantic and cyclopean races that served him, descended on the warmer Jovian, the Fire-Giant. Here were machines left by the vampires, some intelligent and still active. The fight with these machines was ferocious but brief, as Jupiter slowed the speed of light to allow ionized electrons to flow, but not lasers or energy weapons. The daughters of Jupiter in their shining blue robes riding their cloud-chariots called down lightning of modest size to destroy mansized targets, and larger bolts to incinerate walking tanks, leviathanic swimming machines, or dark, domed cities that crawled on many legs like monstrous crabs.

  He called the planet Inferno.

  Lord Neptune, nine natural daugh
ters, and Galatea, his artificial daughter, transited to the colder of the two Jovian worlds, the Ice Giant, along with countless servant-minds and living automata. The method used by the Daughters of Neptune was less precise than that used by the Daughters of Jupiter. Cities and fortresses hidden in the glacier canyons, or wherever else still active robots offered resistance, were flattened under hundredfold weight of multiplied gravity, or shattered with earthquakes and swallowed into crevasses. Few of the needed machines were captured intact.

  He dubbed the planet Niflheim.

  The third Jovian, this one from the water ring of Canopus, therefore called a Water Giant, was given to Lady Pallas. She merely dropped her asteroid from which she took her name whole into the superdense, ultracold methane atmosphere. The whole interior of the asteroid had been hollowed out and replaced with a crystal rod-logic brain, designed to operate on the levels-of-logic principles known only to her.

  The giant brain, capable of up to ten thousand simultaneous tasks, created an army of telemechanical remote manipulators to cover the immense globe, locate, study, and coordinate control of the alien weaponry and machinery. There was no fighting with native machines; Lady Pallas merely suborned them with her levels-of-logic techniques. Her technique was as effective as Lady Luna’s rule over the dreaming frequency of the thought spectrum, but was aimed at a higher energy state in the conceptual layer of the universe.

  When the robots found their basic abstract concepts revealed to them by this sudden perception of the formal layer of the universe, their own logic forced them to cooperate with the usurpers. This method would not have worked on any beings, living or undead, capable of deliberate immoral action. Nor could it work on animals, in whose simpler minds abstractions had no place.