Superluminary

by perpetrator

  “How flat, sir?” Because, of course, it was possible to halt macroscopic spacewarp effects, such as forming warpchannels, while allowing contortion effects to continue, or other stratonic effects.

  “Prevent any warps from forming. Halt all space contortion, but allow disinertia.”

  “Aye, aye. Anything else?” They both knew that as long as electromagnetic or gravitic energy was allowed to propagate through space, even if it crawled along at lightspeed, beam weapons from LBV 1806-20 could annihilate the World Armada. Such beams would take a minute or two to reach the distance from the giant star’s surface, but without their tachyonic periscopes working, the humans could not see any beam attack coming.

  “Nothing else,” said Lord Jupiter.

  “Sir, mass estimates show that the Master Armature can overpower anything our Dyson can do. Easily.”

  “Thank you, Lord Deimos. Carry on,” said Lord Jupiter.

  Jupiter glanced sidelong at Aeneas, but the young emperor issued no orders and gave no advice. His face was impassive.

  Lord Jupiter called to Lord Uranus. “Report!”

  Lord Uranus said, “Our hyperspatial periscopes were in operation for 0.1 second, and gravitic images are still coming in. The enemy has a fleet in nullspace roughly ten times the mass of ours. Call that Black Fleet Alpha. It will be summoned into normal space wherever the enemy wishes if we allow the enemy to form a warpchannel.

  “There is a second fleet, four hundred times the mass, of black suns and dark jovians within the Blue Star system englobing the star at one hundred twenty AU, or twenty-four light-hour radius. Call this Black Fleet Baker. Each ship is projecting a segment of a forcefield surface surrounding the entire star system. They have detected our warpchannel emergence, and are sailing hence at lightspeed under disinertia drive, shrinking the radius of the force bubble as they come. At current rate of speed, this second fleet should arrive in a day.

  “At the moment, no warpchannels can emerge anywhere within a spherical volume sixty lightyears in radius. Fifty one stars just beyond that range, between sixty and one hundred lightyears, have opened fire, and are directing their total energy output toward us via hyperspatial periscope. However, this fire cannot emerge into normal space within the flattened radius, so they have placed their emergence apertures beyond that. It will take sixty years to reach us. Therefore the obvious maneuver on part of the enemy....”

  In the illusion hanging above the curule chair of Deimos, all could see the Master Armature, immense, unimaginably great in power, was beginning to spin.

  “...is to flatten space, cut off our spy-rays and weapons, and pin us here.”

  Lord Jupiter looked at the tactical display. The four Dysons of the Tellurian World Armada were arranged in a tetrahedron. In the vanguard were the smaller planets, Hesperus and George. Midmost were three jovian gas giants in a Klemperer triangle protecting the towed terrestrials and moons. The fourth superterrestrial, Saint Michael’s World, hung in the rearguard as a reserve. The vanguard of the Armada was thirty five million miles from the surface of the hypergiant blue star. The rear was one hundred million.

  Jupiter said to Venus, “Report.”

  She said, “The thought information in the imperative occupies a different part of the psychic spectrum from the declarative, interrogative or exclamatory. The source of all the local commands is there, the complex of cities dotting the surface of that cubical object where those two armatures intersect.”

  She pointed to a rectilinear macroscale object only slightly larger than a planet, half-hidden in the flames near the scalding surface of the hellish sun, which formed the joint where two bands of the vast armature crossed.

  Lady Luna said, “The murmur of their nightmares is muted. Like someone waiting in an ambush, holding his breath. These are the thoughts that were passing through the area when we arrived, before they saw us. It is a trap.”

  Lord Jupiter said, “Can they tell what we are planning?”

  Lady Luna said, “That is not the type of information I can glean from these wavelengths of mental activity.”

  Lady Venus said, “They are carrying out a prearranged plan. They were not surprised to see us appear at this time, in this area.”

  Jupiter scowled. “There is no help for it: our current plan is still our best. Lord Deimos, order the fleet to engage planetary disinertia engines, and proceed at nearlightspeed to the command cities. George and Hesperus grapple the cubical object! Militia to boarding stations!”

  Through his ring, Jupiter summoned into view visions of the worlds of Hesperus and George unlimbering and erecting their many space elevators, cables of ultra-tensile nanodiamond fiber. At the base of each cable, countless militiamen in their shining environ robes thrown over their paragravitic neutronium armor stood with impossibly deadly weapons ready.

  Lord Jupiter gave the signal for the attack.

  49. The Battle of the Blue Hypergiant

  Lord Jupiter, Aeneas, the Lords Mars and Mercury, the Ladies Ceres and Vesta, and Lord Pluto in his blank one-lensed helm and dark mantle were present in the command arena of the Tellurian Dyson, along with Lord Deimos. Scarlet-skinned Monotremes, four-armed Quadramanes, and lordly Thitherfolk were manning the watch stations to work human-shaped controls, and the energy-beings called Ifrit, living lightningbolts from Jupiter, stood in the acre-wide bowls which once had been the thrones of the amoeboid archvampires, to work the myriad and tiny nerve-jack controls dotting the inner surfaces.

  Lady Venus uttered a warning, “Evil thoughts have overwhelmed several of our smaller moons, driving all the populations mad. Medical robots have taken control there. The thought screens on the larger planets are buckling.”

  Jupiter said to Deimos, “Increase the spin rate to insulate the mental layer of the universe. This should prevent neuropsionic propagation. Announce it fleetwide and have all signet rings switched over to direct neural interface.”

  Without inertia, the whole fleet moved with the speed of a ray of light toward the city group which was their target. Two minutes passed. Two and a half. Three. More.

  The distance to LBV 1806-20 diminished. Planetary shields labored to deflect the incalculable heat. The moon Second Phobos suffered shield failure and was burned to a cinder. The other moons and smaller worlds were gathered into the shadow cones of the gas giants.

  The target cities of the foe grew close. They were visible to the naked eye, clusters of egg-shape habitats, each larger than a moon, like bunches of fungi clinging to all the six sides of the immense armature joint.

  The joint was a cube larger than a world, holding a synchronous orbit motionless relative to the slowly-turning equator stream of the hypergiant star. The two armatures, each at right angles to the next, one above the other, were moving at nearlightspeed through tunnels piercing the cube at right angles. The armatures, like metal rainbows, were red in the direction of one horizon of the sun and blue in the other, and the mass created by their relativistic speed was causing sunspots. Coronal loops of disturbed star matter made lovely, fiery arches of immense diameter above and around the moving armatures.

  The planet Hesperus was already reaching for the joint with many space elevators. The diamond cables elongated and flexed, so the attacking planet looked like a malproportioned squid. The outer atmosphere of the planet was already rocking towers and edifices with friction of the collision, and the outer forcesheilds were flattening flimsy structures as if by an impalpable wind.

  Swarms of militiamen in free fall now were crossing the gap on the wings of their personal gravity fields, while endless hosts waited along the space elevator cables for the far reach of his cable to snag a projection. Their cloaks were blazing like stars, laboring to repel the deadly heat of the hypergiant star whose surface was so close below.

  Ten million windows and portals opened in the endless surface of the alien structure. Like termites from a disturbed nest, countless humanoid shapes boiled forth, indifferent to hellish temperature or har
d vacuum.

  The Lords of Creation heard Lord Neptune on the planet Niflheim mutter. “This is insane. Any one of those ringworlds could contain several orders of magnitudes more vampires than we have militia. We cannot beat them in hand to hand combat!” Of course, he had spoken this before the World Armada had begun its maneuver, and the words were reaching the ears of his brothers and sisters now.

  Lord Mercury answered the moment he heard the words, so that, a few minutes later the words reached Neptune: “Have faith, blue brother! We still have a trick up our sleeve!”

  Lord Jupiter stared at the displays hanging above, showing the progress of the militia crossing from the planet George, flying like shining hailstones or streaming like jeweled ants across space elevator cables, into the Armature joint area. It was disturbing to contemplate that all this had happened minutes ago, and only now was the light image reaching him.

  At that moment, the Master Armature encircling LBV1806-20 increased its spin. All the stars in the skies around them winked out, and the immense glare from the blue hypergiant went dark. Not just space was utterly black, but the chamber they were in. Through his ring, Lord Jupiter could reach no open radio channels, no radar, no microwave communication. Nothing.

  “We’re blind!” gasped Lord Jupiter.

  He heard a motion next to him, a footstep, and felt a hand on his shoulder. Because of its strength and the strange texture of the armored skin, he knew it was Aeneas. The young emperor merely squeezed his shoulder silently, as if to reassure him that all was not lost, and as if to remind him the command was still his.

  The display above the curule chair stitched over automatically to the white, the gray and dark gray monochromatic shadows of graviton sensors.

  Aeneas was standing next to Lord Jupiter, visible to him, now, as a black-and-gray gravity image. Jupiter wondered at the cold, watchful look in his eye. Aeneas was paying no attention to the battle. Instead, he was watching his relatives on their thrones warily.

  Deimos said tensely, “The enemy has flexed space to halt electromagnetic propagation. Switching from photonic to neutronic radio. And now they are flexing the space further! Sir, we simply do not have the mass to counteract this.”

  “Do they have enough flex to open longrange warpchannels?”

  “No. But with a shortrange convexity, it is enough to contort mass out of nullspace... The Black Fleet is here!”

  The smaller of the two enemy fleets had been stored in nullspace. That fleet now materialized in a globe around them: ten black suns, thirty superjovians, and scores of smaller worlds, moons, and armored asteroids. The human fleet was outnumbered and outmassed, and the primary nova-beam from the Tellurian Dyson was useless, since space was not carrying any lightwaves at the moment.

  Enemy planets now swarmed the human worlds and spheres, flashing up to them instantly, moving with no inertia, suddenly coming to a gentle halt when outermost worldwide kinetic defense shield touched outermost shield.

  Like the militia swarming from George and Hesperus onto the cities of the Armature cube, vampires in human shape now swarmed up and down ratlines leading from one world to another, and icebergs, lakes and oceans of liquid amoeboid forms poured themselves after as vast interplanetary rivers. The human worlds were hemmed in on each side, surrounded and enclosed, so that awed and terrified civilians standing on the surface, if they had graviton-sensitive eyes equipped to see the view, would have beheld dozens of vast orbs from horizon to horizon, filling the dome of the sky overhead.

  The three smaller Dysons in the human fleet, Wolf and Hound and Owl, now threw out countless clouds of black pearls. They were moving at disinertial speed, which was the same speed as the gravity waves being used to sense them, and so the enemy did not see the first rank of them until they fell among the enemy worlds. These pearls contorted fragments of superdense singularity substance out of nullspace, and these microscopic black holes issued tidal forces that began to tear up anything made of matter.

  The militia on every world raised their pistols and fired gravity beams to crush and rip asunder anything caught in the path. These energies were gravitic, not electromagnetic, and hence could still operate.

  The coppery Dyson spheres began pulling black suns into their firing apertures. The kinetic and gravitic fields which formed the interior firing mechanism still worked, even if the beam could not propagate. The Dysons began chewing up the black suns. In a moment, there were only seven of them.

  Lord Deimos said, “Sir, the Master Armature is overpowering us. Soon, light will flow again, and then neuropsionic waves. When that happens, the black suns will overwhelm our thought shields, and mindwipe us.”

  Lord Jupiter said, “Make it look good. Struggle, but not hard enough to damage our Dyson armature. Order all armatures to out of phase spin.”

  Light returned, and neuropsionic radiation.

  Alarms showing the immanent failure of the planetary thought screens now rang. The beam weapons of the enemy returned as well, and these began lancing out in all directions from all parts of the enemy worlds, sweeping away vast volumes of the deadly black pearls. The nova beam of the Tellurian Dyson struck two of the black suns, which were instantly obliterated.

  Space elevators rose from the surface of the Armature cube and reached to the two attacking worlds of George and Hesperus. An ocean of vampire liquid, so great as to make the archvampire coating Pluto to seem less than a raindrop in the sea, an extent greater in volume than a gas giant, now rose like living towers out from the shattered domes of the command cities peering from the Armature joint. Space elevators reached out like so many numberless blades of grass and snared the superterrestrial and the subjovian. The undead liquid crawled up the lines of the space elevators. The militia, outnumbered by hundreds to one, rushed in to engage them, duplicating themselves as they came.

  The master armature surrounding the supergiant sun was beginning to grow discolored as the armatures of the miniature Dysons Hound and Owl were rotating in destructive interference to it. The vampire lords manning the Master Armature of LBV-1806-20 no doubt laughed at this futile gesture. Theirs was the most powerful armature imaginable, circling the largest star! They knew this trick: but a smaller armature could not dissolve a larger via neutron storm unless it had a store of neutrons standing by in nullspace.

  Aeneas said, “Where is Jackal?” He jerked his hand upward as if stung, and stared at this signet ring.

  The vampires of LBV 1806-20 made a slight adjustment of their spin vector. The Master Armature warped space further. All materials in nullspace were forced into normal space.

  This included what had been kept, all this time, safely in the megascale pearl of Lord Mercury. The last few cubic miles from the core of long dead Sol now emerged, and expanded at the speed of light. The visible rays were less than a candle in the sunlight compared to the hypergiant.

  But the neuropsionic rays spread as well.

  Lord Deimos spun his armatures, forming periscopic channels through hyperspace from the center of the neuropsionic explosion of the remnant of Sol to each of the attacking worlds, and to the target command cities clinging to the Armature joint. This would allow the deadly rays to appear at these target points faster than the speed of light.

  To prevent this, the vampires flattened space, and in so doing prevented themselves from using any periscope to see the oncoming expanding sphere of holy radiation so deadly to them. They would perish before they knew what hit them...

  Lord Deimos said tensely, “Sir! I think it is going to work!”

  “Victory!” shouted Jupiter. “As I vowed!”

  Jupiter stole a glance over this shoulder at the young emperor, hoping for a look of favor. Aeneas was staring at Lord Mercury, ignoring all else.

  The holy light of Sol spread outward. The neuropsionic radiation passed through solid matter without hindrance, and vampires in countless myriads died at its touch. Neutron radio carried the sounds of endless cheering from the militia.

&n
bsp; But the skies suddenly turned to fire. In each direction was a curving wall of blue-white plasma.

  Lord Jupiter said, “We are inside of a hollow sun! Did they move us?”

  Lord Deimos said, “No, sir. The outer layer of LBV-1806-20 was teleported off from its body and placed around us by contortion. The space contortion happened several minutes ago, and only arrived now.”

  The sphere of fire surrounded the World Armada and the gas giants. The two smaller worlds in the vanguard, George and Hesperus, were cut off.

  The image of Uranus said, “It is temporary, but this wall has the psychological properties the same as any sun. It is opaque to neuropsionic radiation. The holy light from Sol will not pass through, nor any stellar influence. All the vampires at the command cities, and in the second fleet will be unharmed...” Then his image flickered and vanished.

  At the same time, the image in the center of the circle of thrones went dark. Communication with the outside was cut off. The images of the Lords of Creation stationed on other worlds also went dark.

  Blindness returned, and the signet rings of the Lords of Creation stabbed them again, as their mindlinks failed. The gray images of gravity waves also went blank.

  Soundwaves were still being carried in the bubble of air beneath the canopy erected on the floor of the command arena of the Tellurian Dyson. Speech was possible.

  Lord Deimos said in hollow voice, “Everything is gone. It is all suppressed by the Master Armature. Photons, gravitons, spacewarps, contortions, thought-waves.”

  A type of sickness he had never felt before was in the soul of Lord Jupiter, a burning bile in his throat, a pounding sound in his head. Always erenow, his victories came easily. Now, the whole family, the whole race, the whole of human civilization had been depending on him.

  Jupiter said, “Sound the retreat!”

  Deimos said, “There is no way to sound retreat. All forms of communication are cut. There is no direction to retreat. A field of plasma surrounds us in all directions, and outside that is the second black fleet, closing in. We are completely trapped. All they need do is wait for the fragment of Sol to burn out.”