Star Rain

by Smith, Dean Wesley

  “And with Star Rain,” Carrie said.

  For the first time in a lot of years, Gina felt hopeful that they might have a chance to win this fight.

  Or at least slow the expansion down enough to get the full weight of galaxies full of humanity working on the problem in time.

  THREE

  BENNY HAD BEEN excited since Ray and Tacita brought the long-range scanner with them. It seemed that the two inventors of the new trans-tunnel drive had been challenged by the idea of trying to scan for a tiny dot and energy signature from hundreds of thousands of light years away.

  The two inventors had been spending the entire time, sixteen years, on the task. As had thousands of other scientists, but it had been those two who had made the breakthrough by using brand new scanning technology that worked in the trans-tunnel space looking for disruptions.

  “The scanning system on all three ships are tested and working,” Star Rain told them four weeks after the meeting with Ray and Tacita.

  Star Rain always spoke to Benny and Gina in a solid, female voice and everyone thought of Star Rain as female, even though Benny doubted an intelligent computer thought in terms of gender.

  Now it was time to test the new scanner. Benny felt even more excited. Finally, they were going to be able to see what they were fighting.

  Finally, after sixteen years.

  Benny wasn’t sure he wanted to see. But he had to.

  They all did.

  He and Gina were in their command chair and linked with the other chairmen on the other two mother ships. As always, in the command chair, they held hands and the heads-up displays flowed past them.

  While in the chair, Benny felt at times as if he and Gina were in each other’s minds. He loved that.

  And he could sense Star Rain as well.

  “Star Rain,” Gina asked, “how will we be able to tell the difference between an alien ship and a human ship?”

  “Alien ships will be designated by a red dot, Seeder ships designated by a green dot, other human ships from The Creators and The Exterminators designated by blue.”

  “We are ready,” Gina said.

  “So are we,” Carrie said.

  Benny could hear the excitement in their voices matching his own.

  “How about we scan part of our area first,” Gage said. “Since we have been trying to stop them here the longest.”

  All agreed, since the mother ships were too far apart to even come close to overlapping scans at this point. Benny knew that being able to do that would still be a year or more away and would take a lot of signal boosters being built.

  “Do we have any boosters online yet?” Angie asked Star Mist.

  “There are enough boosters online to cover the thirty closest active alien galaxies to this position along what is being called the front line,” Star Mist replied to all the chairmen.

  Benny liked the sound of that.

  “Good,” Gage said. “All right, let’s take a look. And Star Mist, keep the image only for chairmen at the moment.”

  “First only show Seeder ships and designate this ship with a slightly brighter point,” Angie said.

  Damn, Benny found this so exciting he had to force himself to breathe.

  Gina squeezed his hand and took a deep breath as well.

  A hologram of the area of space along the front line appeared in front of Benny and Gina.

  Benny was surprised at how many thousands of small green dots appeared around Star Mist’s position in space.

  It seemed as if their coverage was very tight, but he knew those ships were hundreds of light years from the closest ship, some far more. And without this scanner, up until now they only had short-range scanners of less than a quarter of a light year to try to find an alien ship.

  On the left were the alien occupied galaxies, on the right were the galaxies they were trying to protect from the alien ships.

  “Star Mist, now add in the alien ships,” Angie said.

  The entire hologram almost turned completely red.

  Angie gasped.

  Gina clamped down on Benny’s hand.

  Benny said simply, “Shit.”

  It was a massive sea of millions and millions of alien ships. And a lot of the red dots were into the galaxies behind the front line.

  Benny felt sick.

  “We are so screwed,” Gage said.

  Benny could only agree with that.

  “Let’s see what it looks like around Star Rain,” Angie said, her voice almost hollow.

  The horrid image vanished and once again Benny forced himself to take a deep breath.

  A second hologram appeared in front of them, showing the Seeder ships and Star Rain. Again it seemed like a decent defense line.

  “Star Rain, please add in the alien ships,” Benny said.

  Again the entire hologram seemed to turn a bright shade of red. And the galaxies beyond the front lines were filled with red dots as well.

  Benny just wanted to hit something, but instead he just sat there.

  The same thing repeated around Star Fall.

  And these images showed only a tiny, tiny part of the battle area. They wouldn’t have the full picture for years yet until all the scanner boosters were put into place.

  But it was clear from where Benny sat.

  They were losing this war.

  As far as he knew, they had already lost it.

  FOUR

  GINA STOOD BESIDE their chairmen’s chair in the command center, just sort of staring at the big screen and thinking. Benny was off having a quick meeting with some military mother-ship chairmen and he was going to meet her back here at any moment.

  On the screen in front of her it showed the area of space they had been trying to defend, mostly covered with red alien ships.

  For the three years after the first scans, humanity had geared up even more. It seemed that Ray and Tacita were moving mountains, if not entire galaxies, to join the fight. They were pushing to get every bit of fighting power to these front lines.

  Gina was impressed and it seemed that those first scans had scared them more than anyone.

  Anyone with a brain knew how scary an infestation like this was. Like a bad infection in a human body could spread, this infection, if not contained at this level, could spread over all the known universe. And at full force, even a galaxy of humans could not stop the wave of rats pouring at them.

  After three years, new military ship factories were coming online almost every week around this sector of space.

  And all effort was put to building booster scanners and linking in all fighting ships to the scans so they would know if there was an alien ship close to them.

  The kill rate of alien ships had jumped dramatically with the ability to see them. The small military ten-man fighters were now being called Sharks because they could take out an alien ship and jump and ten minutes later take out another.

  But Gina and everyone on every ship knew they were still losing.

  One alien planet alone in a galaxy could pour out millions and millions of transport ships over a fifty-year period, continuing until every bit of material on the planet was exhausted.

  You multiply that by maybe a billion planets in just a normal-sized galaxy and hundreds of years and the number became a staggering wave of red.

  Gina still felt mostly discouraged at the progress. But after three years they finally had all the area inside the million galaxies in this area monitored in one way or another.

  So they at least knew how bad they were losing.

  Benny’s secondary line of defense which was to protect the galaxies beyond the main line of defense seemed to be on full push as well. But it took far more firepower to destroy a growing infestation on a planet then it did a transport ship in space. So the decision had been made to follow Seeder guidelines and just let the civilization grow once it was started on a planet. But a number of Sharks would be stationed in orbit to make sure no alien ship left the planet’s gravity well. />
  But in every galaxy there could be a billion alien planets. Once infected to any extent, that line of defense flat didn’t work.

  But on new infections into a galaxy, that plan of Sharks in orbit tended to stop the growth inside of new galaxies when caught early. But they often didn’t see a new planet starting to launch ships until the ships were in space and able to be picked up on the scanners.

  And often the ship wasn’t in space very long jumping between planets, so even with the scanning technology, they didn’t have the firepower or even awareness to track everything.

  Gina knew, as all of them did, that they were still decades, if not a hundred years or more from having enough ships to even begin to battle this growing infestation on a level basis.

  They were slowing the spread, but only slowing it.

  And not by that much.

  Very discouraging.

  The third line of defense was also catching ships now that they could see them.

  At one point a few months back, they had decided to set up yet a fourth line of defense much farther out, just to be sure. The sensors for that were being built now.

  And Ray and Tacita reported that the sensor shield and thousands of ships were now manning the protection line between this area of space and human occupied space. Even though it would take an alien ship thousands of years to make that journey with the old trans-tunnel drives they used, no one wanted to take a chance that just one ship would get through.

  Angie felt good about that at least.

  Over the last year, two more Seeder mother ships had arrived as well. But the chairmen of both had no battle experience, so even though considerably older, they chose to let the six chairmen of the three main ships be in charge of the entire operation.

  So the weight of all this rested on the six of them. And Gina felt it every day. And she knew Benny did as well.

  This was going to be a very, very long fight.

  SECTION TWO

  The Empty Space Problem

  FIVE

  BENNY AND GINA were in their command chair, studying the battle scenes as more sensors came online. Behind them, the huge command center ran with muffled talking and an efficiency Benny always found impressive. They had the best and most dedicated command crew anyone could ever hope for.

  And all of them were focused completely on the task at hand, even though they all knew they would be at this for maybe a century or more.

  Star Rain fed Benny and Gina information both through non-verbal connections and heads-up displays. The situation had just gotten worse and worse as each day went by, especially now that they actually knew where more and more of the alien ships were.

  And it seemed like every day more sensors came onto the network showing millions more alien ships.

  Benny hated the impossible feeling of what they were facing. As Carrie had said a number of years back, they couldn’t miss a single alien ship. But from the sensors they now had online, the rough count of alien ships was far over eighty billion.

  He couldn’t even imagine that number.

  And every day that count seemed to climb instead of go down, even with thousands and thousands of Seeder ships destroying alien ships. It seemed more alien ships were launched from hundreds of millions of planets than Seeder ships could destroy by factors.

  The initial mission of the three mother ships to this distant area of space had been to find out about an alien culture. A solo alien ship had reached the edge of human occupied space with its alien occupants long dead. The ship had been traveling for over two hundred thousand years. So no one knew what to expect at the origin of that alien ship.

  With the new trans-tunnel drive and exploring along the way, it had taken thirteen years for the three mother ships, Star Rain, Star Mist, and Star Fall to reach the alien area of space.

  When they had first gotten to this area of space, they had discovered hundreds and hundreds of completely destroyed galaxies. It seemed the branch of humanity that had created this mess was trying to destroy the aliens by firebombing every alien planet in an entire galaxy.

  But usually by the time The Creators, as they called themselves, had gotten to a galaxy to destroy it, the aliens had already sent out hundreds of millions of ships from that galaxy to infect millions more galaxies.

  So when the three mother ships had arrived and learned what was happening, the decision had been made to not even contact The Creators. Or the group that had followed them millions of years before called “The Exterminators.” Since both ancient groups still had old, slow drives, it was decided they would be more trouble than they would be help.

  The decision of the Seeders was to let the aliens left behind on planets just die off naturally. It seemed the aliens took every resource a planet had to build ships and those left behind on the planet were without food and resources and turned on each other and quickly died off.

  So the Seeders had taken the fight to the vastness of space between the galaxies to stop the aliens in space. That had been Benny’s idea. But now he was starting to think that idea had no hope.

  “Rescue One has arrived in the area of Star Mist,” Star Rain reported to them.

  Benny glanced at the specs on the newly arrived ship as they scrolled over his display.

  Rescue One was half the size of a mother ship and the chairman was named Evan West. Rescue One had been upgraded to the new trans-tunnel drive and in the ten-year trip here from human space, it had built complete hangars full of the large military ships and a couple thousand smaller Sharks.

  And they had brought the crew for all of the ships as well as the crew for another two hundred ships yet to be built here.

  “Wow,” Gina said. “That’s going to help some.”

  Benny wanted to say that it wouldn’t make a dent, but he didn’t. Gina and the other four chairmen who were running this knew exactly how bad the situation was. They were kids on a beach with sand pails trying to stop a tsunami. He didn’t need to make things worse by running off his mouth.

  Then a bit of data about the new arrival went over his screen. It seemed the Rescue One got its name when it was built to save the mother ship Dreaming Large from empty space.

  He didn’t remember learning anything about that.

  Now all Seeder ships just had automatic sensors and avoided the small, solar-system-sized bubbles of null or empty space. He did a quick scan of the story about Dreaming Large.

  It was thanks to that rescue operation the sensors for null space had been invented for every Seeder ship. Before then, Seeder ships just vanished, often not appearing again for hundreds of thousands of years, even though on the ship only a few hours had passed.

  Suddenly Benny realized something else they were missing.

  Something major.

  Empty space.

  Damn, just damn.

  He brought back up the image of the fifty or so galaxies closest to their position on his and Gina’s display. As always, there were a few thousand Seeder ships showing green in a sea of alien red ships. Even though the area shown was more than a hundred million light years across, it still looked like it was covered in solid red.

  Gina glanced at him. He could sense she was puzzled at what he was doing.

  “Rescue One reminded me we are missing something very, very critical in this fight,” he said. “Star Rain, please show in bright white dots all the empty space areas in this scan.”

  The white dots spread out solidly through the entire area of space.

  “Oh, no,” Gina said, clearly catching on to what he was thinking.

  “Star Rain,” Benny said, “Approximately, to the nearest thousand, how many empty space areas are showing?”

  “Over eighty-six thousand,” Star Rain said.

  “Star Rain,” Gina said, “Would you have any way to estimate how many alien ships have been lost in an empty space bubble?”

  “In this area shown?” Star Rain asked.

  “Yes,” Benny said. “In the area shown.”


  “Approximately nine thousand,” Star Rain said.

  “Could you extrapolate that over the entire history of the alien race expansion,” Gina asked. “Very rough and approximate would be fine.”

  “Aliens have been expanding for 280 thousand years,” Star Rain said. “In that amount of time, an estimation of alien ships vanishing into null space would be approximately two hundred million.”

  “Two hundred million?” Gina asked.

  “Approximately,” Star Rain said.

  “We are so screwed,” Benny said, his stomach in a knot as he stared at the screen of red with white dots. And he had thought the battle had been impossible ten minutes ago.

  “We can’t miss a ship,” Gina said softly.

  “Even one that might just reappear two hundred thousand years from now,” Benny said.

  Gina laughed, but it sounded forced. “At least they are out of our way for now.”

  Benny laughed. But she did have a point.

  SIX

  GINA HATED MORE than she wanted to think about the empty space problem Benny had just noticed. She had been managing to hold out hope that given enough time and forces, they could slow and then eventually stop the alien expansion.

  She knew that was only a hope, and not based on any kind of probability. After the first group of sensors came online, Benny had asked Star Rain to calculate the odds of defeating the alien expansion.

  Star Rain’s answer had been zero percent. Not even a tiny fraction chance of success. Benny had decided he would never ask that question again, but he still did every six months or so.

  He just put his head down and worked on the problem, something she loved about him. One of the many hundreds of things she loved about him, actually. No task seemed impossible to him if he worked at it hard enough.

  Now this had just made things worse.

  Much worse.

  One alien ship finding a galaxy and this infection would start all over. Just one.

  “We need to tell the others,” Benny said after the two of them had gone back over the data even more about how many alien ships were trapped in empty space, just waiting like time-bombs to come out and infect things all over again.