Star Rain

by Smith, Dean Wesley

  “Approximately six-point-one billion,” Star Rain said.

  “How many alien ships are leaving this galaxy in a twenty-four-hour period?” Gina asked.

  “One-point-four million,” Star Rain said.

  Benny just shook his head. Maybe it would be better to just go in and destroy every planet in the galaxy as The Creators and The Exterminators were trying to do. But he couldn’t stomach that and he knew most Seeders could not either, unless it was a last resort.

  But at these numbers, unless they found some way to slow down those ships and the alien expansion, Seeders may not have a choice.

  “Would you please show, if possible, the general path of most of the ships?” Gina asked.

  “Alien ships are designed, from what we have learned from the Creator’s files,” Star Rain said, “to first find the closest planet to settle and then the closest galaxy. In a simple view, these are the three main paths the majority of alien ships are taking from this galaxy.”

  The image on the screen shifted to looking down on the galaxy as if it were just in two dimensions. The red dots of alien ships formed three wide streams, going in three directions from the galaxy toward three other galaxies.

  Benny just damn near fell over.

  “Holy shit,” a voice echoed through the room from the command crew behind them.

  Benny couldn’t agree more.

  “So we can predict them to a degree,” Gina said, nodding to Benny and smiling.

  He just stood there staring at the screen. Then he asked the question he didn’t want to ask.

  “How wide and how deep are each of those streams of alien ships, approximately?”

  Benny was holding his breath waiting for the answer and he bet everyone in the command center behind him was doing the same.

  “Each stream is approximately the same width as the galaxy, or 100,000 light years wide,” Star Rain said, “and the same depth as the galaxy of about 8,000 light years.”

  “How long is the travel time for an alien ship?” Gina asked. “Please indicate in approximate years near each stream on the screen.”

  On the screen Benny could see the answer. One stream took approximately 27 years for each ship to get to the next galaxy. Another stream took 30 years, and a third stream took 34 years.

  “Star Rain,” Benny said, “In theory, could we make an empty space bubble a full light year across?”

  “In theory, yes,” Star Rain said.

  “How big could we go?” Gina asked.

  “There is a stabilization point,” Star Rain said. “Any size would be possible, in theory, if that stabilization point in the area of the empty space bubble was maintained.”

  “Holy shit,” Benny said to himself.

  Gina just grabbed him and kissed him.

  Then she turned and said to everyone in the command center, “Go back to work. We’ll brief you all on this as soon as we know more.”

  “Star Rain,” Benny said, “Could you ask the other four chairmen for an emergency meeting again. And ask them to invite Chairman West.”

  A moment later Star Rain said, “They have agreed.”

  “Here we go,” Gina said.

  “I just hope we don’t waste too many resources on this,” Benny said, suddenly feeling worried. This idea was totally crazy and right now they couldn’t afford to go wasting resources in a wrong direction.

  “Can we stop a million-plus ships a day just from this one galaxy?” Gina asked.

  Benny shook his head. They couldn’t even stop a fraction of them, even knowing where they were. And that was only one small galaxy.

  “So no idea is too wild to explore,” she said, smiling at him. “Even one of yours.”

  “Thanks,” he said, laughing and shaking his head. “I think.”

  He just hoped to hell she was right.

  SECTION THREE

  The Shape of Empty Space

  TEN

  GINA AND BENNY had presented what they had discovered and thought about to the other chairmen in the meeting room on Star Mist.

  At first, the other chairmen had just sat there, stunned. Chairman West just sort of nodded the more they got into their presentation.

  Gina and Benny could hardly contain their excitement and Gina could tell the excitement seemed to slowly be catching with the others. These empty-space pockets might not be a huge problem, but instead a weapon.

  Then Gage asked simply, once Benny and Gina were finished, “Is this possible?”

  “Star Rain says it is in theory,” Gina said.

  All six looked at West.

  He shrugged. “Empty space pockets tend to be a certain size, but not all of them. I have seen empty space pockets smaller than a moon and others twenty times the size of the one that caught Dreaming Large.”

  “Star Mist,” Angie said, “Would you consult with Star Rain and Star Fall to determine the parameters possible for an empty space bubble?”

  “We agree that any size is theoretically possible,” Star Mist said. “But past a certain size the bubble would only exist for a fraction of a second.”

  “What is that theoretical size of stability?” Gage asked.

  “A diameter of just over one hundred light years,” Star Mist said.

  Gina felt shocked. Putting an empty space bubble that size in the middle of those three major streams would catch millions and millions of alien ships each and actually give the Sharks a chance at slowing down and destroying the remaining ships.

  “Star Mist, could we create one that size?” Matt asked.

  “In theory,” Star Mist said.

  “Do you three ships have any idea or theories on how that could be accomplished?” Angie asked.

  “No,” Star Mist said.

  Gina did not like the sound of the finality of that statement. But it didn’t seem to bother West in the slightest.

  “Let me get my original Dreaming Large rescue team on this,” he said. “They are the best experts there are on empty space. I’ll pull them all back together from all over the human universe. We’ll find the answer.”

  “And moving the smaller ones would help as well,” Benny said.

  West nodded.

  Gina understood what Benny was thinking. He had thought about just sending numbers of the small empty space pockets moving back along a stream from a galaxy, catching ships as it went. He had called it “bowling for aliens” and she had kissed him for that silliness.

  But underneath the silliness, it was a good idea.

  “Once I distribute the fighting forces I brought with me,” West said, jumping into action, “with your permissions, I would like to set up my ship to be the ground center on this research.”

  Gina glanced around and all were nodding.

  “Please do so,” Angie said after checking with all the chairmen.

  “I will get in touch with Chairmen Ray and Tacita and get their help as well,” West said.

  Gina could hear the growing excitement in his voice.

  Clearly Benny could as well. “You think this is possible?” Benny asked.

  West shrugged. “If Star Mist and your other ships say it is theoretically possible, then all we have to do is find out how to change that theoretical to reality. It took us a lot of years to go from knowing nothing about empty space to saving a mother ship from it. I think we can do this as well, but it may take years.”

  “We are going to be at this for years,” Gage said, nodding.

  Gina agreed with that.

  “The more ideas we have to help,” Angie said, “the better off we will be in this fight. So thank you, Chairman West, for running with this. Please give us regular updates on your progress.”

  “Thank you for trusting me with something this important,” he said.

  They all stood and for the first time in a lot of years, Gina felt lifted by one of the meetings. Everything was still in theory, but theoretical help was more than they had yesterday.

  A lot more.

  ELE
VEN

  BENNY STOOD BESIDE their command chair, watching the daily reports of the battle scroll across the big screen. Gina was still in the gym working out as she did three mornings a week, letting him be the first in the Command Center. She liked the extra workout time, said it kept her mind sharp.

  Around him the others worked, mostly silently, sometimes conferring with each other in normal voices that seemed almost like whispers down near the command chair the room was so big.

  It had been over two years since the meeting about the theory of building large empty space bubbles to trap large numbers of alien ships and Benny had given up counting how many years they had been here blowing alien ships out of space.

  Chairman West reported his teams’ findings every week on advances in empty space work, but it seemed to Benny to always be the same.

  Nothing yet.

  Chairmen Ray and Tacita had entire fleets of ships headed this direction, and factories around this area were producing Shark-sized fighting ships at the pace of fifty per day.

  The war effort in the last two years had exploded into full movement.

  Around Benny, the main command crew was all at stations and working. The entire sphere around the main one hundred and fifty thousand alien-infested galaxies was now under scan, so at least they knew where every alien ship was.

  And every alien ship that managed to get outside of that sphere had been destroyed.

  But there were far, far too many alien ships to even pretend to deal with, but at least humanity knew where they all were, for what little good that did. Humanity was still losing the battle against the alien expansion and there was talk that in a couple of years they would be forced to fall back to a larger sphere of defense.

  That was going to feel like defeat to Benny, but it more than likely was going to have to be done.

  Benny was about to turn to talk with their second in command when Star Rain said simply, “There is a problem with The Creators’ fleet.”

  Benny glanced back at the big screen. The Creators’ ships were working in their area of defense and were always shown as a tiny blob of blue dots moving slowly from galaxy to galaxy. When they reached an alien galaxy, The Creators would fire-bomb every alien planet in the galaxy over a six-week period and then move on, leaving the galaxy a dead husk.

  That cleared out and stopped the aliens, but by the time The Creators did that, millions and millions of alien ships had already launched to other galaxies.

  Benny considered what The Creators were doing horrid and a total waste of effort. But that was no surprise because The Creators were the same idiots who had started this entire mess with their ideas that they could build an intelligent alien race.

  No Seeder had even talked to The Creators. Benny and Gina mostly just ignored them and Benny doubted the Creators even knew the Seeders were here fighting their fight.

  The Creators still had the old trans-tunnel drive, so their ships were no faster than the ones they had programmed the aliens to build.

  It took Benny a moment of staring at the big screen filling one wall of the command center before he finally understood the problem with The Creators’ small fleet of seven-hundred-plus ships.

  It was gone.

  No blue lights left on the board.

  Not a one.

  Just Seeder green lights and hundreds of millions of alien red lights.

  “Star Rain, what happened to The Creators’ ships?” Benny asked.

  “The entire fleet of Creators’ ships,” Star Rain said, “ran into an empty space pocket about twice the size of the empty space pocket that held the Dreaming Large.”

  Benny just started laughing.

  And after a moment most of the command center crew laughed with him.

  Irony was a bitch, that was for sure.

  TWELVE

  GINA FOUND THE meeting with the other four mission command chairmen and Ray and Tacita and Chairman West fun and somewhat funny. All of them thought the fact that The Creators’ ships had run into an empty space bubble just laughable.

  They were all in the Star Mist meeting room, as normal. Everyone in the room was dressed casually in jeans, light shirts, and tennis shoes except for Ray and Tacita. Both of them were in their standard black silk.

  As far as Gina could tell through the laughter, the consensus of the nine was to leave The Creators’ fleet in the bubble. The idiot Creators wouldn’t even know any time had passed for a hundred thousand years or so.

  After some laughing, a wonderful relief for these meetings, it was Matt who finally pointed out that their method of destroying entire galaxies of aliens was helping a little, even though none of them in the room agreed or liked The Creators’ method.

  Or liked the fact that they had caused all this in the first place, but Gina didn’t say that. She knew they were all thinking it, though.

  Ray nodded. “Our simulations show that given enough time, having The Creators and The Exterminators doing what they are doing might be the difference in the final outcome.”

  “A very slight difference,” Tacita said.

  Gina could tell that Tacita was just disgusted at The Creators and had no intention of hiding it.

  Gina hated to admit that she agreed with that feeling.

  “So are you suggesting we let those idiots out of there?” Benny asked.

  Gina could tell from Benny’s voice that he was surprised at the idea.

  “Actually,” West said, “It might be a great experiment for us to free them and get more data at the same time. It has been a very long time since we freed the Dreaming Large.”

  Gina nodded to that. Anything at all that would speed up the development of control over empty-space bubbles would be a good thing. Even letting the idiots who caused this entire fight free again.

  Ray nodded as well, but Tacita just looked more disgusted.

  “Could we free them and not have them spot us?” Matt asked.

  Ray and West both shook their heads.

  “I’m afraid that wouldn’t be possible,” West said. “We would need to surround the bubble and their fleet and they would see us instantly when the bubble dropped.”

  “So we leave them,” Angie said, “or rescue them and tell them we are here trying to clean up their mess.”

  “Pretty much those two options,” Ray said.

  “If they have to see us,” Gage said, “at least can we direct them toward some alien galaxies that their destruction tactics would make more sense against?”

  “That would help,” Ray said, nodding.

  Gina wasn’t sure, but she thought she heard Tacita snort softly.

  “So,” Carrie said, “it seems pretty clear that none of us really want to free those idiots. Correct?”

  Gina looked around and everyone was nodding, including Ray. Tacita’s head was almost bobbing, she was nodding so hard.

  “But,” Carrie said, “it would give us a bubble release to study for West and his team if we freed them.”

  West nodded. “A very good example, actually.”

  “And,” Carrie said, “in the long run of the war, if we directed them, they might be able to help in a slight way with the overall outcome. Do I have all that correct?”

  Everyone nodded again.

  Since it was the six of them running this entire operation, even though Ray and Tacita and West and numbers of other chairmen with ships now in the fight had seniority, only the six of them voted on any major decision.

  And lately it had been Gina who had polled the six of them. She never polled unless she was sure of the outcome and right now she was sure. They had no other choice that she could see if they hoped to win this war.

  “Angie?” Gina said.

  “We release them.”

  “Gage?”

  He nodded and shrugged. “Makes sense to release them.”

  “Carrie?” Gina asked.

  Gina could tell that Carrie wanted no part of this vote, but she finally glanced at Matt and then said, “R
elease them.”

  “I agree,” Matt said.

  Gina looked at Benny and smiled. “Well?”

  “Can we put them back into a bubble when this is all over?” Benny asked.

  Gina and everyone laughed, and West said, “We get control of the empty space bubbles, I think that could be arranged without them even realizing they were in one.”

  “Then we release them for now,” Benny said.

  “I agree,” Gina said, laughing. “For now.”

  “I think after the mess they have caused,” Tacita said, “an empty space bubble is where they eventually belong.”

  Ray nodded to that and everyone else laughed.

  THIRTEEN

  “HAVE I SAID how much I hate this?” Benny asked as he stood next to Gina in their command center.

  On the big screen was showing fifty small Seeder ships and Rescue One, Chairman West’s ship. They were stationed at regular intervals in a globe form and Benny knew that in that globe shape was an empty space bubble holding an entire fleet of ships. The bubble was about ten times larger than a normal-sized solar system.

  “Over the last six months?” Gina said, laughing, “I could have Star Rain count the times you have said that, because the number is far too big for me.”

  Benny shook his head and stared at the screen. “I don’t care, I still hate this.”

  They had moved Star Rain to a position near the empty-space bubble holding The Creators’ fleet. And when the fleet appeared after West and his people shut down the bubble, it was up to Benny and Gina to explain what had happened and what was going on in the battle against the aliens.

  At first Benny thought it would be better to have Ray and Tacita talk with these people, since they were the ones that had sent them off into space to keep humanity safe. But both Ray and Tacita said there would be no point in bringing up old fights.

  Million-year-old fights.

  Benny thought that too stupid for words, but since The Creators were blowing up galaxies worth of planets in Benny and Gina’s area of defense, it fell to them to do the meet and greet.