by M. D. Cooper
“I’ve been thinking a lot about what could have been,” Terrance said in a quiet voice as he stepped to her side. “If we’d made it to New Eden, if we’d developed the picotech there. Maybe we could have headed all this off. Stopped the FTL wars and the dark ages that followed.”
“Maybe,” Tangel allowed. “I think about that, too. If I had somehow stopped the SSS from sabotaging the ship at Estrella de la Muerte…”
“You know it’s not that simple. There was Myrrdan and the Caretakers working against us. We didn’t even have a clue that they were in play.”
“Yeah.”
Tangel let the word fall from her lips as she stared out over the great ship. The greatest ship ever built.
The man chuckled. “Yeah. I know. Doesn’t stop you from wondering.”
“While I agree that wars like this are necessary once you exhaust all other options, I don’t think that’s what you’re referring to, is it?” Terrance asked.
“You’re starting to sound like the core AIs,” Tangel cautioned.
Bob spoke in a half-joking tone that had Tangel and Terrance sharing a surprised look.
Terrance chuckled. “Uhhhh…yeah, but you need to do it more than once a decade for us to be used to it.”
“Stop messing with them, Bob,” Earnest said as he entered the room and strode toward Tangel and Terrance.
-What’s gotten into you?- Tangel asked the AI.
-I can’t have fun?-
Tangel sent him a wave of curious incredulity. -I guess…sure. People just tend to take everything you say very seriously. You’re usually a very serious person.-
-I’m evolving.-
-That’s scary too.-
The ascended, multinodal AI sent Tangel a feeling of amused mirth that nearly knocked her over, and she decided not to pursue the conversation any further.
“I know where your off switch is,” Earnest was saying to Bob with a smirk.
“Is this because Priscilla’s gone?” Tangel asked, as the realization hit her that Bob’s change in behavior may be due to the absence of the woman who had been only a thought away for decades.
“Priscilla’s gone?” Earnest shot Tangel a sharp look. “Gone where?”
“We were attacked by Finaeus’s ex-wives,” Tangel explained. “We also learned that the Garza clone we captured on the Britannica two years ago wasn’t a clone at all. I interrogated him, and we found out where the Widows operate from.”
“And you sent Priscilla?” Earnest’s voice rose half an octave as he took a step toward her. “She doesn’t have the training for that.”
“Sorry, she has ‘training’,” the engineer held up his hands to make air quotes, “but she has no experience. Those Widows are nasty business. She’s—”
“She’s with my daughters,” Tangel interjected. “And Joe has a stealthed fleet nearby. Trust me, I’m anxious about this, too, but we’re low on people who can take out an installation like that.”
“Why send people at all?” Terrance asked. “Couldn’t Joe just blow their base and call it a day?”
Tangel nodded. “Yes, yes he could. But the Widows are Orion’s preeminent blackops organization. The intel we’re bound to get from them will be indispensable.”
Earnest chewed on his lip for a moment before glancing at Terrance. “So you didn’t know about this?”
“Me?” The business exec held up his hands. “I’ve been in Praesepe watching the core AIs shuffle stars around like they’re playing a stellar game of checkers.”
“Is that why you’re cracking jokes?” Tangel asked. “You’re worried?”
“OK, I know we’re thinking of starting a comedy club, but we need to decide what to do about this,” Terrance interjected, turning to the window and gesturing at it. The aft view of the I2 was replaced by the image of a star. “This is our subject. The little star that could.”
As Tangel and Earnest watched, the poles of the star dimmed, and a single hot point formed near the equator before blasting out a jet of energy for several minutes.
It was Earnest who spoke first.
“Well I’ll be a…uhh, I have no idea what.”
“Emily was tangentially aware of our efforts in New Canaan,” Terrance explained. “She seemed to think that it was a more powerful emission than what we were doing.”
“That’s because we’re not doing anything like that,” Earnest muttered as he replayed the visual. “We’re focusing the star’s burn at the north pole, while dimming the southern polar region. We’re intensifying the stellar output at the equator to compensate for the luminosity change…but nothing like this.”
“It’s obviously sufficient to move the star,” Tangel observed. “And it looks like they used some sort of swarm to do it.”
“An expendable swarm,” Terrance added. “So far as we can tell, once the stellar output shift completed, whatever machinery was at play fell into the star.”
Tangel snapped her fingers. “So that’s why you queried our resources when you arrived. You want to mount a search for the facility where they’re making those things.”
“It has to be close,” Terrance replied. “The stars are already on a collision course. It’ll take a few centuries, at the current rate, but the total stellar mass in the cluster’s core is over forty Sols. When they collide….”
“We get it,” Earnest replied. “The entire cluster is sterilized…well, more than just the cluster, though folks beyond the slow zone will have a few centuries to get out of the way.”
Tangel flung a new visual at the window. It showed the region of space between Sol and the Praesepe cluster. Centered in the view was the Betelgeuse exclusion zone, an empty region of space that had been vacated when the massive star underwent a supernova several thousand years earlier.
“Now…I’m no stellar engineer, but when Praesepe goes up, it’s going to trigger some of its own supernovae, right?”
Earnest nodded. “There are no hypergiants in Praesepe, but there are stars that will evolve into them. But…the event that we’ll witness isn’t like other supernovae. If you look at Betelgeuse, you can see that its shockwave has only moved about nine hundred light years, and it’s all but dissipated now. Most stellar systems it hits see a compression of their heliosphere, but not so much that the stellar wind can’t stop the wave before it reaches major planets. Betelgeuse also released very little gamma radiation, and the x-rays are all but dissipated, thanks to our friend the inverse square law.”
“And Praesepe?” Tangel asked. “It will be much worse, won’t it?”
The engineer nodded. “I’m actually less worried about a collapse of the cluster’s core triggering supernovae in massive stars, and more worried about the cluster’s white dwarfs. There are several that are massive enough to undergo a supernova event on their own.”
“White dwarfs can do that?” Terrance asked, then glanced at Tangel. “Don’t go making any ‘you’ve been flying around in space for a thousand years and you don’t know that?’ jokes. There aren’t any white dwarfs around Sol, and Betelgeuse is…was…the only nearby star likely to undergo collapse.”
Tangel held up her hands in a defens
ive gesture. “I wasn’t going to say a word. Honest. Really.”
“White dwarfs can do it too,” Earnest confirmed, casting Tangel a bemused look. “If they increase in mass close to one and a half Sols—depending on their rotational speed—then electron degeneracy pressure isn’t enough to support the star’s mass, and it collapses.”
“But not into a black hole?” Terrance clarified.
“No. Before that happens, the star gets hot enough to fuse a substantial fraction of its mass in a matter of seconds.” The engineer paused as he looked from Tangel to Terrance. “The ejecta from the white dwarf’s explosion travels at ten percent the speed of light.”
“Holy shit,” Terrance whispered. “OK, so this is going to make Betelgeuse look like the warmup.”
“Multiple stellar-sized fusion bombs,” Tangel said quietly. “If they’re doing this in other clusters…”
“I’d thought that, too,” Terrance said. “I just didn’t realize what the white dwarfs in them will do.”
“Might,” Earnest held up a hand. “Might. It could be that the shockwave never pushes enough mass toward the white dwarfs…or it could set a bunch of them up to slowly accrete mass and detonate over the next few thousand years.”
Tangel held up a hand. “OK, so it’s the big suck. We didn’t think it meant sunshine and daisies, so that part’s not news. What we need to do now is find out where their facility is that is making their little dyson swarm, take control of it, and then reverse this process.”
“And then check over every other fucking cluster in the galaxy,” Earnest muttered. “Fuck. This is going to take millennia to fix. Fucking AIs. Present company excluded.”
“Thanks,” Bob and Tangel said at the same time.
Terrance shot a curious look at her. “I didn’t know you identified as AI.”
Tangel shrugged. “Depends on the day. Of course, this presents a whole new problem. Who do we send?”
“What about Jessica and Trevor?” Terrance asked her. “I bet Amavia and Iris could go with them.”
“I think the fact that I sent my daughters along with Priscilla to hit the Widows should tell you that those other four aren’t available.”
“Oh, yeah, that makes sense. And I guess you and Bob are staying here in reserve for when the shit hits the fan.”
Tangel nodded. “And worrying that it doesn’t hit all over all at once.”
“OK, Terrance. Here’s what we’ll do. I’ll have Bob drum up a couple of AIs who are as crazy as the rest of us, we’ll peel off a cruiser from the First Fleet, and we’ll send you into Praesepe to start the hunt. We’ll send you with a spare gate, too. I don’t want you going into the ass-end of nowhere and taking months to get back.”
“I’m going to need some trigger pullers, too,” Terrance added. “Any of those left?”
“Barely,” Tangel said with a drawn out sigh. “Joe’s going to kill me, but I’ll send Lieutenant Brennen with you. It drops the I2 down to just two platoons, but we have thousands of combat drones aboard, so we’ll manage.”
“I’m going with him,” Earnest said, fixing Tangel with a resolute stare. “Someone is going to have to figure out how to put those stars back where they belong.”
Tangel nodded. “I suspected you would want to go.”
“Wait. Really?” he asked. “You’re going to let me run off into danger like this?”
“Sure. We’re all in danger. To be honest, Praesepe is probably one of the safest places around. Till it explodes, of course.”
Terrance laughed. “You have such a way with words.”
PART 5 – AIRTHA
TO AIRTHA
STELLAR DATE: 10.10.8949 (Adjusted Years)
LOCATION: Sabrina, Interstellar dark layer
REGION: Huygens System, Transcend Interstellar Alliance
Sabrina’s voice broke Sera from the thoughts she’d been lost in, and she looked at the nearest optical pickup on the bridge.
Sera gave a tired smile.
Sera said as she stood from the scan console and looked down at Cheeky in the pilot’s seat.
“Did you have to remove the captain’s chair?”
“What are you talking about?” Cheeky asked as she looked up at Sera and gave a languid wink. “This is the captain’s chair.”
“You know what I mean. It feels weird to sit at scan.”
Seraphina looked up from where she sat at the comm console and gave Cheeky a sour look. “I would have won.”
“Oh?” Sera asked. “How’s that?”
“I fight dirtier than you.”
Sera barked a laugh. “That’s probably true.”
“Still three hours till we dump out of the DL,” Cheeky said, and nodded to the display at the front of the bridge. We’re going to pop out just one AU from the Thomias Belt. Are our pre-clearances in order?”
“Look at her!” Seraphina said, grinning as she met Sera’s eyes. “She’s allll growed up.”
Cheeky twisted in her seat and glowered at Seraphina. “Only ‘cause the two of you made me. Sending us off alone, then you get cloned, or whatever, and start the biggest interstellar war in history.”
“Yikes!” Sera exclaimed. “You grew teeth, too.”
“I’ve always had teeth,” Cheeky said with a low chuckle. “Pre-clearances?”
“Confirmed with the last DL relay we just passed. We’re good to go.”
Sera placed her hands on her hips and shook her head at Seraphina. “I’m amazed you deployed this many relays in the DL. Must have been quite the undertaking.”
“It was,” Seraphina replied. “Some were already there, but Airtha wanted it locked down. We only beefed things up on this side of the star, though. Given that it’s a hundred AU trek if you come in on the far side of Huygens, the system itself works as enough of a buffer for other approaches.”
“Still a pain in the ass,” Cheeky muttered.
Seraphina gave a noncommittal shrug. “Kinda the point.”
“I’m going to the galley. Gotta do something other than think about the mission for the next two hours.”
“Just gonna leave me up here?” Cheeky asked without turning in her seat.
“You can fly the ship from anywhere,” Sera pointed out. “Doesn’t have to be here.”
“It does,” the pilot-now-captain replied. “This is where my gut works.”
“What?” both Seras asked at once.
This time, Cheeky turned around and knelt on her seat, peering over the backrest.
“You know, flying with your gut, by the seat of your pants,” she said simply.
“I know what that means,” Sera replied, while Seraphina chuckled. “Though I don’t think I’ve ever seen you wear pants.”
“I own a few pairs.” Cheeky’s tone was only mildly defensive. “Though half of them are transparent.”
Sabrina’s laugh filled their minds.
“Fine. Mock me,” Cheeky said, and adopted a pout, but remained perched on her seat, staring at the other two women. “You don’t know what it’s like being put into another body. It took a long time to get the same feel for the ship that I used to. Sure, I can fly Sabrina from anywhere aboard, but here is where it feels right here.” She slapped her stomach for emphasis, almost glaring at the two women.
“I kinda know what it feels like,” Seraphina volunteered, but Cheeky
sent a scowl her way, and she amended, “A wee, tiny little bit.”
“I never flew with my gut,” Sera said, shrugging indifferently. “And I’m a pretty decent pilot.”
Cheeky put her hand out palm-down and wobbled it back and forth. “Ehhh, on a good day.”
“What? Seriously? I flew the ship back in the Fringe before we picked you up, Cheeky. I got us out of some tight spaces. Back me up, here, Sabrina.”
Sera looked at Seraphina. “You know she’s disparaging us both, don’t you?”
Seraphina shrugged. “I didn’t get as much of the competitive, high and mighty gene as you did. I’m OK with being just good enough to get by.”
Sera blew out a dramatic sigh. “It’s like being insulted in my own home. Where’d all this fly-with-your-gut nonsense come from, anyway?”
Sabrina said.
“You don’t even have a gut,” Sera threw her arms in the air.
“Neither does Jessica, with a waist that small,” Seraphina said, chuckling softly. “But she’s got a lot of hiney under all that shiny. She’s probably more of a ‘seat of your pants’ kinda gal. She flies with her butt, not her gut!” Her chuckle turned into a full-on laugh.
“Taking the word of that purple hussy over mine,” Sera said, placing a hand on her chest. “You wound me.”
Cheeky snorted. “ ‘Purple hussy’? You live in a glass house, there, Red.”
“Well, at least I don’t glow…or have alien microbes living inside me.”
“You’re damn right I’m jealous,” Sera said as she walked off the bridge. “But if I went purple, you’d all accuse me of copying her.”
“Plus, Fina would constantly switch you back!” Seraphina called out after her.
Sera laughed at the thought. Fina would, but she wasn’t on Sabrina. Her team was aboard the Voyager, and if all was going well, they’d already be on the Airthan Ring.