Singularity: Book Two of the StarCruiser Brilliant Series

by Rick Lakin

  “Hello, I hate to be cliché,” Ami said, “but there is good news and bad news. Firstly, the drugs from Earth are helping, but the disease is rapidly mutating and making the drugs ineffective. Secondly, we have found the origin of the disease. Ani?”

  “Hello, everyone,” Ani said. “Using the research techniques Jennifer and her team provided me, I’ve been able to isolate DNA strands to an animal native to Xaphnore called a Malfnid. It’s a six-legged carnivore with vestigial wings and an enormous mouth. Legends say it was a favorite of hunters who put themselves at risk hunting the animal. As weapons evolved, it was hunted to extinction a century-and-a-half ago.”

  “You need this animal to create a vaccine?” Jack said. “What’s the alternative?”

  “It’ll take months and more scientists to tailor a vaccine,” Ami said. “As it is, we’re running out of time and scientists.”

  “You’ve got an idea?” Jack asked.

  “We grab the critter,” Sami said.

  Dr. Ami and Ani gave their colleague a skeptical look. “I go back two hundred years, grab several animals, and hang out around a deserted planet until I can return.”

  “The trip back in time would take a minute,” Jennifer said, “but it would take you two hundred years to get back. So many things could happen.”

  “Sis, this is the only way,” Sami said.

  “Riley, can the shuttle pull it off?” Jack said.

  “Captain, multi-century sub-light travel was perfected in your timeline,” Riley said. “The shuttle has level one self-repair capability. We stock it up with ice and a fabricator, and it should be good to go. Can your cyberian structure hold up?”

  “Of course,” Jennifer said. “We can optimize the AI for the lack of storage. Sami, you will have full reasoning, but you might have some memory loss.”

  “I can handle it,” Sami said. “Can the animals make the trip?”

  “We’ll install cryostasis chambers for the critters,” Anthen said.

  “How soon can you get back, Sami?”

  “We need to offload the remainder of our scientific equipment and AI support,” Sami said. “Eight hours, Captain.”

  “Riley, David, and Tayla are working for you and Anthen,” Jack said. “Maiara and I will cover the bridge.”

  “Captain?” Jennifer asked.

  “Sleep, eight hours. I need you at full strength for mission planning,” Jack said. “That’s an order.”

  “Dr. Ami, have you kept the shuttle interior clean?”

  “Yes, Captain, there is a sterile boundary,” Ami said. “I expect that the exterior is pretty crapped up.”

  “Sami, can you give the Hope a star bath on the way in?”

  “Yes, sir, how close.”

  “Riley?”

  “Two thousand degrees for five minutes is well below design capability.”

  “Do it,” Jack said. “We’ll see you soon. We’ll bring the StarShuttle aboard, check it over and reconfigure it for this mission.”

  Eight hours later, Jennifer was at the ops panel as the crew at their stations watched StarShuttle Hope approach the hangar bay. The white paint job was now splotched with burn marks from the close approach to the Wolf Star.

  “The StarShuttle is aboard, and the hangar bay is sealed,” Maiara said.

  “Very well,” Jack said. “Secure from flight ops. Engineer, full diagnostics and then begin the loadout. David, you and the stowaways are in charge of the new camouflage paint job. Sami, join us in my ready room.”

  Sami was already in the ready room when Jennifer entered carrying a Double-shot Caramel Frappuccino. “What was it like on Xaphnore?”

  “It was difficult,” Sami said. “Most people we ran into were sick. No one smiled. Death was all around.”

  “It affected you.”

  “Ani and Ami were able to focus on the cure,” Sami said. “I was treating patients.”

  “That’s why you came up with this crazy plan.”

  She pointed at her chest. “Sami, the yellow-eyed hunter.”

  “I’ll miss you.”

  They hugged.

  “For you, I’ll be gone for 36 hours. I’ll have Dani, the shuttle’s AI, to keep me company for two hundred years,” Sami said. “Thanks for that.”

  “Won’t it get boring with only a sentient AI to talk to?”

  “You tell me. You’ve shared every secret with me for the last ten years.”

  “True,” Jennifer said. “Will you be alert the whole time?”

  “I’ll be in deep hibernation. Dani will, as well, but will awaken to tend to the animals in stasis and monitor the systems. She’ll alert me if there is a problem.”

  “Take care and come back safe,” Jennifer said.

  Anthen and Jack entered the ready room.

  “Thanks for doing this.”

  “Yes, Captain,” Sami said.

  “Go over the mission profile.”

  “Yes, Captain,” Jennifer said. “Sami will depart Brilliant and begin a parabolic approach to the Wolf Star. At the perigee deep in the gravity well, she will engage the StarDrive to escape. The operation is programmed to set her back two hundred years.”

  “Sounds familiar,” Anthen said.

  “Too familiar,” Jack said. “Same as the maneuver that brought Navvy, Hanna, and me to this timeline.”

  Jennifer continued. “Sami will proceed to Xaphnore and land in an unpopulated habitat of the Malfnids, obtain a genetically diverse set, depart the planet and proceed on a slow curve at sub-light speed back to the Wolf Star.”

  “We considered orbiting a planet,” Anthen said, “but that would make the StarShuttle a target for meteors and comets.”

  “To avoid a temporal paradox, you will contact us exactly thirty-six hours after departure. You will return to Xaphnore and the team can develop a vaccine,” Jennifer said.

  “Simple,” Sami said. “Out in 3 minutes, back in two hundred years. I understand.”

  “That’s all I have,” Jennifer said.

  “First Officer,” Jack said. “Please return to your duties. We have something further to discuss that does not concern you or the rest of the crew. Understand?”

  “Yes, Captain.” Jennifer left the ready room with great curiosity that she would have to keep to herself.

  Jack and Anthen looked at Sami. “We have an additional mission that we would like for you to undertake.”

  46

  Three hours later, Sami disengaged the StarDrive and decelerated to sub-light. She listened to all radio frequencies and the StarWave bands. There was only the constant white noise of interstellar space.

  “Get a celestial fix and find out the date and time.”

  “It’s 1437 Greenwich Mean Time,” Dani said. “The date is October 2, 1867. The ship has traveled back in time two hundred years, three days, six hours, and twenty-three minutes.”

  “Lay in a course for Xaphnore.”

  “Course laid in. The ship will arrive in 7 hours and 3 minutes.”

  “Engage.”

  A few hours later, the StarShuttle was in geosynchronous above Xaphnore.

  “What’s the local time in the target area?” Sami asked.

  “It’s 0537, eighteen minutes before Hoclar rises.”

  “Scan for life signs, Dani.”

  “There are three humans in the target area. There are a great number of animals larger than five kilos. I’ve located seven groups of the target species.”

  “Scan for the optimum landing area.”

  “There’s a clearing near the center of the target area that is eight miles from the nearest human detected and within three miles of four target groups.”

  “Put us in a low orbit. Plot a slow re-entry above the visible horizon of Hoclar. We do not want to start UFO rumors.”

  “Your request sets up an optimum re-entry window in three hours and forty-two minutes.”

  “Thank you, Dani.” She talked to herself. “I’ll review procedures and figure out how to hu
nt a malfnid,” Sami said.

  A flat-screen window appeared before Sami. “Here’s a list of procedures to review. I cannot help you learn to hunt.”

  “Thanks,” Sami said. “I wasn’t talking to you.”

  “I am not allowed to ignore you, Sami. You, on the other hand, are permitted to ignore me. That’s truly unfair. Am I just supposed to…?”

  This is going to be a long two hundred years, Sami thought.

  “I heard that. Remember, we’re both wired into the same AI system so I can monitor your speech and your thoughts. Besides that, it is just plain rude…”

  “Shut up, Dani.”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  The StarShuttle landed in a small clearing surrounded by native trees and vegetation after the local noontime. There was a dense forest to hide the ship even for the short time it took Sami to exit. She looked at the snow-capped mountains to the west where the nearby flowing brook originated.

  Sami dressed in period hunting suit that included a hood and mask. It was synthesized from the material in Kalinda’s fighting suit so that she was effectively cloaked. After dark, Sami checked her tranquilizer gun once again and exited the StarShuttle. She hoped the tranq shot would disable the animal for the time it took to return to the shuttle.

  Dani was monitoring the hunting area and vectored her in on several groups of Malfnids. Each time she approached, the herd disappeared. She failed several times. Sami did not spot a single animal on her first night hunting.

  With dawn approaching, Sami headed back to StarShuttle Hope. She received a message from Dani, “We’ve got company. A Hoclarth hunter set up camp ten feet away from the shuttle.”

  Sami approached in slow motion making not a sound. She observed the campfire from fifteen feet away for about ten minutes.

  The hunter looked directly at her. “Good morning,” he said. “Care to join me?” The hunter spoke in the Kwan’qil dialect that Sami had learned from the patients she treated, not knowing that she would be required to speak it on this visit. She froze for another two minutes.

  “Timid, huh?” the hunter said. “Your friends from before were not timid.”

  Sami was curious about this Hoclarth hunter. She felt the same empathy for him that she felt for the patients she treated on the future Xaphnore.

  “Curious?” the hunter asked.

  Sami was feeling fear for the first time. This hunter was able to sense her presence and even know her emotions.

  “Your brothers came to Xaphnore, killed many animals without respecting them enough to eat their flesh or tan their skins.”

  Sami stepped forward and turned off her camouflage.

  “I have no brothers tal’ven,” Sami said.

  “You honor me with your greeting, tal’dor,” the hunter said. “I am Dimat Megrath.”

  “I am called Sami, but I have no brothers. How did you sense my presence? I know that the Hoclarth have a proximity sense for animals.”

  “It took many generations for the gromnels to teach us this sense after the Sisters brought us here,” Dimat said.

  “Why do you talk of my brothers or sisters.”

  “You are not like me or the gromnels. You are like the machines in our cities. They tell time, they create whole cloth, and they create the steel from which we build other machines. You are like them but from a time that has not yet passed.”

  “You understand that I’m from the future?” Sami asked.

  “A long-dead philosopher named Tal’qid explained that if you are faced with multiple possibilities, you eliminate the least likely, and select the one remaining. That’s why we don’t believe in magic.”

  “We call that Occam’s Razor. It’s important to what we call the scientific method.”

  “Our scientists follow a similar path,” Dimat said.

  “You say my brothers were here?”

  “The Kir’qox came a generation ago in a ship like yours. We named them after our word for ghosts. They killed many of us and our animal friends. They took our blood and left our bodies to rot. After a few days, they focused on the Malfnids. Our elders believe they left them with a disease. The sickness spread to the Hoclarth and killed many more of us before our doctors were able to use the blood of the Malfnids to create a cure.”

  “In my time, the Kir’qox have revisited Xaphnore and left behind the disease you spoke of,” Sami said.

  “The doctors will turn to the malfnids again.”

  “In the future, when you’re very old, your hunters will kill the last malfnid.”

  “So, you are here to use your weapon to kill them and take the bodies of malfnids back to your time,” Dimat said.

  “My weapon puts the malfnid to sleep. I hope to bring some animals back to my time so that they can live in the wild again.”

  “A young scientist has foretold that it is possible to travel back in time but not forward. Many have ridiculed her for the outrageous ideas that light and heat are the same things as earth, water, and air.”

  “She is correct,” Sami said.

  “So, how will you travel forward in time?”

  “The same way that you do, my friend, the same way we all do. I’ll take a long nap and awaken on a new day in the future.”

  “And, like your sisters before, you will protect the citizens of Xaphnore.”

  “I do not know about these sisters you speak of.”

  “In our language, gromnel means first citizen,” Dimat said. “The gromnels, like the malfnids, are related to the first particle of life on Xaphnore. They think and communicate without words or sound.”

  “The humans and gromnels get along?”

  “A hundred years before the sisters brought us to Xaphnore, they came and prepared the way. They got to know the ways of the planet and learned from the gromnels. The sisters learned to communicate in the way of the gromnel. When they brought the humans to Xaphnore, they spent centuries more teaching the humans to communicate with the gromnels.”

  “Humans like to be at the top of the food chain. They seek power over their domain.”

  “Citizens of Xaphnore are different now than when your sisters brought us here. The gromnels shared their proximity sense which allows us to hunt, but it also provides the humans with an acute empathy for the animals they hunt. We feel the pain and the anguish of our prey. That's why our weapons do not cause pain.”

  “I need your help then. My mission is to capture a group of malfnids from different herds.”

  “To prevent a problem we call family from family. Our scientists have studied this. The gromnels and I shall help you,” Dimat said.

  “You’ll communicate with them?”

  “They’re nearby. We’re communicating now.”

  “They trust me?”

  “They know that you are a child among the sisters, and it will be many revolutions before you share all of their wisdom.”

  “So, what’s next?” Sami asked.

  “The malfnids sleep in hiding during the day. We shall begin our hunt when Hoclar falls below the horizon.”

  “On Earth, we call it a sunset,” Sami said. “Humans gather around the world to observe the moment.”

  “We, too, observe the moment as the culmination of our day. The gods draw a new canvas from an infinite palette of colors each day.”

  “This is my first sunset.”

  After dark, Dimat led Sami to a spot under cover. Two hours later, Sami heard and felt the rumble of a large animal approaching.

  Dimat made the universal signal for quiet. “It’s a gromnel.”

  Sami did not see the animal nearby, but Dimat stood. “Greetings Toxem’al.”

  Sami heard a guttural language. She looked toward the sound but heard nothing. The speech she heard began to form words in her mind.

  Greetings hunter, I am called… The syllables of the name were foreign to Sami. I know you from the past, Dimat. You are a respectful hunter.

  “I appreciate the honor you bestow on me by remembering
.”

  Greetings, young sister. It has been many lifetimes since you last visited. How may we help you?

  Sami looked at Dimat. “Just speak normally,” he said.

  “I come from the near future. The humans of your planet suffer from a disease that comes from the Malfnid. I wish to take them back to find a cure.”

  I know of this disease, and I know those disrespectful hunters will kill our last friend soon. But you are to return our friends to their homes?

  “Correct Toxem’al,” Sami said.

  We grant you the forest and bless your endeavor.

  “My great thanks, Toxem’al.”

  Tell your children’s children that we enjoyed their visit. You will enjoy many sunsets.

  “I don’t understand,” Sami said.

  Every story has a beginning. You are that beginning.

  “I’ll do my best to bring you good memories,” Sami said.

  Dimat, this sister brings you a great gift as well. Tell our stories well, Dimat.

  “My greatest respect and appreciation for your foresight.”

  Again, the forest rumbled as the great animal departed.

  “What now?” Sami asked.

  “We wait.”

  Several hours passed. There was noise around them, and a smell overcame them.

  “Be careful, they bite,” Dimat said.

  Dimat and Sami returned to the shuttle with five malfnids.

  “I must go aboard my ship and prepare the animals for sleep,” Sami said.

  “Send my regards to your friend, Dani.”

  “You seem to know more about me than I about you,” Sami said.

  She spent some time aboard the ship and then revealed it momentarily again as she came outside before morning twilight. Her friend was asleep, and she quietly stood watch.

  The next night Sami and Dimat gathered more malfnids after putting them to sleep. Dimat hunted for skins and food and came back with several carcasses. Sami entered the shuttle and put the new animals in cryo-stasis. When she came out, Dimat was cooking meat over a fire. Sami sat next to him.