Superluminary_The World Armada Page 7
Lady Pallas said, “This is very odd. These are main sequence stars, and should not have any nitrogen and helium in the stellar surface visible in the spectrum. At this distance, the stellar winds colliding do not produce sufficient x-rays to ionize the nebula around us. But 9 Sagittarii is the main source for ionization for most of the visible nebula in this region… something is wrong with the shape of space and time in this star system…”
Aeneas cut her off. “We can discuss scientific curios later, Aunt Aspasia! Right now there is something wrong with the warpchannel we just left. It has not collapsed behind us!” Aeneas probed with his instruments. “Twenty five of the fleet of worlds that attacked us at Canopus survived and are in pursuit. They are in the warpchannel behind us. Be ready.”
Lord Mars paused in his polishing. “I thought the range of jovian planets was less than three hundred light years, even with a massive anchor at the far end. How could they follow us?”
But the signet ring of Lord Mars answered the question silently: the pursuit had made a warpchannel reaching no farther than into the warpchannel formed by the Dyson as it departed, and so the surviving enemy worlds had merely been pulled along in the wake.
Aeneas said, “We must rapidly form a shortrange warpchannel through nullspace to entrap first one of the 9 Sagittarii stars, and then the other, and reduce them to a singularity as fuel for our next long-range jump…” His signet ring was already calculating the four dimensional vectors needed for the tiny interplanetary hop.
The young Lord Deimos said, “Wait, sire! The temple computers of Mars register danger! Their thought processes were formatted by Lord Tellus, and no one can understand them. It is some sort of intuitive calculus: but we are in danger…”
Alarms were already coming in. Aeneas heard the screams from his relatives as their faces started to melt.
Episode 09 The Deadly Double Star
Aeneas saw, through his ring, the face and body of Brother Beast, alone in his control cell at the pole of the weapon-coated Tellurian superjovian. Both the planet and the man were glowing and dissolving. The core of the superjovian was disintegrating into neutrons and neutrinos, and the whole surface was convulsed with earthquakes and collapsing continents.
The fire giant, ice giant and water giant planets controlled by Lords Jupiter, Neptune and Lady Pallas were likewise shrinking and shaking themselves to pieces, while emitting massive neutrino bursts. The neutron storm radiating from the core through the surface was uneven, concentrated in some places, diffuse in others. Where the neutron storm was dense, the waves were destroying machines and organisms.
The neutral particles were unaffected by positive and negative energy holding atoms and molecules together, and, indeed, passed through such things like ghosts. But these neutrons had a greater rest mass than it was possible, in nature, for neutrons to have, and this increased the range of their strong nuclear force. Any atomic nuclei they passed through reacted like an unstable, radioactive material. Elements profoundly stable, carbon, helium, hydrogen, now dissolved into protons and alpha particles, and the energy of these dissolutions broke up atoms around them in a chain reaction.
The miniature suns orbiting the worlds popped like Roman candles, dissolving instantly, unnoticed in the eye-dazzlingly bright blaze of the two giant, white suns.
The superterrestrial and terrestrial planets were not as damaged, but cities and parishes were burning in the weird, invisible storm. By a bitter irony, the people living on the surfaces of the world, places thought to be unsafe, survived in greater numbers than the buried cities or the mermaids. The surrounding heavier elements in water and stone ignited more swiftly and in greater numbers than gasses.
And so the worlds were beginning to melt.
Deimos had formed periscopes to bring current images in from the myriad planetoids of this mad, clockwork system. On the worldlets were races of beings dissolving and re-growing continuously, living in towers and domes that also rotted and dissolved in minutes, but continually re-grew into new shapes, glowing and burning.
The worldlets were smooth, because land and ocean melted and reformed so frequently, that the surface was merely a level, glowing mush up from which heaps and bubbles and forked crystal-growth endlessly swelled and toppled. Burning rivers writhed like snakes, and burning mountains rose and fell like waves on the sea.
Brother Beast used his secret technique of metanthropy to shed his damaged skin, and now he stood alone on his superjovian world, his skin pink as a baby. “How are these creatures alive? Are they vampires?”
The glowing worldlets had not yet seen the warplanet called Saint Michael’s World, but they soon would, as the seconds turned into minutes.
Lord Uranus was less burned than his brothers. The subjovian world under his command, being less massive, had released fewer neutrons and neutrinos. He had also placed his command throne in the subjovian’s ring system, far above the surface. He said, “They are another kind of undead. No biological cells could withstand the constant elemental changes happening here: they must have been designed for this environment.”
It was young Lord Ganymede who then screamed. The closest of the many small worlds darting like fish and burning like torches was only four or five light minutes away from Second Jupiter. By sheer mischance, this was one of the civilian worlds, meant to be far from harm’s way. Immediately the nearer worldlets, including those not close enough to have seen the light-image from the gas giant as yet, informed by tachyon radio, now rushed inward toward the heavily populated gas giant, and the space-distorting neutron storm effect lanced out before them.
In the periscope spy-rays, the melting and reforming creatures in their melting and reforming observatories and weapon stations could be seen dancing and exalting. They retained just enough human shape to make the image horrible.
Brother Beast, even though his world was farthest from Ganymede’s location, was the most massive and had the greatest range. He reached out with a warpfissure, plucked up the nearest worldlet to the gas giant under Ganymede’s command, and flung it out of timespace. But his warp control circuits exploded and melted, and the armatures began to vibrate strangely and tear themselves apart.
Lord Jupiter, at the helm of the fiery gas giant called Inferno, was stationed nearby to Ganymede. Even though his body was glowing and falling, flake by flake, into pieces, and the pains burning his every nerve were hell itself, he retained the presence of mind to command his servants to open fire on the worldlets attacking his son.
More than half of the weaponry and mighty engines of Inferno dissolved and burned, but the other half created the interplanetary beam weapons and launched them, like bolts of lightning wider than moons reaching from globe to globe. The nearest enemy worldlets to Ganymede were incinerated, nor could the neutron storms which the glowing worlds shed block the river of electric power which flowed over them.
Aeneas ordered the evacuation of Second Jupiter. During battle, the populations had been told, and, indeed, hypnotized, into the discipline of carrying interplanetary range contortion pearls with them at all times. It would take many moments, perhaps more than they had to spare.
Then Aeneas called all the Lords of Creation to contort through space to the command dome on the Dyson, where Lord Deimos sat. They stopped dissolving.
Deimos said to Aeneas, “Why are we not melting?”
Aeneas said, “I don’t know.”
But Lady Pallas, her flesh a mass of melting scars, could still speak through her ring. “It is an application of warpcore technology. The base mass value of fundamental particles is being changed. The Dyson is hollow, less dense than air, so there is less damage here. Any neutron storm appearing at the gravitational center of the Dyson would be inside the singularity.”
Aeneas saw she was right. It was something even he had overlooked. In his memory was buried information about the effects of two space warps being formed in opposition to each other, but, until now, as the only man able to work a warpco
re, that knowledge had never floated to the surface of his mind before. There had been no example, and no need.
He now saw that the two giant stars were both equipped with armatures, but out of phase with each other, each interfering destructively with the other. The disharmony kept the fabric of space always perturbed. It was as if spacetime itself was in a continual state of flexing, growing, flattening, shrinking, so as to produce different mass values for neutrons and protons from moment to moment. No wonder normal matter was dissolving.
Lady Pallas said, “The violent convection at the star cores was a clue, as was the reach of ionization throughout the nebula. These are side effects of the alternations of base neutron mass: stable elements that cannot be ionized are being ionized here.”
The closest of the small worlds were now aware of Inferno, the fire giant warworld that had opened fire on them. Aeneas detected changes in nearby warpspace, and knew the creatures on the nearest world were communicating by tachyon radio to the further worlds that the lightwaves from the newly-arrived human intruders had not yet reached.
The small worlds now turned like a school of fish, as one, and closed in toward the fire giant. It was clear that they had not yet seen the Dyson and the other worlds in the Tellurian Armada: those bodies were too far away for the light to have reached them yet.
Lord Jupiter held up his ring, but the damage to his nervous system was too great: his hand melted and dissolved before his eyes, and his ring fell to the ground, also melting. “My children! They are still on that world!”
Lady Pallas acted before any could stop her. Her ring twinkled on her scarred, half-burned hand. She took control of one of the contortion pearls Lord Mars had arranged before him.
She was back on the water giant world called Pallas, alone with the vast brain that controlled it. She spun her armatures up to speed, vanished and swelled back into timespace at a point between Inferno and the smaller worlds. The countless weapons from far below her atmosphere blazed, but she was not attempting to overwhelm the vampire warp effect with hers. Instead, she directed neuropsionic fire at the strange and ever-burning white worlds. The only thing she did with the warp core was halt the progression of gravity through space, rendering all objects on and around her planet weightless, and throwing her atmosphere out into space. It definitely slowed the neutron storm effect.
The small worlds displayed another application of warpcore technology the humans had not hitherto seen: small cores making small warps in concert with each other, to impose slightly different fundamental physical constants on the planet Pallas. She was forced to flatten space to prevent small warps from destroying the matter-energy balances on her world. But when she did so, the small worlds erected warps out of phase with hers. Even though her world was far more massive than theirs, her attempt to flatten space accelerated the rate of disintegration of the core of her world, and dissolved her warp armature control mechanisms. She was now on a blind and uncontrolled planet, with a loose warp core consuming the center of it.
Both Pallas and Saint Michael’s World were motionless and defenseless. The speed at which two of the fourteen battle worlds had been rendered helpless was astonishing.
The rate of dissolution of the small worlds increased, and the small globes visibly shrank: but they soon recovered and restored themselves.
Aeneas attempted rapidly to change the spin variable of the Dyson, trying to synchronize with the many disjoined small, attacking worlds. His hope was that if he could stop this chaotic effect, he could form a stable warp and overwhelm these tiny, annoying worlds. It should have been child’s play to overpower things of so small a mass.
He could not do it.
The warp armature machinery on these melting worlds also seemed to be dissolving and recreating itself, and so was doubly unsteady. There was no way to match phase with them.
It was then the Lord Mercury spoke up. “I see what is happening. My son and I can save them!” Whereupon Lord Anubis spun up the armature of his subterrestrial world, Bald Spot, and vaulted the remaining megascale pearl near orbit around Inferno.
The small worlds suddenly lost their warp core controls. The Lords of Creation, through their instruments, watched in awe the buildings and people on the surfaces of the ever-changing, ever-burning worlds dissolved and did not regrow.
In suicidal runs, the dying undead of the small worlds set their planets shooting like bullets toward the gas giants just before they died. Fast as these bodies were, across interplanetary distances, they were far too slow.
Anubis darted Bald Spot toward Inferno, and formed a small warpchannel between leading back to the Dyson. Contortion pearls, which had been being jammed by the small and melting worlds, now operated. The children of Jupiter were moved instantly to safety.
Lord Mercury used the megascale contortion pearl to move the helpless water giant, Pallas, into close orbit around the Dyson, then Inferno, then Saint Michael’s World.
Lord Uranus said, “Sire, the other worlds of the system are now aware of us. The ringworlds show an energy spike: they are about to cast a field around the whole nebula and dissolve everything made of matter.”
Lord Mercury said, “Time to go!”
Deimos said, “Where to, sire?”
Aeneas by signet ring imprinted the navigational elements into his brain. Sakurai’s Object was nearby: a slow nova, but massive enough to fuel a next leap.
Deimos was already giving the command. The equatorial armature of the Dyson spun and tilted its own lightcone outside of timespace, and pulled the worlds of man into its wake.
Aeneas focused a hyperspatial periscope behind then, peering back into normal space, while their own local and highly curved spacetime folded abruptly. The surrounding stars turned red and fled away like sparks.
Aeneas smiled grimly as the twenty five worlds of vampires from Canopus emerged just at the moment when the nightmarish system of 9 Sagittarii annihilated everything made of normal matter. The vampire worlds dissolved. The small worlds dissolved. The small worlds, impossibly, like something from a bad dream, returned, burning and melting and rippling like water. The vampire worlds did not.
Then the survivors of mankind were safe within the warp channel: a zone of timespace so small that light rays circumnavigated the entire miniature universe, and the men could see the surface of their own Dyson reflected in every direction as if in a globe surrounding. The worlds of men seemed to hang between the orb of the Dyson and the inside-out orb of its reflection, globes of gas and stone hovering like bubbles between two curving walls of metal. Unlike the escape from Canopus, there was no pursuit.
The wounded were taken to cellular regeneration coffins. All but one. Lord Jupiter, sitting on his chair of state, would not leave the chamber and go to his own healing. His face was drawn and pale with grief, and he did not bother to wipe the tears streaming freely from his eyes.
He spoke no word: all knew this meant his son Lord Ganymede was dead.
Aeneas sighed. “At Sakurai’s Object, we can refuel for our next jump, lick our wounds, bury our dead, rebuild our broken jovians, and see what more nightmares await us.”
He adjourned the council, and set them about such tasks of repair as could be done while the armada was within the closed timelike curve segment outside spacetime. Then Aeneas returned to his own chambers, brooding over his mistakes and failures, and wishing, for once, his cleverly-made and poison-resistant body could be influenced by alcohol.
Episode 10 Sakurai’s Object
The star V4334 Sagittarii, also called Sakurai’s Object, thought to be a slow nova, was a white dwarf that, due to a very late thermal pulse, swelled monstrously and became a red giant.
Fortunately, there were no surviving planets in the system, hence no space vampires. The cataclysmic thermal pulse had obliterated any outer worlds, and then the rapid expansion of the star to a red giant swallowed any inner worlds, leaving the entire system swept clear of any trace of planet, planetoid, or comet.
The Dyson turned the hullplates of its equator transparent to light and infrared, and the worlds adjusted their orbits to let the radiance falling from these vast windows fall across them.
The Dyson did not crush the giant star, not yet. Masses of material drawn up by counter rotating magnetic fields reaching in-system from the underside hull of the Dyson, were cooled, transmogrified, and contorted to the wounded worlds to supply what had been lost to the neutron decay at 9 Sagittarii.
Time passed while worlds were rebuilt and trillions of dead were mourned and buried.
The Lords of Creation met in council beneath the trees of Heaven Lake on Second Earth. In the sky, the Dyson had risen to the zenith. the curving strip of windows through which Sakurai’s Object, now their sun, blazed like a rainbow ignited to fire. The wind was fierce and blustery. Several Lords and Ladies used their rings to erect invisible fields to block the gusts and to warm themselves, wondering why Aeneas insisted on meeting out of doors. Only Mars and Aeneas ignored the weather.
Aeneas had erected seven new seats with tall backs, shadowed beneath shining canopies, each with a sapling behind. An eighth seat, draped in black crepe and trimmed with a wreath, was also there. He watched the faces of his aunts and uncles as they contorted into view and looked, and saw the new seats.
The worlds under repair, mottled and scarred, were visible above the horizon as large crescents or small disks. Something in the demeanor of Aeneas was also scarred, although not visibly. Grim lines had deepened like crow’s feet about his eyes or like calipers around his nostrils and mouth.