Kali's Doom

by Craig Allen

  Cody had thought about that too. The Hive had taken out every Kali ship launched from the planet without breaking a sweat. He was terrified by what would happen if the Hive reached Earth and Stripe were in a bad mood.

  “Think the UEAF will try to destroy the Hive?” Cody asked.

  Sonja sat on the edge of the bed. “That’s what I’m afraid of. Someone high up might order the fleet to try, mostly out of fear. The fliers will do what they have to, to protect themselves.”

  Cody sat next to her. “That scares me too. Guys like Simmons run the UET, ultimately. They’ll try something rash, and then God help us.” He shook his head. “I don’t want to talk about it anymore.”

  “I hear you.”

  Cody lay down, and she lay next to him. For a while, they just lay there without speaking. Cody focused on her heartbeat and breathing. He wanted to listen to that over and over, every day. Every night.

  He thought of asking her a question he’d wanted to ask for some time but didn’t have the nerve. Yes, they’d known each other for a year, but for most of that time, she was away. But when she came back, they’d picked up right where they left off, as if that was natural.

  He wanted to ask as they waited for the ship to transition to bridge space, beginning the two-light-year voyage to the globular cluster, and he kicked himself for not doing so.

  ~~~

  Cody sat at a station on the bridge, somewhat out of the way but still within earshot of Captain Gaston. Commander Galloway and Lieutenant Johnson were there too. Johnson had the helm. Cody saw a lot of familiar faces, plus many he didn’t recognize.

  “Thirty seconds,” Johnson said.

  Gaston was leaning back in his command chair, checking his fingernails. “Stand by to drop the Alcubierre field.”

  Everyone remained calm except Cody. Getting from the globular cluster to Kali took light almost two years, but they had made the trip in several hours. Technically, they were removed from space-time while inside the Alcubierre bubble, but that didn’t mean hitting an object wouldn’t hurt them.

  Further, the only thing visible on the main hologlobe was the interaction of ionic particles found in deep space against the Alcubierre field—stars, planets, or any other ship-crushing object. Mapping of the sector, especially in the past year, had been extensive, which reduced the odds of smacking something large.

  But none of that changed the reality that they were hurtling toward a globular cluster, where hundreds of millions of stars occupied a sphere only a few light years in diameter. How spacers maintained their cool in such situations baffled Cody.

  Then again, the toads were probably far more dangerous than the particles outside the ship.

  “Five, four, three…” Johnson turned to Gaston. “We’re here.”

  “Bring down the field,” Gaston said. “Let’s have a look around.”

  The dull throb around Cody vanished, and the view on the hologlobe shimmered as the Alcubierre field dissipated. The stars in the globe were easily ten times more numerous than the night sky.

  “How close are we, Lieutenant?” Gaston asked.

  “On the nose, sir.” Johnson adjusted the view on the holoview. “The target star is bearing zero four zero by zero zero eight. Three hundred million klicks.”

  Cody wiped his brow. Three hundred million kilometers from a neutron star, an object with an escape velocity of around ninety percent the speed of light, was almost too close.

  But Gaston didn’t seem perturbed in the slightest. “Very good. The mining facility?”

  An ensign at the sensor console swept his hand over his controls. “The mining facility is not present. Presumably, it is on the far side of the neutron star.”

  “As we planned.” Gaston steepled his fingers. “Adjust our trajectory so we are in high orbit around the star and shut down main drives. Then send out a probe to scan the other side of the star.”

  Galloway echoed the orders while Gaston sat in his chair, staring at the floor. Cody wanted to ask what Gaston was thinking, but just walking over to him didn’t seem appropriate. Gaston stood and paced. On the holoview, a tactical display showed the neutron star and Odin in its orbit. Two more objects rocketed away from the ship at speeds far greater than any hopper.

  “Probe will be in range of the mine within ten minutes, sir,” Galloway said.

  “Good.” Gaston continued pacing. “And there’s no sign of anyone else?”

  The sensor operator scanned the area. “No gravimetric readings other than the probe.”

  “Maybe they don’t expect us to be here,” Cody said.

  “I would.” Gaston folded his arms. “They didn’t even place a probe out—”

  “Contact!” The sensor operator put a graphic up on the hologlobe. “Looks like the Spican vessel.”

  The vessel had parked itself half a million kilometers away, in almost the same orbit as the Odin.

  “They’re hailing,” said the comm officer.

  The comm chimed, and a hollow voice drifted across the bridge. “We have nothing on our sensors but you.”

  “Same here,” Gaston said. “That doesn’t seem right.”

  “Agreed. We will proceed toward the facility over the perihelion.”

  Some officers glanced at Gaston, at least those that didn’t understand Spican. The Spicans didn’t have a concept of questions, so they simply made statements and waited for an agreement or a disagreement.

  Gaston responded. “And we’ll proceed over the star’s apogee. However, we have a probe proceeding around the star in our same orbit. We should wait to see what it reports before we move into range.”

  “Agreed.” The comm chimed off.

  Gaston sat back down. “Well, I hope they don’t get too impatient.”

  Cody hoped the same.

  Minutes ticked by, during which the probe skirted an inner orbit past the neutron star. It dove closer to the star, using its gravity to pick up momentum. Upon reaching a certain distance, the probe’s grav engines shut down so gravimetrics aboard toad vessels wouldn’t pick it up. The probe itself was fitted with antilidar and other stealth mechanisms, but that didn’t guarantee invisibility. It only reduced the odds of it being discovered.

  “Receiving a signal now, sir.” Johnson put the readouts on the hologlobe.

  “Relay those readings to the Spicans, Mr. Johnson,” Gaston said.

  Cody pulled up the readings on his own station. To the naked eye, the star simply looked like any other neutron star though the patterns on the surface remained in one place, which was strange. When a massive stellar body died, it collapsed into a neutron star. As it ran out of fuel and the remaining mass fell toward the center, the spin was imparted, like draining water. It could spin several times a second—but not the neutron star before them. Someone had put the brakes on the spin, which was a miracle. A cubic centimeter of a neutronium weighed around a billion tons. Halting the spin of an object twenty-five kilometers in diameter made of that sort of dense material required technology and physics beyond human understanding.

  In other words, an Antediluvian civilization had done it.

  “What do you think?” Gaston stopped at Cody’s station.

  Cody examined the gravimetric readings from the probe. “The mining facility is likely still present. The zero-gravity column is, anyway.”

  Gravimetrics showed massive gravity around the neutron star, but rising from the center of the massive body was a corridor of zero gravity, big enough for a battle cruiser to fly all the way down to the surface, and not once would the vessel experience any gravimetric shear.

  Cody knew that was the case as he had been in the hopper that had first flown down into the star with Sonja and Sergeant Bodin eight months before. They got out okay, but the toads hadn’t made it easy. They likely would cause problems again even though they had lost a lot of ships last time.

  “What about the facility itself?” Gaston asked. “That thing took a massive beating, last I heard.”

&n
bsp; Cody thought that an understatement. During the final battle at the star, one of the toads’ battle cruisers had fallen onto the surface. When the remains of the Kali ship were crushed by the star’s gravity and reduced to atoms—traveling at about a third the speed of light upon impact—the force of the explosion was larger than all the tacs in the fleet detonating at the same spot at once. The fact that no other ships were lost in that explosion was a miracle, but the debris had covered the facility on the star’s surface, making retrieval of additional exotic matter impossible.

  Soon, the probe came into range. A hole was present at the bottom of the zero-g shaft.

  Cody looked at the readouts. The facility had removed not only all debris from the crashed space vessel, but also material from the star itself. In a few months, it had mopped up billions of tons of neutronium, and the installation looked as if nothing had ever gone awry.

  “So the facility cleaned itself up,” Gaston said.

  “Apparently.” Cody wished the probe were at a better angle so that he could see all the way into the mine itself, which was below the surface of the star. “It makes sense, really. As massive as the gravity is on a neutron star, debris must sink in from time to time. They’d have to have a means of cleaning it up.”

  “How the hell do you clean up debris on the surface of a neutron star?” Gaston asked.

  “Same way you maintain zero gravity on an area on the surface,” Cody said. “Or dig a hole into the center of the star where the degenerate quark matter is located.”

  Gaston nodded. “In other words, by magic. Or whatever technology the Antediluvians used.”

  “Receiving a hail from the Spicans,” the comms officer said.

  “Patch it through.” Gaston left Cody’s station and sat in his chair. “Looks like everything is intact.”

  “Everything is present as it was reported before, and we see no ships,” the Spican said. “It is unusual, but we will proceed with the plan.”

  The comm cut out.

  “Helm,” Gaston said. “Set course for the other side of that star, passing across its apogee. Time for us to do a little mining.”

  ~~~

  An hour later, they were on the other side of the star, which didn’t look very different from the initial side, other than the presence of the mining facility.

  “Are we still alone out here?” Gaston asked.

  “Affirmative, sir,” the sensor officer said. “I’m detecting the Spican ship approaching, but that’s it.”

  “Damn.” Gaston pressed his fingertips together. “They wouldn’t just abandon this place.”

  “Maybe they’re at Kali,” Galloway said. “We could be missing out on a fight.”

  “Let’s hope not.” Gaston stood from his command chair. “Helm, take us to the top of the zero-g shaft. When we’re there, we’ll launch Banshee One Eight to collect the gold.”

  Gaston turned to Cody. “Doc, you seem to be the resident expert on Antediluvian tech. If anything goes wrong, I want you present. And, so far, that facility seems safe, at least safer than here if we encounter the toads. The question is are you ready to go down there.”

  “I am.” Cody wasn’t, but he would never admit that.

  “Then get your ass onto Banshee One Eight.” Gaston pointed at him. “And you and Ensign Monroe be good on this trip, understand?”

  Cody cleared his throat. “I’ll do my best, Captain.”

  ~~~

  The hopper accelerated against its momentum, trying to slow its descent into the zero-g corridor. The star’s surface raced past the zero-g column like a river around a tree. Most of what Cody saw was an illusion of light warped by the star’s massive gravity, but it still looked impressive and dangerous.

  They’d been traveling for several hours, and Cody did his best to get some sleep, but he was all slept out. Furthermore, this was one of the few times he could spend alone with Sonja, even if they were just sitting in a cockpit.

  Sonja was checking their Daedalus drive, which had been attached to the hopper in case the Odin or the Spican ship wasn’t there when they got back. The Spican ship itself didn’t have a name. Spicans never named their ships. Somehow, they just always knew which ship was which.

  “This is familiar, isn’t it?” she asked.

  “Yeah. Except Bodin was with us,” Cody said. “And Sinclair and Francis were up top.”

  She nodded. “Sinclair and Francis are still in the fleet, aren’t they?”

  “Assigned to the Tokugawa. I see them once in a while.”

  “Those two guys were goddamn crazy.” She sighed. “I miss the hell out of Bodin.”

  “Yeah, me too.”

  Cody pulled up the rear view again. The Spican vessel sat almost on top of the zero-g tube, like a book covering a hole in a table. He wasn’t worried about them. They wanted access to the technology within the ring as much as humans did. The question was would the UET Council permit it. If they didn’t, the Spicans wouldn’t be happy, and the last time the Spicans weren’t happy, a war broke out.

  “Here we go,” Sonja said. “We’re passing the surface.”

  Waves of light continued to wrap around the zero-g tube. Judging distance or shape or anything familiar to humans on the surface was nearly impossible.

  The hopper sank deeper into the hole of the mine. Outside was only blackness. Hopper readings were useless. Lidar was absorbed by the neutronium around them, and gravimetrics continued to read zero. That alone was interesting. Gravity was everywhere. Even in the depths of space, one could detect the gravity from distant stars. Gravity kept the stars in orbit around the center of the galaxy. To see no readings at all on gravimetrics was unheard of.

  “Cutting main drive,” Sonja said. “Engaging maneuvering thrusters. I’m going to launch skeeters once we’re past that barrier.”

  Cody nodded as he checked the sensors. “Still nothing. Not even a gram of debris is left over.”

  “The place cleans up nicely,” Sonja said.

  Purple light illuminated the exterior. It surrounded the hopper then stretched out to fill the corridor in a disk shape behind them, like a cap on a bottle.

  “There it is.” Sonja pointed. “That brings back memories.”

  Three lights appeared in a triangle fashion at the bottom of the shaft. The two on top were indigo and blue, while the one below was green.

  “Launching skeeters,” Sonja said.

  Seconds later, the tiny bots flooded from small hatches along one side of the hopper. They flew with miniature grav jets until they touched the exterior wall of the tube. There, they lined up equidistant from each other, creating an outline on the hopper’s sensors showing the edge of the tube on the HUD.

  “The interior is the same size as before,” Cody said. “Nothing’s changed. Not even the lights.” He raised an eyebrow. “I’m reading an oxygen-nitrogen atmosphere outside.”

  “Just like last time.” Sonja reached for him. “Babe, put your helmet on anyway.”

  “It’ll be fine,” he said.

  “I know, but do it for me. I don’t—” She took a breath. “This whole thing makes me nervous.”

  “What makes me nervous is the return trip,” Cody said. “This is nothing.”

  “I hope you’re right. Then again, we may end up having a potential disaster up top.”

  Cody leaned over and kissed her. To hell with Gaston’s orders. “It’ll be fine.”

  She brushed at his hair. “Better be.”

  Just above the lights, she fired forward station-keeping jets and brought the hopper to a stop. She then initiated anterior and posterior thrusters and flipped the hopper around until the rear hatch pointed at the lights.

  She let her breath out and activated her helmet. The clear plexi-composite wrapped around her head and sealed her helmet tight. Cody did the same.

  “Opening the rear hatch.” She looked at him. “Be careful.”

  He winked at her and smiled as he unbuckled himself. “Remember, this is
the easy part.”

  He told himself that several times. In reality, he was scared stiff. They were at the bottom of a shaft that had, at one point, been filled with neutronium. The pressure would have crushed even the atoms in his body. All that had been cleared by unknown mechanisms, which would likely clean his atoms up if something went wrong.

  Cody reached the edge of the hatch as it continued to open. He pulled a tether from the wall and attached it to his space suit then tried to guess how much slack he would need.

  “The control system is about three meters away,” Sonja said.

  Cody measured out three meters then a few extra centimeters. He then took another step and leapt toward the lights.

  As soon as he left the artificial gravity of the hopper, he was in free fall. He drifted toward the lights slowly, then the tether stopped him. It pulled him back a little, and he activated the jets on his suit, giving him a gentle thrust forward again. After a brief tug-of-war between his jets and the tether, Cody came to a stop in front of the lights.

  The three lights drifted toward him as if to say, “Hello, old friend.”

  Cody reached for the blue light. It flashed white, but nothing else happened.

  “It’s not doing anything,” Cody said. “I may have to touch it directly.”

  “Aren’t you doing that?” Sonja asked over the comm.

  “No, my suit’s glove is touching it.”

  “But that’s what we did last time, isn’t it? Why isn’t it working now?”

  Cody wasn’t sure. “I’m going to take off the glove.”

  “Cody, no.” Her voice was frantic. “What if the atmosphere fails?”

  “It won’t.” He was pretty sure of that, but he didn’t say he could guarantee it. “Look, I don’t think it’s trying to trap me.”

  “Oh Christ.” She sighed heavily. “Fine. Just be careful.”

  “Always.”