Armageddon

by Craig Alanson

  “Oh, there are plenty of dwarf galaxies and star clusters between Andromeda and us, and all around the Milky Way in what you humans call the Local Group. Beyond the nine objects I listed, there is the Phoenix Dwarf, the three Leo dwarves, and plenty of others.”

  “Can, or should, we include any of those in our search?”

  “We can’t, because the Elders did not establish wormholes out that far. At least, the wormhole network does not have records of anything out that far. The Phoenix Dwarf, for example, is roughly a million and a half lightyears away. The practical limit for how far away a wormhole can project is approximately four hundred thousand lightyears. ”

  “Ok, fine. So, you identified potential beta sites, in the dwarf galaxies closer to the Milky Way.”

  “Yes, however, the effort to explore all these sites to determine which one would be best for a colony will take years, Joe, many years.”

  “No it won’t, Skippy. We don’t need to find the best site, we just need to find one that is good enough. Sometimes trying to be perfect only means you waste a bunch of time. Soon as we identify a planet that can support human life, and like, is not near a star that will go supernova, we should try to establish a colony there.”

  “Oh. That narrows the list considerably, then. I will eliminate those dwarf galaxies and star clusters that only have one wormhole that I know of.”

  “Only one?” That surprised me. “In a whole galaxy? I know these are dwarf galaxies, but still, I thought there would be more than one wormhole there.”

  “Yes, some of the dwarf galaxies and star clusters have only a single wormhole, the one that connects to the Milky Way. Take, for example, the Bootes dwarf-”

  “Hee hee,” I had to laugh. “Booty. That’s funny.”

  “Oh, you are such a child sometimes, Joe. Bootes is spelled B-O-O-T-E-S, with an umlaut on the second ‘O’.”

  “An oom what?”

  “Umlaut, you ignorant cretin. Those two dots used above vowels in German. Oh, forget it, I can see this is hopeless. Fine, how about the Draco dwarf galaxy? Anything funny about that?”

  “Nope. Draco means dragon, right? Cool.”

  “I am so grateful the name of that minor galaxy meets your approval. You moron. Anyway, I have identified only one wormhole in Draco. Apparently, the Elders got there, looked around and decided there was nothing interesting, so they never set up other wormholes to travel within Draco. They probably left a solid ‘Meh’ review on Tripadvisor. That makes sense. Draco mostly consists of old stars, without many large clouds of dust for forming new stars. It is not a good candidate for a colony.”

  “I like your logic. We not only need to get to a dwarf galaxy, we also need to fly around inside it to explore. If all we can do is check out sites within a couple lightyears of the one wormhole that connects to the Milky Way, we aren’t likely to identify a good candidate for a beta site. Ok, we eliminate Draco and this Booty Call place,” I snickered at my own joke. “Are there any dwarf galaxies or star clusters that have multiple wormholes, so we have multiple sites to explore?”

  “Having a local wormhole network is not the only criteria, Joe. We should eliminate the Magellanic Clouds and the Sagittarius Dwarf, because records indicate the Rindhalu might have traveled there in the past. There may be Rindhalu there still. To be safe, I kept on the list only locations where there is no evidence of the Rindhalu ever traveling there, and where the wormhole connecting to the Milky Way has been dormant as long as the Rindhalu have been keeping records.”

  “Great, so that leaves how many places? Wait, don’t tell me that, I don’t want to get bogged down in details. What are your top three potential sites?”

  “In order of preference, the Sculptor dwarf, the Carina dwarf and the Ursa Minor dwarf. They each have an active local wormhole network, in addition to the super-duty wormhole connecting to the Milky Way.”

  “Whoa! Active wormholes? Like, somebody out there is using them?”

  “I can’t tell from here if ships are going through those wormholes, Joe. All I know is, there are local wormholes that were still active, at the time those gamma rays left the source. In the case of Sculptor, that data is nearly three hundred thousand years old. The entire local wormhole network in that dwarf galaxy could be dormant by now, I have no way to know until we get there.”

  “How extensive are these local wormhole networks? Are there hundreds of wormholes in each dwarf galaxy?”

  “Hundreds? No, Joe. The Sculptor dwarf has only two wormholes that I can detect, in addition to the one connecting to the Milky Way. The Carina dwarf has six, and Ursa Minor has three. The lack of wormholes is not because the dwarf galaxies are actually small, Carina is nearly two thousand lightyears across. I think the relative lack of wormholes is because there are not many habitable planets in those dwarf galaxies. They tend to consist of older stars with little formation of new stars, plus they generally are less rich in carbon, metals and other heavy elements that form rocky planets. Don’t worry, even a dwarf galaxy is big, Joe. It is fairly certain there are habitable planets out there, especially near wormholes, because the Elders usually located wormholes near habitable planets. The fact that the dwarf galaxies I mentioned are overall poor in heavy elements is a bonus, for the purpose of setting up a beta site.”

  I was dreading a nerdy science lecture, but had to ask anyway. “Uh, why is that?”

  “Because they would be last on the list of places the Rindhalu or Maxolhx would want to go, if they ever achieved the technology to travel beyond the Milky Way.”

  “Good, good,” I let out a breath in relief. While he was smacking me with sciency stuff, I feared he was telling me that our search for a beta site was doomed. “That is great news, Skippy. We have three good candidates.” In the back of my mind I was thinking that having multiple possible sites would be a good thing. “We will have to be careful about screwing with wormholes to connect to one of these dwarf galaxies, so maybe we should use a wormhole far away from Earth, huh?”

  “Good idea, but here is another complication; it is not easy to find super-duty wormholes here in the local sector, that can be connected to wormholes in satellite galaxies.”

  “Wait, what? Why can’t-”

  “Because they can’t, Joe. Not every wormhole can be connected to every other one. There are different types of wormholes, some were built for long-range connections. Most are only capable of spanning a gap of six thousand lightyears, even if I screw with their programming.”

  “Crap. I did not know that.”

  “Joe, you should use ‘I did not know that’ as your theme song.”

  “Why are there different types? Wait, have we ever been through one of these super-duper heavy-duty wormholes?” All the wormholes we had been through looked the same to me. All we saw, of course, was the temporary event horizon in local spacetime, we never actually saw the wormhole mechanism itself. Skippy had told me there were multiple types of Elder wormholes, but he hadn’t given me a lot of detail on what made them different.

  “Well, twice we have been through what I call ‘heavy-duty’ wormholes, although we used for them for relatively short-range shortcuts. The wormhole we used to get to the Roach Motel is a ‘heavy-duty’ wormhole, as you would describe it. There are different types of wormholes for the same reason there are different types of warships in a fleet; each type has a range of capabilities.”

  “Yeah, but, the reason not every ship is a battleship is mostly because they are expensive to build, maintain and support a large crew. The Elders did not have to consider resource constraints, did they? They could move stars!”

  “Even the Elders had to deal with limited resources. Their capabilities were truly vast, but, still limited. That is not the point, dumdum. Damn, you love to interrupt me. The Elders constructed different types of wormholes for different purposes. Remember I told you they once relocated an unstable blue giant star by jumping it through a wormhole? That was a very special wormhole built just for that
one-time use, it was taken apart to prevent it from creating a rupture in spacetime. That is why not every wormhole has long-range capability, Joe. Those heavy-duty wormholes are rough on local spacetime, they appear much less frequently than other wormholes and their emergence points are far apart. They also apparently have a limited lifespan, that is why the vast majority of them are currently dormant. I think the Elders kept these heavy-duty wormholes dormant most of the time, only activating them when needed. Even while dormant, their presence causes disruptions in higher dimensions of spacetime, that is how I have been able to locate them.”

  Damn it, not knowing why there are different types of wormholes fell into that huge category of ‘ways my ignorance can get me killed’. Unfortunately, there was a LOT in that category. Like, too much. The problem was, Skippy only told me stuff he thought I needed to know, and because of my profound ignorance, I did not even know what questions to ask. It was very frustrating.

  “Wonderful. You do know which wormholes are just the normal or heavy-duty type, and which super-duty ones can connect outside the galaxy, right? At the end of our Renegade mission, you said something about there being three super-duties we should check out.””

  “Yes to your first question, no to the second. I don’t know which wormholes might be able to connect beyond the galaxy, because I have never asked the wormhole network to try that.”

  “Whoa. Do you know for sure that any wormholes in this galaxy can reach one of those dwarf galaxies, or are you guessing?”

  “I’m not guessing, Joe, I- Hmm, Ok, technically I am sort of guessing. It’s a simple matter of logic. There are Elder wormholes in satellite galaxies, so they must have been active at some point, and they must have connected to this galaxy. I’m not going to use the word ‘duh’-”

  “Except you just did.”

  “Ugh. Fine. You asshole! You slap this huge project on me, to identify potential beta sites, and when I tell you it is not so easy as the monkey would like, you get all pouty and mad at me.”

  “I do not get ‘pouty’.”

  “Your lower lip is sticking out, and you are frowning like a baby who can’t get candy.”

  “Can we just agree this is super complicated? Damn, whenever you go all Professor Nerdnik on me, my head hurts.” I had not asked him why the dwarf galaxies were poor in heavy elements and why most of their stars were old, because I knew he would give me a half-hour lecture about it. And because it did not matter why a dwarf galaxy had so little carbon compared to the Milky Way-

  Except, crap, maybe it did matter. My ignorance could get me killed someday, get a lot of people killed. With a mental groan I kept to myself, I decided learning useful knowledge was too important, I needed to suck it up and force my slow brain to smarten up. “Skippy, I’m going to grab a sandwich and I’ll be right back, so you can explain about the chemical composition of dwarf galaxies, and how you plan to find out whether any wormholes in this galaxy can connect way out there.”

  “Really?” his voice dripped with sarcasm.

  “For realz, homeboy. This ignorant monkey needs to smarten up sometime, might as well start now.”

  “Hoo boy, this is not going to be easy. Well, if I can educate you about the physics of stellar formation, maybe that will add another plaque to the wall in my Awesomeness Hall of Fame.”

  Wisely, I did not ask whether he was actually planning to build a hall of fame for himself.

  Adams was back aboard the ship, that meant she was again leading exercise classes in the gym. Because she loved so much to make people suffer, I was surprised that she had chosen the Marine Corps over a job at the Department of Motor Vehicles. The first class she led was a Spin workout, which I was excited about because all the equipment in the gym had recently been replaced and upgraded. As part of rebuilding the ship yet again, Skippy had moved bulkheads to make the gym larger. That was good for our high-speed special operations troops, but the reason for expanding the ship’s recreation facilities was we would be carrying a lot more people. The ship’s new peacetime role of missions back and forth to a beta site, including the initial survey work and setting up for a colony, meant the Dutchman would be supporting two or three times as many people. Skippy had upgraded the life support capacity, mostly the water supply and oxygen recycling. Several cargo bays had been converted to sleeping quarters, with racks of bunks. Privacy would be at a premium, and two cargo bays had been set aside for common areas and a second galley. I would have to appoint an officer to deal with the civilian survey teams, because I sure as hell didn’t want to do that.

  Anyway, I had been given a tour of our new gym, but had not used the Spin bikes yet. For Adams’s first class, I arrived twenty minutes early, to find the room already almost full. The only bikes left were in the second row, so I picked one at random and set it up, flopping a towel over the handlebars and a water bottle in the rack. Everyone else was warming up, and I got started. Then I noticed something odd. All the women in the class were on bikes in the back row. Captain Frey was behind me, so I turned around and whispered to her. “You’re a hardcore adventure racer, Frey. I figured you would be in the front row.”

  “Sir,” she said evenly between breaths, because she was already out of her seat, standing on the pedals. “If I was right in front of you, what would you be doing?”

  “Uh-” That confused me for only a heartbeat, then I felt my cheeks redden with a blush. She meant, I would be staring at her shapely ass. That would be wrong and unprofessional and disrespectful, and biology didn’t care about any of that. “Gotcha,” I mumbled and turned around, pretending to be adjusting my bike.

  Five minutes before the class started, all the bikes were occupied, and Adams was walking around, checking that everyone knew how to set up the new bikes. Just before she got to my row, the bulkhead in front of us changed from projecting a view of a mountain road, to display boxes of data. It shocked me when I saw the data being displayed.

  “Gunny,” I hissed, waving her over to me. “When you were dirtside, did you visit the Bad Ideas Hall of Fame?”

  “No Sir,” she grinned. “Why?”

  “You know exactly what I mean.” The problem was not the new bikes, it was the display. It showed the name and a photo of everyone, with their current heartrate and the amount of power they were generating. Everyone in the class could see the amount of power output of everyone else. With the class full of special operations troops, that was a recipe for nothing but trouble. One thing I knew about operators was they were competitive, like, super competitive. Now they could see where they ranked against their peers, in real-time. “Are you trying to kill people?”

  She looked behind her at the display. “You’re cranking out a hundred sixty watts, Sir. That’s nothing to be ashamed of,” she said, but the tone of her voice was that of a mother patting a child on the head after striking out at teeball.

  “I’m just warming up, Gunny,” I said through clenched teeth. “This is a bad idea,” I pushed harder and my power output went up above two hundred. Crap. Behind me, Frey was above two fifty. She was already warmed up, I told myself.

  That is very nice, girly-man, my inner self responded. My inner self is an asshole.

  “Trust me, Sir,” Adams whispered as she moved away. On the display, several boxes were showing a continuous power output above four hundred watts. One guy was approaching five hundred. I knew that just from the gasping grunts he was making.

  Damn, the class was scheduled for an hour and it hadn’t started yet.

  Adams got the music thumping, taking us straight into a long climb. We reached the top seven minutes later, and everyone was gasping. My legs felt like rubber, yet I was proud of myself. My power output was in the top quarter of the class. It was partly unfair, because while the ship was being rebuilt, I had nothing much else to do, so I had taken as much time as I could in the flight simulator, and practically lived in the gym when I wasn’t pretending to fly. As a result, I was in the best condition of my life. Ha,
I thought, the old man isn’t so-

  Adams interrupted. “Very good, boys and girls. I see we have some superstars with us today.” She highlighted a handful of the power output numbers. Those people were giving themselves imaginary high-fives. Then she crushed egos. “This is not a competition, but we all know that is bullshit.” She shook her head and drew laughter from the group. “Here’s what you don’t know. The winner of this competition will have the greatest average power output, as a percentage of body weight. Average, over the hour. That means you show-off idiots who are pushing so hard that you bonk after thirty minutes, are going to lose.”

  Man, I could almost hear the class doing math in their heads. The guy who had been cranking out a steady four hundred watts immediately dropped below two hundred, a sheepish look on his exhausted face. He was in trouble and he knew it, his legs already shook like jello. Everyone was looking around, trying to guess body weights.

  Adams had not only made the class a competition, she had found a way to make it interesting.

  The class ended, with an optional fifteen minutes of ab work, which of course everyone stayed for. How did I do in the competition? Not at the bottom, thank you very much.

  Hey, you want to know if I beat Captain Frey?

  Oh, shut up.

  “Adams, I owe you an apology,” I said as I helped her carry a basket of sweat-soaked towels.

  “Sir, you trust the awesomeness, but you don’t trust me?”

  “Won’t happen again,” I assured her. “What?” She was looking at me with amusement.

  “If you weren’t my C.O., I would say you are cute when you’re embarrassed. But that would be inappropriate.”

  “The jury is instructed to disregard that remark,” I winked.

  “Are you coming to my strength class this afternoon?”