Empire of Stars

by D. W. Patterson

  EMPIRE OF

  STARS

  Star Series Book 2

  D.W. PATTERSON

  Copyright © 2019 D.W. Patterson

  All rights reserved.

  1st Edition

  1st Printing - December, 2019

  Cover – Copyright © 2019 Future Chron Publishing

  Cover Image © – SelfPubBookCovers.com/RLSather

  No part of this book may be reproduced in any manner whatsoever without permission, except in the case of brief quotations for the purpose of review. For information please contact – futurechronpub@gmail.com

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and events are products of the author's imagination and should not be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events and people, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  DEDICATION

  To Sarah

  In spite of the opinions of certain narrow-minded people, who would shut up the human race upon this globe, as within some magic circle it must never out step, we shall one day travel to the moon, the planets, and the stars ...

  Jules Verne

  EMPIRE

  OF

  STARS

  star series book 2

  TO THE READER

  Most of the technology and science used in the story is defined as it is introduced. However, so as not to slow the story excessively, not all the science and technology is described or not completely described when introduced. Much of the science and technology were developed throughout my Mach Series of books (Mach's Metric, Mach's Mission and Mach's Legacy), and in the first book of the Star Series (Cycle Of Stars). A description, or a more complete description of these terms can be found in the section Future Chron Science.

  Note that the Star Series is set in the same universe as my Mach Series with the same science and technology carried over and some of the same characters.

  1

  Humankind had made many false starts on their way to becoming a space-faring species. Some had hesitated because they were dismayed at the costs and turned to controlling the limited resources on Earth rather than trying to expand those resources through space exploration and development. Others were dismissive of man's capabilities in space. They had no faith in mankind even though they expected their fellow citizens to make sacrifices for some cherished ideology.

  Then there were those who believed it would be best for the Earth and also the universe if mankind simply quit striving and stagnated to death.

  But nothing had stopped simple human inventiveness and the relatively recent development of the spin-two drive*, which had superseded the less capable but sufficient for its time wormhole drive*, had increased humanity's reach into space by a factor of a thousand.

  Humanity was farther out now, farther from Earth than ever before. With the new drive, they were now tentatively exploring in the Perseus Arm of the Milky Way and there they had made a discovery, a discovery that mankind had longed for ever since he looked up into the night sky and wondered. A discovery that threatened to answer an eternity of dreams with a nightmare ever after if humanity didn't prove to be capable of making the right choice. And it wasn't only humanity's choice . . .

  Game-changing events usually start in obscurity, if only they would stay that way.

  The road to the bison ranch was long. Darryl was traveling it for the hundredth time bringing the stuff to the ranch that the drones couldn't deliver. Darryl was the ranch's least important employee, the last man on every list.

  The vehicle he was driving was a large delivery van that had a failed self-driving droid. The ranch was like that, almost everything there was used in a manner that was not its intended use and took the maximum of human input. But no one complained, it was better than being confined in a couple of rooms of one of the huge tower complex buildings where ninety percent of the population of Earth now lived.

  Out here it was a throwback to a time when people had some direct influence on the outcome of their life. Darryl appreciated the freedom even though the pay and board weren't that good. Driving through the open country for miles to the ranch was a reward in itself. Out here you could be alone. No one in the tower complexes could think for themselves without taking into account their neighbor's thoughts.

  The sky was low today, clouds coming from the coast as a weather system moved across. Because of the low ceiling, Darryl almost missed the bright bubble of light in the clouds but he couldn't have missed the result. Darryl was watching as the light blinked out and held his gaze for a moment. A moment too long.

  “What the . . .” he said as he put the truck into a sideways skid to shed its momentum. The truck slid to a stop with only a slight whumpf as it encountered the object. Darryl turned to look out his side window only to see what looked to be a wall of dirt. He quickly slid to the other side and exited through that door.

  Walking backward, all the while looking up, he beheld what seemed a chunk of earth maybe fifty feet high and as far as he could tell slightly wedge-shaped like the top was somewhat overhanging. It was probably a hundred feet in diameter and round. Darryl began to move at an angle to the object.

  At the top of this mound of earth, if that was what it was, he saw some kind of vegetation with an unbelievable color. A kind of green-red iridescent. Darryl may have been more curious except at that moment right behind him another huge mound of dirt hit and shook the ground with a huge roar that sounded like an incoming artillery shell. It blocked the road in that direction. He felt trapped and almost panicky, what if he were in the wrong place when one of the mounds fell from the sky?

  Darryl ran back to the truck and started it up. He felt the ground shake as before, though he couldn't see it he knew from the shaking that another mound had hit. He turned the wheel sharply away from the wall of dirt that the truck was resting against and mashed the accelerator. At first, the truck was slow to respond as Darryl heard the scraping sound of the truck's side against the wall of dirt. But soon it broke free and Darryl was driving as fast as he could around the obstacle. It was then that he saw mound after mound set down on the floor of the valley he was traveling through. Darryl quit looking and determined on regaining the road so that he could increase his speed and get out of “Giant Valley” as the old-timers called it.

  Jim Owens had heard what that crazy Schiff boy had been saying but he didn't believe it until the government showed up. Now they had blocked off the valley road and Jim would have to take his horses to the buyers over the mountains. It was the long way and the horses didn't like being penned up that long. He could rent a sky-transport but that was expensive compared to his horse trailer. The Ems* might run the tower complexes efficiently but out here they were useless.

  Up in the mountains, the roads weren't so well maintained because the traffic was light. Jim would have to be careful especially after dark to avoid any problems with broken stretches of roadway. But if he didn't have to stop he should be down and out of the mountains by morning and almost at his destination.

  It was almost midnight and Jim had the windows down and the music cranked to keep himself awake. He saw the road sign at the last minute and wasn't sure what it indicated. He slowed down anyway and turned on all the truck's lights. There was another warning sign and just beyond Jim saw the reason why. The road was carved out as if someone had taken a huge ladle and scraped from one side to the other. It was a deep gouge but the sides were shallow so Jim thought he could wrestle the truck and trailer across.

  He had the truck down one side and had started up the other when the trailer hitch broke. Jim had to spend a minute cussing before he got out of the truck. Another minute was spent in exclamation when he saw the broken hitch. He was disturbing the horses.

  Before he bent down to see
what was the damage a bright light from above engulfed him. Shielding his eyes with his hand he looked up but still couldn't see anything. He felt his skin prickling and then a sensation of falling, upward.

  A moment and he was standing in a large room with a high ceiling. The walls, floors and ceiling all seemed luminescent. The truck and trailer were before him with the truck still running. He moved to turn it off.

  As he was sitting in the quiet of the truck a door recessed into the far wall. What looked like a man appeared on a screen that almost covered one wall. As Jim stared could see the man was almost bald and likely of small stature. His facial features were childish.

  Just like a scientist, thought Jim.

  He got out of the truck.

  Then the being said, “Welcome.”

  Jim hesitated.

  “Where am I?”

  “I'm afraid that isn't important. You were brought here as a test and it seems successful.”

  Jim was starting to dislike the little man.

  “Very well then who are you?”

  “Again that is unimportant. We will be sending you back shortly.”

  “You're going to send me back without repairing my trailer hitch and into that hole? That sir is abominable.”

  “Get back in your vehicle the transfer will begin immediately.”

  The little man turned and wallscreen went blank.

  Jim was tempted to charge the wallscreen but what good would that do? Then he felt the prickling on his skin as he had before. He jumped into the truck as the sensation got most intense.

  Then it was over. Jim was sitting in his truck staring through the windshield. It was obvious he was back in the mountains. Then he noticed. They had returned him to the road but on the wrong side of the trench.

  Damn!

  Corporal Wright thought it strange. He had been assigned to take a vehicle and reconnoiter the mountain road. He was supposed to watch out for any unusual luminescence. He had found a locked truck with a broken trailer hitch and an empty horse trailer in the middle of the road. Just beyond it looked like a washout except there had been no great storms in the area for some time.

  Later after making his way across the washout, he had found a man on horseback with three other horses trailing. He said his name was Jim Owens and he was taking his horses to sale and that was his abandoned truck the Corporal had found.

  He had then started talking about lights and little men and rooms with huge wallscreens. Wright listened attentively shaking his head as if in agreement. The last thing he wanted to do was upset the man as it was obvious he had some serious problems.

  After parting the Corporal radioed for backup to meet him further down the mountain where they would wait for Owens to show up and quietly take him into custody. The Captain had specifically said he didn't want any crazy stories spreading about what was happening in the valley or up on the mountain.

  2

  Dagmar was an Em. That is an Em-based robot, an artificial intelligence (AI). Em stood for emulated brain, a scanned human brain loaded into a computer like substrate which had all the advantages of human thought at computer speeds. Ems had come into existence in the late twenty-first century, indeed Dag himself had been aware for more than five-hundred years.

  At six feet two inches, he had an impressive presence which was very human-like. His carbon nanotube outer body, except for his vision receptors, had the unique ability to become almost invisible when a small bias voltage was applied. He had used this ability before when encountering physical opposition.

  Dag had worked closely with humans for many years and had learned much about interacting with them. But still their emotional outbursts confused him and he was not sure he would ever understand. Dr. Dagmar Mach (the last name an honorary bequest of his mentor Dr. Elias Mach) was proud of being a robot and never tried to hide that fact.

  Dag had come to the planet New Adowa, some three-hundred light-years from his former home, Alpha Centauri. As seen from Earth, New Adowa lay in the direction of the Draco constellation. The Earth's old pole star Thuban (during the time of the Egyptian pharoahs) was a close companion of the star New Adowa orbited.

  Dag and his robot friend Sigmund had come to assist the New Gallan government in its work on extending the reach of the spin-two drive, that Dag had developed, beyond a thousand light-years. Sigmund's intelligence was based on an updated version of Artificial Narrow Intelligence (ANI)*, a much earlier form of AI than Ems. They both had worked closely with both the famous Dr. Mach, inventor of the wormhole drive, and his great-great-granddaughter Dr. Emmy Gibbs who took over Dr. Mach's work when he was killed. They expected to meet with Walker, another Em, who had previously been Dag's assistant.

  Dag and Sigmund had taken a shuttle down to the planet's surface. They were in Dag's hotel room which would serve as a base from which to work. They had noticed that all the news was about the strange discovery that had turned up when a nonlocal link* (similar to a wormhole and used for transportation and communication in space) had been opened far away near the Crab Nebula.

  “Dag do you remember what Dr. Mach used to say?”

  “I'm not sure Sigmund, what did he say?”

  “Well he used to say that there were no surprises if you had imagination.”

  “Certainly, no doubt,” said Dag still a bit confused about what they were discussing.

  “So you agree then that this latest discovery out near the Crab Nebula is no surprise.”

  “Oh, that's what you're talking about. As far as I know everyone's surprised. I mean over six-thousand light-years. I'm impressed they could open a link that far. Even finding such a distant nonlocal link is unusual. And that thing they found, how did it get way out there? They say its been there over four hundred years. Two hundred years before I developed the spin-two drive. And without the drive there's no way you can get that far out unless it was aliens.”

  “Yeah most ascribe it to aliens but that's not imaginative enough Dag, use your imagination. You see?”

  “See what Sigmund? I wish you wouldn't be so obtuse.”

  “Dag maybe you need a checkup. Could be time for an upgrade.”

  “I assure you that all systems are working fine. It's your darned obstinate refusal to speak in a straight forward manner that needs a checkup.”

  Sigmund continued, “I don't think it's aliens. I think that someone had to have the spin-two drive before you invented it. No way a wormhole drive could get anything out that far, take too long and the ship would probably fail along the way.”

  “Well if it's not aliens then it had to be the Aggies*.”

  “That's what I figure. Only those AIs from Earth were pretty much out of the picture at that time.”

  “How about that other AI faction, the Beleni*? Why couldn't it be them?”

  “Their leader was too authoritarian. I don't think any authoritarian regime would have the innate curiosity and necessary freedoms to come up with such a thing.”

  “Then who was it Sigmund!”

  “I don't know.”

  Dag exasperated, could only stare.

  “But with a little imagination I think we could figure it out,” added Sigmund. “We just need to . . .”

  Sigmund's voice trailed off as Dag held up his hand.

  “I'm detecting seismic activity Sigmund. It is very strong, you will feel it shortly.”

  That's when the hotel room they were in began to sway. The room lights failed but it wasn't dark. Light poured in from the windows.

  Sigmund rushed to the windows. As far as he could tell the lights were out everywhere in Arba Harar. But the glow came from the heavens. Looking up Sigmund could only make out a bubble-like structure which was pulsing and then became incandescently bright. Sigmund's image receptors failed him.

  A loud pop like an electric transformer blowing out followed. The building's frame rippled and some floors folded. Sigmund who had turned to ask Dag for help fell to the floor.

  The light from
outside dimmed, the building stopped its bucking and Dag made his way to where Sigmund had fallen. A quick check showed no activity in the inert form.

  It was a week before the power came back. A week in which Dag could do nothing for Sigmund's lifeless bulk. Once power was restored Dag was able to run the diagnostics on his friend's internal problems. It returned failure after failure of critical circuits.

  Dag knew that the loud sound, as if all the electrical transformers on New Adowa had blown at the same time, had to have been an EMP, an electromagnetic pulse of tremendous intensity. That would explain the circuit failures in Sigmund he was now seeing. He knew that his form was better prepared for such an event than Sigmund and not being near the window somewhat shielded him from the pulse.

  Now that the diagnostics had run, he busied himself with replacing the damage in Sigmund from the kit that Sigmund always carried. Sigmund called it his “organ vault” or “triage kit”.

  Finally after hours, the last item pulled from the organ vault by Dag was a datacube carrying all of Sigmund's persona which Sigmund kept backed up at regular intervals.

  Once finished it was simply a matter of a few seconds until Sigmund opened his now replaced image receptors.

  “Hello Dag. How are you?”

  “I'm fine Sigmund and you?”

  “Well I see I'm lying on the bed so I assume I have been out of it. Dag, I can't find the local time on the net. As a matter of fact, I don't sense a net. What day is it?”

  “You've been asleep for a few days Sigmund. It is 7.15 at 16:18:32 in the Thirty-Second Interstellar Era.”

  “I have been asleep awhile. What happened Dag?”

  Dag explained all that had occurred since the date of the restored backup which didn't include the incident that had knocked out Sigmund.