“Will it be safe to look directly at it?” Jan asked.
“Yes. All the stations’ view ports have automatic screening so we’re safe,” Aon said.
“You won’t be able to see it, but the star has changed color. It’s a lot redder than it was just yesterday. The red coloration has been building for the last three weeks.” Donnelly explained. “Alright, let’s watch…any time now…”
Right on time, the dim star changed to the brightest star anyone had ever seen in Amular’s night sky. It was like a second sun, though a lot smaller. The brightness peaked then faded a fraction and held there.
“That’s it,” Donnelly said. “In a couple of days, we’ll start to see a halo around it as the nebula begins to form.”
“Unbelievable,” Jan said.
“We’ll have shadows at night for a couple of weeks,” Donnelly added.
“I think there’ll be a lot of nightmares as well,” Wicker said.
They all looked at him and agreed. This is what the alien had planned for their sun.
---
From the main viewing port at Hideaway Dock One, Evelyn and Brandon plus a small group of friends watched G214h explode.
Half a million miles away, Radin and Burnwall watched from the bridge of a Leviathan Two Battleship. Fifteen miles away, Nero watched from his battleship’s bridge.
Adamarus was at home with Grace, watching from Hillcrest.
Every man, woman and child watched from somewhere in the star system. Moreover, every person watching felt a cold knot in his or her chest. In 90 years—previously an average lifetime—would their sun be exploding just like this?
---
Two months later, the Loud Umbrella Ships returned to Amular. The next morning, the president’s inner-circle assembled in the Hillcrest Situation Room. Bugs’ avatar stood to address the small assembly. President Wicker was attending in person for a change. Radin, Burnwall, Evelyn and Brandon attended virtually. Seated at the conference table with the President were Adamarus, Leewood, Harrington, Woodworth and Jan. Everyone was on the edge of their seats waiting for the details of what had happened at the Loud’s star system.
The meeting came to order and Bugs spoke, “I regret to inform you that all of the transmissions from our planetary system were…completely scrambled by interference, presumably created by the alien.”
Everyone stared at Bugs in mute shock. Amular’s scientific community as well as President Wicker’s considerable resources had also received the almost non-stop transmissions. The message had been utterly meaningless to the humans who had presumed that it made sense to the Loud. It looked like this was not the case.
Finally, the President asked, “Was there nothing that could be recovered?”
“Nothing,” Bugs answered.
The President’s eyes left Bugs and stared at something far off. Then he tried again. “Is there anything new that you’ve learned at all?”
“Actually, a few things,” Bugs said, sounding a little more upbeat than before. “By combining data from the Tachyon scope and the data from the light emitted, we now know for certain that there is a large ship, though there might be smaller craft too small to detect.” The avatar sat down and silence stretched out for several seconds.
Adamarus rolled his eyes, “Bugs, the ship…how big?”
“Sorry, indeterminate,” Bugs replied. “Oh, also…”
“Wait…” Adamarus protested, “You must have some idea.”
Bugs paused for the briefest second, “One hundred and fifty miles to two hundred miles, give or take fifty miles.” Nervous whispers surged around the room. Bugs waited. Adamarus just stared, nodding, looking as if he were sorry he’d asked. Finally Bugs continued, “Also, within a day, the color of our world changed. We assume this was caused by smoke in the atmosphere. We also know that after this, a single powerful energy beam was fired from the area of our home world, presumably from the Blackship, at our sun, for a sustained period of twenty-seven minutes, and that after this, our sun was damaged.”
Adamarus cleared his throat then asked, “How could you tell that your sun was damaged?”
“The amount of red light coming from our sun increased by three hundred percent. Also, it exploded three weeks later,” it concluded, as if that might be something anyone might forget.
That shut Maximus up.
President Wicker shook his head—they were all still speechless by the devastating turn of events. They had hoped to get a complete report on the Blackship’s game plan, how it would attack, what weapons it used, hell, at least what it looked like.
---
Three weeks later, President Wicker called for another late night meeting.
He stood outside his office on the balcony. The brilliant explosion had faded now, leaving a glowing white hourglass shape that was the growing nebula.
Howard Dawn was now 24 years old and had helped the defensive buildup in many ways, but his latest idea was a weapon that offered Amular its best hope yet.
After the full inner-circle had arrived or teleconferenced in, President Wicker walked inside, sat and quickly gave the floor to Howard Dawn to explain the new device.
The young man stood up nervously. “It’s called the Jumper, for reasons you’ll soon see, and actually, it’s a delivery device.” His voice was still young and broke from tension now and then.
He activated a large holographic image. It showed a simulation of the approaching black hole. It had the usual accretion disk swirling in at the equator. Tiny purple swirls of radiation colored the black surface of the event horizon.
“Assuming we can really predict anything about the inside of the alien’s event horizon, there are, almost certainly, two chambers inside.” Within the holograph, the right half of the black sphere was cut away, revealing the continuation of the accretion disk within the event horizon. It passed through the equator of the event horizon, continuing to the center where it merged with a black dot indicating the singularity. The accretion disk neatly cut the interior of the event horizon exactly in half, creating an upper chamber and a lower chamber.
“Pretty simple—if a ship is in there, it will be in one of these chambers. Nothing else makes sense.” On cue, a toy-like rocket ship appeared in the upper chamber.
Then, from the edges of the hologram, 24 blinking blue dots appeared evenly spaced around the black sphere, representing the event horizon and closed on it. Twelve were above the accretion disk and 12 were below it. The accretion disk pulled the dots in until they were right next to it, half on the upper side, half on the lower side.
Above the cut-away of the black hole appeared a flat oval. Howard pointed at it, “This is a mockup of one of the twenty-four hardened jumper devices—all evenly distributed, twelve for each chamber. As the accretion disk pulls them in, gravity increases, but just before the devices are torn apart, a grav-bomb will detonate, throwing another hardened grav-bomb out of the accretion disk.”
Above the black hole, the flat oval exploded and another smaller oval shot out of the top. Below, around the black hole within the accretion disk, the 24 blue dots exploded, throwing 12 white dots upward and 12 downward. Gravity was still pulling them inward and back toward the accretion disk. It was immediately obvious that their arcs would bring the white dots into the event horizon before they again merged with the accretion disk.
“The second grav-bomb is high yield; they arc away from the accretion disk falling into the event horizon. Twelve enter the upper chamber, twelve the lower chamber and detonate, destroying the alien ship within.”
After the white dots entered the upper and lower chambers, they detonated. The toy space ship broke apart and vanished.
Donnelly asked, “And what happens to the black hole?”
The holograph vanished and another one appeared. It showed half of the Iceis star system out to the gas giant, Aster. A red dot appeared close to Aster. Howard pointed, “The red dot is the black hole. The Jumper devices can only be used just aft
er the black hole passes Aster. When the alien ship guiding the black hole is destroyed, Aster’s gravity will take over and the black hole will be pulled back around it and then fly out of the star system.” Within the display, the red dot circled around Aster and continued out and off screen.
There was silence…then one person started clapping, then another and soon the entire room was standing and applauding. This was fantastic and made even more so because it had come from the humans rather than the Loud.
---
Leewood stood looking out over the flat landscape filled only with rocks and weeds. Engineers with scopes and measuring instruments were spread out across the barren plain. Three men were approaching him.
When they were six feet away, Leewood hollered, “What do you think?”
“It all works,” one of the men said. The trio gathered around Leewood and the one who had spoken held up a 12-inch screen. On it, a simulation of what the base would look like was superimposed over the terrain. “The three arks will be constructed along here,” the man’s finger indicated an area on the screen.
“Alright, I’m sold,” Leewood replied, as he pulled out his com unit. He sent a simple message to President Wicker. It said, “The location for the Trinity Base has been determined.”
Chapter Nine – Dawn’s Finale
“It’s been proven repeatedly that simply observing a thing, changes that thing. The classic example is the double slit experiment where shooting particles at a wall with two slits should produce two lines of particles on the other side. However, it does not. Instead, a waveform pattern emerges. If we attempt to observe the particles going through the slits to determine what exactly is happening, and do so without interfering in any way…the pattern changes to what we’d expect to see, two lines. There could not be a more radical change. Everything we know, we know from observing; and therefore, by our observing, we have changed. This suggests that the universe we know exists only because there is an observer, and if we follow this to its logical conclusion and look deep enough, what we must find is ourselves looking back.”
Howard Dawn
The Book of Random Thought
Source: The Archive
T-Minus 082 Years
Two years later…
Howard Dawn was 26 years old as he climbed the grated metal staircase to the observation platform. Even with presidential authority, he had had to wait five days to get six hours on the Dowser Yeoman Observatory’s main reflecting telescope, which was the largest telescope on Amular. The large dome echoed his footsteps as he ascended next to the massive framework of the telescope. He paused and looked around. The observatory was seemingly empty except for him.
The data he’d been gathering was both surprising and potentially significant. His observations tonight would either support what he suspected or not.
He sat down in front of the multiple display screens, keyboard and other controls and went to work. First, he aligned the scope on the growing nebula—it was, of course, named the Loud Nebula—two growing spheres touching each other where the star used to be, all that was left of the Loud’s star. In Amular’s night sky, it now looked as big as the Larger Moon. He carefully focused in on the glowing dumbbell shaped cloud and then began taking measurements.
It had not been easy proving what he suspected and he’d had to use a variety of different instruments over a two-year period. At first, it had just been a curious anomaly. Seemingly, one of the system's gas giants had shrunk and then simply vanished just before the Blackship had fired a powerful energy beam at the Loud’s star. However, at that time the total matter contained within the star system had remained the same. The disappearance had been written off as some kind of optical anomaly as the gas giant had been just about to pass from view behind the star.
On further inspection though, it appeared that two other gas giants had also seemed to vanish. Neither could be located within the Tachyon Scans done by the Loud. It was crazy.
However, the data Howard had been collecting showed that the mass of all three of those gas giants had gone missing after the Blackship left the system.
Tedious hour after hour passed and soon, before the last data sets were even confirmed, he knew…the Blackship had somehow taken the mass of three gas giants with it.
Interesting, he thought.
He transferred the images and data he’d gathered to his PDA, then retraced his steps down the spiral staircase. He exited the dome, walked down the long entrance hall but then he suddenly stopped.
Filling the walls of the long hall were pictures of various astronomical objects. One was an image of the Tang-Loral Nebula, but something looked different about it. He studied it for a moment, but could not determine what it was. Finally, he shrugged and continued out.
The next day he flew back to Axis, and after arriving at his lab, he contacted Leewood and told him he had a new and interesting discovery. Leewood invited him to the next monthly inner-circle meeting to present his findings.
After disconnecting, Howard remembered the image of the nebula he’d seen in the observatory’s entrance hall, and on a whim, walked to the library and looked up an image of the Tang-Loral Nebula.
He saw it at once, the center of the nebula contained a large cavern and in this image, and in every image he’d ever seen of this nebula, the inside of the cavern was shrouded in darkness. No details were visible. In the picture he’d seen in the observatory’s entrance hall, the cavern was lit up and details could be seen.
How odd, he thought.
He accessed other images of the nebula and they were all the same. Shaking his head, he took out his com unit and contacted the observatory. After identifying himself, he asked about the picture. The person who’d answered didn’t know anything, but he was transferred to Rod Sturgis, the assistant manager of the observatory.
“Yes, this is Dr. Howard Dawn.”
“Dr. Dawn, how can I be of assistance?”
“Yesterday when I was there, I noticed a picture of the Tang-Loral Nebula in the entrance hall. The picture showed details that are not shown in any of the other images of the nebula I’ve been able to find.”
“Oh, yes, I know the one. It was taken quite a while back through the observatory’s original telescope. I don’t recall the astronomer’s name who grabbed the shot, but you’re right, the picture is unique. If memory serves, a stellar flare occurred somewhere and this person calculated when the light from that flair would illuminate the nebula. This fellow managed to capture the image while the light hit it.”
“How interesting,” Howard said.
“Hold on, I’m querying the Archive for the chap’s name. Hm…how odd, I’m not finding it. Obviously, it’s in here somewhere. Oh, well, hold on and I’ll just look at the picture.”
Howard hadn’t noticed a name, but then he wasn’t looking for one at the time. After a few minutes, Rod came back. “His name was Dr. Paladin.”
“Thank you,” Howard replied and disconnected.
He was about to go back into his lab when he decided to follow up a little more. He connected to the Archive and searched for the astronomer’s name. Several seconds passed before his search came back with no match found.
Howard’s eyebrows went up. Impossible, he thought. He checked his spelling, searched again, but got the same result.
In the library, Howard looked up at the long rows filled with books. He sighed and started searching.
---
The bus came to a stop, kicking up clouds of dust that slowly drifted away. Ted Desman and 62 other passengers got out and stood on the dirt plain. A dozen or so prefabricated buildings had been erected among the large earthmovers, cranes and other machinery. The bus driver swung out and started opening large doors along the base of the vehicle. Inside were the passengers’ luggage and duffel bags. The men and women lined up and started searching for their gear.
An officer approached them and yelled at the group, “Welcome to Trinity. My name is Sergeant Walters and
I’ll be briefing you, showing you around and then getting you settled in. You’ll be bunking in temporary quarters for the first six weeks or so, but it’s actually not that bad.”
After everyone had gathered their belongings, Walters said, “Okay, listen up. Over there,” he pointed at one of the large prefab structures, “is the mess hall.” He told them what time meals were served. “Toilets are over there. With your basic input and output needs sorted out, HQ is that building over there and next to it is the com shack. Now if you’ll step this way, I’ll introduce you to your accommodations.”
They were led to a long building that contained cots and lockers and then were told to find one and lay claim to it. “At 4:00 p.m. your first orientation will be conducted in front of HQ. Be there or else.” With that, he turned on his heel and left them.
Ted claimed a cot and locker, locked up his duffel bag then walked outside. The day was bright and the light gusts of wind were cold. He made his way to the porta-potty, entered one and locked the door.
Inside he took off his left boot then worked to slide the boot heel back, exposing a hidden compartment. From it, he took a small com unit. He sat down on the pot and turned the unit on. He carefully entered two words into it then pressed send.
---
A thousand miles away, General Whitehall was being driven across base when his com unit vibrated. He took it out and looked at the screen—finally, a message from Desman. It contained two words.
“I’m in.”
Whitehall smiled. So you plan to send over a quarter million people to safety before the alien arrives, do you, he thought.
Well, think again, Mr. President.
---
“So what do you think it means?” President Wicker asked.
It was the inner-circle’s monthly meeting and most of the group had teleconferenced in except for Adamarus, Bugs and Howard Dawn who had met up in one of the Capitol Building’s conference rooms. Although the president was in the building, he had also teleconferenced in. Howard Dawn had just briefed them on his latest discovery, that the Loud system had three missing gas giants.
Countdown Amageddon (The Spiral Slayers Book 2) Page 23
