Exiles (The Progenitor Trilogy, Book One)

by Dan Worth

  He sat at the desk in his cabin, a mug of thick black coffee in one hand and his eyes fixed on the schematic map of Fulan on his console screen as he pondered the odd binary system. It made no sense. Planets were not uncommon in binary systems; either orbiting at a distance from two closely orbiting parent stars or around one or the other of more widely separated suns, but nowhere else in known space did a planet exist at the Lagrange point between two such closely orbiting binary stars. Debris fields had been found, planets that had begun to form and been torn apart by the gravity of the parent stars, or just random bits of rubble that had become trapped in the neutral gravity. Similarly it was not unusual to find planets around one or the other star in a binary that moved in erratic orbits or even swapped between one star and another and upon which life could not evolve due to the unstable environments they possessed.

  Something had happened in Fulan to change the orbits of the bodies within it after it had begun to form. Spiers could see no other explanation at the moment to the theory he had previously proposed to Professor Cor. Had a rogue body from outside the system passed through it at some time, a small black hole or neutron star perhaps, sweeping up the asteroids in the system, knocking some planets from their orbits, destroying some and boiling away the surfaces of the gas giants? But how had the planet known as Maranos come to rest in the Lagrange point? What were the odds of it coming to rest there after being knocked out of its original orbit? Why had it not ended up orbiting one star or another, or simply plummeted to its doom, or been flung out into interstellar space?

  But what of the two stars themselves, why had they not been affected? Or had they? Outwardly they seemed unremarkable. But perhaps today’s survey might reveal something unusual. Spiers hoped so. He enjoyed a good scientific mystery, especially if he and his crew could gain credit for solving it. Maybe any anomaly in the character of the two stars might go some way to explaining the unusual nature of the system.

  He felt the ship shift beneath him. Despite the artificial gravity field he could still tell what the ship was doing purely by the feel of the deck alone, he had commanded her for so long. The gentle vibration of the engines changed too as the light from the small porthole swung around across the cabin. Photo-chromatic filters activated to dim the harsh sunlight pouring in through the small aperture. The Darwin was coming about to position itself above Maranos’s north-pole at an equal distance from both stars to begin the initial surveys.

  There was something else on Spiers’ mind too. He saved his work, switched off the console and drained the muddy dregs of his coffee, then headed out of his cabin. He went aft through the maze of cramped gangways toward the vessel’s midsection and the hub of labs that formed a cylinder of compartments inside the outer ring of sensor bays.

  Spiers ran an informal ship. The Darwin was nominally part of the Commonwealth Navy and much of its research was used by the Navy for navigation, but its crew did not feel that they were military officers. All were highly qualified in their specialised fields of physics, astronomy, cartography and many more - Spiers had done his Phd on wormhole theory. Although they all held naval ranks, they tended to regard one another purely as fellow scientists. In front of outsiders Spiers insisted they act formally, for the sake of protocol, but when no-one was looking everyone addressed one another on first name terms and largely disregarded the rigid etiquette of rank. The Darwin was tightly knit community that often spent months at a time in remote regions of space, far from other humans. Its crew of fifty were squashed together into an already cramped, ancient pre-war hull along with tonnes of equipment and supplies. Spiers wasn’t about to insist they all start saluting one another. Respect had to be earned aboard his ship and not dictated purely by rank.

  Spiers ambled aft through the busy gangway, pressing himself against the grey cabled lined wall periodically to let one of his crew past in the opposite direction. He loved the Darwin, she was his ship. He loved the oily smell of the gangway, the hum of machinery and sounds of his crew hard at work. This was where he belonged.

  Before long he reached the labs. The long cylindrical space was divided into sections. Each of them could be independently sealed off from the others and they could also have their atmospheres and artificial gravity altered to produce differing environments within them if necessary. The outer skin of the cylinder provided access to the instrument bays via a layer of airlocks whose heavy square doors lined the walls.

  Spiers checked in with a number of his fellow scientists to check their progress on preparing for the coming work schedule, and then headed off in search of the man he really wanted to speak to: his electronics engineer Gustav Marchand. He eventually found the man sat at a workbench cluttered with a vast assortment of computer parts and cabling. Gus was a thin, balding man with an unkempt beard and hair. He was holding a battered paper manual and looking accusingly at a sensor package from one the ships probes. Spiers guessed that he was probably enjoying himself, despite the muttered cursing. He sat down at the bench beside him.

  ‘Gus, how’s it going?’

  ‘Hmm? Oh not so bad Bob, not so bad. This bloody thing here,’ he tapped the sensor package, ‘is stretching my patience, but otherwise no complaints.’

  ‘Everything running okay down here? We’re about to start surveying the stars in short while.’

  ‘Yep, pretty much. The solar telescope’s ready to go, as is the spectroscopy package and the gravimetric array. Magnetometer needs a few more minutes though: the bloody bay doors are stuck again. Emma’s taking a look at it, shouldn’t be a problem. It probably just needs a good thump.’

  ‘There was something else that I wanted to ask.’

  ‘Oh? Not that bloody navi-comp again is it?’

  ‘No, no ah… Bob have you ever encountered any Esacir vessels before?’

  ‘You on about that one belonging to the Arkari archaeologist we’re supposed to be lending our services to in a few days?’

  ‘Yeah. Ever been on one or seen any specifications?’

  ‘I’ve seen plenty, but I’ve only been inside one. I’d love a look under the bonnet so to speak, though I gather the Esacir aren’t keen on that sort of thing.’

  ‘What about shipboard personalities?’

  ‘Oh, them? They’re fairly common; they handle mundane stuff and make you feel at home, that sort of thing. You know even a few of our ships have them now, liners and suchlike? Glorified room service mostly, they’re just a voice recognition and response program linked to the ship’s systems and sometimes to the autopilot. The Esacir ones are quite lifelike until you start to spot the repeated responses. I wouldn’t trust one to fly a ship though, not with me on it!’ he chuckled.

  ‘How lifelike though? The one on Rekkid Cor’s ship is pretty convincing, chatty even. It even has a name, Quickchild.’

  ‘A name eh? Well some people do give them names, helps them to anthropomorphise their own ship. Maybe it’s just a new model. Rekkid Cor knows Sanjay Chopra at Cambridge and Sanjay knows Ormintu at Riianto. Perhaps he got it from him?’

  ‘You know Professor Cor?’

  ‘Know of him. Sanjay and I know each other professionally so I’ve heard the odd thing here and there. He’s something of a maverick. I’ve heard a lot about Cor though recently. Did you know that he’s something of a wanted man? Him and his colleague, Dr O’Reilly.’

  ‘Wanted? For what?’

  ‘Hah, well the story goes they went to check out an ancient wreck, only it turned out to be the Arkari’s latest destroyer prototype that had suffered catastrophic engine failure! They nearly got arrested by the Arkari Navy on the spot but they got let off. Anyway someone on the mission is supposed to have taken something they shouldn’t. I dunno, documents or something, and the intelligence services have been chasing them ever since.’

  ‘Bloody hell. That’s a pretty embarrassing thing to happen to him.’

  ‘No doubt, I reckon that’s why he and O’Reilly have come all the way out here, to get away from it
all and do some work to restore their credibility.’

  ‘Poor sods.’

  ‘Aye. So, this ship of Cor’s: it has a lifelike personality, eh?’

  ‘Yeah, it’s been nagging me this past day or so. I was wondering if there’s any way you could, you know, slyly have a look at it somehow? We have comm. channels open to it. Thought you’d be interested.’

  ‘Ahh, hmm. Possibly, I can’t promise you anything though.’ Marchand grimaced and scratched his scraggly beard.

  ‘Oh?’

  ‘Esacir ships usually have pretty good security lock outs. If it has simulated intelligence of some sort you can bet it can defend itself against any sort of attempt to hack into it. I’ll have a go though.’

  ‘Thanks.’

  ‘My pleasure. You know you could just ask it how it works?’

  ‘Think it’d tell me?’

  ‘Who knows? Maybe, or you could ask Cor for a look, you know as a return favour for mapping his dig site for him.’

  ‘Worth a try.’

  ‘Aye.’

  Spiers felt a series of mechanical thuds through the deck plating, followed by the sound of hydraulics being released.

  ‘Sounds like Emma’s got that door to move, Bob. We’ll deploy the instruments in a minute.’

  ‘Great, I should get up to the bridge.’

  Spiers headed back to the ship’s forward section through its cramped gangways and lifts up to the bridge. The command deck looked out over the ship’s bullet nose through a sixty degree arc of narrow windows. When Spiers arrived, the view through them was currently dominated by the clouded bulls-eye of the north pole of Maranos. Fulan A and B were visible to the extreme left and right and cast conflicting shadows across the surprisingly spacious bridge which served not only for piloting the ship but as a data monitoring centre. Behind the main bridge area sat several curving banks of consoles that linked directly to the ship’s vast array of external instruments.

  Spiers greeted the assembled crew members, briefly conversing with each team, and then plopped into his captain’s chair, shifting his stocky form till he got comfortable on the worn upholstery that had moulded itself to his body through years of usage. He turned to his crew.

  ‘Okay, everyone set?’ There was a general agreement. ‘Okay, all stations deploy instruments.’

  The assembled scientists and technicians got to work, activating and deploying the necessary selection of equipment from the great variety stored within the Darwin’s hull. There was a series of thuds, more felt than heard, as bay doors hinged slowly open and sensor arrays emerged and unfolded before locking into place. There was hubbub of activity on the bridge as the crew set about targeting the piercing gaze of the Darwin onto the two stars of the Fulan system. Data streamed in and flooded the console screens of the bridge, a torrent of information which only an expert eye could make sense of. Fortunately the Darwin was blessed with a glut of experts.

  ‘So what do we have here then people?’ said Spiers hopefully.

  ‘Looks like two common or garden G Type stars Bob,’ said Georgi Antonov, one of the ship’s solar experts, as he peered at the data on his screen. ‘Each one point two solar masses and… that’s odd.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Each star is exactly the same the mass as the other.’

  ‘That’s hardly that unusual, binary stars of similar mass occur elsewhere and we know just by looking at this system that that’s the case here, Georgi.’

  ‘No, not similar in mass; exactly the same mass. These two stars are exactly the same mass as one another and have the same diameter to at least an accuracy of ten decimal places.’

  ‘So that would mean that they would orbit around one another in perfect circles.’

  ‘Correct, therefore the Lagrange point that Maranos sits at does not move in relation to the star system as a whole. Hence, the stability of the system.’

  ‘That’s remarkable. What are the odds of a system forming like this?’

  ‘Slim. My guess is that something split a larger star apart as it was forming and the debris re-coalesced into two equal twins, either that or one star captured the other and they fed off one another until their masses balanced one another out.’

  ‘But they’re exactly the same size?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Fascinating.’

  ‘Ah, there’s something else I think you should look at everyone,’ said a quiet voice from the back of the bridge. It belonged Doctor Mary Fullerton, a recent addition to the ship’s complement. She held the nominal rank of Ensign and had won some acclaim for her research into planetary and stellar magnetic fields. She was currently monitoring the data from the ship’s magnetometer. ‘There’s something very odd indeed about the magnetic fields of those two stars,’ she said with a puzzled tone and she scrutinised the data on her screens.

  ‘Show us please Mary. Put it through to the HUD,’ said Spiers, his interest piqued still further as he donned a bridge HUD monocle. The others did likewise whilst Dr Fullerton transferred the data she was receiving to the bridge’s imaging systems. A simulated three dimensional model of the two stars and the planet Maranos appeared in mid air in the middle of the bridge. It showed the magnetic lines of force as parabolic curves sprouting from the poles of each star and reaching out into space. Similar smaller lines surrounded Maranos and merged with the ones from the stars.

  ‘Okay, this is what you would expect to see when looking at the magnetic fields of this part of the system, yes?’ said Doctor Fullerton. There was a murmur of agreement. ‘But this is what my data is showing us at the moment.’

  The image changed to show the magnetic fields of the stars curiously distorted. Instead of spreading out around the stars they appeared to curve back around and converge on a point close to the surface of each star that directly faced Maranos, like a bundle of wires that been bent and knotted together and were straining gently against being tied down.

  ‘Good grief. Mary, what do you suppose could cause that?’ said Spiers quietly in the stunned silence of the bridge.

  ‘I’m afraid to say I have no idea whatsoever Bob. I’ve never seen anything like this. Granted I’ve never seen a system quite like this either. We need to get closer to those convergence points and gather more data. Perhaps if we examine the activity in that part of the stars we can get a better idea of what going one here. What is puzzling is the lack of sunspot activity. You’d expect massive amounts due a magnetic anomaly of this size. Maybe there’s some unusual interaction between the planet and the stars… I don’t know. I need more data.’

  ‘Agreed. Helm, plot a course towards the point of magnetic convergence on Fulan A, Mary will supply the co-ordinates. Take us to the minimum safe distance that our instruments can withstand. We have to get a closer look at this without burning out our arrays.’

  At Spiers’ instruction the ship’s pilot turned the ungainly craft toward the dazzling orb of Fulan A and engaged the ship’s jump drive for a fraction of a second. The Darwin emerged half a million kilometres away from a convex wall of blinding, boiling plasma. Photo-chromatic shielding blocked the blinding radiation from the eyes of the crew as the Darwin’s shields glowed gently from the barrage of charged particles.

  ‘Helm, report please.’

  ‘We have emerged half a million kilometres from the designated point. All systems are operational. Shields are holding and will provide us with sufficient protection for a least half an hour.’

  ‘Good. Everyone, train your instruments on the co-ordinates supplied by Mary’s observations. Let’s see what we can find here.’

  The crew got to work, re-targeting and refocusing the banks of sensors and telescopes onto the surface of the star to collect yet more data. There was a series of triumphant yells from the assembled observers.

  ‘People please. What? Show me,’ said Spiers impatiently.

  ‘With pleasure,’ said Mary.

  Someone put up a window in Bob’s vision. It seemed to hang in fr
ont of him and showed a zoomed-in, greatly darkened view of the star’s surface… and something else. A dark ring appeared to be floating inside the star’s corona. It was undoubtedly artificial. It was smooth and black and at this distance appeared seamless and delicate like a piece of jewellery mysteriously impervious to the effects of the nuclear inferno in which it lay. It was around a hundred kilometres in diameter and seemed to be mysteriously convecting the star’s atmosphere around itself in a curious standing solar flare. Spiers struggled for words.

  ‘What the… what is that?’

  ‘You tell us Bob, but you can bet that that is what’s causing these weird magnetic phenomena,’ said Doctor Fullerton. ‘My instruments show it as lying right as the centre of where the field distorts.’

  ‘Anyone ever see anything like this in our records of alien artefacts? Because this thing certainly wasn’t built by humans. How the hell can it stand the conditions down there?’

  There were a series of negative gestures and shrugs from the assembled science staff, some of whom had extensive knowledge of alien technology.

  ‘Could be a habitat at that size,’ ventured one Doctor Mark Pembrooke. ‘Or possibly some sort of energy gathering station. In any case I’d say out of the species that we know of, only the Arkari or the Esacir possess the technology to even attempt anything like that.’

  ‘Hmm. Except that they wouldn’t build it here in a system outside their borders would they?’ replied Spiers, his mind working furiously. ‘What’s it made of?’

  ‘Hard to tell, there’s too much interference from the star,’ said Sorensen on the spectrometer team. ‘Though it seems to be made of something pretty dense, it’s bending the light around itself slightly as well as distorting the magnetic field. We’d need to get closer to have a proper look. There’s too much interference from the solar environment.’

  ‘Gravimetrics?’

  ‘We concur, the object is producing an unusual localised gravity field which is distorting the star’s corona, but we can’t pin down the exact shape of the field. We’d also like a closer look.’