Raystar of Terra: Book 1

by Kurt Johnson

  Well. If she wasn’t going to tell me about it, I wasn’t going to think about it, at least for now. I was too hungry to be curious.

  “It’ssoommmgood!”

  “Architect,” Mom breathed. “You should be as large as we are with the amount you eat.”

  Yeah, well. Too bad. Just keep the food coming. I craned my neck to see if she was making more.

  Mom half-turned toward me. “After last night, you and Dad need to be careful. And wear sunscreen.”

  Sunscreen? I swallowed and shoveled in another mouthful of salty, savory energy. Gratcher. Eggs. Toast. Carbs. Iron. I thought about it. Yes, I needed more food. “Careful of what, Mom?”

  “We’ll talk when you return. I’ve told Dad in no uncertain words that safety is essential. I am telling you, no snooping about in the Ruins. Fix the controller and go. Drop EVERYTHING at the first sign of a storm.”

  I frowned.

  Ray, you gotta tell her. AI urged. You only bleed before really bad storms.

  “What do the Ruins have to do with anything? And what about those meteors?” I asked Mom while frowning at AI’s comment. My fork scratched against my plate as I impaled pieces of gratcher and bread and swirled the bite-to-be through the egg yolk, giving the toast time to absorb the juice. I stared sullenly at no-place-in-particular.

  “Ray….” Mom paused. “We’ll talk, I promise. We’ll talk about everything when you return. ”

  I continued swirling. Silence filled the vacuum between us. The vid screen was muted, and in its silence, it lit up the kitchen with blue, flickering light. I glanced at the feed. A young, silver-haired Glean news reporter stood atop one of the towers in Blue River, pointing with two hands at the Mesas while gesturing with her other two hands for emphasis. Her blue suit, red skin, golden eyes, bobbed hair, and face fit her curious eagerness. She was instantly likeable. Her video drones showed smoke rising from the impact site at the base of the squat, dark Mesas. The caption read, “Nyla Jax, Galactic News Network: Mystery Morning Meteors Impact the Human Ruins!”

  I blinked.

  “Darling, you know the results you get with the nannites.”

  “I get it.”

  “And with the Storm Wall building, we need you back before the afternoon.”

  “MOM,” I said, loudly. “This sucks. Not seeing my friends, getting up early…and summer’s over! Cri gets to sleep in because she can’t do what I do with the nanotech? I mean, thanks. But that sucks too! You and Dad have been trying to tell me something for weeks now. It’s about me, obviously. Obviously. Right?”

  I shoved in the now-ready mouthful, expecting snark from AI but receiving only mental silence. I felt my friend’s virtual eyes going back and forth between Mom and me. He was room temperature and didn’t flash any emotional colors—uncharacteristically, he was keeping his thoughts to himself.

  Last week, Dad had gone so far as to sit us all down before dinner and start off with, “Raystar, you know we love you.” But Cri had shot a furious glare at me and stomped out of the kitchen to her room, thus ending our family conversation. They wouldn’t tell me anymore, saying we all needed to be present. There were secrets in the stars, and down here on Nem’.

  Right. I should be telling Mom about the toothbrush incident.

  “Mom,” I blurted, ready to confess all.

  Mom was simultaneously putting pans in the cabinet, dishes in the shelves, and food back in the cooler with the coordination and speed only a Glean’s four arms can accomplish. Without turning, she interrupted me. “I’m sorry you feel like you didn’t have fun this summer.”

  Finished with cleanup, but not with her thought, she leaned down and placed her two upper hands gently on either side of my head and her lower two hands on my shoulders. The warmth from her touch melted through my clothes. Our faces were close enough to feel each other’s breath.

  She considered me with her golden eyes. A curtain of hair spilled over her shoulders, cascaded around us, and carried with it her mom-scents of flowers and earth. I chewed my huge forkful, doing my teenage best to ignore how good all of it felt and smelled. She mushed my cheeks into fish-lips, smiled, and kissed me on the forehead. “I love you so much, Raystar. Maybe you’ll see this all differently one day. Until then, sit up straight.”

  I renewed the glare I’d focused on my plate and straightened up.

  I knew she loved me. I was the best with the nano. She was right about the Storm Wall too.

  Outside, Dad could be heard giving instructions to Aidee. Extraordinary clanking and sounds of twisting metal followed each order. Aidee’s name was actually AD9—autonomous drone number nine. I’d never bothered to ask why she was number nine.

  She was an egg-shaped, floating, do-everything helper, larger than me by a half. She had multiple extendable arms, storage space, and multiple sensor clusters, all hidden by reflective, sky-blue, Galactic metal. AD9 was a communicator, a drone for managing farm equipment, a security guard, a babysitter, and a farmhand.

  The hangar lights were bright in the morning darkness, and they threw harsh shadows through the kitchen windows. I looked at my mom and slouched a little, letting out a breath. I was lucky. My friends, they might have more, but none had my family. Even so—is love enough? Where does it stop, and when do I start?

  I asked Mom if there was more steak. She sighed, squeezed me with all four arms, and put the last piece of sizzling gratcher on my plate.

  I had a suspicion that I should be telling Mom I loved her, too.

  As often as I could.

  4

  Dad froze as my brown, leather-booted foot thumped on the porch leading from our kitchen to the central yard. My hair was jagged; I was a purple comet. He eyed me for a millisecond, snorted and pulled himself into the lev-sled. In Dad’s mind, everyone had a place in the mission, and it was all down to execution. The door hissed shut behind him. If he had his way, I bet we’d all be wearing freshly pressed uniforms.

  Whatever. It was too early for parents to get to me. Besides, by his own admission, HE owed ME explanations, not the other way around.

  The central yard was ringed by our humble (and very square) two-story house, the hangar for our various vehicles, the über-utilitarian work shed, and the gratcher compound. Opposite the hangar, near the force-gate entrance to our property and farthest away from our house, sprawled the gratcher pen. As I mentioned, our house was a standard Galactic square shape—the application of millennia of non-creativity. Even rectangles would be exciting. I’d be completely starred if someone showed up with, like, a triangle. OMG, what would I do with an acute triangle?

  I digress.

  The small garden outside of our kitchen was guilty of being decorative. It reminded Mom of home, or so she said. It was hard for me to imagine being from any place other than Nem’. But I was adopted. The flowers she planted weren’t from ”here.“ Is home where we’re from, or where we belong?

  Thick, grey walls rising two stories above our house comprised our hangar. The top two floors were off-limits. Our vehicles all fit in the bottom two floors, with room to spare. “We’ll show you two one day,” Mom would say whenever we asked about the upper levels. I swear, “one day” was like “maybe.” “Maybe” is pretty much, like, never! Think I’m kidding?

  There were so many boys wanting to kiss Cri. “Maybe,” is all THEY got.

  If the thickness of the supports and power conduits that snaked upward from the hangar’s floor through the ceiling were any indication of what was up there, it was HEAVY and needed a flipping nova’s worth of power. Despite our best attempts, neither Cri nor I had figured out how to actually GET up to the third floor.

  In contrast to the hangar’s puzzle, the work-shed won the competition for the most non-remarkable structure in the freaking MILKY WAY. It was square and filled with tools more neatly organized and inventoried than the stores where the tools were bought.

  Finally, the gratcher pen was, hands down, the most organic of our farm’s structures. Our
gratcher herd of roughly forty of the giant pig descendants needed ROOM. Notwithstanding your race, if you had a nose, you needed some distance from the gratchers’ “perfume.” The pen had an enclosure that sheltered the creatures from the regular storms, as well as the Storm Wall. A muddy, black field was relentlessly churned by their hooves and mixed with poop and the food they didn’t eat. While wind, and perhaps the whine of anti-gravity engines, were the only sounds to be heard in the rest of the compound, a basso profundo “Squea! Squea!” blared constantly from the pen, with the occasional “SQUEA!!” from Chunks reminding all who the boss gratcher was.

  Roughly ten meters beyond each building stood blood-red metallic pillars spaced evenly in a circle around our compound. They bristled with sensors. A single, very large autocannon sat atop each pillar. Like angry gargoyles, the cannons tracked everything inbound and outbound. At night, the smoldering plasma visible in their giant twin barrels looked like red monster eyes. The pillars didn’t just serve as autocannon perches—they were the force dome generators that, when activated (which was always), created a defensive shield around our compound. The Dome, as we called it, distorted reality around the farm with a shimmering field as thick as I was tall. It was the security of my home.

  Inside was safety.

  Although Nem’ had been settled for thousands of years, its wildlife could ruin your day. Leggers, random nanotech, rats, and, in recent months, things coming from the Mesa Ruins made it important to be prepared.

  Grownups have incomprehensible stuff going on. Since I’m a kid, I feel like I never know how much I know or don’t know. Because, uh, I’m a kid? Shouldn’t grownups know more?

  Nem’ was violent and raw. Why hadn’t the Convergence, a 1,300- system-strong civilization, made us safe here? We’re a key agricultural world. What else should power be for, if not to protect what’s important?

  Don’t get me wrong: our wildlife was absolutely survivable. Go out during the day, AVOID the Ruins, bring along light weaponry and shielding. Easy. My parents spent eternities drilling Cri and me, both of us, with and without weapons, so we could even be prepared while unarmed. Having only two hands, I grew up bruised, but fast and nimble. This summer, I was almost able to handle myself against Mom or Dad. Once my adrenaline surged through me, I could predict, almost see, where they would be and adjust accordingly. But the training, the weapons—it seemed excessive. At least that was my opinion until I could understand the nightly reports about farms that couldn’t afford weapons or defenses.

  Maybe Mom and Dad did have a clue.

  Our lev-sled currently occupied the center of the courtyard. Its size, color, and…something else…made it seem out of place against our agrarian ecosystem. Dad had its stubborn nose pointed toward the house, presumably to make it easier to join him in the cockpit.

  The lev-sled was a mottled, black-and-grey, elongated hexagon. Its squat form was about twenty meters long and a third as wide, with sides that sloped out from the ground at a forty-five degree angle, rose vertically, and then sloped back in at an equivalent opposite angle to complete its seven-meter height. Glass-steel at the front of the sled, where inside the pilot and three other people could fit, could be made clear or opaque and take on the rest of the sled’s pattern.

  It was the largest ’natch hauler I’d seen. Our neighbors’ sleds had nothing remotely close to its hulking, bullying form. Despite its years of hard farmwork, the excessively thick plating that covered it was razor smooth. You could pound it with the hardest metal and not even scratch it.

  Last year, with all my little Human strength, I’d hit the lev-sled using a hammer from our toolshed. I’d been quite surprised by the resulting deep gong the hammer made upon impact. Cri should have been cleaning the container bed instead of napping in it, and the only thing louder than the reverberations of my hammer blow was Cri’s shriek and subsequent swearing.

  Ahh. Yeah. I grinned at the pre-dawn sky, remembering.

  Dad had strapped in as the anti-gravity pods whined and nudged the sled’s house-sized hulk upward. The cockpit’s glass-metal faded to clear, and I saw him wave at me to join him or get in the back. Sprinting through the morning darkness, I raced down the porch to the ladder that extended from the sled’s sidewall.

  As I ran to him, I passed AD9’s empty storage dock in the sled’s underbelly. Dad had had “her” working on…something…since breakfast. I frowned not because she was working, but because she was working now. We’d always taken her when we went into the fields. Dad and I were well equipped to handle ourselves, but out in the fields, two were better than one, and three were better than two.

  I grabbed the cool rungs along the sled’s exterior, spidered up the six meters to the container bed’s rim, and dove in. The farmhouse, stars, and sky spun as I launched myself head-over-boots into the sled’s full bed of ’natch. I bounced twice, sinking into the leafy green harvest.

  Reality shimmered and tingled as the sled’s shields flickered to life. Its plasma autoturrets powered up, their barrels filling with smoldering orange fire. There were eight barrels on the sled. Four were on top, with two on each side at the front and two on each side at the back. The other four were directly underneath, attached upside down against the sled’s upsloping plating. With every angle covered by at least two cannons, we were not an empty threat.

  Once in the air, Dad rotated the sled toward our compound’s exit and through the geodesic force dome encompassing our compound. Gratchers squea’d their displeasure as we glided by. I wrinkled my nose as I smelled them, voicing my own complaint.

  We passed through our Dome’s shimmering, tingly perimeter and emerged into Nem’s open air. The breeze from our speed caressed my exposed skin. I faced the new day’s sky on my back, my hands laced underneath my head, on an over-full bed of poky ’natch.

  The ancients called it spinach. Rich in nutrients and protein, ’natch was a cash crop.

  It made me want to vomit. It wasn’t unreasonable to believe that Humans lost the War because we ate too much ’natch.

  Starbats circled above as dawn forced the night’s darkness toward the horizon. The starbats’ four wings alternated beats, and their flickering red mouth lights convinced naïve little birds to investigate and become breakfast. The little fliers were almost as pretty as the fading stars.

  By the time we’d reached the controller, Banefire, the red giant squatting in the center of our solar system, was a backdrop filling half the sky. The asteroid belt around Nem’ shimmered with metal. The metal was supposedly the Ruins from a Human battle station that had been obliterated during the defense of Nem’. It must have been huge. I frowned, trying to remember when I’d seen it this defined—it was usually more of a haze than a line. Banefire’s malevolent glare reflected off the trillions of metal pieces that wrapped around Nem’ like an electron’s orbit. It created the illusion of a rainbow-rope that ran from the near horizon to the top of the sky, only to arch down and reach back to the far horizon.

  I was lying with my head facing the direction we were headed. Framed between my feet, our town, Blue River, rose like a cluster of needles that stabbed into our atmosphere. The clouds around the city were actually air traffic made up of everything from individual darts to cargo ships. I craned my head back, so I was looking upside down in the direction we were headed. The Mesas, three-thousand-meter–high plateaus, hid the sky with their square brutishness.

  The Ruins meshed across their bases like a tattered frock. Smoke spiraled up from one point and drew my eyes down to raging flames laced with blue lightning. Banefire cast a red tint over the green fields and the warped, grey, Human structures. The buildings had been ripped apart. Orange-yellow fire snaked and writhed between the gaping building skeletons and roiling smoke. Great gravity well. THAT was the meteor impact from last night?

  “A minute to arrival,” Dad called.

  I filed the image in my “don’t get hit by a meteor” folder. How could Dad not have seen the destruction? He saw it.
Who was I kidding? He saw it. Right?

  “Dad.”

  Silence.

  “Dad! On our four o’clock.”

  “The objective, Raystar. The Ruins are not for today. Focus.”

  Focus? I swear.

  The brown patch of dried ’natch we were approaching was no less obvious than the fiery-red crater. The irrigation controller that lay near it was a two-by-two-meter, blue-white metallic box made of standard Galactic self-healing nano alloy. Pipes went in, pipes came out. It ensured the ’natch in its area of responsibility received the right water and nutrient flows.

  Only a corner of this one’s frame remained. Silver fuzz blanketed what was left of the controller. The mold growth transitioned into a pool of sparkling-blue nanobots that sometimes looked like liquid and other times like fine sand.

  I peered apprehensively at the mess and then spared a glance toward the flaming Ruins. THOSE fires could be put out. Nanotech, however….

  It’s the foundation of Galactic civilization. Nannites are mechanical or organic robots. They could be as small as a molecule or as large as a few cells. They are in shampoo to give cleaner, shinier hair; in machines, for better performance; and in vaccinations, for better health. They are EVERYWHERE, and they always worked.

  Except when they didn’t.

  Fear gripped my gut. The first lesson every Galactic learns is that insane nanobots will be the death of the civilization. Our controller was “self-healing.” But think about it. If self-healing programming was in the control code, so was reproduction. Which meant the nannites had to eat. When their governing software code was corrupted, the nanobots didn’t care what they ate. Metal. Plants.

  Galactics.

  AI whistled in my head and flashed yellow. Whoaaaa. That’s messed up. REALLY messed up.

  “What do you see?” I asked, frowning at his color. He was genuinely concerned.

  Nano behaving badly. I wouldn’t get close to it. He sighed. But I’m just a pendant around your neck. So, of course I’m going to get close to it.