Zero Star

by Chad Huskins

  “What is this?” he asked her.

  “First, I just want to say that I apologize that I didn’t see it earlier when going through our course and developing our itinerary. But since we’ve caught it so early, it’s possible to avert the problem altogether.” She shrugged. “Assuming we survive Phanes, that is, and are alive to continue the Crusade at all.”

  “Explain.”

  Moira sighed. She wasn’t thrilled about saying what she had to say next. Pritchard sensed her nervousness, and gave her hand an encouraging lick.

  She took the holotab back from the senator and waved the image over to the holo-projector on his wall. It picked it up, and showed a complex system of twenty-three planets orbiting a very large white main-sequence star.

  “This is the Taka-Renault System,” she said. “This is where we’re going after we stop by the s’Dar Watchtower. LOG shows the system was originally plotted by Isoshi priests some thirty thousand years ago, but that they never did anything with it. It has no great asteroid belt to speak of, just a few thin ones, which the Isoshi found suspicious—their theory was that it once did have a large asteroid belt, and that some older civilization came through and scooped them all up, but there’s no forensic evidence of that. So the Isoshi passed it over.”

  “And?” Julian said. “What’s this got to do with the itinerary you plotted?”

  Moira looked at him, slightly irritated by the interruption. She looked back at Kalder. “Fast-forward twenty-five thousand years. Mankind makes the same discovery, back when we were still several separate nations exploring the cosmos. The two chief explorers, Ruth Taka and Roberto Renault the Fourth, get to name it after themselves and name all the planets after Ruth’s children, nieces, and nephews. The moons are named after some of Ruth’s favorite twenty-second century movie stars—Ruth was a film historian, said that was the greatest era in film.”

  “I’m assuming this tale has a point?” said Kalder. “If so, you had better get to it. I have nine more meetings today, Miss Holdengard.”

  Moira waved her hand at the holo-projector, and the rotating industrialized planet shrank, and it joined a rotating simulation of twenty-two other planets. “This is an updated map. It’s not on LOG, it comes from the pubnet I used at the College years ago. I’ve got more than a thousand records of star systems that were only barely documented from thousands of years ago, all backed up on my Series Seven.”

  She licked her lips.

  “Turns out, Taka and Renault left a small group of researchers on two of the moons. The records aren’t clear why. Perhaps to analyze plate tectonics. Purely academic reasons, most likely. But here’s the thing. They built a colony. And four hundred years later, those moons had a population of thousands. Then a mining company came through, saw what they were doing and the infrastructure they had created, and made them a deal to transform their research stations to mining facilities. Fast-forward another thousand years, and the population of the moon boomed. Millions of people migrated into the system, and started terraforming one of the smaller planets. Six hundred years later, they were finally able to walk outside without spacesuits.

  “Then came a war that cut them off for about a thousand years. It’s unclear which war. They became self-sufficient, and were fine being on their own for quite a while. There are some scant reports of missionaries who went there some three thousand years ago, and found that two opposing religions had warred, that they were xenophobic, and did not trust even other humans from elsewhere. They fired on any human vessels that appeared. The last report of any military vessel sent to check on them was two thousand years ago, and it said they had recovered, and were a system of more than thirty nations, all laying claim to different moons and planets, or different parts of planets.”

  “I see,” Kalder said. “The Romulus and Remus Problem, as you say.”

  “Yes.”

  The Romulus and Remus Problem was something that sociologists talked about a lot when referring to Man’s lost colonies. It only took humans on Earth Cradle two thousand years to go from the crude aqueducts of Ancient Rome to the technologies that put them on the Moon, and that was with no previous knowledge of astrophysics, advanced mechanics, or even calculus. All of that had been developed, tested, and integrated over time, in stages. Civilizations that started with raw materials, and already had the advantage of previous knowledge of such things, could build an empire spanning an entire solar system in half the time it took Man to crawl out of the Stone Age. Indeed, there was historical precedence of this, in both human and xeno cultures. The Romulus and Remus Problem came into play when the original “core society” returned one day, after being gone for hundreds or thousands of years, to find that the new “offshoot society” has evolved so far without them that they may not even remember that they were from that core society. Old stories of how they came to be in the Taka-Renault System may have passed into myth and legend. These two “brother cultures”, once reintroduced, almost always clashed and it usually came to shooting first and asking questions later. Brother against brother, like Romulus and Remus of the old Roman legend.

  “How far along do you expect them to have advanced?” asked Kalder.

  Moira shrugged. “Impossible to tell. They could have imploded by now, self-destructed through war, disease, a supernova event, or all of the above.”

  “If they haven’t imploded, then,” Kalder clarified.

  “If they haven’t imploded, and have carried along their last known trajectory of progress, then you’re looking at an advanced civilization, easily knowledgeable of nukes, advanced sensors, even a fleet of starships.”

  “And your itinerary takes us right through there,” he said. “Right through the nucleus of an unknown and potentially hostile civilization.”

  “To be fair to me,” Moira said, “I only chose that system because it was a clearly-charted one, well documented in LOG, and a natural pit stop after the s’Dar Watchtower, but LOG made no mention of this possible human civilization. The only reason I know about it now is because of a lot of digging in the copies I made of my College’s pubnet—”

  “But you had access to this information from the pubnet before, when you were originally making the itinerary. How did you miss it the first time?”

  Moira watched his cold features closely. She reminded herself that she had seen this man commit murder. He had called it self-defense, and maybe part of it was, but he still killed a man with the help of a Trix security bot and had done it without any indication of regret.

  “I’m human,” she said. “I make mistakes.”

  “You’re saying we could be headed for another war?” Julian asked.

  Moira looked at him. She didn’t care for Kalder’s creature. She couldn’t say why. “If we continue on the itinerary, sure. But I can make some adjustments—”

  “No,” Kalder said. “Make no adjustments.”

  Moira looked at him. “Sorry?”

  “We cannot change our plans now, it would make us look silly. We have to make it look as though we suspected this all along. Besides, the Corporate Arm has been adamant about reestablishing contact with lost colonies. Notombis argued this point the very day I made my intentions for this Crusade known in the Senate. He and his Corporatists want to find our lost brothers and sisters, open trade with them, and reassert the Sol System as our home.”

  He nodded.

  “This could actually help us. If the contact with the people in Taka-Renault goes well, it will make the Crusade look like it has another purpose, which will be helpful. Bringing humanity back together, mankind resurgent, all of that. It will look serendipitous. Fated, to the religious.”

  “And if it goes badly?” Moira asked.

  “We simply say ‘I told you so’ and move on. We show them that time cannot be wasted on lost colonies. If nothing else, it will put a little egg on the Corporatists’ face, which gives them some coloring. Is there anything else?”

  “I…no, but I thought you’d be more
upset.”

  “I don’t get upset, Miss Holdengard. There’s no bad situation that cannot be turned to opportunity, I’m convinced. Now, if you would please?” He gestured for the door.

  Moira nodded. She stood up and left, Pritchard in her wake. As the door hissed closed behind her, she could already hear Kalder on another call.

  “Ah, Pennick, there’s a man I can work with. What’s the latest?”

  “Kalder, I’ll get right to it. There’s been some distressing news from PI about the Queen of Mothers—”

  Moira did not hear the rest.

  WHEN THE VOICE OF REASON came out of its FTL bubble, it was so that her and the other three ships could scoop up some S-type asteroids and feed them into the masticators. The asteroids were a cloud around a dark, rogue planet, adrift in the sea of stars. Kalder stood on the observation deck, alone, gazing down at the planet’s inky-black surface.

  Some light jazz was playing in the room. It was supposed to put a mood over the fields of stars one commonly saw outside the window, Kalder supposed. Like the tables arrayed around the room, which occasionally served the ship’s crew with fine dining during downtime.

  The Voice of Reason was usually used as a carrier for political leaders. Most of its weapons didn’t even work, but its armor had been upgraded, and rated for multiple impacts from railguns and missiles, and its plasma shield was second to none. Currently, it was flanked by the Ferringer, a Rapier-class destroyer, and two Dagger-class corvettes called the Juliette R. Marko and the Sean P.B. Wang. Tenth Fleet ships, all. And they were all that Kalder had been allowed to take with him to meet with Second Fleet at Phanes.

  He watched them all maneuver about, opening their main cargo bays and extending their grapplers, snagging asteroids and reeling them in for the masticators to grind up.

  Behind him, he heard footsteps. “Captain,” he said. He could see Desh’s reflection in the window, approaching from just over his right shoulder. It made him look like a god’s specter floating among the stars.

  Desh cocked his head to one side. “Is that jazz?”

  “It is. Are you a fan?”

  “No. It all sounds the same. Like a bunch of rambling instruments that can’t figure out if they want to be music or not. Every time someone tries to turn me on to it, it seems like it’s always played by some dead jazz player, like that somehow makes it better he’s dead.” He stood beside Kalder and looked out at the debris field, and at the dark planet below. “You called?”

  “I did. How goes the gathering?”

  “Sixteen quality S-types,” Desh said. “Couple of D-types, too. Looks like a good call from your stellarpath. About another hour and we’ll be good to go.” Looked over at Kalder. “How did your stellarpath know about this place? It’s nowhere on our maps.”

  “She knows her stuff,” was all Kalder had to say on that.

  “You mean despite the fact she plotted us a course directly into the shining example of a Romulus and Remus situation?”

  “She makes mistakes. We all do. It’s up to us to mitigate each other’s mistakes in the future. It’s the importance of having a quality team. That’s why I brought you on.”

  “You brought me on because any other captain would have been shamed by being put on such duty,” Desh snorted. “And because anyone else would’ve been in the pocket of your enemies. Not that I’m complaining. Beats the shit out of getting wasted and waking up next to a different futa every morning.”

  “I brought you on for many reasons. One of them being your supreme lack of respect for protocol and chain-of-command. I also respect our service record. Lots of battles. You’ve a willingness—a thirst even—to dive into conflict, which I find admirable.”

  “Never heard insubordination called admirable, but I’ll take it.” He looked up at the speakers above their head. “Fuckin’ jazz.”

  “I require your forthrightness, and your candor, tomorrow at oh-nine-hundred. I’m having a meeting with the captains of the other ships via holoconference. I want you to be in the room with me, sitting by my side, not attending the meeting from your quarters.”

  Desh nodded. “A show of solidarity.”

  “Yes. I may speak little, and just have you say what I need saying.”

  “An attack dog.” The captain sighed, and brushed a lock of hair out of his face. “I’m not captaining any of these ships, I’m just your advisor and liaison, and whatever the hell else you need me to be. But if you think it’ll help heighten your aura of mystery by having me speak for you…shit, why not?”

  “Good.” Kalder nodded towards the planet below. It was so perfectly dark, thanks to having no parent star, that the only way one knew it was there was for the perfect sphere of star-less space it created. “What do you think its story is?”

  “Its story?”

  “Yes. Where did it come from? How long has it been orphaned? For how many billions of years has it drifted out here, alone, without moon or sun to grace its sky? It could be that it was once a moon to some gas giant at the edge of its solar system, but was smashed out of orbit by a terrible collision by some protoplanet, and flung off into space. To be sure, infrared scans point to some cataclysmic event happening around its dented equator, approximately four hundred million years ago.

  “Or might it have been a planet with much potential, forming along with its star, picking up speed on an irregular orbit, racing towards the sun before it picked up too much speed and was hurled to the very fringes of the system? Its orbit could have grown wider and wilder, until at last it slipped free, like a leaf attached to a boat’s keel and coming loose in the ocean, embarking alone on an adventure in the cosmic sea.”

  Desh shrugged. “It’s a big dumb rock.”

  “But would it be a big dumb rock if you weren’t here to say it was?”

  “What?”

  “If you and I did not exist, if Man and Isoshi and Faedyans all just perished, then what would it be? What would that big rock be if you and I were not here to name it? If we were not here to look at the stars and say, ‘There you are,’ then what would any of it mean?”

  “It wouldn’t mean anything,” Desh said, looking confused.

  “Why not?”

  “Because we give it all meaning.”

  “Does that make us gods?”

  “It makes us people who name things when we get frustrated by their lack of having names.”

  “Animals get along just fine without naming things,” Kalder said. “So, why don’t we?”

  “Are you writing a book?” Desh asked.

  “I’ve already written one.”

  “Really?”

  “Yes. Would you be willing to read it?”

  “I’m not really a reader.”

  “Clearly.”

  Desh looked at him. Smirked. “Was that a joke? From a Zeroist? I thought you guys had your senses of humor surgically removed.”

  “It was an observation. And we are on the observation deck.”

  Desh looked him over. “Do you still tell jokes? I mean, thinking like you do, do you even see the humor in anything anymore?”

  Kalder pursed his lips. He looked at Desh. “It is your assertion that I’m looking at a big dumb rock?”

  “Yes.”

  Kalder nodded, and walked off the observation deck.

  Behind him, Desh called out, “Wait…hold on, you were looking at me when you said that.”

  “Was I?”

  Kalder left him with the slow, smooth, soulful music of some dead jazz player.

  MOIRA LOOKED AT the updates coming in from Phanes on the wall screen. The details were scant since the Ascendancy was attempting to jam all communications in and out, but what info was slipping through didn’t look good. The Brotherhood of Contrition had arrived, miraculously, but there was still evidence that Second Fleet was being whittled away. At least three ships were destroyed, all souls lost.

  There were no vids of the assault to be found on the pubnet, it seemed a blackout had be
en put into effect around Phanes, either by the Republic, the Ascendancy, the Widden government, or all three. No images showed what the ground wars looked like on Widden and the various asteroids and moons scattered throughout the system, and looking at these reports, Moira wasn’t sure she wanted to see any.

  There were certain stories being passed around about the campaign, though, and some of those stories came with images and vids. Someone had leaked a vid of one Sergeant Aejon Lyokh of IX Legion from the Kennit campaign. It was cam footage from his helmet, stamped for Primacy Intelligence’s eyes only, and yet there it was, live for all to see. The story had also gotten out that he was given the honor of doyen by his people—Whatever that means, Moira thought—and was given the Imperator’s Medal of Valor and raised to wing leader. The story was that he and his Gold Wing had been the first to land on Widden and were the very tip of the spear.

  So far, no word on whether or not Lyokh was among the dead. But there was a portrait of him, in his uniform, standing in front of the white-and-red stars of the Republican flag, on the day he took his Oath. The narrator was going on about his service record, and how Second Fleet’s Visquain claimed he fought bravely against impossible odds, so on and so forth.

  To Moira, Lyokh looked like a hard man, clearly of Germanic descent, with thick black eyebrows that furrowed just slightly, as if only slightly dismayed by something he was seeing.

  “—and survived a campaign that claimed the lives of the Knights of Sol,” the anchorwoman was saying. “Word of this incredible story has spread fast, ever since the footage of the Kennit campaign was leaked—”

  Wonder how it leaked? Moira thought. She imagined heads rolling somewhere.

  “…demons…All demons…”

  The recording was playing again in her ear, over and over.

  Moira looked around at the others in The Place To Be. Every ship had a place like this, some dusty corner that had been cleared out to allow for a bit of recreation and relaxation.

  Moira drummed her fingers on the table. She used her imtech to bring up all the maps of the regions around Taka-Renault. In truth, she was okay with the senator’s decision to visit the system, for it would provide her explorer’s heart a chance to see what happens when two civilizations tried to reconnect. But something else was bothering her.