“Not going to be a fun meeting,” she said.
“How about we get Chairman West in on the meeting to help us understand everything,” Benny said, standing.
Gina stood as well and stretched. “But let’s talk with the other four first, so they are not caught by surprise with this.”
Benny nodded, then said, “Star Rain, would you contact the Chairmen of Star Fall and Star Mist and ask for an emergency meeting on Star Mist?”
“Be glad to,” Star Rain said.
A moment later Star Rain said, “They have agreed. On Star Mist.”
“Thank you,” Gina said.
A moment later she and Benny were standing in the Star Mist conference room more millions of light-years away from Star Fall than she wanted to think about.
The large oak-colored wooden table filled the center of the conference room and Gina and Benny took their normal seats along one side in the comfortable dark-leather chairs. She could smell some cookies and cupcakes already on the table at the back, but at the moment she didn’t feel up for a snack. Not with this news they were about to hand to the others.
Carrie and Matt appeared a moment later and sat across from Gina and Benny. Both Carrie and Matt were dressed comfortably in jeans and light shirts.
Gina loved the lack of any dress code about the Seeders. There was never a thought about dressing other than for comfort. She and Benny were seldom in anything but jeans, dress shirts, and tennis shoes. Sure made dressing every morning easier.
“Even more problems, huh?” Matt asked, smiling as he sat down.
“They never seem to end,” Benny said, smiling as well.
“Oh, super,” Carrie said, laughing. “And just when some major reinforcements arrived.”
“Yeah,” Benny said, “that illustrated the problem.”
Gina loved the attitude of the six of them. They all knew it was impossible, what they were trying to do, but they didn’t let that get to their attitudes.
At that moment Angie and Gage appeared and sat at the head of the large table.
“More fun, huh?” Gage asked.
“A real party,” Benny said.
“So we noticed that the Rescue One had arrived,” Gina said, deciding to get right to the point.
“Bringing a bunch of military ships and Sharks,” Gage said, nodding. “We all just need to figure out how to deploy all of them.”
Everyone nodded, but waited for Gina to go on.
“Rescue One is known for saving the mother ship Dreaming Large from an empty space bubble,” Gina said.
“And giving all Seeder ships a scanning system to spot empty space bubbles and avoid them,” Benny said.
“Oh, shit,” Gage said, sitting back.
Gina nodded. Clearly Gage had jumped to exactly what they had figured out.
“May I have Star Mist put up a hologram of this area of space?” Gina asked.
Angie nodded, looking puzzled at Gage who just sat there staring at the ceiling.
“Star Mist, would you please show a hologram of the closest 50 galaxies along this line of defense?”
“I would be glad to,” Star Mist said and the hologram appeared. It looked so clean with just the dots of lights.
“Please show all alien ships in this area of space,” Gina said. She didn’t really want to see this again for this area, but they all had to.
The clean image became filled with more millions of red dots than Gina wanted to think about it.
“Please, Star Mist,” Gina said, “would you show the locations in bright white dots of the empty space pockets in this area?”
The white lights appeared, dotted all over the area and all through the red dots of alien ships.
“Oh, no,” Angie said.
Carrie and Matt were just sitting back, staring at the hologram, their mouths open and their eyes wide.
“Star Mist,” Gina said, “could you estimate, roughly, the number of alien ships in this scanned area likely to now be caught in empty space pockets?”
“Over ten thousand,” Star Mist said. “Rough estimation and rounded.”
“Thank you, Star Mist,” Gina said.
Everyone was silent just staring at the hologram full of red and the bright white lights showing pockets of empty space.
“Star Rain estimates,” Gina said, “that we could have over two hundred million alien ships trapped in empty space pockets since the beginning of the alien expansion.”
“Do you agree with that number, Star Mist?” Angie asked.
“Yes,” Star Mist said. “Many factors are in the equation, but taking into account the time of alien expansion and location of many of the empty space bubbles, that number might be slightly low.”
Silence filled the conference room as all six of them sat staring at the sector of space filled with red dots of alien ships.
Finally Angie said, “Thank you, Star Mist. You can shut down the image.”
The image of hopelessness hanging over the table vanished and Gina found herself taking a deep breath.
“I’m so glad you wanted to share this news,” Gage said, shaking his head.
“That’s what friends are for,” Benny said, smiling.
They all laughed. Not one thing else they could do.
SEVEN
BENNY LIKED CHAIRMAN Evan West of Rescue One right from the start. West was a tall, thin man with bright green eyes and a balding head. From his record, he was thousands of years old, which had Benny intimidated almost from the start.
But when Chairman West transported to the meeting room to talk with the six of them, he was charming and kept the mood light to start. He took a chair at the end of the table facing Angie and Gage.
And West was very, very respectful to all of them, even though combined they hadn’t lived a third of his age. That didn’t seem to bother him in the slightest.
When he first arrived, it was clear to Benny that Chairman West thought he was here to talk about how to deploy his ships and forces. And they would have that meeting in time.
So when Angie asked him to explain to them the nature of empty space, he looked surprised.
“Your arrival has made us realize we have a problem,” Gage said.
“A larger problem than the impossible one we already face,” Benny said.
“Yeah, that too,” Gage said.
West chuckled, but Benny could tell he was suddenly worried.
“We think,” Gage said, “that we have over two hundred million alien ships in empty space bubbles.”
West started to say something, then stopped, his mouth open.
Benny could see that suddenly the obvious that they had all missed hit West solidly. No one, since his rescue of Dreaming Large, thought much at all about empty space. Like a moon or an asteroid belt, it was just something to not hit.
“We can’t let one ship escape,” Angie said.
“One ship can contaminate an entire galaxy in just over six hundred years,” Carrie said, “and launch more hundreds and hundreds of millions of alien ships into space than we want to think about.”
“So we need a lesson on empty space bubbles to know what we are facing,” Benny said.
Benny watched as Chairman West just blinked for a moment.
“How they are formed, do they serve a purpose, how can we destroy one, and so on,” Angie said.
West nodded and took a deep breath.
Benny was impressed. This guy had lived a very long time, but it was clear to Benny he had never been under this kind of stress before, except maybe in the rescue of Dreaming Large.
“I can download to your ships from Rescue One all data we gathered and details,” West said, “to the tiniest detail on how we freed Dreaming Large.”
“Would you do that now,” Angie asked. “We need to have our ships with all this information as soon as possible.”
West nodded and contacted his second in command and had that done.
A few moments later Star Mist said, “Receiving
the information now.”
Benny contacted Star Rain and Carrie contacted Star Fall to make sure the information was coming in there as well.
“So,” Gina said after a moment, facing Chairman West, “what exactly is empty space?”
“It is, basically,” West said, taking a deep breath and focusing on the topic at hand, “exactly what its name implies. It is an area devoid of all space and time. Normal space around us has many things in it, but inside the gravitational bubble of empty space, nothing exists, including most laws of physics.”
Benny tried to image that and failed, so decided to ask the next question.
“How does a bubble like that even exist? What creates it?”
“Universal forces of gravity create them,” West said. “Every object in the universe warps time and space around it. When certain sets of gravitational forces come into play with each other, the forces form neutral areas and these neutral areas form as gravitational bubbles of nothingness.”
Benny shook his head, still not following completely.
“So back on our home world,” Matt said, “we had high-speed roads for traffic. These roads formed all sorts of patterns to allow vehicles to get on and off smoothly. But there were always dead, worthless areas inside those interchanges, those patterns.”
West nodded. “My home world had those as well. Those dead areas would be these empty space areas. Gravitational forces are in play around a dead area like traffic on an exchange and form the bubble around the nothingness. Once formed it takes on a stability all its own.”
Benny shook his head and smiled at Matt. “Thank you. Just saved me a giant headache trying to understand these things.”
“I was going there myself,” Matt said, smiling.
“Think of them like a balloon,” West said. “To save the Dreaming Large, we had to let in regular space and time evenly from all directions at the same time.”
“So if we just blow a hole in the side of one of these empty spaces?” Benny asked.
“Real time and space and gravitational forces would rush in and destroy anything inside the bubble,” West said.
“So we need to pop a lot of bubbles,” Benny said, nodding. Maybe, just maybe not all was lost yet.
“We can do that,” Gage said and the other chairmen nodded.
“For every bubble you pop,” West said, shaking his head, “another might appear to balance things. It seems the bubbles are also used to balance gravitational forces in an area. Or at least that’s the theory. Never been tested. Until now there was no reason to test it.”
“When you destroyed the bubble around Dreaming Large, did another one form?” Angie asked.
West nodded. “About thirty light-years away and almost swallowed another Seeder ship before we realized what was happening and got the ship out of the way.”
Benny just shook his head. Nothing at all was easy about any of this.
EIGHT
GINA AND BENNY had alternated cooking from the moment they had met. They both liked to cook and it gave them time away. They both tried to protect their private time and get full nights sleep every night. And dinner was part of that.
This evening it was Gina’s turn and she was working on a pasta salad and chicken breasts smothered in Italian spices. One of the advantages they had being on a ship the size of a moon, there was lots of room to grow fresh vegetables and chicken and fish.
The kitchen in their chairmen’s quarters was a dream kitchen as far as she was concerned, with stone-like counter tops, two large sinks, and enough area to prepare anything she or Benny felt like preparing.
Off to one side of the kitchen was a wonderful dining room that could sit eight at the beautiful wooden maple dining table, but they kept the table downsized so she and Benny could sit facing each other and talk across a small table.
They had decorated their apartment with pictures of her home planet and New York City on his home world, where they had lived together for the first two years and tried to help survivors of what they called The Event.
It had been a hard two years, scrambling for food and trying to keep the spirits of those around them up. Even though at any point they could have gone to one of the Seeder ships in orbit, they chose to stay on the surface.
So now those images of her home world and his decorated their wonderful apartment. And in the nearby living room they often cuddled on the couch and watched old movies. She had a lot of movies from his world to catch up on and he had a lot of movies from hers. It was great fun.
She was almost finished with preparing dinner and was about to call Benny when he came out of his office and leaned against the counter to watch her.
“Anything I can do to help?” he asked. “It smells wonderful.”
“Just sit down,” she said, laughing.
They went through that exact same routine every night, the one not cooking asking at the last minute if they could help. She loved that ritual.
“So what were you working on?” she asked as she first dished up the pasta salad.
“Trying to see if I can understand these empty space bubbles a little more,” he said.
“And do you?” she asked, as she put the chicken on a plate for each of them and decorated it with steamed spears of asparagus.
“I think I do,” he said as she served them both and sat down. “But can’t seem to find an answer to one really stupid question.”
He shook his head and dug into the salad.
“What question,” she asked.
“Can we move the things,” he said.
She sort of froze, the first bite of chicken halfway to her mouth.
“Move them?”
“Great chicken,” he said, nodding.
“Thank you,” she said, finishing getting the bite to her mouth. And he was right, it had come out wonderfully, with an Italian spice that gave it just a little zest but kept the chicken flavor.
“So why move them?” she asked.
“Something you said earlier,” Benny said. “If we could get more alien ships to run into the empty space on their own, we could slow them down and then we come along later and pop the bubble and destroy bunches of them all at the same time.”
She just stared at the man she loved more than anything. He looked more military than anything, yet his mind worked in ways that constantly astounded her.
He could see things that made no sense to anyone else.
“Also trying to see if we could make them bigger,” he said. “Bigger rat traps.”
She just kept staring at him. Both of those ideas just might work. Both were brilliant and might turn the tide if they did work.
He shrugged and kept eating. “Silly damn idea considering the size of space between galaxies.”
She just kept staring at him until he noticed and stopped eating and said, “What? I got food stuck to my nose or something?”
She laughed. “No, just admiring that brain of yours is all.”
He laughed. “I’ll let you admire other parts of this body later if you want.”
“Once I get past admiring the brain,” she said, smiling at him, “I just might.”
NINE
BENNY AND GINA the next morning in their command chair, after going over all the reports coming in from scouts and Sharks destroying alien ships, decided to dig more into the idea of moving one of the empty space bubbles.
They had talked about it more last night and both spent time in their offices after dinner making sure they understood what these empty space bubbles actually were.
As far as Benny could tell, they were exactly as Chairman West described them. Nothingness. Complete. No time, no gravity, nothing, held together by a gravity bubble membrane of some sort.
And the more they researched it, the more excited Benny got that this might not be another problem, but in fact might be another weapon for them in the fight to stop the alien expansion.
So now after a good night’s sleep, they sat in their command chair ready to
try to figure it all out.
“Star Rain?” Benny asked, “would it be possible to move an empty space bubble?”
“In theory, yes,” Star Rain said.
Since they were in their command chair, he was holding Gina’s hand and he squeezed it in excitement of that answer.
She squeezed back.
“Would it be possible to expand the size of an existing empty space bubble?” Gina asked.
“In theory, yes,” Star Rain said.
Benny almost felt like jumping up out of the chair and doing a little dance. But he had one more question.
“Star Rain, would it be possible to create from scratch an empty space bubble?”
“In theory, yes,” Star Rain said.
Benny had to get up and so did Gina. They both stood and paced in front of their chair, making many of the command crew look down at them with puzzled looks. But since both were smiling, the command crew, rightfully, decided to not say anything. At that moment, Benny appreciated that.
“Before we go one more step down the road on this,” Gina said, finally stopping in front of Benny, smiling, “we need to see if the size of space the alien ships are traveling through would even make such a thing worthwhile to us.”
“Agreed,” Benny said. “Star Rain, on the big screen, please illustrate an alien occupied galaxy with most of the alien inhabited planets in the galaxy producing alien ships. Any of the galaxies that fit that parameter would be fine.”
In front of them on the wall-sized screen a three dimensional image of a spiral galaxy appeared. It looked a lot like the Milky Way, only about two-thirds the size from the statistics being shown on the screen.
“How many alien planets in this galaxy?” Gina asked.
The Creators had designed this rat-like race to need a similar planet than humans needed under a yellow star in what was the habitable temperature zone orbit. So that limited the number of planets a great deal.
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