Starshine

by G. S. Jennsen

  He knew he was a small cog in a very large machine, but he liked to think he did his part. His great-great-great-grandparents had been farmers on the Oklahoma plains, and in his own way he carried on their proud tradition.

  Nevertheless, it—

  —his eVi flashed red and pushed an emergency pulse into his vision.

  Dad Alliance ships are attack—

  He never saw the missile, nor the ship which fired it.

  The town hall appeared to implode from within, then expel an enormous red-gold wave of fire to consume all in its wake. The heat rolled over them like a blast furnace.

  “Dad!” Thomas fell to his knees in horror. “No, Dad….”

  Ava was pulling on his arm, trying to drag him back up. “Come on, we should get somewhere safe.”

  “But my dad…he might still be alive and need our help….”

  She glanced at the collapsed, destroyed building at the end of the square. It bowed in to the center, where jagged pieces of synthetic stone piled twenty meters high. Black smoke billowed out of every surface, licked by bright yellow flames.

  “I don’t think so, Tom. I’m sorry. We need to move!”

  He gazed at her, eyes wide and desperate. It felt like a dream, everything hazy and sluggish. Ava was talking to him…and his father was dead. Slowly he nodded and struggled up.

  She tugged him around the rubble. “Come on, let’s go to the school—they’ve got a storm shelter!”

  They stumbled through huge chunks of debris and upended vehicles and veered left toward the school. People were running in every direction, some panting, others screaming. A few merely huddled on their knees beside bodies.

  Behind them the jets could be heard approaching again—or maybe it was different ships, more ships. The beam of one of the defense turrets chased them as they passed overhead.

  He saw the beam trail off in the air to the right. Why didn’t the lasers hit the ships? The government had promised they were state of the art.

  Someone crashed into him from behind, and he remembered to start running again.

  Ava’s hand felt sweaty and clammy in his. Not at all like he had imagined it would feel. But she was probably scared, right? That was why it wasn’t soft and warm and gentle.

  To their left the community center smoldered in ruins. A gust of wind blew a cloud of ash and smoke onto them; he accidentally inhaled some of it and doubled over in a coughing fit.

  “Tom, please, we have to keep going!”

  Ava was crying now. Her tears cut wet streaks into the ash coating her face, but her gorgeous green eyes, stark with terror, shone through the smoke.

  He tried to stand, but another coughing fit crippled him.

  She stared at him, panic bubbling forth. “I’m sorry, Tom, I don’t want to die. I have to go!” She let go of his hand and took off running.

  “Ava, wait….” His voice was hoarse and cracking and there was no way she heard him above the cries and screams and thunder of collapsing buildings.

  He crawled to his feet and stumbled after her. She seemed far ahead of him now. He saw her join a group of people scrambling up the stairs and fighting to squeeze through the doors all at once—

  —the front of the school erupted in a pillar of fire.

  His steps slackened to a halt. It was a dream. It had to be. Only in a dream would Ava finally talk to him, then have the life stolen from her.

  “Ava?”

  A column of thick black smoke flowed down the street toward where he stood. He let it wash over him, no longer caring if he could breathe.

  NEW BABEL

  Independent Colony

  * * *

  Olivia observed the feeds from the jets on a large screen above her desk as their fourth and final run began. The perfectly manicured nail of her left index finger tapped a slow, measured beat on the surface of the desk; it was the only sign of tension in an otherwise calm and poised demeanor.

  She waited until the first of the final two missiles had been loosed by each ship. Twenty-eight high-powered precision Alliance missiles had done quite sufficient damage to a nascent village of thirty thousand. She entered a code on the control panel beneath her right hand. The custom ware installed on the jets to jam the defense turrets ceased to function.

  Five seconds later Charlie fighter exploded. Confused chatter burst forth in the other three cockpits.

  “Wha—? How’d that laser hit?”

  “Jamming is down. I repeat jamming is down! Evasive maneuv—” Bravo took a missile to a wing and spun out of control to disintegrate on impact with the ground.

  “Abort! Delta, abort!”

  But they were too close to the town and its meager little defense systems.

  “Eject!”

  She checked, concerned for a moment at least one team member had somehow managed to eject. The eject mechanisms were supposed to be disabled, but mistakes did happen—and would be paid for if they did. Area scans identified no chutes, however.

  She listened as Thad Yue grumbled in the final seconds before his fighter caught a laser from one of the turrets and exploded as he pulled ineffectually on the eject lever. “Qu si, gāisĭ biăo zi.”

  Her eVi helpfully provided the translation: Go to Hell, you fucking whore.

  A wry smile grew on her lips as she shut off the screen. “You first.”

  She had told Marcus traceability wouldn’t be an issue and she had meant it. Yue had been the sole team member who knew the operation was under her direction, but they all knew they weren’t working for the Alliance. Modern interrogation techniques were quite effective, no matter the will of the captive. She simply could not risk the slightest chance of any information being revealed to either Alliance or Senecan agents.

  Therefore none were allowed to survive.

  She sent a brief pulse to Marcus, one whose meaning would never be construed as incriminating.

  As requested.

  27

  SIYANE

  Metis Nebula, Center

  * * *

  The Siyane dropped out of superluminal into an ocean of light.

  Like most plerions, Metis grew brighter as one neared the center despite the lack of visible light from the pulsar itself. Alex had been prepared for it, and spectrum filters were in place over the viewports above and beyond the strengthened radiation shielding. Even so, she had to blink away halos while her eyes adjusted to the increased brightness and her ocular implant adapted to the new range of signals it now received.

  The wispy, amorphous nebular dust of before was gone, replaced by sweeping, dramatic cloud formations in vibrant shades ranging from crisp gold to rich cornflower blue. They towered in thick pillars, resembling the storm wall of a galactic hurricane and spilling forth as crashing waves upon a shore.

  It was magnificent. A stunning tableau of brilliant color and radiant luminance.

  “Well that’s not something you see every day.”

  She tore her attention away from the scene to look over her shoulder. Caleb stood behind her chair, hands perched on the headrest. His attention was directed out the viewport, but sensing her gaze he looked down.

  He wore a spirited grin, one which only broadened when he saw her own expression of delight. Dear lord, when it was genuine his smile could illuminate a world.

  Things had been different between them this morning…more comfortable, more naturally at ease. It was as if giving full voice to the unresolvable conundrum of their circumstance enabled them to, if not break through it, at least put it aside for the time being.

  She returned his smile before returning to the vista. Silently she framed and captured a number of visuals using the external cameras, including several excellent candidates for future additions to the wall in her loft. Satisfied, she leaned forward and rested her chin on her palms to simply stare out and soak it all in.

  Moments such as this made everything else worth it. The difficult choices, the judgmental frowns and even scorn of others, the fading away of
friends and lovers, the isolation and solitude and, every now and again, perhaps loneliness…

  …of course she wasn’t alone right now, was she? She found—somewhat to her surprise—she was okay with that.

  After a soft exhale she sat up and straightened her posture. “Time to get to work.” She glanced back and found him watching her instead of the view. Huh. “All the sensors are wide open. We can monitor the readings along the top of the HUD, though not to the level of detail we can analyze later at the data center.

  “The pulsar resides about half an AU in that direction.” She gestured to an area fifteen degrees port. “Physically it’s quite tiny, only a few kilometers wide, yet obviously the pulse is very strong.”

  The top far right screen showed the rapid, spiking frequency of the gamma flare. “We won’t be able to get any closer than 0.15 AU or the radiation shield will be overwhelmed. But we don’t have to. We can see everything we need to from here.”

  She leaned back in the chair and kicked her feet up on the small dash lip, crossed her arms against her chest and watched as the screens lit up to display new readings. Thirty seconds, a minute passed in silence, her focus wholly on the screens.

  Finally she looked over at him. He had taken up a position beside the half-wall of the cockpit. “See anything interesting?”

  He huffed a laugh. “If you’re seeking an opportunity to put me in my place, now would be a fairly good one.”

  She merely shrugged, and he sucked in a deep breath. “Well, for the most part the readings match the earlier ones you took. The TLF radiation is definitely stronger now, but…it seems a little off-kilter. I can’t put my finger on why.”

  Her lips smacked together, though she was impressed he picked up on the oddity. “Yep. Sure does.” She swiveled to contemplate the far left screen for a moment, then stood and went to the data center. In a few seconds she had redirected the feeds to the table. She pulled up a large physical map of the region and began superimposing the various electromagnetic waves.

  The gamma flare, not surprisingly, lined up directly on the location of the pulsar. The synchrotron radiation also originated at the pulsar to spread in all directions. Same for the pulsar wind. The visible light was diffuse throughout the region, having no clear origin point—consistent with a late-stage supernova remnant. The minor infrared and microwave readings were a bit haphazard, clumping around the pulsar but peaking at several other locations as well.

  The TLF radiation…. “It’s not coming from the pulsar.”

  He had joined her at the table, and stood near enough if she shifted her weight their shoulders would brush against one another. Yet for the moment the unsettling effect of his rather close physical proximity was outweighed by the sheer magnitude of the impossibility in front of her.

  “Impossible. It lines up perfectly on the gamma flare.”

  “I know. But it’s not coming from the pulsar.” She zoomed the map in. “It intersects the pulsar, but it’s coming from…there.” ‘There’ was a region of thick nebular clouds 0.2 AU to the right and behind the pulsar. “And…” a thought and the entire table updated with new data “…I think the pulsar’s orbiting that location.”

  He ran a hand through his hair in consternation. In its wake loose curls spilled down across his forehead, sending her pulse subito accelerando, to put it in polite terms. She willfully blinked the sensation away.

  He seemed completely unaware of the effect he was having on her. “Which would mean it’s a binary system, just as you suspected. Can you detect a companion in here anywhere?”

  “Nope. I mean it’s possible it’s one of these infrared or microwave markers. Still, they don’t really line up correctly for it.”

  “Well if the companion’s a white dwarf—given the age of the Nebula it would make sense—it might be difficult to pick up, right?”

  He continued to impress her with his knowledge of astrophysics concepts; it was layman’s knowledge, but very well informed layman’s knowledge. He was certainly turning out to be quite a bit more than simply a black ops agent.

  “Sure, but from this position it should be detectable. Hmm…the pulsar’s in a tight orbit. If I had to predict, I’d expect the companion—”

  She pivoted and headed to the cockpit. But instead of resuming her seat, she stood so close to the viewport her nose almost pressed to it. Her eyes roved across the scene, pupils dilating and contracting as she repeatedly adjusted the focus of her ocular implant.

  “Come on you little star, shine for me….”

  Abruptly she spun back around. “Let’s go over there.”

  He was leaning on the edge of the data center, ankles and arms crossed loosely as he regarded her with a look of…she couldn’t classify it. But his eyes sparkled and one corner of his mouth was curled up the tiniest bit, causing a flutter in her chest beyond the excitement of the discovery.

  One of his eyebrows arched in question. “Over…where, exactly?”

  She laughed as she settled into the chair. “Sorry, guess I didn’t actually finish that sentence. Not used to having company.” She gestured about ten degrees starboard. “Over thereish.”

  It took them more than an hour to find the companion, despite the fact it was in the end precisely where Alex had thought it would be. It took so long partly because the companion traveled in a bright, dense mass of nebular dust which masked any visual cues, partly because it was smaller than it should have been—roughly the size of Europa—and partly because it was impossibly cool.

  The Siyane hovered 1.5 megameters above the white dwarf. Deep red in color (despite the name), it pulsed at a leisurely period of thirty-six seconds. Seven different ways of measurement told her it radiated a temperature of 910 K.

  “That’s not possible.”

  “And that’s the fourth time you’ve said so.”

  She shot him a glare. “It’s the fourth time it’s been true. The coolest white dwarf ever measured is 2440 K, and it is a helluva lot closer to the center of the damn universe than this is. A temperature so low means it’s almost as old as the Big Bang—and that is impossible.”

  “Excellent.” He shrugged. “So…we go back home and win the Nobel Prize in Astrophysics?”

  She burst out laughing, and felt the tension which had been building within her, and thus in the cabin as well, since locating the dwarf melt away. “Maybe, yes.”

  She dragged a hand down her face and blew out a long breath. “Okay, fuck it. I’ve measured and recorded everything. Floating here staring at it isn’t going to solve any mysteries. On to the next questions: what are they orbiting and why?”

  He frowned a little…in concentration, she thought. When he frowned the bridge of his nose drew together until his eyebrows were virtually horizontal. Two fierce streaks of discontentment.

  After a second he glanced over and caught her watching him. The frown curled upward into a half-grin. “Yes?”

  She looked as innocent as she could manage. “Nothing. You have thoughts?”

  “If I remember correctly, nobody ever gets worked up about whatever binary stars are orbiting. It’s usually some arbitrary center of mass they happened to be drawn around.”

  “All true. But you forgot one thing—the TLF radiation. There’s nothing arbitrary about it.”

  “Consider me chastised. So we go check it out?”

  “We go check it out.” She swiveled the chair to the viewport and began pulling away from the strange, impossible dwarf star. “We’re likely half an hour out from any visuals.” She gazed at him wearing a hopeful, imploring expression. “Make me a sandwich?”

  She had taken a mere two bites of the quite tasty penzine and Swiss cheese sandwich when it dropped forgotten to the plate in her lap. “What the…?”

  The nebular clouds had thickened precipitously as they neared the epicenter of the binary orbit, until it was like traveling through fog in a muggy swamp. Flying by instrumentation was a skill of necessity, so it wasn’t a problem as such.
It had become disturbingly eerie, though.

  The cause of her bewilderment however was not the fog, but rather the spectrum analyzer output. Two minutes into the dense clouds it had begun displaying new frequencies, at first in the background then strengthening until they dominated the noise of the Nebula and even the pulsar.

  She sensed him at her shoulder and pointed at the screen.

  “What the hell?”

  “Indeed.”

  She had tuned the analyzer as broad as practicable to capture any unusual readings across the spectrum. Now it was capturing exactly that.

  The primary spectrum display updated every two seconds with a measurement of amplitude over frequencies ranging from 0.01 Hz to 1030 Hz. It showed a deeply concave shape, featuring strong peaks at both extremes and a severe dip along the middle, except for a narrow but massive spike in the upper terahertz range. Every update saw the peaks grow in power.

  Below the primary a smaller display mapped the measurements over time. It showed a continual series of deep red, light orange and purple spikes—precise, well-defined and increasing in a perfect linear function as they drew closer.

  He dropped his hands to the headrest and leaned into her chair. “Okay. The two extremes are the signals we already knew about, right?”

  “The lowest band is in fact our mystery TLF. But I filtered out the gamma flare and synchrotron radiation on account of them being so noisy. I wanted to be able to spot new anomalies. And it seems I have.”

  “The gamma wave really isn’t from the pulsar?”

  “Nope. And it’s a harmonic partial of the TLF wave.”

  “What’s the source of the terahertz?”

  “No idea.”

  His voice dropped low and acquired a carefully measured tenor. “Alex, slow down.”

  “Why, you want to see if the rate of increase slows?”

  “No, I’m sure it will. I want you to slow down because I think we should approach more cautiously.”